The aunts built a shooting range on an area of property behind the house. It was Mrs. Mitchell's job to set up the targets and fetch them iced tea and ammo. She kept a glass jar full of shells in the back of her closet, shiny gold casings from her aunts' collection of .22 calibers and .45s. They made a shooting station out of an old shed, two tables set up with sandbags to hold the guns, nestling the shape of heavy metal as the pieces were placed down.
When she was twelve years old the aunts gave her a rifle. She already knew the shooting stances, and she practiced them with her new gun every day after school. She could hit a target while kneeling, crouching, lying down, and standing tall, hips parallel to the barrel and her waist turned, the same way the aunts taught her to pose when a picture was being taken. She picked off tin cans and old metal signs and polka-dotted the paper outlines of men.
Mrs. Mitchell remembered this when she pulled into her driveway, glanced over the fence, and saw her husband having sex in the doorway of their neighbors' house. She turned to Miguel in the passenger seat and told him to close his eyes. The boy covered his face with his hands and sat quietly while she got out of the car. Mrs. Mitchell watched her husband moving back and forth and felt her feet give way from the ground. She had the sensation of being caught in a river, the current pulling her body outward, tugging at her ankles, and she wondered why she wasn't being swept away until she realized that she was holding on to the fence. The wood felt smooth and worn, like the handle of her first gun, and she used it to pull herself back down.
Later she thought of the look on Pat's face. It reminded Mrs. Mitchell of the Tin Woodman from the movie The Wizard of Oz—disarmingly lovely and greasy with expectation. In the book version she bought for Miguel she'd read that the Woodman had once been real, but his ax kept slipping and he'd dismembered himself, slowly exchanging his flesh piece by piece for hollow metal. Mrs. Mitchell thought Pat's body would rattle with the same kind of emptiness, but it didn't; it fell with the heavy tone of meat. As she waited for the echo, Mrs. Mitchell heard a small cough from the kitchen, the kind a person does in polite society to remind someone else that they are there. She followed it and found Clyde in his slippers, the knife in the roast.
Hello. I just killed your wife. And when she said it, she knew she'd have to shoot Clyde too. The beans were boiling, the water frothing over the sides of the pan and sizzling into the low flame beneath. Mrs. Mitchell turned off the oven and spun all the burners to zero.
The aunts never married. They still lived in the house where they raised their niece. Occasionally they sent her photographs, recipes, information on the NRA, or obituaries of people she had known clipped from the local newspaper. When a reporter called Mrs. Mitchell, asking questions about Pat and Clyde, she thought back to all the notices her aunts had sent over the years, and said: They were good neighbors and wonderful people. I don't know who would have done something like this. They will be greatly missed. The truth was that she felt very little for Pat. It was hard to forgive herself for this, so she didn't try. Instead she did her best to forget how Clyde had looked, the surprise on his face, as if he were about to offer her a drink before he crumpled to the floor.
She waited patiently through the following day for someone to come for her. She watched the police cruisers and the news vans come and go. On Monday morning she woke up and let the dog out. She made a sandwich for Miguel and fit it in his lunch box beside a thermos of milk. She poured juice into a glass and cereal into a bowl. Then she locked herself in the bathroom and watched her hands shake. She remembered that she had wanted to cover Clyde with something. Falling out of the box, the cereal had sounded crisp and new like water on rocks, but it quickly turned into a soggy mess that stayed with her as she left him, stepped over Pat, and picked up the welcome mat with her gloves. She could still see her husband moving back and forth on top of it. She wanted to make home sweet home disappear, but the longest she could bring herself to touch it was the end of the driveway, and she left it in a garbage can on the street.
She found that she could not say goodbye. Not when her husband pounded on the door to take a shower and not when Miguel asked if he could brush his teeth. She sat on the toilet and listened to them move about the house and leave. Later, she watched through the window as a man wrapped her neighbors' house in police tape. To double it around a tree in the yard, he circled the trunk with his arms. It was a brief embrace and she thought, That tree felt nothing.
In the afternoon, when the sun began to slant, Lieutenant Sales crossed the Mitchells' front yard. He was carrying a chewed-up slipper in a bag, jostling the dandelions, and sending seeds of white fluff adrift. Mrs. Mitchell saw him coming. She turned the key in the lock, and once she was beyond the bathroom, she ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing down the rough spots. The bell rang. The dog barked. She opened the door, and offered him coffee.
* * *
Miguel turned nine that summer. In the past two years he'd spent with the Mitchells, the boy had grown no more than an inch; but with the warm weather that June, he'd suddenly sprouted—his legs stretching like brown sugar taffy tight over his new knobby bones, as if the genes of his American father had been lying dormant, biding their time until the right combination of spring breezes and processed food kissed them awake. He began to trip over himself. On his way home from baseball practice that Monday, he caught one of his newly distended feet on a trash can just outside the line of police tape that closed in Pat and Clyde's yard. Miguel fell to the sidewalk, smacking his hands against the concrete. The barrel toppled over beside him, and out came a welcome mat. home sweet home.
Miguel was not the best student, but he had made friends easily once he hit several home runs in gym class. Norman and Greg Kessler, twins and the most popular kids in school, chose him for their team and for their friend. Norman and Greg helped him with his English, defended him against would-be attackers, and told him when they saw his father naked.
Mr. Mitchell had driven past them on the highway, stripped bare from the waist down. From the window of their mother's minivan, Norman and Greg could see a woman leaning over the gearshift. It's true, said the twins. Miguel made them swear on the Bible, on a stack of Red Sox cards, and finally on their grandfather's grave, which they did, bikes thrown aside in the grass and sweaty hands pressed on the polished marble of his years. At dinner that night the boy watched his father eating. The angle of his jaw clenched and turned.
Miguel felt a memory push past hot dogs, past English, past Hostess cupcakes and his collection of Spider-Man comic books. He was five years old and asked his mother where his father was. She was making coffee—squeezing the grounds through a sieve made out of cloth and wire. He'd collected eggs from their chickens for breakfast. He was holding them in his hands and they were still warm. His mother took one from him. This is the world and we are here, she said, and pointed to the bottom half of the egg. Your father is there. She ran her finger up along the edge and tapped the point with a dark red nail. Then she cracked the yolk in a pan and threw the rest of the egg in the garbage. He retrieved it later and pushed his fingertips back and forth across the slippery inner membrane until the shell came apart into pieces.
Miguel picked up the doormat and shook it to get the dust off. It seemed like something Mrs. Mitchell might be fond of. That morning he had kept watch through the bathroom keyhole. She was out of sight, but he could sense her worry.
In Caracas he had gone through the trash regularly, looking for things to play with and at times for something to eat. Ever since he heard about his father being naked on the highway, he had been remembering more about his life there, and even reverting to some of his old habits, as if the non sequitur of his father's nudity had tenderly shaken him awake. He lay in bed at night and looked into the eyes of the papier-mâché head for guidance. He had two lives now, two countries and two mothers. Soon he would find another life without his father, and another when he went away to college, and another life, and another, and ano
ther, and another, each of them a thin, fragile casing echoing the hum of what had gone before.
The boy walked into the kitchen and found his American mother sitting with a strange man. They both held steaming mugs of coffee. Buster was under the table, waking from his afternoon nap. He saw Miguel and thumped his tail halfheartedly against the floor. The adults turned. Now, what have you got there?
Lieutenant Sales took home sweet home in his hands. There was something in the look of the boy and the feel of the rope that held possibility, and the twisted pink skin where the shark had bitten him began to itch. It had been tingling all afternoon. Later, in the lab, the welcome mat would reveal tiny spots of Pat's blood, dog saliva, gunpowder, dead ants, mud, fertilizer, and footprints—but not the impression of Mr. Mitchell's knees, or the hesitation of his jealous wife on the doorstep, or the hunger of his son in the garbage. All of this had been shaken off.
Lieutenant Sales would leave the Mitchells' house that afternoon with the same thrill he'd had when the shark passed and he realized his leg was still there. He was exhilarated and then exhausted, as though his life had been drained, and he knew then that he had gone as far as he could go. There would be no scar and no solution to the murder, just the sense that he had missed something, and the familiar taste of things not done. For now, he reached out with a kind of hope and accepted the welcome mat as a gift.
Mrs. Mitchell put her arm around Miguel's shoulders and waited for Lieutenant Sales to arrest her. She would continue to wait in the weeks ahead as suspects were raised and then dismissed and headlines changed and funerals were planned. The possibilities of these moments passed over her like shadows. When they were gone she was left standing chilled.
Clyde's mother arranged for closed caskets. In the pew Mrs. Mitchell sat quietly. Her husband looked nervous and cracked knuckles. After the service they went home and Mr. Mitchell started to pack. His wife listened to the suitcases being dragged down from the attic, the swing of hangers, zipper teeth, the straps of leather buckles. Mr. Mitchell said he was leaving, and his wife felt her throat clutch. She wanted to ask him where he would go; she wanted to ask him what she had done this for; she wanted to ask him why he no longer loved her, but instead she asked for his son.
She had watched Miguel hand the frayed rope to the detective, and as it passed by her, she felt an ache in the back of her mouth as though she hadn't eaten for days. Lieutenant Sales turned home sweet home over in his hands. He placed it carefully on the kitchen table and Mrs. Mitchell saw the word Sweet. She remembered the milk she had made for the boy when he arrived, and sensed that this would not be the end of her. She could hear the steady breathing of her sleeping dog. She could smell the coffee. She felt the small frame of Miguel steady beneath her hand. These bones, she thought, were everything. Hey, sport, Mrs. Mitchell asked, is that for me? The boy nodded, and she held him close.
SURROGATE
BY ROBERT B. PARKER
Watertown
(Originally published in 1982)
Brenda Loring sat in my office with her knees together and her hands clasped in her lap and told me that last night a man had broken into her home and raped her for the second time in two weeks.
With my instinct for the bon mot, I said, "Jesus Christ."
"It was the same man as before," she said. Her voice was still and clear and uninflected.
I said, "Last night?"
"About ten hours ago," she said. "I've just now left the police." Her face was blank and, without makeup, it looked unprotected.
"You want to talk about the rapes?" I said.
She shook her head slightly and looked down at her clasped hands.
"That's okay," I said. "I can get it all from the cops. You still living in Cambridge?"
She nodded. "My husband's involved," she said, "my ex-husband."
I said Jesus Christ again, but only to myself. I don't like to overwork a phrase. "You want to talk about that?" I said.
She was still looking at her hands, folded motionless in her lap. "The police don't believe me about my husband."
Her stillness was profound. But it was stillness of tension, like a drawn bowstring. I said, "Brenda, whatever this is, I can fix it."
She looked up at me for the first time since she'd started speaking. "Two rapes too late," she said in her lucid monotone.
"Yes," I said.
She looked back down at her hands.
"Tell me a little more about your husband," I said.
"Northrop," she said. "Mrs. Northrop May."
"I was at your wedding," I said.
"The day after I was raped the first time," she said, "Northrop came to see me. He came in and sat down and I gave him a cup of coffee and he said with a . . . not a smile . . . a . . . a smirk," she nodded her head decisively in approval of the word's rightness, "and he said to me, 'So, how's your love life?' and I said, 'My God, don't you know I was raped?' and he said no and asked me about it. And . . ." she thought a minute, concentrating on her hands. "He wanted details: what did he do? what did I do? did he make me undress?" She shivered slightly. "And all the time he had that smirk and he was . . ." Again she paused and looked for the right word. "Avid," she said. "He was avid, listening. And then he said, 'Did you like it?'"
I could feel the muscles across my shoulders bunch a little. She was quiet, still examining her hands.
I said, "Then what?"
"I asked him to leave," she said. She raised her head. "I know he's involved."
"But he didn't do it?"
"No. I saw the man's face. It wasn't Northrop. Besides, this man was able to do it."
"You mean erect?"
She nodded.
"And Northrop couldn't?"
"Not very often and, before the divorce, getting worse," she said.
"You think Northrop knows who did it?" I said.
"As he left last week, he looked at me from the doorway with that hot smirky look on his face and said, 'Maybe he'll be back.'"
"Cops check on him?"
"He was with three other people having late supper at the Ritz Café," she said. "After theater."
"The cops figure you for a vindictive divorcée," I said.
"Probably."
Two stories down on Berkeley Street a car horn honked impatiently. Brenda rummaged in her bag and found a pack of cigarettes. She took one out and lit it and inhaled a long lungful.
"Faulkner," I said. "Novel called Sanctuary. You ever read it?"
She shook her head. The long inhale began to seep out.
"Character in there called Popeye," I said. "He was impotent, had other people do it for him."
"Yes," Brenda said. She was looking right at me now and her voice was richer. "That's what I think," she said.
"What time of day did he come around to smirk last time?" I said.
"After lunch."
I looked at my watch. "Let's go over to your place and see if he comes around this time."
"So you'll be there if he comes?"
I nodded. Two spots of color appeared on Brenda's cheekbones. She got abruptly to her feet. "Yes," she said, "let's go."
Brenda lived on the fifth floor of a wedge-shaped brick building at the Watertown end of Mt. Auburn Street. We were on the second cup of coffee, and almost no conversation, when Northrop May showed up. He rang, Brenda spoke to him on the intercom and buzzed him in. I went into the kitchen. In maybe thirty seconds I heard Brenda open the apartment door.
May said, "How've you been, Brenda?" His voice sounded vaguely British. Half the people in Cambridge sounded vaguely British. The other half sounded like me.
"What do you care?"
"I worry about you, Brenda, you know that. Just because our marriage has ended doesn't mean I no longer care for you. I want to know that you're happy. That you're dating and things."
"I'm fine," Brenda said.
"Good," May said. "Good. How about last night, did you have a good time last night?"
I heard a sudden m
ovement and the sound of a slap and I came around the corner in time to see May holding both Brenda's wrists down. I shifted my weight slightly onto my left foot, did a small pivot and kicked May in the middle of the back with the bottom of my right foot. He let go of Brenda and sprawled forward face first on the floor. When he hit he scrambled on all fours toward the couch and behind it before he used it to help him to his feet. His face was the color of skimmed milk when he looked at me.
"Hiho, Northrop," I said.
"What are you doing?" he said. "She was hitting me. You had no reason to do that. I was just defending myself."
Brenda moved toward May. "You son of a bitch," she said. Her voice hissed between her teeth. "You lousy dickless bastard." He edged away, keeping the couch between him and me. Brenda went after him, swinging at him with both fists closed. He put his arms up and edged away some more. But he was edging toward me and he didn't like that.
"Keep her away," he said. Brenda kicked at his shins.
I reached out and caught Brenda's arm. "Stop a minute," I said. "Let's talk."
Brenda leaned steadily against my restraint. May began edging the other way, toward the door. "I'm not talking," he said. "I'm going to leave right now."
I shook my head, still holding Brenda's steady weight with my left hand. Northrop looked at me. He was about my height but much lighter, angular and narrow with round gold glasses and blond hair combed straight back.
"I'm not going to fight with a pug like you," he said.
"A wise choice," I said. "Sit down. We'll talk."
His face tightened and his eyes moved around the room. I was between him and the only door. He went to the couch and sat down. With his legs crossed and his hands folded precisely in his lap he said, "Very well, what is it? why are you here? why are you detaining me? and why on earth is that woman acting even more insane than usual?"
"Your wife has been raped," I said, "and you're responsible."
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