Twisted River

by Siobhan MacDonald

  Mannix stared at Kate like a fool. There was nothing he could say.

  “Oh, what have you done, Mannix? What in God’s name have you done?” Kate said slowly.

  Mannix had little doubt he’d be asking himself the same thing over and over again. Her question echoed round the silent bedroom. He saw years of angst and penance looming. But for now, the question that concerned him most was just how long before Joanne Collins learned of her mistake?

  And what would she do when she learned that the woman she’d meant to kill was still alive?

  Oscar

  “I’ve just checked on the kids. They’re playing a computer game together,” said Helen.

  How ironic, thought Oscar—that it should take the death of their mother to bring them together. As far back as he could recall, Oscar couldn’t think of a single instance in which they’d ever played a computer game together. Maybe it was the sedatives. They’d wear off soon, and Oscar wondered if he should expect a repeat performance from Jess. Though exhausted, she’d been completely unable to stop the crying. Oscar had been happy to let them both take the tablets, for the first few days at least. They had a long hard road ahead.

  “Oh, Oscar, I can’t take it in,” said Helen. “I can hardly believe that this has happened. What are we all going to do without her?”

  Helen poured two drinks. Bottled water for Oscar and a Coke for herself. Oscar knew she was doing her best to hold herself together—for his sake. Helen was bigger than him in every way and, not for the first time in his life, Oscar was immensely grateful for that. He’d allowed himself to be comforted in the cushiony warmth of Helen’s bear hug.

  Helen arrived on the first flight in from the States on Wednesday morning and Spike O’Brien had gone to collect her. Spike was now in the backyard, smoking and keeping company with the team of policemen who were guarding the house. Oscar wasn’t sure, he couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something in Spike’s body language that suggested he was keeping something from him.

  “Elizabeth is in shock,” said Helen. “You know I told her? Sorry, of course you do, I told you that already. I’m repeating myself now. It’s all just so . . . unbelievable.” Oscar heard the emotion catch in her throat. “And to think that Hazel came here to get away from everything . . . to get her head together. Elizabeth told me that she’d been having trouble.”

  She looked directly at Oscar now, inquiring, probing.

  “You should have told me, Oscar. You should have told me. And now it’s all so tragic . . . Those poor kids . . .” she said. Realizing she was rambling, Helen took a breath and squared her shoulders. “But we are going to get through this. You, me, and the kids. I’m going to be with you, Oscar, every step of the way.”

  “Thank you, Helen. I know that.” He smiled at her gratefully and again it struck him how little he deserved her. He’d always repaid her kindness and her support so poorly. Only thinking of her as an eating machine. Not as a loving and empathetic human being.

  “Elizabeth wanted to come,” said Helen. “But I told her to keep her powder dry till we get back to the States. We’ll need her then. We’ll need all the support we can get. Poor Elizabeth has lost a very dear friend. But please tell me, Oscar, what exactly was going on at that dreadful school? What exactly did they do to our darling Hazel?”

  “I should never have let her go there . . .” Oscar shook his head.

  It had without doubt been one calamity after another, one great big protracted shit storm. Maybe if Hazel had never gone to that school, maybe they would never have felt the need to run away, to come to Ireland. Maybe his wife would not be lying in a body bag now. It had all started with that stupid fucking school.

  “What kind of place was it?” asked Helen gently. She was leaning against the breakfast counter staring at the Halloween banner. Angrily, Oscar leaned across her to pull it down. There was no cause for celebration.

  “The place was a hellhole,” he spat. “There’s no other way of putting it. It was one of those Impact Schools, you know?”

  Helen nodded. “Armed security, strict codes, body scanners, that sort of stuff?”

  “You got it,” said Oscar. “Three strikes and you’re out. Three black marks on your record and they kick you out.”

  “I knew the school was in a tough part of the city and the kids were challenging, but I didn’t realize that the regime was quite that severe . . . Hazel never talked about it.” Helen looked puzzled. She pulled the corners of her cardigan tightly over her bosom.

  “But she wouldn’t, would she?” Oscar said. “This was yet another one of Hazel’s projects, another one of her crusades to make the world a better place.” His voice reeked of bitterness.

  “Hazel gave those punks so much of herself. She invested in them personally. It was always much more than a job to Hazel. And okay—I think that some of them may actually have appreciated it. But I worried about her, Helen. Going there every day. I know she thought she was tough but she had a real naïveté. You know what I mean by that, don’t you?”

  Helen nodded.

  “Like she always saw the best in people, a bit like you,” Oscar added.

  “I try.” Helen smiled sadly.

  “There was this one guy—Jay Mahoney, one mean kid. Like I said—there were some real gems in that place. He gave her hell. According to Hazel, she’d been unfortunate enough to laugh at something he did in class. He waited until he got her alone one day. Accused her of disrespecting him, humiliating him. But then it got physical. That twisted punk—he hit her. And not just once.”

  Helen gasped but didn’t interrupt. She was a good listener.

  “I tried, Helen, God knows I tried. I wanted her to give the gig up. Pack up and start over somewhere else. Back to publishing. But she wouldn’t hear of it. Took the whole thing as a personal challenge. She thought it would be giving in. There were too many good kids, she said. Kids who she had nurtured, who she felt were making progress. You know, Helen, you know how there was always an agenda. Somehow everything ends up getting political with Hazel.”

  Helen nodded soundlessly. Oscar saw her eyes begin to brim with tears. In that moment, he wished that he too could cry. But his hurt and shock were way too deep for tears. Like before, he knew the tears would come, in time. When he was able to believe that all of this had happened, for real. It seemed important to him then that Helen should know how much he had tried.

  “Hazel was there for the long haul. She wasn’t giving up. That first time, that first time Jay Mahoney hit her—I wanted her out of there, period. I wanted to deck the guy personally. I told Hazel then to go to the principal. I told her to file a complaint. But she made excuses. Said it was well known that Jay Mahoney was on two strikes. And apparently the only person who Jay was afraid of was his own father.

  “This guy’s father wanted him to graduate. Somehow, in some misguided way, my poor wife felt that telling on this guy would blight his chances in life. It doesn’t matter, you know—no matter what, these guys always end up in the slammer. Oh, Helen, I cannot tell you how many countless arguments we had over that. You can imagine how fucking useless it made me feel. I got pretty mad—I can tell you. But I had to let her have her way—you know what she’s like . . .” It struck him then how he spoke about Hazel as if she were there. A weight of sorrow hit him.

  Helen had perched on a stool but didn’t look comfortable. She slid his glass of water toward him.

  Swallowing the lump in his throat, Oscar tried to carry on. “I obviously go for stubborn women, because I couldn’t budge her. Not on this.” He shook his head. “But you know what, Helen? The second time, I really think she may have been having misgivings. I really do. I was trying to work on that while we were here. I felt like killing the little punk myself, I really did.”

  “Oh, poor Hazel. I wish I’d known. If only I’d known, maybe I could have done something.”<
br />
  Oscar thought a moment. Could things have really turned out any different had he told her? Helen had always been a great support, but in this, he doubted she could have made any material difference.

  “Do you think so, Helen? Do you really think so?” he asked.

  “I don’t know how much Elizabeth told you of what was going on,” Oscar said, “but I know that she tried too. So that was two of us. And the reason I never told you was because Hazel didn’t want me to. At first, I thought we were onto something, when Hazel took leave from the place. I thought I’d work on her. She was pretty traumatized, you know. What kind of a sick fuck roughs up a woman? And I know she never told me just how bad it was. You should have seen the bruises, Helen. I know she thought she was tough—she’d worked in the soup kitchens, she’d volunteered in the projects. But you know what? I think she found that being face-to-face with such aggression at such close quarters—I really don’t think she was prepared for that. No, ma’am. Not at all. Underneath it all Hazel was a romantic, an idealist. She wasn’t equipped for that place. So then she became withdrawn and moody. At first, I tried to talk to her about it. And then I tried not talking about it. Neither worked. I really wasn’t sure where we were headed. And then Hazel came up with this idea of coming back to her hometown. As if that somehow was going to be the panacea to all her ills . . .”

  Oscar laughed a mirthless laugh. “It’s like a black comedy isn’t it, though? Isn’t it, Helen? Isn’t it?” he said, his voice rising.

  The total blackness of it all struck him again. The escape to Ireland. Into the jaws of disaster. Bubbles of anger broke at the surface. Where was the justice in any of it? It was all so bloody senseless.

  Helen looked at him. “When I arrived you said the police had told you that they were following a definite line of inquiry,” she said. “I don’t want to press you, and I can’t even begin to guess the hell you’re going through right now, Oscar. But just that if you do want to talk about it, I’m here now—what happened outside, I mean.” Helen sipped her Coke and waited, her eyes kind and searching.

  Strangely, Oscar did want to talk about it. He wanted to tell Helen exactly what had happened, as if in the telling, it might somehow make more sense.

  “It all happened so quickly,” he began. This must have been about the sixth or seventh time he was going through this. Every so often, the police would return to his story and ask him to go through parts of it again. He got up from the stool, stretched his legs, and walked to the window. There was no evidence of the casual party in the park from two nights ago. The bottles and cans had been cleared away. It was bizarre to think that his wife’s murder had been witnessed by a bunch of street drinkers who had been just feet away. A couple of large vans had pulled up with the letters RTÉ TELEVISION emblazoned on the sides.

  “Hazel went to get the kids some candy and goodies for an evening in with a scary movie,” he said. “You know how she liked to treat them.”

  Helen nodded.

  A voice in his head said to him—Yes, that’s it. The past tense. She’s no longer here. From now on, it’s all the past tense.

  “Hazel was gone awhile and I was listening out for her. Hazel did the driving here. So I hear her pull into the drive and I was just over there, beyond where you are now—at the kitchen window. If you stand there, you’ll see how you have a clear view to the drive below. So I’m just standing there, like, watching her, you know. Hazel was trying to put all the groceries back in bags, they’d spilled over in the trunk. Instead of bloody watching, I should have gone out to help her—

  Oscar felt a spreading tightness across his chest, wondering now at what might have been.

  “—It happened in slow motion,” he said. “At first, I thought it was a Halloween prank. This person appears down there, just there by the gate—dressed in black with a ski mask and a hood. Someone small, slight, wearing a black cloak. I thought at first it was a kid—trick or treat, you know? Hazel hadn’t heard a thing. She didn’t even turn around. I didn’t think much at first. I waited to see what would happen. The figure, well, it walked slowly up behind her. But there was something else I hadn’t noticed in the dark. I saw a sudden flash of steel. I saw him raise the spade, high above his head. I ran, Helen, I tore down those stairs. It can only have been a few seconds, but by the time I got there it was too late. The person in the cloak was gone and I knew by looking at Hazel that it was too late . . .” He looked at his hand, suddenly realizing his fist was full of gray hairs. He’d been tugging at his hair. “It makes no sense at all, Helen. It doesn’t add up, whoever he was, this person, he killed Hazel. And I don’t know why. I don’t know why. It makes no sense.”

  “No sense at all,” said Helen softly. “But the police, Oscar, what was it they said—the phrase they used? ‘A definite line of inquiry.’ What do you think that means?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” said Oscar. “But they told me they’d been speaking to the O’Briens before they left New York. There’s something they know, Helen, and they’re not telling us. That guy Spike, he knows something too. I can see it by the way I catch him looking at me.”

  “So you don’t think that they think it was a random attack?” asked Helen gently.

  “I dunno, Helen,” said Oscar. “I was never very keen on these home exchanges. On paper or on a Web site you may very well think that other folks are like you. They may look like you but often you’re surprised when they don’t act like you do, when you find out that actually their value system is very different to yours. It was Hazel who set all this up, you know. She said they were professional folks, like us. Two kids, like us. A boy and a girl, like us. But what did we really know about the O’Briens? And that guy Spike, very nice and all that, but would you trust him? Really trust him? I don’t know, Helen, there’s something pretty odd about these people . . .”

  “I think I know what you mean, Oscar. Something definitely left of center.” Helen smiled. “But, then, Hazel isn’t . . . wasn’t exactly a conformist herself.”

  “And now look where that’s landed us all . . .”

  Outside, the sky was now an ominous gray and the water ran gray over the falls. Guys with large TV cameras hoisted on their shoulders scouted about the park, moving between the railings and the benches. Oscar quickly stepped back from the window. Oscar could still see Spike below, who was now talking to a garda policeman. The garda looked at his watch. Oscar remembered they’d said there may be something on the lunchtime news. The TV was on, but on a muted setting. Grabbing the remote from the cane swing chair, he signaled to Helen to join him on the sofa. It was now 12:55, five minutes to the news bulletin.

  Once again Helen was there for Oscar in his hour of need. Just as she’d waited with him fifteen years before, as Birgitte lay dying, ravaged with cancer in the hospice. On hand again today, Helen had stood shoulder to shoulder with him as they zipped his wife into a body bag and put her in a funeral car.

  Helen sat with him now in stony silence as they watched the opening headlines on TV. The opening news stories were full of economic data coming from Europe. There were lots of shots of the German chancellor and European heads of state. Somehow these news stories glided into reports of Halloween hooliganism on the streets of Ireland. With a start, Oscar realized that the bulletin had cut to a scene that was now familiar to him. Introducing herself as the midwest correspondent, a blond woman was standing with a mike in the little park across the road. The camera panned up and down the river, showing the castle and the bridges. It suddenly swung round to face the terraced house Oscar and Helen now sat in.

  “Gardaí are still trying to piece together the tragic events that led to the death of an American tourist at this house in Clancy Strand on Halloween night. It appears that the woman may have been the victim of an unprovoked attack here in the driveway of this end of terrace house, overlooking the Curragower Falls.”

  The delivery
was clear, precise, and matter-of-fact.

  The reporter continued, “It is not yet clear whether it could have been a Halloween prank that tragically went wrong. Some eyewitnesses drinking in the park opposite reported seeing someone dressed in a hood and cloak leaving the scene at approximately seven o’clock two nights ago. But these reports have not yet been confirmed by gardaí. The state pathologist was on the scene early this morning and the body has been removed from the scene for forensic examination.”

  The camera zoomed in on the garda policemen at the gate. Spike had turned his back away from the camera.

  “The woman’s name has not yet been released but it appears that the family staying here were on holiday in the region and had exchanged houses with the owners for the October holidays. The owners of the house have been informed and are expected to arrive back in Shannon from the U.S. later on today. Back to you in the studio, Anne.”

  Oscar turned the TV off.

  “Nothing about ‘a definite line of inquiry’ there,” he said, turning to Helen. “But I guess we don’t know how the Irish justice system works. It’s hard to get a handle on what is really happening here.”

  “What did the U.S. embassy say?” asked Helen.

  “They offered to send someone from Dublin, but you know what? This little house is beginning to feel so cramped with all the commotion. And I don’t really want the kids disturbed any more than they need to be, so I said I’d deal with them by phone. I’m worried about them, Helen. One minute I think they’re going to be okay and the next I’m afraid they’re going under. They’ve just lost their mother. You know what? I remember when I lost Ike, and Ike was only a dog. My kids will only ever have one mother . . .” His voice trailed off. He was reluctant to give in to the well of emotion that had gurgled up inside him. There was far too much to do. He must be strong.