Acts of Murder

by L. R. Wright

  “I—Sunday?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  Susan stared out at the weather.

  “Hello? Do you want to leave a message?”

  “Oh no,” said Susan, stammering a little. “No—that’s fine. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Ivan’s wife. “Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye,” said Susan, and hung up.

  Denise. That was the woman’s name.

  Susan didn’t move for a while. She held on to the phone.

  Gone until Sunday.

  Okay. He had decided to go ahead on his own, then, and call to tell her where to meet him.

  But then why hadn’t she heard from him? She sat down to think. Maybe he hadn’t been able to get away until today. He might still be on his way to wherever it was he’d decided they should go. Susan was slightly irritated by this high-handedness: she would like to have had a say in where they spent their days together.

  But that was nit-picking.

  She would wait, then, to hear from him.

  ***

  When the telephone rang, Mrs. O’Hara had just finished doing the rugs: the sound of the vacuum cleaner still echoed through the small house. Denise answered on the portable phone in the kitchen, and the eagerness in her voice created in Mrs. O’Hara’s heart a sympathetic leap.

  “Hello?” said Denise, and she might as well have said, “Ivan?”

  Mrs. O’Hara, winding the cord around the plump body of the vacuum cleaner, listened, in spite of herself.

  “Oh,” said Denise listlessly.

  Mrs. O’Hara shook her head.

  “I’m afraid he isn’t here,” said Denise. “Can I take a message?”

  Mrs. O’Hara put the vacuum cleaner away in the closet.

  “Oh, not until Sunday, I’m afraid,” said Denise. “Shall I get him to call you?”

  Mrs. O’Hara pushed the sleeves of her sweatshirt up past her elbows and picked up one of her pails.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  She poured a thick yellow liquid into the pail.

  “Hello?” said Denise. “Do you want to leave a message?”

  Mrs. O’Hara put the pail in the kitchen sink and turned on the hot water tap.

  “You’re welcome. Goodbye.”

  Mrs. O’Hara glanced at Denise, who was replacing the telephone in its cradle.

  Then she looked at her more sharply.

  “That was somebody wanting Ivan,” said Denise. “A woman.”

  She went to the kitchen window and looked outside. “It’s raining again. Or maybe it never stopped. Did it stop, for a while?”

  Mrs. O’Hara scratched absently at the flesh of her arms. She thought about Ivan Dyakowski, about how he was always late going to work. She had never considered him a particularly attractive man, physically.

  A familiar intoxicating euphoria began bubbling in Mrs. O’Hara’s veins. She shivered with gratitude.

  “Do you want to have children?” she asked Denise.

  “What?”

  Mrs. O’Hara didn’t repeat the question, just swung the pail out of the sink and set it down on the floor.

  “Yes,” said Denise finally. “Of course.” Her voice acquired more confidence as she said this. “Eventually,” she added, more hesitantly, as if her husband had just whispered in her ear. She stepped out of Mrs. O’Hara’s way and backed from the kitchen into the living room.

  Mrs. O’Hara submerged the sponge mop in the pail and waited while it absorbed water.

  “She didn’t say who she was,” said Denise, behind her.

  Mrs. O’Hara listened carefully.

  “I told her he’ll be home on Sunday. I’m sure she’ll call again then,” said Denise.

  Mrs. O’Hara looked behind her, thoughtfully, at Denise, who was standing in the middle of the living room, looking at the wall, hugging herself. “Oh, I’m sure she will,” she said. “Perhaps, if she calls before he gets here, you should ask for her name.”

  Denise turned and looked at her sharply.

  Mrs. O’Hara raised her eyebrows. Then started scrubbing the kitchen floor, humming to herself as she worked.

  Chapter 15 Sunday, March 31

  ON SUNDAY MORNING, simultaneously with the fluttering open of Denise’s eyes, came the ringing of the telephone. She lay for a moment looking at the ceiling. And with astonishing certitude and grace, the world shifted. Changed.

  Denise sat up in bed, slowly, listening to the phone ring, knowing that it was not Ivan calling; knowing who was calling; knowing everything.

  She sat still, waiting for the ringing to stop, but it rang on and on—Denise had turned off the answering machine. She began counting the rings and had counted nine when it stopped, abruptly. But the noise it had created hung in the air like a miasma. Denise could hear it echoing, shimmering; an auricular illusion that racketed from wall to wall and then, gradually, faded away.

  She pulled up her knees, wrapped her arms around them, lowered her head and wept, for Ivan, for her loss. Her body ached for him...for his flat stomach, his hairy genitals, his wide shoulders, the blunt, brutal thickness of his neck; she whispered to herself, recreating him, his brown eyes, his thin lips, the space between his front teeth... She grieved the loss of his laughter and his disdain, his restless ambition, the children they would never have.

  Mourning was good, she realized. Funerals were good. It was necessary to have a sense of the world stopping in its tracks for a moment, giving the bereaved person time—not to adjust—the world couldn’t afford to stop long enough for that—but to prepare, as one prepares for a voyage.

  She wiped her face with the sheet and got out of bed, standing cautiously on legs that trembled, hobbled to the window and pulled the blind. Spring sunshine shone once again on the tumult of vegetation that was their backyard—her backyard, now.

  Too shaky to stand any longer, she sat down at the desk and ran the palm of her hand over its smooth surface, pale and shiny, lacquered pine. No dust was to be found there. Between them, Denise and Mrs. O’Hara had vanquished dust and grime, fingerprints and skid marks. And blood...

  She wouldn’t have believed she had the strength, let alone the will. Denise bent her head, obedient to anguish, and wept again softly, hopelessly, wondering who might help her: oh! such a pickle she was in.

  But totally in the wrong? Was she?

  She pushed herself wearily to her feet and shuffled into the kitchen, where she turned on the radio for company. She ate some cereal, sitting on the love seat. She glanced at the rocking chair as she ate and wondered if she would keep it. She spooned up the last of the sugared milk and put the bowl in the sink.

  In the shower, Denise washed her body with tenderness and compassion, for it was the body of a young widow and deserved these attentions. The warm, soothing water stroked her skin like the hands of a lover. Denise observed once more, admiringly, how selective the mind could become, capable of closing the door firmly on great chunks of its own churning contemplations, perfectly willing to eschew rationality in the service of its own well-being.

  She turned off the shower, stepped out of the tub, and was suddenly acutely aware of sounds: her own breathing, the settling of the shower curtain, reluctant waterdrops easing down the drain. The rubbing of the towel against her legs, her arms, her torso sounded to Denise like the purring of a cat. She enjoyed, briefly, a sense of immense well-being.

  She dressed in shorts and a sweatshirt and exited the bathroom, leaving the door open so that the steam could escape. It was because of steam that the paint in there had puckered and flaked. I may move, Denise thought. Maybe to Gibsons.

  Or farther, she thought, standing at the living room window, looking out at the front yard, which was every bit as crammed full of untended greenery as the back.

  She sat down again, in the rocking chair this time, her hands on its wooden arms, and rocked. She had not meant to hurt him. She had not meant to cause him pain.

  Denise rocked, grieving.


  Then she rethought. No, that wasn’t right. She had meant to hurt him. She had meant to cause him pain. What she hadn’t intended was to kill him.

  ***

  There she was—Denise, last Monday evening—reclining on the love seat, doing her nails, with the television on for company. She bent her head to her task, paying scant attention to the local—which was to say Vancouver—late news, listening for Ivan’s car and concentrating on her manicure, wiping each nail with a tissue soaked in polish remover, working a file under each one, then gently stroking them smooth with an emery board, taking her time about it, on the lookout for every single chip and crack. The news came to an end and she changed channels, looking for a Law & Order rerun. She watched the screen until she had identified the episode, turned her head slightly and muted the set for a moment, listening—then re-established the sound.

  Ivan’s car pulled up outside, present first at a distance and then proximate, impending, emerging from the night like a swell of music.

  On the television screen an agitated Logan was telling Greavey about his abusive, alcoholic mother.

  Outside, the car door slammed shut. He hadn’t bothered to be quiet about it because he could see from the glow of the lights through the living room curtain that Denise was not only awake, but up.

  Law & Order was having a commercial break. Denise muted the sound again and imagined Mike, during this break, imposing calm upon himself, and Greavey deciding not to inquire further into his partner’s relationship with his dead mom. At least Denise had assumed that she was dead. But why? she wondered, watching the front door, watching for the knob to turn. Maybe she wasn’t dead. Denise liked this idea. Perhaps someday the producers would do an episode in which Mike’s mother made an appearance. Denise was very curious about her.

  The knob turned, the door opened. “Hi,” said Ivan.

  “Hi,” said Denise.

  “It’s late,” they both said, almost in unison. Ivan laughed, and Denise stretched the corners of her mouth upward.

  “The meeting ran late,” he said, holding up his briefcase, as if in verification of the irrevocable passing of time. It was the first day of spring break. Denise noticed an alteration in her heartbeat, which had become a quick shallow thrumming that she felt not in her chest but in her wrists. She lowered her feet to the floor and sat on the edge of the love seat. Her mouth was dry—she drank some stale ginger ale from a glass sitting in a puddle of water on the coffee table.

  “Your program’s back on,” said Ivan, gesturing at the television set. He looked at his watch. “Boy. Yeah, it is late. I’m off to bed, hon.”

  Denise gritted her teeth against a sudden battering of anger and contempt. She reached for the remote and turned the sound back on. This was her favorite episode of Law & Order. She tried to watch it, struggled to find and re-harness her concentration. But it had been splintered: the pieces of her concentration hung in the air like shards of brittle light.

  Denise got to her feet, feeling aimless and large-footed. Was her hair disheveled? Was her face mottled? distorted? She tried to make it smooth and stood straight, forcing her shoulders out of a huddle.

  “I wanted to be calm about this,” she said. “Yes, I had really and truly wanted to be calm.”

  Ivan must have heard something new in her voice. Perhaps she sounded unnaturally dispassionate, Denise thought, and she tried to lengthen her body, to draw her shoulders back, elevate her chin, stretch her spine. Detached and elegant, that’s what she would be.

  But it wasn’t working. Her shoulders wouldn’t budge from their protective hunch, her neck had shrunk, and her chin was tucked into the hollow between neck and chest. She heard herself screech at him: “Where have you been?!”

  How ghastly, that she should shout such a thing. How mortifying, that she should feel so ugly.

  Ivan pivoted in the doorway, one hand lightly on the doorjamb. She watched him thinking. Denise, looking at the long weary stripe of male thing that was Ivan in the damn doorway, thought he was too close to her, much too close to her, even though he was across the room. There ought to be a great chasm between them, some sort of gorge, with rocks, and wickedly rushing water in its bottom. Instead, there was only an expanse of familiar floor, so familiar as to be nauseating.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Ivan. But he did. Of course he did.

  He didn’t turn to leave the room, to head for the bathroom or the bedroom. He continued to stand quietly in the doorway, waiting. Patiently expectant, that’s what he was. Maybe a tiny bit tense, but not much.

  Denise flapped her hands, but couldn’t think of anything to say, and for an instant he looked amused. And then this was gone, and he was hiding again behind his blank face.

  Denise, snared among furniture, stumbled toward the window and lacking a purpose there created one, hauling the venetian blind ceilingward and tethering it. Her image in the glass stared back at her, fists on hips, head thrust forward, shoulders still hunkered. Behind her, in the glass, Ivan leaned against the doorjamb and folded his arms, right shoulder leaning, left leg straight, right leg slightly bent, hip thrust slightly forward, and—was this deliberate? The son of a bitch, thought Denise. She turned quickly around, appalled by the sensations in her groin, the silent moaning, the growing dampness: the cotton crotch of her underpants would soon be sticky with sex.

  “You’re having an affair,” she said. “You’re sleeping with somebody else.” Ivan lowered his jaw and widened his eyes but he didn’t fool Denise. “And I won’t have it,” she said.

  She stalked into the kitchen, but once again found herself without an objective. She was fluttering, pointlessly. Confronting him, but not really confronting him. Hurling accusations over a hunched shoulder, then skittering face first into a corner while he considered his possibilities. You are a spineless chick, she said to herself, contemptuously. Well, somebody said it. This was not a phrase Denise had ever used and she tilted her head inquisitively, listening for more. But there wasn’t any more, only the same phrase again: You are a spineless chick, Denise.

  Ivan had come into the kitchen by now. Denise felt him behind her. She wiped the countertops, vigorously. And noticed that she hadn’t cleaned up after her dinner of scrambled eggs and toast. She had cooked the eggs in butter with a little cream, slowly, with some chopped chives added at the end. The cast-iron frying pan that had been her mother’s sat on the stove with shreds of dried egg clinging to its sides and bottom. Toast crumbs littered the breadboard, and her dirty dishes sat in the sink. Denise swept the dishcloth across the countertop, rearranging the crumbs.

  “Don’t try to deny it,” she said to the sink. Then she leaned heavily against the counter, gripping the edge with her fingers, her palms facing upward. The dishcloth fell to the floor, and a moment of silence was created—poignant, unencumbered. Then Ivan reached down, picked up the dishcloth, tossed it onto the counter.

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  Denise couldn’t begin to assimilate the variety of consequences, repercussions, that she knew would flow from this unequivocal monosyllable. She blinked her eyes, rapidly, her lashes brushing them free of sudden tears whose warmth astonished her. She remained where she was, her back to Ivan, wrists crooked, bare, thrust upward like a pair of pale vein-threaded offerings.

  “Good,” she said. “Thank you for that, anyway.” But bitterness had seeped into her voice.

  “Denise,” he said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She pushed herself away from the counter and rubbed her wrists, which were aching now. “Talk about what, exactly?” And this was better—she sounded almost conversational. She even felt able now to turn and face him, and did so, folding her arms, giving her head a little toss. She directed her gaze straight into his eyes and felt a small prick of satisfaction when his lashes fluttered and he looked away from her. “You’re prepared to give me details, perhaps?” she said.

  “I mean, talk about what happens no
w,” said Ivan, patiently.

  Denise rubbed her big toe through a splotch of what was probably butter and glanced across the floor at Ivan’s shoes, black and polished, with jaunty leather tassels. She imagined him slipping off his loafers in somebody else’s bedroom. They were probably all over each other, the two of them, while this was happening. She glanced up, higher: was his shirt misbuttoned? Was a button gone? But no. If passion were to send their buttons flying, one of them—not Ivan, definitely not useless, bloody Ivan—would sew them back on again. Before or after the shower? she wondered. Which they would have together... Denise stamped her bare foot on the floor, splintering these apparitions.

  “Perhaps I should leave,” said Ivan, very seriously. “Tonight, I mean.”

  Denise felt her lungs deflate, and looked sideways for deliverance.

  “We can talk later,” he said solicitously. “Tomorrow, maybe. I could come by in the evening.”

  Denise couldn’t speak. She picked up the dishcloth and started wiping again, but her hands were trembling.

  “Denise?”

  She shook her head.

  “Ah, Denise. Listen. Who knows, right? Who knows what’s going to happen?”

  Her hands were shaking so badly now that the dishcloth slipped through her fingers and again landed on the floor. It has to go into the laundry now, Denise thought. It should have gone into the laundry the first time it fell. She couldn’t look away from it, a crumpled square of fabric with a blue and white pattern huddling on the kitchen floor.

  “We’ll talk about it,” said Ivan. “And we’ll do what’s right for both of us.”

  Denise continued to stare at the dishcloth, her hands entwined in front of her. She watched Ivan reach down and pick it up. She looked at the frying pan and wondered what size of a lump it might effect upon the back of Ivan’s head, which he was even now offering to her, stooping before her as if in placation, his hair as shiny black as his polished loafers.

  She had thought it would be a cuff, something merely tentative, she was still trembling so. But when her fingers wrapped around the familiar handle she stopped shaking. Even then she expected to land only an insignificant blow, a trivial clout which Ivan would accept with a groan and a manly flinch, as something justly deserved.