The Craigslist Murders

by Brenda Cullerton

  A new client had offered her a limo and two nights at the Maidstone Inn. It would be good to get of town. There’d been a message on her machine from Gina, too.

  “I can’t wait to see you, Charlotte,” she’d said. “So please don’t forget our appointment. Oh. And bring cash!”

  37

  The new client’s chauffeur was driving her back from East Hampton when she saw the sign. Stuck at a dead halt somewhere between exits 31 and 35, she erupted into a burst of laughter. There it was on the side of the road: “Adopt-A-Highway. Litter Control Next One Mile. Rita and Abe Brickman.” Rita had mentioned hiring a publicist; but this was just too good.

  Sticking her name on the L.I.E. where every social-climbing slob in an S.U.V would see it on their way back from the beach! And you’d think they could afford to clean up two miles, wouldn’t you? One mile made them seem so cheap. Dabbing at her eyes, Charlotte phoned her branch of the Commerce Bank to check her balance. There was still no money in her account. Pavel had handled the wire transfer before he left for Moscow. She’d stood right next to him when he made the call. So what had happened? He couldn’t have lied, could he?

  Commerce was the only bank in town open seven days a week. Dumping her bag in the hallway of the loft, she rushed back downstairs, and hailed a cab. A conversation with the bank manager uptown accomplished nothing.

  “I’ve checked the account twice, madam.”

  Jesus. She hated that word, madam.

  “If he sent it when he said he did, it would be here by now.”

  “I’d like to speak with your manager, please.” Charlotte had said, twisting around in her chair to look for someone more important; someone who hadn’t bought a suit straight off the rack at Kmart.

  “I am the manager, madam,” he’d retorted, pointing to the plaque on his desk. “See? Vice president?”

  “I can read, thank you,” Charlotte had replied, haughtily.

  “All I can suggest is that you contact the party involved and ask him when the transfer was sent. Maybe he had the wrong routing number or something.”

  Ignoring him, she pulled on her coat and marched off towards the door.

  Shit! she thought. Charlotte tried Pavel’s cell for the third time. Where is he?

  Even the walk back downtown depressed her. The tall buildings that loomed above her cast cold, dark shadows. Her rhythm was off and she’d fallen out of sync with the traffic lights. This city that she so often turned to for solace and comfort, suddenly felt suffocatingly close and small. What was the matter with her? When she got home, she saw a guy in camouflage pants, peering into the side mirror of a car. He was squeezing his pimples. How could a guy do something as intimate and ugly as squeeze pimples in public? It revolted her.

  “Hey! Charlotte, Charlotte!” John the homeless guy was shuffling up the block, dropping his papers, holding his hands out to stop her.

  “Christ!” she muttered. He stinks. Charlotte’s bad mood took over; she didn’t care if he was homeless. She just wished to hell he’d take a shower.

  “What is it, John?” she snarled. “I don’t have much time.”

  Recoiling as if slapped, he lowered his eyes. “Sorry, sorry, Charlotte. Just want you know the UPS man was looking for you yesterday. He left a package at the dry cleaner.”

  Charlotte felt so guilty, she palmed him a twenty.

  “Thanks, John. And it’s me who’s sorry. Bad day, you know?”

  “No problem, Charlotte. I have bad days, too,” John said, as he shuffled back down the block.

  Jogging over to the cleaners, she sighed with relief. She liked Brian, the UPS guy who delivered to her door. He was New York Irish, like the old cops and firemen. He also had some kind of oral fixation. In ten years, she’d never seen him without a piece of gum in his mouth. He liked sucking lollipops, too. The problem was, he talked too much. And today, she was in no mood for talk.

  After a few quick words with Kim (whose knowledge of English was blessedly limited to words like shirt, pant, and blouse), Charlotte lugged the box home. It was unwieldy: big but light. Recognizing the return address, its contents became even more mysterious. What could her mother possibly have sent her?

  Crouching down in her hallway and puncturing the seam of the box with her pocket knife, she pulled out the note. “Dear Charlotte: Just thought you might want to have this. Mom.” The handwriting was spidery. It looked like the pen was running out of ink. She began tearing out the stuffing of white tissue paper.

  It must be fragile, she thought to herself. Maybe it’s that Steuben vase I asked for. When she saw what lay nestled beneath the remaining layers of tissue, she sat back and whimpered.

  Putting her head between her knees, she tried to breathe in, slowly. It couldn’t be! It couldn’t be! she repeated, over and over again, as if in repeating this plea, it might suddenly disappear. But no. The hair, her own hair, was still there. Clumps of tangled, red hair, leeched of color, and brittle with age. Dragging herself along the floor towards the hall bathroom, Charlotte vomited. She vomited until there was nothing left in her stomach but clear liquid and her own bile.

  If only she could sleep. And if only Anna were home. As she lay there on her bed, twisting and twitching, her eyes pinned open, she felt like a runner waiting to sprint at the sound of a starter’s pistol. There was so much adrenaline pumping through her system, not even two milligrams of Ativan slowed her down. All she could see was the murderous look on her mother’s face and the silvery teeth of the pinking shears, the same shears her nanny had used to cut patterns and fabric for Charlotte’s doll clothes. Her hair, her beautiful hair that she brushed every night in the bathroom mirror, was falling all around her while she plugged her ears to block out the sound of snipping.

  When Charlotte finally awoke, her abdomen hurt so much, she could hardly move. It was dawn. Shifting her body around beneath the sheets, she felt helpless and dirty. So dirty. The taste of vomit in her mouth nearly made her retch. She could feel the acid rise in her throat. There was still a pool of vomit in the hallway, too. She’d been too tired to even think of cleaning it up.

  Closing her eyes, Charlotte imagined herself singing. She clung to the notes of this silent song as if they were a lifeline. An hour later, she picked up the phone and called Dr. Greene.

  38

  Like a blind person, Charlotte raised her hands to her own face and touched her features: her eyes, her nose, her cheeks. Her whole body jittered in her chair. Even her skin was clammy. Squeezing her knees tightly shut, she tried to stop the convulsive shaking. She started counting. One, two, three, four …

  Dr. Greene sat across from his patient, waiting. When she realized that the pains in her stomach had subsided, she stopped shaking.

  “Thank you for making time for me on a Sunday,” she mumbled.

  “It sounded like an emergency, Charlotte. I imagine it wasn’t easy to call …”

  “No,” Charlotte replied, crumpling her Kleenex. “It wasn’t. And I don’t know what to say right now.”

  “You don’t need to say anything if you don’t want to. Sometimes, people just need to feel someone near them in times of crisis.”

  “Ummmm,” she said, her hands gently kneading her stomach. She was scared stiff. Literally. Afraid that the twist in her gut would return and with it, the unbearable pain.

  Dr. Greene remained still, waiting for his patient’s cue.

  “Charlotte …”

  “What’s the matter with me?” she cried out. “I haven’t thought of my sister in years. I didn’t even remember what she looked like till yesterday.”

  Closing her eyes, Charlotte found herself, once again, peering over the edge of the white, wooden crib.

  “She was screaming, Doctor. It just went on and on. Mother was out at a party. I don’t know where nanny was. I wanted to help, you know? I wanted to tell my mother that it was me who had quieted her down and put her back to sleep.”

  Shifting imperceptibly in his chair, the doctor
gently guided her. “What did it feel like to be with your sister? Do you remember?”

  “I was never allowed to have pets at home,” Charlotte replied. “So I remember how weird it felt, having something so tiny, wriggling around in my arms. And her head. Her head was so small, my hand fit right over it.”

  “Were you nervous?” Dr. Greene asked.

  Charlotte’s teeth began to chatter. “I’m so cold, Doctor.”

  “It’s normal, Charlotte. You’re not just talking here, you’re feeling something.”

  Her eyes began to wander wildly around the room and she rocked back and forth in her chair.

  “I, I …” she faltered. “I thought the bear would comfort her, you see? The way he always comforted me. So I lay her down on her stomach and went into my room to get him. She must have quieted down. Because I left the bear in the crib and went to sleep. I wouldn’t have gone to sleep if she were still crying.”

  “Charlotte, please forgive me. I don’t want to push you if you’re not ready …”

  “No, I can talk, Doctor. I …”

  “So what happened in the morning?”

  Charlotte’s lips quivered.

  “I was frightened,” she answered. “I mean, my father was in my sister’s room. Which was unusual. And he was talking very softly. So I couldn’t hear what he was saying. But he was pulling my mother away from the crib.”

  Charlotte’s voice suddenly grew deep, harsh. She moved to the edge of her chair.

  “Nanny was over at the window. When my father left the room, probably to call an ambulance or something, I started to cry.”

  Charlotte’s knee began to bounce up and down as her eyes darted around the office. “My mother … My mother saw me. ‘What happened, Mommy?’ I asked her. ‘What happened?’ ”

  Charlotte slid down in her chair and hugged herself. “That’s when she came at me. And she scratched my face. It stung. My fingers had blood on them when I touched my cheek. ‘Get out!’ she yelled. ‘Get out!’

  “So I ran back to my bedroom and wrapped myself up in the sheets. I could hear the sirens and the sound of all these footsteps on the stairs.”

  Charlotte paused and took a sip from the glass of water.

  “When my mother finally came in … it must have been an hour later. She tiptoed over to my bed. I was so scared, I wet my pants. I just wanted to shrink into the sheets and disappear.”

  “ ‘Well, Charlotte,’ she said, her voice was so low I could hardly hear it. ‘Your sister is dead. I think you snuck into her room and you suffocated her. But you forgot to take your bear.’ ”

  “ ‘I did not, Mother,’ I told her. ‘I did not! I’m the one who put her back to sleep.’ ”

  Charlotte felt as if her ears had filled with water. There was a rushing sound. Her heart was beating so fast, she put her hand to her chest.

  “She picked up a pair of pinking shears and she started to chop at my hair. And while she chopped, she talked. She told me that she wouldn’t tell on me, that the police would never know. ‘It would ruin your father’s career,’ she said. And then she said that she’d never wanted me, not even when I was a baby.”

  Charlotte stopped speaking. Her body was trembling.

  In a voice so soft Dr. Greene had to lean in to hear her, she said: “She told me that every time she felt me kick her in the belly, it reminded her of what she’d lost; of all the things she’d had to give up. She said I made her feel ugly, useless.”

  Charlotte rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. “I couldn’t move, Doctor. I just sat there in bed and waited for her to finish.” Charlotte touched the top of her scalp, as if to heal the nicks, the broken skin that had been left by the tips of the shears thirty years before. “Then she stuck a mirror in front of my face. ‘Look at yourself, Charlotte,’ she said. ‘Ugly and useless. That’s all you’ll ever be.’ ”

  Afterwards, she remembered Nanny coming in to console her. “Your hair will grow back,” she’d promised, washing away the mess of snot and tears from Charlotte’s face. And her nanny was right. It did grow back. But there had been times in the years since that morning when Charlotte, shorn of everything including hair and childhood illusions, would look into a mirror and swear that there was nothing there, no reflection.

  “Charlotte? Charlotte?” The voice seemed as it were coming from the bottom of the sea.

  She was gripping the edge of her chair so tightly, her knuckles had turned white.

  When the doctor reached out to touch her, Charlotte shrank back into her chair.

  “Charlotte, I am so sorry. But we have to stop now.”

  Which is when Charlotte grinned. “We have to stop now!” she mimicked. “Is that all you can say after my breakthrough?”

  “It’s a lot to process, dear. For both of us,” he replied, quietly.

  She stiffened and glared at him. “Are you afraid to look at me, Doctor?”

  Rummaging around his desk, the frail, elderly man picked up a prescription pad. “Of course not, Charlotte,” he said, scribbling on the pad. “But I’d like to give you something to help calm you down. Just until our next session.”

  Snapping the brass fastener on her bag open and shut, open and shut, Charlotte stared vacantly out the office window. “Yeah, right,” she, finally, said, buttoning up her cardigan and snatching the slip of paper. “Thanks for your time.”

  The doctor just nodded and continued writing on his legal pad.

  39

  Like a child who sits parked in front of television for hours and then sees the screen go dark, Charlotte felt hostile, disoriented, sluggish. Using her hand to shield her eyes from the bright sunlight, she tried to get her bearings. Even the tree-lined street outside Greene’s office, a street so familiar to her she could have run its length blindfolded, felt foreign to her. She was thinking of the cartoon she’d drawn, the one her mother gave when she came to visit. There were teeth inside the mouth of the C. Like the teeth of the shears, like C for Charlotte, she thought. It’s me, she thought, feeling a pang of what might have been genuine sadness. But the howl in the cartoon had been silent. And no one had ever heard her.

  Pulling a silver compact out from the depths of her purse, Charlotte hesitated. She never powdered her nose or even applied lipstick in public. Such overt displays of vanity repelled her. Turning her back to the street, she stole a furtive glance in the compact and gasped. The furrows on her forehead, the deeply etched lines between her mouth and nose. She looked a hundred years old.

  Wiping her face with the back of her hand, as if to erase the last hour with Dr. Greene, she vowed: I am not going to lose control now. I will not indulge in weak, embarrassing fits of self-pity.

  When Charlotte’s phone began to vibrate, she was so aware of her every movement, pulling it out from her pocket, flipping it open, and placing it next to her ear, that it felt like those slow-motion split seconds before a car crash.

  “Charlotte?”

  She held the phone away from her ear. Her hand was shaking.

  “Charlotte! Can you hear me?” The voice at the other end was braying. Shrill.

  “Yes, Mother. I’m here,” Charlotte replied, robotically.

  “No, Charlotte. You’re there. And I need you here. I don’t feel well.”

  “I don’t feel well, either, Mother.”

  “I’m dizzy, light-headed.”

  Charlotte’s chest tightened. Folding the phone neatly shut, she severed the connection. When it began to vibrate, again, she gently placed it at the bottom of her bag. The slow, deliberate movements calmed her down. Charlotte thought of the nightmares she’d had of running away from her mother and of her cartoon figure, its mouth open in a silent scream. She would take care of her mother. But right now, she needed to channel her fury somewhere more constructive.

  Charlotte pulled the curtains snugly shut and collapsed on her bed. Touching the glass inside the silver picture frame, she imagined that her Aunt Dottie was there with her. Her silence was a signal, she
thought. Proof that Dottie was listening. As she tried to explain to her aunt, this is why she had fallen so hard for Pavel. Because he was a man who could listen, too. And unlike Dr. Greene, she didn’t have to pay him for it. Just the thought of Dr. Greene was unpleasant, the way he’d poked and prodded; the way he’d cut her off today.

  Lying there in the dark, Charlotte caressed the soft pilled sleeves of Vicky’s old sweater. Inserting her finger into a hole near the armpit, she began to tug. The yarn gave way and the hole became bigger. The sound of ripping comforted her. Gazing at the photo of her Aunt Dottie, she tried to imagine the day at Orchard Beach. She’d never been to an amusement park, not even Coney Island, but she wondered if her mother and aunt had shared a seat on the Ferris wheel; if they’d eaten pink cotton candy. She wondered who had taken the picture and thought that, perhaps, it might have been her grandfather. Charlotte’s only consolation that night was her newfound realization that she was no longer afraid of her dreams. She was done with running away from her mother. There would be no more sleep-curdling visions of rooftops, silent screams, and kitchen knives.

  The phone rang during breakfast. Charlotte had been sitting there, hypnotized by the silvery reflections of light on the river. Like a mirror, she’d thought, thinking of her mother. After years of being tongue-tied, she wanted answers to her questions. When she picked up the phone, the voice on the other end was breaking up.

  It was Pavel.

  Charlotte’s muscles relaxed. She grinned.

  “Charlotte, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Pavel. The connection’s not great. But I hear you.”

  “Listen, I …”

  Charlotte interrupted. “I’ve been trying to get you.”

  “I know. But there are some problems in Moscow, Charlotte. I’ve had to leave.”

  Her grin sagged. “What kind of problems?”