by Melanie Finn
“Love, oh yeah. Lots of people love their kids, still treat ’em like shit.”
“But,” and now Kay’s face screwed up into an ugly knot. “I think I hate them.”
The girl exhaled, regarded Kay. “They got a good dad?”
A man who flew back from Africa for his children. “Good, yes.”
“They’ll be okay.”
“And you’ll quit smoking?”
“Sure.” The girl smiled, and this made her pretty, dimple-cheeked. She offered the pack to Kay. “You keep them.”
“No, I—” but Kay took them. “I should pay you. These are, what? Twenty bucks now?”
The girl was already moving away, waving a plump hand. “The doctors said her lungs were like a clogged toilet. She died puking blood.”
62
THE SUNLIGHT FLICKERED THROUGH THE birches. Moses’s Pinto was gone—though it had left a large oil stain on the bare ground. Moses had taken it, Moses was home safely. No CPB, no fleet of cops. Just the chickadees, the song sparrows. Ben stood for a moment, enjoying their songs. He felt a sense of tidiness—what Frank tried to achieve, as if life was at last in the correct order.
He entered Shevaunne’s room, the bed unmade, adorned with pink clothing. A bra. He beheld this, the foam cups where she’d inserted her breasts. The bra was pink, with lace, a choice that was sexual, and this surprised him. She’d wanted to feel pretty, feminine, the bra meant for a man who might reach back with desire and tenderness and unhook the clasp.
He shoveled her things into garbage bags, clothes, the bra, towels, sheets. So much of it was pink and soft, even her shoes were the fake sheepskin slipper boots. Perhaps it was an attempt to buffer the hardness of the world. He thought about her slobbed out on the sofa in her pink fleece bottoms, and he decided, no, she just wanted to be as comfortable as possible, nothing to bind or chafe or constrain or provoke. She was so soft she’d actually begun to blur around the edges. If she hadn’t died, she’d have eventually dissolved into lint.
But she had died, he’d killed her. He was a murderer. The word conjured up a perpetrator and a victim, like dealer, dealer and addict, clearly defined; only, he didn’t feel that definition at all, just the gentle but firm closing of his forefinger and thumb and the fade out of someone who’d abdicated years ago. And wasn’t she the murderer, relentlessly extinguishing hope and joy in her son? She might as well break his bones and twist them into crab-like deformity and set him on the corner to beg.
From under the bed, he pulled a stash of celebrity magazines, Jennifer Aniston was pregnant, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. More pink socks, shed like skins, plus three empty Dunkin’ Donuts cups. There were panties, dozens, that he quickly realized were dirty. He put a sock over his hand to handle them and closed his eyes; he felt both embarrassed and disgusted. She’d simply taken off her panties and stuffed them under the bed. She wasn’t even able to wash her dirty underwear, how could she care for a child?
At the faint sound of car brakes locking, he sat up, cocked his ear.
A banging on the screen door. “Hello? Hey, Shevaunne? You there, Shev?”
Shev? Ben removed the sock from his hand.
“Hello?” the visitor said. Then chiming the syllables, “Hel-lo!?”
Ben did not hurry.
A small man with a scraggly beard threaded with grey peered at him through the screen door. “Oh, hey, man, sorry to bother you.”
Ben, keeping the mesh between them: “No bother.”
“Eh, I’m looking for Shevaunne.” He held in his hand an extra-large Dunkin’ Donuts pumpkin spice latte.
“You’d better come in.” Ben opened the door.
“Dinko,” the man said, awkwardly offering a dry hand.
“Dinko?”
“Duncan, but no one calls me that.”
What sort of a man went around with a name like Dinko? This sort of man, Ben assessed, food-stamp thin with dirty fingernails and thrift-store shoes. He gestured to the sofa, now empty of Shevaunne. “How can I help you, Dinko.”
Dinko looked around at the seating options, eschewing the sofa and stepping behind Ben to choose the grubby lounger. He sat with Victorian politeness. “Shevaunne, huh? She around?”
“What is it you want her for?” Ben kept his voice neutral.
“We go way back.” Dinko smiled, revealing teeth like rusty nails. “A long time, but not, you know, romantically. Now.” This added for Ben’s benefit, in case Ben might be the jealous type.
Ben smiled back.
“I saw her a few weeks ago,” Dinko continued. “In town. She said she was in a program. Said, to, ah, stop by.”
“And you’ve stopped by a couple of times.”
Dinko giggled coyly. “And, ah, she mentioned the boy. Jack.”
Now Ben felt an electric spark at the base of his spine. But he kept his face closed, let Dinko talk on.
“She got him back from DCF. She said they gave him back.”
Ben doled out the words. “Jake. His name is Jake.”
Dinko rubbed his hands on his thighs. His hands were covered in tattoos, poorly done, even by prison standards. “Well, the thing is, I really need to talk to Shevaunne.”
“She’s not here.”
“Ah. When might she be back?” Dinko shifted forward. “I can wait in the car.”
Ben mirrored him, so that he was only inches from Dinko’s face, and Dinko could not fail to realize that Ben was a healthy and strong man with a whiff of violence about him. “Why do you want to talk to Shevaunne about Jake”—and he tossed out the ridiculous name—“Dinko?”
Dinko stood up, quick as a rabbit. Prison had taught him to always keep one eye on the exit. Ben realized this was why he’d chosen the lounger. Nothing was between him and the door. In response, Ben stayed put; he let his eyes pin Dinko. And he understood, quick and hard as a gut punch. “Is Jake your son?”
Hovering a few feet from the door, Dinko’s eyes slid left to right; he nodded.
“Does Jake know that?”
Dinko shrugged. “I haven’t exactly been around.”
“And you want to be around now?”
“Shevaunne, it’s really Shev—” he bleated. “She wanted me to, ah, get back with the boy.”
“Shevaunne,” Ben said slowly. “Shevaunne is dead.”
“What?” Dinko leaned in as if he hadn’t heard.
“Two nights ago, an overdose.”
“But she was clean. She was staying clean for Jack—”
“Jake.”
“For Jake, she was trying for Jake.” Dinko’s features collapsed together, and he let out a sob. “No, no, Shev, no.”
“Sit down, Dinko,” Ben murmured and Dinko shuffled back.
“She was going clean. She was doing it. She told me how really determined she was, and maybe she could get the baby back as well. She said it was tough but things were looking up. She said she was coming into money.”
Ben nearly laughed, it was nearly funny.
Tears welled in Dinko’s red-rimmed eyes. “I’ve known Shev for ages, years. The thing with Jake? We were friends, we got high one night, didn’t even think about it, it was just a one-night thing. We were partying out at Willoughby, summer night, felt good, seemed an easy thing to do, and then three months later I see her and she’s like, ‘Remember that night?’ And, I’m like, ‘Oh yeah!’ And she tapped her belly, ‘Got us a little memento.’ Then she went and got herself arrested so she could be off the streets and off the smack for the pregnancy. Bless her heart.”
Down the road, Ed had the chainsaw out, preparing for the upcoming Caledonia County Fair. Ben focused on the bee-whine of the saw, rather than Dinko’s shameless weeping. He felt he should soften, he should show respect: someone was grieving for Shevaunne, someone who believed she hadn’t been so bad, she’d been trying, for her son. Dinko believed in another version of her, and, thus, another version of himself, a clean Dinko, a respected member of the community. And Ben might also have anothe
r version, someone with kind, compassionate thoughts, a twin who wore the same shirt in a slightly different way. However, Dinko was a junkie loser and Ben was not compassionate, and Shevaunne had been a treacherous junkie bitch and he’d killed her.
“Why are you asking about Jake?”
Dinko sniffed. “Sorry, man, I was just expecting to see her and she’s dead, you know.”
Ben quietly repeated himself.
“I dunno, man. I just thought I could meet him. We could start to know each other, hang out.”
“And then what?”
Dinko shrugged. “I’m his dad. Dad stuff.”
“Go fishing, do his homework with him?”
“Sure, why not.”
Ben smiled pleasantly.
63
As Kay packed, she found the tadpoles her children had so carefully and proudly placed in jars. The jars were murky, torpid, and when she opened the lid, the stink reminded her of the rotting stalks of cut flowers. Nothing was alive, she could see, the tadpoles had congealed. She opened the window and hurled the jars far out into the long grass beyond the lawn.
Tom’s t-shirts, Freya’s panties, their books, colored pens, a paltry scattering of toys: everything fit into one suitcase. This had also been the point of coming here: to break from things, plastic, synthetic, technological. City children, they would commune instead with nature—leaves, earth, rain, sky. They’d learn the elements. They’d learn to track. They’d learn about different trees. They’d be barefoot, carefree. Not angry, scared, abandoned. Not finding their mother’s porn. Not finding their mother, who she really was.
Children were under the impression that adults understood the world, were experts in its navigation. How frightening, then, to discover they were, in fact, lost, fallible, dull, and vain; that no one knew the way, after all.
Off her desk, she swept the notebooks, dozens of them, her former life. There would be no book, no ground-breaking memoir, no investigative piece about drugs and logging in not-so-quaint Vermont. She must burn these all or throw them out.
In the bathroom, she scooped up the shampoo, conditioner, toothbrushes and toothpaste, her single jar of night cream, a stray wand of mascara.
It was a whim, perhaps, but all she had left, because the mother person’s skin did not fit, too tight, too loose, she was whittled down to the scurrying creature that rifled garbage bags on the side of the road. She went downstairs, to the kitchen sink and picked up the hammer. She grabbed the flashlight from the hook by the front door. She knew where everything was, now, as if it were her own house. She returned to the bathroom.
She crawled into the cupboard on her hands and knees, then squatted.
The hammer swung back, then forward, the momentum of the heavy steal head. What tools are for, to improve on the human hand. The hammer’s head split the wallboard. Kay swung again and again until she’d gouged out a hole big enough to climb through. She entered the crawl space under the roof.
Shuffling forward, she swung the flashlight around, scanning the eaves of the house, the floor covered only sparingly with wide, old boards; otherwise, pink insulation bristled up. She shuffled along, scraping her knees, squinting into corners, pulling up the odd bit of insulation.
There was nothing. She lifted the loose floorboards. Nothing. She pressed the flashlight into the corners. But there was nothing, nothing, only the house as it should be.
Kay sat, rubbing her knees in the dark. If Michael saw her like this, he wouldn’t be surprised. Crazy, he’d called her, you’re crazy. She was an unhinged person in a dark crawl space looking for something that wasn’t there. She was a child stuck up a tree—a child who climbed there of her own volition—she could not see her way down. Or out. Or back. Or forward. She would put everything in the car and drive, any direction, until dark, and then find a motel. She would be a drifter, motels, interstates, truck stops, it was almost romantic.
Switching off the flashlight, she grabbed the hammer and crawled back out. She shut the cupboard, and went back down to the cellar, to Frank’s tool bench. She opened the drawers and mixed around the tools, tossing about the chisels, disorganizing the screwdrivers. She took a box of screws and dumped them out on the floor. She thought to go on, but she’d made her point. She opened the drawer reserved for “Saws” and carelessly shoved the hammer all the way to the back. But it caught on a larger object lodged even further back. Pulling the drawer all the way to the end of its runners, she peered in and saw a white plastic handle, vaguely like an electric egg-beater.
She reached in, grasped it, retrieved it.
An electric carving knife. Smeared in a rusty substance.
The rust flaked off onto her fingers. She knew, of course, it wasn’t rust.
64
BEN KEPT HIS EYES ON Dinko. He knew Dinko saw the small muscles of his jaw twitch and then relax. Then Ben smiled at him, an unexpected smile. “Jake is a fine boy. I understand why you’d want to be there for him.”
Dinko felt a flutter in his chest, as if a pretty girl had looked his way, for Ben aimed to flatter. The fineness of the child must reflect somehow on the father, the bloodlines after all. He’d done something good, at last, Dinko seemed to be thinking. Why not be a dad? He was so used to feeling either high or scratchy, but feeling like this—all happy-fluttery—well, he figured, actually, he would be a pretty decent dad. He had the right, being the father. His sperm was strong—his boys could swim!
“The thing is,” Ben leaned forward, his hands making a little pyramid. “The thing is I’m planning on adopting him.”
Things were suddenly happening, and Dinko was used to a slow, focused life. He slept a lot. He watched TV. He thought about scoring. He worried about scoring, he planned how and where to score, and when he scored, he didn’t think much. He had a son, Shevaunne was dead, and now this random guy wanted to adopt her son—his son. And Dinko was realizing he had a possession of real value, something to keep or trade—this was Shevaunne’s gift to him, like an inheritance in a will. Ben knew Dinko’s brain was rattling down such a mental track. He knew Dinko because he’d known Dinko all this life—And who do we have hiding in here? That’s just Ben. He’s all right, aren’t you, my Benben. You’re cool with Momma partying.
“Adopt him how?” Dinko mused.
“A formal adoption,” replied Ben. “He’d legally become my child.”
“But what about me?”
“You would give up your right. You would terminate your parental right.”
Termination was a polite way of saying abortion. Ben was, basically, asking Dinko to abort his child.
“Jake.” Dinko said. “Jake. Is that short for Jacob? Or just Jake?”
“Just Jake.”
“Sort of like naming your kid Bob instead of Robert.”
“Is it?” Ben wondered.
“Termination.” Dinko leaned back, the tough negotiator. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
Ben respectfully countered, “How might you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what would it take for you to be able to know.”
Dinko was on The Apprentice; he was tough, but fair. “Why do you want the boy?”
The question was so simple, delivered by a simpleton, but it hit Ben square in the chest. Why did he want Jake? Because he loved him. Because he wanted to help him. But there was something else, an unreasonable reason he couldn’t articulate, could only feel his way around, as if in the dark, the way known objects became unfamiliar.
He kept his voice low, daring a secret. “How much smack for the boy?”
Dinko tilted his head. “He’s not for sale.”
“A kilo.”
“You are sick, man.”
“I’ll give you a kilo of uncut heroin if you write a letter stating that you terminate your parental rights and you will never contact Jake again.”
Now Dinko looked around. Were there cameras? Was this a sting? For a moment, Dinko stared at Ben. He would not tak
e the deal. He would stand up and walk out into the afternoon light. He would go clean and raise his son right.
Dinko watched Ben and Ben watched Dinko back and saw the creature who squatted on the child Dinko had once been, picking at the fine brittle child bones. The creature scratched itself and opened its beak and smiled and said: “Two kilos and the kid is yours.”
“Two kilos.” Ben nodded. “We just have to go to my friend Ed’s to get it.”
And Dinko, who had survived jail and years of petty crime and badly cut smack, stepped in front of Ben, he stepped sprightly, leading the way to the two kilos of smack.
Having never strangled anyone before, Ben did not know if it would be easy. He simply took a pair of Shevaunne’s panties and looped them over Dinko’s head and pulled the ends in opposite directions. Dinko kicked and sputtered; his arms flailed, but he was a small man, 130 pounds, and his strength blunted by years of drug abuse. His eyes bulged, his tongue sprouted from his mouth, a final wind-milling of his limbs. And then he stopped. He went floppy so that Ben lost his balance and dropped him. Looking down at Dinko, he felt the same curious flatness as he had with Shevaunne. He nudged the body with his foot, no longer a man but more a ragged carpet, something to be removed. He looked down at his hands, his new killer’s hands. They were not shaking—they were steady and strong, and he understood that this was who he had been becoming.
65
The pig blinked, its thick pale lashes sweeping down over the thumb-tack eyes. Standing, it was even bigger than Kay had first estimated—the width and breadth of a sofa, its snout the size of a dinner plate.
“Easy, pig,” Ammon murmured unconvincingly, then leaned back to attend his beer. “Excellent noses, pigs.”
Kay took the electric knife out of her bag, showed it to Ammon. He gave a little belch, his eyes never leaving hers, bold and amused. The pig edged closer, sniffing, snuffling. Kay could see below the nose, its tusks, its yellow teeth, its fat pink tongue. She stood dead-still, sweat pricking at her armpits, clamping her intestines, as the pig gazed up at her. She realized its principal interest was the knife. It grunted and began to drool.
