IT was past midnight when she heard a car door slam. She assumed it was her mother until she heard a rapping at the front door and flew down the stairs. Her father, laughing, grabbed her in a hug and said he hoped he hadn’t scared her.
She said he hadn’t, which wasn’t true. She felt as if she were watching a movie and had come to the part where she wanted to turn away from the screen. Her mother would walk in any second, stinking of booze, and her father would take one look at her and guess what she’d been up to. Then there’d be a blowup and her father would leave her alone with her mother forever. She wanted to say, Let’s go home right now, but instead she asked how he’d managed to get away. Making conversation, as if their lives were not about to explode in their faces.
He said he’d pulled some all-nighters so he could join them for a couple of days, and then asked what she’d been doing. Before she could answer, the back door opened and her mother was in the kitchen, not quite steady on her feet. Her hair was a mess and the black linen dress looked like it had been run over by a truck. She smelled of alcohol and cigarettes and sour perspiration. Her mother didn’t seem surprised to see her father, and Cassie realized she’d seen his car outside.
“Hey, sweetie, this is great!” Cassie’s mother, with a big smile, threw her arms wide and tottered toward Cassie’s father, then cried out when he gave her a shove that sent her crashing against the refrigerator.
For a second, Cassie was paralyzed by the sound of her mother’s head slamming into the refrigerator door. Then, without looking at either of them, she ran out of the room and up the stairs. Her first thought was to go to her room, but she was afraid she might not hear her father leave, and he was not leaving without her, not tonight. She stayed at the top of the stairs, first leaning against the wall, then sitting on the top step, listening to the war going on below. It sounded to her as if they were slashing each other with words, and she imagined blood spurting onto the kitchen floor. It went on for a while, her father screaming at her mother, calling her names that made it clear he’d had a good idea all along what was going on. Cassie wanted to go downstairs and kill them both, pay them back for all the years she’d wished she was dead, so she could be free of the secret that wasn’t a secret at all. Instead, she waited for the slamming door, prepared to run out after her father, but it didn’t come. Then she heard her mother say in a hoarse voice, “I’m going to bed.”
Cassie ducked into her room when her mother started upstairs clutching a bottle by its neck and moaning, “I can’t do this anymore.” Her Sunday night song. When she heard her mother’s door close, Cassie went down to look for her father. She panicked when she didn’t see him in the house, and stepped outside to check for his car. He was on the porch smoking, something she’d seen him do maybe three times in her life.
He took her hand and said in an exhausted voice, “Cass, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you had to hear that.”
She said, “I want to go home. Tonight, right now.”
“I’m wiped,” he said. “Maybe in the morning.” Then he stood and crushed the cigarette with his shoe and said he was going to take a ride. He had to clear his head. When Cassie said she’d go with him, he said he needed to be on his own for a little while. He hoped she understood.
“Please don’t leave me alone with her,” she said.
“Cassie, go to bed. It’s almost one-thirty. I won’t be gone long.”
She fell asleep in her clothes on top of the blanket and woke a few hours later to a damp, gray dawn. She went downstairs to check for her father’s car. It wasn’t in the driveway. If he’d gone home without her, she’d never forgive him. She stood on the porch for a while watching for the car, as if she could draw him to the house. When that became unbearable, she decided to pack so she’d be ready to leave when he came for her.
When she got to the top of the stairs, she heard noises coming from her mother’s room, not sex noises but choking noises. Her immediate thought was that her father had somehow come back without his car, and was in the room with his hands around her mother’s throat. Cassie threw open the door and was hit by the smell of vomit and by the sight of her mother on her back, naked, the blanket tangled at her feet, gasping for breath.
Cassie froze in the doorway, sickened by the smell but nailed to the spot by the sight of her mother’s naked body. The sounds coming from her mother’s throat were like a harsh foreign language she’d never heard before. She turned away and covered her ears, like she did on Sunday nights when she was small. At one point she thought her mother cried Help, but she couldn’t be sure. When she dropped her hands seconds later, her mother was still, the only sounds coming from the birds at the feeder outside the window.
Daylight seeped between the slats of the blinds, and a frail sliver of moon was visible through the skylight above the bed. Cassie stood by the bed, breathing into her hand to avoid the stink. This was her first view of death, not counting the stiff canary at the bottom of the cage and the fish floating in the tank. Her mother’s head was to one side, vomit trailing from her mouth onto the pillow, and her eyes were open and bulging. Cassie had never thought of death as making people ugly, at least not before they were in the ground and rotted, but now realized that’s what sometimes happened.
She went downstairs and out onto the porch to wait for her father. The mist had burned off and the sun felt good, so she didn’t mind sitting there. She had no idea how long she waited. It was as if she were living outside time, so time wasn’t something she needed to understand anymore—like the junk you forgot at the end of school.
From the porch, she could see pretty far down the drive, and although she was watching for her father’s car, she never saw it turn in. One minute she was alone, and the next minute he was standing in front of her. She didn’t understand how that had happened. Her father said she must have fallen asleep.
Then she told him her mother was dead, and this time, he was the one who didn’t understand, so she had to say it again. When he ran into the house, she followed him. She’d left her mother’s door open, and could smell the vomit as soon as she got upstairs. While she was waiting for her father to come back, she’d thought about what he would do when he saw her mother. It happened pretty much as she’d imagined. He pulled the blanket over her mother’s body, crying, “My god, my god,” again and again. Then he covered his face with his hands. His back was to Cassie and his shoulders were shaking, so she guessed he was crying though no sounds came out.
When he calmed down, she told him she’d killed her mother. They were in Cassie’s room by then. Cassie was sitting on her bed and her father was sitting on the other bed. Her father said, “She choked on her vomit, Cassandra. It’s no one’s fault, except maybe mine for the things I said to her last night. Or maybe hers for drinking herself into a stupor.”
They went back and forth on that for a while. Cassie had known he would try to turn everything around, the way he always did. Finally she said in a loud, clear voice: “I hated her and I wanted her to die, so I didn’t help her. Can you get that through your head?”
When he started in on how wanting someone to die wasn’t the same as killing them, she screamed at him, “Will you stop saying things just because you want them to be true?”
He didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds, his face squeezed tight as if he was fighting back tears. Then, in a strangled voice, he said, “I’ll tell you what’s true. What’s true is that if I lose you now, it’s the end for me. And that’s exactly what could happen if you keep up this crazy talk.”
Crazy talk.
“Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Cassandra?”
His bloodshot eyes and his stubble of a beard made him look like an old man, and she turned toward the window so she wouldn’t have to see him. Yes, she understood. She’d been dumb enough to think that with her mother dead she’d be free, but she wasn’t. It would always be about them, about their lives.
While her father made the 911 call, she went
to the bathroom and scrubbed her face, and then—her father’s brilliant idea—took out the lip ring and the stud in her nose. Miss Innocent, in the mirror, stared back at her.
Cassie wished they could trade places, she and the girl in the mirror. She wished she could disappear into that world. “Is your mother dead?” she murmured to the girl. “Did you kill her?” Then she leaned in close, her breath leaving a little cloud on the glass as she whispered the forbidden word: “Murderer!”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Manhattan author CYNTHIA BENJAMIN is a television and feature film writer. She created a daytime soap opera for CBS and wrote twelve children’s books. Her mystery stories have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the Murder New York Style anthology, Fresh Slices.
FRAN BANNIGAN COX is a visual artist and writer. She holds an M.A. from Hunter College in New York. Her artwork has been exhibited in one-person and group shows in New York, Boston, and other major cities. She is the co-author of A Conscious Life, published by Conari Press in Berkeley, California. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies Murder New York Style and Fresh Slices, in the Murder New York Style series, as well as in the webzine Mysterical-e. Fran holds a 500-hour teaching certification from The Yoga Alliance. Yoga, she says, keeps it all together.
LINDSAY A. CURCIO is a transplanted Chicagoan living and working in Brooklyn, New York. She is an attorney practicing U.S. immigration law. Lindsay has authored numerous articles and a textbook about immigration law. While she admits to reading government statutes and regulations for fun, she also loves mysteries and pop culture.
EILEEN DUNBAUGH’s fiction has previously appeared in the Mystery Writer’s of America anthology The Prosecution Rests, edited by Linda Fairstein, in the historical mystery anthology Somewhere in Crime, from the Central Coast Mystery Writers, and in a previous volume from the New York/Tri-State chapter of Sisters in Crime, Fresh Slices, edited by Terrie Farley Moran.
LYNNE LEDERMAN, PH.D. has a doctorate degree in molecular biology and virology from the Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Sciences. She is a widely-published medical, science, and health writer, and an award-winning printmaker. She is using her experience in the cutthroat world of scientific research and the biotechnology industry to write her mystery series, which features scientist and amateur detective Nanette Newman.
KATE LINCOLN works in alternative and surgical medicine, gaining inspiration from each. Her novels and short fiction offer wry observations about the ironies of life and death that she daily encounters. In 2013, her debut short story, “The Eighth Cup,” was named a runner up in the First International Homeopathy Short Story Contest by the on-line journal Hpathy.com. “The July Rebellion” is her second work of short fiction. Kate lives with her husband and their very old Corgi in New Jersey, where their children visit from the far reaches of southern California and northern Maine.
CATHERINE MAIORISI lives in New York City and often writes under the watchful eye of Edgar Allan Poe, in Edgar’s Café near her apartment. While seeking an agent for her series starring NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli and her sidekick, Detective P.J. Parker, Catherine is plotting a new series and writing short stories. She has published two earlier short stories: “Justice for All” in the Murder New York Style anthology, Fresh Slices, and “The Fan Club” in The Best Lesbian Romances of 2014.
TERRIE FARLEY MORAN is the author of Well Read, Then Dead, the first cozy mystery in the Read ’Em and Eat series published by Berkley Prime Crime. Her short mystery fiction has been published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and various anthologies, including the Mystery Writers of America anthology Crimes by Moonlight. Her work has been short-listed twice for Best American Mystery Stories. Terrie’s website is www.terriefarleymoran.com, and you can find her blogging amid the grand banter of an eclectic group of writers known as the Women of Mystery at www.womenofmystery.net.
DOROTHY MORTMAN is a retired New York State Tax Auditor who spends her time traveling and writing. She has incorporated her travel experiences as well as the historical background of her borough, Brooklyn, in her stories. She is a member of the New York/ Tri-State chapter of Sisters in Crime, and an avid reader of mystery stories. Dorothy has had short stories published in The Raconteur, Whispering Willows, and Murder New York Style. Several of her stories have been honored in competitions. She is presently at work on a historical mystery novel.
Before turning to fiction, Leigh Neely enjoyed a career in newspapers and magazines as a writer and an editor. She currently works with writing partner, Jan Powell, on books with romance, suspense, and paranormal elements using the pseudonym Neely Powell. Witch’s Awakening, from The Connelly Witches miniseries, is out now with two more books coming soon. True Nature, from The Wild Rose Press, was published in 2013. Her first short story, “A Vampire in Brooklyn,” appeared in the Murder New York Style anthology, Fresh Slices, from the New York/Tri-State chapter of Sisters in Crime.
ANITA PAGE’s short stories have appeared in webzines and anthologies including Mysterical-e, Beat to a Pulp, Back Alley, Word Riot, Fresh Slices, in the Murder New York Style series, and the Mystery Writers of America anthology, The Prosecution Rests (Little, Brown). She received a Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society in 2010 for “’Twas the Night,” which appeared in The Gift of Murder. Her Catskill Mountain mystery, Damned If You Don’t, featuring community activist Hannah Fox, is available as an eBook from Glenmere Press. She was honored to have been invited to edit this anthology. Anita can be found online at www.womenofmystery.net and www.anitapagewriter.blogspot.com.
ELLEN QUINT coaches and trains professionals on how to succeed in leadership roles. Her work takes her around the globe, but all roads lead back to Brooklyn where she lives with her husband. “Crossing the Line” is Ellen’s first published fiction. She is working on a cozy, featuring a fifty-something researcher for an online finance magazine, who becomes trapped in a deadly mortgage scam while discovering the joys of porn, high heels by Nike, and learning to thwart a kidnapping with a hot flash. Ellen is an active member of the New York/Tri-State chapter of Sisters in Crime.
ROSLYN SIEGEL, PH.D. has been a writer and editor for more than thirty years, holding senior positions at Simon & Schuster, Random House, Consumer Reports, The Literary Guild Book Club and MJF Books, where she is currently Director of Acquisitions. She has written numerous articles and book reviews for The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Village Voice, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, and other periodicals, and is the author of Goodie One Shoes (Hilliard and Harris, 2011), a mystery set on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “Sylvia” is her first published work of short fiction.
TRISS STEIN is a small-town girl from New York State’s dairy country, who has spent most of her adult life living and working in New York City. This gives her the double vision of a stranger and a resident, useful for writing mysteries about Brooklyn, her ever-fascinating, ever-changing, ever-challenging adopted home. Brooklyn Graves, from Poisoned Pen Press, is the second in the series, following Brooklyn Bones. “Eldercare” is her third story published in a Sisters in Crime anthology. Triss is active in both Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.
CATHI STOLER’s Laurel and Helen New York Mystery series includes Telling Lies, Keeping Secrets, and The Hard Way. The series features P.I. Helen McCorkendale and magazine editor Laurel Imperiole. Cathi, a native New Yorker, has published a novella, Nick of Time, and is working on a new series, Bar None, A Murder on The Rocks Mystery featuring female bar owner Jude Dillane. Her stories have been published in several print anthologies and online. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, as well as Sisters in Crime, and blogs at womenofmystery.net. Visit Cathi at www.cathistoler.com.
ANNE-MARIE SUTTON, a Baltimore native, now lives in Connecticut. She works with her husband in their sales and marketing consulting business where she has ample opportunity to use her writing skills. She i
s happy to have a second career as a fiction writer. She’s published three mysteries set in Newport, Rhode Island (www.newportmystery.com), and enjoys her frequent visits to the city to do events to promote her novels. Her most recent book, Keep My Secret, came out in 2013. Her newest project is working with a local Connecticut group called Writers Unlimited, composed of senior citizens who love to write.
CLARE TOOHEY considers herself a genre omnivore, a grazer of stories who wants a taste from your plate. She’s a freelance editor, who helped found and manages CriminalElement.com, a community for crime fans. Her short stories appear in the Murder New York Style anthology, Fresh Slices, and Feeding Kate, the latter of which she co-edited. She edited St. Martins Press’s award-winning collection of short crime, The Malfeasance Occasional: Girl Trouble, as well as the Murder New York Style anthology, Deadly Debut. She consults on fiction projects for (and as) other people. She’s most often seen as an indistinct blur, gadding between online homes that include the group blog WomenofMystery.net and Twitter @clare2e.
DEIRDRE VERNE likes to think of writing as her third career, after teaching and working in marketing. Prior to teaching, Deirdre held senior positions at Time Inc. where she handled business development for Fortune, Money, and Parenting magazines. Currently, she is the Curriculum Chair of the Marketing Program at Westchester Community College. When not in a classroom, Verne makes time for her new mystery series (Winter, 2015), featuring CeCe Prentice—an eco-friendly, dumpster-diving sleuth. Deirdre lives in lower Westchester with her husband and two boys.
STEPHANIE WILSON-FLAHERTY is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and Romance Writers of America. She published a finalist entry in RWA’s Golden Heart contest, earning a four-star review from Romantic Times Book Review upon its release. She has recently focused on writing short mystery stories with a humorous touch, set in her native Brooklyn, starring a busybody older woman sleuth.
Family Matters Page 22
