The Best of Crimes

by K. C. Maher

  Before we eat, she unfastens the leash and lures him into his crate by dropping one of her socks inside. She sets the table barefoot. The roses sit in the bay window.

  When we’re ready to watch TV, Amanda pleads for Samson to join us. The puppy engages all our combined attention. Playing with him is tactile, freewheeling, rough-and-tumble, and, blessedly, harmless.

  Twenty Five

  Amanda wants Samson to sleep at her house, which she says is so lonely it’s like being in a horror movie.

  It’s past midnight when I carry the dog’s crate and food into her kitchen. The house is so cold I can see our breath in the air. She says she’s used to it. The light is soft but clear.

  Oh, she explains, she covered the fluorescent tube lights with pink gels from the middle school’s theater. The walls need paint. Above a flimsy table and chairs, a pale blue has been scrubbed away in patches. Her kitchen is small, with one window over the sink, facing spindly evergreens.

  ‘How much time do you spend cleaning, Amanda?’

  ‘Not so much anymore, because you cook for me. I can take care of Samson, you’ll see.’

  ‘That’s not why I asked.’

  We go outside to walk the puppy once more. She’s holding the leash and seems to be hurrying away from me before I can ask anything more about maintaining that house, which she’s kept in decent shape with minimal help for most of her life.

  We traipse through her yard and mine and then around the Point. The first time I bend down with a plastic bag to pick up Samson’s mess, Amanda says, ‘Let me. I want to be responsible for him. Except when Olivia comes back. Then we’ll trade back and forth.’

  ‘Is she coming back? Have you talked to her?’

  ‘Texted. She’ll definitely call you after spring break.’

  (Definitely? Is Amanda urging my daughter to stay in touch with me?)

  ‘Let her know she can bring Karl.’

  ‘Sterling won’t agree.’ Staring up at me, Amanda adds, ‘Olivia and Granny disagree with Sterling.’

  I don’t know what my face is doing, but Amanda says, ‘You miss her.’

  I know she means Olivia, not Sterling. ‘Yes, and I’m worried she won’t come back. If she’s happier living in Maine, I have to accept that.’

  Amanda reaches up to hug me while Samson runs around our legs. ‘I miss Olivia, too,’ she says and I quickly kiss the crown of her head.

  Now that Samson’s eliminated all he can for the night, we return to Amanda’s kitchen. She pulls a chewed sock from her back pocket, drops it into the crate, and pushes the puppy in there with it. He whines and thumps his tail but she won’t look at him.

  Instead, she steps beneath the gel-covered light and stands tall, focusing on me. In her concern, she appears more grown-up and therefore even more desirable. She stares in the middle distance before returning to the here and now. Then, she exhales audibly and asks, ‘What about Sterling? Do you miss her?’

  ‘You and I probably shouldn’t talk about that. But no, I don’t.’

  ‘But she’s coming back with or without Olivia.’

  ‘She thinks she is. But I’ve told her it’s not that easy.’

  A silent spell falls and I step closer to Amanda, who’s radiating anxiety. It’s like a ghost that roams her house.

  Gently, I lift her chin to see if I can guess what’s happening behind her beguiling, wide eyes. Their amber hue has never been so fiery. Her expression is taut and I can feel the tension rising beneath her skin. She looks away.

  ‘Honey, don’t worry about Sterling.’

  She sighs and sits at the cheap little table. ‘I know. I know—I should be happy for these past months, this night . . . everything.’

  I hover behind her. ‘Trying to be happy means you’re not happy at all. When I say not to worry about Sterling, I mean she’s my problem, not yours. That’s how it should be, anyway. Everyone only gets so much time before things change.’

  She drops her head and after a long pause suddenly twists around, and kneels on the chair, facing me. I anticipate—in fact, I hope—she’ll fly into my arms.

  Seeing this, Amanda taunts me with a little grin and then matter-of-factly walks me to the door and outside, where I ask her to flick her lights once I’m inside my own home.

  ‘No. This time, you flick your lights to show me you’re safe.’

  I do that and she flicks hers back.

  *

  Before dawn, I enter Amanda’s kitchen through her garage. We had agreed that I’d walk Samson first thing, because I have been running at 5:30 every day for fourteen years. But when I open the door, Amanda’s dressed for the day and sitting on the kitchen floor, nestling Samson in her lap. ‘Hi.’

  She stands up and walks toward me. The dog’s claws scrape the floor as he scrambles after her.

  Amanda stands on top of my running shoes and reaches up. ‘Come here.’ She folds her hands behind my neck. I’m determined not to lose myself in her eyes or study her mouth too intently. I shut down any—and every—response to her touch. I resist her inherent luster and she releases me. Then, as if from far away, I hear her saying, ‘Walter, thank you. Just—thank you.’

  Walking the puppy in the eerie light before dawn, she says, ‘Go for your run.’

  ‘We agreed we’d train him together.’

  So she leads the way and says—sounding shy—‘You, me, and Samson are like a little family.’

  Stepping beside her, I take and swing her free hand, ‘You’re right. Except I’ve never felt like this before.’

  ‘That’s because you’re like me. Your family wasn’t dependable.’

  ‘That’s true, and it has become true again.’

  Before I run off to the hills, I carry the dog crate to my house, because I’d rather Amanda and Samson wait there. If the puppy stains or chews things, let it be in my house and not Cheryl’s haunted one. Amanda sees her roses on the table and leans her face into the petals. ‘I practically forgot about my beautiful flowers. That’s how much Samson hogs my attention.’

  ‘He’ll need just as much attention when those flowers are dead.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ She stands as if shielding the roses.

  ‘Honey, they seem just like you to me. Except, they’re very temporary. Cut hot-house flowers will droop and fall apart in three or four days. Samson is yours for a long time.’

  ‘I know that!’ she whispers. ‘I love the flowers, Walter, but not like I love Samson. I say, I love this, I love that. But love means a million different things.’

  She’s right, of course. It’s a shame our language is so inept. But words are both the cause and effect of our thoughts and feelings. So, the shame is on us, not our words.

  *

  An hour later, returning up the hill, I visit the abandoned playground, where the equipment is weathered and damp. All evidence of night has fled, but the sun remains invisible behind low cloud cover. I stretch and reach my wrists halfway inside the metal basketball hoop. For months, I’ve been doing metaphysical cartwheels beside Amanda. Monstrous impulses still plague my unconscious, but I’m no longer appalled. Because I know—and continue to affirm—that I will never hurt her.

  For a minute, I’m high in the sky, rolling through celestial cycles. Back on the ground, I remember to listen for Jimmy Quinn cheering me on. And he is. He always is.

  Twenty Six

  The spring air is fresh and sweet even when it’s not warm. The outdoor skating rinks are beginning to close for the season. During Amanda’s break from school, we’ve been walking the puppy around and skating at indoor arenas. We’ve attended two sessions of puppy school. During these classes with three other dogs and their owners, Amanda calls me ‘Dad’ and sometimes ‘Daddy.’

  Friday morning, after walking Samson around the pond at Rockefeller Park, we agree to try the Palisades Ice Arena across the Hudson. Amanda says the rink hires a deejay on the weekends. ‘But because it’s spring break, they’re having a deejay every afternoo
n.’

  Wary of a wrong turn taking us into New Jersey, I memorize the directions. Because on Monday, Amanda’s enthusiasm and my blind devotion to her led us into sudden legal danger. We were going to an indoor rink in Danbury, Connecticut. Not until I saw the exit sign did it occur to me that entering Connecticut would constitute ‘transporting a minor across state lines.’

  After taking the exit, I needed to pass through two lights before I could get on the highway going west. So, I ‘kidnapped’ her for approximately ten minutes. She didn’t ask why I changed my mind, but we arrived at a rink in Newburgh, New York in time to spend twenty minutes clinging to each other without jackets and mittens.

  This afternoon, we arrive at the Palisades Arena just as public skating begins. The deejay mixes disco, soul, and hip-hop. No waltzes, no staticky speakers.

  Amanda and I skate in time with the layered tunes. She’s become steady on the ice and a fantastic magnetism propels us with increasing speed and precision. Driving home, we’re happy and hungry.

  She showers at her house and then joins me in my kitchen, kicking off her shoes, while I prepare dinner. In footless tights and a short tunic, she balances on one leg while stretching the other high and to the side, her thumb and finger clasping her big toe. She holds this pose impossibly long, then stands straight and folds in half, clasping her ankles. I do not even try to look away as she unfurls slowly up, her hair alive in the air, and presses her palms together. She bows her radiant head. ‘Namaste.’

  ‘Namaste, yourself.’

  ‘Do you meditate?’ she asks.

  ‘I use a breathing technique to counter stress. Sharp, fast inhalations and long, slow exhalations through the mouth.’

  ‘How come you know everything, Walter?’

  ‘I don’t—know everything. And can’t remember when I started the breathing thing, but it helps me calm down.’

  Samson has stopped whining, and his tail thumps inside his cage. Amanda fills his ceramic bowls with dog food and water before opening the cage door. He behaves at Amanda’s command, not mine.

  The first buds have appeared in the garden. We linger over dinner, watching the April sky fill the open bay window as it slowly develops into an evening of brisk green breezes.

  *

  On Sunday, our last evening of Amanda’s spring break, the puppy behaves so well, I try slipping him a bit of steak at dinner.

  Amanda objects. ‘You’ll spoil him!’

  After loading the dishwasher, we walk Samson around the Point before watching TV. Between us on the couch, the exuberant little animal squirms from my lap to hers. He gets up and starts barking and running around the house. I check on him but he’s just scampering through the hallways.

  He returns and crouches on the floor, then flips over and lays panting on his back, his little canine body squirming. Amanda and I drop onto the floor to play with him. But he immediately gets up, sniffs around, and settles into a corner.

  Lying on the rug, we watch the next-to-last episode in The Real Miranda’s third season. The commercials promote a denim jacket I bought Amanda two weeks ago, when ads for it pursued me wherever I went online. Traditional metal buttons and pockets, but the back has a latex image of Miranda’s face, her bright pink mouth a surprised ‘O.’

  The image struck me as so garish that I searched Disney shops in various cities until I found a ‘distressed’ version of the jacket in San Francisco. No worn or torn patches, but the oversized, oversaturated actress’s face is significantly faded, as is the denim. Like the standard version, her name is scrawled in heavy script, a fat heart dotting the ‘i.’ The jacket arrived yesterday.

  Amanda loves it—much more, she says, than the regular version, which the whole cast is wearing in a commercial. Before I notice, she’s ducked from the room and returns, prancing around me, the jacket dangling from one shoulder while she mimics Iris’s quick little dance steps. She hums one of the songs and twirls. Stretched out on the carpet, balanced on my side, I watch without staring, a distinction I’m forever trying to master.

  Samson wakes and growls. Amanda stops. The jacket falls. And Samson pounces, tearing into my back.

  ‘Bad Samson! Bad, bad, bad!’ Amanda stomps her feet and swats the air just above the dog’s head. Samson whines, his spine hunched with guilt, his tail between his legs, before bounding onto the couch. He settles into the far, padded corner, covers his snout with his front paws, and seems to fall immediately asleep.

  On the edge of the couch, her hands on her knees, Amanda asks, ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine, honey.’

  ‘You have to admit he’s cute,’ she says.

  ‘Very cute.’

  While the puppy sleeps, we stretch out on the floor, hands cupping our chins, our eyes fixed on Miranda gazing from her bedroom window. The actress sings what good is telepathy without a leap of empathy? Amanda sings along, anticipating the words, lying on her stomach, her feet up and crisscrossing. Twisting, I grab the high arch of her foot. She pulls it free and I fall forward.

  ‘Walter, my God!’

  Frantic, she urges me to sit up so she can see my back. And then: ‘May I?’ Gasping, she carefully rolls up my ruined Italian-knit polo shirt over my head. Moving around on her knees, she touches the tops of my naked shoulders, fretting, ‘Oh, my God, oh, my God! The only reason you’re not gushing blood is that the gashes are very deep.’

  ‘All right, let me go upstairs and take care of it. You wait here.’

  ‘No way, Walter! You’ve got three deep, terrible slashes just beneath your ribs.’

  ‘I’m okay, honey. Just give me back my shirt and I’ll tend to them later.’

  ‘We should go to the emergency room.’

  ‘No, we shouldn’t.’

  ‘You need stitches.’

  ‘Cuts from animals contain too much bacteria.’

  ‘At least let the emergency room doctors irrigate the wounds.’ She tells me that last summer one of the Baxter twins sliced his ear where it meets his head. It was impossible to suture it so the doctor flushed the area with distilled water followed by a jet stream of liquid antiseptic.

  ‘Please, honey. I’m fine.’ Then I sink into the carpet, stupid and woozy.

  Suddenly I’m exhausted—also shirtless and prone on the floor. I mumble, ‘Please don’t take advantage of the situation. Upstairs or anywhere else.’

  ‘Me?’ Her laugh sounds like a bell.

  She returns holding a red metal first-aid kit and hydrogen peroxide from the linen closet upstairs. I turn my head. She hovers at the room’s threshold. Within seconds, our rituals slip into a precarious, new intimacy. To tend to the scratches, she straddles my waist.

  ‘They’re puffing up,’ she says.

  After cleaning them, which stings enough to make my eyes water, she carefully slathers them with ointment, and stacks gauze over them, covering the edges with medical tape. Amanda stretches over my patched-up but otherwise naked back and whispers in my ear, ‘Do you love me, Walter? Do you?’

  Each cool, sweet word surges through me. ‘Do you,’ she asks, ‘love me like I love you?’

  ‘Yes, Amanda.’ Unwisely, I turn over to stare up at her. ‘You know I love you.’ I lift her off and sit up. My fingers touch her chin and stroke the sides of her neck. ‘I love you more than is morally defensible.’

  She breaks eye contact. I’m not sure if she sighs. But I’m not sure of anything anymore.

  ‘That bad dog—I can’t believe it. Lie down, Walter. I’ll rub your shoulders. I do it for Cheryl all the time. It’s the one thing she likes about me. The way I rub her shoulders.’

  ‘But she’s your mother.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me rubbing your shoulders.’

  So, God help me, I drop my forehead onto her denim jacket that’s folded like a pillow, and close my eyes, my heart beating so furiously I’m prepared to die. Amanda’s knuckles push deep into my upper trapezius muscles, which are like rock. Deliciously, she dra
gs her elbows around and between my shoulder blades repeatedly—until I’m nearly asleep. Finally, her fingertips brush against my skin like wings, soothing every nerve in the region. So I’m calm and steady enough—even as her long, girlish thighs squeeze my waist and her little butt perches on my sacrum. My mind shuts down because after all, she’s right. Nothing we’re doing is wrong. In contrast to everything I feel—that is evil!

  She won’t get up until I agree to her rubbing my shoulders again tomorrow night.

  None of this is going to quit.

  Twenty Seven

  Today Amanda begins her last twelve weeks in eighth grade. During my run, cresting the first steep hill, I calculate how much time escapes me every day. As if that were the problem. When, in fact, the problem is this: Amanda and I are hurtling ever closer to the end.

  Running very fast through the whole long loop, I stop before Oak Grove Point and watch the early sunbeams falling upon the ground. It’s 6:45 or so when I enter the kitchen. Amanda’s standing there, because today marks our first appearance walking Samson on Broadway—a girl on her way to middle school matching strides with the man who lives across the lane, walking his new rescue puppy.

  She hands me a frosted glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. One sip and I shut my eyes. The flavor invigorates me to the point of confusion and I sink into a chair. It’s as if I’ve just drunk something I wasn’t aware I desperately needed. I extend my legs and give in to the waves of gratification carrying me higher and higher with every swallow.

  ‘How,’ I ask, ‘did you do this?’

  Amanda puts her face near mine and crosses her eyes. ‘Your credit card. How else?’

  ‘Where did you get the oranges?’

  She hops onto the stool. ‘I bought juice oranges from the farmers’ market just before they packed up yesterday. You can’t use the regular kind, so I raced over on my bike before dinner.’

  It’s scary how much she delights me, and breathtaking how each little pleasure magnifies the others. ‘Why didn’t I think of buying a juicer?’