Mother Dear

by Nova Lee Maier

  Maybe Jeffrey was still looking for somebody. He had been talking lately about a job at a cannabis farm inside a shipping container. It was tougher than the laundry: you had to work nonstop for twelve-hour shifts in the heat and the stench, under the constant risk of a robbery or a police raid—but it also paid a few hundred euros per day. If he could stick it out for three or four days, he’d be in the clear for next month.

  He grabbed his jacket from the coatrack and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To find a job,” he answered.

  His mother’s face brightened, but her smile vanished again almost instantly. “Nothing illegal, I hope?”

  So, she could read his mind as well as his mail.

  “Mom . . . I’ll see you later.”

  “Ralf, wait. Do you remember that youth project I told you about the other day? I’ve spoken to a few people there and explained your situation to them. You can start next week.”

  He stared at her blankly.

  “You get assigned a sort of coach,” she continued, “who sits down with you to look at your positive qualities and help you get your life back on track.”

  “Amazing,” he said dully. “That’s just amazing, Mom.” He walked out the house and slammed the door behind him. Did she really think he was suitable material for a useless, hippie, socks-and-sandals project like that?

  In his car, he grabbed his phone and sent a message to Jeffrey—Where are you, dude?—before starting the engine and driving down the street. Only then did he see in his rearview mirror that a purple BMW was following close behind.

  2

  “Sorry. This won’t get us anywhere.”

  Werner’s voice sounded like he had stumbled out of a smoky karaoke bar in the early hours of the morning. His skin looked gray, and the swelling by his eye had begun to change color from purple to yellow.

  But it wasn’t his appearance that Helen found alarming. Werner had a new kind of energy. Nervous, jittery. It felt like she was sitting at the kitchen table with a stranger.

  “You should have woken me up,” she said. “We could have done it together.”

  He shook his head. “That wouldn’t have made any difference. It just can’t be done with a handsaw. I spent half an hour sawing away at one—” His eyes roved restlessly across the kitchen. “It’ll take weeks. Months.” He raised his palms, spreading his fingers. Werner’s piano-playing hands had never been suited to heavy labor, and they were now covered with broken blisters and grazes. “It was quite a job just getting him out of the freezer—he was completely frozen to the sides.”

  Helen clenched her jaw and silently looked past Werner and out of the window. A man on the other side of the street was walking two huge Rottweilers and obviously struggling to control them. One of the dogs dragged him over to the bushes next to the substation and started sniffing all around it.

  She scratched her neck. “I had a nightmare last night that seemed so real. It woke me up. I went downstairs to look for you, and I heard you in the basement.”

  Werner fixed her with a glassy look. “Oh?”

  Helen rubbed her forehead. Her fingers were shaking. “I couldn’t bring myself to set foot in there; I’m sorry. It’s so horrible, Werner. I—I don’t know what to do.”

  He regarded her in silence, his eyes narrowed to slits. For a moment, his expression felt accusatory, but she must have imagined it.

  “We can only do this once, Helen,” he said softly. “There’s no second chance. We have to get it right the first time.”

  Very occasionally, and especially when she was tired, Helen would look at her husband and—in a flash—see him as he might appear to a random passerby. A stylish man around forty, with slightly graying hair, a high forehead, and fine, aristocratic features. A lot of people would call him handsome. Helen hadn’t fallen so much for his looks; rather, it had been his inner strength that attracted her. Werner was the kind of man who was ten steps ahead of everyone else, who always thought things through and knew what needed to happen. But this morning, for the first time, she saw desperation in his eyes.

  “There must be saws out there that you can use to cut through frozen flesh and bone. A hacksaw, maybe?” he wondered out loud. He picked up the iPad from the table, but his fingers hovered motionless above the screen.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He pushed the device away in frustration. “Suppose—suppose we get linked to all this one day. They’ll definitely go through our browser history if that happens.”

  “I think they would, yes. But maybe we don’t need to look it up online.” She told him about the cordless drill the orthopedic surgeon used at the hospital. “Of course, I don’t know how well it works on frozen body parts. Nor do I have any idea how to bring something like that home unnoticed. It won’t fit in my handbag. But it might go in a—”

  “What sort of blade would something like that have?”

  Helen held her thumb and index finger apart. “About that big. Pretty thin. Like an electric bread knife.”

  He leapt to his feet. “Get your coat.”

  3

  Ralf had driven through a red light and abruptly changed direction a few times in an attempt to lose Mikey, but the BMW continued to pop up in his rearview mirror. By the time Ralf turned onto Jeffrey’s street, there were only two cars between them.

  He thought about the can of pepper spray in his glove compartment. Very effective, but he didn’t dare use it on Mikey. Brian’s dealer knew where he lived and would at the very least break his arm or leg in revenge. Ralf could think of only two ways to get rid of him, aside from killing him: talking to him and hoping that he would listen, or paying him what Brian owed.

  He drove slowly past the apartment where Jeffrey lived with his girlfriend, Denise, and their infant twins. The curtains were open, and he could see movement inside. Jeffrey was usually at home in the morning, and he was also quick-tempered and strong—maybe he could get him involved in this?

  Hunting for a parking space, he drove to a small shopping area at the end of the street. It was quiet here. The fast-food place was still closed at this time of day, and the door to the Turkish shop was shut.

  He parked and got out. The BMW’s tires squealed as it hurtled across the parking lot and came to a stop. Mikey leapt out. Before Ralf had a chance to say anything, Mikey grabbed him by the throat and forcefully pushed him back against his car.

  4

  “Can I help you at all?” A boy with a freckled face approached Werner and Helen. “Jan-Willem,” said his name tag.

  “Um, well . . .”

  Jan-Willem pointed to the wall display of electric saws. “There’s a twenty percent discount on all Black and Decker products this week. It’s a great offer, and on a good brand too. We don’t get many complaints.” His eyes met Werner’s. Jan-Willem’s eyebrows and eyelashes were so light, they seemed almost transparent. “As long as you don’t have any really big jobs on your to-do list.”

  “Well, I—” Werner clenched his fist and started coughing, turning his back on the boy.

  Helen forced a smile. “We’re looking for a really good one, actually. One that doesn’t overheat too quickly, you know? So you can work with it for an hour or so without stopping.”

  “They’re all capable of that, but it depends on what you use them for. What will you be cutting?”

  Helen looked to Werner for help, but he was still coughing.

  “Ma’am?”

  “It’s for meat. Meat and bones,” she said quickly.

  “Excuse me?”

  Werner had stopped coughing and was staring at her with a bewildered expression. His eyes watered.

  “We feed our Rottweilers frozen meat and bones. We want to saw it into smaller portions, but it takes much too long with a handsaw.”

  Werner had scarcely moved.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve heard that,” the young man said with a grin. “BARF, they call it, right? Bo
nes and”—he thought for a second—“raw food.”

  Helen nodded gratefully.

  “My sister feeds her Labradors that way too,” he continued. “It’s more natural. Kibble was just invented by manufacturers to make money, of course.”

  Werner joined the conversation. “What kind of equipment does your sister use?”

  “For frozen meat? The one at the top.” He pointed to an electric saw costing around one hundred euros. “But it isn’t part of the special offer, I’m afraid.”

  “We’ll take it anyway,” said Werner.

  “An excellent choice.” Jan-Willem bent down and searched through a pile of boxes for the right model. “If you’ve been messing around with inadequate equipment, then you’ll know it’s worth the investment. Having the right tools is half the battle.”

  5

  “I don’t know where he is!” Ralf pushed his chin down toward his chest to relieve the pressure on his neck.

  Mikey’s fingers encircled his throat like iron hooks. He was smaller and thinner than Ralf, but quick and unexpectedly strong. His other hand was also pressing a butterfly knife into Ralf’s side. “I see you at Brian’s place all the time, and now you turn up on Jeffrey’s street. What does he know about this? What are you all up to?”

  “Nothing, man. Jeffrey is just a friend of mine. Can’t I visit my friends?”

  Mikey moved his face up close to Ralf’s, narrowing his crossed eyes into slits. “OK. One more time . . .”

  “I’m looking for him just as much as you are!”

  Maybe Mikey believed him, or maybe he had just made him uncertain. Either way, he let go of his throat.

  “How much does he owe you?” Ralf’s voice was high and hoarse.

  “Three grand. He took over a batch of blow from me that he’d found some customers for, and he was supposed to bring me the money the same evening.”

  Ralf’s jaw dropped. Had Brian been planning to start dealing? “When was that?”

  “Friday.”

  Something started to dawn on Ralf. Brian had assumed he would be at least five thousand euros richer on Friday night after paying a visit to Werner Möhring.

  “I’ll tell you what.” Mikey waved the knife at him. “I’ll give you until Sunday. Twelve o’clock, Brian’s room. If neither you nor that dirty thief shows up, then you’ll have a serious problem on your hands. Both of you.” He brought his lips up to Ralf’s ear and whispered, “I wouldn’t get too attached to that bitch of his either. She’s first on my list.”

  6

  Werner and Helen had purchased a large plastic tarp and a few rolls of duct tape from another hardware store, and while buying their regular groceries from the supermarket, they had also picked up four packs of extra-large freezer bags and a roll of gray garbage bags. All paid for in cash. They had spread the plastic-smelling tarp over the basement floor before coming back up to the kitchen.

  Werner looked at the clock. It was ten past eleven. “What time are the kids getting home?”

  “The girls get back at three thirty, and Thom will be here an hour before that.”

  “Good.” Werner drew a deep breath. His eyes were pensive. “I need a drink.”

  “You don’t have to do this on your own.”

  He glanced at her with an expression that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, before walking over to the cabinet where he kept his liquor.

  Helen realized that it had been a long time since she and Werner had spent a weekday morning or afternoon together. They used to do that regularly—back when Werner was still an employee at the Horn of Plenty and she worked more evening shifts than she did now.

  “Somebody’s been in here again, for Christ’s sake,” she heard him say.

  After noticing on a few occasions that some of his alcohol had gone missing, Werner had taken to unobtrusively marking the level by scratching a line on the label with his thumb. If the level in the bottle was lower than the last marker, that meant somebody else had taken a drink from it. Helen found that sort of monitoring distasteful. She preferred to assume her children were honest—at least with her and Werner. The outside world could be hard and unfair enough as it was, so she felt everybody in the family ought to be able to rely on one another. Sara’s recent deceit had shown her the naiveté of that—and on top of it, now she had to deal with children who were developing their own identities and pushing the boundaries.

  Was there a teenager anywhere in the world who left their parents’ liquor cabinet alone?

  “What have they been drinking?” she asked.

  “My Aultmore Adelphi,” he replied. “That bottle cost me a hundred fifty goddamn euros.”

  “Our kids have good taste,” she said softly, unable to suppress a faint smile.

  Werner came back with a glass of whiskey. He leaned his back against the counter and took a sip. Closed his eyes briefly. “Man, I needed this.”

  On the counter behind him lay the new electric saw, gleaming in the fall sunshine.

  7

  The day had gotten off to a bad start, what with his mother’s nagging and that run-in with Mikey so soon afterward. Then, at Jeffrey’s place, he’d learned that the jobs with his weed-growing friends were spoken for already. “You’re too late, man. There’s a lot of people looking for that kind of work.”

  Naomi was sitting next to him in the passenger seat, unaware of the threat hanging over her head. They’d just had another driving lesson. She was getting better.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “At first, I thought Brian was just being a jerk, but now I think—”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked at him. “It’s just so weird, isn’t it? It’s already Tuesday afternoon. Don’t you think we should talk to the police?”

  “No. That’s up to his mother. We’re just his friends.”

  “But Brian sees her so rarely that she probably doesn’t even know. She might not report him missing for a few weeks.”

  He took off his cap, examined the shiny sticker on the brim, and gently ran his thumb over it. “What do you say we wait one more night? If he hasn’t turned up by tomorrow, we’ll go and see her. You and me. OK?”

  8

  The high, whining noise reached as far as the kitchen—the same pitch for minutes on end, then back to a stuttering staccato.

  At times, it would suddenly fall silent.

  Helen paced in circles around the kitchen island, her arms folded. She felt guilty.

  Cowardly.

  Of course, Werner had wanted to do it all on his own. “What’s the good if both of us go crazy?” he’d asked, and she had been only too happy to concede the point. But she would never forget the look in his eyes before he disappeared into the basement. Such coldness, such resolve. And yet, behind that tough exterior lay uncertainty and fear too. It was unavoidable. He was just as afraid as she was, only he didn’t want to let it show.

  “My part will soon be over,” he had said. “After that, it’s your turn. I can’t help you at the hospital.”

  The noise from the basement died away.

  Silence.

  Helen listened intently. How much progress had he made? Was it even working? She tried not to picture the scene too vividly, but her subconscious fed her a stream of horrific images. The blue tarp spread out on the cold floor; the boy who—

  She felt a wave of nausea and pressed a fist against her mouth. At the hospital, there was nothing gruesome about somebody who had just passed away; it was simply sad. But the bodies of deceased patients were treated with respect, while in the world of murder and manslaughter, things were very different. Until recently, she had only known about that world from TV shows and books, violent fictions that scarcely affected her. That scene in Breaking Bad, for example, where the corpse gets dissolved in acid and has to be more or less mopped up afterward—she had found it ingenious and fascinating rather than horrifying or repugnant. Only now did she realize that even the best fiction was nothing
like the raw, dirty reality.

  Helen rubbed her upper arms. The temperature seemed to have dropped—as if the piercing cold from the freezer had gradually seeped through the rest of the house.

  When she turned around, she saw a police car pulling up by the front door.

  9

  “Thanks for the lesson. It was really great.” Naomi leaned toward him and, before he knew what was happening, planted a kiss on his cheek. It was slightly moist, dangerously close to his mouth, and a little too long to be just friendly.

  “I’m looking forward to Saturday.” His voice sounded a bit hoarse. He held her gaze.

  “Me too.” Her hand moved hesitantly toward the door handle.

  “That Sara, how do you know her, anyway?”

  “From tennis camp last summer.” Naomi shifted her hand from the door handle to the zipper on her tight-fitting cardigan. She played with it as she told Ralf about the bottles of expensive liquor that Sara had brought with her from home. That supply of alcohol had made her endlessly popular.

  Ralf did his best to listen attentively. He glanced at Naomi’s lips—soft and strong at the same time—and her tongue, which occasionally came into view between her teeth whenever she pronounced a word beginning with th. With all his might, he tried not to stare too much at her breasts. Occasionally, he looked away, feigning indifference, and breathed in her scent. When he was with Naomi, he almost forgot about Mikey and the disaster that awaited them both. He had long since stopped thinking about his mother and her tiresome “get my son back on track” projects.

  “Sara is the reason I know Brian.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Brian and Sara were together at one point. Only very briefly, though.”

  “Weird.” Sara was stunningly beautiful, but with her cool, calculating attitude, she didn’t seem like Brian’s type at all. He tended to go for more obedient girls. Uncritical ones, ideally. Brian’s ego was easily wounded. “He never mentioned her to me.”