Sara said, “Maybe Jordy inherited a bad gene. It seems too coincidental to me that two killings separated by thirty years are so similar and linked to a parent and his child, doesn’t it?”
Cassie said, “It was crazy times in our house, Sara, terrible, confused. Lots of yelling and screaming back and forth between my mother and my dad, and, lots of drinking.”
“Over your brother?”
“That, and I think my father may have been seeing another woman. Don’t ask how I know; instinct, I guess. I was too young at the time to understand but I got the impression the old man was sleeping with someone other than my mom.”
“We’ve known each other almost a year, Cass, and this is the first you’ve spoken in any detail about your past. You’ve been holding out on me.”
“It may be therapeutic, Sara, but does it help?” Cassie said with a dismissive wave of her hand. They were silent a moment. Cassie said, “Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Nietzsche.” Cassie replied in explanation. “Essentially, our future is predetermined. Our present is dictated not by where we are, but by where we’re destined to be. So, it’s not a matter of, if I had only done this rather than that, things might have turned out differently. No matter which fork in the road you take, Sara, a train wreck is waiting before you get to the station. Whether you choose door number one, two or door number three, you’re life is pretty much fucked.”
Sara managed a dull smile. “That’s pretty fatalistic.”
“You didn’t grow up in my family.”
“Thank God.”
“When can we have her back, Sara?” Cassie asked. “The wait is killing us. Maggie is falling apart; she needs to grieve.”
“Soon?” Sara replied with a shrug. “It’s all I can promise, Cassie. It’s a murder investigation; we’re reluctant to release the body prematurely.”
“We can’t put this behind us until we bury her. Even then, we never will.”
Standing, Sara said, “I should go. You’ll be okay?”
“No,” replied Cassie, “I won’t. But you should go anyway.”
CHURCH FALLS, SOMETIME IN THE SEVENTIES
Leland Junior staggered but he did not fall. The bittersweet taste of his own blood exploded in his mouth and over his tongue like sour candy—familiar one moment, utterly foreign the next—prompting a wave of nausea he suppressed only temporarily before it spilled out onto the Persian area carpet covering his mother’s hardwood floor. He stared at his father in shocked disbelief. To his amusement, Leland Senior stared back, as if his fist had acted independently from his mind. Never before had he raised a hand in anger toward his son. As if viewing the incident in hindsight, Helen McMaster twisted her hands anxiously, wedding band slicing through the skin of her fingers. Moments later, she rushed from the room, supporting herself unsteadily on the doorjamb on the way out.
Not one to apologize, Leland Senior said, “You’ve put yourself—and me—in a bad spot, son.” Given the circumstances, an understatement.
“How was I to know he would take pictures? I thought he was doing me a favor by letting me use his room. The little pervert,” Leland Junior uttered through teeth clenched partly in anger, more in pain. “Let me deal with him, Dad.”
“It’s too late for that,” his father said impatiently. He massaged his knuckles cautiously, as if hoping to understand the aberrant behavior of his appendage. “Copies are in the possession of the county prosecutor. In itself, not so bad and a problem I could fix. But the photos came from Sheriff Womack, who, if he has his druthers, will hang you by your foreskin.”
Leland groaned, his confidence sagging like the soiled mattress on which the photos had been taken. As he had admitted to Ed Dojcsak on the Fourth of July, if Sid Womack discovered Leland was feeling up the youngsters, the Sheriff would skin him alive. Apparently, now he did.
Leland cursed both his manhood and his immaturity in the same notion. Had the sex been his idea? After more than six months, Leland was no longer sure. He knew for certain Seamus had suggested the photographs. As son of the self-proclaimed wealthiest man in the county, Leland resented always being broke, and after Seamus had offered to pay to photograph him having sex, Leland became driven by the twin bogeys of irrepressible teenage lust and greed. The girls were always young and impressionable, though in the case of Frances Stoops, Leland knew upon entering her it was not her first time.
“I didn’t kill her,” Leland said.
“Lot of good that does you,” replied his father. He stepped forward, removing a clean handkerchief from his pocket, handing it to his son. “Which is why we’re having this conversation. Clean yourself up. Come in to the study, you look as if you need a drink.”
“You know I don’t drink.”
“After you hear what I have to say, you’ll want to start,” said Leland Senior, wearily sliding open the heavy oak doors to the study in a way that lacked his usual, self-confident flair.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
MAGGIE BITSON WAS less surprised than disappointed to know Missy was having sex. She had suspected, though refrained from confronting the girl, less able to accept what it said about Missy than what it said about herself.
“I’ll fix lunch,” Maggie offered to Eugene, though it was only nine-thirty in the morning. The blood behind Maggie’s forehead boiled, burning like an overheated electrical transmission wire, circulating unwelcome images and irrepressible demons and thoughts. Every so often, Maggie pressed her fists to her eye sockets as if to prevent the negative energy escaping through her eyeballs. The dark, green-gray circles that appeared as a result of the effort made her resemble a raccoon, or a concentration camp survivor, depending on your perspective and experience.
“I’ll take it with me,” Eugene replied, thinking Maggie had meant for him to eat the lunch later while at work, though had he asked he would have realized she didn’t mean this at all.
“Will you be home for supper?” she wanted to know.
For days now he hadn’t been, instead locking the door to the video shop and making the short run across the street to the Big Top Diner after ordering his dinner in advance by telephone, returning to the store within minutes carrying a hot meal in an insulated Styrofoam container and eating alone at the service counter surrounded by a plethora of sex novelties; flavored, textured and multi-colored condoms; dildos varying in color and size; studded dog collars, cats-o-nine-tails, seductive lingerie, inflatable dolls, molded poly-urethane vaginas and chocolate novelties in the form of both female and male genitalia, the candy confections and sexy underwear selling briskly at Christmas, but especially so in the week preceding Valentine.
Eugene’s appetite was just now beginning to return to normal. Had he been home more often and less preoccupied with himself, he might have noted that not only had Maggie’s appetite not returned to normal, she had regained no appetite at all. If Eugene resembled a man turning himself inside out like a reversible skin—as Ed Dojcsak had imagined him on the day after the death of his daughter—less than one week later, in his wife, the process appeared to be almost complete.
Since the killing, the Reverend Cassie McMaster had been telephoning her sister at least twice daily and taking the fifteen-minute walk from the rectory after dinner each evening to sit with Maggie, usually for an hour but sometimes longer, huddling in the living room together, foreheads pressed close, voices low, as if conspiring. During these moments, Eugene watched television, alone: he did not complain, though the sight of the two women so deeply engaged was unnerving.
Since the killing of her sister, the whereabouts of Mandy Bitson had become less a concern for Maggie, if it had ever been a concern at all, as if in failing to protect Missy what hope was there for her elder sister? With the death of Missy, increasingly it appeared Maggie was willing to helplessly throw up her hands against th
e whims of tragic fate, as if to say “Que Sera, Sera, Whatever Will Be, Will Be”. (Even so, Maggie Bitson did not fancy herself a Doris Day.)
Ostensibly, the visits from Cassie were meant as comfort and support to Maggie. Eugene was happy for his wife to have the distraction and to remove the obligation from him. Though Cassie noted Maggie’s deteriorating physical appearance, she didn’t comment, believing it to be the next and necessary in another of the many crosses this child of Leland McMaster was obliged to bear. (Cassie sensed her own burden to be more from association than experience, subconsciously thankful thus far, for her, Maggie and Missy had done much of the heavy lifting.) As for Eugene, he was happy for Dr. Henry Bauer to increase the dosage of the sedative Maggie had been prescribed.
After seeing off Eugene, Maggie returned to the kitchen. Unless she was compelled to leave it either to relieve herself or to wash, (which was infrequently since Maggie was neither eating nor drinking much and insensate both to her appearance and the scent of her own body) it was here Maggie was spending much of her time.
Maggie moved to the refrigerator. Methodically, she began to remove the contents, subdividing them on the floor in related food groups in a way, she imagined, that resembled the shelf space at the Exxxotica Video: pre-cooked meals such as pasta sauce, casseroles, roasts and stews together on the one side, packaged grocery store items such as cheese and cold meats on the other, assorted vegetables and fruit in between. “Anal, Bi, Homosexual and Mixed Race.” Maggie giggled, reciting titles she had seen over the racks of videos in Eugene’s store. (She could not, after all, avoid the place altogether, could she?) “Tit, Cunt, Cock, Cum.” Maggie giggled self-consciously, checking to see she was not overheard, wondering why it was all men loved to hear women talk dirty.
Maggie did not need, but did not refuse, the post tragedy offerings of pre-prepared meals from neighbors and friends. She accepted them graciously, as if in exchange for a glimpse of the grieving mother. Maggie removed beverage cartons, emptying the contents down the drain of the kitchen sink, rinsing the containers, dividing them into groups to more efficiently accommodate the recycling program which had recently been started by the sanitation department in town: plastic, paper and tin carefully separated.
Ed Dojcsak had been yesterday, once more repeating his filthy accusation that Missy had been having sex; three times since the morning after her daughter’s death he’d come to the house, after Eugene had gone, spouting his dirty lies.
“No, Maggie,” he’d said, “the evidence doesn’t lie.”
Maggie had slapped his face the first time he’d said it, hard, so hard that for a moment she feared the mottled flesh might fall from his cheek.
“We know she was having it,” he said, or words to some such effect. “But we don’t know with who.”
Ultimately, under the weight of her own guilt-ridden subconscious, Maggie accepted Missy was having it; didn’t take her long to imagine with who.
Mandy entered the kitchen and said to her mother, “Cleaning the fridge, mom?” though since the death of her sister she had seen Maggie repeat the exercise a dozen or more times. Always removing then discarding, afterward scrubbing the interior of a refrigerator that already appeared to be spotlessly clean. (She should try giving herself a scrub, Mandy thought.) After satisfying herself the effort was satisfactory, Maggie telephoned the grocery with a list of items for delivery. By mid-afternoon her order would arrive and Maggie would bake and cook and butcher and braise, slice and dice and repackage and refreeze on her way to replenishing her food supply. By the time Eugene arrived home from the store, Maggie would have gone to bed, exhausted, sleeping soundly and appearing to her husband as if she hadn’t a concern in the world. To Eugene, the fridge was fully stocked, the house clean (even if around Maggie there was a slightly sour odor) and clearly, Dr. Bauer had acceded to Eugene’s request to up Maggie’s dosage of tranquillizing, mind-numbing medication.
At the rate her mother was going, Mandy wondered what would go first: the money or her mother’s mind, although she suspected the latter to have already left the building, as if having escaped through an open window. Mandy considered only briefly speaking with her father, decided against it, knowing he either was aware and didn’t care, or he would find out soon enough.
Besides, if her all knowing Servant of God, Aunt Clueless Cassie didn’t see it, who was Mandy to weigh in with her own two-cents worth? That and a dollar will get me a cup of coffee at the Big Top Diner, if not the recently commissioned Starbucks across town. Anyway, her mother was popping pills like cocktail peanuts and in the care of a qualified professional. Maybe her behavior was somehow therapeutic, the first step in boo-hooing over her dead daughter, who increasingly Mandy believed had screwed up more than her own life by getting herself killed.
“I’ll be late tonight, Mom. Don’t expect me before midnight.”
“That’s fine,” Maggie said, back turned to her daughter. “Have a nice time.”
“I don’t know where I’m going to or what I’m doing yet,” Mandy baited, pausing for her mother’s response. “Or even who with.”
I know she’s having it, Maggie heard Dojcsak say in her mind, I just don’t know with who.
“Goodbye sweetheart,” Maggie said.
Under her breath, Mandy replied, “Yeah; fuck you, too.”
After Mandy left, Maggie continued cleaning but was thinking now, of her own mother. Helen McMaster had hit her when Maggie confessed to being pregnant, an open-hand slap that caught her high on the cheekbone, leaving a bruise. It was the first time either parent had raised a hand to her in anger.
“Filthy slut,” Helen had growled, as if the words had been forced to her lips from her diaphragm by a lifetime of humiliation and hurt. Maggie did not resent it; she accepted her mother’s justification. Helen apologized immediately but lacked the strength to acknowledge openly what Maggie suspected was the true source of her outburst.
Leland McMaster arrived home that evening, late, sensing only after his customary and solitary vodka martini something was amiss. Unable to speak for herself, Helen related on behalf of her daughter the details of Maggie’s predicament.
“How could this happen?” he asked Helen. “How could you let it happen? Have you not spoken to her about these things?” He pointed a finger to Maggie. “Surely to God,” he continued, blaming his wife, “you could have spoken to Henry. He would have prescribed something. An injection, or a pill.”
They sat silent in the study. Cassie was in her room, presumably asleep. A fire burned in the hearth. Maggie considered taking a metal poker, heating it to red-hot and inserting it between her thighs, deep into her womb in an effort to expunge what in her mind she visualized as a boil, a festering wound. But she wouldn’t. Instead, she placed a hand possessively on her flat belly and said to herself, I’ll hate you, but I’ll have you. When it came, this child would be a scab on her virtue, the sore by which Maggie was destined to be forever defined; a testament, her adolescent mind reasoned then, to her own contemptibility.
Outside it had begun to snow. The forecast called for a foot overnight and into the morning; Maggie shuddered at the prospect they might be snowed in together. Refusing to meet her father’s eye, Maggie confirmed his presence by focusing on his shoe, then his pants cuff and finally the crease in his trouser leg, making its way inexorably from his ankle, to his knee, to his thigh, finally to the secret spot which compelled her to look, yet at the same time forced her to turn away.
Maggie thought to wake her sister, to suggest enthusiastically that in the morning Cassie remain sick in bed, preferably claiming it was again, for her, that time of the month, though Maggie knew Cassie was not of an age yet to have begun her monthly cycle. Mother knew, but would Dad?
“I’ll keep the baby,” she said now.
“You’re a child; not capable of making that decision,” said her father, refusing to meet her gaze.
“Perhaps it’s for the best, Leland,” said Helen.
“You’re not capable of making that decision either,” he said.
“I deserve it,” Maggie said, her voice rising, “the baby. It’s my fault. Why should the baby be made to pay?”
“Not your fault entirely, dear,” said Helen, eyes downcast, locked on the tight weave of her recently acquired Persian rug.
After a moment, Leland said, “It’s late. We won’t make any decision tonight that can’t wait till morning.”
They left the study together. At the top of the stairs they parted company, Helen to her room, Leland to his and Maggie, alone, to hers. The snow was falling more heavily now, the lawn, the winding front drive and the branches of the trees flanking it obscured beneath a blanket of pure, undisturbed whiteness. By tomorrow it would be soiled, moved off to the side by her father’s plough.
It was after one in the morning and just as Maggie was beginning to hope her condition might be grounds, on this night, for temporary respite, the door to her bedroom opened. Perhaps not, she decided. Returning to her bed, she lay on her side, knees pulled to her tummy, calculating the number of weeks before she might begin to show. Maggie wondered if with the unsightly weight gain, the inevitable swelling of her breasts and the widening of her hips, her body might finally be granted a more permanent reprieve.
THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE Page 28