by Saul Black
“She’s going to Julia’s for a sleepover,” Rachel said. “I don’t know what happens next. I can’t even begin to imagine—but I need to see you. Please come tonight. Will you?”
She had an image of a fox nosing the edge of a baited trap. Not knowing it was a trap, of course, but electric with hunger and tension. Her own voice in her head repeated: Come on … Just a bit further … Come on …
Adam exhaled, heavily. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he said.
“I know. I “know. Just come and we’ll talk.”
Come on … A little closer … Almost there …
“What made her…?” He hesitated. “Why now?”
“I honestly don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I don’t understand any of it. We need to help her. I know how much this has hurt you, but she’s our daughter and one way or another she needs … We have to try to understand why she did this. I don’t know how we get through it, but we have to.”
“Maybe we don’t get through it,” he said. “I doubt I will.” And there it was, the first tentative note of grievance. He was testing it out, the idea of his own victimhood.
“Please come tonight. You can hate me as much as you like but we still have to talk.”
One more step. Just one more. You know you want it.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll come. I’ll be there as soon as I finish.”
* * *
Rachel dropped Elspeth at Julia’s at 4 P.M. The half hour she spent having coffee with Dina Klein was a torment. The effort to keep living the old life while the new one raged inside her. She felt transparent, riddled with a disease anyone (certainly Dina, who didn’t miss much) would see at a glance. But the universe not only allowed these dualities, it insisted on them. Therefore the horror footage ran while she confessed to having lost interest in House of Cards. She went to the bathroom for a few minutes just to get away from the absurdity. There were framed family holiday photos in there—as there were in her own bathroom. A copy of Cosmopolitan: “Sex Tips for a Sinful Summer.” Sinful. Sin. Thou shalt not kill. Except that was wrong. At Berkeley someone had pointed it out. In Hebrew, the commandment was more specific: Thou shalt not do murder.
Not that that made any difference to her. She was guilty either way.
Back at home she tidied up, wiped down the kitchen worktops, put freshly laundered white linen on the bed. The rituals of domestic order. The good wife. Then she took her second shower of the day. Underwear. Nothing too overtly sexy. Nude lace briefs and bra. Forget the stockings. Overkill. Don’t suggest premeditation. A seduction, yes, but it would have to come as if it were a surprise to her. Too blatant a reversal would back him off. His instincts were good. Let it emerge from sadness, regret, torment. Let the words run out so that the body must speak. If he even still wanted her. Perhaps he wouldn’t. There was always the possibility he would want to exploit his newly acquired innocence, preserve the high ground to which she’d admitted him. She imagined him fending her off, saying, Really? This? Now—after what I’ve been through? In which case … In which case things would be difficult. Not impossible—but difficult. Don’t think about it. Trust your skills. They’re all still there. They’ll always be there. Her legacy—Abigail’s legacy, Sophia’s legacy—whether she wanted it or not.
Eventually, after one last check in the mirror, there was nothing to do but wait. She stood in the big living room that looked out over the front yard and drive. The evening was coming in with a slow, comforting dimming of the sky’s light. The lawn was already dusk blue, the maples Rorschach blots of darkness. The whole neighborhood was settling into a deeper gravity. Her face was warm, her hands sensitive. She felt perfectly suspended, looking neither forward nor back, her life without a past, without a future, just a moment-by-moment nowness from which it seemed nothing could follow.
And yet something extrasensory rose in her (the hairs on her bare forearms lifted) a couple of seconds before she actually heard the car, as if his approach had sent a tremor through the ether ahead of him and she knew before she could possibly know.
Then the seconds were gone and there was the car, nosing its way through the gate and turning with a sound of soft crunching onto the white gravel drive. She watched him get out. He looked up and saw her at the window. His face was drawn and blank. Not knowing what to hope. She didn’t smile. Not a conscious decision. She was in the flow now, committed by something that demanded a dark spontaneity. Everything she could do beforehand had been done. Now she was back in the strange choreography, a subtle force that came from outside herself and to which there was nothing but surrender.
They met in the hallway, stood a few feet apart. He was still undecided, fundamentally. The gift on offer to him was huge. Premature acceptance could explode it. They stared at each other. Their bodies heated the cool space.
“What happened?” he said.
Rachel stood without answering immediately, shaking her head. It wasn’t right to touch him. Not yet.
“Come into the kitchen,” she said.
He followed her, took a seat at the white island. She opened the fridge, took the chilled bottle of Semillon chardonnay, poured them a glass each. Both of them felt the space where a toast, the clink of glasses, no matter how perfunctory, would normally be. Adam swallowed a large mouthful.
“I don’t think I should be expected to do the talking here,” he said.
“No. I know. Of course not.”
Even in the flow she was amazed at him. Since he knew the truth, he knew Elspeth’s alleged retraction was false. But he was subtle enough to imagine the psychology that would explain it, that she’d changed her story out of guilt, or fear, or both. He was considering—he was actually considering—living with that. Living with his wife and his daughter—and the lie he knew the girl had told out of suffering. Rachel knew she shouldn’t be amazed that he was willing to accommodate this, but she was. There was no limit to him, to what he would dare to take for himself. It was, to the detached part of herself, impressive. Perhaps evil always was. Hence sympathy for the Devil. Lucifer.
“I didn’t wring it out of her,” she said. “I don’t know what made her tell me. The truth is we were just here in the kitchen yesterday. We were talking about something else—about her doing a zip-wire at summer camp, in fact. She was … I don’t know. She went quiet. I asked her what was the matter and the next minute she was in tears. She was … It was awful. My God, it was awful.” Rachel put the wineglass down on the counter. Leaned on the heels of her hands. Again, not for effect. Her legs felt weak.
Adam was silent, absorbing, calculating. Willing himself not to speak too soon. He knew his words now had the potential to decimate his advantage. She could feel the mental care he was taking, measuring out the new dimensions, gently, gently.
“What, exactly, did she say?” he asked at last, quietly.
Rachel sat down on the island stool opposite him. She saw them as if from the viewpoint of someone looking in through the glass doors from the patio: a married couple having a serious conversation at the end of a long day. But not this serious conversation, not this long day.
“She said she made it up,” Rachel said. Kept her voice flat, even. Let him infer the grueling hours she’d put in to assimilate this. Let him hear what it had cost her to accept the scale of the wreckage, the irreversibility of the damage done. The damage done to him.
He took another swallow of wine, with what looked like controlled aggression. The performance of suppressed outrage. He was letting her see him rising above it. The man was incredible. But she was incredible herself, she thought. Casually incredible, when it was demanded.
“Did she say why she did that?” he asked. Still the visible mastery of himself.
“I asked her. Obviously.”
“And?”
Rachel rested her fingertips on the rim of her glass. Studied the pale golden liquid. Shook her head again. Weary incomprehension. “She said she didn’t really know. I realize that sounds unbelie
vable, but that’s what she said. She was angry with you.”
“Angry? Jesus. Why?”
“I don’t know, Adam. I talked with her for hours. It was a circle. There was nothing there for me to get hold of.” She looked up at him. Brought distress into her face. “Don’t you see? I don’t know why she would do a thing like that. Which is bad enough, but what’s worse is I’m not sure she knows. It’s like she’s going quietly crazy.”
“She’s not the only one.”
Rachel looked away.
“Sorry,” he said. “I know. But do you have any fucking idea what this has been like? For me?”
Her turn to exhibit self-control. “Well, I know what it’s been like for me,” she said. “It’s been the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.” The self-control wasn’t, entirely, fake. It was costing her a lot to play her part. Her amazement at him kept rising up, a hot nausea. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Yes, I have an idea of what this has been like for you.”
“There’s literally nothing worse to be accused of,” he said. “Not even murder. People can respect a murder. This?”
People can respect a murder. She hadn’t thought of it that way—hadn’t cared—but she saw he was right. It almost made her laugh. His astute ignorance.
“And I believed her,” she said neutrally. “Don’t think I don’t know what that means to you.”
Adam pursed his lips, breathed through his nose. Opened and closed his mouth. This was the performance of impasse. Of forcing himself through the impasse to see it from her side, from a mother’s side.
“Yeah,” he said, eventually. “But the world’s not going to blame you for that.”
“You do. You blame me. How can you not?”
He shook his head. Giant, resigned nobility. “You didn’t have a choice. Why wouldn’t you believe her. She’s your daughter. I’m just one more fucking guy, in the last analysis. The world knows what fucking guys are like. Even fathers. Christ, especially fathers.”
He swallowed the remainder of his wine. Rachel restrained herself. The Ambien was already crumbled. On a little piece of napkin behind the cookie jar. Wait. Not yet.
Adam put his head in his hands, ran them up through his dark hair, held it for a moment. Exhaled. He was still wearing his wedding band.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said. Truthfully, she thought. He was so full of lies his occasional truths were like little solar flares. “I just … Fuck. I can’t believe this is happening. Why is this happening?”
“We have to find a way through with her,” Rachel said. “Whatever the reason for what she did, it’s nothing good. We have to talk to her.” She left a pause. “She’s going to have to know that you’ll be able to forgive her.”
Another facial performance: the wound inflicted on him—and the larger self grudgingly conceding that she was right.
“I don’t know that there’s a way forward.” He hesitated. “For me, I mean.”
“Don’t you care about her? About us?”
“Jesus Christ, of course I fucking care!” He got to his feet, paced away to the big glass doors. His hands were clenched. “Of course I care. But … How, exactly, do you think it could possibly be between me and her now?”
Rachel went back to the fridge. Refilled his glass. Added the Ambien. Didn’t touch her own. She took the glass to him. Relief when he took it and swallowed.
“This is going to sound insane,” she said. “But I’ve made dinner.”
* * *
The rest of the evening went as she’d imagined. There was nothing to talk about except the one thing. In spite of which they took occasional surreally ordinary detours: his work; Hester’s marriage; his bizarre existence living secretly on the boat; even, for a few minutes, the president’s latest gaffes. But always they returned to the same loop: that she wanted to heal what had happened and that they didn’t understand why it had and that he didn’t know how he could come back. The bottle of Semillon went, quickly, almost entirely to him. He ate only half his dinner, though it was his favorite, chicken in a wine and wild mushroom sauce, sautéed potatoes with paprika, asparagus. When she opened the second bottle and brought it to the table he said: I have to drive. She looked away from him. Didn’t touch him. But said: No, you don’t. Which shifted him into a new calculus. His goal was the same: to consolidate his gain. Now he was working out whether fucking his wife would help that. He was mentally busy, she knew, shuffling the necessities. But the wine had loosened him. As had the Ambien. In the lounge they sat at right angles to each other on the white corner suite. When he blinked, now, his eyelids met and parted slowly, like a failing mechanism.
She reached under her blouse, unhooked her bra, pulled it out, awkwardly.
He observed, struggled for alertness.
“It’s new,” she said. “Doesn’t fit right.”
They looked at each other. He was very uncertain. She had only a narrow window, she knew.
“I’ve missed you,” she said quietly.
* * *
He was so groggy by the time they made it to the bedroom she had to pull his clothes off, albeit under the disguise of passion. She knew, in fact, that she didn’t have to fuck him. He was close enough to sleep. He would sleep, and she would be at liberty to do what she had to do. She didn’t need sex for her practical purposes.
She needed it to solidify her hatred.
When she straddled him (having applied lubricant in the bathroom) and took him inside her, she focused on his face and let the footage run. All of it. He and Elspeth had been at the Campbellville house alone. Elspeth had told her, between sobs, that he’d been in tears, after he’d done it. He’d got down on his knees and begged her to understand. He’d been taking medicines for depression, he said, and with the drink it had messed up his mind. It had made him crazy. He went to the kitchen and brought a knife. He said if she couldn’t forgive him he’d kill himself right there, in front of her. Begged and begged and begged. For her silence, too. It’ll kill your mother. It’ll kill your mother. Please, angel. Either let me kill myself or let me get help.
The second time it happened he was different. There were, initially, the same tears. But there was anger, too: You’ve always known there’s something special between us. And don’t look so innocent. It takes two to tango. You know what that means?
Rachel thought of the courage it would have taken for her daughter to fight through that. Elspeth had walked around with it for months. Changed inside. Diseased. And in the end it was almost an accident that had brought it out. They—mother and daughter—had been arguing about Elspeth’s falling grades. At some point Rachel had said: Your father’s just as worried about this as I am. And Elspeth had said: He’s not worried about that.
He’s not worried about that.
The single emphasis. Even in that moment, seeing her daughter’s face suddenly closing like a door too late to prevent the escape of a prisoner, Rachel had felt the world tilt. The world was nothing but a flat plane that could tip you without warning into the void. Elspeth hadn’t clamped her hand to her mouth—but Rachel had seen the ghost of the gesture. They’d looked at each other. The kitchen bright and gleaming around them. The backyard’s life of thick color and quiet breathing.
Then Elspeth’s eyes had filled with tears.
And don’t look so innocent. It takes two to tango.
Either because of the mix of booze and soporific or because he still harbored a lingering suspicion, he couldn’t stay hard inside her. It was a disappointment to Rachel, that she couldn’t sink low enough to accommodate her own disgust. She’d wanted the final ignominy. She couldn’t think of another way of honoring her daughter’s suffering.
In the end she rolled off him. They were past speech. Even his calculations had flailed, collapsed, dissipated.
He slept.
She waited five minutes. Ten. The house’s silence gathered around her, rich with what it knew, what it was waiting for, since it had witnessed her preparations.
There was a question in the quiet: Well? Are you going to do this or not? Bizarrely, the question was asked in his voice. Which gave her the necessary impetus.
She eased herself from the bed. Paused at the doorway to the landing. Listened. His breathing was deep and steady. She slipped into her nightdress and went into the reading room.
The larger hammer. The Indian-print throw. A pair of the vinyl gloves.
A quick glance out of the window above the box seat. Vincent was at his post in the Lyles’ conservatory, book held up, reading lamp angled.
Back in the bedroom she stood over her husband. The hammer’s rubber grip was solid, snug, perfectly designed. She had an image of it coming off a factory production line with thousands just like it. She wondered if anyone had ever written a novel from an inanimate object’s point of view: Autobiography of a Hammer. Witness to all the ordinary domestic life: building a tree house; putting up pictures; refurbishing a bathroom. Conversations with other tools that did their other jobs. A novel with a cute device to observe human life. A novel you wouldn’t really see the point of—until the end. Until a moment just like this one.
She raised her arm. Tightened her grip. Felt the hammer’s weight of physics and innocence. Thor was the god of thunder. And here was the silence before it broke.
The sound of the first blow was distinct and intimate. A soft crack.
She stopped. No blood.
He groaned. She hadn’t known what to expect. In all the planning this was the one blind spot.
She felt his body’s alarm going off. A terrible biological awareness, red blood cells like firemen screamed awake by the Klaxon rushing, rushing to the site, consciousness scrambling—Jesus Christ … Jesus Christ—all the strands of his being hurrying to gather because this was death, death was here and they hadn’t known, had never dreamed that it would come and it was too late, if they didn’t run now, run now and gather and rise up against it—