by Jim Grimsley
In my room I grab a bag and shove some clothes in it. I pull on a running suit and clean underwear, smelling myself. There’s a spot of blood on my bare foot. I get my son’s wallet. He carries it in the inner pocket of his jacket, which is hanging on the back of the chair in the kitchen; I don’t have to go near any of his blood, and I step carefully around Carmine. His car keys are there, too, and I take them.
I put the knife in my bag at the last minute, just before leaving the house.
Movie Nature: A Flashback
MOVIE PEOPLE SOLVE their problems by violence. To be a movie person, that is, a person whose story might be told in the movies, I had to solve my problem the same way.
Violence is an expression of both good and evil in the movie world; evil by its nature erupts into violence and good must resort to violence to tame evil.
My marriage to Carmine could only have been reconciled in a small, independent film; we never had a blockbuster marriage to begin with, so a story centered on its preservation would never have generated much buzz. To achieve blockbuster status one of us had to die. Since I was playing the role of killer, Carmine’s role was therefore clear.
Carmine had walked into the sunroom to talk to Frank and then walked through the open doors outside. I was warm from the deep swig of bourbon and stood touching the keen edge of the knife to the tips of my fingers.
I drank more bourbon and walked directly around the table behind Frank. He was angry at me and ignoring me and never suspected a thing. Even then I knew better than to hesitate when I stood behind him, looking into his moussed, thinning hair.
I cut his throat while Carmine stood outside looking at the pool, the heavy knife easing through the white skin and flesh and biting deep, blood in gushes; I pulled the blade against him hard till his windpipe severed. He convulsed and tried to turn his head and his arms splayed out in a spasm. He made this harsh barking sound and his limbs went rigid, maybe with panic. My heart was pounding but any feeling other than rage was distant. All I could see was what I had to do to kill Carmine, and getting rid of Frankie was the first step. Blood streamed down the front of his suit. From behind I pulled his chair onto the tile with his throat spurting, his arms flopping down, one heavy leg sliding against the table, but no struggle or fight. I refused to look anywhere near his eyes, but I could see a spasm cross his lips, blood at the corner. Suddenly I was a strong man, not old at all, and I stabbed him deep in the chest twice. He made more gurgling noise out of his windpipe, loud.
The narrative always implies an implicit right for the killer to kill, because the narrative thrives on killing. In my mind there is only one course of action left, and therefore my brain closes off all others, and all objections. The narrative constricts itself to a focused frame and I see only what comes into the frame. The consequences of my actions are a later scene, maybe never to be written or filmed.
We think like the movies. What we don’t see or don’t believe or don’t agree with falls out of the frame. What is left in the picture is what we want to see, the movie that moves us most. Each of us sees the movie separately, and what I see in the movie never coincides with what another sees. I make a movie in which I must kill Carmine, and when the moment comes it is the only choice left to me. It is the only choice left functioning in my mind; all the other choices have surrendered, and I pick up the knife.
Carmine maybe heard the sound of me wrestling Frank and the chair onto the floor and turned, but by the time she realized what had happened I had her by the hair and pulled her inside. She grabbed the knife but instead of screaming started hissing at me like this was a fight she meant to win. I punched her hard in the stomach and then kicked her and she fell to her knees and I stabbed her in the back as deep as I could and then did it again. I wasn’t saying anything and she was gasping and these other, strange sounds were coming out of Frank and from Carmine too, and a foul smell came over the room from Frank and I was enraged and stabbed her really hard and slashed her across the face with her eyes looking right at me. I never felt such hate for anything. Where it came from I don’t know. I never felt like that about her before, not that intense. She was trying to say something and I tried to slice her mouth and then got behind her and cut her throat. A spray of blood went out across the floor and she lay in it. She was moving as if some kind of current were in her and so I stabbed her in the back once more, leaning on the blade to drive it in deep. After a few minutes she got still and I took out the knife. We were in the kitchen by then. She had pulled off my robe and used her fingernails on my arm; she dug in pretty deep, fighting for her life; two of the nails were broken and my arm was burning and bleeding.
I killed Carmine to cross a line. To find a higher self. It is the choice one sees made in a movie, so clearly, when the action hero blows away the first of the thugs. He sets his jaw and cocks his gun from his hip and does his duty. He has the power of judgment. He is law and order wrapped up in one flesh. The only reality is to be his friend or his enemy and I can never be his friend, I can never be man enough for that.
With malice aforethought, I wreck our finances, lose our house, ruin our marriage, and kill Carmine, in order to create a moral dilemma. Without a moral dilemma at which to succeed or fail, what am I? I can’t remember ever thinking of myself as a hero. But I have a mighty failure in me, and I give it everything I have.
Villains are remembered among movie people, often as fondly as heroines or heroes or even more so.
Murdered wives are portrayed more vividly than faithful ones. Murdered and unfaithful wives are very near the top of the heap in terms of status, thinking of Anna Karenina as a murdered wife (though she murdered herself, of course), or Marilyn Monroe as Rose Loomis in Niagara (who also murdered herself, but in real life), or Rebecca DeWinter, for whom a priceless mansion burns. Though I know she would never thank me, I have given Carmine, in memory, a longer life than she would have had in years.
What should my ending be? A strong man who loved his family but killed them in a fit of drunken rage would put a pistol to his own head or find some other painful way of dying. A wicked weasel of a man would fight to go on living, to be proven innocent of his murders, to seek support from his daughter whom he did not kill, to beg forgiveness on his hands and knees. A slimy, evil, shadow of a human being would try to escape prison and punishment with every trick and lie he can think of. Temporary insanity. Had just learned I lost my house. Wife accusing me of sleeping with the maid, of being impotent, of never satisfying her in bed. Pushed over the edge. Already drunk and my wife knew it. Flew into a rage and grabbed the knife. Manslaughter, not murder. I never premeditated a thing.
A good man, a man who was killing only out of rage, would have killed his wife first and left his son alone. A wicked man, a worthless man, a failure of a human being would kill his son first so that the son would not prevent the killing of the wife. Both kinds of men are indispensable to storytelling.
The power of evil is its power to transform in narratively interesting ways, and for this reason evil is vital to movie nature. Good is not vital, good can only transform at the end, because once goodness triumphs, there is no more story. A person’s life is transformed by some evil moment, choice, or accident, and thereafter the life is stronger, more defined and clear. The transformations brought about by goodness are rarely as dynamic and are useful only for the background of stories, the time that has passed or is coming to an end, or the time that is about to be.
In movies, evil may never be finally vanquished in order that violence may always have a purpose. Stars are born in violence. Only by violence might I also become a star. By killing my wife and son, I have taken the road toward the only kind of celebrity I can reasonably claim. Nothing but celebrity is worthwhile in the end.
We have a chance to be a movie because of me. My wreck of a family might become immortal. Thanks to me. Who would pass that up for a life of virtue? Meagerness is its own reward, too.
I cleaned myself and the wound on my
arm and poured alcohol on it. That burned and sobered me too much and I drank some more of the bourbon, enough that I was staggering. I cleaned the knife with alcohol and bleach and laid it beside the sink. I knew I needed to leave but I wanted to rest for a while, I needed to close my eyes. I was feeling sick to my stomach. The blood smell spread all over the house. So I went into the family room and lay down on the couch for a minute.
“You bastard, you killed me,” Carmine said from the floor.
“Yes, I did.”
“Look at me. I’m a mess. I wet myself.”
“You can’t help it. Nobody’s going to care.”
“Are you just going to leave me lying here like this?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have a son. He’s in there flat on his back. You don’t even know if he’s still alive or not.”
“He’s dead. I cut his throat.”
“You don’t know. You might have missed a part. He might be lying in there suffocating in his own blood, he might be suffering because of you.”
“You never stop,” I said.
She laughed. “That’s because you never do anything right. Even my murder you screw up.”
“You’re dead, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but you can’t just leave me here.”
“Why not?”
“Put something over me. I’m your wife, for pity’s sake.”
“I could cut you up into little pieces and put you down the toilet,” I said.
“You wouldn’t dare. God would curse you.”
“God will already curse me for killing you in the first place.”
“God would curse you even worse.”
“I killed you and you won’t even leave me alone,” I said.
“Look at you, drunk. You’re going to lie there and let them catch you, you’re not even going to try to get away.”
“I’m too drunk to drive anywhere.”
“Make yourself a cup of coffee.”
“Miss Know-It-All. Miss I’ve-Been-Murdered-A-Thousand-Times-Before.”
“My mother will wake up any minute and walk out here and die of a heart attack.”
“We should be so lucky,” I said, and fell asleep for a while, and dreamed.
Child Abuse
I DRIVE TO THE ONLY PLACE I have left. I’ll be on the road a while; Ann lives about forty minutes away, just across the state line in another town. I’m on the interstate headed toward a patchy line of skyscrapers. Traffic is moving in zooms and curves, and sleek German cars are darting in and out of lanes willy-nilly.
Doing my best to control my own narrative is not enough; I already wonder what I’m doing. I am already departing from my ideal dramatic arc. For instance, at this moment someone like O.J. Simpson should be driving, and I should be lying prone in the back seat of the car muttering about suicide. A briefcase with ten thousand dollars cash in the back of the SUV would also be reassuring, although if I still had ten thousand dollars in the first place, I might not be in this pickle.
I thought I was making myself feel better by contemplating the idea of murdering Carmine, but when the opportunity presented itself the fantasy made the reality so easy. If I were being interviewed right now, I would say I was surprised at what I have done, that I never thought myself to be capable of anything like this, that I am just a normal person. I take out the garbage, I take a shower every morning, I play some golf now and then. But I have been thinking about killing Carmine this way for days and now I’ve done it. In the process I’ve also killed my son. It’s even the case that I thought about that beforehand, too.
So now I’m a full-fledged, visible monster.
The memory of the moments when I was using the knife on the two of them are still coming back to me in flashes as I drive. The images are vivid and make me nauseous. I remember that I never even looked Frank in the face before I reached the knife across his throat; I remember that the knife bit into his cloudy neck without any effort and he never uttered any last word or expressed any surprise. Refusing to look at his eyes, I lowered the chair he was sitting in to the floor. I was surprised at my strength, that I was able to do it, but for God’s sake I’m only fifty-eight, and I had no choice; and anyway, after the first cut, my adrenaline was flowing.
I get lost in that image and have to come back to my driving. I am still drunk enough that I need to pay attention or some state patrolman will pull me over and I’ll never get to Ann’s.
My shoulder aches from Carmine’s nails in a way that pierces the fog, and it helps to concentrate on that. I have been favoring the shoulder on the drive but start to use it, despite the pain this causes, in order to keep my thoughts anchored in the car. There’s still an ache in my gut. I’m still remembering bits and flashes of what happened and pushing them away: Carmine struggling hard to beat me off, tugging at my robe, scratching my shoulder, sure, at first, that she’s strong enough to defend herself, until I stab her in the front and she cries out not so much pain as indignation. Pain comes later, when she grabs the blade of the knife and tries to stop me that way, blood dripping off her hands, but she refuses to let it go; this from a woman who if you pinched her would pout for days and complain of the ache and the bruising. In the last moment of her life she rose above so many things, even her fear of blood.
I sway off the road onto the exit ramp and the worst is over. On the streets I can go slow enough to blend into the rest of the mid-morning traffic.
Ann’s car is parked in front of the apartment building. I roll out my suitcase from the car and carry it up the steps to her door. She lives in an old house that’s been broken up into rental units; she got rooms at the back with a view of the yard. Nothing like the kind of house Ann was raised in, which we sold long ago to upgrade to the one I have just lost to the mortgage company.
When I knock, it takes her a while to answer. She’s home from work at this hour of the morning so I know she’s there.
“Who’s that?” asks her roommate, the thin girl, Hilda.
“Ann’s father.”
There’s a moment of something that should be silence but isn’t, quite. I’m leaning my hand on a doorframe which has flaking paint of various shades of white and pale green, painted and repainted as tenants came and went, never sanded back to the grain of the wood and made fresh. I hear movement near the door on the other side. Hilda says, “She’s not here.”
“I know she’s there. I know you’re there Ann.”
“I swear she’s not.”
“Shut up, Hilda. Ann, I’m sorry. I’m not going to hurt you. Please let me in. I don’t have anywhere to go.” This speech releases something that I’ve been holding in and a kind of sob rises out of me. “Please.”
I can hear them talking inside. From the parking lot I can hear cars driving past and horns on the street and the openness of standing in the door this way makes me afraid. I am about to call her again when she opens the door. Her eyes are red, streaming with tears. “Gramma called,” she says.
“When?”
“About ten minutes ago.”
I stand there, saying nothing. Yes, I did this. Yes, I am the one. Here is the monster.
“Why did you do it, Dad?” she asks, her face collapsing.
When she calls me Dad I can feel something of the pain I’ve caused her. At the moment I have few feelings of my own, but I can feel some of hers. I say, “I didn’t hurt anybody. I swear I didn’t. I woke up and found them like that.”
She’s flooded with emotion, so much she can’t speak. She’s moving from foot to foot as if she’s trying to reset her system, do a reboot.
“Are you going to let me come in?” I ask. “I’m begging you. I don’t know where else to go.”
“The police are on their way,” she says. “They said you would come here.”
“That’s fine.”
“You’ll talk to them?” she asks.
“Yes. Sure.”
“You really didn’t do it?”
“No.
”
She’s thinking hard, she’s thinking for her life, for the first time. I can see a whole person rising up in her. She might say no to me, she might shut the door in my face. I want her to do that, I’ll go away then, I’ll keep driving. But the strong part of her is wavering; there is still so much weakness in her. She lets me in.
Her apartment looks upscale, full of her mother’s castoffs. The living room is a mess but basically clean.
“You brought your suitcase,” she says, as I roll it to the couch on the opposite wall.
“I don’t know where I’ll end up.”
“Dad, you’re sounding like you did something, or else why are you running. Did you?”
“You know they’ll suspect me, Ann. Your grandmother already told you it was me, didn’t she?”
Ann is pacing in her kitchen. Hilda steps out of the little hall that leads to the bedroom and glances at me and looks at Ann. She’s concerned. She’s alive right now, too. Maybe she’s even hungry. “Is everything all right?”
“It’s all right, Hilda. Leave us out here for a while.”
“Are you sure?”
“He says he didn’t do it.” Ann is embracing herself, clutching her own shoulders, a soft blue sweater that clings to her round, full lower belly.
Hilda looks at me with her emaciated eyes. I know what she sees by her expression. I am a fearful thing, a lunatic, a possible killer. I try not to look at her too long. I study the copies of Detail magazine on their coffee table.
“Leave us alone,” Ann says. “I’ll call you if I need anything.”
She has a monster in the room with her, Ann does. The sense of this is plain in her brittle calm as Hilda leaves the room; Ann paces and stays near the door. I put the suitcase on its side and unzip it and leave it there, watching my daughter. She is coming to terms with the shifting images that apply themselves to this strange world in which she suddenly finds herself, where everything is more real than usual, where her father might be a murderer, where he might have killed her brother and her mother only a short while ago. I am lulling her with the pleasant possibility that I did not do these crimes, and because it is a reality which she desires she bends toward it; but because she also, by instinct, feels I might actually be a monster, because the truth of that is in the cells of her body, in the air between us, she resists it at the same time and stays caught between both alternatives, unable to choose. She is becoming a whole person, I see her clearly. She can cope with this.