Murder Never Forgets

by Diana O'Hehir

  The ladies are now on the subject of Mona’s childhood, which they’re guessing was unhappy.

  My father is watching the window. “Is there,” he asks, “a beach down there?”

  Several voices tell him, “Sure,” and “I guess.”

  “If someone could have stopped something and didn’t and they have regret for it afterwards . . .” he begins.

  These ladies are really sweet. That proposition must seem to come out of nowhere, but they can still be comforting about it. Mrs. Cohen pats his hand, “We just can’t tell, can we?” Mrs. Dexter says, “Everyone always wonders.”

  He says, “What I’m thinking is, the Declaration of Innocence .”

  I think, Oh, God, the Declaration of Innocence. And, of course, the guilty conscience. I try to send stop and quit mental messages at him. Don’t rehash it. Please. What could you have done? If you were up on the bluff and it was happening down on the beach?

  “Oh, I can’t, sir. Here’s your wine sorbet, sir.”

  “It doesn’t open?”

  This waiter, in his tux and black pants, looks generically continental, but when he talks he’s more Central Valley. “Well only to wash it, sir, swivels out, kinda, hard to manage, practically takes an engineering degree.” He hands Daddy a dish of tan-colored ice, “Here’s to cleanse the palate, sir.”

  “Amazing,” says my father.

  I start playing with the gold-rimmed dishes and then with the silver candleholder, and discover that I can see the whole restaurant in the shiny candleholder surface. The room in the candleholder appears long and wobbly, stretched in the middle and disappearing at the edges, with white tables and a low, rounded Moorish ceiling. That skinny place in the middle is an attenuated front door.

  “I don’t care about her unhappy childhood,” Mrs. La Salle is saying, “she was a bitch.” She pronounces the word precisely, as if it’s one she appreciates.

  Daddy is still dividing his time between the room, which he doesn’t like, and the view, which he wants to watch. I move to see it, but with the window starting at waist height the view is mostly sky; just a line of horizon, and then the sweep of heaven where the sun is squat and fat and getting lower.

  Mrs. La Salle is saying that there’s a reason for the split between Mona’s visible smarmy personality and her underlying evil scheming one; people with an ego split have a recognizable psychic illness, and Mrs. Cohen says, “Oh, tell me, Daphne, you’re so informed,” and I return to my candleholder where there is somebody in a blue dress gesticulating and crossing the room, and now someone with red hair, coming from the opposite direction, wobbling because the reflective surface is bumpy. And now arrives the hostess, undulating away, recognizable because of her scrambled hairdo. And finally . . . I stop here. I call a halt. I simply won’t start the game of recognizing old friends in this mirror. But, yes, there is a man now, waiting over by the door, who looks familiar. How silly to think you can identify someone reflected in a candleholder, but just the same I do recognize him.

  “The sun is getting ready to depart; I need to speak to her,” says my father. He’s right about the sun; I can feel over my left shoulder that the sky is growing very deeply crimson.

  Now there’s a chorus of gasps from my table mates; the lobsters have arrived, paraded home by a matched pair of busboys. “How totally gorgeous,” Mrs. Cohen exhales and, “Well, I do love all the nonsense.” That’s Mrs. Dexter.

  I leave my candleholder. I am firm with myself. Quit being silly; quit pretending you’re the Lady of Shallot or some damn stupid thing. How often lately do you get to eat lobster?

  There’s a several-minute hiatus while napkins are arranged and silverware jostles. Mrs. Cohen says, “You know, I never could do this when I was a child. Because of the dietary laws,” and Mrs. La Salle tells her that those Old Testament rules are admirable, entirely sensible.

  I am fussing with lobster claws. Pretty soon I have broached the small claw and eaten the meat out of it. And that, I decide, makes it okay for me to sneak a sideways peek into my magic mirror.

  The person I think I know is crossing the restaurant. Over my shoulder the sky has gotten a deeper red.

  Now the figure is circling in my mirror, and the walk is definitely familiar. There he goes, led by the hostess, into a cubicle at the edge of my view. I don’t think he sees me. If he did he’d be here in a minute; there’s nothing subtle about him. Him of course being Rob, in case you hadn’t guessed. And it is Rob; he goes into a cubicle, and there’s someone with him. You don’t come to a place like this alone.

  If I want to put an end to this childish mirror-watching, all I have to do is get up and speak to him. That’ll be a perfectly straightforward, ordinary encounter. “Hi, Rob.” “Well, hi, Carly.” “Hey, you.” “Well, hey, yourself.” Anticlimax times ten.

  He’s here with a date, and I am here with my father and three old ladies.

  I won’t let Robbie feel sorry for me. I’ll wait before I speak to him. Maybe I’ll never speak.

  The ladies have moved from discussing Mona to debating eternity and God. People talk like that over wine and lobster. Mrs. La Salle says, “No, Louise, it’s not that there aren’t atheists in foxholes . . .” and Mrs. Dexter says, “If I were in a foxhole, I’d show you an atheist, all right.”

  My father isn’t eating his lobster; his eyes are glued on the window where the sun, enormous now, is spreading itself, ready to flatten, which is what it does just before it sets. The setting of the sun in the Egyptian religion equals the descent of Re, sent underground for his dangerous journey. “Don’t stare right at it, Father.”

  He’s rapt, not moving a muscle. I don’t like this much. “Daddy?”

  It does something to your retina, I’ve read about that; fries it. Maybe I should tap him on the shoulder.

  “Why, dear.” He smiles his chairman’s smile but keeps on looking past my shoulder as if I’m not there.

  I sit back and examine my hands, my napkin, my fingernails, and a spot on the knee of my good black pants. Mrs. Dexter is saying, “What makes it interesting, we’re the only species with the foresight of death.”

  Mrs. La Salle talks about Heraclitus and something about the sweet and the bittersweet. Mrs. Dexter moves the walker an inch, for emphasis maybe, she says, “Daphne, now, you must listen . . .”

  I can feel with the side of my face that Robbie is just a couple of dozen feet away. Maybe I should simply turn and smile, straightforward, nothing to it.

  “But death is a going over,” Mrs. Cohen is saying, “a translation, a passing into the next stage of life . . .”

  From some place near me, maybe right beside me, yes, from my father; he’s the one that’s doing it—there’s a scream, a skull-splitting shriek, a gargling, ferocious noise wrenched from stomach, lungs, throat, gut, to make you grab for your chest, put your hands over your ears. Voices say, “My God,” “Where is it?” “What?” and “Who?” A glass clangs, sets of plates crash, a metal stand collapses. And Edward Day, screaming, is on the window ledge. He has somehow, without fuss or muss, in an instant, got the magic window open and is trying to climb out of it into the setting sun.

  This window opens onto nothing at all. Below it is one hundred and fifty feet of building side, cliff side, rocks, then ocean.

  Carla, for God’s sake, for God’s sake, get up, don’t just sit there.

  He has one knee up on the white cement casement sill; his head is out, his body bent, he has kicked over his wineglass, pushed his lobster plate onto the floor. What is he saying? Words. I can understand them; “Tell her . . . I’m supposed to . . . help.”

  And I’m beside him now, which has happened in one motion without my thinking. I’m on one side, and somebody else is on the other side. I can feel that other person though I don’t really look, only with the side of my vision; there’s a dark jacket and an arm, and my father is half out the window, knee flexed, body bent, rock him the wrong way and the whole man goes end over end into the v
iew.

  “Careful, careful.”

  “There, darling, there.”

  “I did not help,” he is saying.

  It’s only the setting sun, a brilliant red streak across the black of the blackened mind. Life, strength, force, reason, and all those things you’ve lost. “Watch it. Slow . . .”

  “Careful . . . he’s a lot stronger than he looks.”

  “Without scaring . . . try it without scaring him.”

  “Watch out, don’t tip that way. Back . . .”

  My God, for a minute there I thought he was going through, tipping and teetering, old fragile kneecap on rough white sill, old man balanced insecurely like a toy. Oh, Jesus.

  The sun is almost gone now, and there’s nothing left except a purple glow and that green streak they talk about. Then careful and slow, let’s get him back down without catching his arm. He’s coming willingly, maybe he’s a little scared, looking down into that vastness and the sea blue and hard and the rocks brown and hard.

  We pull him in slowly, his shoulders still partly out the window and one shoe catching on something. We push the table back. There, now. Sit down. Gently, gently. It’s all right, dear, really it is.

  Rob says, “Dr. Day? It’s Robbie. Hey, now, it’s me, Dr. Day. Robbie Ackroyd.”

  The hostess is worried that something happened in the restaurant—a rat or a bat or a cockroach—to make my father behave like that. I let her think this.

  Daddy tries to tell her that he had an e-mail. He says, “E-mail,” and she says, “Oh, don’t do that.”

  Rob and I have had a six-sentence conversation in the lobby. Now he tells my father, “Ed, I certainly would like to take you back and examine you.”

  I stare. I’d sort of forgotten that Rob is a doctor.

  Daddy says, “That is so good of you. But not at all.”

  Rob’s girlfriend sticks her hand out. “Hi. I’m Arlette.”

  Henry says, “Hey, everybody almost ready?” Unlikely as it seems, our outing is going to end as it began, with a quiet taxi ride. Henry will probably point out some new shoreline sights.

  Rob asks am I sure? And I say, yes, yes, and he says, “I’ll come with you,” and I say, “It’s all right now,” and he tells me he’ll see me tomorrow. Meanwhile, the ladies start piling up into the cab. My father shakes his head. “Carla, I must have left something in that restaurant.” That’s the way he looks, a little troubled, the way you are when you think you’ve lost that ad you were saving for the shopping expedition tomorrow.

  I tell him, “No, Father, I’m sure you haven’t,” and he says, “Well, now, if you’re sure, my dear, you always seem to know, and I will once again sit all the way in the back,” and he’s up the van steps and has started wiggling past the middle seats.

  I say, “Robbie, thank you.” I remember to tell Arlette it is good to meet her. I look up into the cab after my father who seems okay, just a little bit, I suppose you’d say, quenched. I thank Rob one time more and climb up the van steps after my dad.

  Chapter 14

  “Carly, if you’ve been here for a month, why didn’t you call me a month ago?”

  It’s the day after the Justine’s Restaurant evening, and Robbie and I are in the Manor garden, bench-sitting near the mermaid statue.

  “I don’t know,” I say sullenly, staring down at my hands as if I’m eight years old.

  Actually, I do know pretty well why I didn’t call him.

  “Carla,” he says, “we’re friends. Good friends. You’re my oldest friend.”

  Oh, Robbie, go climb a tree.

  The Manor old ladies are very excited about the lovely young man who appeared out of nowhere to help me last night. Mrs. Cohen says, “I recognized him, dear, did you know that? He was our doctor last summer when Dr. Kittredge was away. So young and energetic, I thought then. Just what you’ve been needing. And you can tell, that little person with him, she doesn’t mean a thing.”

  Mrs. Cohen, darling, climb the other tree.

  “Maybe,” I tell Robbie now, “I expected Susie to tell you. About my being here.”

  “Well, she didn’t.”

  Rob is just the same, hardly any older, still sturdy and energetic, with slightly broader shoulders and lots of wavy brown hair. He’s a little taller than me. He doesn’t like to sit still. Right now he’s scuffing a foot back and forth, tracing patterns in the pink dust of the mermaid path. “How long has Ed been like this?”

  “It’s worse lately.”

  “Well, listen, I’m really, really sorry, and it’s awful to see him this way, and I’ll go do a lot of research. Maybe there’s something they haven’t been trying.” Rob’s field isn’t Aging or Alzheimer’s or anything even remotely like that; he’s an intern in tropical medicine because he wants to return to Egypt and do good for the populace. You wouldn’t think they’d have a tropical medicine clinic at North Coast Hospital, but they do because of the workers who come up from Central America to pick artichokes and lettuce and asparagus in our farm fields.

  “None of that medicine will help,” I say. “I know because I’ve been researching, too. Come on, Rob, let’s go for a walk.” I take his hand and think, sixteen hours he’s back into my life and he’s already revising it.

  Daddy is fine today; right now he’s taking a nap. He doesn’t seem to remember anything bad about last night. This morning he was cheerful, welcoming Robbie. “Hello there. We really know you’re one of us when we see you looking like that, don’t we? Now, the name’s on the tip of my tongue.” He was okay about letting Rob listen to his chest and thump his back, and during lunch he was so relaxed and funny that I think if Rob hadn’t seen him last night he would have been telling me, “Carly, nothing much is wrong with him; that’s just normal fatigue, not Alzheimer’s. All old people are like that.”

  Rob and I start walking, hand in hand like the good friends we’re supposed to be; I’m leading him along the nonscenic route, past the Manor garbage cans. I want to show him the net-woman beach. I’ve told him the story about that; I’ve told him most of our stories, and he’s been horrified and says we’ve got to move. And doesn’t remember about the lifetime clause and the full lifetime payment to the Manor and says, forget about that, you have to move anyway. Rob likes to take charge.

  We approach Daddy’s beach by walking along the top of the culvert; I’ve decided Rob is too broad to squeeze through the inside. So we scramble precariously over the top and then through the weeds and bushes and finally down into Daddy’s viewing place where we’re in a standing position, not lying on our bellies the way Daddy and I were.

  Rob says, “Wow,” and “Uh-huh,” and “Yeah, I see, yeah, I get it.”

  The beach looks the same except that the tide is halfway out and the pile of nets is smaller. “It’s funny,” I say, “I’m getting used to thinking he saw something here, and now I can start asking questions, like, why was he here at all? How did he know there would be anything to see? There are the steps where he says the people came down.” I point to the north end of the beach and the ragged seacoast structure of sagging steps and rickety balustrades. “He knew they were coming; he’d been observing for a while.

  “And, Rob, he keeps repeating about secrecy. Or not talking. Except that last night he thought he had to talk. He said he got an e-mail.”

  “E-mail?” Rob asks. Both of us are silent for a minute, chasing the idea e-mail. What does Edward think that is?

  “Existential-mail,” I suggest, and, “Evaporating mail,” Rob counters.

  We waste some time giggling and telling each other how funny we are.

  One of our local long-legged hares pops out of the bushes and looks at us, standing on his rear legs like a kangaroo. Rob knows the scientific name of the breed: Lepus townsendii.

  He then offers the opinion, which irks me, that most of my dad’s vagueness is Alzheimer’s. Of course I knew that. I act cross. Rob says, “And furthermore . . . furthermore . . . well, you know that, too.”
<
br />   So I have to persuade him. “What, already?”

  After a minute’s silence he says, “Know what the big question is, Carly, the big, big question?”

  I tell him no.

  Robbie’s single-mindedness seems conceited sometimes, but that’s not accurate. It’s more that he jumps on his horse and rides enthusiastically off in whatever direction he sees at the moment.

  He waves an arm around. “If they wrapped somebody in a net until she stopped wriggling, where is she? Where’s the body?”

  I point. “In the ocean. They dumped her.”

  “Okay, right, sometime she’ll wash up. But meanwhile, somebody is missing. Her relatives are looking. She’s on a list someplace.”

  I say, “Ye-ah,” trying not to sound too contemplative. Estupida , I tell myself. Not believing Daddy’s story kept me from getting this far in thinking about it.

  We’re silent for a couple of heartbeats, and then I say, “Probably someone from around here.”

  “Most likely.”

  “Daddy does seem to sort of know her. He saw her, and he watched them going through the Manor grounds, and he sort of followed—he’s good at that little boy stuff, hiding and peering . . .” This fantasy begins to trickle away, and I say, “Or something,” and sit in the weeds where Rob has already hunkered down and is unwrapping a protein bar, which he hands me half of. “Apricot flavor,” he explains.

  “Who’s Arlette?” I ask. It’s Arlette from last night that I’m asking about, and I mean, of course, what sort of a person is she; does she like Yo-Yo Ma and The Sopranos; where did you get her? He tells me, all enthusiasm, that Arlette is a great girl, smart and, well, simpatico, “You’re going to love her.” I look sideways to see if he’s being ironic, and he isn’t; his square face is flushed with pleasure.