Poison

by Galt Niederhoffer

  “Arsenic absorption through skin,” she types, looking for greater detail.

  Though often used as a cure-all in ancient Chinese medicine and recently approved for use in chemotherapy for specific cancer treatments, arsenic must be used with care as a therapeutic agent. The pentavalent form of the arsenic compound is absorbed through the intestine. The more toxic trivalent form is best absorbed through the skin.

  She thinks back to high school chem. Trivalent. Three electrons available for bonding. Pentavalent. Five electrons.

  “Best test for arsenic,” she types.

  “Heavy metals panel. Urine, blood, or hair sample,” says one website.

  Cass ponders for a moment. Inspired, she bolts out of bed, hurries to the bathroom, and removes a pair of scissors from the cabinet. Standing at the mirror, she appraises her appearance. Her heart-shaped locket still grazes her collarbone. She has left it on as a reminder. The heart is still surrounded by his ring, caged, like her own vital organ. Her face is still a dissonant mix of delicate and determined. Slowly, she pulls her hair back, finds an inconspicuous spot near the nape of her neck, and cuts a half-inch swatch of hair. She walks downstairs to the kitchen and places the lock of hair in a small Ziploc.

  She writes her name on the bag, walks upstairs, and places it under her mattress.

  “Cass Connor. 12/5.”

  Another day. Another sickening sample. She will stockpile her own hair, another stack of proof with its own empirical data.

  Hours later, Cass lies in bed, soothed by the whir of the dryer. She clutches Ryan’s phone, braced for any communication, but she knows its contents by heart now: emails to and from work, texts to a confidante, dry cleaning notifications. Except for one exchange she has missed, a message to C. Alloy, written at 4:41 P.M. as he left the courtroom.

  “Split,” he writes. “I should have killed myself.”

  She reads it as both a cry for help and a confession. Indeed, they may be one and the same. A cry for help, like a threat, however feigned or performed, is always, in some way, a statement of intention. Knowing Ryan as she does, Cass hears his statement’s implied referent. As though the word instead belongs at the end of the sentence.

  She winces at the response. From C. Alloy: “Keep the faith. Stay focused. This is only the beginning.”

  NINETEEN

  When Cass wakes up in the morning, which is to say two hours later, her phone contains an arresting message.

  “Cass, I know I have not been good. I have been bad, Cass. But not in the way you think. Not in the way you’re afraid of. I am guilty of not making you feel as loved as I do love you. I am guilty of failing to provide the comfort I wanted to provide you. I am guilty of making you feel alone in the home we built for our children. I am guilty of failing to give the only thing I wanted for you.

  “We have built a home together. This is simple for many people. But you and I, we come from homes built on shoddy foundations. I didn’t know how to make a home. I knew how to demolish and destroy, to pound a wall with a hammer. I knew how to hide in the shadows, how to withdraw in plain sight, behind work, my phone, the children. I knew how to make a good meal, but I didn’t know how to feed a family. I myself did not feel safe—and so I could not make you feel safe—in the home we built together.

  “It is not too late to save our home. To fortify the life we want for our family. Everything is still possible, Cass. A good life. More beautiful children. All we have to do is love. Just love. Just love each other. You were right, and I was wrong. Love is the only true thing. All we have to do is love. It’s that simple. Please forgive me, Cass. Please give me a chance to be better. A chance to finish the home we built together.”

  Cass is close to tears by the time she finishes the letter. She cannot help but be moved. It preys on her deepest doubts and needs. This is the man she remembers. She misses that man and wants so badly to believe him. She wants so badly to believe him. But there is no time for fantasy now. No time for wish fulfillment. Will and belief are a powerful pair, enacting faith in the most unlikely places. She thinks of the famous experiment, the theory proposed by Melvin J. Lerner. The “Just World” Delusion. It explains why people celebrate others’ good fortune—and justify their torture. A lottery winner “deserved” his good luck. A girl who got raped “had it coming.” We cling so desperately to the idea that good prevails over evil, so desperately as to deny the facts, to explain away atrocities in backbends of denial.

  Cass runs through a set of possibilities and permutations. On one hand, she knows she is being snowed, lulled into a story. This is Ryan doing what Ryan does best, selling a plan, telling a story. She is a sucker in a seat, watching a sappy romantic movie. She suspends her disbelief. It is reflexive and instinctual, like blinking and breathing. She fills in the gaps of Ryan’s tale. She empathizes with the characters he describes. Her heart breaks for them. She yearns for a happy ending.

  It is human to trust, to expect the best, to grant forgiveness, especially when so much is at stake: a man you love, a home you’ve built, three beautiful children. “Keep working on it,” women are taught. “Stand by your man.” “Don’t give up on your marriage.” But sometimes the soothing mantras create their own madness. Sometimes standing by your man is an act of self-destruction. And through it all, one glaring question remains: Is it possible that she is wrong, that all this is imagined?

  Now Cass finds herself caught in a state of sickening confusion. If her mind were a map, there would be routes in every opposing direction. A scribble of goals and circuitous needs, inferences and deductions. She wants—my God, how she wants—to believe that she has been wrong about Ryan. The question is whether this will amounts to belief, her wish to a delusion. Whether she wants so badly to believe that she will defy her best judgment. But another want and another route is equally compelling: she wants, just as much, to prove her memory and perceptions, and to see her husband locked up as a result of his actions. She wants both things equally: to be right and to be wrong, to be rid of him and to be near him.

  And so she allows competing truths to echo in her mind now. Competing truths that disorient her, like a child playing hide-and-seek, spun in circles. Love spiked by hatred. Fear mixed with desire. Emotion tempered by reason. All the while, the voices of doubt, however off-key, begin to sound like a chorus. The wisdom of crowds. The opinion of experts. She must silence them also. None of them feels what she feels in her gut. None of them saw what she saw in her bedroom, the hatred in his voice, the intention. None can measure or bottle the bile, the blood coming out of her organs. They can only assume. They can guess and condemn, tsk and tut, disapprove with knowing glances. They can sway her with something more potent than truth, consensus.

  They can help her deny what she knows to be true. Lay the cement of denial. They can help her forget the strange surreal truth that took place in her bedroom. His cheek on her cheek. His voice in her ear. The gleam of his saliva. They can help her deceive herself just one more night while she secretly wonders. When she knows Ryan’s crime better than her multiplication tables. Just like this, those who know and love her best can induce her to take back a killer. They can sanction and justify just one more night, one more chance to die for her husband.

  The truth is there is no one truth right now. No single motive for Cass at this moment. It is true that she needs him to prove she is right. She needs incontrovertible evidence. An eyewitness. A nosy neighbor. A perfectly placed camera. In the bedroom. The hutch across from the fridge. On the kitchen counter. Or perhaps she can collect samples fast enough, her own bodily fluids—hair, blood, and urine—and bring them directly to the cops to prove there could be no other source than Ryan. She can follow him. Take photos. Find receipts. Bank statements. Cash withdrawals. She can wait until sleep, for the heaviest breath, take his phone from the bedside table. Read and forward every text and email. She needs this kind of evidence to advance the case, for him to be charged and convicted. Only proof will achieve this. Of
course, she is conflicted. She is too self-aware to deny this. Of course, she yearns to be kissed and caressed, to be comforted and crushed by her husband. But, just as much as she wants to be wrong, she needs him to prove her correctness.

  And so, the confusion of crisscrossing routes brings Cass to an unexpected destination. All routes lead back to the same place. In all cases, Cass needs to take Ryan back: to prove she is right or to prove she is wrong, to prove he is good or evil, to answer the questions in her head or to advance the case against him. The chorus of skeptics has not weakened her will, nor lessened her conviction. They have given her license to doubt and deny, to test her beliefs just long enough to make a bargain. She must take him back in either case. It is a win-win situation. If she takes him back and learns that she was wrong, then she saves her family and gets back her husband. If she takes him back and proves his crime, then she saves her family and gets him arrested. And if he has been bad and she takes him back, she believes this too—like so many women before her—there is a small chance she can fix him. The finest of lines between love and hate finds its highest tightrope in this marriage. In exchange for the chance to destroy him, she gets one small perk, that most lethal of trades, the most dangerous of addictions. One more night to fill her fix, the company of her husband.

  But here, here she catches herself. No more. No more magical thinking. This man is not the man she knows, the man she fell in love with. This man is not Ryan. This is a sick, warped version. This man deliberately caused her harm. This man has built up a toxic level of poison in her system. This man is the reason she puked her guts out, hemorrhaged out of her asshole. This man is the reason her hair falls out in clumps when she gets out of the shower. And this man will continue unless she can prove it. She must meet the so-called burden of proof, shine light on the shadows of doubt, disarm the front line of skeptics. She must find the proof to see him charged and convicted. She must pull off a seamless bait and switch, snow him and seduce him. This man does not deserve her love. Not another moment of equivocation. He requires her most strategic attention. This man is not her friend or her love. This man is a killer. And she is going to catch him.

  Now she makes a resolution. She will do whatever it takes to achieve this. She will take this killer into her home. She will neutralize him like Delilah. Why? To obtain evidence of his crime, and to use this evidence to protect herself and her children. Why go to all this trouble? Why risk continued danger? Because she knows that if she does not, he will fuck with her for the rest of her life, and this is the only way to stop him. What better reason could there be? For love. Just love. Unjust love. Love for her children.

  * * *

  An hour later, at school drop-off, the children safely delivered, she walks with her friend toward their cars and shows Ryan’s email to Nora.

  “What do you think?” Cass asks.

  “Utter bullshit,” says Nora.

  “He’s full of it, right?” says Cass. “This is Ryan’s favorite move. The Charm Offensive.”

  “He’s after something,” Nora agrees. “He’s rolling the dice with custody. And he wants you off the scent of the crime.” She assumes a melodramatic tone. “‘I would never do it. And here are the three reasons.’ That denial reads like something out of a law school textbook. When people are falsely accused, they’re much less coherent.”

  “Good,” says Cass. “Then we agree. I wanted your perspective.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Nora asks.

  “Take him back,” says Cass.

  Nora stares at her friend.

  “Get proof,” she says. “Send the bastard to prison.”

  “No,” she says. “You can’t do that.”

  “I have spent the last three weeks reporting this crime to cops, lawyers, and doctors. None of them have helped me. None of them have stopped him. I need irrefutable proof. An eyewitness, a video recording, proof of purchase, or a confession.”

  “So what? You’re going to take him in and hope that you can catch him?”

  “I don’t see any other option.”

  “You’re playing with fire,” Nora says.

  “You would do the same,” Cass says, “for the safety of your children.”

  “He’s making the same bet,” says Nora. “Winner takes all.”

  “He won’t win,” says Cass.

  “But you could lose everything.”

  “We’re in danger regardless.”

  Nora is shaking her head. “I don’t know if you’re being honest with yourself. It seems like you still love him. I know, if it were me, all I would want to do right now is collapse into the arms of my husband. As normal as that impulse may be, nothing about this is normal.”

  Cass pauses. She values Nora’s candor, and she can’t deny there may be some truth to her statement. “Of course, I love the man he was. Or the con that he presented. And yes, it takes time to trade that fiction for this person. But this man? No. No love anymore. Just a practical problem. It’s not safe for Sam to be with him. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my son. No one else believes me, Nora. I have no choice but prove it.”

  * * *

  Several hours later, Ryan and Cass have made progress. They begin to communicate, she with caution, tentative power, he with passion, desperation, feigned or actual, and that ineffable gift for words, the tongue she fell in love with.

  He asks to meet in person. He can’t bear to be away from the children. He wants to rebuild the family, to sleep next to her in their bed, to finish the home they started together. She agrees to meet at a restaurant, buoyed by the safety of public witness. They will meet again tomorrow, on Friday. She cannot deny the excitement she feels, the wild exhilaration. She cannot deny the thrill she feels at the thought of catching her husband. But the predatory nature of her goals—and their attraction, the undeniable comfort of “collapsing into his arms”—pales in comparison to the prospect of something more essential, something far more urgent: waiting him out and securing the proof she needs to send him to prison.

  TWENTY

  They decide on a restaurant in Back Cove, an old shipping neighborhood on the northern side of Portland. Back Cove is bordered by the dockyards, an abandoned bridge, and its replacement. The area has enjoyed the mixed blessing of hipster gentrification. Empty warehouses share sidewalks with treacly coffee bars and restaurants with names that sound like obscure rock bands. For a while, the area was populated by shipmen and junkies in harmonious coexistence. Now it is mostly home to hipsters seeking Saturday brunch or young families seeking condos. Even still, the big sky and abandoned bridge give it a desolate quality.

  Ryan arrives first. Cass sees his car when she is locking her own. She pauses outside, checks her reflection in the car window. She wears a gray shirt dress, buttoned from the collar to the bottom. She looks the way she did on her first day of college, but her eyes show the wear and worry of the recent horrors.

  Cass is arrested by the sight of Ryan, his striking face and features. He has always had this power over her, the power to freeze her in her place, to weaken her defenses. She feels the power of desire, the power of attraction. He is her poison. The only question is the dose at which he is fatal. But now, as she takes in the sight of this man, her lover, her tormentor, she must overcome conflicted goals: the desire to run from him, to collapse into his arms, and the need to destroy him.

  “Cass,” he says.

  It is warm inside, but he still wears his jacket. His hands are deep in his pockets as though he is holding something—a gun, a recording device, more of the toxin? Cass places her jacket on her chair. Ryan doesn’t falter.

  Before a word is uttered, they have exchanged a thousand accusations, have alleged all manner of betrayal. And yet, they must pretend to speak in a common parlance. They must speak in terms others understand. Perform for the public record. They must act as though their connection is pure, not tainted and brutal. They must play familiar roles, archetypes: he is the contrite lover, the straye
d lamb, the remorseful husband. She is the aggrieved wife, the long-suffering widow.

  “Take me back,” he tells her. “Give me a chance to be better.” He grabs her hand and she lets him. And then, as though jolted by the circuit they have created, he unclasps her hand, spins her to him, and grabs her by the shoulders. He moves his hands from her shoulders to her face, as he did in their early courtship. They stare at each other for several moments, searching for trust, answers, predictions. They are like two injured cats, both conditioned by torment, braced for pain at every moment.

  Does he love her? Does she love him? Is either one honest in his intentions? As Heisenberg famously asked: Does the act of measuring change the value of the thing being measured? Does the act of pursuing the truth change that which is being detected? Could Cass’s efforts to prove his guilt compel Ryan to be guilty? Could she force a sincerely repentant man to resume his violence until he has no choice but silence her before she can prove his attempted murder?

  As Cass looks into his eyes, she questions whether Ryan is more guileless than she is. That he is here to make things right, that, however horrid he has been, he now has good intentions. The only thing that can trip them up is whether or not she believes him, whether or not she trusts him to stop, and drops her investigation. If she persists in proving her claim, he will have no choice but harm her. And so the act of detection here finds its most bizarre challenge, because the act of measuring intent can greatly impact the outcome. Trust could compel Ryan to be a better man, whereas doubt could force him to give in to his worst nature. A trusting marriage finds new stakes on the age-old issue: happiness or homicide, confidante or killer.

  “Let’s go away together,” he says. “Just us. Just the family. Like we were planning. To heal. To be together.”