That squeezing in the gut. Yes, yes, I say, I love my son. I love him.
Liar liar, a voice says. Pants on fire.
It is too hot in the room. I pull at my sweater, try to let in some air. My stomach groans. I need to eat.
Of course you loved him, she says. Of course.
We are quiet a moment. I sip some water.
Funny thing about love, though, she says. It isn’t always enough, is it.
She is watching me, eyes boring into my being. I wonder what darkness she sees.
Sometimes it feels like a trap, doesn’t it? she says. Love. Marriage. Motherhood. It takes so much. It leaves so little.
My mother’s face, frozen in a grotesque plastic mask. My father’s, desperate and pleading. Let me go, Maureen, let me leave.
Some of the greatest cruelties are the ones married people inflict upon each other.
I hate you, I screamed, I hate you both.
His brains splattered over the study lamp—why did she make me look? Marriage, she’d said. This is what you get for thirty years of marriage.
What is it they say? The opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference. Hate is what you feel when love betrays you.
I never wanted to be a mother, Maureen said. It was your father who wanted a child—but he was imagining that it would be a son.
Oh, Conor, oh, Conor, whatever did I do?
Please stop now, I say. Please.
I can’t stop, Merry, Detective Bergstrom says. A child is dead. Your child.
My whole body, shaking with tears and terror.
Some women just aren’t meant to be mothers.
Or don’t deserve it.
Opposite me, Detective Bergstrom waits.
He wasn’t sick, Merry. He didn’t die of natural causes. But you know that, don’t you?
Yes, yes. The blanket at his head. Bear, Biscuit, a pillow. My own full body weight—yes, yes, how many times hadn’t I dared it. Willed it. The things I did to that boy, that baby.
Think it, will it, make it so. From the start, child unwanted, willed out of existence, a secret wrapped in a blanket. I had planned him dead and now it was so.
Merry, Detective Bergstrom says again. You know that.
No.
You do. You do. You know because you were there.
No.
Do it. Do it.
The dare and then the deed. Baby in arms, one last time. Solve it. Make it go away.
That way we could start over. That way it could go back to before. Before Christopher. Before the lies. I know, he’d written, but what did that mean? I needed it to be fixed.
Just us.
Sam and Merry. Merry and Sam.
Merry, Detective Bergstrom says. We both know you were there. And we both know you killed him.
Sam
Frank drove us back home from the police station. I didn’t speak and neither did she. I held my fists. I clenched my jaw, ground down on my teeth. I pinched my skin, felt the sting. Still there, I thought, but only just.
At home, I went straight to the barn, drank back a few shots of whiskey from the bottle, felt the slow burn of warmth and obliteration.
Merry’s face as they bundled her off in the police car. Murder, they said. We think your son was murdered.
Frank put her head around the door of the barn. Anything I can do, you just say.
I shook my head. Just leave me alone.
I sank to the floor, held the bottle against me. On my phone, a message.
Where were you today?
Malin.
My head swam; the floor danced beneath my feet.
I must have drunk myself to sleep. In the morning, there was a blanket covering me and a pillow under my head. Frank. I got up, too fast. My head was pounding, loud and angry. My fingers were frozen stiff. I went inside. I put on the coffee. I looked around the house. A mausoleum. That’s what it is now. Death inside walls. A memorial to the dead and the death of dreams. There is no point to the house now. No point to any of it.
I burned the coffee and drank it anyway. I sat and stared at a photograph stuck up on the fridge with a magnet shaped like a pretzel. Merry, Conor, and me, a shot from this last summer. A trip to the Gothenburg Archipelagos. Ferries and lakes and ice creams in the sun. We rode the ferry to Donsö, walked around the little fishing village and stopped for coffee and pastries on the pier. In Styrsö we ate oysters, in Brännö, it was swimming at the beach, dunking Conor’s toes in the water, laughing as his face scrunched up in delight at the cold.
Smiling, happy faces.
It feels so pure here, I said to Karl once. Like nothing bad ever happens or could happen.
He laughed. You know how many people here are depressed or alcoholics? he said. Or depressed alcoholics.
Come on, I said.
And the weather, he said. That alone is enough to kill you.
I thought it was a dream come true.
I took the empty coffee mug and hurled it at the window. The mug broke, but the window did not.
Frank ran into the room. Are you all right, Sam?
I’m great, I said. Just great.
She offered to make some eggs. You need it, she said. You really need to eat.
She set a plate down on the counter, knife, fork, napkin. She poured more coffee, then smelled it and threw it out.
I’ll make a fresh pot, she said.
She found a broom and swept up the remnants of the broken mug.
You don’t have to do it, I said. Leave it.
She swept anyway. She emptied the pan into the trash and washed her hands.
Weren’t you supposed to leave yesterday? I said. She nodded.
You missed your flight.
Didn’t seem like a good time to go, she said. Merry needs me.
I snorted.
She served up the eggs, a slice of buttered rye toast. She set out a jar of blueberry jam. I stared at Merry’s handwriting on the label. Another of her homemade feats.
A woman who makes her own goddamn jam, and she’s suspected of killing her child.
I watched Frank move around the house, straightening up, trying to restore some kind of order. Felt a kick of something, maybe regret. I could hear her behind the bathroom door. Sobbing. I think of her with Conor, a natural like I’ve never seen. As though she were born to mother and love.
The doorbell rang. Karl.
I can come back, he said. If it’s a bad time.
It’s all a bad time, I said.
He sighed. I understand. I just thought maybe you’d like some company. A walk or something. A distraction.
Hold on, I said. I ducked out of the house and slipped into the barn.
I held up the bottle of whiskey.
Even better, he said.
We walked along the dirt road that links our properties, then off the reserve and across the road toward the forest trails.
I know a spot, he said. Elsa and I go there often.
We walked briskly, the half-empty bottle swinging in my hands.
There are no words, really, he said.
No.
We are so sorry. So sorry for this terrible loss.
We came to a hilltop, a clearing that overlooks the lake. Shielded by a circle of trees, soft moss underfoot, blueberries popping as you stepped over them.
We sat on a log, dead wood from a tree, rotted or felled. I handed Karl the bottle and he took a swig. He was unshaven, rugged-looking. It suited him and I wondered why I noticed.
He handed the bottle back to me and I swallowed.
They came for Merry yesterday, I said.
Merry?
They’re saying the death was suspicious. That it looks like Conor might have been murdered. Smothered.
My God, Sam.
I shook my head. They found signs of petechiae— Christ. I can’t even say it. Makes me want to throw up.
But Merry, he said, incredulous because of course he’d witnessed it too. Mother of the fucking year.
She was the one looking after him when it happened, I said.
I took another sip, long and slow this time. The day was cold; a thick fog hung over the lake. I shivered. I thought about telling him the other news.
No, not yet.
Take another drink, Karl said, and I did, grateful for the lubrication to the brain, the soft blur of thoughts and time. I saw a flash of Merry on our wedding day, promising herself to me. Merry in New York, coming home at strange hours. Big shoot, she’d explain, her face flushed. Then pregnant, a dream come true. A child, a chance. Family and happiness.
Taken now. She has taken it all.
Who would hurt a child? I said. Who would be so sick?
Still I couldn’t imagine it.
Karl said nothing.
I took another sip. I coughed. I swallowed; spit and whiskey, all down the same hole.
They found other stuff, I said. Evidence of prior harm, they called it. Suspicious bruises, a fracture.
Bruises, I thought, suddenly remembering.
Karl cracked his knuckles. He leaned over and picked up the bottle, took a long drink.
Sam, he said. It’s not my business. But a few times, Elsa mentioned something to me. About overhearing a lot of crying coming from your place. The afternoons that she was home early.
I waited.
He shrugged. I don’t know. I’m only saying what she said. That there are cries and then there are cries. Different sounds. Different…causes. She said it a few times. How Conor was always crying. How it sounded like…Like it wasn’t just teething. Like something bad was happening.
I looked at my hands. Clenched and unclenched.
Slowly, it is sinking in. I am sick to my stomach. So sick I want to reach in there with my bare hands like those Filipino faith healers I went once to Laguna to observe. Yes, I want to dig into the flesh with my fingers and pull out every strand of the bloody rot, the pain and the grief and the burning red rage that’s lodged deep in the pit of my gut, sitting, sitting, marinating in the juices of Merry’s betrayal.
Which is worse, the murder or the lie? In my mind, they are one.
Karl and I got back to the house just after the police had arrived.
Search warrant, Frank said. They came straight in.
Back and forth they went, officers with cameras and evidence bags, shoes booted with plastic covers to stop any transfer of evidence. Clip, snap. Cameras and flashes; the sum of our lives bagged and sent away for analysis.
I went into the bedroom. A man was pulling something out of one of Merry’s drawers.
What is that? I demanded.
Looks like birth control, he said. He opened a plastic evidence bag and dropped the little wheel of pills inside.
Birth control. All those red days, those dewy-eyed discussions of our baker’s dozen—oh, Sam, I can’t wait, the more the merrier.
It’s all been a game. Everything. Nothing but Merry pretending. Putting on a show. Making me believe that all this was real.
Frank
I’m doing whatever I can to be useful. To stay out of the way, to be around if Sam decides that he needs me. Poor man. He is grieving twice. First for the dead child, now for the murderous wife. A shocking turn of events, an awful and tragic revelation. A woman hurting a child. It goes against all the laws of nature, doesn’t it? An aberration.
I still cannot believe that he is gone, that beautiful, magical child.
He is everywhere in the house. His smell, his clothes, his little blocks of brightly colored wood. In the fridge, neat rows of uneaten baby meals, green and orange, pureed and ready to be spooned into his mouth. Vroom vroom, chuck-a-choo. The train or the fighter jet his favorite; he’d always open wide for those.
In the bathroom, plastic toys wait patiently on the rim of the tub, three big-eyed ducks that squeak and the blue elephant that squeezes soapy water from its trunk. Quack quack. Splish splash.
His socks, pulled off his toes, hidden in the cracks in the couch. His bottles, sterilized and stacked in a line in the cupboard, the brown teats overchewed and ready to be replaced. The board books, the bath books, the attachment for the stroller and the car seat, the activity mat on the floor, the soft smell of a half-eaten digestive biscuit spit up and abandoned somewhere only he could know. In the glass door, a line of handprints reflected in the sunlight, along with slobbery kisses planted and not yet washed away. There’s not a corner of the house that does not contain him. Oh, it is agony, the cruelty of him being vanished from this world.
I cooked dinner tonight, a roast and vegetables—the last of the greens and carrots still salvageable from the garden. A big green salad, homemade vinaigrette.
As I tied Merry’s striped red apron around my waist, I shuddered.
Where was she now? In a cell, in another interrogation. I know what she is accused of—I know the crimes of which she is guilty—and yet I pity her. My dearest friend. A desperate woman. A woman trapped by her own lies.
A lie is like a snowball, my mother always warned. The further you roll it, the bigger it will grow.
I doubt Carol uttered a single untrue word her entire life.
Sam came into the kitchen. What’s this?
Sometimes a good meal helps, I said. Even just a little.
I lit the candles, I poured him a whiskey.
He sat down and I served up a plate of food. He took a bite. He chewed and swallowed, and the walls echoed back the sounds.
After a while he spoke. You know her.
I sighed. I thought I did.
He looked up sharply. You know her secrets, he said. He pointed at me with his knife. You know what she’s been up to.
I must have looked as startled as I felt.
Yes, he spat, you knew, didn’t you.
I swallowed, shook my head. I’m so sorry, Sam. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to interfere. I didn’t—
She’s my best friend.
Tell me, he spat. Tell me everything.
I took another breath.
All right, I said. It was soon after I arrived. One day, I walked past the room as she was changing Conor. She had him on his back. She stood over him a long time looking at him, and then she took his legs and she squeezed, she pinched. She was hurting him, it was clear; she was hurting him on purpose.
Sam said nothing, and I continued.
Conor cried, I said, and she pulled her hands back, and I walked away, because I couldn’t believe what I had seen.
I was going to tell you, Sam—I was going to tell you everything, I swear. I wrote you a letter; I was planning to give it to you before I left. So you’d know. So you’d know it all.
He looked down at his fists, shaking his head. No, no, he muttered, you don’t get it. I’m not talking about—
I’m so sorry, I said. About everything that’s happened. I keep thinking if I’d said something sooner, well, maybe things would be different. Maybe Conor would still be here. Maybe the outcome of all this would have been something else.
He gave a cold laugh. He pushed away the plate. Your best friend, he said. Strangest fucking friendship I ever saw.
He stood up to fetch the whiskey. Thanks for a great dinner. He sneered. He took the bottle and stormed outside into the night, back to the barn like a bear to his den.
I scraped the uneaten food into the trash and slipped into my bedroom. I retrieved the letter I’d written to Sam, secreted away between the pages of my book. I opened it and scanned over what I’d written.
The physical abuse. The forest runs.
I walked back out to the table, where the candles still flickered, where the place settings still lay; the remnants of a cozy dinner for two. I held the letter over the glowing flame and waited for it to catch and burn.
Sam
I don’t know how to contain it. It is consuming me. Relentless.
I bite down on my fist until the teeth crack the skin; bite and bite, teeth on shocked white bone. Yes. Pain is the singular comfort. When it feels too good
, I stop.
In my childhood, Ida brought me back gifts of picture books when she and my grandfather visited her homeland, English translations of the Swedish classics. Peter in Blueberry Land, The Children in the Forest, 100 Swedish Folk Tales. They were magical adventures in snow and pine; intricate full-color illustrations of smiling children and woodland creatures. Occasionally there was a story of something frightening—the evil trolls or Huldra, the conniving forest wife. But mostly the fairy tales ended with a reassuring happily-ever-after. The blueberry boys and the blueberry king, helpful and playful and kind.
Oh, you will love Sweden, Ida used to say, in her lovely staccato way. It is very beautiful; it is a very wonderful place.
Can I go there someday? I asked her, and she kissed me and patted my hand.
Of course, dear boy, of course.
I loved Ida. So different from my mother, so warm and soft and kind. No ulterior motives in the doling out of her love.
Sweden, I said to Merry. Let’s go to Sweden.
We’d just found out about the baby. There was a house waiting, a country full of strangers. Brave new world; we would make ourselves over and better.
I was suddenly excruciatingly aware of her body, the delicateness of her bones and the places she was softest and most vulnerable. Here, let me; no, don’t lift that. A choreography of roles and purposes. Husband, wife, parents-to-be. I bought her the vitamins and the books, printed out from the internet the lists of things to be avoided: tuna, salmon, toxic detergents.
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