Exactly, I said. She hasn’t even figured out who she is.
But you have.
Oh, yes.
And who is that, Frank?
I’m a woman who knows what she wants.
And what is it you want?
Right now, I said. I’d like to leave. Or call my lawyer.
Detective Bergstrom snapped shut her file.
Of course, she said. As you wish.
She stood up and opened the door to usher me out.
Thank you, Frank, she said. It’s been illuminating.
As I brushed past her, she touched my arm lightly.
Merry’s coming in tomorrow, she said. I’m sure she’ll have many more insights to share on everything we’ve discussed today.
Merry
I watched from the window as the police car pulled up. Frank got out. She was on her phone. Laughing about something that seemed very funny indeed.
She looked like her face must hurt. Mine did. I touched the tracks her nails had left behind.
Detective Bergstrom called when she’d finished the interview.
I think we might have her, she said. I just need to clarify a few things with you tomorrow. The final pieces of the puzzle. Then we’ll be in a position to lay a formal charge.
Good, I said.
I felt queasy.
The other call came from the medical examiner. They have wrapped up the autopsy and the report. They have gathered all the evidence they could hope to find.
We are ready to release your son’s body, the receptionist said.
But what do we do with it? I asked.
You’ll need to decide, she said gently. We usually release the body to a funeral home, for burial or cremation.
Thank you, I said.
I’d like to cremate him, I told Sam.
Whatever you want, he said.
Is that all right with you?
You were his mother, Merry, he said. It’s your decision.
I wanted to say, But you were his father.
I thought better of it. I have spoken enough lies out loud. Still, he can’t find out. He won’t now, anyway. There is no reason for it.
I wanted to reach out and touch him. To feel the warmth of his skin. The solidness of his flesh under my fingers, the certainty of another human. The Sam who breathed life into me and made me a person.
He smelled strongly of whiskey and sweat. His beard ragged, his face unwashed. A wild man, some folkloric woodsman from deep in the forest. The kind who rescues you from danger. Or from yourself.
You really think Frank did it? he said.
I nodded.
Why? What would it solve?
She can’t handle it when I have what she wants, I said.
This, he said. She’d kill for this?
I think she did.
He reached out a finger and traced the thin line of dried blood under my eye.
What kind of a friendship is that? he said.
The dangerous kind, I replied.
He took back his hand and cupped it into a fist.
But Bergstrom is close, I said. She’ll get her. They’ll put her away. She’ll pay for what she did.
He looked at me, menace lighting his eyes. And you, Merry, he said. What about you?
How will you pay?
Frank
I was outside under the night sky, cold and starless. The houses were all in darkness, everyone inside snug beneath the covers, lost to dreams and tired bones.
My fingers cold against the glass of the bedroom window, knocking rat-tat-tat-a-tat-rat-rat-rat. Our code, like always.
I waited.
I knocked once again.
The window opened. Bleary-eyed from tears or sleep, Merry squinted at me.
Come with me, I whispered. I’ll tell you everything.
She went to get her coat and boots. I helped her as she climbed out into the night. We shivered against the cold but said nothing as we walked. I had a flashlight stolen from Karl’s barn to light our path, but it was hardly necessary. I think we both knew where we were headed.
The day and the night belong to different worlds. The air is strange, thicker and moister; the animals that call out to each other in the dark are the secretive kind, wilder and fiercer and tormented by the light. There was an eerie stillness, our breath heavy and dense against the night. You could see it in front of you: proof of life in frozen air.
Careful, I said, as Merry tripped on a rock. I took her arm. I smelled blood. She’d cut her hand breaking the fall.
We crossed the deserted road and headed into the forest, along the path and up toward the clearing. Merry at one point stopped and shook her head.
This is crazy, Frank, she said.
Still, we walked on, listening to the leaves and branches crack, to the burrowing of the nocturnal beasts; our coats wrapped tightly around our bodies, our hands clenched into fists within the pockets of our coats.
Everything in the night smelled sharper, stronger; life or slow decay, because everything ends up in the same state in the end. Rain caught in pools of rock or rotting leaves trodden back to mulch, clumps of thick moss and the droppings of secretive mammals.
I knew the way and so did Merry. Burned it was into the recesses of memory, the darkest and worst things; that terrible day and the ones before it.
At the clearing, I stopped.
Here, I said. I followed you here that day.
Merry was still, barely breathing.
And before. Long before, I said. I followed you, and I saw what you were doing. How you were leaving Conor by himself while you ran off.
I shined the light into the trees. The glow was enough to catch her face, the outline of eyes and nose, mouth set in a grimace. We surely looked minuscule against the trees, two beings shrunken and insignificant against a greater force. A darkness and mystery we cannot fight.
You killed him, she said, her voice a whisper.
I didn’t plan to do it, I said.
But you did.
In the strange half-light, she was almost ghostly, a wisp of fragments out of the dark, dancing, shining in a sliver of white. Angelic and pure. This too, she could be, and sometimes was.
Oh, Frank, Merry moaned. She sank to her knees, her nightdress exposed under the thick green winter coat. The wailing in the trees, the echo of the empty heart.
Tell me, she said. Tell me what you did.
I was so angry, I said. At you and Sam. Asking me to leave. Treating me like a pariah. I knew what you were doing, how you were lying about being this happy wife and mother. So I followed you. I thought I’d…I don’t know. Take some pictures. Have something solid to show Sam, to confront you. Oh, I don’t know, really. I didn’t have much of a plan.
She was listening, head in hands, the smells around us suddenly too much, too mossy, too reminiscent of bodily things. Blood and sex and death. I wanted to retch but continued.
I followed you, I said. I waited until you left him. Then I went to him. I took some pictures, to show how he’d been left alone among the trees. I picked him up. He was half-asleep, dozy and warm and soft, that delicious state of a child.
Well. I held him. I just wanted to hold him, you see.
Merry was sniffing, soft little moans of despair, a strange mewling animal.
Oh, Merry, I said, I was looking at him and seeing you in him. He had your mouth. He had that tiny, thin mouth you have. I was looking at him and thinking how you were with him. How you were so miserable. How you were so trapped.
No, she said. I loved him.
Yes, I said. I’m sure that’s true too. But it was a prison, wasn’t it. Motherhood.
She moaned, whimpered the air out of her lungs.
You’re my best friend, Merry, I said. I’ve only ever wanted you to be happy. And you weren’t happy. You know you weren’t.
It felt liberating to tell her, to hear the words spoken aloud. Let her know how much I love her. How far I will go.
Merry, I continu
ed. You have to understand, I did it for you.
She wailed. No, Frank, no you didn’t. You didn’t. Please say you didn’t.
She was clutching at me, pulling on my coat. I did not push her off.
Merry, with all my heart. I didn’t want to hurt you. I only wanted to help you. To set you free.
I took her face in my hands. I stroked her hair back from her forehead and looked at her, eyes bulging with tears and truth. Merry on her knees. Merry felled.
There weren’t any lies, Frank, she moaned. I was happy. I was happy.
Poor Merry. Even now, she doesn’t know what that means.
She moaned and rocked and shivered. I sighed.
She did not stop.
Would not stop.
Come on, I said. You can be yourself with me. Be real. Be real for five minutes.
No, no, no, Frank. She was grabbing at me again, hands clawing, shaking with violence. She pulled me down to the ground beside her.
You’re a psychopath. A raging psychopath, she screamed.
I pushed her from me and she curled into a ball, hunched over her knees, shivering and sniffling. I watched her. Like this, she has always repulsed me. All these crocodile tears. Hideous. I looked away, and rose to my feet.
It’s okay, Merry. You don’t have to pretend anymore.
No, Frank, she moaned. Please, no.
I was above her and she was below. Begging, pleading. Roles reversed, I thought. At last.
I stood there, my hand on her head, a benediction, a pardon.
You hurt him, Merry. You wanted him gone.
She was choked now with tears, rocking on her haunches, back and forth. Pitiful.
I waited. Let her cry herself dry. She’d have to stop eventually. I let the flashlight shine out into the trees, circling us in shadows, keeping all our secrets safely within.
You were trapped, I said quietly. And I set you free.
She had stopped crying now. She was unmoving next to me, staring blankly into the ground at her feet. Letting it sink in.
I suppose she could have lunged at me, grabbed a rock from the ground and launched it at my head, bludgeoned me with her rage. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care.
I know all your secrets, Merry, I said. I am your best friend. And best friends can’t fool each other.
She looked up at me, tears all dried. Eyes clear; glass or ice. Cold. Numb. This was Merry. Insensate. Unmoved. All roles interchangeable. She was no grieving mother.
I had gifted her with freedom. With what she’d wanted all along.
You see, I said. I did this for you.
Merry
The face you paint with a film of foundation, blend it in, cover up the cracks and pores, the thin line of blood. The eyes you make bigger, wider and more intense. Yes, these are the windows to my soul; see how they are tinged with black and blue. If you cry, they reveal themselves to be bruises, two big black eyes. Like you have been violently punished and beaten.
Perhaps this is the better look. Perhaps this is the real face you ought to be showing to the world.
For the lips, a hint of color, a shade darker to make them more defined, so your mouth doesn’t appear to be just a flap of skin slashed open with a knife.
I can’t go out without my face on, my mother always said. Her made-up face, the only self she wanted to know or show. Her plastic face, doing its best to keep the real one stapled and tucked underneath.
The reflection in the mirror showed me two women. Frank and me.
She smiled. You’re ready, she said.
Thank you, I replied.
It has always been Frank showing me how to make up a face. We were twelve when she first took me inside the bathroom with a bag full of tricks, eye shadow and blusher and paint for the lips. This is how girls learn to play at being women.
When we’re grown-ups, she said, we’ll be perfect women.
In the kitchen, I tried to eat a few bites of toast, something light to line the stomach. I swallowed down a mug of coffee. The barn was still shut up. Sam would be asleep, lost to his whiskey oblivion. Unaware of everything that happened last night. Everything spoken and agreed.
I went out to the car. I switched on the heat to try and warm myself. I turned the radio to a Swedish talk show, and set off for the police station.
In my jacket pocket I had Frank’s phone, stolen this morning after we hugged and I’d made an excuse to look for something in the spare room.
I did it for you, Merry, she’d said, and I had to pretend I believed it. That I was grateful, even.
You know I love you, Merry.
Yes, I see that, Frank.
In the parking lot of the police station, I looked through her phone. The photos she’d taken of the baby in the woods, captured under the date and time. He was still awake. A knife to the heart, the sight of him small and alone in his stroller, abandoned child in the middle of the trees.
He did not even have the words yet to cry out for help. Mama. Papa. We were nowhere. He was at the mercy of everyone and every cruel thing.
Frank, the cruelest of them all.
I was late for my interview but still I sat, trying to let the heat from the car take the ice out of me. Grief. Loss. Guilt. The terrible, irreversible truth.
Monster. Murderer.
But which of us is worse?
On the camera roll, one photo I’d missed. A rare one of Frank and me, two faces smiling for the camera. Sam must have taken it. Her arm is around my shoulders, holding me close, as though she is sheltering my small frame with her own.
We look happy, the way people who are happy look. A happy day, a moment outside of time. Nothing to prove, nothing to lose, nothing to take away. Just two old friends, enjoying the sunshine on a warm August afternoon.
I know all your secrets, Merry, she said.
I slipped the phone into my pocket.
Frank
It wasn’t all a lie. It wasn’t all the truth. What does it matter anyway? The two eventually merge into some form of reality. Some version of something half resembling the facts.
Here is the truth. The truth is, you don’t always set out to do something. Sometimes, it is the buried part that takes over, the part deep and black inside you. You know it is there—it always has been—but it is kept secreted away, chained up in the basement because it is so fearful and hideous and shameful that you cannot imagine anyone ever seeing it and understanding that it belongs to you. Like your limbs and your teeth and your bloody heart, it is a part of you no matter how you try to disown it.
No, you say. You weep, you beg. Go away, leave me alone. Please, you say, I don’t want you here.
It quietens; it’s clever. It knows to wait. To bide its time until the moment is irresistible and you are too weak to fight it.
In these moments, it is the monster rising from the deep, the beast that gnaws off its own limb to escape the chains, the tiger at the circus who one day turns his jaws mid-performance and splits his master in two.
Enough, it bellows, shaking itself loose, snarling and spitting and howling into the night. You have kept me locked away for long enough.
Into the world it unleashes its angry chaos.
Yes. This was it. Raging me, hurt and banished, bursting with injustice. I followed Merry into the woods. I held the baby in my arms, because it was the very best feeling in the world, the weight of a small, warm human.
A baby. A baby who looks at you with wide, hopeful eyes, a baby who tells you wordlessly that you are enough, that you are loved, that you are all they need to make them feel safe and happy in the world. I rubbed his back, feeling the knobs of his vertebrae, the thin ladder of ribs, the solid thumping of his young and pure heart. He smelled of lavender baby wash and diaper cream, of something new and unspoiled.
Oh, Conor, my Conor. What a sweet, dear boy. I held him and loved him. I loved him very much. I held him and wept, for how I’d hurt him the night of the anniversary. For how I’d been so unthinkably cruel.
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br /> No. For how his mother was cruel. And for how she would never love him enough.
I held him and I looked into his little face. His mouth was open, his hand spread softly across my heart. I studied him, that impossibly smooth skin, all fat and youth, those long lashes, those shining eyes—like liquid gold.
Those eyes! I looked at him. Merry’s baby. Merry’s unloved baby. I watched her life in his face, a montage playing across the screen of his flesh. Merry’s whole life, spent taking what she’s wanted. Never a fight, never a struggle. Impervious to loss or attachment. Impervious to people and their emotions.
Thoughts you don’t even know are there start to unionize. They push everything else aside and march to the front of your brain. They shake you and shout.
Merry didn’t deserve the baby. Merry didn’t want the baby. Merry didn’t want Sam.
It was all wrong. The picture was all wrong. Unjust.
But it’s not fair, my childhood self would moan to my mother.
And who told you that life is meant to be fair? she always said in reply. Pragmatic old Carol, who almost never got what she wanted.
The flash of an idea, terrible and cruel, the voice saying yes. Yes. Maybe I could make it right.
Take him.
Take him.
Look what you did, Merry. Look what you made me do.
I kissed Conor’s mouth, a poison kiss from his fairy godmother.
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