Blameless

by B. A. Shapiro

  Diana told herself there was no way she was going to be arrested for murdering James—let alone convicted. They were just being cautious; it was better to spend a few dollars to ensure the worst didn’t happen. But no matter how hard she tried, the images wouldn’t go away. The baby being born in prison. Her daughter growing up with the stigma of an incarcerated mother—a mother she only saw wearing the coarse red uniform of a murderer.

  Diana blinked back tears. To lose her family. To be separated from Craig. From their child. To never know her. To never drink in the sweetness of her baby smell, to never feel her chubby arms pressed tightly around her neck. To see them both only on monthly visiting days.

  Diana saw the sterile vastness of the visitor’s room at Middlesex, the long table running the width of the space, clear plastic rising from its surface to the ceiling, separating the free from the unfree. She remembered the sheriff explaining that although there were bathrooms off the visitor’s room, no one was allowed to use them. Visitors had to go back out through the metal detectors to the facilities off the main entrance. This was to keep contraband from being hidden in the toilets for prisoners to retrieve later. “Yes,” he had responded in answer to a question. “Even the elderly and small children.”

  21

  IT WAS THE TUESDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING AND THE roads were busy, but traffic was flowing smoothly. Diana figured that with a little luck, she could make it to Norwich by ten-thirty, thereby giving herself half an hour to get lost before Molly Arell expected her.

  When Mitch had advised her to call ahead to arrange to meet with Molly, Diana had balked. But to her surprise, Molly had been very pleasant. Diana hadn’t even had to use her half-baked explanations for the trip—her meeting in the area and her need to get a few final bits of information on James to close out her files—for Molly had immediately invited her to stop by anytime.

  “People love to talk about themselves,” Mitch had said. “Always have, always will.” As Diana’s class was canceled due to the Thanksgiving recess, she had proposed to Molly that she come down the next day. James’s aunt had graciously offered to fit her in between her nine-o’clock tennis game and her noon literature class. Diana had been forced to shuffle her afternoon patients around, but it had all been accomplished with surprising ease, and now she was flying down the Mass Pike toward a meeting she anticipated with both excitement and dread.

  Mitch had spent almost an hour on the phone coaching her. “Remember,” he had advised, “the one and only purpose of this visit is to see if you can get the aunt to slip up and reveal that Jill’s alibi is a lie. So do everything you can to make her feel comfortable. Never be antagonistic. Never threaten or intimidate. Only if she trusts you will her guard drop.”

  He was a good teacher, and Diana felt much more confident than she would have expected under the circumstances. She also had found his optimism contagious. “I can just feel it in these old bones,” he had told her. “You’re coming back with something.”

  Diana’s heart beat faster at the idea of actually finding some evidence that would implicate Jill, of coming home exonerated and triumphant. Stop it, she warned herself as she turned off the highway. Raising her expectations for what promised to be a difficult encounter—to say the least—was not a good idea. But she also knew that she needed every possible ounce of confidence she could muster to walk up to the door of 52 Pine Street.

  Consulting Molly Arell’s directions and the map Mitch had suggested she buy, Diana drove through downtown Norwich—“downtown” being a rather long stretch of the term. The place had that depressed-fifties look that indicated it had never seen better times, Diana thought as she took a left turn around a jewelry store with a huge banner declaring that they had lost their lease, and a right two stores beyond a closed-down moviehouse. She was relieved as she headed away from the drab narrow streets toward the more suburban part of town.

  She rode for a couple of miles past unpretentious houses and strip shopping centers—one named Marcus Plaza—and found the corner of Warren and Pine just a little after ten-thirty. She returned to Marcus Plaza and sat in the small parking lot, revving up her confidence and reviewing Mitch’s instructions, until just before eleven.

  A beaming Molly Arell greeted Diana at her front door. “Please, please do come in, dear,” she said, leading Diana through her unassuming living room into a bright homey kitchen that flashed Diana back to childhood afternoons of Oreos and milk. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Molly continued. “This whole thing has just been so difficult for all of us—for the family.” She touched Diana’s arm and her smile faded. “And I’m sure it has been equally difficult for you.”

  Even though she had come to this woman’s house to get proof she was a liar, Diana couldn’t help warming to James’s aunt. The aunts hadn’t technically done anything wrong, after all; they had been only guilty of disinterest and silence. According to both James and Jill, their mother and her three sisters had known when Hank Hutchins first moved to Norwich that he was up to no good, although it wasn’t clear exactly what that “no good” was. And although Hank was from James’s father’s side of the family, he spread his money around James’s mother’s family—helping pay off Gertie’s mortgage, “loaning” Molly what she needed for a new refrigerator, paying a year’s college tuition for Hallie’s oldest—so it was convenient for everyone to keep their eyes averted. And after Uncle Hank got caught and sent to prison, the sisters were so humiliated they continued to act as if nothing untoward had occurred. On second thought, Diana realized that an act of omission was still a wrong.

  Diana accepted the older woman’s offer of coffee and sat down at the large and comfortably worn table. She watched Molly, who must have been in her early sixties but moved as if she were half that age, as she poured from a coffee maker standing on the immaculate counter.

  “Decaf, I presume?” Molly asked, smiling at Diana’s stomach. “My daughter just had her second, so I know all the rules.”

  “Thank you,” Diana said again, pressing her damp palms to the skirt of her jumper. She felt as she did on the first day of class: nervous and hyped-up, full of both excited anticipation and an almost uncontrollable desire to bolt from the room.

  Mitch had instructed Diana to take her lead from Molly, to sit quietly and politely and just let the woman jabber. And Molly was doing exactly as he had predicted. “I felt just terrible when Jilly was so hard on you at James’s funeral,” she was saying. “But you have to understand that the poor girl was beside herself. James meant the world to her. Everything, perhaps.” She stared into the depths of her coffee mug and sighed. “I don’t think she ever really accepted how truly disturbed that boy was.” She shook her head and looked up at Diana. “You’re not by any chance related to any of the Norwich Marcus girls, are you? I went to school with Beatrice, but there was Bertha and Rose and Doris and Sandra—and a son too, I think. One of their husbands—Sandra or Doris’s, I can’t remember which—built a shopping center just around the corner from here.” She nodded as if she didn’t expect Diana to believe her words. “Named it after them.”

  “No,” Diana said politely, although she was worried that the older woman’s tangents might whittle away her short hour. “My father was an only child.”

  “Too bad,” Molly said, playing with the handle on her mug. “I understand Jilly was also quite rude to you when you went to visit her at her apartment.”

  Diana took a sip of coffee in an attempt to cover her surprise.

  “Oh, yes,” the aunt said, nodding sagely. “Jilly and I are very close now. And I know she felt quite badly about the incident.”

  “She did?” Diana asked, not bothering to conceal her incredulity.

  “And that’s why you’re here, right?” Molly tilted her head and smiled at Diana. “You want my help getting back that journal or whatever it is.”

  Speechless, Diana resisted the urge to shake her head. Mitch had cautioned her to watch her body language, to modulate her voi
ce, to play to Molly’s lead. So Diana tried to control her movements. She swallowed her words and nodded encouragingly.

  Diana’s reaction must have been acceptable, because Molly continued, “You have to forgive Jilly’s rudeness. You must,” she pleaded. “We—the whole family, that is—knew right from the start, when we thought it was suicide, that you couldn’t be held responsible for what James had done.” She raised her eyebrows. “Let’s just say that no one was overly shocked. And now, well …” She looked meaningfully at Diana’s stomach. “Well, it’s obvious that you had nothing to do with this either.”

  Diana nodded and sipped her coffee, trying to figure out how to take control of the conversation. According to Mitch, she shouldn’t interrupt Molly’s prattle, but her time was running out, and she had to get the woman to the subject of Jill’s alibi. “Bite your tongue if you have to,” Mitch had advised. “But keep yourself quiet.” So, against her better judgment, she did. And once again Mitch’s recommendation was right on the mark.

  “I was so happy that Jilly and I reconciled before all this happened—it would have been just too horrible for everyone involved had the family not been back together. Ironic, isn’t it? To think that I was actually up in Boston visiting with Jilly on that very day …” She stared off into space. “Frankly, I don’t know if Jilly could have survived it all without us.”

  “Families can be a tremendous source of strength in difficult times,” Diana murmured, hoping to encourage Molly to let down her guard and say something that would reveal what Diana believed was her charade.

  “Yes,” Molly said, nodding her agreement. “And even though our family has had its rocky moments, we’ve always stuck together when times got difficult.”

  Diana tried to smile at Molly, but it wasn’t easy. She knew too much of the history, had felt too much of James’s pain, to believe a word of Molly’s close-knit-supportive-family rubbish. According to James, it had been Jill who had raised him, Jill who had made him do his homework, Jill who had bailed him out when he got caught shoplifting, and Jill who had helped him write his college application essays. Their mother had slipped into a deep depression after the Uncle Hank episode—a depression from which she never recovered, a depression, it seemed to Diana, that she had been in all her life. And although all three of her sisters lived in Norwich, they went out of their way to maintain their distance from James. James had laughed and said he was just the family black sheep, claiming that every family needed one. But Diana had seen the hurt in his eyes when he told her his aunts had stopped inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner after Jill moved to Des Moines.

  “Like when my poor sister Gertie—Jilly’s mother—was having all those troubles with James,” Molly was saying. “The drinking. The drugs. The police.” She stared out the front window and sighed with labored sincerity. “It was a burden we all shared together. It was so hard for Gertie to understand, James being so smart and handsome and all. She just couldn’t see—kind of like Jilly—couldn’t see that the boy was plain bad.” Molly turned and looked at Diana. “It was his own fault, I always said. Someone that smart could have helped himself, if he had really wanted to. With his looks and his brains …” She shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Don’t you agree?”

  Diana looked at the older woman, amazed at the capacity of the human mind to deny what it didn’t want to see, to truly forget what it didn’t want to remember. “These things can be very difficult to understand,” she said slowly, straining to follow Mitch’s advice, but unable to help herself. “More complex than one might think.”

  Molly pursed her lips. “If you had known him as a child, I’m sure you would agree. He had the devil in his eyes from day one.” She stood and looked out the window as a car pulled up in front of the house. “Day one,” she repeated, then frowned. “My son, Adam.”

  A tall blond man in his mid-twenties sauntered through the kitchen door. “You’re James’s doctor,” he said when he saw Diana. “Adam Arell.” He held out his hand and smiled warmly. “I know that you were a good friend to James.”

  Diana took his hand, vaguely remembering him from the funeral. “And I know that you were too.” James had spoken often of Adam: of how they had fended off Jill and the older cousins together; of how Adam had stood up to the high school principal for him; of Adam’s problems in Baltimore. Diana looked into Adam’s pale eyes and smiled. Although his coloring was completely different, there was something of James about him.

  Molly pursed her lips again. “Why aren’t you at work?” she demanded.

  Adam dropped Diana’s hand and winked at her. He turned to his mother. “I’ve got early lunch today. I’m due back at the store at noon.” He walked across the room and began pulling sandwich-makings from the refrigerator. “My mother mentioned that you were coming down this morning,” he said to Diana. “Would you like something to eat?”

  Diana shook her head and, out of the corner of her eye, caught Molly glaring at Adam. Molly quickly rearranged her face for her guest. “Used to be that children grew up and moved away,” she said, sighing heavily. “Now they grow up and stay.”

  “Aw, you love it, Ma,” Adam said, winking again at Diana. “You’re going to be crying in your coffee when my commissions get big enough for me to get a place of my own.”

  “I doubt it,” Molly said.

  Diana smiled slightly at this pseudo-friendly repartee. She didn’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to sense the undercurrent of tension. She watched and listened in silence for a while, her eyes moving between mother and son like a spectator at a tennis tournament. Mitch might not approve of her aggressiveness, but it struck Diana that in this family animosity lay an opportunity that would be lost if she continued to remain passive. “So,” Diana said into a moment of silence, “your mother has been telling me how close your family is.”

  “Ha!” Adam snorted as he spread mayo on a couple of pieces of bread.

  “And,” Diana continued, as if unaware of Adam’s cynical response, “how pleased she is that she and your cousin Jill have reconciled their differences.”

  “Not the we’re-all-so-happy-sweet-Jilly-has-returned-to-the-fold bullshit again?” he said, pulling a thick wad of turkey from a plastic bag.

  “Adam!” Molly stood abruptly and carried her cup to the sink.

  He sidestepped neatly around her and grabbed a glass from the cabinet. “Along with the James-was-plain-bad-from-day-one story, I suppose?”

  “You know that James was in trouble all of the time.” Molly slammed her cup into the sink and turned to her son. “You know that just as well as I do, Adam Francis! You can do all the pretending that you want, but he—”

  “And the rest of us were all perfect?” Adam asked.

  Now Diana took Mitch’s advice. She sat back in her chair and said nothing, letting Adam and Molly take their argument wherever it might go, hoping it would give her what she needed.

  “Far from it,” Molly said with venom in her voice. “Especially when you were around him. But that doesn’t change the fact that—”

  “Did I ever tell you what really happened the time Elizabeth broke her arm?” Adam asked his mother.

  “We have company, Adam.” Molly’s voice rang with icy authority.

  Adam carried his plate to the table and placed it across from Diana. He sat down and addressed Diana as if his mother hadn’t spoken. “When we were kids, all the cousins were afraid of Jill. She might not have been ‘bad from day one.’ And she might not have been ‘in trouble all of the time’”—he flashed his mother a roguish grin—“but she was a real hothead. No way to figure what she was going to do next. Even James was afraid of her—and he thought she could walk on water. One minute she was protecting you from Mike Carlson, the bully of Hilldale Road, and the next she was pushing you off the jungle gym.”

  “That’s quite enough, Adam,” Molly ordered. “I won’t have this kind of talk in my house.”

  “You and all the aunts thought Elizabeth fell and bro
ke her arm, didn’t you?” He shook his head sadly. “Wasn’t so. ’Twas your precious Jilly who pushed her.”

  “I won’t listen to your nasty lies,” Molly said. “And I must apologize to you, Dr. Marcus. Adam has been so surly and hateful of late.” She glanced down at Diana’s stomach. “You do everything for them when they’re young. They’re the light of your life. Your beautiful children. And then—”

  “Cut the crap, Ma,” Adam said. “It’s important for Dr. Marcus to hear both sides of the story. Did you bother to tell her anything good about James? Anything about how close he and Jill were? How he supported her for the last decade or so? What about how he helped her when she got into that mess in Des Moines? Or how about when he dropped everything and came down to Baltimore to bail me out?” Adam waved his sandwich in the air. “Did you tell her any of that, Ma? Did you?”

  Diana shifted in her seat, trying to look as if she were terribly uncomfortable, although actually she was thrilled by the family feud she had so easily instigated. She was also enthralled. This discord was the soil in which James had been nurtured, in which he had grown. Jill too.

  “No,” Molly said. “Nor did I tell her that since James cut Jilly off, the poor thing’s been in terrible financial straits.”

  “Not that sad car repossession story again,” Adam said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Seems to me Jill is old enough to be responsible for herself.”

  “Oh?” his mother asked, raising her eyebrows. “People who live in glass houses …”

  “Touché!” Adam said, grinning, then took a bite of his sandwich. “So who do you think killed James?” Adam asked Diana conversationally.

  “I have my literature class at noon,” Molly said before Diana could answer Adam. “I’m on my way out the door.” She picked up Diana’s mug and placed it in the sink. “And so is she.”