The Murderer’s Daughters

by Randy Susan Meyers

  I closed the card, thinking I might have a fury-induced stroke if I read any more. How did he manage to throw in that breezy reference to my mother, as though she were in Boca Raton rather than moldering in a coffin? Here’s a news flash, Dad—we have no “our family.”

  Adults should be able to offer themselves up for adoption. I’d find a family who gathered at every holiday ever invented—quick, get out the Columbus Day tree!—offering ourselves immeasurable occasions to use our in-family jokes and us-only references. A family that celebrated birthdays in some way other than sending homemade birthday cards from prison.

  I ached to say things like Oh, Jesus, I haven’t called Aunt Mary in ages! I wanted to walk into a warm house and have worried people grab my arms and ask, “How bad were the roads, Lulu?” as I shook the snow out of my hair.

  Adopting adults should be as desirable as rescuing beautiful little Chinese girls.

  Maybe this would be the year I’d tell the prison to forbid him to send me mail. My daughters were both getting old enough to notice “Inmate Correspondence Program, Joseph Zachariah, 79-×-876” on the envelope flap and “Richmond County Prison” as part of the return address. He’d been banned from telephoning me ever since I had my first phone.

  Our shredder groaned as it made confetti from my father’s card, then the envelope.

  I rotated my head to the right and the left, stretching away tension. I imagined my family secretly placing candles on my birthday cake. The girls had barely contained their excitement about the hush-hush dessert. Cake! Ice cream! Sugar, sugar, sugar!

  Drew realized I hated this day, and like a good husband, he sympathized, but only to a point, the point when my neuroses poked into our daughters’ need for normal family interaction. Given my druthers, I’d eschew all festivities, and until I became a parent, I had. However, decent motherhood demands everything in the world from you, including pretending happiness about your own birthday, and letting your children own a piece of that supposed joy.

  I closed my eyes and tried to wish away the stress backache wrapping itself around my spine. I pushed my fingers deep into my lower back and rubbed. I grabbed two Excedrin and washed them down with cold coffee. Then I took a breath and opened the door to the impatient sounds of my daughters waiting for my gasp of delight at the pink—Ruby’s choice—and purple—Cassandra’s—helium-filled balloons floating around the ceiling like lost clouds, dangerously close to the fan blades spinning over the table.

  “Mama!” Ruby barreled into my arms, shrieking. “Guess what we have, Mama!”

  I hugged her hard, loving the feel of her perfect little body, the silk of her dark hair under my cheek. Ruby looked like my sister and husband more than she resembled me—as though Drew and Merry had mated and then snuck their embryo into my womb. Merry’s eyes stared out from Ruby’s face, miniature little chocolate Tootsie Pops, under Drew’s sharply arched eyebrows and over his snubbed nose.

  “Happy birthday, Mama.” Cassandra’s prim tone acknowledged the importance of the occasion.

  Drew bent me backward for a Hollywood-style kiss to the shrieking delight of the girls, who loved watching him loosen me up. Merry pulled me to the table and seated me before a stack of presents. I shut my eyes for a moment and invoked the gods of false gaiety.

  “First things first,” Merry said. She sat across from me and lifted Ruby on her lap, the two of them looking like mother and daughter. If Mama were here, the picture would be complete, three generations of beauties. Ruby leaned against my sister’s chest, the strands of their hair a perfect color match.

  Cassandra stood at my side, her thin hand on my knee. She rested her head briefly on my shoulder, and I kissed her cool cheek. She presented pale, ethereal, and Lutheran-pretty, like Drew’s mother, both with green eyes smudged with gold.

  Just as in my childhood, I felt like the plain one, Drew’s constant assurances meaningless as I stared at my sister. Maybe I’d choose a homely family to adopt me—I’d like to try being the pretty one for a change. On the other hand, my no-nonsense looks offered approachability. My patients presented their secrets with the predictability of the tides. I drink at night, but no one knows, the bus driver told me. I cheated on my wife. Please, test me for everything, begged the history professor. I hide Dove chocolate bars in the bottom of the hamper, confessed the depressed nurse with uncontrolled diabetes.

  Merry pressed a present into my hands, and I tugged at the opulence of curled ribbons circling the box. Finally, I took the scissors Drew offered and snipped them open. The girls watched with a hush.

  “It’s special!” Ruby said. “We got it from—”

  “Shh!” Merry held a finger to Ruby’s lips.

  “Let Mommy be surprised,” Drew said. He moved to sit next to me, pulling Cassandra onto his lap.

  I ripped off the wrapping from the heavy-for-its-size package and lifted the top of a stiff silver box, the sort of box given by expensive stores. Merry saved boxes like this forever. Bright tissue paper—hot pink, neon blue, parakeet green—layers of it needed to be unpacked before I reached the present. “I can tell who wrapped this.”

  “Daddy made the package beautiful for you,” Ruby declared. “But Aunt Merry—”

  Again, Merry shushed Ruby. I pushed away the wrapping. Under the tissue, a glossy hexagon box shone. I recognized the object immediately. It had come from what my mother had deemed Grandpa’s collection. Mama had decorated our living room with these exotic treasures. Mother-of-pearl triangles ornamented the polished surface, meeting at a circle of glittering green stone. It had been many years since I’d seen this box. The last time had been during my final visit to Aunt Cilla’s house, when I’d realized my mother’s sister had taken all my mother’s belongings.

  Mrs. Cohen had thought it important to put some sort of closure on our relationship with my aunt and uncle. She drove Merry and me over to Aunt Cilla’s house in Brooklyn, leaving us alone there for a horrible half hour so we could “talk.”

  “What, what are you looking at?” Aunt Cilla had said when she saw me staring at the amethyst ring on her right hand. “Am I not supposed to have a memory of my sister?”

  When she got no response from me, she’d turned to Merry. “And you, who’s taking you to see the monster now?”

  “How did you get this?” I asked Merry.

  She grinned as though she’d pulled off quite a coup, too damn excited to notice the warning in my voice.

  Cassandra answered. “She got it from Aunt Cilla.”

  “Aunt Cilla had it in New York!” Ruby said. “Aunt Cilla!” Ruby repeated the words Aunt Cilla with relish, though she’d never met her. The girls had never met a soul from my side of the family except, of course, Merry. Ruby, our athletic girl, who played in the family-rich Cambridge Little League, came home with stories of teammates’ grandparents, cousins, and uncles on a regular basis.

  “She gave it to Aunt Merry. For you,” Ruby made clear. “Aunt Cilla.”

  For me. Indeed. That would break tradition. My mother’s sister hadn’t done anything for us since she’d banished us from her house and sent us to the orphanage.

  “I remembered how much you loved it,” Merry said. “It was your favorite.”

  I started to remind Merry that she couldn’t possibly remember anything from before Mama died, then stopped. “Thank you.” I ran my fingers over the top, smooth and cold as I remembered.

  Once a month, when Mama took them down from the shelf, Merry and I had made little worlds with the boxes. Mama had placed them carefully on the carpet and let us dust and shine them. Seven black onyx boxes in all different shapes and sizes, some inlaid with green and red stones along with the mother-of-pearl.

  “It was your mother’s,” Cassandra said in whispery wonder. My mother, by her absence, by her rare mentioning, had been elevated, along with my father, to the status of a hovering saint. My children lived to the fullest our myth that a fatal car crash had taken both our parents. Only Drew, Merry, and I
, and my tiny bit of family left back in New York—family we never saw, and never should—knew the truth.

  “Right, it was my mother’s.” I ran my fingers through Cassandra’s hair. I wanted to shove the box away, before my past tainted my daughters’. “I see another present. Is it for me?”

  “Don’t you miss your mother?” Cassandra asked for the millionth time. “Isn’t it sad that she’s dead? She died when you were little, right?” She bound her hands together as though showing respect.

  “Not so very, very little,” I assured her. “I was your age, and you’re not so very little, are you?” I playfully clipped her chin.

  Ruby clasped her hands together, imitating Cassandra’s prayerful position. “Who took care of you?”

  My daughters took every opportunity to pepper me with their questions.

  “You remember, honey, Aunt Merry and I went to the special sleepover school.”

  “Why didn’t you go live with Aunt Cilla?” Cassandra asked as though for the first time.

  I repacked the box, covering it with the vibrant tissue. “You know the story already.”

  “Okay, girls, let Mommy open her other present.” Drew reached for a small box and handed it to Cassandra. “You can give this to Mommy.”

  Cassandra took the box but didn’t offer it to me. “But why?” she asked again. “Why didn’t she take you? She’s your aunt. You were all alone!”

  Merry wrapped her arms tighter around Ruby. “She wasn’t an aunt like me, sweetie. I’ll always take care of you, no matter what. But Aunt Cilla had too many other responsibilities.”

  “And she was too sad from everyone dying, right?” Ruby said, repeating the family litany. “So she was too pressed. About the accident.”

  Drew took over. “De-pressed. Right, Aunt Cilla was depressed. Now give Mommy the present, Cassie.”

  I took the present Cassandra held out. Her ecologically correct wrapping, the Boston Sunday Globe’s comic pages, covered a small velvet jewel box. Inside, sitting on a fluffy mound of cotton balls sprinkled with tiny ribbon shavings, were a pair of macaroni shells dipped in gold glitter. A shaky pink glitter L decorated each one.

  “L for Lulu,” Ruby explained.

  “She knows,” Cassandra said. “Do you like them?”

  “We made them.” Ruby’s eyes sparkled. “They’re earrings!”

  I touched them carefully. Drew had applied some magic artist substance to render the macaroni jewels buttery-slippery-smooth. “They look like real gold.”

  “I made the letters.” Ruby picked the earrings up and handed them to me. “Aren’t they pretty?”

  “Do you like them?” Cassandra asked again.

  “I love them.” I unscrewed the plain gold studs I wore most days and put in the shells.

  “Oh, you look so beautiful, Mama!” Ruby gasped.

  I went to the mirror hanging above our oak buffet and turned my head from one side to the other. Layers of glitter trapped in the hard resin shimmered.

  “We made them together, Daddy and Cassandra and me.” Ruby ran a small hand down my arm, then grabbed my hand and kissed it. “Because we love you. We’ll always take care of you.”

  I covered Ruby with her pink and white fairy princess comforter, kissing her in the pattern she’d long ago established: right cheek, left cheek, and chin. When I got to Cassandra’s room, she’d already cocooned herself in her patchwork quilt. After one more glass of water for Ruby, one more kiss for Cassandra, I slipped out and into the kitchen, where I leaned over the sink and took deep breaths, letting my anger beat back before joining Drew and Merry in the living room.

  I tried to imagine what it had been like for Merry, seeing Aunt Cilla. My sharpest memory of her would always be the hours following Mimi Rubee’s funeral, when everyone went back to Aunt Cilla’s house after leaving the cemetery. I’d been what, eleven?

  I won’t have Joey’s girls living here. Not in my house. They’re black marks on my sister’s memory, a dark shadow on my mother’s name. Having them here is ripping out my kishkes.

  I’d swallowed Aunt Cilla’s words in silence, nodding, as though agreeing with my aunt that, yes, Merry and I were exactly what she said: dark shadows, black marks, kishke rippers.

  I went to find my sister.

  “What in the name of God were you thinking, Merry?” I sat close to Drew on the couch, seeking his body heat. Drew preferred the air-conditioning at a cool sixty-seven degrees. Even in July, I pulled on cotton cardigans.

  “I worked my behind off to get the box for you,” Merry said. “For one thing, I actually saw Aunt Cilla.”

  Itchy curiosity about Aunt Cilla’s fate fought with my need to scream no. No boxes from the past. No Aunt Cilla. No bringing any of it into my house.

  No more passing information about me to our father.

  My present glowed poison green from the table. Sticky tentacles crept at me from the onyx box. I scratched X after X on my arm.

  “I don’t want it.” I crossed my arms against my chest. “I don’t want anything from that time in my house.”

  Merry came forward in the bentwood rocker and pointed at me. “You need something from back then or you’ll never deal with it.”

  “News flash: I don’t plan to deal with it. Is that what you’re doing during those visits to prison? Dealing with it? Hah!”

  “Are you planning to let the kids think their grandparents died in a car accident forever?”

  “Just what do you suggest?” I couldn’t admit that I kept hoping our father would die before I had to face some ultimate decision. I brought my knees close to my chest, protecting myself from the box’s vibes. “Should I let you take them to prison with you next time you visit him?”

  “It would be better than trying to hide him forever. Doesn’t anyone but you get a vote?” Merry turned to Drew. “Aren’t you concerned about this giant lie you’re feeding the girls?”

  “Don’t ask him, ask me!” I almost yelled, holding back only because of the girls.

  “Watch it,” Drew said. “I’m not a lamp, for Christ’s sake.”

  I slid away from Drew and picked up Merry’s wine, taking a giant gulp, knowing it drove him crazy. Put together a woman drinking and a woman getting emotional and you’d see my husband harden like concrete.

  “Great idea, Lulu. Add fuel to the fire,” Drew said.

  “It’s my fire,” I said. “And you, Merry, don’t bring me any more remembrances.”

  “You know it’s just going to blow up in the girls’ faces, don’t you? You can’t live in denial forever.” Merry never gave up.

  “At least I’m not rolling around in it every day,” I said. “Unlike you, I don’t need to have criminals be my entire life.”

  “Screw you,” Merry said. “Being a probation officer isn’t because of Dad. Here’s something for you to consider—I thought you’d like the box!”

  Drew untangled himself from me and took away my wineglass. “Time to go home. Time to go to sleep. This is over.”

  Merry ignored Drew and came over to the couch. She lay down, placing her head in my lap. I rubbed her back, feeling her tears stain my pants. After a time, she rolled over and gave me a toothy, wet-eyed smile. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just wanted to make you happy.”

  “I know.” Merry had an expensive smile, with expensive teeth, teeth that had rotted courtesy of the New York City orphanage system and the terrible genes she’d inherited from who knows which side of the family. I had helped her fix those teeth by spending thousands of dollars ten years before. My marriage, which came with Drew’s good-size nest egg, had enabled me to pay for this. Thank God I didn’t know how good size it was when we dated, tempted as I might have been to marry him solely for the money. However, I married for love, for Drew’s ease in the world, for his caretaking, for accepting Merry as part of our bargain.

  For asking less of me than others had.

  For keeping watch over us.

  For his willingness to joi
n me in ignoring my father’s existence.

  I could afford to forgive his need to shut us down when we boiled over, and his chafing under the bubbling quicksand Merry and I kept at the edge of our lives.

  “I love you, Drew,” I said from where I sat with Merry.

  “I know.”

  “And I apologize,” I said.

  “Right.” He gathered up the birthday garbage from around the room, avoiding my gaze.

  “And I love you, Merry,” I said.

  “I know, too,” she answered. “But someday you’re going to have to tell them.”

  Not necessarily, I thought, but I let it go, imagining our father having a heart attack, being stabbed in a prison argument, too tired to argue.

  Merry and I stayed on the couch, wrapped together in our wine-rendered love-hate until Drew pulled us apart. He walked Merry out the door. I heard the key turn in her lock, heard her door open. I listened as she entered her apartment, heard the sound of her footsteps over my head as she walked across her wooden floor.

  The past trapped us. Even now, at forty-one and thirty-six, we remained prisoners of our parents’ long-ended war, still ensnared in a prison of bad memories, exchanging furtive glances, secrets known and secrets buried flashing between us.

  “Coming to bed, Lulu?” Drew stood in the doorway of the living room. His expression of sympathy seemed curdled by my and Merry’s tired repetition.

  “Soon,” I said. “I’ll get there soon.”

  21

  Merry

  I hugged my rigid brother-in-law good night and walked into my apartment, snapping on lights as I headed to the bedroom. I ripped off my clothes, threw on an old basketball T-shirt I’d once plucked from Drew’s Goodwill pile, and turned on the TV as I went past the set.

  Despite the effects of alcohol buzzing through my head, I forced myself into the bathroom, where I smeared on an expensive cream guaranteeing me an eternal wrinkle-free, moisture-rich existence. Even in death, I’d be pretty.

  Creamed, I collapsed on my unmade bed, falling back on my pile of pillows. Crimes in the hood topped the TV news. I listened closely, tuned for which of my probationers had been arrested on some new charge of rape or murder. Please God, if it was one of my clients, let it be for a simple assault. Being a probation officer, I was accountable for hundreds of thugs and gangbangers, and each time one of them committed another crime, I felt responsible for some family’s pain.