A Twist of the Knife

by Becky Masterman

  “Don’t tell me to calm down! A man’s life hangs in the balance and all you can do is think.”

  “You’re being unreasonable, and you sound hysterical. Where’s that old Coleman professional restraint?”

  There was a shout, and then I heard the sound of something breaking.

  “Did you just throw something?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer that. “Restraint,” she said. “Brigid Quinn is advising restraint.”

  “Oh. Well,” I said.

  By this time it was late afternoon, and I was starving for lack of lunch. Wanting to feel like I wasn’t letting at least one person down, I drove over to Mom’s, picking up a couple of burgers from a drive-through.

  I found her already in her nightie and her old snap-front housecoat with the big pink hibiscus flowers on it. I made a mental note to get her a new housecoat for Christmas. There were crumbs on the counter in the tiny hallway kitchen, and Mom was always very neat, which told me she had eaten something in her apartment rather than go down to the dining room. But the crumbs didn’t give me a clear picture. Could have just been toast.

  “Junior Whopper with cheese, your favorite,” I said, unwrapping one for each of us. “Fries and a strawberry shake, too.”

  She didn’t say anything but looked grateful almost against her will. She sagged into her recliner, and I sat in Dad’s, facing the television, which was turned on to an old Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie. We munched in silence, and when we were done I cleaned up the smelly hamburger wrappers and took them to the garbage chute down the hall so they wouldn’t stink up the place.

  In the hallway I called Carlo on my cell, only to connect and tell him there was no real news.

  “None here, either. We got a notice from the homeowners’ association. There have been some cases of graffiti in the neighborhood. And Peg got a thorn in her paw. Pretty boring.”

  “Did you get it out okay?”

  “Yes.”

  I said, “I can’t think of anything nicer than to be bored with you.”

  When I got back to the apartment, Mom hadn’t moved. As in, her fingers were in the precise position on the arms of her recliner. I sat back down.

  We watched another movie while I thought about Creighton and whether we’d actually get the stay of execution, let alone a new trial, let alone an exoneration. How many more years he’d have to be in prison while all that happened. Thoughts veering from him to Dad and back again.

  I asked Mom if she had the old photograph albums I remembered looking through on countless occasions myself, trying to get a handle on our family and my place in it. She pointed to the hutch crammed into the small space that was the dining area of the apartment, and I found the two albums in the bottom drawer.

  I spent a little time looking, and remembering. Then something made me say, “Mom, if something happened would you be all right?” Please say you’ll be all right.

  There was a silence. It was like there was something going on at her end that had never been there before, or at least that I had never noticed. Did she know what I was thinking as well as what I was saying? Had she always? Were mothers that way?

  “Sure, I’ll be all right,” she said, saying what I wanted her to say. What she knew I wanted her to say. But she picked at the arm of the chair as she said it.

  I turned my body the way I used to so that my back was against the arm of the chair and my legs hung over the other arm. I slurped the rest of my milk shake and balanced the empty plastic cup against my stomach. “He’s been a hard man to live with, hasn’t he?”

  I could feel her thinking Here we go again, but she said, “None of us is perfect.”

  “Remember how he used to try to turn Ariel and me into boys?”

  “It’s a little soon for memories. You might want to save them for the wake,” Mom said. She sounded angry now as well as tired. I liked that bite in her tone, I wanted to spur her on to some emotion, any emotion, and if I couldn’t get affectionate reminiscence I’d settle for anger.

  “Do you ever wish he was dead?” I asked.

  She managed to keep control. “That’s a mortal sin, even to speak those words. Even to think them.”

  “Then what about divorce, ever think of that?”

  “That’s a mortal sin, too. Have you completely forgotten your catechism?”

  I shouldn’t have fanned her flames any more than I had already, and certainly not when she was down like this. Then again, what the hell, I was a Quinn, so I said it. “What about hating him, is that a mortal sin?”

  “I never said I hated him.”

  There was another long pause, as if she’d gone too far that time and didn’t know how to get back. She had said more than she wanted to say, and only this forced contact over Dad’s ill health, and my persistent questions, had brought her to it.

  “Did you ever love him?” I pressed.

  She finally turned to face me and leaned her elbow on the arm of the chair as she did so. “Why are you suddenly asking all these questions?” She came as close to shouting at me as she ever had. Tired past her limit. I didn’t back down.

  “What is it with you two?”

  She settled on “None of your beeswax.”

  Ah, the old beeswax defense.

  But then later, when I insisted on spending the night, she didn’t resist, not even when I told her I’d sleep in Dad’s bed.

  I walked into the one bedroom, where they still had the antiqued French provincial bedroom set with twin beds. The Dick Van Dyke bedroom set. The little bed table held the beds apart as if it was a boxing referee. Dad’s dentures were in the glass next to his bed where they’d been ever since he went to the hospital. The water was getting filmy. On Mom’s side there was a rosary I remembered playing with as a child. Blessed by the pope it was.

  I didn’t want to appear insensitive, but I couldn’t stand the thought of Dad’s teeth grinning at me all night, so I took the glass into the bathroom and left it by the sink. The place was so hot I considered sticking my head under the faucet, but instead found a blanket in the closet and put it over Mom’s bed.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m turning the temperature down because I don’t want to die of heat stroke in my sleep,” I said, going to the thermostat and taking it down ten degrees from the eighty-five where it was set.

  She was already in bed fingering her rosary when I came back. I got one of Dad’s old T-shirts out of the single dresser in the room and changed into it in the bathroom. As far as I could recall, the last time I was naked with her was when I needed a diaper change. I had never seen her body.

  I got into bed and reached for the lamp on the nightstand to turn off the lamp. Some light still came in through the venetian blinds that overlooked the parking lot, casting a slatted shadow across the wall.

  The smell as I lay down on Dad’s bed was that singular odor that identifies a person no matter how young or old they are, the scent caused by years of breathing through the night. This scent was perspiration and old-fashioned hair oil with undertones of bourbon. It wasn’t that bad, kind of comforting actually, but I turned the pillow over just the same.

  There was no sound for a while other than the occasional clicking of the rosary beads, no louder than a moth beating against tinfoil. Then it stopped.

  Flashbulb memory of slumber parties in school, whispering secrets in a dark that knocked down barriers. I thought about the slumber party that the Creighton children missed. Their dad. My dad. Then my thoughts came back to the room. Thoughts are like that, real travelers.

  I put my hands out and felt both sides of the narrow mattress. Thoughts ran again, this time to what they had ever done in these beds. No, I wouldn’t ask that. But kisses? I tried to remember them kissing and came up with that thing where bodies stay apart and both pairs of lips extend out to barely touch. Once a year on anniversaries, and then only at someone’s urging. What other touching?

  Is anyone at home hurting you?
This was part of my job, after all. I had seen so many cuts and bruises in so many states of injury and healing, and in places one would never think to find them. Maybe I had it too much on the brain, but what’s oddest is that I had never before applied it to my parents. Is that odd?

  “Are you awake, Mom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Dad never hit you?” I strung out the words in such a way that I could almost be saying it would be unlikely never to have been hit. Not a big deal, Mom.

  Silence.

  “When he threw things, I mean.”

  “No.”

  I tried to make it easy for her. “By accident, I mean. A vase or a book?”

  “No.”

  The nos were coming pretty regular, but they didn’t have a lot of resistance in them, and I had the feeling that in the dark I was melting the beeswax. “What about cheating, Mom?” I tried to keep the words as soft as possible. “It’s okay to say, cops have that reputation.”

  The longest silence yet, and then “No,” whispered so softly, even now I can’t be sure I heard it. Even if I heard it, there was something about it I couldn’t believe.

  “Did he ever hurt you?” A different word, hurt is, from hit.

  I thought I heard a quick intake of breath, more like a sigh than a gasp.

  “No,” she said, with the breath. The word sounded so matter-of-fact, like we were talking about whether she had ever traveled outside the country, or eaten raw oysters.

  I didn’t believe her. I held my breath waiting to see if she would say more, but there was silence again. Silence, but so far she hadn’t cut me off.

  I had asked these questions of so many women, but never my own mother. Maybe I didn’t want to know after all. For now, change tack. “You’ve never complained about anything.”

  “Mothers don’t do that to their children, bring them into the battle. It’s not fair.”

  Battle. “Did Dad play fair?”

  “Go to sleep now, Brigid. You wore me out. I’m sleepy.”

  I waited for a long time to hear the sound of steady breathing that would tell me she’d fallen asleep, but I must have been the one to go first.

  Twenty-one

  The way Mom was the next morning, I had to doubt whether that conversation ever happened. Brisk and brusque as ever, after we called the hospital to find out Dad continued stable, she made me go down to the dining room for breakfast, where we sat at their usual table with two other old women. No more opportunity for honest conversation. No conversation at all; the two women with identical white poofs of hair sprayed into plasticity had nothing to say, and I ran out of energy with my own attempts.

  My phone rang, and I took it out of my pocket. Laura. Maybe she wanted to yell at me again. I started to get up and take the phone into the lobby, but Mom said, “Answer it here. The old ladies are listening more than you think, and this will probably give them their thrill for the day.”

  So I did, but tried to keep my voice down so the adjacent table couldn’t hear. “Hey, Laura. What’s up? You mean Will’s interview actually did some good? Are you shi—kidding me? Bones? Seriously? Where did he say they found them?”

  I was aware of the whole room going silent. Even the waitstaff froze in place.

  “Have you called the sheriff’s department in Vero? We’ll need a cadaver dog.” I closed my eyes. “I don’t think so…”

  When I disconnected, I looked at Mom. Her eyes, in which I’d just today noticed the sadness, almost twinkled. She said, “Go.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “What are you going to do, hold my hand? I’ll go over to the hospital later. When you get to be my age, bad health is your main source of entertainment.”

  I pretended to pick at my toast, and now I was the one who wasn’t saying what I meant. “I hate to leave you.”

  “No you don’t.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, and was aware of the two old women sitting on either side of me. The glitter in their eyes told me there was nothing wrong with their minds. This was better than a daytime soap opera.

  Mom sounded a little gentler when she spoke next. “Honey, listen to me. You left a long time ago. Longer than you think you did.”

  But then she opened her eyes wider over the edge of her juice glass, making me feel as if she’d just given me permission to run along and play.

  * * *

  Laura and I met the others at the Vero Beach police station by midmorning, Staci Kuhl along with the construction guy. Kuhl was a human remains searcher, the kind of person who, when you looked at her, you somehow saw dog in her eyes. It was a kind of goodness in the raw. The construction guy was introduced to us as Richard Hiatt. You can always tell an ex-marine. They’re always too something, too short or too tall, too good-looking or too ugly. His body looked like it couldn’t get any taller so he did his best to get bigger.

  Next to Kuhl was Chili Dawg. About one foot off the ground and wiry around the muzzle. Breed? I don’t know, maybe what they’d call a dachsypoo. Chili had won awards, but it wasn’t for her looks.

  Laura looked at the dog doubtfully, and Kuhl was used to the look. “Don’t even go there,” Kuhl said. “Chili has investigated collapsed buildings that a full-sized shepherd couldn’t fit in. She’s a pro.”

  The six of us, Staci Kuhl, Gabriel Delgado, Richard Hiatt, Laura, me, and Chili Dawg, piled into Kuhl’s SUV and drove to the site where Hiatt had seen the bones. I felt we could trust his memory; he remembered he had been eating a tuna sub that day, sitting under the shade of the half-completed bridge they were building to get to the island. If Hiatt hadn’t offered so much information as we drove, including that he moved from the North when his wife got a job in Vero as a paramedic, that he was happy to leave the cold, and that she made more money than he did, I would have talked more with Kuhl on the way. Kuhl would probably have explained to Laura that there was a chance the bones would have been covered by either bridge pilings or asphalt, and that we’d never stand a chance of having it all dug up.

  Luckily, Richard Hiatt remembered pretty specifically what part of the bridge he had been leaning against when he spotted something protruding from the sand. He said at first he thought it looked like a bone, but then he thought it was just a shell or something. The place wasn’t so much a beach as the sandy lip around the island, and the waves that came ashore in sync with the boats going by had eroded the soil some, even at that time. He talked mostly to Delgado, maybe because he was the only other male in the group.

  When he was finished describing that day when he sat in just this spot eating his tuna fish sub, he leaned against the piling and appeared satisfied that he had our undivided attention. He would, after all, think of us as “important people.” He would have more interesting things to tell his wife that evening than she ever had to tell him, no matter how many heart attacks and traffic fatalities she had covered.

  Laura pulled three T-shirts from a plastic bag. One was hot pink, one was navy blue with Spider-Man on the front, and the third was black with JUICY COUTURE written on it. They had been left with the evidence after the searchers stopped using cadaver dogs to hunt for the children. I thought about how those dogs would now be long gone themselves and whether in some afterlife they might have finally found the children. The others in the group were more about reality.

  “The records show these were picked up off the bedroom floors, probably unwashed, typical kids,” Laura said.

  Kuhl nodded in a polite but dismissive kind of way and did not take the shirts. “How long ago did you see the bones?” she asked Hiatt.

  “This would have been…” I could tell he was pausing for effect, but let it go when he saw we were all more fascinated by Chili.”Two years ago. It was the first part of the development process, and you can see they’re still adding houses. Do you want me to show you exactly—”

  “No, thanks,” Kuhl said. “Better if we do it this way.” She looked down at Chili, who was looking up at her as if ready
for a game. “Chili, find!” Kuhl called, emphasizing each letter of each word.

  Chili took off at a run, through a large concrete pipe that had been placed there to prevent further erosion, and peed against a sign warning passing boats NO WAKE.

  “Why didn’t you mention the bones again?” Kuhl asked as she watched.

  “Like I said, if I thought they were really human bones I would have said something. And I never heard about the missing kids until my buddy mentioned it last night, that interview on TV. I only moved here from Pittsburgh the year before I started working on this site.”

  “The remains would have been here for over a decade at that point,” I said. “Do you think it’s possible Chili can find them?”

  Kuhl snorted. I could almost think Chili did, too. She ran past Richard Hiatt in one of her passes over the area, and the guy reached out to pet her.

  “Please don’t do that when she’s working,” Kuhl said. But then she looked doubtful despite her apparent confidence in Chili. “If there were still some bones left when you were here two years ago, and they were close to the surface, it doesn’t necessarily mean there’d be some now. This is a very unstable environment. They could have washed away.”

  Chili kept her nose to the ground. After a few passes, during which time we might have all been holding our collective breath, she paused and cocked her head to the side. “Show me, Chili,” Kuhl said with the same careful pronunciation as before. But Chili didn’t appear to have reached a definite conclusion. She sniffed closer to the spot, almost digging her nose into the wet sand, then moved a step or two up the slope. She scratched a bit, sniffed, and moved another step

  “Ah, probably an odor plume,” Kuhl said.

  Chili had been moving step after step further up the slope of the bank. About ten feet from where she’d first paused she took a good drag, and only then started to bark. It was an annoying yippy kind of bark like you’d expect from a small dog. Grass had been planted on the spot, to make the area more attractive and to further hold back the erosion.