He knows that we’ll never see each other again. I can tell by the way Tyler lets his fingers linger in my palm as I step into the hallway and cautions me to “take care of myself.” In another life, I’d be with a man like him. We would share our stories over bottles of wine, take our kids to picnics in the park, laugh at one another’s jokes. Make love until morning. We’d build a happy blended family based on kindness and mutual respect.
But I’m a murderer. I don’t get that happy ending.
Fortunately, Jake is gone when I reenter the apartment. Vicky is near hysterics from a full diaper. I lift my baby from the carriage and hold her against me with both hands, too weak from all the emotions and activity in the past twenty-four hours to trust myself with a dangling football carry. The changing table is in the bedroom. As I enter, I can’t help but notice that the covers on Jake’s side of the mattress are tossed back onto my spot by the window. His refusal to make the bed seems vengeful. In my head, I can imagine him excusing his sloppiness: You can’t kick me out and think I’m going to straighten up before I leave.
Vicky stops crying the second I place her on the padded changing surface and release the tabs on her diaper. The blue line on the outside of her nappy that lets me know when it’s wet extends all the way to the waist, a mercury thermometer about to burst in the heat. The diaper is so heavy and warm with urine that I can’t properly fold it into the neat pentagon that fits in the hole of the fancy bin purchased at Babies“R”Us. Pee ruptures from the sides as I shove it inside while holding Vicky down on the changing mat with my other palm.
“I can do this all by myself.” I say the words aloud to comfort me. “Jake wasn’t helping anyway. I can do this alone.”
I put on a fresh diaper with my clean hand. Now dry, she wants to nurse. All the liquids that have leaked out of my eyes and chest during the past twenty-four hours have left me dehydrated. I pull Jake’s cover flat and place Vicky in the center of the bed on her back, feeling like a bad mom for leaving her unattended as I wash my hand in the kitchen sink and simultaneously grab a water glass from the cabinet.
My thirst makes me overfill it. It spills as I rush back into the room, creating a wet spot on the hardwood that I will have to wipe up later. I scoop Vicky back onto my torso and sit with my back against our headboard, drinking water with my right hand while she drains my left breast.
After she finishes, I put her on my shoulder to burp her. She spits up on the strap of my shirt, catching the ends of my hair. I tell myself that I could use a shower anyway as I put her to nurse on the other breast. When she’s done, I hear a loud squirt followed by the distinctive sour-milk smell of baby poop. Again, I remove her diaper, this time wiping the mustardy grains from her backside. I put on a fresh one, dress her in a side-snap onesie that says “Sleep, Eat, Poop, Repeat” and put her down for a short digestion nap in her crib.
I strip out of my college gear and get into the bathtub, not even bothering to check the reflection in the mirror. I can imagine what I look like after bawling over Colleen. I don’t need confirmation.
While rubbing shampoo into my scalp, I realize that Jake didn’t take any of his toiletries in the shower caddy. He probably only packed an overnight bag and intends to talk things out with me in the morning. I’ll have to box his stuff up and have it ready to go by the time he gets here. I add packing my husband’s things to my mental to-do list: feed Vicky, change her, entertain her, buy packing boxes from the UPS store—and tape. I can’t forget tape.
The water rinses sudsy and clear. Not red. Not now. I tilt my face into the stream, as though the steady drops on my forehead might penetrate into my brain and flush the image of Colleen’s blood flowing off my body. It doesn’t work. Instead it adds the phantom sound of her falling into the water, like a log dropping into a stream. The sound intensifies as I head into the kitchen for another glass of water to help me replenish my milk supply.
I sit on the sofa as I drink my eight ounces. The couch is a holdover from Jake’s bachelor pad days. He can have it. In fact, he can take the television too. I prefer reading to watching movies. I scan the room for anything I want to keep and realize that I can’t find one item. I only want Vicky. I don’t deserve anything else.
Instead of packing Jake up, I should box my clothing and Vicky’s things. We can move to a cheaper apartment, maybe somewhere by my mother. Of course, then my commute would get longer. But my mother could help watch her when I needed to work late.
A buzzing sound stops me from listing the pros and cons of relocating to New Jersey. I track it to my purse, hanging off of Vicky’s stroller in the foyer. Jake’s number is on my cell screen.
He shouldn’t be calling me so soon. Goose bumps, like those I’d felt walking to the dumpster, break out on my arms. Something is wrong.
I pick up without saying hello.
“Beth, we need to talk,” he says. “I followed you in the park. I know what you did.”
LIZA
“You have to call the police.” Chris says this as though she’s stating the obvious, like we are talking about reporting a breakin or a suspicious stranger and not turning in murder evidence against my husband of twelve years. The best defense, she tells me, is a good offense. If I bring the gun to the cops and explain that David must have buried it, they’ll be more likely to take my side than if the weapon comes up in court as evidence unearthed by David’s investigator.
She might be right. Still, I can’t do it. Though my husband didn’t love me like he loved Nick, I have to believe that our marriage meant something.
“I need to talk to David first.”
Chris looks at me as though I’ve forgotten our conversation or the fact that my husband lied to me for the better part of a year. “You can’t warn him. That’s idiotic, Liza. He’ll go to the police and say you told him that you buried it.”
Arguing with Chris is difficult enough without reeling from the revelations of the past hour. My head is a Newton’s cradle where the horrors of my childhood hit against my present problems in perpetuity. My marriage began failing when I couldn’t get pregnant. My father is the reason I can’t have children. I married a man who could never really love me. I had a father who never loved me at all.
“I have a splitting headache.” I press my fingers to my temples for emphasis. “I need aspirin.”
Chris makes me promise to wait in the side yard for her to return with my pills. The house, with its kitchen knives in the drawers and its possibly full bottle of aspirin in the medicine cabinet, is far too dangerous for a person with a suicide attempt in her past and a plethora of reasons.
I pretend to agree with her logic as I direct her to the downstairs bathroom. As she enters through the side door, I slip the gun into my bag and run to my car.
I hear the screen door slide open again as I’m shutting the driver’s side door. “Liza?” Chris sounds incredulous. “Where are you going?”
“I’m sorry,” I shout through the window. “But I have to talk to my husband.”
Chris runs out to the driveway, waving the bottle of aspirin, shouting for me to come out and talk this through. I jam my keys into the ignition and put the car into reverse. The sound of gravel rattling beneath the chassis drowns out Chris’s cries as I back out onto the road and gun the engine.