“Kerra.” Huge breath drawn in, huge breath expelled. He slapped his hands onto his knees. “What in God’s name is going on?”
“Excuse me?” She managed arch again. “My brother’s been murdered. Does something else need to be ‘going on’ for things not to be quite as you’d like them?”
“You know what I mean. There’s what happened to Santo and God knows that’s a nightmare. And a gut-ripping tragedy.”
“Nice of you to add that last bit.”
“But there’s also what’s happened between you and me and that?whether you want to admit it or not?began the same day as what happened to Santo.”
“Murder happened to Santo,” Kerra said. “Why can’t you say that, Alan? Why can’t you say murder?”
“For the obvious reason. I don’t want you to feel worse than you already feel. I don’t want anyone to feel worse than they already feel.”
“Anyone?”
“Everyone. You. Your dad. Your mum. Kerra?”
She got to her feet. The postcard was singeing her skin. It begged to be withdrawn from her pocket and flung at him. This is it demanded an explanation. But the explanation already existed. Only the confrontation remained.
Kerra knew who needed to be on the other side of that confrontation, and it wasn’t Alan. She pardoned herself and she left her office. She used the stairs rather than the lift.
She entered her parents’ room without knocking, the postcard in her hand. At some point in the day the curtains had been opened, so dust motes swam in an oblong of weak spring sunlight. But no one had thought to open the window to refresh the rank air. It smelled of perspiration and sex.
Kerra hated the smell, for what it stated about her parents and the stranglehold one had upon the other. She walked across the room and shoved the window open as wide as she could get it to go. Cold air swept in.
When she turned, she saw that her parents’ bed was lumpy and the sheets were stained. A pile of her father’s clothes lay on the floor, as if his body had dissolved and left this trace of him behind. Dellen herself was not immediately evident, until Kerra walked round the bed and found her lying on the floor, atop a considerable pile of her own clothing. Red, this was, and it seemed to be every article of crimson that she possessed.
For only an instant as she gazed down upon her, Kerra felt renewed: a bulb’s single flower finally being released from both the soil and the stalk. But then her mother’s lips worked and her tongue appeared between them, French kissing the air. Her hand opened and closed. Her hips moved then rested. Her eyelids twitched. She sighed.
Seeing this, Kerra wondered for the first time what it was actually like to be this woman. But she didn’t want to entertain that thought, so she used her foot to flip her mother’s right leg roughly off her left leg. “Wake up,” she told her. “It’s time to talk.” She gazed at the postcard’s picture to gain the strength she needed. This is it her mother’s red writing said. Yes, Kerra thought. This was definitely it. “Wake up,” she said again, more loudly. “Get up from the floor.”
Dellen opened her eyes. For a moment she looked confused, until she saw Kerra. And then she pulled to her the garments nearest her right hand. She clutched these to her breasts and, in doing so, she uncovered a pair of shears and a carving knife. Kerra looked from these to her mother to the clothes. She saw that every item on the floor had been rendered useless through slashing, slicing, hacking, and cutting.
“I should have used them on myself,” Dellen said dully. “But I couldn’t. Still, wouldn’t you have been happy had I done it? You and your father? Happy? Oh God, I want to die. Why won’t anyone help me die?” She began to weep tearlessly and as she did so, she drew more and more of the clothing to her until she’d formed an enormous pillow of ruined clothes.