CLARA
This afternoon my mother has a neurologist appointment at three o’clock, the very same time that the HVAC men are to come to my home and bless me with an operable air-conditioning unit at my father’s expense. But the memories of the HVAC men evade me as I maneuver a sleeping Felix and a completely crazed Maisie into the back seat of my car, not thinking of anything but that car, the black car, my mother’s car. Maisie is beside herself, absolutely unable to calm down for anything, not a sticker or her teddy bear or the promise of ice cream. She hasn’t stopped crying, a paltry cry but still a cry, as if she’s truly scared out of her mind. She kicks in my arms as I set her in the back seat of the car, and, as I attempt to strap the harness around her lobbing body, she gets me in the nose with those hot-pink Crocs of hers. I recoil, and she begins to whimper, petitioning desperately and to no avail for Daddy. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” she begs.
As I stand there on my driveway, both sweating and out of breath, trying to close the back door against the weight of Maisie’s foot, Emily comes scurrying down the street, tugging little Teddy by the hand. “Would Maisie like to come over and play?” she asks, as if she’s plain forgotten about our rift the other morning, as if it didn’t happen. Teddy stands beside her with pleading eyes, telling me how he and Maisie are going to do another magic show as if it’s already been discussed, which of course it hasn’t, but I’m shaking my head before I can stop myself, and already I’m telling them no. “No, Maisie can’t play today,” I say. “No.”
As if it matters, Emily tells me that Theo isn’t home.
I step past her and say that I’m in a rush. “There’s somewhere we need to be.”
“Clara,” she says, latching on to my arm. The bruising is still there, decorating her neck like festive garland. My eyes fall to it and then glance away quickly, as Teddy presses his face to Maisie’s side window and makes a silly face. From the interior of the car, I hear Maisie squeal in delight, clapping her hands. How she adores sweet Teddy, so much so that already she’s forgotten about kicking me in the nose. Oh, how easy it is for Maisie to forget. “I just couldn’t bear to think of it,” Emily says to me. “A murder,” she whispers, so that Teddy won’t hear, “so close to our homes. We’re not that type of community.” I think to myself, easy for her to say. Hers isn’t the husband who’s dead. “It isn’t that I didn’t believe you,” she says. “It’s that I didn’t want to believe. Theo and I picked this area to live because of the low rates of crime. Some vandalism, arson, auto theft. Sure. But murder, Clara? I can’t imagine. There just has to be some other way,” she goes on, though I excuse myself; I don’t want to hear it. I say I have to go, stepping into the car and driving away quickly, leaving Emily and Teddy standing awkwardly on my drive, wondering whether her words were a failed attempt at an apology, a rationalization or something different. Something else. Something more.
I think of Theo with his rotation of loaner cars. His petulance and temper. The fear in Emily’s eyes.
Theo is no stranger to brute force; the bruises on Emily’s neck are proof of this. He and Nick were never friends; he called the police on Nick. He had a beef with him. Maybe he wanted to get even, to seek revenge.
And suddenly my mind is swimming, all logical thought and sensibility sinking beneath the water, drowning a slow death. I can’t think. My mother killed Nick, of this I was certain just moments ago.
But now a new thought crosses my mind, one that doesn’t replace the first but only distorts it somehow, turning it ogrelike before my eyes.
Theo killed Nick.
And I find that it’s like radio static somehow, all sorts of white noise and other disturbances interrupting the ordinary processes of my mind. Crackling noises. Interference. Background noise. Drugs and adultery, lying, stealing, cheating. Who is this man I’m married to? Who killed Nick, or did Nick kill Nick?
My mother killed Nick.
Theo killed Nick.
Or maybe someone else killed Nick, I think as I see Emily and Teddy shrinking away in the car’s rearview mirror as I drive slowly down the street. Emily’s eyes are aimed in my direction, watching as I go. The hem of her long skirt blows in the wind, getting wrapped around her legs.
Maybe she isn’t trying to cover for Theo.
Maybe she’s trying to cover for herself.
She would do anything for Theo, out of fear and out of necessity. Maybe Nick threatened to go to the police if Theo ever laid a hand on her again. Emily has confessed to me that she couldn’t live without Theo, not because she loves him but because he pays the bills, he puts food on the table and a roof over their heads. He’s the sole breadwinner in the family, and without him, Emily believes she has nothing. Believes she is nothing.
Maybe Nick told her he would turn Theo in for spousal abuse, for child abuse.
Maybe Emily killed Nick.
A dozen radio stations play simultaneously in my mind, each playing a different genre, a different song, not in harmony but, rather, fighting each other for airtime, the volume turned all the way up so that it’s impossible to think or to hear, and it all becomes one thing: noise.
A migraine forms in my head. It’s all too much to handle.
It’s all I can do not to scream.
“Mommy, play a song?” begs Maisie from the back seat of the car, and I think to myself, How can she not hear it? The radio is already on.
NICK
BEFORE
I stand in the doorway to the bathroom, watching as Clara forces Maisie’s hair into twin pigtails with adroit hands. Maisie, excited for an afternoon at ballet, is completely incapable of standing still, though Clara reminds her countless times, “The sooner we’re done here, the sooner we can go.” She forces a pair of white tights onto Maisie’s legs, then slides on her leotard and the pink tutu. Maisie begs Clara for lipstick, and at first Clara hesitates, but then she relents, painting a pale pink lip gloss across Maisie’s lips.
My heart stops. My little girl is all grown up.