Izzy did all of this. Izzy stole the endorsed check, she made the regular cash withdrawals from my father’s account, she opened a credit card in my mother’s name. She bought herself jewelry, a bangle bracelet made of genuine jade, which glares at me now from the fleshy wrist, just inches away from my grandmother’s wedding ring, which she also stole. She’s been stealing from my parents all this time. My mother hasn’t been misplacing things. Izzy has taken them.
“That bracelet?” I ask, to be sure. “Where did you get that bracelet?” though again my thoughts are a jumble, not knowing what the jade bracelet has to do with the receipt for a pendant necklace I found in Nick’s drawer. They’re one in the same, aren’t they? Nick used my parents’ credit card to purchase the necklace, helping himself to hundreds of dollars of my father’s hard-earned money. To buy a necklace for Kat, I’d assumed. Because he was sleeping with her. Because he loved Kat more than me.
Izzy thumbs at the bracelet. “Your father bought this for me,” she says with a wink as my grip on the baseball bat again constricts, a boa constrictor squeezing its prey. I’m feeling dizzy, nauseous from the heat of the garage. I’m losing control, wondering again what Izzy’s thievery has to do with Nick’s death? Are they one and the same? Are they connected somehow? Did Nick know?
Or are they disjointed facts, and my imagination is to blame for fusing them together?
But if not Izzy, then who?
Who? I want to scream, or maybe I do scream it aloud for Izzy just stares at me with eyes gaping wide, listening to my breathless scream. Who? Who? Who?
“You,” I say, pointing a finger at her, thinking how worried I’d been about my parents’ finances and my father’s state of mind. “You.” And at that I raise the bat to strike her in the chest, or maybe the head, and Izzy pushes me in return, her face turning florid, a frightening contrast to the white of her bleached hair. I stumble awkwardly into the hand tools that line the garage wall and at once a wheal begins to form on my shoulder, fiercely red and rising from the surface of the skin. I stare at Izzy in dismay; this can’t possibly be the same woman who trails on the heels of my mother, predicting her every move. Gently, lovingly catering to her. Caring for her.
“Why would you tell me this? Why in the world did you confess?” I ask, though of course I know why she confessed. She confessed because I left her no choice. Because I threatened to beat the life out of her if she didn’t confess, and now I’ll do it regardless, confession or not.
“Because stealing, Clara, is a far cry from murder. I might be a thief, but I’m no murderer. I never killed Nick,” she says defensively this time, and for once I can’t tell if she’s lying or not. “You have to believe me,” she begs, her voice suddenly desperate and pleading, and I find that in that moment I don’t know what to believe, for it’s happening so fast and I’m so confused, certain that Melinda was to blame, then my mother, then Theo and Emily and Izzy.
If Izzy didn’t kill Nick, then who?
“Why would I believe you?” I ask.
“You said it yourself, Clara,” she says, confusing me. “I had no reason to kill Nick. Nick, who was always so kind to me. I’m just as sad about Nick’s passing as you are,” she claims as a puddle of phony tears fills the basins of her eyes and she begins to cry. It exasperates me, the bogus tears at my dead husband’s expense. It makes me lose control. How vain to think that she is as saddened by Nick’s death as me. He was my husband. He loved me the most.
And that’s when I lose it.
I brace myself to strike. I’m feeling off-kilter, finding it hard to stand, much less think, as I raise the bat up above my head. I haven’t slept in weeks, and the delirium and confusion and sadness chip quickly away at me, a wood carver with chisel, rendering me a skeleton of myself. I come at Izzy with all of my might, flinching as if it hurts me more than it does her.
I’m stricken by a sudden and visceral irascibility, and it hits me then: this is just as she did to Nick, though in my heart of hearts I know it isn’t necessarily true, but I need someone, anyone, to take the blame for Nick’s death. It’s a means to an end, that’s all. Killing Izzy because I so desperately need someone to blame so this can be over and done with. I need closure. Acceptance.
Self-defense, I’ll later allege, though I’m not thinking about that right now.
Right now I’m only thinking that I need for this to be through.
NICK
BEFORE
We pick up the Chinese food first and then head home. As expected, traffic is a nightmare, stir-crazed drivers at the helm, ready to be home. They accelerate quickly and then slam on the brake, going nowhere. The sun is bright this evening, the day still hot. The thermometer on my car’s dashboard reads eighty-three degrees. As the sun sinks lower and lower into the evening sky, its glaring light lands in that cavity just beneath the visor’s edge so that there’s nothing there to dull the light. It disorients me as I drive on, having forgotten my sunglasses at home. I find that it’s hard to see. I use the rear tires of the car before me as a guide. I can’t see anything up above—not the houses or the trees—because the sun is there, turning the world into a sea of flames.
I take the back roads to avoid the gridlock of the highway, gliding down Douglas to Wolf Road. The car fills with the scent of ginger and soy sauce, and my stomach growls at the anticipation of food. Maisie sits in her car seat, kicking her little feet against the back of the passenger’s seat, asking, “When will we be home, Daddy?” and I tell her soon. “I want to be home now,” she pouts, and again I tell her, peering over my shoulder to look her in the eye, that we’ll be home soon. Her eyes are sad, pleading, desperate. “I’m hungry,” she complains, and I pat my stomach and say that I am hungry, too.
“I’m starving,” I tell Maisie. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”
At this Maisie laughs, a high-pitched squeal, and comes back with, “I’m so hungry I could eat a sheep,” and we both laugh.
“I could eat a pig,” I say, and Maisie says, “I could eat a cow,” as the tires of the car in front of me come to a sudden halt, and I slam on the brakes, the car kicking up rocks as I swerve to the side of the road, missing the bumper by a mere three inches. I inwardly curse the logjam of evening traffic, this stop-and-go for no apparent reason at all. Car horns honk, and slowly, we begin to move.
And then my cell phone begins to ring. My first thought is that it’s Clara asking me to pick up milk on the way home, milk as well as Chinese, but when the Bluetooth display bears the name Kat, my heart skips a beat.
It’s Kat, calling finally to tell me if Gus is my son.
Just like that my hands begin to sweat, and I’m no longer thinking about evening traffic.
“Where are your books?” I ask Maisie before answering the call.