It’s me.
Her eyes are wide and terrified. They fill with tears. She stands in a princess dress because it was what she insisted on wearing today and I didn’t care enough to object. It’s a beautiful dress made of organza, a Halloween costume that Maisie considers appropriate for daily wear, with glittery rosettes stitched to the bodice and light-up, high-heeled shoes. On her head is a tiara. Lilac in color with feather trim and colored jewels. Perched askew on the top of her head, threatening to fall.
She’s just a child. A wholesome child watching her mother beat the life out of another woman while the woman begs for her to stop.
“It’s Boppy on the phone,” she says, trying hard not to cry, and in that moment I lose control of my body. My legs go weak and lame. The bat falls from my grasp. “Tell Boppy I’ll call him back,” I say as I shrivel to the ground like flowers withering in the heat of the afternoon sun, and Izzy takes advantage of this—bruised but not broken Izzy, who limps and bleeds but is very much still alive—to make a run for it. I don’t have it in me to stop her as she hobbles through the house for her purse and keys, and heads for her car. I watch on as she climbs inside and fights the aging engine to start, driving off down the street, her Izzy charm still clenched in my fist.
Izzy can wait.
“It’s okay,” I say to Maisie, extending my pinkie finger as only Nick would do. “Pinkie promise, it’s okay,” I tell her and, as she slips her tiny pinkie through mine, she smiles weakly, though her hand still shakes and on my fingertips there is blood.
I stagger into the police station with Felix in my arms and Maisie on my heels. The very same quasi-receptionist in uniform greets me, and this time I don’t need to wait fifteen minutes to speak to the detective. Detective Kaufman is phoned without delay, and he quickly appears, standing before me, eyeing my children and me.
“Mrs. Solberg,” he says, and I’m not sure if it’s concern that crosses his face or something more like disbelief or incredulity, but I don’t care. My mouth opens, and these words come tumbling out, “She did it. She killed Nick,” I say, and the detective asks, “Who, Mrs. Solberg, who?”
“Izzy,” I say.
“Who is Izzy?” he asks cynically, and I don’t respond right away for I can’t find the words to explain. Again he asks, “Mrs. Solberg, who is Izzy?” and this time I manage to tell him.
“My mother’s caregiver. Izzy Chapman,” I say, and as I start to rattle off the woman’s credentials, I wonder how much of it is true, or whether Izzy lied about them to deceive us, my father and me easily putting our trust in her because we were so desperate for good help we would have believed anything.
“And what reason would Ms. Chapman have for killing Nick? Did she have a motive?” he asks, stepping forward, and when I splutter, not willing or not able to hush my voice for the children’s sake, “I don’t know, I don’t know, but she killed him. I know she did,” Detective Kaufman leads me to an interrogation room and suggests we start at the beginning. But before we do, he phones for another detective, a female detective by the name of Howell—Detective Howell—to come and lay claim to Maisie. Maisie is too young to overhear the conversation that’s about to transpire, and though she doesn’t want to, it’s in Maisie’s best interest that she goes.
“I don’t want to,” moans Maisie, eyes pleading with mine as Detective Howell reaches out a hand and says, “I’m pretty sure I saw cookies in the vending machine. You like chocolate chip?” and Maisie gives in, only for the sake of cookies. Detective Howell has also promised to find coloring pages, and I wonder if, somewhere in another interrogation room much like mine, she will sit Maisie down and ask her about what she saw today, the bat and the blood, Izzy begging for me to stop.
With Maisie gone and Felix asleep in my arms, Detective Kaufman again asks me to explain, and I begin falteringly to recount my story of the black Chevrolet, the Izzy charm I found beneath the seat of the car. My words verge on incoherent. The detective only stares. He’s unimpressed with my fieldwork and displays far more interest in Izzy stealing from my parents than her committing murder. The facts that he bullet points on the legal pad before him have to do with the stolen check, credit card fraud, insurance fraud and more, but when I raise my voice and insist, “She killed my husband,” he gazes at me disinterestedly—or maybe it’s with shame and pity—and asks to know about the blood on my hands.
I open my mouth and commit perjury. “Self-defense,” I allege, saying how Izzy came after me with the baseball bat. How I was only trying to protect myself from her.
“She killed Nick,” I assert. “I didn’t know what she was capable of. I had to protect myself. I had to protect my children.”
“Did you hit her with the bat?” he asks, and I say, “Of course not.”
“When is the last time you’ve eaten, Mrs. Solberg?” he asks, evaluating my dry skin, my hollow cheekbones, my tired eyes. Like magic the baby weight has disappeared from my stomach and hips, and instead of a potbellied pig, I’ve become gaunt. “Have you been eating, sleeping? There are grief counselors, you know,” he says, but I snap at this, telling him I don’t want a goddamn grief counselor. I want him to find the person who killed Nick.
“And where is Ms. Chapman?” he asks then, and I tell him she ran. “Is she okay, Mrs. Solberg? Did you hurt her?” and I shrug drily and say, “Nothing she won’t get over,” but even this is something I don’t know. How hard did I hit her? I wonder now, thinking of the fury with which I swung that baseball bat. Did I hit her head, or was it only her hands? Did her hands protect her head from my repeated blows? Or might there be damage, internal damage, far more damning than a bloody nose?
I check my watch. It’s nearing four thirty. “She could be anywhere by now,” I say, though I beg the detective to send an officer to keep watch over my mother and father’s home in case she returns, and he relents, saying he will. He’ll send someone at once. “You’ll look for her,” I insist. “You’ll arrest Izzy.” But all Detective Kaufman assures me is that if and when his officers find her, they’ll bring her in for questioning in regards to fraud and theft. If my father chooses to press charges, that is.
“And murder,” I remind him, though the expression on his face says otherwise, and I think that maybe it’s not murder after all, but rather manslaughter, vehicular homicide or some other designation of which I don’t know. I’ve gotten the terminology wrong, that’s all. The wrong verbiage.