“Here are your clothes. You can pick up a cab on Main Street.”
His brain would reach for the memory of her warmth, for the smell of her skin beneath the powders and the creams. But the powders and creams would have been reapplied and the woman he’d touched would be hidden away, beneath arched brows and the slow drag on a cigarette. And when he tried to kiss her, his lips would meet her cool cheek.
How would it be?
The night was cold and the street silent and full of pre-dawn calm. He walked for over an hour, thinking of her. Pushing the image of her husband from his mind, the image of his mother’s face, the faces of Ruth’s children. Pushing away his own shame, his own guilt.
He tried to focus only on her. On her tired, beautiful face. On how she would taste. The sounds she would make. The softness of her under his fingerprints. And he found that it was easy to think only of her.
He felt his heart pound and imagined it attuning itself to her heart. He thought of the connection between them stretching across the city: elastic, taut with possibility. With promise.
He thought of her voice. Of how she looked, and the different textures of her hair and her skin and her mouth. He thought of the things he wanted to say to her, the letters he wanted to write and knew he would never send.
He felt an ache of longing in the pit of his stomach, in the back of his throat. And he felt the space where she ought to be.
Frank came by and said he needed to talk to her.
Ruth’s mother smiled at him, gave him her cheek to kiss, said that she would leave them alone, that she had planned to go to church that morning anyway.
They went into the living room and Ruth sat by the window, smoking. She watched her mother walk down the path, stiff-legged, back bent. She let Frank’s words wash over her, let the warmth of the winter sun through the glass relax her.
Then he said something that shook her awake. She turned to him.
“Devlin said what?”
“He told me a lie detector test would make all the questions stop. He said if we both took the test, they’d leave us alone.”
Ruth lit another cigarette, blew out smoke, looked at him through narrowed eyes.
“And you believed him?”
Frank spread his arms in a gesture she knew well. It was his I-forgot-the-time pose. His they-didn’t-tell-me-you-called, I-couldn’t-get-the-money-today stance.
“Ruth, he’s a cop. He just wants to find out who did it. That’s his job.”
She took another drag, stared at the floor. Thought about Devlin and that other cop—Mackay. Telling her he understood. Telling her he knew how things could get out of hand. That low voice, insinuating he knew she’d killed her children. They’d been pushing and pushing her for months. She needed to find a way to make them stop.
Two days later, Ruth sat in the chair in the dark room.
She’d told Devlin that she would do the test, but she wanted Frank to do it as well. And she wanted assurances that she would be alone in the room with the technicians, that no one would be watching her. She’d had enough of being watched.
“Fine. That’s fine, Mrs. Malone. Sure. If that’s what you want.”
“And Frank will be doing it at the same time?”
“That’s right. Both of you. He’ll be just in the room next door.”
As the technician checked the wires and tested that the machine was working, she smoked one cigarette after another.
“This isn’t legal, you know. I read that they don’t accept it in court.”
The man kept his head down, turned dials, flicked switches.
“There must be something wrong with it. Otherwise they’d accept it in court.”
He stayed silent, but glanced toward the door.
Then they began:
“Is your name Ruth Marie Malone?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Are you married?”
“Not anymore.”
“On the night of July thirteenth, nineteen sixty-five, were you alone at your apartment with your children?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever hurt your children?”
“No.”
“When did you last see your children alive?”
“I’ve been through this. Over and over.”
“When did you last see your children alive?”
“Are you asking Frank the same questions?”
The technician looked toward the mirror along the wall.
“Are you?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t . . .”
“Frank Malone. My ex-husband. He’s taking the test next door right now.”
“There’s . . . we only have one machine.”
Ruth pulled the wires from her arm and threw them at the bemused technician as though they were radioactive. Then she walked to the mirror on the wall and spoke into it.
“You bastard. You lied to me!”
And then: “I can hear you laughing at me, you piece of shit! This isn’t fair. It isn’t fair!”
She spat her words at the men in the mirror. “You’re not interested in finding out the truth about my kids—you just want to twist everything against me!”
MALONE MOTHER REFUSES TO TAKE LIE DETECTOR TEST