Another step.
I swallowed, caught a forgotten taste on the tip of my tongue, apple marmalade. Abby’s marmalade was always too thick, never reached the same consistency as Mother’s. Between the three women who made it, mine was the best. When I ate Abby’s it always stuck to the end of my tongue, had the taste of slightly blackened apple toffee. Father had developed a liking for Abby’s marmalade though, the way he slathered it thick on stale bread, the way he licked sticky from his lips. His enjoyment.
John had said how the men were wiping blood on clothes and towels all day. ‘You couldn’t help but put your hands in it.’ Now I understood.
I sat at the foot of the sofa and placed my hands in the water. The space where Father’s head had laid open was liquid-thick, imprecise. I expected him to walk through the door and tell me, ‘I had such a silly accident; I cut myself shaving,’ or, ‘There was a disagreement but it’s all better now.’ I was surprised by expectation, these things the dead could bring you. The stain would be hard to remove. Along the carpet were signs of how Father had been escorted from the room: the shock of his carved face was signposted by a dropped handkerchief; the conversation as to where best to store the body until the undertaker arrived was marked by small congealed blood spatters by the entrance to the dining room. How long exactly was he lying here before help arrived? I looked at my hands; I should have used gloves. There was a crack and drag along floorboards above my head and I held my breath. Then: a voice. John’s low tones followed by Lizzie’s sweeping laughter. I gritted teeth, failed to see how any humour could be found on a day like today. I placed the bucket of warm soapy water at the head of the sofa and began scrubbing in small half-circles, looked at the carpet and noticed that there was at once too much blood and not enough blood for the crime committed. Why wasn’t there more of him? When we were fourteen and four, Lizzie and I believed that Father was big enough to store the whole world inside his body, that in the centre of his stomach was a map that led to a secret world: corners to wait and hide behind, desert mirages for swimming, table upon table of boiled sweets, sugar water to drink, wide gullies full of trees and creatures, ancient ruins, a mother. Then, when I was fifteen, I discovered that Father was no longer a father: he was a person, like all other adults, prone to failure. He couldn’t possibly hold everything we wanted. The disappointment.
My wrists were lashed by the warmth of being with Father for the last time, those uncomfortable remnants. What had Lizzie’s last moments with him been like?
I scrubbed the sofa, replayed the police officers’ conversations:
‘And she showed no signs of harm?’
‘None that I could see.’
‘And she told you that she had found him lying down like such?’
‘Yes. That is how Miss Lizzie had left him when Mr Borden had come home.’
‘And she told you she found Mr Borden?’
‘Yes. She had said, “Father’s been cut.”’
Mrs Churchill had told me, ‘I saw your father this morning on his way to work. He looked so nice.’ She paused. ‘I keep seeing your mother’s body every time I close my eyes. I wish I hadn’t gone upstairs with Bridget to get those stupid sheets.’
I had stared at Mrs Churchill’s bulbous knuckles. Then she had whispered quick and fast to me, ‘When I first got here, I asked where your mother was and Lizzie told me she had gone to see a sick relative but then I kept asking her and she said the strangest thing: “I don’t know but I think they have killed her too.”’ Mrs Churchill began to sob. ‘I’m not going to tell the police about that because Lizzie was in all sorts of ways. God, to think this was all happening while I was next door. Emma, I didn’t hear a thing. If I had, I would’ve rushed right over.’
I leaned across and kissed Mrs Churchill on the cheek, her ghost-cold skin. ‘Thank you for looking after Lizzie,’ I said and my body shook. Why would Lizzie have said such a thing?
Father had once told me, ‘You have a slow brain for facts.’ But there I was collecting:
I had asked, ‘Has the culprit been apprehended?’
I had asked, ‘Has anything been stolen from the house?’
I asked again, ‘How long until the murderer is found?’
I scrubbed, blood covered hand. The brush in the water, the brush on the sofa, I scrubbed.
Father’s blood was thicker than I’d first thought. It had seeped into the carpet, watered the floral pattern and stained the wood below. I put the brush back into the water and rinsed, all the red, rinsed again. I absent-mindedly wiped the sofa legs with my fingers then wiped my cheek. I closed my eyes, heard a heavy thud upstairs. I gazed towards the ceiling, towards the place where Abby had been found, thought of what would have to be cleaned up there. My knees dug into the floor. I wanted Lizzie to come down and help. Another thud. Laughter.
I scrubbed the carpet, my scalp itched from sweat and heat and I stopped scrubbing, took stock of my work, all that was yet to be done before the funeral. My hands drowned in water, a faded red ring formed around my wrists, the blood that kept coming. I took the bucket outside, past the police lining the perimeter of the house, and threw the water onto the pear arbour. Over the fence I heard Mary and Mrs Kelly:
‘I didn’t see a thing, Mrs Kelly,’ Mary said.
‘Imagine that poor daughter having to come home to all of that!’
‘That family . . .’
Why did this have to happen to my family? I waited for the conversation to end and when it did, the women went away and I was on my own. I walked back inside, refilled the bucket with warm water. Back on my hands and knees I cleaned the wall behind the sofa, noticed hair-fine cracks along the skirting board and tried not to think about Father, but he was all around me. I scrubbed harder, knowing that behind the wall, Father’s and Abby’s bodies were rigid from disbelief. The heat trapped in the room ran across my fingers. I wiped them on my dress, afraid of what the air was carrying.
A strange wind howl whipped from the floral carpet; a lost child, frightened animal, a haunting. I scrubbed, my throat tight and sore, a strangulation, and the howl came again, so loud it filled my ears, stung my eyes, shocked the hair on my arms into tiny needles. The howl. The howl was me. How had I forgotten what grief would sound like? I was no stranger to it.
Then there was movement along the ceiling and a door opened. At the top of the stairs Lizzie sighed and cleared her throat before walking down and I dragged my head towards my sister: arms folded across her chest, head tilted to the side.