Exit Wounds, page 9
“Then why you chuckling?”
“I didn’t realize I was.”
“You say you’re a homemaker; it’s a fair question to ask what you make.”
“I make this house,” she said softly, “a home.”
“Ah, I get it,” he said. He looked around the room for a moment and his face darkened. “No, I don’t. That’s one of those things that sounds good – I make the house a home – but is really bullshit. I mean, this doesn’t feel like a home, it feels like a fucking monument to, I don’t know, hoarding a bunch of useless shit. I saw your bedroom – well one of them, one with the bed the size of Air Force One, that yours?”
She nodded. “That’s the master, yeah.”
“That’s the master’s? OK.”
“No, I said—”
“Anyway, I’m up there thinking you could hold NFL combines in that room. It’s fucking huge. It ain’t intimate, that’s for sure. And homes to me, always feel intimate. Houses, on the other hand, they can feel like anything.”
He pulled a handful of coins out of his pocket for some reason, shook them in his palm.
She glanced at the clock. “Lana’s expecting me.”
He nodded. “So you don’t have a job.”
“No.”
“And you don’t produce anything.”
“No.”
“You consume.”
“Huh?”
“You consume,” he repeated. “Air, food, energy—” He looked up at the ceiling and over at the walls: “—space.”
She followed his gaze and when she looked back at him, the gun was out on his lap. It was black and smaller than she would have imagined and it had a very long suppressor attached to the muzzle, the kind hit men always used in movies like Grosse Pointe Blank or The Professional, the kind that went pffft when fired.
“I’m meeting Lana,” she said again.
“I know.” He shook the change in his hand again and she looked closer, realized it wasn’t coins at all. Some kind of small metal things that reminded her of snowflake replicas.
“Lana knows who you are.”
“She thinks she does, but she actually knew another guy, the real Kineavy. See, they never met. Her father met him, but her father died – what – three years ago, after the stroke.”
Her therapist had taught her breathing exercises for tense situations. She tried one now. She took long slow breaths and tried to visualize their colors but the only color that came up was red.
He plucked one of the metal snowflakes from his palm and held it between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. “So Kineavy, I knew him well, he died too. About two years ago. Natural causes. And faux Kineavy – that’s me – sees no point in meeting most clients a second time, which suits them fine. What do you do, Mrs Walford? What do you do?”
She could feel her lower lip start to bubble and she sucked it into her mouth for a moment. “I do nothing.”
“You do nothing,” he agreed. “So why should I let you live?”
“Because—”
He flicked his wrist and the metal snowflake entered her throat. She could see it in the mirror. About a third of it – three metal points out of eight – stuck out of her flesh. The other five points were on the other side, in her throat. A floss-thin line of blood trickled out of the new seam in her body, but otherwise, she didn’t look like someone who was dying. She looked OK.
He stood over her. “You knew what your husband was doing, right?”
“Yes.” The word sounded funny, like a whistle, like a baby noise.
“But you didn’t stop him.”
“I tried. That’s why I hired you.”
“You didn’t stop him.”
“No.”
“You spent the money.”
“Yes.”
“You feel bad about it?”
And she had, she’d felt so terribly bad about it. Tears spilled from her eyes and dripped from the edges of her jaw. “Yes.”
“You felt bad? You felt sad?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Who gives a shit?”
And she watched in the mirror as he fired the bullet into her head.
Afterward, he walked around the house for a little bit. He checked out the cars in the garage, the lawn out back so endless you would have thought it was part of the Serengeti. There was a gym and a pool house and a guest house. A guest house for a seven-bedroom main house. He shook his head as he went back inside and passed through the dining room and the living room into the family room where she sat in the chair and he lay on the stairs. All this space, and they’d never had kids. You would have thought they would’ve had kids.
To kill the silence, if for no other reason.
VOICES THROUGH THE WALL
ALEX GRAY
Voices through the wall. I can hear them, whispering, making insinuations about me. But I’m well used to that now, aren’t I? The constant babble of tongues, the sly, invisible eyes looking at the plasterboard that divides them from me, knowing I can sense their disapproval.
It wasn’t always like this, though. When he was born, it wasn’t thought of as a crime any more; having a wee one out of wedlock had become as common as setting up house together with your man. Partner, they call him now, as if he was doing the business all right. There was no parental opposition either, because both of mine were long dead. No grannies to shush the wee fella or to take him off my hands for a brief hour while I caught up with washing his baby clothes. Just him and me. Didn’t do too badly, either. Got a wee flat off the council, one floor up, and managed to furnish it with second-hand stuff from the Sally Army shop in Partick. Visiting officer from the Social helped an’ all. Nice woman she was, telling me it was my right to have all these things; the layette, the blankets and even the living room decorated at their expense.
So it was nice at first, having this wee man cuddling up, me the centre of his universe. He was never a quiet baby and squirmed and wriggled whenever it was time to change a filthy nappy, but he loved splashing in the blue plastic bath, making damp patches on the worn carpet. Never had any bother from them downstairs, either. No one banging a stick against the ceiling to tell me the racket was too much, making the baby scream even louder. No, the neighbours were lovely; even brought nicely wrapped gifts for Jonnie at Christmas. Made me feel bad ’cos I had nothing to give them back. I remember the yellow rubber duck and that teddy bear with his knitted blue waistcoat: Jonnie played with them for years until they were all but trashed. They disappeared one day after he came home from school and I never found them till just the other day, at the bottom of a box in the hall cupboard. Teddy’s head was missing and the duck would never bob in the water any more, its plastic sides stabbed through with a blunt instrument. Holding them in both hands, I wept tears that I had thought could not be shed any more.
Most days I go down to the chapel, but not when Father is in the middle of a service. No, I wait until I’m sure there’s nobody left then slip into a pew at the front and have my conversation with the Madonna. Doesn’t look as if she could say much, this painted plaster figure, but it does me good to talk to her. She understands, you see. What was it like for you? I sometimes ask her. Did they mock you and whisper behind their hands? “That’s his mother. Bad lot, if you ask me. No way to bring up a child. Illegitimate, an’ all.” Did they point their fingers at you? Wag their self-righteous heads and tell themselves, “It all comes down to the parents, in the end.” Aye, I can guess the sort of pain that pierced your heart after they put him on a cross and killed him.
They didn’t kill Jonnie, just put him away. The lawyer told me he’d get life. Not that it really means life, you know. Just a couple of decades and he could’ve been back out. But that was before they’d assessed him and found that he wasn’t right in the head. Not his fault he’d murdered those wee girls, really. Something in his brain that was never right. But it doesn’t stop the voices, on and on, suggesting, wondering whether I was a bad mother to him, making him what he is today.
The newspapers had a field day. This woman came up to see me, promising a load of cash if I would tell them my story. I told her to go to hell. It wasn’t any of their business, was it? Even when I had to appear in court as a witness, they wouldn’t leave me alone. I saw the wee girls’ parents, two mums’ and two dads’ heads bowed as they entered the High Court. Recognised them from the papers and the telly. Their lives would never be the same again. Never. But neither would mine and the thought that they might just understand that made me want to go up to them and say I was sorry, as if apologising for what Jonnie had done could make it OK. I never did get close enough to catch the eye of any one of them, though their misery cut me to ribbons.
I’d said sorry so many times before. To the weans who’d been bullied by my son and to the parents who’d come knocking at my door, fierce scowls on their unforgiving faces. Sorry, I’d say, trying to smile and be friendly to them. He’s just a very active boy, I’d tell them, thinking to myself: wild, uncontrollable, not the wee lad who’d crawled into my bed whenever the thunder crashed and the rain drummed against the windowpanes. When had it all gone wrong? When had Jonnie become this monster living in my home, terrorising me with a look?
Primary Five he’d been escorted home by the head teacher of St Francis. There had been a fight and Jonnie had pulled out a blade. Was it one that I recognised?, the man had asked. Looking at my wee vegetable knife, I’d said, yes, it was. Jonnie had hung his head and said nothing at all, nodding his promises to be a better student, never to carry a dangerous weapon like that again. I threw the knife out and bought another one in Woolworth’s. Somehow I couldn’t bear the thought of cutting up potatoes with the same blade that my son had used to hurt another little boy. But it hadn’t stopped there. Money went missing from my purse and into Jonnie’s pocket. He must have bought his first switchblade with cash from his very own family allowance. And by the time I challenged him about it, he had grown bigger than me and looked down at his wee Maw with a sneer on his face that was so different from the lovely boy I’d once known.
They said I should have controlled him better. Been a role model for him, whatever that meant. But he left home at sixteen, no qualifications to his name, ready to face a world on his own. I’d cried then, but there was also a sense of pride that my boy could stand on his own two feet. He got a job and came back sometimes for a meal or just to tell me how he was doing. Half of me wanted him back home but the other half felt only relief once he’d gone again.
It was Mother’s Day today. For the last week I’ve seen the shops full of decorated banners and cards, flowers in the doorways. Jonnie made me a card in Primary Two. I took it out this morning and looked at it, his childish scrawl wishing me a Happy Mother’s Day. I don’t have any letters from the place he’s in, not even a Christmas card. And I’m not allowed to send anything to Jonnie in case it upsets him. Sometimes I wonder what it’s like for him in that place full of mad, bad, sick people and the doctors who have to restrain their violent behaviour. Does Jonnie hear voices through the walls there? And can he hear the whispering coming into his room at night?
The sound of the television stops and the muttering begins, telling me I’m a bad mother, that it’s all my fault, that these little girls would be alive if it hadn’t been for me and my one lapse of decency.
And they will go on, whispering their insinuations even when my dust blows away and this victim is long forgotten.
WET WITH RAIN
LEE CHILD
Births and deaths are in the public record. Census returns and rent rolls and old mortgages are searchable. As are citizenship applications from all the other English-speaking countries. There are all kinds of ancestry sites on the web. These were the factors in our favor.
Against us was a historical truth. The street had been built in the 1960s. Fifty years ago, more or less. Within living memory. Most of the original residents had died off, but they had families, who must have visited, and who might remember. Children and grandchildren, recipients of lore and legend, and therefore possibly a problem.
But overall we counted ourselves lucky. The first owners of the house in question were long dead, and had left no children. The husband had surviving siblings, but they had all gone to either Australia or Canada. The wife had a living sister, still in the neighborhood, but she was over eighty years old, and considered unreliable.
Since the original pair, the house had had five owners, most of them in the later years. We felt we had enough distance. So we went with the third variant of the second plan. Hairl Carter came with me. Hairl Carter the second, technically. His father had the same name. From southeastern Missouri. His father’s mother had wanted to name her firstborn Harold, but she had no more than a third-grade education, and couldn’t spell except phonetically. So Harold it was, phonetically. The old lady never knew it was weird. We all called her grandson Harry, which might not have pleased her.
Harry did the paperwork, which was easy enough, because we made it all Xeroxes of Xeroxes, which hides a lot of sins. I opened an account at a DC bank, in the name of the society, and I put half a million dollars in, and we got credit cards and a checkbook. Then we rehearsed. We prepped it, like a candidates’ debate. The same conversation, over and over again, down all the possible highways and byways. We identified weak spots, but we had no choice but to barrel through. We figured audacity would stop them thinking straight.
We flew first to London, then to Dublin in the south, and then we made the connection to Belfast on tickets that cost less than cups of coffee back home. We took a cab to the Europa Hotel, which is where we figured people like us would stay. We arranged a car with the concierge. Then we laid up and slept. We figured mid morning the next day should be zero hour.
* * *
The car was a crisp Mercedes and the driver showed no real reluctance about the address. Which was second from the end of a short line of ticky-tacky row houses, bland and cheaply built, with big areas of peeling white weatherboard, which must have saved money on bricks. The roof tiles were concrete, and had gone mossy. In the distance the hills were like velvet, impossibly green, but all around us the built environment was hard. There was fine cold drizzle in the air, and the street and the sidewalk were both shiny gray.
The car waited at the curb and we opened a broken gate and walked up a short path through the front yard. Carter rang the bell and the door opened immediately. The Mercedes had not gone unnoticed. A woman looked out at us. She was solidly built, with a pale, meaty face. She said, “Who are you?”
I said, “We’re from America.”
“America?”
“We came all the way to see you.”
“Why?”
“Mrs Healy, is it?” I asked, even though I knew it was. I knew all about her. I knew where she was born, how old she was, and how much her husband made. Which wasn’t much. They were a month behind on practically everything. Which I hoped was going to help.
“Yes, I’m Mrs Healy,” the woman said.
“My name is John Pacino, and my colleague here is Harry Carter.”
“Good morning to you both.”
“You live in a very interesting house, Mrs Healy.”
She looked blank, and then craned her neck out the door and stared up at her front wall. She said, “Do I?”
“Interesting to us, anyway.”
“Why?”
“Can we tell you all about it?”
She said, “Would you like a wee cup of tea?”
“That would be lovely.”
So we trooped inside, first Carter, then me, feeling a kind of preliminary satisfaction, as if our lead-off hitter had gotten on base. Nothing guaranteed, but so far so good. The air inside smelled of daily life and closed windows. A skilled analyst could have listed the ingredients from their last eight meals. All of which had been either boiled or fried, I guessed.
It wasn’t the kind of household where guests get deposited in the parlor to wait. We followed the woman to the kitchen, which had drying laundry suspended on a rack. She filled a kettle and lit the stove. She said, “Tell me what’s interesting about my house.”
Carter said, “There’s a writer we admire very much, name of Edmund Wall.”
“Here?”
“In America.”
“A writer?”
“A novelist. A very fine one.”
“I never heard of him. But then, I don’t read much.”
“Here,” Carter said, and he took Xeroxes from his pocket and smoothed them on the counter. They were faked to look like Wikipedia pages. Which is trickier than people think. Wikipedia prints different than it looks on the computer screen.
Mrs Healy said, “Is he famous?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “Writers don’t really get famous. But he’s very well respected. Among people who like his sort of thing. There’s an appreciation society. That’s why we’re here. I’m the chairman and Mr Carter is the general secretary.”
Mrs Healy stiffened a little, as if she thought we were trying to sell her something. She said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to join. I don’t know him.”
I said, “That’s not the proposition we have for you.”
“Then what is?”
“Before you, the Robinsons lived here, am I right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“And before them, the Donnellys, and before them, the McLaughlins.”
The woman nodded. “They all got cancer. One after the other. People started to say this was an unlucky house.”
I looked concerned. “That didn’t bother you? When you bought it?”
She said, “My faith has no room for superstition.”
Which was a circularity fit to make a person’s head explode. It struck me mute. Carter said, “And before the McLaughlins were the McCanns, and way back at the beginning were the McKennas.”
“Before my time,” the woman said, uninterested, and I felt the runner on first steal second. Scoring position. So far so good.
