Murder
One
(1991)
My study of murder began in third grade, three days
after Thanksgiving, when my father offed my mother.
You might think committing the perfect murder
requires practice, technique, thought. Daddy’s one skill is dumb luck. He’s a lousy
criminal. Sloppy. Lazy. But, because Mommy took lots of pills (diagnosed
bipolar), the cops called her death suicide.
I found her in the bathtub floating in a pool of
blood.
I don’t think it affected me.
Not really.
I closed the bathroom door, went into the kitchen to
make a turkey sandwich, then I turned on the TV. Not a flat screen. Back in
1991, when I was eight years old, we had a console full of toxic tubes spewing
radiation into our living room.
Sometimes I feel like I’m back there, even though
I’m all grown up and live far, far away. I’m from New York. Not the city, Long
Island. A long strip of land in the Atlantic—takes three hours to drive from
one end to the other, changing from urban to rural until you reach the points,
Montauk and Orient. Then you fall into the ocean.
Too bad I couldn’t drive when I was eight.
Our town is too far from the city to be called a
suburb and not fancy like the Hamptons. This town is blue collar, hard-working
people who provide services to the rich and famous, and a few stray farmers holding
out against developers. Our house looks pretty much like every other on Maple
Street. The lawn is tidy, the front porch neat, windows so polished birds fly
into the glass then drop dead.
I bury them in the backyard with the other bodies.
Most Sundays Mommy and I get up early and go to
church, while Daddy and my little brother stay at home. After church Mommy
makes a giganto lunch, and I help.
Not today.
Today we didn’t eat, because Mommy and Daddy had a
fight. (They yell a lot.) Then Mommy had a headache, and she told me to get her
pills.
Now the house is quiet, like it should be.
My teacher at church says Sunday is a day of rest,
but most Sunday afternoons Mommy gives me chores: cleaning toilets, using a
toothbrush to scrub between tiles, vacuuming dead flies that get caught between
the windows and the screens.
Today I don’t have to do anything, because Mommy’s
in the bathtub.
I climb onto the plush beige couch (our house is
beige; the furniture, the walls, the carpet), rest my head on a beige cushion, and
kick off my sneakers (hot pink Revs with zebra inserts—rad). Usually, I’d untie
the laces, carefully remove my shoes and arrange them side-by-side on the mat by
the front door, the way Mommy taught me, but now I let them tumble from my feet
and land where they will.
I take a bite of sandwich, set it on my stomach.
Mommy would tell me to use a plate, call me a slob
like Daddy.
Donnie, my little brother, comes into the living
room, carrying his kitten and practically strangling it. He grins at me,
displaying the gap in his front teeth. He’s still wearing pajamas, and a smudge of grape jelly stains the bright green brontosaurus on his chest.
“Is Mommy taking a nap?”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’s not in her bed.”
“In the bathroom. Don’t go in there.”
The kitten squirms in Donnie’s arms, revealing its
tiny balls. I guess I should call it a him.
“What you want Santa to bring you, Sadie?”
A
chainsaw, like Daddy’s.
“I don’t know.”
“I want a Cabbage Patch Birthday Kid with brown hair,”
Donnie says.
“Boys don’t get dolls.”
“Why not?”
“They just don’t, dummy.”
Donnie sticks his thumb between his lips and sucks.
If Mommy were around she’d tell him to take that thing out of his mouth, tell
him she was gonna smear his thumb with mustard and eat it like a hotdog.
“I want a red BMX bike,” I say.
Donnie stops sucking his thumb long enough to say, “That’s
really dumb.”
“Not as dumb as you.”
I grab the remote and amp up the TV’s volume, so I
can hear the evil king, Zarkon, ruler of the planet Doom, vowing to destroy
Voltron’s lion robots.
The kitten escapes Donnie’s stranglehold, hops onto
the couch, and sniffs my turkey sandwich. I run my fingers down its back, think
about snipping off its little balls. Mommy said they have to be removed, so the
cat won’t spray. She said big cats squirt this stinky stuff to mark their
territory. I’d like to mark my territory and make this couch off limits to
Donnie. (He just wiped a glob of snot on the seat cushion.) How long does it
takes to drown a cat? Less time, I bet, than it would take to drown my baby
brother.
“What show is this?” he asks.
“Voltron:
Defender of the Universe.”
“Could we watch Sesame
Street?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Chill.”
“I’m hungry.”
I hand him half of my sandwich, my eyes glued to
Princess Allura.
Donnie bites into the bread, spits out the meat.
“I don’t want dead bird. I want PBJ.”
Even at age five, my brother is sensitive.
“We’re out of jelly.”
“Where’s Daddy?”
“In the basement.”
“What’s he doing?”
“How should I know?”
Daddy spends hours in the basement working on stuff
he calls projects. He doesn’t like to
be disturbed. The basement door is next to the kitchen, and I can see it from
the couch. Closed and locked. One time Muffy followed Daddy downstairs and
never came back. Muffy was our Yorkshire Terrier. Donnie and I are forbidden to
enter the basement, except when Daddy makes us go down there for punishment,
and we have to sit in the chair. In our house, the basement is the only door
that locks.
“I’m gonna wake up Mommy,” Donnie announces.
Before I can stop him, he scrambles down the hall
past the kitchen, past the door leading to the basement, the feet of his footed
pajamas catching on the carpet. He stops at the bathroom door.
“Don’t go in there, Donnie.”
“Why?”
His small hand reaches for the knob.
“Cause I said so.”
Muffin (named after Muffy) meows.
(Note:
for the sake of clarity, henceforward, I’ll refer to them as Kitty Muffin and
Doggie Muffy.)
I click off the TV, watch the picture fade.
“I want Mommy,” Donnie whines.
Plump tears roll down his chubby cheeks. Pretty soon,
he’ll wet his pants.
I hop off the couch, crumbs from my sandwich falling
on the carpet, and get to the bathroom door as Donnie shoves it open.
The woman in the bathtub doesn’t look like Mommy.
She’s sort of floating and her face is bloated, greenish like the mask that big
kid across the street (I think his name is Jason) wore for Halloween. Mommy’s
hair is a tangled mess and her makeup is blotchy. She stinks. Bloody water overspills the tub, leaving a pinkish
puddle on the tile. The bathmat is stained brownish red. I wonder when the
maggots will show up. I wonder if they’re inside Mommy now, writhing, twisting, turning, as they eat their way out.
Donnie wails, his small fists digging into his eyes.
I lead him away from the tub, and we back out of the
bathroom staring at what used to be Mommy, pull the door shut till the catch
clicks.
Then I go to the kitchen, climb onto a stool so I
can reach the wall phone’s receiver, and call 911.
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