A Child's Book of True Crime (18 page)

“Listen,” I whispered to Thomas, “I need to talk to you. I’m in trouble.” My stare was intense. “Please.”

“Today’s a bad day,” he said under his breath. “Today’s a very bad day. Hello, darling!” he called.

Veronica wore a sheer silver blouse with a lace camisole
underneath. A gray crushed-silk skirt. Ballet slippers. It was like a fashion spread where the stylist chooses the most devastating suburban scene—a bowls club raffle; trash and treasure in the local church hall—then inserts the model. Veronica took off her hat. She kissed her husband, then turned to me, smiling. “Miss Byrne, how’s everything going?”

“Very well, thank you.”

“The class is okay?”

“Yeah, it’s going fine, it’s going really great.” I paused. “Except for one thing.”

The Marnes both turned.

“Yesterday afternoon someone cut my fan belt and loosened a brake caliper!”

Veronica looked horrified. “That’s terrible. Have you reported it to the police?”

Thomas interjected, “The thing about fan belts is that they can snap.” He crossed his arms. “Fan belts can snap, and you just can’t really tell.”

I stared at him. “What about the caliper?”

He sighed, shrugging. “Well, from what I understand, it was an old car.” His face was stony. “It probably needed a service . . .”

“Could someone be trying to hurt Kate?” Veronica interrupted.

“It would be difficult to prove.”

“Someone with a grudge?”

“The more I think of it,” Thomas told her, “the more unlikely it sounds.”

“I see.” Veronica’s expression softened, and she spoke slowly. “You’re overwhelmed, Kate. It must be hard for you being so far away from your family.”

I paused, slightly hypnotized. “Yes. It has been.”

She gathered her mane of hair, pulling it over her shoulder. “Is this the first time you’ve lived away from home?” I nodded. “Well, I think you’ve been very brave coming and staying here all alone. Very brave.” She looked at me closely. “You must feel vulnerable?”

“Sometimes.”

“How old are you, Kate?”

“I’ll be twenty-three next month.”

“Well, you were right to move away,” she said. “These feelings are natural.” Thomas groaned quietly, but she ignored him, advising, “Now it’s time to grow up.”

I gasped for breath, coughing, and she patted my back. “It’s all right. Let it out. Let it out.” Before me the horizon line trembled: I’d been dumped by a wave. I stood feeling its slap, the way it belted my body. If you’re unaccustomed to malice, it’s shocking that someone would bear you ill intent. It’s like receiving a dream kick or a dream bullet. You’ve been injured, but since there’s no physical scar, one discounts the violence as imaginary. “Let it out.” Veronica continued patting my back. She was privy to every intimacy. She had told me to grow up because she even knew of my baby talk.

I finished coughing, and Veronica waited for some response. “Thank you.” Lightly touching her arm, I added, “I was speaking to my mother. And I just want you to know, she and her friends have been really moved by your book.”

Veronica raised her hand to block sun from her brow. She looked grave. “That means so much.” She closed her eyes. “The readers’ support has just been totally overwhelming.” She smiled a radiant smile, before reaching out to squeeze
my hand. Then Veronica turned to her husband, and very naturally—the way one does when one’s body is aligned closely to another’s—he put his arm around her. I had heard it said, actually by Thomas, that in a threesome if one woman gets out of the bed to go and sit in a corner, rocking back and forward, shaking and crying to herself, it’s not because of any noble reason; it’s because the crying woman senses (correctly) that the other woman is preferred. I looked down at the ground. “Will you excuse me, Mrs. Marne, Mr. Marne.”

I moved closer to the other parents. The Marnes were gaslighting me, slowly driving me crazy. As far as Veronica was concerned, Thomas was only sleeping with me to benefit her work. And perhaps she was right . . . I imagined her trying to write the most difficult part of
Murder at Black Swan Point
, trying to feel murderous: Enter Thomas, disheveled, wild-eyed, after an afternoon at my grandparents’ house. He’d lean down to kiss her and she’d ask snakily, “Have fun?” She’d hand him a pencil, and he’d be about to draw diagrams, when she’d let fly with a tirade of abuse; the rudest, cruelest words. Then more calmly, in fact with the calm that only came with this inspiration, Veronica would have asked Thomas to leave, so she could complete the chapter. I had been the sacrificial lamb, a third party used to induce a jolt of frisson. They were the finest, the most refined criminals. It made sense—some jewel thieves orgasm during robberies.

I found myself laughing. Laughter which made people turn and stare. If Veronica had convinced Thomas to join her replaying the Black Swan Point story, perhaps she’d need to watch her own back. She must have known, in fact better than anyone, the tale’s alternative ending. The police searched tirelessly
for Margot Harvey for two weeks; then declared her deceased. It was ruled that on the balance of evidence she had contributed to Eleanor Siddell’s killing. But what had happened to her? Why was Margot’s blood found all over her house? Presumably Veronica had tried to find the answer.

The locals claimed she’d visited Graeme Harvey in the cancer ward, bearing an opulent bouquet. She had also taken along some crime photos hoping to jog his memory. It was suspicious that Margot had left so few traces at the crime scene. It was suspicious that the abandoned station wagon was spotless. However, what really confused Veronica was why it took the pathologist’s testimony to jolt the good vet from his concussion? In the ward, Mrs. Marne had reached into her briefcase and pulled out the photos. She felt the poignancy of this exchange. She was helping him confront his ghosts: “Here’s your blood on the blue shag bath mat. Here’s your wife’s blood too. How did she come to bleed again? You do remember, don’t you?” The dying man tried to scream but without his trachea made very little noise. A nurse checking the room, saw Veronica on the verge of tears. “Oh! A visitor: lovely! I’ll leave you a bit longer.”

 • • • 

The boys’ cricket whites billowed against their skinny bodies; the material, on their backs, like sails. It was strange, but despite the Marnes’ threats for the first time in a long while I felt totally alive. I felt as if every particle was swimming before me with improved resolution. Fear, like guilt, must have a way of increasing the pixelation of everyday life. It was Lucien’s turn to bat. He walked onto the oval, staring down
as if wishing to be swallowed. I shook my head. The relationship between teacher and student was so intimate. People gave me their children every morning. I had them for the whole day. Then, these same people gave me the children again the next morning. For eight months the kids had been like members of my family. I taught them their most essential lessons: how to read, how to write, how to treat others. I taught them skills they’d have for the rest of their lives.

Lucien got into position, holding the bat the way his father had shown him. He was trying hard to concentrate, but looked panicked. Thomas stood nearby yelling directions. Watching his child, it was easier to understand him: he had probably been hardened day by day.

The bowler took a long run, and it seemed forever until he threw the ball. It missed the wicket, and an ancient dog with a windup tail snatched it in his mouth, then hobbled away. A chase ensued: the dog was apprehended, but refused to drop it. “
Drop the ball!”

“Drop! Drop!”
The bored fielders were having a hard time standing still. While a father negotiated with the dog, the fielders were air-batting, or air-bowling, or fiddling with themselves.

Lucien was trembling with concentration. His father called out, and the boy smiled weakly in his direction. Another ball flew toward him: he missed it. An expression came over Lucien’s face I hadn’t seen before. He looked frightened. His father called again, angrily. The boy looked toward Thomas as the ball approached, and it shot past him for the third time.

How many parents will admit their fantasy is to be childless? I watched Lucien fight back tears. His body language revealed his fit in the world; his shoulders were stooped, his
gaze averted. For a long time I’d thought it the pose of a young philosopher. It was also the pose of a child not wanting to be seen. The Marnes had fostered their son’s mature demeanor because they couldn’t stand the “kidness” of him. Thomas had written me his long notes about curricula so he didn’t have to talk to Lucien about hopscotch and the tooth fairy. The tragedy of parenthood must be that you make this baby, and you start off loving the baby in all the ways you wanted to be loved. Then the baby, slowly, grows into something you don’t recognize: a separate person with your own worst faults. The tragedy of having children must be learning firsthand that in every parent there’s a black box of infanticidal thoughts. Lucien had drawn pictures of himself blind, beheaded, and bullet-ridden: who would be most likely, in his wildest nightmares, to perform such atrocities? According to child psychologists, often monsters are mothers and fathers in disguise.

The batting team was reacting to Lucien’s poor play in high-drama mode. They were shaking their heads, kicking at the grass. The fielders were playing air guitar and sitting down in mock contemplation, staring at the sky. Thomas seemed just as revolted by his son’s form. Darren called out, expressing Mr. Marne’s opinion: “You play like a girl!” Even the kids on Lucien’s team laughed and sniggered. “Lucy! Lucy!” they started yelling and their parents did nothing to stop them.

Lucien stood holding the bat. For a split second it seemed the tears would spill. Then he smiled good-naturedly. He smiled at full volume. And I remembered the textbook had suggested that if a young child spontaneously added to his drawing a unicorn, or butterflies, or a rainbow, one was supposed to heed the warning. Aren’t they meant to draw these
things, one might have thought; didn’t I? Apparently in stressful situations young children will draw what appears to be happy: just as we think we should pretty up the truth for them, they do it straight back.

“Lucy!” the boys called, then they clapped. “Lucy!” Clap-clap-clap. “Lucy!”

Lucien smiled merrily, like he was in on the joke. He was smiling even as he was bowled out. The bails flew off, and the winning team tried to make that primordial noise, that tribal noise to do with winning that comes from deep within one’s belly: a guttural roar like the cricket spectators made on television. Their voices had not yet broken, however, so the noise was high and choirboy sweet. The boys threw their hands in the air, all yelping with delight. From a distance they looked like gulls. They ran to each other, slapping their friends on their backs. In the melee, Lucien tossed his white hat over his head. The hat blew a few feet away, and while the others were hugging, he ran to catch it. He threw it again and again, and the same absurd thing kept happening. Thomas’s face was blank with humiliation. But I understood what Lucien was doing. He was adding butterflies, and unicorns, and a rainbow. And take note, I thought, by being so merry he was sabotaging his enemies’ plans.

I smoothed my dress over my hips and smiled. An ice-cream van, with cones painted naively on the paneling, pulled up in all its psycho-clown glory. The children on the field—especially those from the losing team, crying—now perked up. They forgot about the cricket, consumed by the age-old dilemma: “Should I get a rocket ice cream with competition details inside, or a spaceman with a bubblegum nose?” All the
boys were filthy with grass stains, trying to do deals. Negotiations had begun regarding sleepovers or play dates for the evening. Younger kids ran around catching insects in their drink bottles. Some first-graders were scaling the walls of the girls’ toilet block. This was Oedipal athletics: if the little gender warriors saw the secret way girls tinkled they’d all rule the world, or spin into a decline.

I stood near some mothers, wanting to blend in. They talked in hushed tones without acknowledging me. Surely they’d heard, like their husbands, what had happened to my car. Everyone must have known. They all ignored me, peevish about some lesson I’d taught they’d found offensive. Trying to stay calm, I approached Lillian Hurnell. She was holding her two small dogs on a lead, talking closely to Dawn Nesbit, the physical education teacher. “Isn’t it a stunning day?” I called.

“It’s still quite chilly, Kate,” Lillian answered. “If you’ve got a fever, perhaps you should wear a cardigan.”

“I think I got excited to see summer coming.”

“Perhaps a bit too excited,” said Dawn.

I glared. Dawn, with her lace ankle socks and cutoff overalls, was not very good with other women. I noticed, however, how quick she was to console any fathers in need. Every time she complimented a boy on his batting or hand-eye coordination, it was really a way of complimenting the father. These men looked at Dawn all the more closely, thinking, I guess she’s not
that
ugly. It was an ingenious way of luring them into her web. I wondered how many she had slept with—she’d been teaching here an awfully long time.

“The Marnes should’ve put that boy in the car,” Dawn said, “and driven him straight home.” She and Lillian turned
to stare at the couple. While Lucien purchased an ice cream, Veronica stood waiting, looking uncomfortable. Thomas was drowning his sorrows with a beer.

“Can’t children be mean?” I thought aloud. “So breathtakingly mean to each other? At least adults have codes.” My voice sounded strange. “But a child will say: ‘I hate you!’; ‘All the kids hate you!’; ‘You are ugly, you smell.’” I laughed. “‘All the freckles on your face look like flecks of shit!’”

“Kate,” Lillian interrupted. “Will you be the garbage monitor, please?”

Dawn grinned: this was usually a job for two fourth-graders.

“Of course, Lillian.” I went to get the bin and the kids came up, dropping their rubbish inside. Soon it was heavy with soda cans and rejected sandwiches. I could barely drag it.