Denise sat at her small neat table in a space between the living room and kitchen called “the dining room” on the lease. In front of her, on the shining black wood, was a spiral notebook of college ruled paper. The cover was bright red.
She laughed. The sound startled her. Covering the notebook with her forearm, she glanced around as if the laughter had emanated from another source.
She was alone.
No. That was the old Denise Castle. She had been creakingly, hauntingly alone. An open wound walking through a world of salt and thorns, she’d not dared let anyone close.
Being alone was not being lonely.
People liked to say that. People were full of shit. Alone echoed down hallways of the mind, shrieking with the shrill voice of icy wind through winter-bare branches. Denise had thought that she would be alone forever, but that was just a lie the world told her. She wasn’t even alone sitting by herself in her one-bedroom apartment in her single dining chair.
That was the first huge change. Massive. Making her not a ghost, but a guest, at the party. Better than a guest, family. For so many years she’d had to watch sisters and brothers, wives and husbands and children, being families while she was just herself, one hand clapping, a loose end, a fifth wheel. Families didn’t even show her the courtesy of knowing they were the lucky ones. They fought and complained, disrespected each other, went years without speaking over a trifle, yelled at their children as if children were annoying pests they were forced to deal with.
Aborting babies.
Getting divorces.
Choosing not to be together on Christmas.
As if everybody had that choice, as if, for Denise, holidays hadn’t been an inescapable nightmare, where, like a bird with no place to perch, she circled cold and alone high over lighted windows and laden tables, hoping that someone would invite her in, if even only for an evening. Then, if they did, it was worse because she knew she did not belong. They knew she did not belong. Once she was surrounded, all she wanted to do was get away, be by herself where the pain and shame wouldn’t show.
Family cared enough to poke and nag, call too often and hug too tightly; they fell asleep with their head in another’s lap, were carried to bed. They gossiped and worried and gave unwelcome advice. Family cared if you showed up for birthdays, chided if you forgot anniversaries, because your presence, mentally and physically, mattered. Family stimulated the psyche. Without it part of a person fell asleep, like a foot held in one position too long.
A part of Denise had gone to sleep like that. It was still alive, but didn’t feel alive. It felt like concrete or asphalt. As time passed, the thought of trying to wake it, to suffer the miserable tingling of life returning, had become worse than knowing a portion of her being was as deadwood on a living tree.
Paulette had woken her without a twinge. Denise was fully alive for the first time in forever.
Then she’d killed a man.
Another huge new thing: life and death, both in her hands.
About life, she felt … That was it; that was the whole thing, she felt. Resentment, jealousy, spite: The stuff she’d been sustaining herself with for so long was not feeling. It was what replaced feeling, fake pain directed outward so the real pain would not eat the host alive. Becoming partially dead to keep the other parts from being flayed.
Life felt good. What did adults say when she was a kid? “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.” She’d thought they were idiots. Now she knew what it meant to have her whole life ahead of her.
About killing Kurt, she should feel something. Like sex, or reading Siddhartha, people were supposed to be changed by the experience, somehow different afterward. Killing another human being should be like that. One day she was Denise Castle who had never killed a person. The next she was Denise Castle who had taken a human life in sweat and blood and a plastic shower curtain with yellow fishes on it. Those two Denises should be different, but they weren’t. Sex and Siddhartha had been like that for her as well. Not as big a deal as advertised.
For a moment she marveled at the things that had changed in the past week. Denise Castle: alive, feeling, killer, family woman.
Almost a family woman. That would come, she decided.
Alone and not alone, she returned to her notebook and her list, items that had to be checked off before the whole life she had ahead of her could officially commence.
Kill Kurt (Denise)
Sell Land (Paulette)
Quit NPS (retirement pension) (D)
Find out about “Legacy” (if it exists) (P)
Car, car seat, etc.
Give landlord notice
Arrange for family—Mt. Desert Hospital (D&P)
Leave MA for GA or SC or NC (D&P&O)
Rent (D&P&O)
Buy (D&P&O)
“Kill Kurt” was checked off.
“Sell Land” had a tentative pencil mark next to it. Kurt’s house was worthless, but the land was not. The land was paid off; Kurt’s parents were dead. He had no brothers and sisters, and no children. Paulette said it was to pass to her on his death. Ownership wasn’t an issue. Denise figured Paulette could get around four or five hundred thousand for the place. They should take less if it would move the property more quickly. Timing was important.
They would skip the balancing act of selling and moving. There was no way to know if it would sell in a week or six months. Banks had gotten paranoid after the big savings-and-loan scandals, but given location, location, location, Denise guessed it would move fast. They’d have to find a way to do the paperwork from out of state. By the time it was all settled, they had to be long gone.
The land sale would mean a big infusion of cash, which was good. Denise had about a hundred thousand of her own in investments, and her pension should come to around forty thousand a year, less everything. Maybe a net of thirty. They had enough.
Again she bent over the list.
Between “Sell Land” and “Quit NPS” she penciled in in tiny letters “Remove Obstacle.” Not that she’d forget to take care of that particular problem. Denise had an excellent memory—or had until her nerves started going bad. Still, the lists weren’t a memory aid; she made lists so she could check things off, have the satisfaction of seeing in black and white what she had accomplished.
“Obstacle” was the second most complex item on the list.
Changing from a pencil to a pen, she underlined it in ink. Denise had hoped she could erase it as unnecessary. That hope was growing slim to nonexistent. There was no doubt in Denise’s mind that Anna Pigeon would remember who the Denise in the photograph reminded her of. Those kinds of things tickled at the brain until they were solved. Anna would remember it was Paulette. Given what a nuisance the pigeon was, she would put two and two together and get Murder. If they could move the project along quickly, Anna would only have to be put off for a couple of days, three at most.
Denise overwrote the underlined word in ink. To the side, in parentheses, she wrote “triazolam.” Google said triazolam was common enough. As a nurse, Paulette would be able to lay her hands on a few tabs at the hospital. Needed or not, it was important to have the drug option.
For a moment Denise stared at the wall, eyes unfocused.
“Family” was next on her list, the most difficult of all the tasks. She and her sister would be getting a family. Denise smiled. When she was a kid, people would say of a pregnant woman, “She’s in a family way.” There was something lovely about that. Denise and Paulette were going to be in a family way.
It was poetic justice that lovely fertile Lily was going to be their accomplice.
Lily took ergotamine for her migraines. Denise had Googled the side effects.
God, but Denise loved Google.