Killer, Come Back to Me

“Answer me, if she died one week, seven days from now…” He grabbed my arms.

“But how can you be sure?”

“I’ll make myself sure! I swear she’ll be dead a week from now, or I’ll never bother you again with this!”

And he flung the screen doors wide, hurrying off into the day that was suddenly too bright.

“Roger, don’t—” I cried.

But my mind thought, Roger do, do something, anything, to start it all or end it all.

That night in bed I thought, What ways are there for murder that no one could know? Is Roger, a hundred yards away this moment, thinking the same? Will he search the woods tomorrow for toadstools resembling mushrooms, or drive the car too fast and fling her door wide on a curve? I saw the wax-dummy witch fly through the air in a lovely soaring arc, to break like ridiculous peanut brittle on an oak, an elm, a maple. I sat up in bed. I laughed until I wept. I wept until I laughed again. No, no, I thought, he’ll find a better way. A night burglar will shock her heart into her throat. Once in her throat, he will not let it go down again, she’ll choke on her own panic.

And then the oldest, the darkest, most childish thought of all. There’s only one way to finish a woman whose mouth is the color of blood. Being what she is, no relative, not an aunt or a great-grandmother, surprise her with a stake driven through her heart!

I heard her scream. It was so loud, all the night birds jumped from the trees to cover the stars.

I lay back down. Dear Christian Anna Marie, I thought, what’s this? Do you want to kill? Yes, for why not kill a killer, a woman who strangled her child in his crib and has not loosened the throttling cord since? He is so pale, poor man, because he has not breathed free air, all of his life.

And then, unbidden, the lines of an old poem stood up in my head. Where I had read them or who had put them down, or if I had written them myself, within my head over the years, I could not say. But the lines were there and I read them in the dark:

Some live like Lazarus

In a tomb of life

And come forth curious late to twilight hospitals

And mortuary rooms.

The lines vanished. For a while I could recall no more, and then, unable to fend it off, for it came of itself, a last fragment appeared in the dark:

Better cold skies seen bitter to the North

Than stillborn stay, all blind and gone to ghost.

If Rio is lost, well, love the Arctic Coast!

O ancient Lazarus

Come ye forth.

There the poem stopped and let me be. At last I slept, restless, hoping for the dawn, and good and final news.

The next day I saw him pushing her along the pier and thought, Yes, that’s it! She’ll vanish and be found a week from now, on the shore, like a sea monster floating, all face and no body.

That day passed. Well, surely, I thought, tomorrow…

The second day of the week, the third, the fourth and then the fifth and sixth passed, and on the seventh day one of the maids came running up the path, shrieking.

“Oh, it’s terrible, terrible!”

“Mrs. Harrison?” I cried. I felt a terrible and quite uncontrollable smile on my face.

“No, no, her son! He’s hung himself!”

“Hung himself?” I said ridiculously, and found myself, stunned, explaining to her. “Oh, no, it wasn’t him was going to die, it was—” I babbled. I stopped, for the maid was clutching, pulling my arm.

“We cut him down, oh, God, he’s still alive, quick!”