Deadly Housewives Page 15

  “That’s right,” Tanya said firmly. “I’m a TV star. I got on TV.”

  “So it was worth it, girl.”

  “Yeah, it was worth it.”

  Tanya entered her cell. The bars slammed shut.

  She was sure it was worth it.

  Anyway, she was pretty sure.

  An Invisible Minus Sign

  Denise Mina

  Moira sipped her last-ever gin and tonic and looked out over the immaculate lawn. This afternoon, before the roads got busy with the school run, she was going to take the car out and drive herself off a bridge.

  The state of their lawn wasn’t down to her; Mr. Toppy did that. She hardly ever went into the garden. The boys used to play cricket out there in the summer, but now they spent their time masturbating in their rooms, looking at pornography on their computers—she wasn’t stupid. Both doors had mysteriously developed locks. When she did get into tidy them, the rooms were ankle-deep in hankies.

  The boys had been her life, but they were never home anymore. When they did meet her, in a hall or the kitchen, both were so disinterested they could hardly see her. She was an empty space. Invisible. An invisible minus sign.

  Moira was invisible to herself. She no longer knew if she liked strong cheddar or the boys did, whether France was somewhere she wanted to go to on holiday or David’s choice. And she didn’t even think she liked the hidden Moira enough to send out a search party.

  She sipped again and the bitter tonic pleased her, making her tongue flinch. She wished vaguely that she had some lemon to slice into it. Knowing it was the last drink she would ever have, she had made it indulgently strong, but still she stood over the kitchen sink, the cold metal pleasant in the well of her flattened hand, a chill seeping through her trousers, cooling the silver stretch marks on her stomach. She was over the sink trying not to make a mess. She always ate her lunch there. When she realized what she was doing, the timidity of her life had appalled her. Her eyes brimmed with hot angry tears as she wiped imaginary crumbs from the work top. She never left traces of herself anywhere, no crumbs or mess or dirty cups. Whether dead or alive, she didn’t leave a ripple in the world.

  The most intense connections in her life had been with people who were looking the other way: crying over her dead mother’s body; watching her husband sleeping after the first time they made love, when he was handsome and didn’t smell of offices; watching her eldest son in the incubator when he was born, panicked tears dripping onto the thick plastic, the weight of milk in her heavy breasts crushing her heart. Never reciprocated, never witnessed. She might never have been there.

  When she realized, she had tried to make her mark. She’d taken on part-time work in a small business but gave up because the other receptionist made everything sticky with food.

  She took up exercise, step classes and jazz/tap, but got an injury, a bad ankle, and was told to stop it by the doctor. She folded the pastel tracksuits up, one pink, one blue, and stacked them in the back cupboard in the fug of mothballs, knowing that another desperate attempt to connect was over.

  She started a catering company for friends’ and neighbors’ parties, making quiches as small as a thumbnail, but grew bored. It took fifteen minutes to make each one and the pastry was so delicate that they often broke.

  She had an affair, with a man called Brian, desperate fumbles in hotel rooms that left her wishing she had gone shopping instead. She observed him like a scientist: Brian’s passion was damp, his erection fragile, his orgasm loud and red-faced. They said good-bye sitting in her car in a county council carpark and he cried. She watched him, feeling nothing, and wondered what was wrong with him and then, later, what was wrong with her.

  Moira tried these and a hundred other suburban redemptions, but still no one could see her. She couldn’t stop herself dressing discreetly, speaking softly, and never divulging a secret. She listened to Classic FM and knew the names of many flowers. David, her husband, had become so bland to her that she had trouble remembering his age, his job, and recently his name.

  And always the endless shuffle of objects from one room to another, the boys’ clean clothes taken upstairs, laundry baskets brought downstairs, plates to cupboards, cups to mouths, cleaning, cleaning, an eraser swiping back and forth across all traces of her presence on the planet.

  Finishing the gin and tonic, she unthinkingly rinsed out her glass and left it on the draining board. Without stopping to consider it, she picked up a handbag that matched her white rain mac, beige with a white piping trim, and transferred her wallet, keys, and a small packet of tissues. She turned on the alarm and locked the front door carefully behind her.

  As she walked around to the driver’s seat she brushed two loose leaves off the bonnet, scanning the car for splattered bird droppings to wash off when she got back. Bad for the paintwork.

  She’d chosen the road already. It was out of the way, two miles out of town, a small bridge over a deep gully. If the impact against the low stone wall didn’t kill her, the fall to the river would. It was a very quiet road. No one would see her or be upset by the mess. She hoped the first thing anyone would notice was the break in the wall or the car on its roof, the wheels spinning slowly and a curl of smoke from the riverbed.

  She approached the spot far sooner than she had expected. It was three hundred yards ahead, around this next corner, but she was resolved, glad to be going, looking forward to an eternity of nothing.

  She turned the corner, thinking about her wedding, labor pains, a summer party a hundred years ago when she felt popular and beautiful, her father’s heart attack, even Brian’s red face straining over her like a tortoise doing the toilet. She shut her eyes and spun the wheel.

  A piercing scream and she flew forward half a foot, stopped suddenly by the restraining band across her chest. She’d put her seat belt on. Why had she done that? She wanted to die, but it was too late. The air bag burst in front of her, squashing her face and upper body, releasing a nasty smell of plastic.

  Noting that the car hadn’t fallen any distance, she realized that she was still on the bridge. And there was something else: her throat wasn’t raw from screaming. She had no resonance in her nose. She hadn’t made any noise as she crashed, just shut her eyes and breathed in. If the scream hadn’t come from her, it must have come from someone else.

  Moira opened the door. A breath of warm afternoon country air engulfed her, picnic weather. She uncoupled the seat belt and wrestled her way out of the insistent air bag, hanging on to her like a drunk at a party, as she climbed out of the car.

  Staggering slightly, finding her feet and knees unsteady, she looked back at the car. It was pressed tight against the stone bridge wall, paintwork scratched on the bonnet but otherwise untarnished. It looked badly parked but nothing more. She stepped back and it was then that she saw it: there was a body underneath the car.

  Little-legs navy nylon trousers were topped with sensible red lace-ups, both pressed to the side like the Wicked Witch of the West’s. One foot, the left foot, twitched as if to kick her, if only it wasn’t so sleepy.

  She skirted the car, bunny-dipping down to look underneath. The woman was slim and elderly, had a white perm. The shattered lenses on her glasses obscured her eyes, making it bearable to look at her. In the shade of the car, next to the dead woman’s hand, was a small gift-wrapped parcel and a sensible navy handbag, a little scuffed but good leather nonetheless.

  Moira knelt down on all fours and looked underneath. The front wheel of the car was planted on the woman’s chest, crushing her heart flat. Mora felt past the cheap watch with a leather strap for a pulse, but there was nothing.

  She had killed a woman. A nice woman. A woman who gave gifts to people, cared about people. She had been a good girl, too, going about her good-girl business, until Moira crashed into her and parked a car on her heart.

  Moira grabbed the gift and the sensible leather handbag out from under the car and scrambled across the road. She ripped purple paper off in
a mad burst of energy. A ceramic picture frame, the shop picture of a square-jawed man still in it. A cheap gift, not for a special friend or family member, not unless she was tightfisted.

  Light-headed, she unzipped the woman’s handbag and found a large brown purse. She unclipped it and found a photo of three sweet children, sitting side by side, smiling for granny. Moira had murdered a grandmother. She stuck her hand in the bag again. Deep inside a side pocket was a packet of cigarettes and a plastic lighter. She ripped the packet open and put a cigarette in her mouth, lighting it. She hadn’t smoked since she was at college and had never inhaled before, but now she sucked in the smoke hungrily until she was able to think clearly.

  She had killed a woman and then gone into her handbag without permission. She’d stolen. And she was openly smoking a cigarette.

  She looked across at the car. She could clearly see the little nylon legs underneath and the jaunty angle of the car resting on the good granny’s rib cage. The police would be here soon. Someone would pass the bridge and see what she had done, they’d phone 999, and the police would come and get her.

  Moira looked up at the glorious trees around the bridge, heard birds singing in the sunshine, and watched her gray stinking smoke climb into the blue sky and spoil it for everyone else. She’d done it now, though: it was a hell of a big ripple.

  She smoked five cigarettes and waited until the sun went down. No one came. Eventually, not knowing what else to do, she got into her car and backed carefully off the body and drove home.

  Jason sat down at the kitchen table without greeting her or speaking or acknowledging her presence in any way. He picked up his serviette, shook it, and lay it across his lap. There was a pause during which Moira would usually have slipped the plate under his nose, quizzing him, asking questions about his day and being rebuffed. He touched his knife and fork, letting his hands fall to his lap again, filling the moment.

  Neither food nor questions came. He knew she was up at the sink. If he bothered to look at her, he’d see that she was looking at him and her arms were crossed.

  His eyes flickered to the cooker, finding it bare, then to the oven, over to the microwave. “No dinner?”

  Moira didn’t answer. She did what he did when she asked him questions: shrugged and grunted. Jason frowned at the table and made himself look at his mother. His nose twitched.

  “Does it smell of cigarette smoke in here?”

  Moira shrugged. “Dunno.”

  He sat up straight. “It does. Has a workman been in today?”

  “No.” She was leaning against the work top, bad posture, and seemed to have some food spilled on her top, a drip down her front.

  “Well, why does it smell of smoke in here?”

  He could see the change in her and it startled him. He sat up straight. “Where’s the dinner? What’s happened here? Why are you wearing a dirty top?”

  His voice had cracked five years ago. Last in his class, but it was a whinging high-pitched voice, like his father’s when he was younger. “Mum?”

  “Jason,” drawled his mother, standing up straight, “stop bloody whining, would you?”

  It was a crisis. She hadn’t done a wash in four days and everyone was running out of underpants. They had plenty, pressed and stored in bottom drawers, but their favorites, the ones they didn’t need to look for, were dirty and no one knew how to run the machine.

  Moira was sitting on the sofa, the remote tucked under her thigh, ashtray balanced on the arm of the chair, overflowing onto the white linen cover. Empty plates were scattered around the sofa, stacked messily on one another over the floor. They’d had satellite television for four years, but she’d never realized before this week that Jerry Springer–type shows were on for ten hours a day. She was starting to recognize episodes.

  The living-room door was glass. She could hear them telling the doctor about her. Jason, junior medic, kept saying “head injury” and “personality change.” She could tell by the paucity of “uh-huhs” from the doctor that he didn’t believe it.

  “She doesn’t usually smoke,” said Gerald, her younger son. His voice was whiny, too.

  “We’ve been married for eighteen years and she’s never smoked.” Definitely an inheritance from their whiny father.

  The doctor knocked gingerly on the door and slipped in as though he were approaching a sleeping bear. He pulled the door closed behind him. His were the first eyes she’d met since the bridge. He had little-currant eyes and a fat nose that sprawled across a jaundiced face. His haircut was cheap.

  He asked if she was all right and she said she was, she was fine, just going through a bit of a change of lifestyle. What did she mean, he asked, by “lifestyle”? She shrugged and looked back at the television. He married his stepmom but loved his stepsister. They were fat, all of them, and shouted rude words so they had to bleep them out.

  “And you’ve recently taken up smoking?” The doctor smiled weakly. “That’s a rather odd habit to take up at your time of life, isn’t it?”

  Moira looked at her hands, at the cigarette between her fingers, and a torrent of words flooded her mind, happy afternoons with the babies, glimpses of transcendental moments in her life, and small deaths. Everyone she loved looked away as she died. She remembered Brian and catering and meals and lamb, recalled sunshine and sleep and midnight trips to the toilet for a drink of water, memories of screams on bridges and sudden jolting plastic smells.

  Swamped, her head reeled back on her neck. They could have been kind to her. They could have asked how she was, what she was doing. Hello, Mum, having an affair? Hello, dear, killed a lady today?

  She heard him speak through the fog of white noise in her head.

  “Moira, Mrs. Appleton? Have you been feeling hot at all? Any unexplained sweating?”

  She stood up, eyes fixed on the doctor, lifting the cigarette to her mouth and sucking hard. She wanted to look straight at the living-room door, look through the mottled glass at her sons and husband, but she couldn’t turn her neck or make her eyes leave his yellow face. She was not invisible anymore, she took up space and left mess, she hid the remote and had killed a stranger.

  Moira opened her mouth wide, tipping her head back to let the jagged, clinging words out of her throat, but when her voice came it was small and strangled.

  “I am a ripple.”

  Purrz, Baby

  Vicki Hendricks

  When Mary Lou came to the door in a red velvet robe, exactly like mine—except for the size—I knew it was no coincidence. What I’d been suspecting for months was clear. How smart of Jack to save time on Christmas shopping by making one stop at the department store, a robe for his wife and one for his lover! I saw the competition in her eyes as she boldly sized me up, thinking she could snatch him away from me by sheer intelligence, never mind looks. She was only wondering how long it would take. I saw his eyes flick down the front of her robe, which was loosely tied, although there wasn’t much to see in there. She must have worn the robe to taunt me, secretly, not figuring that I had one just like it. Of course, mine didn’t have embroidered initials. That ML stuck in my mind. It was early morning, and we were dropping Purrzie off before we flew out to visit my mother. Jack had suggested that ML, as a cat lover whose elderly pet had just passed away, would take good care of our little sweetheart. After seeing the robe, I wouldn’t have entrusted my beloved Purrzie to her, but we barely had time to get to the airport, and Purrz seemed comfortable sniffing around her living room, which was the most important consideration, after all.

  I had to wonder what Jack’s motivation could be in taking me to this lair. Did he want to get caught? More likely he thought I was too stupid to have a clue. His underestimating my intelligence had been an issue for years, mainly because I didn’t read continuously like he did or appreciate the arts. I was proud of my down-to-earth personality, but he just got snootier as the years went by. He’d been spending a lot of time away from home lately, but I wouldn’t have figured on
a lover if I hadn’t seen that robe and the calculating look on ML’s face.

  Maybe ML had suggested the idea of watching Purrzie so she could check me out. Of course, Jack wouldn’t have thought she’d wear the robe. On the way to the airport I mentioned the identical style, and he shrugged as if he was barely listening. His acting was decent when he was desperate.

  I forced myself to put all my feelings aside while we were at Mother’s. After the trip when we picked Purrzie up, I looked around her place. She had her Ph.D. diploma on the wall and tons of books, Shakespeare plays and novels and poetry I was supposed to read in high school but never had time for because I had to work. She had a lot of female poetry writers that I never heard of—Marilyn Hacker, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, many more. I glanced into the kitchen. Only a toaster on the counter. She was no doubt a feminist who couldn’t cook. Women’s poetry was her specialty. While ML and Jack were discussing “school business,” I scribbled down a few of the poets’ names, thinking I might catch up.

  Back at home, I’d kept my suspicions to myself for a couple of weeks, when I heard Jack having a quiet phone call. “Who was it, honey?” I asked him.

  “Somebody from school about a meeting. Nothing.”

  I let it go, but my guard was up. I heard him again, with that same tone, two days later. Then one morning he was on the phone before I even got out to the kitchen. I punched *69 on the extension, and checked ML’s number on information. I was no fool.

  Jack was slathering cream cheese on a bagel when I confronted him.

  “Why were you talking to Mary Lou so early?” I asked him.

  “What?” He looked up from the newspaper like he was dazed.

  “I just did star-sixty-nine on the phone.”

  “Huh?”

  “Six-nine. It redials the last caller.”

  “Oh. Why’d you do that?”