not quite a murder mystery

University of Northern Iowa

Not Quite a Murder MysteryAuthor(s): Kate Myers HansonSource: The North American Review, Vol. 290, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 2005), pp. 9-16Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25127428 .

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NAR

not quite a murder mystery A STORY BY KATE MYERS HANSON

rv

!

Leela's cat drags a sleek, gray rabbit across the slate floor,

leaving a blood smear from his kitty door to the woodstove, where he warms himself in the kitchen. Poe never showed

any interest in hunting until last summer when he brought in a

crayon-green garden snake, which Leela picked up with barbeque tongs and hurled into the juniper hedge, impressed that she had thrown it such a distance. Less strength than momentum, her husband would have said.

A hefty, black stray she rescued from the animal shelter ten

years ago, Poe is up to the challenge of a rabbit, but she believes it was already eviscerated when he discovered the animal outside. She walks over to him; his tail swings in a wide arc, once, then

twice, like a metronome. She expected to be disgusted but finds she's only curious, staring at the rabbit's glistening heart, its bluish

liver, steam rising from its body. Or maybe she imagined the body giving off something. Leela has been devouring old movies, last

night Boris Karloff in The Old Dark House, which she has rented at least three times this month. Little goth-girl behind the counter at Family Video keeps suggesting other movies she might enjoy, but Leela always shakes her head no, maybe next time. There's

something to be said for knowing how a movie is going to end, no

surprises. Plus, it's too hokey to scare her. An insane buder, mute

and disfigured, invites stranded travelers to stay the night in the Welsh countryside. The perfect setting: a decrepit house, the air

inside pumped with smoke, weak groans from a pipe organ.

Maybe she should try writing a murder mystery. Poe's back arches into her hand when she strokes him. "A silver

fox, that's what I want next," she tells him and shoos him outside, but she has never seen a silver fox in east Tennessee, only red ones

running like fire when her mama would take after them with her

shotgun if they got too close to the henhouse. She places a Hefty bag over the rabbit. She'll deal with it later, along with the piles of

laundry she tried to sort into lights and darks and then gave up and kicked the whole mess down the basement steps so she

wouldn't have to look at it. She sits shivering at the kitchen table, her toes curled inside an old pair of her husband's wool socks. Chris liked to pretend they were roughing it. Man's work: he'd wear big canvas gloves he ordered from L. L. Bean. He'd stack the wood a fellow out in the country delivered. He'd start up their

Buck stove. Women's work: her mama would scald her hands

September-October 2005 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 9



NAR

putting up corn and okra and turnip greens for the winter. Her

mama could shell peas without even looking. Her mama, a good

Baptist, told Leela: Keeping up with your studies is more impor tant than praying.

Heating their log cabin with wood did not save money and

what did it matter anyway, but Chris swore it did, kept records of

how many cords of wood they went

through in a winter, used that same insis- * r

tent voice when he offered advice on her ^

stories. It was easier to get that sort of DSTOrS Sil6 T

thing published, he said, his insinuation that Chri? K like an odor. Not that hers weren't well

written of course. His writing came out of SPG QTdDS 3 I

a scholarly pursuit, most recently an flannel MrCS ? examination of revenge tragedy, from the

Greeks to the twentieth century, even in

cluding some of Truman Capote's true crime. It has already been

done, she wanted to tell him. In fact, she wanted to stuff the words

right down his arrogant throat.

Even though Chris moved out in a single afternoon six

months ago to live with a graduate student who has hips like a

boy, Leela feels like she lost him a little at a time after that

moment. A plaid shirt he wore when he chopped wood still

hangs on a nail on the back porch, the bittersweet smell of him

in heated-up flannel almost gone. The bed they shared is still a

problem. She clings to the edge of the mattress, an arm dangling over her side or a foot caught in a sling of tucked-in covers, but

often in her sleep she drifts back into the middle where the bed

sags, where their bodies fit together. This morning she lay there

imagining a butcher knife in one hand as she ripped the mattress

to shreds, the music from Psycho thrumming in her head.

Boy-girl and Chris live together in her apartment over Suds

and Duds, a twenty-four-hour laundromat downtown. Leela

imagines how the machines must rumble during spin cycles, the

floor of their apartment vibrating. Chris hates noise; he never

wanted children. Well, now he has one. Boy-girl wears a pearl

dangling from one eyebrow and an opalescent gem studding her

nose. Leela is always tempted to grab a tissue from her purse and

offer it to her as she whispers, Here, your nose has something gooey on it. This scene plays over and over in her head: Boy-girl tries to bake chocolate chip cookies for Chris, his favorite. Smoke

seeps out of the oven as she grabs a dirty dish towel to remove the

pan, cookies flying into the sink revealing their shiny black

bottoms. Chris opens a door, a window. There, there, he says and

wipes away her tears, then lifts her onto the counter. No, maybe

they collapse on the vinyl floor. Sex is easier that way; he's not as

agile as he used to be. Leela rubs her eyes, then her temples. She

has to quit doing this; it's a one-way ticket to the nut hut.

She has vowed to take better care of herself, but she unwraps a

king-sized Milky Way and breaks it in half, catching the string of

caramel in her mouth when she divides it, as if she won't eat all of

it, as if a gesture of change. She thinks about fixing oatmeal but

she doesn't have the energy. Oatmeal reduces your cholesterol.

There's a recipe for muffins in a cheesy women's magazine

a

student left behind during office hours. Also, hints about

removing mold, exercise to deal with those problem areas, and

how to stop your dog from barking. Leela poured over every

single page, including an article on the orgasmic activity of women. One of the conclusions: reducing

a woman's intake of

oxygen during sex increases the intensity of her orgasm. Who took part in these studies, any Jack and Jill off the street? Maybe

this has potential for her murder mystery. il She needs the requisite dead body?

r drowned, filleted, shot?a gruesome first

e 1716171 u6rS scene to hook the reader. Even better,

Q O n P a n d Chris has his slender fingers around Boy

r* ix i x 8^>s neck' so dght he can feel her carotid fia I7QTU I OT pulse, and then she begins to writhe, not

t ?S flesh. out ?f ecstasv but from panic, her rag

mop hair, the only large part of her,

swinging every which way.

Through the frosted windows, Leela watches Poe crouch beside

her geranium planters on the porch railing, then arc toward the stone bird feeder in the middle of the yard, a clean layer of snow

ruffled by his stalking. The weatherman on Channel 6 is calling it a freak storm. You can tell he's excited. He predicts more than

eight inches. Leela is the one who wanted this house way out on

Brody Lake, three acres and a buffer of ancient pines between

them and the highway into town. Lately she has heard earth

moving equipment, but as long as she can't see it she still feels

safe, like she did growing up on her parents' farm.

Close enough to Sims College where both she and Chris have

taught for over twenty years, she always walked the two miles to

campus, stayed fit. But now she looks her age, nearly fifty,

carrying an extra forty pounds. Often people who pass her on

campus give her that I-know-you-from-somewhere look, which

Leela enjoys, not having to stop and make small talk about this

committee or that, a peculiar incognito she never planned on.

She shakes the teakettle, puts water on to boil. She's almost out

of a special hot chocolate blend Chris used to pick up for her at

the Grinder, a gourmet coffee place downtown, a hangout where

they graded papers. She often told Chris that she knew him better

than anyone else did; maybe he wanted to prove her wrong. Last

year when he was turned down for promotion to full professor, a

rank she already had, he told her he was above ass kissing. Did he

think she always enjoyed serving on the faculty senate or acting as

advisor to the student magazine? Her young editors often selected

poetry to publish that reminded her of readings she and Chris

frequented as grad students, held in downtown Knoxville in the

basement of a beauty school. Cold year round, permanent-wave

solution lingering in the air, putrid and mysterious. Black sheets

hung from concrete walls, and they all sat on musty pillows on the

floor while a Madonna or Christ figure mounted a stool and

uttered the meaning of life in monosyllables, strung together like

beads.

After Leela drinks her hot chocolate she wets some paper towels, throws them on the floor, and with one foot slides them across the bloody trail. She still has to dispose of the rabbit's body. If she can toss a spoiled chicken in the regular garbage pickup, she

decides it's all right to double bag the rabbit and throw him in

10 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW September-October 2005



KATE MYERS HANSON

there, too. Outside in the carport, she secures the lid on top of the

trash can and leaves.

Due to the weather, traffic into school is slower than usual. In

the faculty lot she parks illegally beside a fire hydrant, a cap of snow on it. She'll claim poor vision if she gets a ticket. With her

coat tucked around her, she rushes into the English building,

climbing the stairs to her third-floor office, clutching her over

stuffed briefcase to her chest, student papers fluttering about her

neck. Then she spots them in the hallway. Chris and Boy-girl glide toward her, giggling and touching in a careless, adolescent way until they see her. Chris nods, the way he might have acknowl

edged a

preacher or a distant cousin. She stops and turns to watch

his hand move from Boy-girl's thin shoulder to the small of her

back. Their laughter resumes. Not about her. Without her he'll

forget to call his mother on her birthday, forget to pick up his dry

cleaning, forget her completely. Their voices fade like an old

Victrola winding down. Her mama owned one, and a piano she

passed on to Leela. Her mama's hands thundered across those

yellowed keys, the weight of gospel songs absorbed in them, often

playing early in the morning when Leela collected eggs from the

henhouse in the near light, a half dozen or so in a basket filled

with straw, and she'd never hurry, sometimes walk on her tiptoes,

afraid of breaking them, already smelling butter in her mama's

cast-iron fry pan. What would her mama think of all this mess, a

person who could talk a blue streak to Leela while she'd wring a

chicken's neck and then sling it over a tree stump to chop off its

head, but after she plucked it clean and put it on to boil, she'd

gather Leela in her lap so they could watch the sunset or constel

lations in the night sky, and her mama would laugh when Leela

held her hand above her forehead as if to see better, farther, clearer.

Leela closes the door to her office. Her students won't visit this

early, only during official office hours this afternoon. Chris's

students hang around his office and call him Chris, whereas

Leela's always address her as Dr. Jarrell and enter with a certain

amount of trepidation. She is too tough, they write in their eval uations. She opens the bottom drawer of her file cabinet and

drops in the last of her Milky Ways; they thud against the metal.

One before class will give her the high she needs to get through student workshops. As she leans back, she can feel the extra

weight of her hips spread, filling her chair, her small frame hidden

beneath all of it. She can't catch her breath, as if she has just run

hard. She leans over and lets the blood drain to her head. Her

internist said she needed to find a way to reduce stress and lose

weight. Leela stared at his crisp white coat, buttoned just so, not a

wrinkle, an older doctor who still believed those things counted. His wide gold wedding band would be impossible to remove over

his enlarged knuckles. Chris used soap. Last year she noticed a change in him, always in a hurry to get

through dinner, rushing back to the office for one thing or

another. She didn't see the pattern as something suspicious; she

worried about his overworking. That twitch in his right eye had

become more pronounced, and he had lost weight. One night she

tried to surprise him at his office and whisk him away for a drink, but he wasn't there. On the way home she swung by Kelly's, a

favorite haunt. Outside the bar in full view of everyone, he cooed

to Boy-girl, leaned down to kiss her and then nuzzled her neck,

strings of Christmas lights never taken down wiggling above their

heads. She pulled into the Texaco station directly across the street, in the middle of the service island. Under bulbs bright as search

lights, she stepped out of her car. He'd see her standing still as a

pillar and think better of throwing away a twenty-five-year

marriage. But he never looked up.

Class in ten minutes. These are her best students, an honors

seminar for writing majors. When they studied Edgar Allan Poe's short stories earlier in the semester, she brought Poe to class. He

slithered in and out of laps as they poured over the author's

exquisite beginnings. She smiles remembering when she tried to

imitate Faulkner in her own writing. It was like falling in love.

These students enjoy the workshop process. They are applying to

graduate schools. Leela will write letters for them. They will never

lose touch, they tell one another, maybe live together and write,

perhaps a garret in the south of France. No, a log cabin in the

woods, one of them says. Then they laugh. Friends forever, they say.

When Leela returns home that evening, Poe is waiting for her, curled against the cinder blocks where the woodstove is mounted. She feeds it small kindling and the last of the precisely cut wood

Chris stacked outside. Poe looks up anxiously when he hears the

draw of the flue, a sucking sound. She has done it right this time. He arches his back and underneath him is a dead mouse, slick like a newborn. "Another present?" she asks as he coils around it,

having already forgotten that he killed it?a plaything, a prize. She used to be afraid of mice but now feels nothing. She suspects that she is no longer afraid of heights, either. When she and Chris

vacationed in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, she had to

thread her way back down from the top of the Cape Hatteras

Lighthouse, through the irritated crowd on the spiral stairs. Chris went on without her. She could do it now. It's not some newfound

bravery. She doesn't care if she falls over the guardrail and lands hundreds of feet below like a beached whale.

Still cold, Leela squeezes the extra flesh on her arms. Trucks out

sanding the highway grind past. She needs to make it down to the

shopping center for a few supplies. After she feeds Poe, she tucks her flannel nightshirt into an old pair of Chris's ski pants and

snaps up his jacket. Poe makes one rapid movement with his tail. "I'll be back soon," she says, pushing hard with one shoulder

against the back door to shove the snow aside. As soon as she pulls out of the carport, her four-wheel drive kicks in and she rolls

easily over banks that look like sea swells at the end of her

driveway.

Out on the highway she passes a cluster of eerie red lights and a white van nose down in a

gully. She speeds up, changes lanes

quickly and feels her Toyota 4Runner slip only slightly. The man in back of her lays on his horn. A crazy woman driver. She doesn't care. For a moment she thinks of going past the cutoff to the shopping center and driving out farther to Hazel's

Roadhouse where patrons line dance, drink homemade beer and throw peanut shells on the floor, according to her students.

You and your husband ought to come out there sometime, they




NAR

tell her, it's a blast. But she takes the next exit and crawls into

the Target parking lot. She should have made a list, at least

pretended there was some urgency for this shopping trip?

cough syrup or one of those quartz heaters. Even though she

parked close to the entrance, by the time she makes it to the door her hair is sopping wet from exertion. She takes off her

gloves and tries to comb her hair with her fingers. Target is nearly empty, stock

ShetUCkshf people in red smocks unpacking inven

tory, one on a ladder hanging hearts and I PITO NET pO( bears for a Valentine display. Only the r 1 riot b express checkout is lit up. A mother , unloads dozens of canned goods while GnOU?jil TO 7

her toddler dances wildly in their cart. with StOPIGS. She smiles helplessly at Leela.

"Dr. Jarrell," someone calls. She ignores

the voice and walks on. "Dr. Jarrell." How could anyone recognize

her in this getup? She turns. An older student who looks like Abe

Lincoln, Henry something or other. He took her Forms of

Fiction. He walks a few steps toward her, holding a bundle of

Stayfrees, slims with wings. "Nice to see you," Leela manages, struggling with the zipper on

Chris's jacket, its teeth biting into her shirt.

"We keep it warm in here," he says.

She strains to look up at him. "I was surprised you were open."

"Until ten," he says, now more self-conscious, wrapping his

arms around the Stayfrees. "I mean with the weather."

He nods. "I've never seen a storm like this, but management

thought it would be good PR. People might run out of things." Leela can feel her face heating up. "Ah, well..."

"You drove in this mess?"

The zipper finally lets go. "Rode my horse," she says. "You're very funny, Professor."

"Leela, please." Her heart beats too fast. Chris would have said

that, not her. She is beginning to feel faint, sick to her stomach.

"Is there something I can help you find, Dr. Jarrell?" She grabs the end cap display. "I can't breathe," she says and

then his arm is around her waist, supporting her. They move

down the magazine aisle, and he sits her down on a short stack of

boxes.

"I'll get you some water," he tells her.

"No, just stay with me for a minute in case I pass out." She leans over hugging her knees as if preparing for an airplane crash.

He's down on one knee beside her. "Take in a deep breath, then

let it out slowly. Again . . ." One arm sweeps up and down as if

conducting. "Better?"

"Not sure." She still sees spots.

"Did you forget to eat today?"

"Crashing, maybe low blood sugar ..."

"I'll go get some juice."

"Thank you."

Her mouth is dry, her speech awkward. He probably thinks

she's some kind of nut. Why did she say crashing. Her head still on her knees, she can read the cover of a craft magazine.

"Foolproof bows for your Easter baskets." Jesus, what the hell does that mean? Nothing is foolproof.

Henry holds out a bottle of orange juice, twisting off the cap for her. "Here, this will make you feel better."

She fumbles bringing the bottle to her mouth, juice dribbling down her chin. She dabs it with the sleeve of her coat. "I appre

ciate this."

*~ u~.~~J~. "No problem. You still shaky?" ?r hands ?Ali??e? ! ketS "My manager says for you to sit here as

ra ve ^on?as y?u neec*ta" ... , "That's nice," Leela says. "I don't want

III them you to get in trouble."

Henry laughs and motions to the customer service desk. "He's that kid over

there with the headphones on. Still in

high school."

For the first time she reads his nametag: Hello I'm Mark. "I

thought your name was Henry."

"Yes, ma'am, Henry Swisher. I was always impressed?you

never forgot any of our names." Now she recalls, he didn't

complete his MA, some sticky family problems. Leela swallows the last of the juice. "I think this did the trick." "Well look, if you need someone to drive you home, I have a

buddy over at the highway patrol." She holds the bottle in midair and Henry takes it from her. "Oh,

that's not necessary."

"You wouldn't want to get in an accident or anything."

Even if she'd gone through a red light at the intersection, no

one would have been going fast enough to hit her hard enough, a

real T-bone, a broken neck, something quick and final. "I'll just sit here a while longer, I'll be fine."

The young manager waves Henry to the front desk.

Leela rests her head again on her folded arms and closes her

eyes, hoping the white spots will go away. These panic attacks

should have happened when Chris first left, when she was numb, when she'd strike up conversations with colleagues in the lounge to prove to everybody within earshot that she was all right, when

she hoped Chris would see her being so congenial, when it

mattered to her what people said behind her back: Leela never

saw this coming, in her head most of the time, and she grew up

poor, did you know that? And her mother could drive a tractor

and butcher a hog. Her daddy? He left when she was only eight, poor thing. Do you think she'd like some company out there in

the boonies?

When Henry mentioned the highway patrol, she realized that

she needed to bring law enforcement into her mystery. First,

they'll go after suspicious characters in Boy-girl's neighborhood,

concentrating for a while on a creepy janitor who cleans Suds and

Duds and often leers at women while they fold clothes, but the

janitor has an alibi?he was picked up for lewd behavior on the

other side of town and was hauled into the police station at the

approximate time of Boy-girl's murder. The detective in charge of

the case, a recovering alcoholic, never believed the janitor was the

culprit and has been looking at her relatives and close friends. He




KATE MYERS HANSON

rules out other grad students who feign being heartbroken over

Boy-girl's demise, her ne'er-do-well older brother, and a free

loading uncle who lives with Boy-girl's mother, but during the

questioning the detective learns about Chris, whom family and

friends refer to as cradle robber, pseudo intellectual, and cheap

skate. In a moment of irony, the detective finds Chris living on the

south side, underneath the train trestle, in a camp homeless

people built out of appliance boxes. He doesn't fit in, no one likes

him, so it's easy for the residents to give him up. Eventually Chris

will go on trial for Boy-girl's murder, and other women will come

forward to testify. Chris tried that choking technique on them as

well.

Henry stands over her. "I think we better call someone for you."

"No, really, I'm better," she says, struggling to stand. The boxes

she has been sitting on are caved in. "Sorry about that."

He waves one long

arm in the air, as if swatting a

fly. "No

problem."

"Are you going to finish your degree?" "Yes, ma'am. This semester I'm taking Critical Theory with

Professor Gaines."

"Ah, good ..."

"I'll be back full time next fall."

Leela nods.

"If you're sure

you're okay, I guess I better get back to work."

"Of course, you go on now. Oh, when I came in I was looking

for the candy aisle."

Henry seems disappointed in her.

"And I need some file folders ..."

"Candy on aisle 7, folders on 2. You need any help?"

"Oh no, I can manage. Thank you for everything."

Henry walks a couple steps, then turns back to her, coming

so

close she notices the smudge on his right cheek is actually a birth

mark. "Dr. Jarrell, do you think you could come to a writers'

group I have? I mean, we're all beginners, but I know they'd love

to have a real writer come visit."

"Well, I don't have much free time."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been so forward. You've got better

things to do than hang with a bunch of hacks."

Leela recalls his writing. Henry was anything but a hack,

though in her class he had only written heroic fantasy. "Does your

group have a name?"

"Scribes ... we meet at my apartment every Sunday about

seven, read our work and talk about writing."

Leela isn't sure why but she agrees to come. Neither of them can

locate a piece of paper, so Henry writes down his address and

phone number on the back of her hand, like the kids in her classes

do. As he rushes away, she studies what he wrote, wanting to keep it, not wash it off right away. It was the way he had held her hand, like her mama's grip when they'd cross the busy highway for Leela to catch the school bus.

When Leela wakes up in the middle of the night, and she always does, a few seconds elapse before she remembers that Chris is

gone, and she grabs a handful of flannel like it is flesh. Her chest

hurts now, how she imagines the pain of a cracked rib. She swal

lows short, ragged breaths. She thinks about Henry's advice?a

deep breath, then slowly exhale. Imagine, she has to think about

breathing now. Her mama used to clap out meter when Leela

practiced songs about red hens and Indian maidens in

Thompsons Piano Book for Beginners, a rhythm she learned. She can learn this, too. A deep breath, exhale slowly. It's all a matter of

practice.

Late Friday afternoon Leela is sitting in her office, the door ajar, when Boy-girl walks by. A new haircut like Leela's, a short bob, blond and full, but with a few spikes at the crown. A loose dress

in Indian fabric catching her ankles. Wouldn't Chris notice that

she's co-opting the Leela look? She kicks her trash can across the room. God almighty, these people are trying to push her over the

edge. All she wants to do is purge some of her .student files, store

them in her basement locker. Late Friday afternoon the halls are

usually empty. An elderly colleague, Dr. Burke, keeps a bottle of

bourbon in his file cabinet. For emergencies, he says, but he

drinks from his carafe of coffee all day, and she wonders. He's so

jovial. She'd like to barge into his office and say, Burkey, let's have a belt. The last straw, maintenance knocks on her door. No, she

doesn't need her office cleaned for a while, but the sturdy woman

stands tethered to a long orange cord on her industrial vacuum,

trying to peek inside. Leela doesn't budge. No really, her office

doesn't need to be vacuumed. But there are concerns about

schedules, the woman says, now tapping her clipboard. Leela tells

her not to worry and closes the door slowly, watching the last slice

of light from the hallway disappear. She needs to give Chris a different name in the novel, not to

protect him but to give herself some distance from the char acter. She decides on Guy, anonymous and similar to Girl-boy, a man who is consumed by his own

appearance?his house is

filled with mirrors. He glances furtively at his reflection in

storefront windows and asks perfect strangers to guess how old

he is, like a barker at a carnival sideshow. At the preliminary

hearing, Guy's court-appointed attorney wants to exclude testi

mony from other female partners, citing Gumble vs. Strayhorn, in which previous sexual history was shown to be unduly prej

udicial in a capital murder case. The judge, a spindly woman

who has trouble concentrating, rules for the defense: the testi

mony of Bianca, Joan, Leslie and Sherrie is excluded. As soon as

the judge grants the prosecution's request for a recess, Guy's former wife causes a ruckus, screaming that Guy always gets

away with everything. Two portly bailiffs escort her from the

courtroom, but they seem eager to listen to her side of the story.

She can no longer afford to have Merry Maids clean her house, has taken a part-time position at Burger King, and had to cut

up her Macy's credit card. It's a lifestyle thing, she says,

lamenting the fact that Guy will never have to pay a cent of

alimony if he's convicted.

Against one wall of Leela's office, stacks of papers have

shifted into mini landslides. Whatever was she thinking, trying to re-organize. Running her hand through the thickness of her

hair, she is weary from the mere thought of simplifying her life. She sits on the crushed velvet couch she found at Goodwill a

while ago. Still, it gives off a sweet potent smell, leftover, she imagines, from a trendy perfume with a name like




NAR

Compulsion, always marketed with bizarre commercials?rage

followed by angelic repose, then uncontrolled laughter with a

final fade to the product on a white pedestal. She swings her

feet up on the couch and lies down. Oh yes, Dr. Freud, Boy-girl has stolen my hair. In a dream, he asks? No, no, she has my hair.

Let's think about this, Leela, my dear. Since you still have your hair she didn't really take it, now did she, he says. You're missing the point, Dr. Freud.

Leftover slush splashes the undercarriage of her car on her

way to Henry's. The Carlton Arms looks more like a low

budget motel than an apartment building, a single-story

L-shaped complex, bicycles locked to railings, bluish light bleeding through the jalousie windows. Henry answers the

door before she finishes knocking. "Welcome, Dr. Jarrell." He

guides her inside to a furry brown chair, low to the ground. On the ground. She hesitates.

"It only had one leg so I sawed it off," Henry says. "If you'd rather..."

"Oh no, this is fine." She sits like Buddha, her legs crossed

underneath her jumper. "Well," she says, then admires Henry's

small aquarium and the bookshelves he has constructed with

cinder blocks and boards. She and Chris had made the exact same

thing in grad school. One of the other writers, a young woman with a cap of

magenta-colored hair, clears her throat. Henry says, "Oh, I'm

sorry, Dr. Jarrell, this is Salina. She writes sonnets."

"A poet," Leela says and Salina grins.

"Oh Dr. Jarrell, I just finished your last collection. I've read

all three," says Salina, hand over her heart. "I'll tell you, that last scene in 'Tides' when the grandfather and the boy spot the

seagull, well..."

Leela seriously wonders how she could have written such tripe. If she could go back and rewrite the story, it would be much less sentimental.

"Maybe we should let Dr. Jarrell take a breath, Salina," Henry says.

A lean young man sits beside Henry in their circle, but on a

folding chair. "This is Eddie, Dr. Jarrell." Henry squeezes his arm.

"I have a bad back," he says, "so I can't sit on the floor."

"He likes being up there," Salina says. "He thinks he's in charge."

"Nobody's in charge," says Henry, his forehead perspiring. Leela says, "Tell me what you're all working on."

"Story cycles about my wacko family," Eddie tells her. He plucks a thick manuscript from his book bag like an offering.

"It's good to have material to jump-start fiction," she says. "It's Henry's turn to read first," says Salina. She is clearly in

charge.

Eddie bumps his chair closer into the circle. Leela leans back in

the fur chair to test its stability, not wanting to fall out of the thing backwards, and then extends her legs, crossing them as demurely as possible at the ankle. She isn't sure how long she can sit this

way, and God, how will she get up when it's time to leave? When

she folds her hands in her lap, Henry reaches for his work on the

coffee table and sits down beside her and reads part of the first scene.

Seth, the young narrator, holds a flashlight against the tips of

his fingers to see his own blood flow, AB negative and HIV

infected. He's only sixteen. He wants to see past the candy pink

glow underneath his fingernails. He suspects that his blood must look different now as it moves through his body wearing down organs. When they draw blood at the hospital, he watches as it fills each tube, oily the way it clings to the plastic. Even

though the med techs wear rubber gloves, the boy knows

they're afraid. He sees that look in his own parents' eyes. He

shines the beam of his flashlight on the ceiling of his bedroom, a spotlight on an airplane model made of balsa wood. It drifts if he breathes hard.

Henry looks up from reading, only at Leela, as if asking permis sion. Her eyes water, not because of the content of the story but

from the discovery that Henry is the real thing. It may be the first honest emotion she has had since Chris left.

"Look, I know it needs work," he says, "but what do you think?" Leela isn't in a classroom now where that prof-voice of hers

takes over automatically. She feels nervous about responding.

"The voice is so authentic," she says. "May I read the rest?"

"This is all I have so far, but when I have some more...."

"Of course," says Leela. "All stories need time to percolate. Don't

rush it."

Henry glances up at Eddie. "Didn't I tell you she was

wonderful?"

Leela isn't sure what to make of the "wonderful" remark.

Initially she supposes she liked the compliment but now feels out

of her own skin, a fraud. She still wants her old life back, never

mind being wonderful.

When Leela's alarm beeps the next morning, she is cold and still

dreaming, on her back in a free fall through a layer of ice, the

sound like bone cracking. When she wiggles her toes, Poe

pounces on them, expecting play. Now fully awake, her heart

beating too fast, her nightshirt drenched in sweat, she calls in sick, cancels her classes, which she hasn't done since the Asian flu

fifteen years ago, not even when Chris first left her. The depart ment secretary, Pauline, loses her officious manner and wants to

send someone out to check on her, says she can come herself

around noon. But Leela won't hear of it, her words strained,

mumbling about a flu bug, no need to worry, she'll be back

Thursday or Friday. But the end of the week comes and goes and Leela is still in bed,

feeling safer than she has in a long time. More calls from the

department, colleagues who hate to disturb her, and then the

Chair, a crotchety old man who likes Leela because she's punctual.

On the phone, she imitates that voice her students use pretending to be ill?the dying swan, Leela calls it. The Chair wants to know

if she plans to be out next week as well. Does she have any sugges tions for someone to cover her classes? Dr. Burke is doing it right now but the Chair is sure he's making a mess of it. She claims to

be too sick to talk.

Poe seems calmer now that they stay in bed all day. A pile of

Sunday New York Times lie on the floor beside her. Lately she

only reads the Arts and Leisure sections, crossing out bad

reviews of movies and putting large stars beside the ones she




KATE MYERS HANSON

might consider seeing. She fumbles in her bedside table for her

pen. In the back of the drawer is a bottle of Percocet, prescribed to Chris when he had knee surgery last year. She dumps the pills out onto the bedspread and counts them, like tiny white seeds.

Twelve left. A narcotic of some sort. Take as needed for pain, one

every four to six hours. How hard could it be, but she isn't sure

if twelve will do it. Her students claim that you can find out

anything on the Internet, including how to make a bomb. With

her mama long gone, no siblings

or children, no one will be

hurt. Like a needle stuck in the groove of an old phonograph record, she knows where the damage is and there's no way past

it. Her whole adult life was spent with Chris. He stayed beside

her mama's sickbed and rubbed her back and fed her custard.

He said to Leela: my life, my soul mate, we'll grow old together. She has proof,

a love letter. She stares into the mirror over her

dresser trying to find her mama, her eyes more almond shaped when she stretches the skin at both corners, but she favors her

daddy, dark eyes buried deep. She'll need to find a home for Poe.

Once or twice her new mailman has called him a magnificent cat.

Someone knocks on the back door. She scoops up the pills and

places the bottle on her nightstand. Whoever it is will give up and

leave; she isn't going to budge. Now, pounding with purpose.

Maybe someone is stranded. She wraps a quilt around her shoul

ders, steps over discarded orange peels and a half-eaten toasted

cheese and tiptoes down the hall, hoping to see who is there

without being seen. Too late; Henry holds one hand above his

eyes like a visor and peeks through her kitchen window. Melting snow and ice off the eaves sound like rainfall. He waves and

points to the door handle. She's supposed to let him in? How in

the hell does he know where she lives?

She unlatches the door. He stands there, hands tucked into the

pockets of his barn coat, his feet moving in place, either nervous

or cold. "I tried to call," he explains, "but the phone was busy all

the time."

She offers no explanation. She took her phone off the hook

and stuffed it into the bottom of her clothes hamper. "Pauline said you were ill. I told her I'd come out

and..."

Leela pulls the train of her quilt along and sits down on a

kitchen chair. "I'm all right, really." She thumbs through stacks of

mail, pretending to be busy, hoping Henry will leave.

He looks around the kitchen. "Maybe I could fix you some

tea."

"No thanks," she manages. Poe jumps into her lap. He sniffs an

untouched carton of Chinese food she had delivered last night. "Dr. Jarrell, I know I must seem real forward coming out here,

but everyone's real worried about you."

"Everyone?"

Henry walks closer to where Leela sits in her cocoon, the quilt

puddled around her feet. "I was worried about you. I called for

days to make sure you were coming to Writers' Group."

"I thought it was called 'Scribes.'"

"Salina thinks that's way too religious."

"I see. Who told you where I lived?"

Henry finally sits down in the chair across from her. "Students

always know where professors live; it's a hobby." Leela smiles. "I gave you a B in that course. Your final paper was late."

"I deserved it..."

She strokes Poe who now purrs loudly in her lap. "I was

wondering how you feel about cats. I might be looking for a new

home for Poe."

"I see," says Henry. "I'd help you out but my landlord doesn't

allow pets."

"Well, I just thought I'd ask." Up close she realizes that Henry is older than she first thought, late thirties maybe. She shivers

but not from the cold. She needs Henry to wrap his long thin arms around her, to hold her here. She tucks her hands into her

pockets, but there's nothing in them. She's not brave enough to

fill them with stones.

"You're going to be all right," he says, "in spite of that asshole

husband of yours."

"So much for a private life."

Henry puts his hand over his heart. "Trust me, there's no such

thing." He stands up and gestures toward the stove. "How 'bout

that tea?"

"Yes, all right." They will drink the damn tea and then she'll ask

him to leave and that will be that.

From the shelf above the stove, Henry removes two boxes.

"Which one would you like, Earl Grey or Raspberry Essence?"

"Raspberry, I suppose." She doesn't even like tea. Henry

retrieves two mugs from the drain board. She hasn't washed

ROBIN LOPEZ LYSNE

Death of the Death Wish

Make a whistle from my thigh bone

when I die, let the eagles hear the laughter from my bones.

Let this be a surprise to everyone, how death is a song, and sorrow makes way for soaring,

well into the evening sun.

I_I




N A R

dishes in days; the place is a disaster. Henry fills the old kettle, her

mama's. She likes the way it pops and strains while the water comes to a boil.

When the kettle hums, Henry fills the mugs and brings them to

the table. He sits across from her again, his ardent blue eyes

pressing her to talk to him when all she wants is to retreat back

into her room. "They're not worth it," he says.

She isn't going to open that can of worms, and besides, she can't

see where her business is any concern of Henry's. She has never

been familiar like this with a student. Well, technically, he isn't a

student of hers now, but still. . . . And now she has become

involved in his writers' group. She doesn't know where her head

is these days. "About the writers' group, Henry..."

Henry leans toward her. "We sure did miss you last time. I

didn't tell you but we agreed when we first started the group that we'd never discuss what goes on at group with anyone

else."

"Well, that's good to know." What could they reveal about her?

That she was so fat she had trouble getting out of the brown fur

chair?

"I suppose you heard all that mess about me a couple years

ago," Henry says.

"Henry, to tell you the truth, I'm not often in the loop when it comes to gossip about students. People don't usually confide in

me."

"Would you mind if I did?"

Now what is she supposed to say to a request like that? No

Henry, I have enough on my own plate, thank you very much,

and close the door on your way out. Maybe she can say she has a

dentist's appointment and needs to get ready. Jesus, he'll never

believe her.

"I mean I won't say anything if you don't want me to."

Leela remembers his kindness that night at Target. "Of course,

go ahead," she tells him.

"I was just going to say that after my parents disowned me, I

believed they'd be better off without me and I did a stupid

thing..."

"How stupid?" Leela asks.

"I ended up in the hospital." I see ...

"When my parents didn't come to visit me there, that was a real

come-to-Jesus moment for me."

Leela smiles. "Why in the world didn't they come see you?" "I told them I was gay, wanting to be honest with them. They

were always trying to fix me up with single women at their church, we're talking Pentecostal?way out there?so they said they'd pray for my soul but unless I repented, I was no longer their son."

"And now, how are you doing with all that?"

"Better . . . Somewhere along the line after I got out of the

hospital, with the help of my two sisters and a good friend, I knew

that I was going to be better off without my parents. More than I

knew, I think I made a conscious decision."

"Like choosing broccoli instead of cauliflower?"

"Yes, exactly," Henry says, reaching for the sugar bowl.

"Nothing is that simple."

"But maybe it is, Dr. Jarrell," he says, vigorously stirring sugar into his tea.

Leela tosses Poe out of her lap. "Are you working

on any new stories right now?" Henry asks.

"A longer work ..."

"How's that going?"

"Right now one of the central characters, Guy, has been

captured by the police, arrested for murder, no bail pending trial.

He was on the run for a long time."

"Is he a serial killer?"

She shouldn't have told him anything. "Something like that," Leela says.

"Who'd he k?l?"

"Most recentiy, he strangled Boy-girl, an accident, but nonethe

less, he's responsible for her death."

"Do we know these characters, Dr. Jarrell?"

"It's fiction, Henry."

"Ah, right." He blows his tea before each sip. Leela leans into her steamy cup. "Thank you, Henry."

"You're welcome. Okay, what happens next? Hopefully, he has

an agonizing death."

"Too easy, don't you think?" Leela asks. "Perhaps the psychia

trists on both sides determine that he's insane and then he's

committed to one of those snake-pit asylums where he has to

listen to the mutterings of schizophrenics in an ill-lit dayroom for

the rest of his days." "As long

as there's no way he can ever be released ..."

Leela nods. "But is that even possible any more in the mental

health system?"

Henry shifts in his chair. He's excited now. "I think I've heard of cases where if a convicted murderer is found sane in the future then

he has to serve out his sentence in jail, so either way it's a done deal."

"Guess I need to do a little research."

Henry frames the final scene with his hands, making a box in

the air. "I can see him now in an insane asylum wasted on

Thorazine, sitting on the floor, and he can't even remember where

his boys are."

"His boys?" Henry looks down at his crotch and raises his eyebrows. Leela actually laughs out loud, long and hard, unable to stop

herself, feeling what she expected to feel if she could have cried, her eyes cloudy, throat strained, loss and humiliation mixed in the

noise, and Henry doesn't flinch, waits until she quiets down and

hands her a napkin.

He says, "Nobody ever laughs at my jokes. Do you want to hear one about the rabbi and the schoolgirl?"

Leela says, "I'll pass."

She gets up and throws cold water on her face, and then she

gathers Poe back into her arms. She blots her eyes with one cuff

of her nightshirt, sits back down. Henry pours more hot water

into their cups. Leela dunks her teabag until the water colors a

light pink. She would like to paint the walls in her bedroom that

color, something different. As a tiny

mouse skitters across the slate

floor, Poe stands poised on her lap, content and restiess in a single moment. D




not quite a murder mystery

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