Mulch Page 7

  She entered the park, walking quickly, enjoying the smell of rotting leaves and the gathering damp of night. She kept her stick at the ready. Then a tree root tripped her and she had to grasp a nearby scrub tree to keep from falling. “Clumsy,” she condemned herself, and slowed down. She was walking in what she liked to call her “canyon.” It was a narrow valley with a little creek running through. Next to the stream was a well-worn trail that had felt the tread of the feet of schoolchildren bound for Sylvan Valley Elementary. On either side of the park were lines of houses built on top of ridges.

  Janie loved to walk here. She couldn’t believe people lived in glass houses and didn’t even pull the curtains at night. Well, some people did, but a lot didn’t. She didn’t know everyone yet; sometimes she and Melanie walked around on weekends or after school, and Melanie of course knew everything about everyone. But when Janie walked at night like this by herself, she often crept up through backyards and peeked in windows. Once when she did this, she met a chained dog in the backyard, a big dog who magically remained silent. A large, silent, golden dog. Rebuking her with its silence. Saying (silently), “Don’t you know Sylvan Valley people do not reveal their normal curiosity about their neighbors? So what are you doing here, you misfit?”

  She must not appear to be a threat to anyone, not even a dog. At this thought, she brandished her stick like a sword and leaped forward at an invisible foe and warned: “En garde!” Then, dropping her pose, she sauntered on. Maybe she would fill out like her sister, Martha, and then people would notice her more. Dogs might even bark at her.

  Janie noticed that some houses had little additions, some had great big additions, while others had separate buildings similar to the one at her house. Her mother was now using this addition as her writing studio, which meant Janie rarely could entertain friends there any more. Instead she had to bring them into her bedroom, which wasn’t nearly as cool. This had all happened after her mom talked with Nora, Melanie’s mother. Although Janie liked Nora (“Call me Nora, Jane, and I’ll call you Jane,” she had said in that low voice of hers) she noticed that Nora was another housewife who didn’t go to work. She wrote poetry, and Melanie said her mother got paid for it, too, but not even minimum wage if one counted up all the time it took. And now Nora had influenced her mother not to work but write instead, which was a little embarrassing, because Janie worried that her mother would never get published. So that left two of the women in the cul-de-sac as housewives who wrote, which was kind of funky. Secretly, it’s what Janie could see herself doing when she was married. Secretly, she would like to be a Shakespeare or at least an Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

  But the rest of the mothers had jobs with real salaries, like Mrs. Mougey, who was becoming a kind of friend of Janie’s. She raised money to help needy children in the world, and probably earned lots of money, which always meant the family could more easily pay for things like college. She thought that type of job would make you feel good about yourself, although it was giving Mrs. Mougey more gray hair. She worked so hard, coming home late almost every night, leaving her husband alone all the time in the evening. Janie had a perfect view of their house out of her bedroom window.

  She was torn. If only she didn’t have to worry about money. Then she felt guilty: She was well aware of the homeless when the family drove through Washington. They made her ashamed to drive by, a passenger in a big, new car, wearing clean, new clothes. She knew her family would never suffer like that, and wondered how God figured out what was fair for people.

  She saw the outlines of a big tree ahead. This was where the trail curved sharply up. Here she had a good view of one of those outbuildings, with a man working inside. A saw whined faintly. Janie scrambled up the small incline for a closer look, the leaves crunching like cornflakes. She crossed the yard. The man, who seemed very large, slowly moved his body with the saw, with an occasional forward thrust as if he had hit an easier spot in the wood. The saw’s whine rose to a higher pitch when he hit those easier spots. Her father always talked longingly of having a saw so he could make his own furniture, but she knew somehow that this was just talk. Her dad was more of a reader than a carpenter. She came a few steps closer, then realized the saw had been turned off. Had he heard her? She froze. He was right there on the other side of the glass, blond, with thick glasses, wearing jeans and a big plaid lumberjack shirt like one her dad wore. In his hand was some kind of a planing tool, which he grasped like a weapon. He slowly turned around and stared at her, his eyes blue and dangerous.

  She was visible! He could see her blond hair, her blue eyes, her skinniness, her jeans jacket, her tan Levi’s, her dirty tennis shoes … he could see it all, she was sure. If only she had been a brunette, he wouldn’t have been able to see her! Dropping her stick in terror, she turned and stumbled out of the yard, tripped and sprawled down the shallow incline, and landed in the path.

  She pulled herself up to a sitting position. “Oooh,” she groaned, and gently touched her face. Then a light shone on her. She looked up and there he was, standing motionless on the edge of the yard. She put a hand up to shield her eyes from the glare.

  His voice was low and threatening. “My, what a pretty girl you are. But this is the last time I want to see you hanging around my house. You understand?”

  Janie mumbled, “I … I understand. I’m really sorry. I won’t ever do it again.”

  “And take your stick with you. Here it comes. Heads up.” He threw it down at her and she brought a hand up to catch it but missed, and it caromed against her body, then flipped out into the darkness.

  The man and the light had disappeared. Limbs trembling, she heaved herself up and ran back on the trail the way she had come, out of the park and down the street to home, leaving her stick behind.

  She stood in her own backyard, panting for breath, her mouth and throat dry, her body cold but wet with perspiration. She slipped up the timbered steps leading to the patio and watched through the expanse of glass windows her parents sitting at the dining room table. Her father’s arm was around her mother, and she knew this meant that later they would probably make love. If he had been sitting without touching, it would have meant one or the other had given some signal that they weren’t going to make love that night. She had figured this out recently. And the rest of the world could figure it out too, because it was all right there for them to see. Her family was just like the others—no curtains drawn—families all over this neighborhood were living in fishbowls! No wonder kids were window peepers.

  She retreated to the other side of the house, coming in through the rec room door, then quickly retired to the bathroom and locked the door. She looked at her face. The scratches were on one side only; she pulled her long, curly blond hair over the area. She was pleased to see that not only did it hide the scratches but it made her look very pretty, actually very grown-up, like that blonde in an ancient movie with hair over one eye and a lisp. Her eyes, for another thing, were still wild with excitement. The eyelashes were like little curtains sweeping the edges of her cheeks. Very becoming, she decided. Then she shuddered, remembering the man. Hoping she would never meet him again.

  “Darling, are you taking a bath?” Her mother was at the door of the bathroom. “I thought you were still doing your homework.”

  “All finished, Ma,” Janie said in a breezy voice. She thought guiltily of the array of open books in her room. Yet any proper investigating mother would know that a person as neat as Janie would never leave them like that if she truly had finished her homework.

  She turned on the water to almost the hottest range. She took off her torn and dirty clothes and sneakers and carefully bundled them to wash later. Her mother would ask too many questions if she found them, so they would go temporarily into Janie’s superhiding place.

  The bath was now quite full of steaming water. Into it went Janie’s thin body. She lay back and put her blond head on the back of the tub.

  “Gosh, this is living,” she said to herself
, and closed her eyes.

  8

  Kristina

  PETER REMEMBERED WHEN HE’D FIRST MET HIS current mistress. One night, because his wife hadn’t done it earlier, he was stuck with taking the dog for a late walk. It was spring, and the air smelled of spring’s ear-liest flowering blossoms. It must have been near midnight. He walked down the path in the woods and then for some reason up to Martha’s Lane. She had been standing among the trees in her front yard. Wearing white, looking up. Looking like a nymph conferring with the moon.

  He had called to her. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, yes, I am all right,” she had called back softly, a lilt raising the “yes” to something special. “I am only out here at this hour to enjoy the beautiful smells.”

  It turned out she was Austrian. He had gravitated toward her as if she had been a magnet, and had been held ever since. Translucent sort of beauty. That charm that only European women possess. Small, lithe, very sexual. And with the ability to love him like his current wife or his ex-wives had never done.

  Her name was Kristina.

  They met next for lunch at Le Steak in Georgetown. Then he had taken her to his place on Q Street. They had tea in the tiny garden. The acrid smell of the boxwoods hung in the damp air and somehow turned them on. They did their mating dance while sitting on French wire garden chairs. She was witty without once talking about Washington politics. They had a proper conversation but smiled conspiratorial smiles, knowing what they would do next and relishing it. Finally they looked at each other and decided the preliminaries were over. They took the tea tray into the kitchen—she carried it, and he put his hand on her silk ass—then rushed to the bedroom and fell at each other.

  Two hours later the sheets were sweaty with their lovemaking, and they were fully acquainted. Comfortable with each other. After that, they met weekly and spent long hours in that bedroom, sometimes going out later to eat, sometimes just eating in.

  That had been spring. Now it was fall. A seven-month affair: a little shorter than his average. The bitter, unexpected cold of early November had hardened the ground just as fast as it had hardened his heart.

  Kristina had cried too much when he told her they had to break it up. He could tell there would be trouble. At first he had been moved. Did this one really love him? For a fleeting second he considered another divorce, then a marriage to this continental, warmhearted woman. But a second terrible picture flashed across his mind: another bitter, rejected wife to get rid of. An open scandal the press would devour. His nomination down the tubes. No thanks. No woman was worth that.

  It was then he realized how unhandy it was to have acquired a lover who lived in the same neighborhood. What if, in one of her hysterical moods, Kristina let something slip? She had seemed like the perfect woman. But even she must have woman’s mischief in her; what if she decided to squeal to his wife?

  He knew that Paschen, an arrogant, hypocritical bastard who probably ran around on his own wife, would leave Peter no room for error.

  Now he stood in Kristina’s living room. He had been here only once before, on that first night they met. Dangerous to be here but necessary. Just two blocks from his own house—perilously close. But it couldn’t be done at his place in Georgetown; the noise of a saw would carry through the walls of the row house.

  He had it all planned. He had even practiced in his workshop. He had to do it right.

  She was to leave tomorrow for one of her foreign buying trips. Gone for two months. Once he had resolved to do this, he had acquired a detailed knowledge of both her business and her personal habits. It had been pathetically easy; Kristina construed it only as an intensification of his love for her. It had been just as easy to acquire samples of her handwriting. He’d write to the few people in the States who would miss her, regarding her plan to live abroad. At the proper time, his Hong Kong connection would send the letters.

  A more sophisticated letter would go to her company, severing her relationship with them—a move that she had been contemplating anyway, and that the company knew about. Mail would be forwarded to his Hong Kong source, and then back to him in the States.

  No one would miss her for quite a while.

  And then the messy part. He thought nostalgically of the ease with which he had disposed of bodies in the jungles of Vietnam. A quick shot or knife thrust, and kick the body into the underbrush, where the animals and insects would take care of it within hours.

  Here, he would have to use her laundry room. A bloody mess but no way around it. Store—in her freezer—the parts that could be identified. Deep-six them later in the Potomac. Dispose quickly of the rest. A perfect crime. As chance would have it, she had provided him with just the right type of innocent containers sitting out in front of her house. Otherwise, there would have been a storage problem bigger than the one he already had, in stowing somewhere the readily identified parts—or elements. Elements. That was the euphemism that readily came to mind; he grasped it gratefully.

  With a start, he broke from his reverie. He looked over at her, sitting on the rose couch. Thinner than usual. Her hair looked like hell. He loved her hair. It was light brown with a rosy tone. So he’d teased her a lot about her pink hair. And her eyes; he loved her eyes, with their slight slant. Some Mongol barbarian blood in there.

  But now she looked like hell. Yes, and nervous. Could she read his mind? His gorge rose in his throat. He fought to keep his face smooth, noncommittal. He took a deep breath and strolled across the room. In his pocket he fingered a coil of strong, thin wire, fashioned with a padded loop on either end.

  Her brown eyes followed him as he approached. He sat down beside her and draped a hand gently around her.

  “You’re tense, my dear. Turn a little and I’ll massage your shoulders, like old times.”

  She exhaled and took a deep, relaxed breath. “Oh, I’d love that so.” As he started kneading her shoulder muscles, she turned her face and quickly kissed one of his hands. A current ran through him of remembered sexual pleasure. She said, “We’re having our troubles now, Peter, but we can find some solution. Just don’t forget how much I love you.”

  The words, the touching, sent a message right through him down to the groin, hardening his penis and softening his resolve. Then he pulled in his breath, bared his teeth in a grimace, and pulled the garrote out of his pocket. At that instant she turned and saw his changed face.

  “Peter!” She howled it like an animal. Her eyes near his were more terrifying than any Vietcong’s had ever been. Then she attacked him.

  Blown it! This 110-pound woman was fighting him! Shoving him in the face, scratching him, twisting away … how dare she!

  “Bitch! Die!” He roughly grabbed her arms and wrenched them back as if breaking wings off a chicken. She screamed. Then quickly he slipped the wire around the small neck, avoiding those large, angry brown eyes. Now it was easy—just a matter of keeping a tight hold. The screams turned to gurgles. Her objecting body arched up in a parody of lovemaking. The fingers—God, he thought he’d neutralized those arms and fingers—clawed at her neck where the wire was now buried deep.

  Finally, she drooped like a dead flower.

  And he, he who was twice her size, was left gasping for breath. It had always amazed him what superhuman strength invaded humans when they were being killed.

  9

  Gathering Leaves

  FROM THE RECREATION ROOM WINDOW LOUISE looked out at the scene of togetherness. The family next door—Roger the father, Laurie the mother, their twelve-year-old son Jeff, and their exemplary older son Michael—were busy raking the woods.

  “Honey, come here, quick,” she called to Bill. “They’re raking the woods next door.”

  “That so?” In tattered Saturday clothes, he was raptly watching a basketball game on television, hunched forward, hands on knees. His eyes were locked on the sports action.

  She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. Quietly she said, “The house is on fire and our child is
burning.”

  “That so?” murmured Bill, then sat forward and yelled, “Shoot, baby, shoot!” She looked at him in disgust and went to get her jacket out of the front hall closet.

  “Ma,” summoned Janie as Louise passed her room. “You leaving?”

  “No, I’m going outside to play,” she said, smiling. She came in and sat on the end of the bed where Janie sat propped up with her French II workbook. A neat pile of notebooks was stationed next to the bed. “Actually,” said Louise, “I’m going outside to beg the neighbors for their leaves.”

  Janie hid her blond head in her hands. “Oh no, Ma, tell me no,” she said in a pleading voice. She opened her hands and peered at her mother in disbelief. “Is Michael out there? And you’re going to humiliate me by asking for their leaves? Can’t we get some more on our way to Bethesda?” She swung her feet down and sat on the edge of the bed next to her mother. “Tonight. Tonight I’ll even help you swipe them in the neighborhood if you’ll just—”

  “Janie, just cut it out,” said Louise. She stood up. “You are being so sensitive I can hardly believe it. I thought you were the environmentalist. I thought you would have read about mulching and using the resources that we have. Leaves are just something else that needs recycling. There’s no sense in sending them to the recycling fields of Fairfax County when we can use them in our own backyard. All I’m doing is asking who are nutty enough to rake their woods to save them for me.”

  Janie, more composed now, got up, stood very tall, looked her mother almost eye to eye, and said, “Okay, Ma. I get you. But you may be ruining a future romance before it even starts.” Then she laughed, and Louise gave her daughter a little hug. Michael, the boy next door, was the same age as Janie but totally engrossed in, as Janie said, “being as perfect as his parents have always planned.”