A Line of Blood (30 page)

‘Well, OK,’ I said.

‘Make coffee, Alex,’ she said softly.

I nodded and went downstairs.

Arla was in the kitchen, reading. I nodded at her too, and looked in the cupboard for the coffee-maker.

‘You OK, Alex?’ she said. ‘You seem a little …’

‘Tense? Yes, I’m a little tense.’

‘Agitated would be the word.’

‘Yes. I’m a little agitated.’

‘Tell me you did not tell her.’ A half-whisper; still the spun-sugar Californian lightness.

I looked at her.

‘Alex, I need to know you did not tell Millicent.’

‘You know, Arla, you and Millicent share a lot of the same mannerisms,’ I said. ‘Which might explain why I …’

‘Why you … why you what, Alex?’ she said.

‘Did …’ I said.

‘Me?’ she said. ‘Why you did me?’

‘Not the way I was trying to say it,’ I said. ‘But yes. I want you to know I feel OK about what we … did.’

‘Yeah, we already had that conversation, Alex. I’m glad to know you feel OK about doing me. Because I
really
do not feel
OK
about what we did. Not at all. I need for you to tell me that you are not going to tell Millicent. You know, in some get-it-all-off-my-chest-and-start-afresh douchey husbandy kind of a way.’

‘Your voice,’ I said. ‘So full of light and air.’

‘Alex,’ she said. ‘You need to tell me you will not unburden.’

‘That wasn’t why I came downstairs. But all right. I am not going to tell Millicent. I will not
unburden
.’

‘So then this is … What is this conversation?’

‘Millicent sent me downstairs to make coffee.’

‘You and my sister are equally weird,’ she said. ‘You know that, right?’

I could feel tears gathering at the edges of my eyes. I nodded and tried to smile. ‘How has Max been?’ I said.

‘Eleven-year-old boys smell of urine and cheap candy,’ she said, all Pacific Coast again. ‘Max doesn’t. You guys did a good job. Sure, he swears a little, but really he’s a nice, smart kid. He’s super-well housebroken.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. I swallowed hard. ‘I have coffee to make.’

I stood at the stove, my back to Arla, sobbing silently as I measured coffee into the coffee-maker. Then I realised I’d forgotten the water. I lifted the aluminium filter out with my thumbnails, spilling coffee on the work surface. Arla got a cloth and wiped up the grounds. ‘Sorry,’ I said. She shook her head gently, took the coffee-maker from me and filled it at the sink. I stood uselessly beside her as she dropped the filter back in and screwed on the top. She lit the gas and put the coffee-maker on the stove.

Then she turned and looked very directly at me. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I really do not do this shit.’ Then she stood on tiptoe and held me very tight in her arms. I began to sob again, silently but uncontrollably.

I didn’t know why I was crying. I only knew that it had something to do with my son, and with his drawings.
Talk to him.
There was a rage and a pain in Max’s drawings of his mother’s seducer – and God knew, Millicent’s betrayal had brought me both rage and pain too – but there was something more frightening as well, like a great beast slowly unfurling its wings, loosening the terrifying coils of its tail.

I knew I was holding Arla too tight, but couldn’t relax my grip. Please God, I thought, let Max come through this in one piece.

When the water bubbled through the coffee-maker I broke away from Arla and turned off the gas. Arla opened the cupboard and got out two cups.

‘You don’t want any?’ I said.

‘I really do
not
,’ she said, and I was surprised by the warmth in her smile. I stared at her for the longest time.

‘What?’ she said.

‘People are kinder than you realise. Or kinder than I realise. Or at least, you are. And really Millicent is.’

She raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘Always the comparisons, Alex.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m joking,’ she said. ‘I like that you think I’m kind.’

‘OK. What do
we
do now?’

‘Nothing, Alex. We do nothing at all. Please. We did a bad thing. There is
nothing
we can do to make it better. Nothing. And now your coffee is made and you can go back upstairs.’ She guided me towards the living room. As I climbed the stairs, I thought I could feel her eyes on me, but wasn’t certain if I had imagined it.

Millicent and I sat in silence on the bed drinking coffee.

‘So,’ she said after a time, ‘I guess this kind of annihilates a whole lot of the good stuff we did in Norway.’

I drank down the rest of my coffee, held my hand beside the bedpost and let the cup slide through my fingers on to the floor. The sound of china on wood was bright, metallic. I looked down. The cup had landed upright.

‘Are you going to leave me, Alex?’ said Millicent. I reached out and took her face in my hands, turned her so she was facing me.

‘No,’ I said quietly.

‘I had no idea that he had heard everything. You have to believe me.’

‘I believe you, Millicent,’ I said.

I wondered whether we had any cigarettes left downstairs. Millicent flicked distractedly through Max’s book, saying nothing. Then she made a show of closing the book and placing it on the bed directly between us. ‘You’re going to leave me,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘You actually have to.’

‘I’m not going to leave you, Millicent.’

Millicent spoke as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘I thought we started to mend our family,’ she said. ‘I actually started to feel like I could be a good person again. When you and I were alone. And now it looks like things are way more broken than I knew, and I’m the one who broke them. And whatever I do I don’t get to be the good person again because look at what I did to our son.’

I said nothing. I wanted to tell her that we needed to fix ourselves if we were going to fix Max, but as soon as the words formed they felt misshapen, self-justifying.
Happy parent, happy child. I’m OK, you’re OK.
Mantra of a generation of bad parents.

The sound of the doorbell cut across that thought, brought me back into the now. Someone was ringing the bell. Someone was standing on our doorstep. Someone wanted us to open the door.

I looked at Millicent. A fight? A stabbing? A deal gone wrong?
Don’t open it.

Millicent’s eyes registered confusion, then concern, then something very like panic. Still the bell rang.

I picked up my phone. Two thirty.
Go away.

The bell stopped ringing. I was on my feet. ‘Millicent,’ I said.

Millicent sat up, swung her feet across the bed as if about to get up. Then she froze.

‘Millicent?’
What do we do?

She looked at me and shook her head.

Four heavy knocks. Bottom of the fist. Arm extended upwards.

‘Millicent?’ I said again.
What do I do?

Still Millicent sat transfixed.

Perhaps it was Mr Ashani. Perhaps he could not sleep.

The landing light came on. I heard small footsteps on the stairs.

‘Max, wait!’

I was out of the bedroom and down the stairs but he had the door open.

The pinstriped suit. The apologetic smile. It was June.

‘What?’ I said. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Mercer,’ she said. She tipped her head to one side, and I saw, behind her in the street, two uniformed officers.

‘Max,’ I said, ‘go back inside.’

‘What is it, Dad?’ said Max.

‘Just go back inside.’

‘But where, Dad?’

‘Upstairs,’ I said. ‘Now.’

‘Alex,’ said June, ‘Alex, I’m sorry.’

‘In front of my own kid, June? Really?’

‘Orders from above. This is not the way it should be. That’s why I came along. I’m sorry …’

‘Are you in the police?’ said Max, defiant in his lion pyjamas.

‘Yes, son. Do as your dad says, son.’

‘He didn’t do anything to the neighbour.’

‘Max,’ I said, ‘go upstairs. Now.’

‘But you didn’t, did you, Dad?’

‘Max,’ I said, ‘I know you’re trying to help, but go upstairs. Find Mum.’

Max turned and with the slowness of the sullen child walked back up the stairs. Everyone else stayed where they were. The uniformed officers hung back in the street, the detective stood hard against the threshold, looking in, and I stood, framed in the doorway.

I realised I was naked. I looked down at my penis, thought how odd it looked, how out of context.

‘Give me five minutes to get dressed and explain to Millicent,’ I said.

‘No, Mr Mercer,’ said the detective.

‘What do you mean, no?’

‘We’re here for your wife.’

The police arrested Millicent for the murder of the neighbour at a little before three in the morning. June was sorry. No, she couldn’t explain to me why it had to happen then, why they couldn’t simply invite her down to the station during working hours and quietly make the arrest when she arrived. It was far from ideal, she said. She agreed that Millicent was not a flight risk.

I invited the officers into the front room. Max came back downstairs carrying a pair of pants, which he handed to me. I put them on and he held my hand.

We stood in silence as Millicent went back upstairs and dressed, the door to the street open. I thought about Mr Ashani, wondered what he would think if he could see us now: me in my pants, Max in his pyjama bottoms, watching the police officers with suspicion. I could hardly bring myself to look at the detective.

Millicent came downstairs in a white shirt and dark skirt, with the training shoes she had worn in the park.

‘I’ll find you a lawyer,’ I said.

She shook her head, asked me to bring her a list of local solicitors. She wanted to decide herself who would represent her, I realised. She wanted to retain the illusion of control.

She whispered a few words to Max, then left with the officers. They didn’t handcuff her, though one of them rested a hand on her arm as they walked to a police car parked across the road. The detective hung back, reluctant to leave.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Come in the morning, Alex. Not much you can do while she’s being processed.’

From the doorway we watched her go. She walked stiffly across the road to the car, got into the back seat beside Millicent. I tried to find Millicent’s eyes, to let her know that I loved her, that we would fight this, but she was too far away and the street was too dark.

Max had gone to bed, palely, quietly, had asked no questions; he had meekly turned on his side and fallen asleep, his arms wound tightly around his pillow. I wondered what he understood of what had just happened. I didn’t know myself. Should I have kept him up? Asked what he was feeling?

What do you do?

I went back into our room and looked for Max’s book, but he must have taken it back before he went to bed. I wondered if Dr Å had encouraged him to get his feelings down on to paper. Did it help him, to draw those angry pictures and write those angry words, or did it just make everything miserably vivid?

I decided to spend what was left of the night on the landing, my back to the banister, watching my son as he slept.
We’ll fight this, Max.
That’s what families do, isn’t it, when bad things happen? They fight. But how?

What are we fighting?

At a little after five I opened the door to Millicent’s office. There on the single mattress on the floor was Arla, naked, her cotton sheet half thrown off.
Don’t look.
Her breasts were so small compared to Millicent’s, and so high, and the last thing I should be thinking of.
Don’t look.
Her nipples were lighter than Millicent’s in colour, despite the deep Pacific Coast tan.

Held, I thought. I want to be held.
Perhaps you could hold me.
But as soon as I felt the thought I banished it from my mind.
At a time like this. What’s wrong with me?

‘Arla,’ I said quietly, crouching down beside the bed. ‘Arla, wake up.’

Millicent had gone to meet her fate without shouting, without raising her voice; she had hardly even spoken. It had all been so very quiet, so very civilised. The police had been sober and respectful. No drama. Arla was the only one of us who didn’t know. She had slept through her sister’s arrest.

She sat up in bed. I could smell the sleep on her. ‘Arla,’ I said again.
Musky. Sweet.

‘Stupid douchey English birds. What in the world time do they wake up?’ Then she looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time. She rearranged herself, pulled up the sheet to shield her breasts. ‘Alex, this is not a good idea. You can not be in here.’

‘I have to talk to you,’ I said.

‘Well, it’s light, I guess. What time is it?’

‘Five. The police have taken Millicent.’

‘They arrested her?’

‘In front of Max.’

She was silent.

How can I want you at a time like this, I thought.
I love her, and I know I love her now, and yet all I want to do is lie down beside you. Just hold me.

‘Oh, Alex,’ she said. ‘No.’

I want you to raise the sheet and let me lie down beside you. I mean, I know this has to be faced. And I will face it.

She was staring at me in utter disbelief. ‘This is bad,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to do. What do I do, Arla?’

Just one hour. Max is asleep. We could pretend for one hour that this isn’t happening. Just one hour, and I promise I’ll face reality after that.

‘I can’t do what you want, Alex,’ she said. ‘Please stop.’

‘What?’

‘We can’t pretend Millicent didn’t get arrested,’ she said, ‘and I can not invite you into my bed. This is a bad situation, Alex. We have to figure out what to do.’

‘What?’ I stared back at her. ‘What did you say?’ I searched her eyes for some clue as to how she had divined my thoughts. ‘How? I mean … yeah, how?’

‘Alex,’ she said. ‘Your filter is not in place.’

‘What?’

‘I think maybe this is a shock reaction. You are not filtering your thoughts.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You love Millicent, and you know you love her, and yet you want to lie down here beside me.’