In February of that year she had briefly met Joseph “Handy” Handie at the inmate library where he was boning up on criminal law and she on back issues of People magazine and they’d hit it off immediately. Joseph had stalked and strangled his former girlfriend but he was repentant about it and very quiet and very nice. She’d been corresponding with him ever since. She had a pair of his underwear in her suitcase now as a matter of fact—not boxers, briefs. Somewhere in his cell he had a pair of hers.
Joseph had directed her to a boardinghouse on the edge of town a few miles from the prison which was run by a woman who was an old lover of his and he’d written to her about Sherry and her situation. The woman wrote back and said certainly, she’d be happy to have her. In fact she knew of a job. One of her ex-boarders had since done very well for himself in the flower-and-gardening business. He was also clean. The conditions of her parole stated that Sherry could not be associated with any ex-felons.
Did Sherry like flowers?
Sherry did.
It’s nice here, she wrote. Jerry (that’s my boss) is really easy to work with and I think he kind of likes me because he doesn’t work me all that hard. (Laugh!) I never knew I had a green thumb but I guess I do. We’ve got kids to haul the heavy stuff and Jerry’s the one with the knowledge about plants and grass and flowers and so on so mostly what I do is water things and do inventory and run the register. He landscapes on the side so many days it’s just me and the kids who are fun to tease and joke around with.
Best thing, Handy? Nobody—and I mean nobody—seems to know who the hell I am here. My lawyers have done a great job of keeping things hush-hush and it looks as though the media types are even getting sick of bothering my parents from what I hear. There’s been nothing about me in the papers or on the news for weeks.
It appears that the media seem to have gone on to the latest flavor of the month—some family in Wisconsin who kept their seventeen-year-old daughter locked up in the basement for three years without anybody knowing. Not even the neighbors! They had three younger daughters who all went to school just like any other kids, had friends and all, but nobody knew this one girl even existed. Isn’t that amazing! They shocked her with this dog collar, burned her with an electric iron, shot her with a BB gun, knocked out her teeth with a hammer, all kinds of weird shit.
You’ve got to wonder what the poor kid did to deserve all that, right?
They were churchgoing baptists. But then aren’t we all?
Anyhow, it sure has helped to get everybody’s attention away from me. I could almost write that girl a fan letter, know what I mean? Thanks for the misdirection. Sorry about your teeth! (Ha!)
But seriously I want to thank you, Handy, from the bottom of my heart. Your friend Lori is absolutely the greatest. We talk all the time, usually over a beer or two or three after work, about my past and about Owen and prison and about you—and I know more than ever now from talking to her that when you did what you did to your girlfriend Suzie you were just completely out of it with pure male passion, you weren’t responsible for your actions. No way, Jose. If anybody was responsible she was—that jury was just plain wrong.
Lori loves you like a brother and so do I. Maybe when you get out—and you will get out, despite what your dopey lawyers are telling you—we can arrange something a little more than…um, brotherly? Like maybe a threesome? Would you like that? I bet you sure as hell would!
Anyhow, we both send you loves and cuddles galore,
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
Always, your
Sherry
CHAPTER NINE
Joseph never did get out but in three months’ time she met Arliss in the flower shop and then later the same night in a bar called the Lion’s Den though the yellow roses he was buying were for his girlfriend. To make up for calling her a bitch before going to work that morning. Yellow was for regret she told him.
Arliss was six years younger than she was—the same age Talia would have been had she lived. He had inherited a contracting business from his father. His jacket and tie were Brooks Brothers and he drank Glenfiddich neat and Courvoisier neat after dinner. At which point she finally got around to asking him about his girlfriend.
I don’t think it’s going to last, he said. I liked her better in the secretarial pool than I do in bed.
Then you just wasted twenty-five dollars on roses, she said.
He grinned. I don’t know. We’re sitting here, aren’t we?
Yes we are.
Well, then.
How are you going to explain this to her? Dinner out, I mean.
I already did. You’re a client. Sometimes I’m out until the wee hours of the morning with a client.
Is that so.
Yes it is.
The wee hours. I haven’t heard that expression in a long time.
I’m an old-fashioned guy.
You want to get out of here?
Finish your drink. No rush.
She got him started while he was driving. Squeezing and rubbing his penis beneath the light sheer summer trousers. After a while they stopped talking and she could hear him breathing. His cock was big and thick and very hard.
Do you know who I am? she said.
He smiled. No, who are you.
I’m Sherry Jefferson.
Not Samuels?
No. Sherry Jefferson. Now do you know who I am?
Yes. I guess I do.
Does it matter?
No. Should it?
It doesn’t feel like it matters.
No it doesn’t, does it. But if you don’t cut that out pretty soon something’s going to matter, that’s for sure.
In her apartment with him standing before her kneeling on her bed she freed him and put him in her mouth and lightly stroked his shaft but she wouldn’t let him come. She unbuttoned and shrugged off her blouse and unsnapped her bra. Her tits were good and still firm and men were amazed at the length of her nipples and she wanted him to see. She continued to stroke him while she reached over to the nightstand and opened the drawer and took out the handcuffs and let them dangle.
For you or for me? he said.
Whatever you want.
For you, he said.
Two months later the girlfriend was long out of the picture and they were lying on his much-larger bed, his bedroom bigger than her whole apartment for god sakes and she unlocked the handcuffs on his wrists and ran her hands down over his sweat-slick body to his penis, cupped it in her palm and said, how would you feel if I wanted to see you rape somebody?
For real?
Yes. Of course for real.
I’ve never done that, he said.
I know you haven’t. But how would you feel. If I wanted you to?
He thought about it.
No problem, he said.
CHAPTER TEN
Janine Edmundson was now Janine Turner and her husband was Owen. The coincidental irony of his surname wasn’t the least bit lost on her. But her first sweet high school boyfriend possibly excepted, her Owen was the kindest, gentlest man she’d ever met.
His pediatric practice had grown to the extent that he’d recently acquired two younger partners and a brand-new office just to handle the overflow. It seemed impossible for him to turn a patient away or in fact to say no to anybody. Owen was gentle with the children and maybe even more so with their worried and sometimes maddeningly demanding mothers. He was given to saying that until his hands started to shake or he couldn’t find his way to work in the morning he had no intention of retiring.
She couldn’t have asked for a better husband or father.
Which made her own situation all the more intolerable.
Janine hit her kids. Suzie, eleven. Debra, nine. She hit them both. There were times she just couldn’t help it. Especially as they grew older.
They made her crazy. They were both so goddamn innocent. The world, she knew, was not.
In one of her rages she was perfectly capable of lashing out at Owen too. Swingin
g on him with all her might, her mouth spewing the vilest things she could imagine saying as though he were the other Owen, the first
Owen—as though she could turn back the clock and do now what she was incapable of doing then. Tearing at him. Hurting him.
And the night they watched American Justice was worst of all. The show was new to them and they always had enjoyed it thus far but this time it blindsided both of them.
She’d been drinking of course. Vodka laced with cranberry juice. Owen didn’t drink anymore. The girls were at a sleepover thank god.
She took one look at his face on the television. The handsome tanned young man on the beach with his lovely bride-to-be.
“Turn it off, Janine,” Owen said gently. “Switch the channel. You don’t need this.”
“That son of a bitch.”
“Come on. Turn it off.”
“You’re wrong. I do need to see this. I want to see it.”
He sighed and got up from his chair.
“Leave it!” she said.
“Come on, Janine.”
“Leave it!”
They were talking about the rapes now. Her rapes. Though neither her face nor those of the other girls were seen.
They hadn’t gotten to the murders yet.
It was only when they arrested him on the murders that she learned who her attacker was. That was years ago and after reading what else he’d done she’d felt lucky simply to be alive. She’d seen his face on the first page of the newspaper that morning just like she was seeing it now on the television and her legs went out from under her. So that suddenly she was sitting on the curbside stunned and nearly unable to comprehend exactly what she was reading and she heard that voice in her head again.
Here’s what I want you to say. I want you to say Merry Christmas I’m a bitch I’m a cunt I’m a dirty little whore I love you this is my Christmas present to you lover, I hate my boyfriend I’m a cheating fucking lying little cunt. What’s your name? Tell me your name. Janine? That’s a nice name. Very nice name. How old are you? Where do you go to school, Janine? Tell me you want it up the ass. Tell me you want me to put it right up your ass. That’s right. Now tell me you want to suck your shit off my cock you dirty little bitch you see the knife? do you see it? do you?
And she was hearing that voice once again now with snapshots flying by on the TV screen. Owen and Sherry at their wedding. Owen and Sherry dancing at the wedding and opening up Christmas presents and on their honeymoon in Maui on the beach and smiling for the camera.
“You motherfucker,” she said. She finished off her drink.
“I know, Janine. I know, honey. I know.”
“No you don’t know! Don’t say that! Don’t you ever say that to me. You can fucking never know! Don’t you give me that I know shit!”
“Hey. All I meant was…”
“Mr. Sweetness and Light says he knows! Fuck you, Owen! Fuck all of you!”
“Okay. That’s it. That’s enough.”
So that he got up and walked over to the TV and picked up the remote and that was when she threw the tumbler and caught him directly in the center of the back. The tumbler was thick and heavy at its base and light and thin at the rim and the sound of it on his backbone was at once a single hollow drumbeat and a shattering. He fell forward and sideways with hands outstretched so that the television went over with him, tumbling off its stand with a metallic crash and ping of light and a sudden dark silence that the room somehow seemed to augment. He said aw jesus, oh shit and clutched his back with his left hand while he tried to wrench his right arm out from under him.
She remained where she was. Frozen in her chair.
“Jesus, Janine. Help me. Would you please help me out here?”
How could she help him. There wasn’t help for anybody.
“I don’t think I can move, honey. I think you hit a nerve or something. God!”
There was blood on the back of his white oxford shirt and it was spreading. A shard of glass glinted in the lamplight as he moved.
“Wait,” she said. “Wait.”
“What? Help me up, will you? Honey?”
“Okay. Wait. I’ll help you up. Wait.”
When she got up and went to him she realized that she was sober now all of a sudden though how that should happen she didn’t know any more than she knew how or why she in particular should be chosen as a girl fit for rape by that other Owen so long ago or whether it was possible to know if her own daughters would be similarly chosen but only that she was going to have to help this Owen and herself too if their lives were ever to peaceably go on.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was early evening Easter Sunday of the following year and Lemuel Samm was reading his Deuteronomy. If your brother, the son of your father or of your mother, or your son or daughter, or the spouse whom you embrace, or your most intimate friend, tries to secretly seduce you, saying “Let us go and serve other gods,” unknown to you or your ancestors before you, gods of the peoples surrounding you, whether near you or far away, anywhere throughout the world, you must not consent, you must not listen to him; you must show him no pity, you must not spare him or conceal his guilt. No, you must kill him, your hand must strike the first blow in putting him to death and the hands of the rest of the people following. You must stone him to death, since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh your God…
Lemuel was a tailor’s son.
He could stitch and sew. He could rend and tear. As need be.
His father had taught him.
The television was on. It did nothing to impair his concentration. It was only noise. The Fox network rerunning an episode of a show called American Justice.
He read on.
“I’m a little old for an Easter basket, don’t you think?” he said.
“I don’t know. You like hard-boiled eggs, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And chocolate.”
“Yes. Not jelly beans, though. We’ve got an awful lot of jelly beans here.”
“The jelly beans are for me. You see that green plastic egg? Open it.”
They’d just come back from evening mass. Arliss went to church every Sunday and now that she was living with him she’d gotten into that habit as well. And of course today was special. She’d worn her best dark blue silk dress.
He read from the folded paper inside.
“ ‘Your own personal Easter Bunny has a present for you. Upon presentation of this certificate she will perform any and all shameful, perverse and degrading acts of your choice upon your person or her own person or that of any other person you wish. The more shameful, perverse and degrading the better. Your widdle wabbit, Sherry.’ That’s quite an Easter present.”
“I thought you’d like it.”
“So how long is this valid?”
“Second Coming sound about right?”
“Sounds fine.”
He leaned over and kissed her.
“My parents were so sweet and silly,” she said, “one Easter they gave me this little white bunny rabbit. It was beautiful. Little pink ears, little pink eyes. Pure white. I used to play with it on the living room rug. We kept it in a cardboard box in my room at first but then it got bigger so they bought this wire hutch and we kept it outside on a pair of sawhorses. I used to have to take care of it. Feed it, clean the cage. The cage was kind of disgusting really. It ate these little rabbit pellets, you know? And its shit was all pellets too. Dark and sticky. And it shit a lot. I mean, all it did was eat and shit. It wasn’t a lot of fun. You couldn’t pick it up or pet it anymore. It got angry and mean.”
“Well, it was in a cage.”
“Yeah, but it bit. One kick and it could open up your goddamn arm.”
“How long’d you have it?”
“Couple of years I guess. I know we had it for a while. I honestly don’t remember. It was out there in the cold—bunnies are okay in the cold, right? And it was there in the summertime. So it was at least a year or more. Ma
ybe two. I was little. I used to feed it lettuce and carrots. But I guess it just sort of wasted away out there after a while. I think I just woke up one morning and it wasn’t there anymore.”
“That’s too bad,” he said. “That’s kind of sad.”
“Silly thing to do. Buy a rabbit.”
“This gift is much more practical.”
“You bet it is. You hear that?”
“Yes.”
“She’s awake.”
“I guess she is.”
“Want me to get her out here?”
“Sure.”
He glanced up from his bible and felt in the immediate presence of revelation.
If you hear that in one of the towns which Yahweh your God has given you for a home, he’d been reading, there are men, scoundrels from your own stock who have led their fellow citizens astray, saying “Let us go and serve other gods,” hitherto unknown to you, it is your duty to look into the matter, examine it, and inquire most carefully. If it is proved and confirmed that such a hateful thing has taken place among you, you must put the inhabitants of that town to the sword…
Lemuel looked up and there she was.
He had a very good eye for faces and the hair color and hairstyle didn’t fool him for a moment nor did the fact that she had been much younger then. No further examination or inquiry was necessary.
She lived at the Arliss Baxter house three doors down and across the street.
He saw her often. Getting in and out of the car. Packages and bundles in her hands. With and without Baxter. She had smiled at him and he at her. She was still very pretty.
He closed and kissed the leather-bound bible and set it down and turned off the television and went back into his bedroom. From his dresser drawer he removed the .38 and tucked it into the back of his belt and crossed through the living room and stepped outside into the crisp spring evening air and blessed the resurrection which had graced this day over 2,000 years ago and now graced his purpose.
This was no blighted neighborhood they lived in where the poor preyed upon their brethren but he had known since his fifty-eighth birthday over eleven years ago when his Mary had died of colon cancer that one day the gun would see its moment. It had been his present to himself that lonely empty year. He had kept it cleaned and oiled ever since. He could smell the oil on his hands now as he reached for the doorknob and turned it and surely the Lord was with him because it opened for him immediately and there they were. Naked and poised in blackest sin on the living room couch.