“She must have…left.” My words fumbled from my lips like the wobbly footfalls of a toddler taking its first steps.
“Her…car…is…still…parked…outside
!” Her words were deliberate and spaced in a steady, angry, impatient rising pitch.
I could feel my brow furrow in fear and shame at having been caught in an obvious lie. I scanned my brain for a sequential and logical fabrication. “She…was waiting for her sister to pick her up…her…car wouldn’t start. She’s going to have it towed.” I finished with conviction. “She must have left while I was in the bathroom.”
Melanie’s face melted, “I can’t take this anymore.” She started to sob and I watched as her knees began to wobble and I was sure that they would collapse beneath her weight.
“It’s okay.” I stepped forward to catch her before she melted into the floor. Her face was now filled with anguish and despair. She was experiencing actual physical pain. I wanted to waive a magic wand and rid her of her agony. I wanted to take her in my arms, like an infant, and comfort her and let her know that it would all work out.
“No, I can’t do this anymore.” She sobbed; but even as she said this she wrapped her arms around my neck and collapsed her face into my chest. “I can’t go on like this…with you fucking her and I pretending like nothing is happening. I just can’t be with you anymore.”
“It’s okay.” I whispered, “You don’t have to worry about Amber any longer.” I slipped my hand beneath her shirt and I gently stroked the baby-soft skin of her back, “I told her that it was over.”
“Really?” Her sobish tone hinted at hope and relief.”
“She said she understood. That she was sorry for having treated you so badly and for forcing me to…sleep with her. We didn’t even sleep together last night.” Melanie hugged me tight. “She slept in my bed and I slept on the couch.” I looked at the couch. Sarah had apparently gone to her bed after she had finished her evenings work and had abandoned the pillow and blanket I had used to make her comfortable. It looked as if I had actually slept on the couch.
“I love you Mathew. I love you so much.” She wrapped her arms around me and buried her head in my chest once again.
“And I love you.” I said to her for the first time. And I did love her; perhaps not with the totality that I had loved Catherine or the unconditional component with which I loved
Sarah, but then I had only known her for a short while relatively. But she was the only living person besides Sarah that I cared about. What I felt for her can only be described as love. She responded with an enormous hug. “Why don’t you lie on the couch and take a nap. After Sarah and I have breakfast I’ll watch television and sit with you and rub you feet while you sleep.”
I helped her to the couch and laid her down and kissed her cheek and tucked her in and waited until she fell asleep before I started the process of moving Amber’s body down to her car. I checked on Sarah, who was still asleep, and then I went to the coat closet where Amber had hung her coat and I retrieved her car keys before I crept down the rear stairway and opened the garage and pulled my car out onto the street; then I climbed into Amber’s car. The seat was pushed forward to its furthest setting and I racked my knees on the steering wheel and I winced in pain. I slid the seat back to a comfortable setting while I cursed under my breath and started the car and backed it up into the driveway to just outside the rear door. I got out and opened the rear driver’s side door and then I climbed the rear staircase and slipped into my bedroom and I grabbed the rolled parcel of dead-weight that lay beside my bed. At my bedroom door I peaked out to be sure that all was still quiet and then I hauled Amber’s body, which I had slung over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, out to her waiting car. I heaved her into the back seat head first and tried to close the door but her feet, stiff with Rigor mortis and completely extended, were sticking out too far. I opened the trunk and mentally measured the compartment but aside from the work of removing the spare tire and many other miscellaneous items, I could tell that no matter how I positioned her lifeless body she would never fit without bending and possibly breaking. I could have closed the door by thrusting my body-weight at it but that would have caused trauma to the corpse that would later be the subject of curiosity for the police. I wanted to arrange things so that it looked as if she had died at home. I walked around to the passenger door and opened it and rolled down the window and then closed the door. Reaching in through the window I lifted up on Amber’s head and I pulled her up until her skull was resting on the armrest. I had hoped to make quick work of my effort but I realized that I had consumed an extraordinary amount of time loading Amber into her car so I looked around to be sure that no one was spying on me. When I looked up at Sarah’s bedroom window I almost fell over from the shock of seeing her staring down at me. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t seem at all phased. It was if she had sent me a message not to bring anyone into her life without her tacit approval. And Sarah’s emotional detachment was her exclamation point. Thank God she had an affinity for Melanie, I thought, or I might have had a second corpse to dispose of once I ascended the stairs.
I rounded the car and closed the rear door with only the least bit of resistance and then climbed back into the drivers’ seat. I reached back to the rear door and I rolled up the window with some difficulty as I bumped Amber’s head with each rotation of the handle. Then I backed the car into the garage and opened the trunk again. I grabbed the lime- green ten-speed bicycle that Melanie had convinced me to buy (it was on sale for ninety- nine dollars at the local department store) so that we could go riding together in the spring and I folded it into the trunk and tied the hood as close to closed as I could get it with the front wheel of the bicycle protruding and then I closed the garage door behind me.
Once back inside the house I went to
Sarah’s bedroom door and pushed it open. Sarah was sitting on the edge of her bed.
“What were you doing with Amber’s car?” She didn’t bother to look up. She was mocking me with her indifference to the trouble she had caused me.
“I think you know damned good and well what I was doing.”
Sarah looked up and feigned shock.
“Get out into the kitchen and eat your breakfast.” I said with authority so as to reestablish my position of power over her.
I had to microwave our food to make it edible and still the French-toast which I had labored over was chewy and bland and the yokes of the eggs, once soft inside prepared sunny-side up were thick and dry. We ate in silence as I am sure that Sarah could sense my anger at her behavior.
12
Sarah was a murderess; a sociopath; a serial killer. She would kill and kill and kill for the rest of her life whenever she felt that the circumstances called for such action. She held no value for human life save for her own. She was probably also incapable of love. She was capable of affection, of that I was certain, but as a sociopath she would be incapable of love.
That did not change my feelings toward her. I loved her more than life itself. She wasn’t even my flesh and blood, and yet I loved her as if her soul were conjoined with my own. I knew that I would do anything for her even as I sat brooding over the bind she had gotten me into.