Kate McNamara 

6714 NW 34th Drive                                                                       

Gainesville, FL 32653

 Three Crimes

by

Mary Fallon Fleming

When I came home that evening, David was sitting at the coffee table, his elbows on his knees, both fists clenched against his temples. A fishbowl sat on the table, and a goldfish with long fins floated languidly within its sphere.

"Hey," I said.

He nodded and cleared his throat, eyes scanning the fishbowl, eyes scanning the blank screen of the television. I stood there for a moment before going to the kitchenette to put down my briefcase and purse. I shed the New Orleans heat in the central air conditioning. David sat hunched on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees. In the kitchen the clock said almost six. I picked up the remote and flipped through the channels. David flinched as the picture tube blazed loud and bright. His hatred of the television irritated me. God, I thought, could I just watch some news for once without feeling guilty about it?

"Honey, what's the matter?" I said.

"I killed that damn cat," he said.                                                            

"What?"

"I killed it."

He paced to the window and stood staring, his long hands grasping the windowsill. I watched him as he stood there. With one finger he began to tap on the windowsill--tap,  tap, tap.

"Hey, could you please turn that thing down?"

"Okay," I said, "no problem."

 I clicked the volume button on the remote.

"I just want to catch the news," I said. My throat felt tight. "I'll turn it off then, if you want me to."

"Okay," he nodded, "the news is okay."

Well, good, I thought, the news is okay. I walked back into the kitchen. David had thawed the steaks on the chipped plate with the sienna etching. I loved that plate. Four high-stepping horses and a coach, rumbling up to the coach stop for passengers, a fine Victorian lady and her husband. The meat lay in a pool of pink serum.

I drew in my breath and looked up at the ceiling. The glazed blue tiles glowed like lapis lazuli. Some of them were painted with stars or moons. Like the sky, I thought, or maybe even the ocean.

            "I could cook dinner tonight," I said. "I mean, the steaks are all thawed and everything."

"Okay," he said, still staring out the window.

I opened the cupboards, pots, pans, pasta. He still hadn't done the shopping, but I found some potatoes and canned spinach. I put the potatoes in the oven and sat on the couch. The news was on.

"What did you do with it?" I said.

"You mean the cat?"

"Yeah," I said, "I mean the cat."

I saw his profile, a silhouette against the reddening sunset. He turned back to the window.

 "I knocked him over the head with the shovel, and then I tied him up in three trash bags and threw him in the river."

"Oh, God!"

"Oh God, what?"

He faced me, his long fingers curled against his sides. "Shit, she wouldn't have him neutered, he was waking us up at all hours of the night, God damn it!"

"Okay!" I said. I shook my head and blew through my teeth.

"I can't handle this crap," he said. "Jesus, I gotta be able to sleep ... "

"Okay, David, shush a minute, please, I want to hear this."                                                         I could see he had been unable to work again today. I clicked the volume button on the remote. But he can't really help it, I thought. He can't. I blinked back a flash of tears. Behind me he was muttering to himself about the god damn television and my neck prickled.  On the television the anchorwoman spoke.

United Nations workers have discovered a mass grave on the outskirts of Sarajevo. The remains of fifty‑two bodies have been unearthed so far, all of them civilian males. Experts say it will be some time before the remains can be identified.

I looked at David. He was still staring out the window. The next news story was about a fox terrier riding a skateboard in Venice Beach. The dog had a black ring around one eye, and a miniature baseball cap that said "Budweiser" on it.

"That cat belonged to somebody," I said.

Stiffly he sat on the couch.

            "Would you mind turning that down, now?" he said.

The edge in his voice alarmed me. With the remote I turned down the television, but he just sat there, looking at his hands.

"Where did that goldfish come from?" I asked.

"I -- I went to the pet shop," he said. He looked sweaty and his fingers were trembling. "I don't know, I just felt -- I mean, after I threw him in the river --  I went to the pet shop."

"David," I said, "this depression --  please, Honey, let's find a psychologist or something."

"You're right," he said softly. "I know you're right."

"Look, I'm going to put the steaks on. You relax. And it's going to be okay! There will be other shows, you’ll get back into it, you know that," I said. "It -- it was just a cat."

I wanted a glass of wine. The merlot sat on the refrigerator; such a magnificent rich color, such a deep, life-giving red.

"Hey," I said. "You want a glass of wine?"

"Yeah," he said. "Thanks, Honey."

The potatoes were done. I took them out of the oven and poured myself another glass.

"You want some more too, David?"

          He nodded and smiled. I refilled his glass and put it back on the table next to the goldfish bowl. I played with the remote control. At last I found another news program.

The steaks were ready. Mine was rare, but David liked his well done. With a knife I checked them. Perfect, I thought. I felt much better. Carrying napkins, plates, and silverware, I joined David at the coffee table. I cut myself a piece of steak, savoring the fine, red juices on my tongue.

"Did you hear that, while you were cooking?" he said. His pupils were huge, rimmed thinly by deep blue iris. "There was another murder last night, in the Desire project."

He paused to swallow.

"Boy, this is really good," I said. "Shall we finish this whole bottle?"

He nodded. David poured the last of the wine into the glasses.

"There it is," said David. "There it is again."

I turned the volume up on the television, and we listened to the reporter in Sarajevo. A Serb in a military uniform; was he the president? How could he say there had been no atrocities? It was unbelievable that he could stand there and say that. I ate my steak and potato, staring at the man's face. He was so without remorse, without shame.

"Okay," said David, "Okay."

He was tense again, hunched on the couch, his anxiety penetrating my heart. I turned off the television and got up to clear the table.

            "So, what are we going to do with this goldfish?" I said. "Are we going to name it?"

We stood and watched the goldfish floating in the glass fishbowl with its fluted edges.

"Gee," I said, "maybe we should get it a bigger bowl or something, that one is pretty small." I frowned. "Maybe it doesn't matter though," I said. "They are pretty stupid."

I looked at the ceiling again. The ceiling was very high in the living room. Blue tiles and a big terracotta sun ring. Like the Aztecs, I thought, or maybe even the Egyptians.      

Suddenly David reached into the fishbowl and scooped out the goldfish. I gasped. The goldfish landed on the coffee table, its fancy fins and tail sticking like slime to the glass. One bulging eye stared. Its mouth popped open and closed, snap, pause, snap.

"David, what are you doing?" I said.

In horror I moved toward the flopping creature, to restore it to life again.

"No," said David.

With his long arm he reached forward and grasped my wrist and stopped me, watching the goldfish all the time.

It was at that moment that I became his accomplice. The two of us stood together and watched the goldfish die. What keen curiosity I felt as the process unfolded, while the goldfish twitched and gasped in an effort to save himself. When it was over, David removed the gooey corpse with a napkin.

"Now," he said, "What did you feel?"

    I had to admit it. I knew exactly what he meant. To watch the death occur was like participating in a ritual of power. Never was it lost upon me, as I watched, that this death would be linked to my own in time; yet how easily I detached myself from the suffering of the goldfish! The goldfish would die today, and I would die as well; but I thought of my own death, and the death of David, as concepts remote in time, so remote as to be merely theoretical.

"All right," I said. I was tense, confused. "You've made your point," I said.

There was moisture on his pale skin.

"That is it!" I said.

 Rushing to the kitchen, I yanked the telephone directory off the top of the refrigerator. David sat on the couch, wide‑eyed. I threw the heavy book into his lap.

"Here!" I said.

Fiercely I opened the book, tearing back the pages, fingering rapidly through the yellow paper.                                                                 

"Psy -- there!" I said. "Now, you find a name in there, and you call, and you make an appointment, and I am not kidding!"

Trembling I sat beside him. Pale and quiet, David obeyed.

*          *          *

David was painting again. We sipped red wine together, spent hours in the back studio, and each new canvas was, to me, more beautiful than the last. As the weeks passed and David's depression improved, a long, deep shadow lifted from our lives.

But strangely, the character of David's paintings had changed. It was hard for me to say how. The colors, the fragile human forms, theme, emanated now from some deeper place, a place dark green and mossy. 

David took his medication and painted. Grateful, I continued with my briefcase and my purse. Occasionally I went to the grotto, to the altar of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who stood in perfect peace inside her halo of raging fire. It was a sun ring, blazing all around her, radiating from the soles of her feet like pyres beneath the feet of fainting heretics.  Behind the flames of the executioner She was La Huesera, the Bone Lady. Who but She tenderly gathers the stinking ancestral remains, to amalgamate them once more in her womb?

On Thanksgiving we remember our ancestors, the Pilgrims and the Indians. The Indians were all ancestor worshippers. On that Thanksgiving, we planned to visit David's ancestral home.

"David, why do you hate them so much? We have to go," I said. "Of course we do. Don't you see? I work nine-to-five now, we have gas money -- and you even paid taxes last year! There are no more excuses, David, you're almost thirty-five."

David just stood there, a very uncertain look on his face.

"Besides," I countered. "It's only three hours away."

It was such a fine old southern home. It was at the end of an old bayou road.  David drove and I looked out the window. Clearings and trees flew past. Sometimes there was swamp water under the highway, and ragged cypresses, stumpy branches laced lavishly with moss. I imagined a magnificent horse running through the green marsh grass, flying tirelessly along beside the car; and then I was riding him, driving him onward with my heels. We flew on together, we made powerful, magical leaps together, across all the places where horses can't run. We passed a lot of old cemeteries. I thought of going inside and finding a place among the tombs to rest my horse.                                              

After a while, I forgot about the horse. We listened to Cajun music all the way to the house. I thought about my in-laws, what I should do, what I should say; but somehow I forgot about the dog.

The dog had lost more hair since the last time I had seen him. I had always hated the dog. When he was young, he had been quick enough to catch the squirrels that lived there before David's family moved in from the city. David said the squirrels were bold and tame when they first came there, especially that first spring. They would come down from the trees to eat peanuts from his hand. David had told me his tales of adolescent grief as he found, one by one, each mangled elfin corpse.

When I got out of the car, the dog scrambled at me on the gravel drive, uttering a guttural sound, his muzzle wrinkling and twitching while he furiously wagged his tail. I could see his red, scaling, thickened hide through his thinning hair. I looked at him and he stared back at me through blue-gray filmy cataracts. The cataracts of old dogs are so ugly; how it makes the soft brown irises seem bulging and purple. I was afraid of the dog. He had always tolerated me, but now he was old and senile.

We went into the house, into the dark Victorian foyer with the dark red cherry-wood floor. Beyond the coat rack the wide parlor opened up in a blaze of sunlight, the glowing hardwood floors, the imported rug, the German clock ticking on the massive mahogany mantle. In the dining room was the table. We sat down and David's mother served tea. My old father-in-law played the piano for me. It was good to see David's father. He always kind of courted me. I had forgotten how much I felt like the fine young daughter, the beautiful bride, whenever we visited them.

As much as I gloated in all the attention I was getting, I was well aware that David did not feel special. They are so different than we are, we are so different from them. I thought it was good that we were doing this together, that he could see his parents and yet not be alone. If there had been a brother or a sister, perhaps David wouldn't feel--so isolated.

 I looked around me with a certain envy, the antiques, the crystal, the heavy gilt framed mirror that hung behind the piano. And David's mother just has all this, I thought, she doesn't have to work; but the dog was always there, lying on the floor with its head on its paws, watching me.

Sometimes, when I looked the dog straight in the eye, he would thump the floor with his tail and growl softly. How intimidating! I was angry. I frowned as I talked to David's father. Was I really so special to him? After all, he could hear the dog growling at me, why didn't he do something about it? I found myself staring through the kitchen doorway, at David's mother cleaning up the sticky plastic wrappings from the turkey. Could David's mother ever kill the turkey that she ate, like old country wives? Could David's father do it? Certainly not, but the dog could. It growled and growled, thumped and growled. Why, it was vicious! It should be put to sleep, just plain common sense. Why didn't they do it, what was stopping them, how could they coddle him with leftovers instead?

In the dining room I loved to stand near the oak table. The grain traced patterns of snaking ovals inside ovals. It was grand, taking up nearly all the space in the room. The legs were carved with capped acorns cupped in curling oak leaves. It displayed all the holiday china, gilded jelly dishes with tiny silver spoons, casseroles of steaming food, and long-stemmed crystal glasses. They brought out the turkey and gravy. We all sat down, and someone passed me the mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. David's father poured the wine. We toasted and ate and talked. I leaned back in my chair, and David held my hand, and I was thinking about eating even more pumpkin pie.         

Suddenly the dog lurched forward from under the table, snarling and snapping. I shrieked and waved my arms in front of me, nearly toppling backwards in my chair. The animal recoiled into the dim light under the table, and I felt his teeth sink into the small of my calf.

I screamed and David was standing over me, pushing away the heavy table, yelling and kicking the dog, exposed now, cowering and growling. My chair was being pushed to the wall, David's arms were locked on the arms of the chair, and dimly I thought my leg, or maybe my ankle, might be aching.

David's face was white as he faced his father, who, with his mouth open, was holding the dog by its collar.

"Honey," said David, "should we take you to the hospital?"

I looked down at the small oozing punctures.

"I don't know," I said, "I think I just want to lie down on the couch."

David and his mother helped me lie down. I drew up my knee and looked at my leg. There were big beads of blood quivering on top of the punctures, and a tender bruise was spreading away from the holes.

"Hey," I said, "could somebody pour some peroxide on this please?"

"Mom," said David.

She hurried off to the bathroom. I looked across the room at David's father, who was still holding the dog by its collar.                                                                

"Has he had his rabies shots?" I said. My voice trembled, my face contracted ... would I cry?

"Yes, of course, he's had all his shots." He paused. "God, I'm so sorry," he said, shaking his head. "I guess he'll just have to stay outside." He led the dog through the kitchen to the back door, its nails clicking on the linoleum.

David's mother returned with a big bath towel and peroxide. She knelt down and draped the couch with the towel, then poured and dabbed. The bloody foam itched as it trickled away.

"For Christ's sake," said David, "how can you keep an animal like that in the house?"

"David," said his mother, her fingers trembling, "he's old! We've had him since he was a puppy!"

"And he's always been a mean son-of-a-bitch," said David.

David's father came in quietly and sat in the armchair. He swiveled the chair to look at the oak table in the dining room. David watched him, but said nothing to him.

"Honey, are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital?" said David.

"No, really," I said, "I'm all right. It just hurts."

David's mother put Band-Aids over the punctures, and a dry towel under my leg. She brought me a glass of water and a sleeping pill.                                                                    

"Here you are, Dear," she said, "it will help you sleep."

"Thanks," I said.

David and I went upstairs. We pressed against each other on the bed, our arms holding as hard as they could. David tucked us in. I looked up at the ceiling, way, way up. The medicine made me drowsy, and I tried to see the ceiling, but I couldn't decide, with all the shadows that filled the corners, was it peach, or was it white?

Pale sunlight was peeping at the window when I woke up. I couldn't go back to sleep. I tossed around until David woke up, too.

"I had a really awful dream," I said.

"What was it about?" said David.

"It's hard to explain. There was something wrong with the house.”  I shook my head. I felt so anxious and my leg felt stiff and sore. "I don't want to get out of bed."

David tiptoed down the stairs and brought me a bowl of cocoa puffs.                                         "We'll just stay up here and pretend we're asleep," he said. "Maybe after they leave for church, we can get up," he said. "If you want to, we can just leave, before they get back."

"No," I said, "I don't want to get up right now."

I fell asleep again. David got dressed. When I opened my eyes, David brought me coffee.

"So what are we going to do when they get back? What are we going to say?" I said.

"I really don't know," said David. "I'm going to pack everything, you relax. Want more coffee?"

I didn't budge. It felt good the way David always brought me coffee.

"I'll tell you one thing, though," he said, "I'm going to fix that son-of-a-bitch before we do leave."

I didn't say anything. I covered myself with blankets and curled up on my side with a pillow, my sore leg sticking out from under the bedspread. David killed the dog. He took it behind the yard, where I didn't have to hear what he was doing. It was an old dog anyway, I said to myself. Besides, he wasn't beautiful.

David was a little out of breath when he came back upstairs.

"Well?" I said.

"He's dead," said David.

There was blood spattered on his shoelaces. I wondered how he had done it.

"They're going to find him," said David.                                                            

"Well, what should we do, leave?"

"No," said David, "I don't want to leave now. I'm too anxious."

I knew what he meant, I was anxious too. Besides, we couldn't just leave, not without  saying something.

"Hey, let's go up in the attic," said David. "I used to hide there all the time when I was a kid. I wonder if all those pictures are still up there. Come on," he said, "I want you to see."

David led me up the creaking wooden staircase. Inside, it was oppressively hot and dim. David found the box of pictures, and we looked at almost all of them, talking in whispers. There was the whole family when David was three, a day at Destin beach in the days before the dog. And then wedding pictures, now fifty years old, David’s mother’s face framed sweetly in a long, lacey white veil. We whispered together until we heard the Cadillac pull up in the gravel driveway. They would be coming up the stairs soon. We squatted there silently, in misery. How could this be happening? How could we have done such a thing?

I don't remember clearly everything that was said. David stood up when the door opened, and then I stood up, too. His mother and father looked at me while they talked to David. I perspired in the sticky heat, light headed. I looked at my feet and saw three old carnations lying in the dust on the floor. They made me think. Someone had put them there, a long time ago. Who had done it? Was there a secret, like three old family crimes? I studied the dried petals and blackened stems. David's voice droned, a dull baritone, the very opium of old flowers. I wished myself to be standing on the grassy lawn outside, where I could see the road from the house.

Suddenly I realized David was leaving. He pushed open the attic door in front of him, pulling me forward by the hand. David and his father faced each other angrily, but David's father said nothing. We went downstairs, outside, down the long driveway to the car. David turned the key in the ignition, and we were going home. I closed my eyes.

I saw a gold fish with fancy fins, floating languidly in a watery sphere.