Laura Lippman - Hardly Knew Her

“And what are you talking about today?” the makeup girl asks, beginning to apply foundation.

“I was raped and I killed my attacker,” Meghan says.

“Oh.” The makeup girl’s eyes slide upward, meeting the gaze of the hairdresser, who’s standing behind Meghan, twirling a round brush through her hair. Meghan sees it all in the mirror-the concern, the pity.

“It’s okay,” she assures them. “That’s why I’m here. Because women should talk about these things. It was horrible, what happened to me, what I had to do to survive. But I have no regrets, and certainly no shame.”

Again, her lines are rehearsed, but that doesn’t mean they’re not true. Even when Meghan allows herself to think about what really happened-something she does less and less-she can’t imagine taking a different course of action. No regret, no shame. She was on top of Dan, their second go-round, riding him and encouraging him to choke her, when he saw her reach for the drawer. “What are you getting?” he gasped. “Something to make it better. Close your eyes.” He did as he was told and she managed to grab the gun, hold it behind her back. “Flip me, you on top.” “I’m too big for a little girl like you, I’ll break you.” “I’ll be fine.” Gracelessly, they switched positions, and she let him have a few more seconds of pleasure-“Eyes shut, eyes shut,” she crooned-until he finally asked, “Where’s the surprise?”

She had never fired a gun and it bucked in her hand, but it didn’t matter, given how closely it was pressed to the spot behind his left ear. He looked surprised. Brian had looked surprised, too. Dan flopped a little and there seemed to be a delay before blood and other things began leaking out of him. It didn’t bother her. She was the mother of four kids. She had been vomited on, peed on, shat on, wiped snotty noses. A little blood and brain matter was nothing to her. Besides, she did this for her kids, all of it. Killing Brian, killing Dan.

So why not kill Lillian, as Dan wanted? He loved her, she wanted a second husband. Eventually. Why not kill Lillian? But that struck Meghan as wrong. She wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. She did the things she did only when backed into a corner. She did what any mother would do, given the same proclivity for quick thinking. It’s not as if she enjoyed it, not quite. She appreciated the power it bestowed, however briefly, the sense of besting men who were making her miserable. But it wasn’t recreational.

It’s pleasant, being tended to, the feel of the soft brush across her cheekbones, her hair being blown and teased into something larger and grander than it is. She also enjoyed checking into a hotel room last night, being by herself, ordering room service. A single mother, she is at once alone and yet never alone in her daily life, and this pure solitude was something to cherish. The producers had offered to bring the whole family up, make it a vacation, but she had quickly demurred. “Oh no, that’s hardly necessary.” Her eyes drift upward, to the monitor above the makeup mirror, and she watches Matt Lauer explaining something, his face grave. Utterly relaxed, she closes her eyes at the makeup woman’s instruction, thinking: I could break Matt’s neck like a little twig. If I had to, if it came to that.

Why can’t I walk home?” Scott asks. It is the first day of school, the first day of fifth grade for him, his last first day ever at Hamilton Point Elementary School. Next year he will be in middle school, which means a bus. A bus will take him away from Heloise every morning and return him in the afternoon. It’s the beginning of his leaving her.

“Why?” he repeats. “Billy does.”

“Billy doesn’t have to cross Old Orchard.” The prettily named street, a monument to a place long gone, a place torn down to make room for the houses there, has the distinction of being the suburb’s most dangerous. Three high school students died in a head-on crash there the last weekend before school started, a tragedy so enormous that it has eclipsed the gossip about Dan Simmons going nuts, trying to rape his neighbor.

“I’ll be good. I’ll look both ways. There’s a crossing guard.”

Heloise begins to repeat her argument, then says: “We’ll talk about it. Maybe soon. But you know what? I like driving you.”

She glances in the rearview mirror, sees Scott make a face, but also sees a guilty flush of affection beneath it. “Mom.” Two syllables, verging on three.

“What did you learn in school today?”

“Nothing, it’s the first day. But I think science is going to be neat. We get to do yearlong projects if we want. Not experiments, but reading projects, where we take on a topic and learn everything about it. I think I want to do nature versus nutria.”

“Nurture? Nutria’s an animal, I think.”

“Right, nurture. It’s like, we used to think it was all about how you were raised, but now we think it’s about what’s in your genes.” A pause, a heartbreaking pause. “Why don’t we have any photographs of my dad?”

“I’ve never been much of one for taking photos, except of you. Children change. Grown-ups, not so much. Your father lives in my memory.” And in my scars.

“But he had red hair, like me?”

“Yes.”

“And he was a businessman, who ran a com-, com-, com-” Bright as Scott is, as many times as they have gone over this story, he stumbles on this word.

“Commodities exchange.” Oh yes, Val traded in commodities. “I never really understood it. Soybeans. And something to do with pork belly futures.” And the bellies and breasts and thighs and cunts of young women.

“And he was nice.”

“So nice.” Especially after he had beaten a girl. He was never nicer.

“But he had a bad accident.”

“Very bad.” His gun ran into a young man, and the woman he thought loved him made sure the police got hold of that weapon, and if he ever finds out, he will arrange to have her killed just for spite. Unless he finds out about you. Then he’ll instruct his old friends to kill you in front of her and leave her alive, knowing that will be the truest hell he can fashion.

“I wish I had even one memory of him.”

“I do too, baby. I do too.”

Nature versus nurture. Hector Lewis had two families. Hector Lewis had two daughters. He beat one. She grew up to be a whore. With the other, he spared the rod, blew hot and cold, providing money and love in fitful amounts, and she grew up to be a cold-blooded killer. Just last week, Meghan moved her family to Florida. A fresh start, she said. It was too awkward, she said, living next door to Lillian after all that had happened. Not that Lillian was going to be living there long. Just as the cobbler’s children go barefoot, the Simmons heirs turned out to have hardly any insurance. Except for Lillian, on whom Dan had taken out a huge policy earlier this summer. That information, along with the selected correspondence that Meghan showed the police-the CD, the poetry, but never the Bible verses-and the autopsy findings of some odd, calcified spots in Dan’s brain, probably months old, took care of everything. Dan had lost his mind. His obsession with Meghan, the rape, his plans for Lillian, the disturbing pornography that he had neglected to clear out of his computer before he died-it didn’t exactly add up to anything, but it served the scenario Meghan had created. Unhinged Dan tried to rape Meghan and she killed him. It made as much sense as anything. It certainly made more sense than the truth. And if the police ever looked into the death of Brian Duffy for any reason, Dan would probably take the rap for that, too. Who was going to contradict Meghan? Not Heloise, certainly.

Nature versus nurture. Heloise glances in the rearview mirror, sees her redheaded son looking out at the passing landscape, thinks of the redheaded man who fathered him, of the grandfather he never knew, of the aunt who has killed two men, of the mother who lies as naturally as breathing.