The Girl Who Was Death
There was a murder here in town this year. The story goes that the woman strangled or suffocated her twelve-year-old son, then tried to commit suicide; the husband came home, found a note which alarmed him, and called the police, who found the two of them in the house. That was last summer, and the church agreed to host a memorial service on behalf of the family, so I met the husband, and his adult daughter, on several occasions. It was very disturbing; it disturbs me still. I think about them from time to time, the survivors. Even after listening to all the tributes paid to the lad he is nothing but a cipher to me. A very ordinary child, distinguished, alas, only by the manner of his death.
She will go to jail, I guess; and they're all three in prison for life. But even before the Big Bad happened, things were bad. I don't know this but it was something I felt, and feel. It was the silent part of the stories I overheard, and it was the empty place in the center of the room when we were there together. All the pictures had been cropped to conceal the monster.
In my mind's eye I see them, a year ago, putting up the tree and wrapping presents, baking cookies and dashing out to holiday parties. A wonderful life: so good-looking, so successful, so pleasurable. So vulnerable, so pitiful, so sad.
