“Eric?”
Nod. “He scares me.”
“How does he scare you, Stacy?”
“By—he—the way he talks—the things he says . . . No, no, forget it, forget I just said that. Please. Just forget it. He’s fine, everything’s fine.”
She slipped a finger between the blades of the blinds and peered out at the night.
I said, “What did Eric say that scared you?”
She spun around. “Nothing! I said forget it!”
I stood there.
“What? “she said.
“If you’re scared, let me help.”
“You can’t—there’s nothing you can—it’s—I just— he—Helen—we were sitting there. After we got back from the police station and he started talking about Helen.”
“Your dog.”
“What’s the difference? Please! Please don’t make me get into it!”
“I can’t make you do anything, Stacy. But if Eric’s in some kind of danger—”
“No, no, that’s not what I mean—he—you remember what I told you about Helen…”
“She was sick. Eric took her up to the mountains and you never saw her again. What’s he saying about her?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing, really . . . Besides,
what’s the big deal? It was the right thing to do—she was sick, she was a dog, for God’s sake, people do that all the time, it’s the humane thing to do.”
“Putting her out of her misery. Eric told you he did it?”
“Yes—never before, not till now. I mean I knew, but he never mentioned before, not once. Then tonight, after we got back. Dad and Mr. Safer were downstairs and we were up here and all of a sudden he starts getting into it. Laughing about it.”
She sat down on the edge of the armchair, crushing stuffed animals. Reaching behind, she took one in her arms—a small, frayed elephant.
“He laughed about Helen,” I said. “And now he’s talking about people being put out of their misery.”
“No—just forget it.” Weak voice, lacking conviction.
“You’re worried,” I went on. “If Eric could do that to Helen, maybe he could do it to a human being. Maybe he had something to do with your mother’s death.”
“No!” she shouted. “Yes! That’s what—he basically told me! I mean, he didn’t come out and say it but he kept hinting around at it. Talking about Helen, how her eyes looked—how she was okay with it, peaceful. She looked up at him and licked his face and he hit her over the head with a rock. One time, he said. That’s all it took. Then he buried her—it was brave of him, right? I couldn’t have done it, it needed to be done, she was so sick.”
She rocked in the chair, held the elephant to her breast.
“Then he got a creepy smile. Said sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands, how no one knows what’s right or wrong unless they’re in your shoes. How maybe there really is no right or wrong, just rules that people take on because they’re too scared to make their own decisions. He said helping Helen was the noblest thing he’d ever done.”
She squeezed the elephant harder and its tiny face compressed to something grotesque. “I’m so scared. What if he did another Helen?”
“No reason to believe that,” I said, lying because now I had an explanation for why Mate hadn’t claimed Joanne. I went on in my best therapist voice: “He’s upset, just as you are. Things will settle down, Eric will settle down.”
My voice and my brain diverged as I continued to comfort, thinking all the while: mother and son, guilt, expiation. Joanne and Eric planning . . . Eric taking pictures because he knew she’d be leaving soon, wanted to grasp every opportunity for memorial.
Too sickening to contemplate, but I couldn’t stop contemplating. I hoped the revulsion hadn’t found its way into my voice. Must have faked it okay because Stacy stopped crying.
“Everything will be fine?” she said in a little girl’s voice.
“Just hang in there.”
She smiled. Then the smile turned into something fearful and ugly. “No, it won’t. It will never be fine.”
“I know it seems like that right now—”
“Hey,” she said, “Eric’s right. Nothing’s complicated. You’re born, life sucks, you die.” She ripped a cuticle bloody, licked the wound, picked some more.