Page 43 of Water's Edge

Dr. A: You’ve mentioned Marie. I know something terrible happened with her… and you.

Me: It wasn’t terrible. It was what it needed to be.

Dr. A: Fine. Tell me. I’m here.

I can hear the anger and anxiety in my voice.

Me: I tell her she’s like a Venus flytrap. So pure and tragic in her wheelchair, with no feeling at all below the waist. Marie was paralyzed in a car accident that was her husband’s fault. She never lets him forget it. She hates any woman that was more attractive, more desirable, than her. She plays out her anger by using her husband.

I tell her the truth: that she is just sitting in her chair, consumed with bitterness, waiting for the next girl to come by so she can entrap her. She tries to tell me that it isn’t like that, but she calls me Rylee. She knows my real name. The name I’m using. She’s holding a knife and her face is hard again. I can tell she hates me for reminding her. For knowing what I know. Not about him. But about how pathetic she is.

Dr. A: What did she say to you?

Me: “I should have killed you when I had the chance. I should have tattooed you like the others and then slit your little throat. I know what you are to him.” It figures that she was the tattoo artist. The tail of a koi carp peeks out from under the bulging upper sleeve of her light pink T-shirt. Just then she starts coming toward me. She is turning the wheels of her chair with one arm. In her hand is the knife. She is quite the tattoo artist. She’s the one that has tattooed all the victims of her and her husband. A small heart on the shoulder.

She is strong. She comes flying at me across the kitchen. I have a gun. I fire but miss. I remember thinking, “Shit!” I have only one bullet left. I fire again, striking her in the kneecap. As if that would give me any hope of retreat. Blood flows from her dead limb and she doesn’t even acknowledge it. She can’t feel anything. The wheels of the chair spin faster. I take a step back, thinking what to do. How I will stop her. I have no bullets. I drop the gun to the floor, regretting doing so instantly. I should have used it to bash in her skull.

“Alex isn’t much,” she cries at me. Now her eyes are narrow and full of sorrow, but she’s a fraud and I know it. “He’s pathetic. But he’s mine. He does what he’s told. He goddamn owes me.”

I think back to what my freak father said before I obliterated him: “I did what I had to do. I had no choice.”

“You pulled the strings, Marie!” I scream at her. “You’re the pathetic one!’ The knife sends a triangle of reflected light into my eyes, and I blink.

“Guilt was Alex’s motivator. Revenge on all the pretty girls was mine,” she says as she lunges with the blade pointed at me. “Now you’ve ruined everything.”

In a flash she’s nearly on me, and I do the only thing I can think of. I plant my foot between her legs and catch the base of the chair. It is fast and decisive. The knife falls to the floor. Marie Rader goes flying backward through the plate glass slider that leads to her patio.

The tape goes quiet. Dr. Albright is waiting. There is a look of concern and support on her face.

Me: Oddly, she doesn’t scream. She starts coming toward me again. I don’t know exactly how I accomplish it, but I manage to plant my hands on her chair as she flails about. With all the strength that’s somehow still inside of me, I push her through the glittery shards of glass on the patio toward her massive koi pond. The one she bragged about while she was poisoning me with her iced tea. The water surges over her head as she starts to sink down beneath the surface. Instinctively, I return for the knife. I stand by the water’s edge as Marie flails around. She’s coughing and choking, but she grabs hold of the cement edge of the pond. I see her rise up. Those arms of hers. They are like a pair of pine trees. They undulate with muscle tissue. I see the veins in her forearms press upward like a mass of worms under her skin.

“Goddamn you!” she says. Her eyes are wild. She starts to pull herself up and I do what I know I have to do. And partly because I want to do it. I can’t stop myself. I take the knife and slam its glinting edge through her fingers, and she screams. Yet she hangs on. I stomp on her other hand with my shoe like I’m crushing the life out of a scorpion. Which she is, and at the same time she’s an insult to the creature. Her severed fingers are lying there on the edge of the cement and the water is turning to blood. She goes under again. The koi are drawn to her. I wish they were piranhas. I wish the pond were a vat of hydrochloric acid. No matter. I am done. So is Marie.

Dr. A: Were the police called?

I notice Dr. Albright hasn’t asked directly if I called the police. I answer her question as best I can.

Me: Marie and I made a lot of noise and I’m hoping no one else heard or cared enough to call the police. Since Alex Rader was a cop, my respect for the cops has nose-dived. Rolland once said that the police are limited in what they can do, but I know that there was at least one among them—and maybe more—who did what they wanted, no matter the price. Go to the police? Mom went there for help and look how it turned out for her. It is one thing of two that I know she and I agree on. The other is that Hayden must never know what I know to be true. Like Mom, I carry that burden now. I love my little brother too much to have him live a life knowing that his heart circulates poisoned blood. Like mine.

Dr. A: So what do you remember?

Me: The koi pond is red with Marie’s blood, and I feel sorry that the fish have to swim in the filth of her body. Even so, I kick her fingers into the water with the tip of my shoe. Under the surface I see her face. Her eyes are open and so is her mouth, in a permanent scream. She was handicapped but she put up more of a fight than her husband, the worthless pig. I start for the living room, and though I scan it with speed, I still see everything and capture it in my memory forever. Like a camera with my finger on the shutter. Click. Click. Click. The scene, the furnishings. Everything is mundane. A TV sits across from a sofa. A recliner points toward the set, and a basket containing needlework sits at the end of the carpet ruts left by Marie’s chair. I grab the wedding photo of Alex and Marie, smash the glass, and pull the photo from the frame. Folded, it goes in my pocket. The ruts. My eyes trace the worn parallel lines in the carpet throughout the house. They stop at the only place Marie cannot go. The door that leads upstairs. If Alex Rader wanted to keep a souvenir from the prying eyes of his wife, then it would be where she could not follow. He wouldn’t have to lock it up. I turn on the light and head up the steps.

The tape goes silent again. I’m replaying in my mind the scene before I speak again.

Me: Up top is one large room with the dormers looking out toward the street. Alex Rader had set it up as his office. It is like no office I could have imagined. Yes, I’ve seen porn. Never on purpose. Not really. There have been times when I’ve gone online and clicked the wrong link and in an instant I’m in a world of naked bodies moving and emoting in ways that indicate great pleasure but frequently make little sense. One time I saw something so strange I still don’t know what they were doing. Or how many were doing it. And, truthfully, I don’t want to know. The room is paneled in dark oak. Using the seams in the paneling as a guide, Alex Rader has taped up photo after vile photo. These are scenes so sickening that I have to steady myself as I try to take them in without vomiting. I wouldn’t mind vomiting right now. But I don’t have the time. I move closer to a section of the wall that holds a familiar face. Megan Moriarty does the splits in her cheerleading uniform from Kentridge High School. It is one of the images of her that I saw online. Next is Shannon Blume’s picture, the same pretty but sad-eyed photo that appeared in the newspaper—the one that her parents held in their arms as they called out to the world for help in finding their daughter. Leanne is there too. But this photo is not familiar. It was candidly snapped when she was caught down by the marina, unaware. She was being stalked.

I hit the “stop” button. Is it a coincidence that one of Rader’s victims was named Leanne? Or is this destiny’s way of reminding me of what I’m supposed to do? Rader is dead. Marie, his helper, his leader, is dead.

The picture of Rader’s Leanne was candidly snapped. Down by the marina. She was being stalked. I believe my victim—and I think of Leann asmyvictim now—was being stalked too.

I hit “play” again, resuming the tape.

Me: I hear the thumping, louder this time, and I turn around. Using her one good hand and the stump that I made for her with the kitchen knife, soaking-wet Marie has heaved herself up the stairs. She slithers. She can barely speak, but she is as mad as hell and she won’t be denied.

“To get out of here,” Marie spits out, “you have to get by me.” She has the knife in her hand. I see by looking past her that she used it like a rock climber to hoist herself up the stairway. A trail of water and blood follows her like a snail’s trail. Except, she’s no snail. Marie is fast. Faster than anyone can imagine. I have been upstairs only a few minutes and she’s managed to track me. She pulls herself toward me. Her hair is wet and soaked with blood.

“Do you realize what you’ve done?” I ask, as though someone so vile could even fathom it. “Do you realize how many lives you ruined?”

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