Chapter 1: Murderers Look Like Grandmothers

     I’ve been sitting on this jailhouse bed for two hours, tracing the veins in my wrinkled hands and tapping my foot as if something will come of it. The only disruption to my impatient fidgetings has been the woman they brought in earlier. She screamed and hollered until the ground shook. But I wasn’t startled. These days my brain registers everything before my body can react. She shut up when she caught sight of me, trying to resist the guards so she could stare just a bit longer. I gave her a slight smile. After all, I can’t blame the dear. If I saw a jailed seventy-seven year old woman who looked like she might drag three grandchildren to church on Sundays, I’d be lost too. Especially if I was that drunk. But, as per usual, this stumbling idiot had failed to notice the darkness behind my big, kind eyes. My heart is only as hard as gold, Henry told me so at a train station. Right before kissing me on the cheek.

 

According to law, foolproof evidence overrides all else, but I beg to differ. I confessed to the crimes, yet still most think of me as an innocent old lady. They forget that I have already grown up. My days of innocence have long since gone. I’ve had my wild and guilt ridden days filled out. But to them, regardless of all that, it’s preposterous to think that I could kill have someone. I mean, I had to hire the neighbour’s boy just to do my gardening!

            They refer to Tommy. What they didn’t know was that I had Tommy come over because he couldn’t be at home. Once I told his parents that karma was a b***h. They looked as though I’d just breathed fire. That night, Tommy left for college again. I’m a bit of an opportunist, I admit.

 

        I have my sentencing tomorrow. I think they sped the process up because they’re afraid I might die on them. Idiots.  During my trial, there was a man just like that�"an idiot, I mean. A lawyer. Not very attractive. Sloppy. Two coloured socks. Scruffy shoes. Unironed shirt. Mismatched tie. Uncombed hair. I felt like a two year old torturing a cat.

 

“Well, Mrs. Thorntonberry?” he demanded. “I asked you a question.”

            I bat my eyelashes, smiling (a bit condesendingly) at him. “I read about this joke once. Henry and I had a good laugh about it. Want to hear it?”

            He threw up his hands. “Mrs. Thorntonberry, are you aware of the gravity of your crimes?”

            “It went something along the lines of a defence lawyer questioning a doctor.”

            “Your Honour!”

            The judge raised a bushy eyebrow, gazing at me. “Is there a point to your…joke, Mrs. Thorntonberry?”

            “Why yes! It proves that this gentleman might not have a brain.”

 

            They didn’t like it too much. They told me to be serious. Everyone thinks that because of my years I should be. I should be this. I should be that. There’s a lot I should be that I’m not and a lot I shouldn’t be that I am. But, as I say to everything…meh. Mrs. Thorntonberry, you’re aunt’s dead. Meh. Mrs. Thorntonberry, you have pancreatic cancer. Meh. Mrs. Thorntonberry, you’re under arrest. Meh. Mrs. Thorntonberry, your husband has passed on…

 

I could see him clear as day every time I shuffled down stairs for breakfast. His ash-colour hair would still be damp from the shower. An emptied World’s Best Cop mug would be cast to the other side of the table to make room for a sprawled newspaper. He’d be pouring over the contents, squinting and adjusting in a vain attempt to avoid visiting our “a*s of an optometrist.” I’d take the mug and refill it, along with another for myself.

It’s funny that Henry would even use that mug. World’s Best Cop. He hated with a passion only matched by Bill Clinton’s love of blowjobs. (Henry called him the Blowhard President, all while ranting that “sex and religion should stay out of politics.”)  

Nothing in our small town was challenging enough for my husband. He dreamed of growing younger, like Benjamin Button, and moving to the city where, maybe, there’d be a case to give him a thrill. Even as a seventy-five retiree, the dream hadn’t faded. That’s why we invented the game. We’d plot the perfect felony. We thought of every detail that would give away a crime. We’d acquire information on a shop or person. It’s all more complex than I expected. They always involved something different. There was nothing the same about any of the attacks. Sometimes we murdered. Sometimes we stole. Sometimes we did both. The game kept our imaginations running.

 

“Evelyn?” 

I blink my eyes opened. It’s Henry. He’s on a bed with white sheet. The white walls of the hospital glow in the background. A clock is ticking somewhere.

“Would you ever go through with one of our plans?” he whispers.

“No! Never!”

“Evelyn?”

“Yes?”

“I hope you’ll never be bored.”

 

What an odd thing to say on a deathbed! Granted his very last words sounded more like gurgling than talking and that was not one of them. Henry. Henry. Henry. Till the end, you were dignified.

 

Bursts of memory come back to me sitting here. Ones before everything. Like twenty-one years ago, when Tommy was born. Or eleven years ago when he first cried on my front porch. Or when Henry and I decided not to have children. Or when we decided to, but couldn’t. Or even before all that, when I first went to college. When I got my first job as a secretary. When Henry and I met at the railway. When we bought our first, and only, house. When he retired. When…I could go on.

After Henry died, those memories were locked away. They were too painful. Not because of what happened, but because Henry wasn’t with me in those early stages. How could I have ever lived without him? It doesn’t make sense. But I guess it doesn’t have to. Nothing has patterns. Nothing has reason. Sense is something we create. As we learnt in the game, there’s good in that.

But this jail cell, this boredom, is forcing me to unlock and sort through those repressed memories. They’re all scattered, see? Like a shelf of papers that toppled over.  I don’t know which happened first. Was I with my mum or my aunt when I went to that fair. Was it the other secretary or the janitor who gave me a cup of coffee on my first day at work? If I were one of those emotional humanistic types, I would say this clogs my essence of being. I can’t let go of anything. I can’t make sense of anything. I’m trying to, but there’s no correction card. I can’t guarantee the accuracy of my own life. And when you put it in that perspective, it’s…warped. You’re meeting a stranger, who could be lying with every single word.

I never was one for humanism.

Author's Note

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