The Matriarch Read online

  “I’d like to see that tree again,” she says as she gets into the truck. “You’ve got me curious.”

  I’m amazed at the relief I feel. A second opinion is always good.

  I feed, sucking nourishment from the tonic-laden liquid that surrounds my growing heart.

  My heart is busy. It is creating. A dense mass of little tubes at its center contract and expand with each beat. This propels blood out from that core to my outer edge where many of my living veins glide along the nutrition-filled floor of this cavern. These tentacles contain everything that is in me, the Mother Tree, but in miniature. And, they do my bidding.

  The rocky chamber—filled with fluid that seeped down from above in which I lay dormant for so long—finally erupted. That fluid rose to nourish this form—this verdant growth that is my home now. I was conceived in those waters eons ago—those life-giving fluids from the rotting bodies of hundreds of natives … young, sacrificed virgins.

  My passion is to create new life but without male involvement. The male is my enemy. I was sacrificed, over and over, my life’s-blood dripping down into a huge sinkhole and then into a chamber below. Man did that to me. Over and over. I was the innocent virgin female; my heart cut from my body and held in the hand of the savage male … still beating. I am in mourning for myself. It is a mourning filled with hate. My hate breeds in me an overwhelming need … a need for vengeance.

  I breathe, and my branches and leaves reach out for knowledge of my new world. Tonight they bring me news that one of my gender has done battle with the enemy. And won. It is a welcome first step.

  Punk. He’s a smart-ass punk.

  Al opens the fridge and gets himself a cold Bud. He opens the can, puts it to his mouth, and tips his head back. The golden liquid falls into his throat—cooling, calming.

  Think you’ll mouth off to me, huh? Think again, punk.

  He has to laugh. That ticket was a good touch. He noticed the expired registration when he pulled up to Frank’s place but hadn’t realized it would come in so handy. It won’t hurt to run a check on that Cassidy guy, Al decides. In fact, it will be thoughtful, preventative police work to do that very thing. Yes-sir! Quality sheriff-type police work. Al finishes his beer and tosses the can into the garbage under the sink. Sure, he’s old man Murphy’s nephew, but that doesn’t mean a fuckin’ thing.

  Cassidy Murphy is the kind of guy Al has always hated. A rich guy brought up by rich parents who supplied the punk with everything. He probably never had to work a day in his life—everything just given to him. Nothing like Al’s knock-around, work-like-a-dog life. And he’s good looking too! Al figures no chick ever says “no” to this guy.

  I’d like to punch him right in his rich, handsome face. He wouldn’t be much to look at after a fight with me—no Sir!

  Al walks into the bedroom, and there she is … his Gin, a lump under the covers. Sometimes he gets a sad feeling when he looks at Gin. Like when she’s bent over her needlepoint, so taken up with those stupid little stitches she doesn’t even know he’s in the room. She’s like a child. It makes him think of when they’d first met. They’d both been children then, talking together of their future. What bullshit. It hadn’t taken him long after marriage to realize that she sure as hell was no Kelly. A dumb broad like Gin could never replace his true love. It doesn’t pay to think on the past though. The future is the bottom line. He smiles at his dark image in the bedroom mirror.

  Albert D. Schmidt’s the name, future sheriff of Diablo County.

  He drops his belt and gun to the floor, along with his pants. He sits down heavily on the bed and takes off his boots and socks. She has to be awake; he’s made enough noise to guarantee that. She’s scared, he knows, and that’s the way he likes his Gin. Already hard, he fondles himself briefly.

  Al pulls the quilt down, exposing her white flannel nightgown. Her gowns are always long-sleeved and full length—a feeble attempt to turn him off. He knows her whole body is clenched, her haunches squeezed shut against him. But that just increases his pleasure. Al smiles in the dark.

  “I forgive you, Gin,” he says.

  WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

  A “very nice service,” everyone says. I guess that’s in contrast to a very shitty service. I look around the Veteran’s Hall, generously given for Dante’s funeral. Gwendolyn Schwartz and her husband, Ed, close friends of the Russos and ex- military people, have arranged a tasteful tribute to Dante and to soldiers everywhere.

  The pastor has opened this after-funeral reception by speaking of this and of the curative balm of military service and deprivation in general, so necessary to the salvation of modern man.

  What crap! Am I drunk yet?

  Soon, I hope. I am grateful though—to the veterans for their benevolence in providing a very decent red wine—and pour myself the last from a nearby decanter. I don’t see any more decanters around and feel a mild surge of alarm. I like to think that I always drink with healthy caution, but today I’m not so sure.

  I’m sick about Dante. Since his death, I’ve been thinking of him, what he was like in the past with my family and me. There were seven of us: my parents, Dante and Carla, Frank and Emma—and me. I was blessed. And Dante was a great guy. He took a liking to me and let me help him with the horses he boarded and trained. He’d put me up on a colt and lead us around ’til we got used to each other. Then he’d let me give the colt a treat of oats or barley. We bonded, those colts and me. Dante told me I was a natural with horses, and I remember how proud I was.

  I ate a lot of meals with Dante and Carla back then; I felt like I was a member of their family. Carla … How could she …? Did she …? Was it really murder? I shake my head. It’s too terrible to think about.

  Everyone is hovering around a long rectangular table. It has a huge chocolate cake on it, about two gallons of softening vanilla ice cream, a large urn of coffee, and three baskets of fresh figs. There’s also an open cooler of beer and soda resting on the floor near the table. Dante’s friends and neighbors fill the hall, and several have brought their children along.

  Charlotte and Shelly are nearby, and I’m grateful for their presence. I’ve heard that Carla wants them to stay on at her home for a while, until her future is decided.

  A few people are standing with Frank near the refreshment table waiting to see me, as if Dante Russo’s funeral has become a ‘catch-up with Cassidy party’. I shake hands with two more couples I remember from the old days. Then comes a woman I don’t remember at all. She has all the charm of icy water thrown into my face.

  “How do you do,” she says, and I know this broad doesn’t give a fuck how I do. She smiles—if a grimace can be called a smile—and one corner of her mouth forms a mean, sharp hook that seems to be actually imbedded in her flesh.

  “Kate Hammond,” she says. She doesn’t offer her hand.

  Her short dark hair frames a wan face, its paleness heightened by rouged cheeks. Brown eyes, made larger by rimless glasses, gaze at me with clinical interest, as if measuring me for her specimen collection. I shiver, suddenly cold. There’s no light in her eyes; they’re dark and lifeless as marbles. Dressed in a short black skirt and a low-cut black blouse, she manages to look funereal and sleazily seductive at the same time.

  A sullen, pallid girl of eleven or so clings to her hand. She looks and acts like her mother, but does offer a limp hand, which I shake firmly. The girl wears black shorts and a black tee shirt. These two are an obscene duo in their mother-daughter mourning outfits.

  “My daughter, Molly,” Kate says.

  Molly is a tall girl, almost as tall as her mother. Her hair is black and long. Her dark eyes are shaded by thick black brows that seem to sprint toward each other across her white forehead. She keeps helping herself to the figs, eating them rapidly.

  “My husband,” Kate says, thrusting her chin up and back, indicating the man behind her. He looks far too normal to be this woman’s husband. “Victor,” she adds in an “I could care less” tone, a
nd I smile at him.

  “A pleasure, man,” Victor says with a friendly grin as he pumps my hand. A well-built man of around forty with healthy color; his appearance and manner are the exact opposite of Kate’s. I can see no similarity between the man and Molly. I think the girl has to be his stepdaughter.

  “Good to meet you, Victor,” I say.

  Charlotte appears then with two cans of cold beer. She hands me one and picks up my empty wine glass.

  “What a woman,” I say smiling at her. I introduce her to the Hammonds. Her cheeks are flushed, and I know I’m not the only one finding solace in drink.

  I feel something at my feet and look down to see a puddle of spilled Coke. Someone has set a plastic cup down by the cooler, and I’ve just kicked it over.

  “Molly!” Kate Hammond’s voice has turned strident. “I told you not to put that drink on the floor! The floor is no place for drinks!”

  Kate reaches for the stack of paper napkins on the table, but Charlotte gets there ahead of her and scoops up a handful. She kneels quickly and puts several on the puddle of Coke. She picks up the cup and smiles at Molly, who looks like she’ll soon burst into tears.

  “No problem, kiddo,” I say and place my hand on the girl’s bony shoulder. She stands motionless, staring down at her feet. Her lower lip is trembling.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Charlotte says, getting to her feet. “This old floor’s seen worse than spilled Coke, I’ll bet.” She reaches to embrace Molly, but Kate steps in front of her. She grasps her daughter firmly by her shoulders and glares down at her.

  “You apologize to Mr. Murphy,” she says.

  I wonder at this girl’s chances in life with a mother like Kate Hammond.

  “Sorry,” Molly mumbles.

  “No problem, Molly,” I say. This puny kid already has the hangdog look of a loser.

  Kate gathers a few figs into her hand and hauls her daughter off, followed by Victor who flashes Charlotte and me an embarrassed smile.

  Just what I needed, Charlotte is thinking, a funeral. It’s the very thing to chase off these annoying blues.

  “It’s so bizarre, you know?” She and an inebriated Shelly are seated at a small table in the Russo home. “A loving wife slaughters her beloved husband, but why? For God’s sake, WHY?”

  “The thing is,” Shelly says, “we don’t know anything about their marriage. Maybe it was a nightmare, and Aunt Carla simply flipped out.”

  “How could a marriage be that bad?”

  “But see, that’s my point. We don’t know anything about their marriage. Or Uncle Dante himself for that matter.”

  “Another thing I’m confused about,” Charlotte says, “is why you think a funeral for your uncle is actually a cocktail party and that you can come home loaded this way.”

  Shelly shrugs and picks up two figs from the basket on the table. She takes a healthy bite out of the greenish one. “Because the only way I can put up with this weird custom of standing around bored silly and mourning is to get bombed just as soon as I can.”

  Charlotte wads up her paper napkin and throws it across the table at Shelly. She’s fixed them a fine meal of lamb chops, hearts of palm salad, and homemade popovers but has been unable to eat a bite herself. She’s been fiddling with the popover and pushing the chop around her plate. All she wants now is to crawl under the covers and lose herself until morning.

  “Funerals are a weird custom, I guess,” she says to Shelly, trying to be less judgmental. She is, after all, very grateful to her sister for coming to the Russo’s with her. “I think of them as a form of vigorish I pay to God so he won’t take me too. It’s what people do, I guess. When someone close to you dies, you pay your respects.”

  Charlotte wonders again how long it will be before Shelly splits, leaving her all alone in the Russo home. Their mother has pleaded with the two girls to stay on for a while—at least until Carla’s future is known.

  “But it’s difficult, you know, to live with someone who’s not really here,” Charlotte continues. “Oh you’re here, all right. I can see you. And we’ve just had this heartwarming dinner together full of bright conversational insights—”

  “Charlotte, I’m sorry,” Shelly says, helping herself to more figs. Amid further apologies, Charlotte realizes what she needs. She needs to call Cass Murphy.

  He answers, thank God.

  “I’ve got to see her,” Charlotte says, “Carla. I’m not sure exactly why; the whole thing is just too weird. I need to make some kind of sense out of it, and I want you to come with me.”

  “Well …”

  “I think it will help me if I see her. To understand.”

  “A visit may not help you at all, Charlotte, but I’ll be happy to go with you.”

  THURSDAY

  The small room is all in gray, stark and depressing. So what did I expect in a jail anyway, sunshine and flowers? Carla sits across from us at a wooden table that has been sloppily painted a too-bright green. The chairs are uncomfortable, a cold gray metal. Fluorescent tubes, dim and flickering like strobe lights, illuminate the windowless room. A deputy sheriff stands near Carla, behind her. Surreal, I’m thinking, a grim and hopeless scene.

  “How are you, Aunt Carla?” Charlotte says, her voice trembling. I slide my chair closer to her and put my arm around her shoulders.

  “They’re treating me well enough, I guess. Food’s terrible. But what can you expect?” She speaks with calm authority, as if commenting on a shoddy new restaurant in town. She has a rosy-cheeked look, her wild hair is combed back from her face, and she wears a dark navy jumpsuit. Her eyes have an odd milky cast to them behind her silver-rimmed grandma readers.

  “Carla … why?” Charlotte asks. “Why did this happen?”

  Carla’s lips part in puzzlement. “Why?” She seems at a loss, makes some kind of mental adjustment, and then flashes us a bright smile.

  “Why what?”

  Her yo-yo change in mood affects me like a sledge to my gut.

  “Why did you kill Uncle Dante?”

  “Kill …?”

  Has this madwoman forgotten?

  I feel Charlotte pull my hand from her shoulder, and I realize I’ve been squeezing it.

  Another jarring shift then as Carla gives us a sweet, cloying smile—a naughty-little-girl-grin.

  “He deserved it that’s why! Dante wasn’t what he seemed, you know.” With her tousled white hair and the light glinting off her glasses, she’s pretty … an angelic grandma of the year. “You girls can stay on for a while, can’t you?” Carla says to Charlotte. “I don’t know how long I’ll be kept here.”

  “A few more days, probably. Will there be a trial … or … what?”

  “I’m not sure,” Carla says. “I don’t think the idiots here know what they’re doing. When I know what’s going on, I’ll let you know.” She sighs and runs her fingers through her hair. “You ask me why. The thing is, Dante was a prick,” she says as if stating a well-known fact.

  “Oh. But Carla,” Charlotte cries, “I just can’t believe—”

  “Well, you believe it, dearie. A woman can take only so much.”

  “What exactly did you have to take, Carla?” I ask. This woman is nothing like the kind and caring Carla I remember.

  “You mind your own fucking business, Cassidy Mur—” She stops as if she’s run into a wall, her brows convulsing in an ugly frown. “How? How could I have killed him? My dear Dante?”

  But her eyes cloud over and Carla the Remorseful is gone. She’s yanked back into her madness, and the other Carla is with us once again. The killer. What has caused this cruel change in the woman I once knew as a second mom?

  “He got what was coming to him,” she says with a smirk.

  “We have to go,” Charlotte says, and I know she’s shaken and close to tears.

  We stand, and Carla jumps to her feet. “Bring me some figs, Charlotte, will you?” She’s almost shouting. “I need them.”

  The word need catc
hes my attention. Why would anyone need a fig?

  “Okay, Carla, I’ll—”

  “Carla,” I say, interrupting Charlotte. “What do you mean you need figs? What do they do for you, anyway?”

  “They’re so sweet … they make it better,” she says, frowning. “Energy, power … like that. Will you, Charlotte?”

  “Of course,” Charlotte says, and we leave.

  I buy us lunch—burgers and Cokes to go—and I drive Charlotte back to the Russo home. We sit in the kitchen and eat our lunch. There’s a note from Shelly on the table there saying she’s in town at the market.

  I see a saucer with a few cigarette butts in it on the counter. “You smoke?”

  “No. Shelly does, but she’s trying to quit. She’s not doing too well on that at the moment.” She shakes her head. “That thing is not Carla Russo,” Charlotte continues. “She doesn’t even seem human.” She takes a swallow of her Coke. “Brandon Sims called yesterday, Carla’s attorney. He wanted to know if there was anything he could do. He said she had seen him about a divorce and he had been very surprised. He said another woman, a neighbor of Carla’s, had just filed for divorce as well. Two on the same day kind of threw him.”

  It throws me as well. Another chill breezes across my neck. Coincidence? Carla’s murder of Dante is not only horrific but also impossible to understand. Something … something horrific had happened in their marriage. But what? What could have caused Carla to file for divorce and then brutally murder her husband?

  “I wonder if there’s more? More divorces.”

  “What, an epidemic?” Charlotte says with a smile.

  “Well, something’s sure as hell out of whack with Carla. Maybe this other woman as well. I’ve heard of crazy stuff like that, haven’t you? A person suddenly goes nuts because of exposure to some kind of chemical additive. Maybe a pesticide of some sort?”