Dis Mem Ber and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense Page 9

  “Steff, for God’s sake! What is that—a gun?”

  Caitlin was shocked but also disgusted. She didn’t seem to notice my flushed face, that felt hot and swollen. The buzzing in my ears was like a roar.

  “Is that—his gun? You took out of his bedroom? Oh my God.”

  Hunt was trying to smile at me, but I could see that Hunt was also disapproving.

  “Is that my uncle’s gun, Steffi? Maybe you should put it down.”

  I told Hunt that I wanted a gun lesson, too. I wanted to learn, too.

  Caitlin said, “That is not a plaything. That is Mr. Lesinger’s gun. You put that right back where you found it. We won’t tell anyone but you’d better do that—now.”

  I knew my sister would say this. Or something like this. It was like Caitlin to spoil anything I wanted to do, when I was poised to be happy for once.

  I did not mean to do anything but scare Caitlin. She was so mean to me, and seemed to be ashamed of me. The mistake was, I know that it was my mistake but it was also Caitlin’s mistake, that she was so nasty to me. She was sneering, and stuck-up, and full of herself, and she didn’t give a damn about me. When we were with Dad, she got all the attention from him. Like all the light in the room, or all the oxygen in the room, and didn’t care about me, and how lonely I was.

  So disgusted looking at me as if she shouldn’t have been scared of me. Respectful of me.

  For I had Mr. Lesinger’s gun, which I had to hold in both hands because it was heavy. And I was pretending that it was loaded. I was pretending that it would really shoot if I pulled the trigger. “Get down! Get down on the ground, you are arrested!” I was mimicking cops on TV programs, like Cops, that’s what the cops always shout at the pathetic whiskery drunk men they’re trying to arrest. Get down! Get down on the ground! The men are slow to obey sometimes out of defiance but sometimes because they are dazed and drunk and disbelieving. Sometimes they are even half-naked—bare-chested, and barefoot. Ridges of fat at their waists spilling over their belts. You see them on TV and feel revulsion for them, which is a disgusted kind of pity. What do his children think! Does he have a daughter? How can she show her face at school? She is more shameful than I would ever be.

  Caitlin was saying mean, sharp things to me. Caitlin was threatening me she’d tell Mom and Mr. Lesinger about me. Caitlin was sneering like she didn’t even know me, I was so far beneath her. Caitlin came forward to slap at me, or to take the gun from me—that is what I remember.

  And the gun going off—that is what I remember.

  How I was ducking away in the marshy grass, and the mud was sucking at my feet. And the gun must have shifted in my hand. The direction of the barrel shifted. In that moment I seemed to have no control over it, the gun was too heavy, it is not like the idea of a gun that is exciting but the actual weight and feel of a gun, that is something different. For maybe Caitlin did not rush at me and try to slap me, but I would remember the look in her face of disgust. And Hunt looking kind of surprised and scared and he’s saying Stephanie hey—don’t aim that at us.

  Hunt was reaching toward me, and Hunt had pushed Caitlin back, behind him. As if to shield her. Shield her from what! I was furious seeing this, because there seemed to be a misunderstanding. And it seemed that I would be blamed. I shut my eyes. I did not pull the trigger but—the gun went off.

  There was a loud crack! Mr. Lesinger’s gun went off by itself and jerked from my hands and fell into the mud.

  I knew then, something terrible had happened. It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t Hunt’s fault. If there was any fault it was Caitlin’s but Caitlin would not be the one who was punished.

  Saw Hunt on his knees in the marsh grass, and that look of shock and hurt and fear in his face. And blood like a burst dark flower on his T-shirt, high on his chest. And Caitlin screaming. And my screaming, too—I think it was me screaming.

  6.

  “Stephanie?”—the voice is firm but kindly.

  In this place there is an air of acceptance, unsurprise.

  There is not what you’d call trust, exactly. I see in their faces, in their eyes, that they are not comfortable with me, or with other court-mandated juveniles who are like me, though they may feel kindly toward us, and they are accepting of us as outpatients receiving court-mandated therapy. We are work to them, and they are working to make us well.

  I have not told any of the staff at the clinic, I am sick with heartbreak. I have told them that I am very sorry for what I did though with a part of my mind—(it is possible that the more experienced among the staff can “read” this part of my mind but I pretend that I don’t know this)—I don’t truly think that what happened was my fault, or my fault entirely. My sister! My sister is to blame.

  Hunt did not die. But Hunt took a long time to recover, after emergency cardiovascular surgery to save his life.

  Hunt would not be enlisting in the New York State National Guard, or in any of the armed services. Hunt would probably not be strong enough to hike, hunt, camp in the mountains as he’d loved to do.

  I would not ever see Hunt again. I knew this.

  Soon after the “gun accident”—(as it was called)—I was sent away to live with my father and his new wife in Jamestown, Pennsylvania.

  Partly this was because Mr. Lesinger did not want me in his house any longer, ever again. But also, Caitlin had come to truly hate me. (She had not hated me before, I realize now.) And Mom seemed fearful of me though she insisted that she was not and that she loved me just as much as ever.

  It was thought best that I go away to live somewhere else where (mostly) no one knew me. A new home, a new school district. In the Morgantown family court it was decided that as a first-time juvenile offender I would receive psychotherapy and counseling as an outpatient. I would not be incarcerated in any facility.

  Dad has full-time custody of me now though I think he is not so happy with this arrangement, and I know that his wife is not at all happy. And even Kyle is fearful of me, at times.

  For I have become one of those persons of whom others will say—There is something not-right about her. Be careful of her.

  Even if they don’t know who I am, and what I did, or caused to happen, in a “gun accident” when I was thirteen years old. Even if they don’t know that I am sick with heartbreak they will say of me—That one, Stephanie. Just be careful around her.

  It is really true, something is wrong with my heart. I can’t breathe deeply the way I once did, my chest hurts. I can’t sleep more than an hour or so at a time—something just wakes me up, like a slap. I hear a girl’s sharp scolding voice—I hear a girl screaming. And I sit up in bed, gasping for breath. In the dark I am anxious of what the day will bring. Sometimes I see a dark ravine with something glittering deep inside it. There is a lake, and there is no opposite shore that I can see, but it is known to me that if I can swim to that shore, I will be all right again and my cousin Hunt will love me again.

  In this place, I am so lonely. But I am lonely in all places for I carry my loneliness around with me like a heavy backpack.

  No one calls me Steff, Steffi any longer.

  THE DROWNED GIRL

  1.

  It was a 1,500-gallon rooftop water tank in which she died.

  Her naked body so decomposed, after eleven days, that water from the tank was badly contaminated—teeming with the bacteria of decay, rot.

  Yet for eleven days this water was piped into the building below, a shabby three-story brownstone on Pitcairn Avenue called The Magellan in which students who could not afford residence halls on campus rented “off-campus” rooms.

  Most were foreign students. Graduate students.

  A few were undergraduates, technically—but not full-time, and older.

  Turned on the faucet in my bathroom and water sputtered and gushed and it was discolored, foul-colored—feculent-smelling.

  Before this for maybe a week it was just the water pressure was low. You’d turn on the faucet and a little trick
le would come out. But it had not seemed discolored then. Or, in the dim light, I could not see clearly.

  Appalled, nauseated, I let the water run—gush and splash—must have thought that it would “clear up”—would become drinkable!

  For some reason I turned on the shower also. Just to see—if—though I must have known better—the water spraying out of the showerhead was discolored also. Of course, it was.

  “‘Miri Krim.’“

  Often, I whispered her name aloud. Shut my eyes to see a butterfly’s shining wings—”Miri.”

  But “Krim” was a sharp deep cut. Razor cut, so quick blood doesn’t appear immediately and when it does, you’re shocked to find blood on your hands.

  She was nineteen when she’d died. Drowned.

  That’s to say, was drowned.

  For certainly Miri Krim had not drowned accidentally. Not in such a terrible place, and in such circumstances!—and not naked.

  Nor had she (as some [male authorities] tried stupidly to argue) killed herself.

  We (girls, women) know how we would kill ourselves, if / when we undertake to do so. And we know—it would not be in a rooftop water tank. And it would not be naked.

  I did not live in The Magellan. But the fascination of The Magellan drew me.

  Each day I passed the building on my way to the University campus. First, I passed by the side of the building that overlooked Humboldt Street; then, I turned left, and passed by the front of the building, that faced Pitcairn Avenue.

  You could not see the water tank from the street. No.

  It was her building. Though Miri Krim was dead, and no one had ever convincingly explained how she’d died, and newer tenants in The Magellan pretended not to know her name, the building was yet hers.

  Mir-i Kim? Never heard of her I’m afraid.

  Who? No.

  What’s the name? Chinese?

  Sorry. Maybe someone else can help you.

  Nooo.

  In high school I’d become interested in epidemics. Infectious diseases. In Scientific American I’d read a terrifying matter-of-fact article on Ebola—the twenty-first-century “scourge.”

  Our school library in Adirondack, New York, was very limited. Our computers were old, malfunctioning. Yet, I managed to write an ambitious term paper on rabies for my Biology and Ecology course, which my teacher praised to our class, and for which he gave me a grade of A+.

  (Invisible) (teeming) pathogens burrowing into the (helpless) body, bent upon the destruction of the (unwitting) host—this was fascinating, awful.

  I did not believe in God. But I had always taken comfort in the God-belief of adults. But now it seemed to me (obvious) that these others did not believe either. No one could seriously “believe” that God cared for man any more than God cared for the pathogens He had created with the power to annihilate mankind utterly.

  Drowned girl. Water tank. Rooftop.

  Girl-body to which (unnamed) things were done.

  Had I known of Miri Krim before enrolling at the University? I think that I did, yes. I did know. Something.

  That is, I had heard. At our community college. But I did not truly know.

  Such an atrocity is like a shadow, or an eclipse. You “see” it with your eyes but you cannot comprehend its meaning. Nor can others explain when it is so very ugly.

  It is not often possible for me to access a computer at the University library. The computers there are always in use. On the screen of my battered laptop is a permanent message—You are not connected to the Internet.

  Is this in mockery? Because I am a transfer student from upstate, and an “older” student? Because I am not one of the “affluent” students at the University?

  At the housing office they are not so nice, if you are “older”—a “part-time” student. If you depend upon student loans and “deferred” tuition.

  Not that they sneer at you openly but there is a look of coldness.

  I am several years older than Miri Krim would be if Miri Krim were still alive. I am a first-year student at the University, in the School of General Studies, in which Miri Krim was a second-year student.

  Though I am a transfer from Adirondack Community College the University did not accept the three courses I’d taken there, in which I had earned all A’s. And so, unjustly in my opinion, I am but a first-year student at the University, at the age of twenty-five. And I am not (yet) allowed to take the courses I want to take.

  In the School of General Studies there are not freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors. We are not so coddled for we are part-time students, and we are (usually) older than undergraduates.

  We do not pay the tuition paid by full-time undergraduates. We pay by “course credit”—like counting pennies into the damp smelly palm of a stranger’s hand. However many pennies it is not ever enough.

  I am not bitter. I am not a bitter person by nature. Bitterness does not “run in the family”—that would not be a Christian way of behavior. Many times I have expressed my gratitude at being allowed to enroll at the University under the deferred tuition payment plan that is available for students who have met certain requirements.

  After her death it would be revealed that Miri Krim was in debt to the University. Just $1,700 which does not seem like a great sum except if $1,700 is, to you, as it is to some of us, a great sum.

  Accounts of Miri Krim’s death were carried by national news services for a day or two and then vanished. Locally, in Hudson County, which is where the University is located, further information was provided, or perhaps leaked, that Miri Krim was in debt to the University and that, at the time of her disappearance, her attendance at her classes was erratic.

  Sometimes it would be primly noted that Miri Krim was a transfer student from an upstate community college.

  (Miri Krim had attended a single semester at Allegheny County Community College which is several hundred miles south and west of Adirondack Community College.)

  (Miri Krim and I did not know each other. Only inhabitants of downstate New York could think that upstate Allegheny and Adirondack are anywhere near each other.)

  (Not only had we never met but the possibility of such a meeting is virtually nil since we did not attend the University at the same time.)

  (What does “nil” mean?—a nothing beyond Nothing.)

  But for The Magellan, would Miri Krim be alive today?

  In the foyer by the mailboxes we’d see her. We thought.

  Turned out, maybe that wasn’t her—the one we were remembering.

  Miri Krim moved into The Magellan on September 6, 2010, and on April 30, 2011, she was reported to have “gone missing”—though her absence was not much noted on that date since she had few friends and attended classes “erratically.” Neighbors in The Magellan did not (usually) see her every day.

  As days passed, Miri Krim’s absence became more evident.

  In The Magellan Miri Krim lived (alone) in 2D, a second-floor room with a single window overlooking Humboldt Street.

  The Magellan is not University-owned but it is University-approved.

  The Krims are bringing a lawsuit against both The Magellan and the University for “criminal negligence” in their daughter’s death.

  On the morning of May 10 Miri Krim’s lifeless naked badly decomposed body was discovered by a building custodian floating, faceup, in the water tank on the roof, in eleven feet of water. By this time water in The Magellan was clearly contaminated. Discolored water gushed from every faucet and showerhead. Tenants complained of a God-awful taste, nasty smell. Police officers who’d previously searched the building, including the roof, were summoned to return, to accompany the custodian to the roof another time.

  That water tank? Let’s take a look.

  Two men required to lift the heavy cover.

  It was disgusting! It was so, so terrible….

  To think that we’d been drinking that water—cooking with that water—until it became so discolored, you knew something was wr
ong.

  Jesus! I knew. I think I knew. Like, right away. Something was wrong. Maybe I thought it was rust in the water like from the pipes.

  You figure, brushing your teeth—that doesn’t require much water, mostly toothpaste….

  When I arrived at the University in September 2011 people were still talking about the drowned girl, the girl in the water tank. But it was rare for anyone to speak the name Miri Krim.

  The Hudson County coroner’s report had not been released until August. Why the autopsy had taken so long was not explained.

  Then, the result was inconclusive: suicide or accidental drowning.

  Many were disbelieving, and angry. How had the drowned girl managed to drown herself in the water tank? How had she gotten up on the roof, how had she lifted the heavy cover by herself?

  If there’d been injuries to Miri Krim’s body, the body was too decomposed to identify these injuries. If Miri Krim had committed suicide, there was no note left behind.

  If there were “suspects” who lived or worked in The Magellan, or close by, who might have had the opportunity to have abducted, raped, and murdered Miri Krim, no one of these was ever arrested.

  There had been a rape kit and this rape kit was said (by the coroner’s office) to have been “misplaced” (by the coroner’s office).

  Like gnats such thoughts pass through my head. Sometimes in my large lecture classes the low persistent buzzing is such that I can barely hear the professor’s voice and I must stare and stare like a lip-reader.

  It has come to be a habit of mine, a compulsion, to glance over my shoulder during the class, to (rapidly, unobtrusively) scan the faces of the strangers behind me, for it seems to me, as in one of those perception tests in which identical figures are repeated in rows and one, singular figure is hidden among them, that the drowned girl is among them.

  Her face, a dead girl’s face, among the faces of the living.

  I try to brush these thoughts away usually without success.