The Murderer Next Door by Rafael Yglesias

Author:Rafael Yglesias
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2010-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

UNREMEMBERED SINS

I DECIDED TO SAY NOTHING TO BEN ABOUT THE CREMATION. As far as I knew he hadn’t told Naomi. Anyway, I hoped not.

It snowed on the morning of Naomi’s birthday. Not much, but enough to cover New York’s dirty gray with a light frosting of confectioners’ sugar, appropriate to our celebration. Anxious for everything to be right, I got us to the ice-skating rink an hour and a half early. They provided a small room in the back where we could serve cake. Two card tables, shoved together and covered with a bright yellow disposable plastic tablecloth, were already set up. Ben and I supplied the rest—cake, paper plates, cups, milk, and juice. The private room was painted green, the sort of washed-out color found only in institutions—is it surplus paint? Does anyone ever actually choose that shade? The windows were of the factory casement variety, double height, double width; they would have let in plenty of light except they faced another building’s wall. The room seemed to me like a coffin. Having a birthday party at this rink had been recommended by several magazines, Naomi had enjoyed a party she attended there, and Janet (Holly’s mother) had confirmed it was good. Certainly it was expensive enough. I decided the luxuries of New York child rearing were pretty dismal—a frozen pond and my mother’s kitchen would have been better than this East Side palace.

I told Ben to set up the plates and cups and to put the candles in the cake in the back room while I went out to the rink to greet our guests by the entrance. He agreed to this division of duty. He did not seek a confrontation with the parents, as I had feared. Maybe a month of seeing them at school each morning and afternoon had sated his appetite for disapproval. Maybe this kind of drop-off was too personal, too intimate, even for him.

Naomi’s four best friends were—remarkably—each accompanied by a pair of parents, mother and father, flanking them like armed guards. Their grim faces—probably concealing fear—eased, even cheered up, at the sight of me beside a bouncing Naomi. She brimmed with feeling that day, eyes glistening tearfully at the slightest provocation, regardless of whether it was a cause for happiness or sorrow. She hugged me and almost cried when she opened my present; she almost cried when I said she couldn’t wear her formal dress to skate in; she almost cried when Ben said in the taxi, “You’re the best girl in the world,” apropos of nothing. All day, she hopped and squealed, too excited for her own peace of mind. It was as if the emotion no longer fit inside her—square-pegged happiness bouncing off the sad round hole of her loss.

With the arrival of her friends, her pleasure was intense and painful. I understood the phrase—she was jumping out of her skin—for the first time. I wasn’t a model of relaxation, either, greeting the parents and Naomi’s little guests with so wide and fixed a smile that I got an instant headache.

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