The Aftermath

'John was twenty-two. Michael? He was twenty-four.' Marilyn paused. She tilted her head back, only a little. Her eyes moved out of focus and took a sudden interest in her brow. After a few seconds, she returned to Lucille and confirmed to her that yes, that was probably correct.

‘This was before you two met, right?’ asked Lucille.

‘Well technically John and I were already introduced, he was different back then.’

‘Different, how?’

‘Well, I don’t know if you would remember, but he was a bit of a child, he liked to make suggestive remarks, and he was always talking about running away on adventures in rainforests, jungles, and rivers, and the like.’

‘I see.’ Lucille reflected that she only had fleeting memories of John at that age. After all, she had been about seven or eight years of age herself at the time.

‘It was all a lot of nonsense, really. I had no time for it.’ She waved away the nonsense with a flick of a wrist, her bell sleeve dangling aloof in the process.

‘Anyway, as I was saying, they met in their twenties, and you could say that their friendship stood the test of time. I mean, it was so enduring it practically defeated our marriage.’ Lucille discerned a hint of bitterness in Marilyn’s voice.

‘Yet, you seem to suggest that without the whole ordeal with Michael, your relationship with John would not have taken off in the first place,’ said Lucille.

‘I suppose you could see things that way, but what good does it do me now? I am not one to wallow in self-pity, but despite all the wonderful memories, I have been estranged from my ex-husband for up to ten years now — I can scarcely believe I am in my fifties — I’ll admit, I thought I could handle it today, but it was more than I could bear. Seeing my John...’

At length, Marilyn brought her tea cup to her lips, as if to distract from the distress she felt. Lucille waited for the background chatter to subside. The cafe` was not normally this busy. She laced her fingers together, ‘It was good of you to come. You know, to the service.’

‘Did you think that I would miss John’s funeral? I shall remind you, he was the one who ended it and it was all because of Michael. Well— I played my part in it as well,’ she added hesitantly. ‘Now you suggested that without Michael I would not have had a relationship with John in the first place, but on the whole was Michael’s impact on our lives for the better? I should think not.’

‘I don’t know about that, but Michael was always going to make an impact, wasn’t he.’

Marilyn chuckled at this. ‘I see you haven’t lost your sense of humour.’

‘Listen, I am not informed about the ins and outs of your marriage. John and I didn’t talk about it, but I do know that losing your best friend like that is bound to put a strain on any marriage.’

In response to this, the older woman leaned forward,

‘Lucille, what is it that you do know? Start from the beginning, and I can help shed light on my side of the story.’

‘From...the beginning?’ Lucille stared blankly at Marilyn’s peter pan collar, as if expecting it to magically reveal all the answers. (That dress had arrested her all day. Was it not too commanding to wear to a funeral? Yet Marilyn somehow pulled it off.)

‘Yes, yes — so you know how they met, right?’ Marilyn said as she extended her hand out in invitation.

‘I know there was an accident, and John ended up with a walking stick for the rest of his life, but after that–’

‘There was no accident.’ Marilyn interrupted. ‘Michael deliberately maimed John.’

Lucille furrowed her brow in confusion.

Deliberately. Surely not.

‘Are you quite sure? Why would he do that?’ Lucille asked.

‘Well, it wasn’t entirely unprovoked. John got terribly drunk one night and shot him, you see and that was how they met.’

‘Shot him? As in, with a gun?’

‘Mm yes. It was really a crime of passion on Michael’s part, to be fair. When the bullet grazed his skin, he was absolutely furious and with his brute strength there was always one outcome. John was lucky his friends came to his aid before it became worse than it did.’

‘Right.’

‘Anyway, the partial loss of John’s leg toned down the bravado, and it was like he was a different person entirely after that, at least from my perspective.’

‘Well this is news to me.’ Lucille was still agape. ‘My brother was always so easygoing, I could never imagine him wielding a gun. Poor Michael, he must have been so afraid.’

Michael would lift Lucille up, count from ten and back again. The mosquitoes pinched at her legs. Her father complained, he wanted it to stop. His arms flailing about as he spoke to John. The son leaned on his walking stick smiling and she laughed and laughed, as the blood rushed through her head, and Michael never got tired, his warm grip around her waist never slackened. He would blow through her fingers and it would tickle, and she would giggle. Her father would announce that it was time to leave.

Just five more minutes.

‘I wouldn’t know. I tended to avoid him. I couldn’t stand him at all.’

‘Isn’t that a bit harsh?’ queried Lucille. Her ex-sister-in-law had always borne a grudge against Michael. It had become the butt of many a joke in the family when John and Marilyn were married, but after it ended it was no laughing matter.

‘Perhaps.’ Marilyn conceded, ‘It was the way things were though.’

‘I could never understand it. You know what John was like after the accident—’

‘You keep suggesting it was an accident.’

‘The incident, I mean’ Lucille felt her face flush, ‘I have yet to come to terms with it,’ she said.

‘I apologise. Please continue,’ beckoned Marilyn.

Lucille adjusted her seat forward and then spoke in a low voice.

‘Well, after his rehabilitation, he was just a mess: he barely ate, wouldn’t get out of bed unless prodded by my mother. He smelled of alcohol all the time. I know — I was there’ She could still smell the awful stench of liquor and body odour that invaded her hair and her clothes every time she went to the bathroom.

‘He would be fine one minute and then he would start crying, Marilyn, for no reason at all. It was dreadful.’

‘Then that zany doctor enticed John to meet Michael again. Isn’t that how the story went?’

Lucille nodded. ‘Yes, he suggested that John might find peace if he confronted the root of his trauma. My father was very much against it, but one day John decided that he had had enough and it just so happened that Michael was very accommodating, or it might not have turned out so well.’

‘It was foolhardy. It could have made things a lot worse,’ said Marilyn.

‘Yes, I see that now, but witnessing John’s transformation following his travels with Michael inspired my career.’

Marilyn beamed and her eyes lit up, ‘I remember you as a child, you were so lively and precocious. I remember telling John, I wanted a daughter just like you.’

Lucille grinned, she felt her face flush again. ‘It was at that time that you came into our lives. You had no problem with Michael at the start. I remember you quite enjoyed travelling with them, or am I misremembering?’

‘No you are not, though we had our issues back then too,’ admitted Marilyn. Lucille was about to inquire further, but before she could do so, a creeping shadow licked the round tabletop between the bereaved women. It was that exhausted waiter doing his rounds, Marilyn took the opportunity to order more tea. He would be happy to oblige.

Lucille was still curious about what happened between Marilyn and John so she invited her companion to carry on with the retelling.

‘I couldn’t tell you when it became too much. It was probably around the time we got married. I felt that Michael was distracting from John’s duties as a husband. I mean, he worked with him all the time doing those tours they did — and then when John would finally come home, he would be telling me he needed to spend time with Michael. It was always about Michael. Even when he wasn’t there, we would be quarrelling about him. It was like he was always in the room, even when he wasn’t.’

Lucille laughed at this, and then she shared her observation with Marilyn who also saw the funny side.

‘Ooh, I see. The room, I said.’ Marilyn then chuckled.

Heh heh heh.

Her hand was over her mouth.

She chortled. Ha ha ha.

‘I can’t stop,’ she laughed.

Lucille felt the unmistakeable nudge on the elbow and John’s full-toothed grin flashed before her.

Watch out Lucille—

‘the dam is about the burst!’

John was gone. She would never see her brother again.

Lucille realised she had said it out loud. ‘I’m sorry’

The dam was far from bursting. Marilyn looked as if she had just been slapped.

Lucille’s mind was elsewhere: She would never see her brother again.

The thought assaulted her like a dagger to the heart and she felt a familiar moisture build up in her eyes. It was just like earlier in the day. Her companion must have cut herself with the sharp edge of a memory of her own, because she was fiddling with her teaspoon. Seconds seemed like minutes, but eventually Lucille composed herself. Marilyn remained downcast as the waiter arrived to serve her her tea.

‘He never forgave me you know. I wrote him many times, but he wouldn’t speak to me.’ Marilyn’s confession was delivered with the quietest voice anyone could possibly muster.

The pregnancy of the comment brought Lucille back to. ‘I am not quite aware of what you are talking about,’ admitted Lucille.

‘Sure you do. Michael’s death. John was never the same after that.’

‘You shouldn’t blame yourself. Michael fell ill. It was so sudden, we couldn’t do anything to save him.’

Marilyn watched the younger woman. What happened? She looked at Lucille as if what she had just said was uttered in Korean.

‘I thought it was strange you invited me to have this chat. You don’t know, do you?’

‘Know what?’

‘I don’t know that I should tell you if John never brought it up, or your father for that matter.’

‘Tell me what?’

‘I heard that John reconciled with him eventually. I saw them together. He always blamed me. Even on his deathbed, he wouldn’t see me.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I was shattered, you know.’

What did she know? What was it about Michael’s death that led to their divorce?

Whatever it was, it was bad. Marilyn looked distraught, her gaze was fixed at nowhere in particular. A wave of sympathy overcame the younger woman, she placed her hand on her companion’s forearm. She waited a while until she felt Marilyn was ready to resurface, then she leaned forward and whispered her plea:

‘Please. Will you tell me?’

Marilyn’s red eyes met hers.

‘It was your father. He was the one who killed Michael.’

What? The word could not escape from Lucille’s lips.

‘and I asked him to do it. It was me. I am to blame.’

Lucille retracted her hand.

It was as if she could hear everything now.

The scraping of knives and forks, the people laughing and chatting.

Thump, thump, thump, went her heart.

‘Y-You murdered Michael?’

Marilyn came alive again.

‘Well of course you would see it that way. I tried to stop it Lucille, I did. I promise you I did.’

The older woman reached her hand out instinctively but then it stopped, suspended in mid-air.

Lucille could see the bell sleeve hang just like before, but it sported a brown stain this time.

It is only tea.

‘I don’t believe you. It doesn’t make any sense.’

But wait...

Lucille’s eyes widened and she put her hands to her mouth to stifle a gasp.

‘The toxicology report...’ The cyanide.

Everyone had explained it away as an unfortunate accident. There had been several cases of cyanide poisoning in water supplies all across the country.

‘Why would you and father…?’

Marilyn took a deep breath.

‘You know he never got over John’s injury. He would bring it up constantly. We would talk about it and then one day—’

Lucille had had enough. ‘The injury was an accident. Why did you blame Michael for your marriage falling apart? You should have blamed John — or yourself for that matter.’

‘I do blame myself. John...’ She stroked the handle of her teacup.

Lucille suppressed the urge to pry it from her fingers.

‘He was a free spirit, you had to focus his mind, and I felt that I would have been able to do that if it wasn’t for Michael.’

‘So you asked my father to murder him.’

That was why her mother complained that John never visited. No wonder. She must not have known either, but John knew. That was why he was distant, it wasn’t just the fact that Michael died.

His best friend was murdered by his father and his wife.

‘Stop using that word.’ Marilyn’s voice was in a whisper and she leaned towards the younger woman: ‘It was wrong. I called on him to call it off. I had just had a miscarriage, and John was with Michael again. That was not the only time either. There were so many times...’

Lucille could not believe what she was hearing. Marilyn returned back to the centre of her seat.

‘Our wedding, we had to change the venue because of Michael,’ recounted Marilyn.

‘Is that your defence? It was a lovely wedding.’

Lucille still remembered Michael’s funny dance.

‘He wanted to make him best man! I actually had to talk him out of it.’

‘What would have been so bad about that?’

‘Lucille, he had hooves and a trunk. How would that have worked. How can an elephant be a best man at a wedding.’

So what if he was an elephant. What did that have to do with anything.

‘It’s been done before. I heard of a dog being one.’

Marilyn closed her eyes and massaged her temples in exasperation.

‘I always blamed myself for not being able to save him.’ Lucille’s voice broke as she spoke, but she did not want to cry. She willed herself not to.

‘You were just out of veterinary school. Even if you weren’t, you couldn’t have done anything. There was no time—’

‘You could have told me.’

‘I did not see you until he passed, and then I confessed to John, so I thought you knew. I was caught off guard just like you were. It was off. We had agreed not to do it. He assured me he had emptied the container, but there must have been some left behind. I didn’t mean to...’

‘You have spent this entire time speaking ill of Michael — blaming him even — and you expect me to believe you are sorry.’

‘I am not going to lie to you. I still feel the way I do about Michael as I did then, but it was a moment of madness. I did not want him dead. I did not want to hurt him. I did not want to hurt John.’

She was so particularly emphatic in this statement that Lucille believed her.

All this time, they hid the truth from her. It was true, she never asked. John would not have told her if she had. She was suddenly angry with him. Did he not realise that Michael meant something to her too. How about her father? How could he sit there and fill out his crossword, knowing what he knew. Of all days, it was the day of John’s funeral that her curiosity got the better of her.

And Marilyn.

‘That’s John’s ex-wife? I recognise her, she volunteers at the shelter I go to.’ Fiona (Lucille’s colleague from work) had said this earlier that morning as the service had just finished.

That Marilyn, the one who used to scrunch up her nose at the sight of a puppy?

‘Are you quite sure?’

Fiona nodded, ‘Positive. She always looks miserable that I feel sorry for her, but she does all her tasks and never complains.’

‘I hear you have been volunteering at the animal shelter. It’s odd, you were never fond of animals.’

Marilyn returned a lazy half-smile. She was sat sideways, staring into space, away from Lucille’s glare.

‘I hate the animals,’ she mumbled.

‘Then why do you go?’

Marilyn shrugged, ‘You know why.’

The waiter returned and Marilyn asked for the bill. She offered to pay it. It was the least she could do, she must have said. Lucille did not respond. Marilyn was apologising, as she picked up her purse and was about to leave. Lucille stopped her. She took her hand.

‘I am still angry with you.’

Marilyn nodded in acknowledgement, ‘I don’t blame you.’

She was about to turn away and leave once more but Lucille had not yet let go of her hand.

‘You don’t have to go to the animal shelter by yourself any more. From now on, I shall come with you.’