A Moment On the Edge : 100 Years of Crime Stories By Women

has hold of his ankles and he’s gripping with both hands an invisible rod, or baseball bat, or club — swinging it in his sleep, and his muscles twitched and spasmed and veins swelled in his head close to bursting. Swinging swinging swinging! — and in his pants, in his Calvin Klein briefs, he’d come.

When he went out he wore dark, very dark, glasses even at night.

His long hair tied back rat-tail style and a Mets cap, reversed, on his head. He’d be getting his hair cut for the trial but just not yet, wasn’t that like…giving in, surrendering…? In the neighborhood pizzeria, in a place on Second Avenue he’d ducked into alone, signing napkins for some giggling girls, once a father and son about eight years old, another time two old women in their forties, fifties, staring like he was Son of Sam, sure okay! signing Derek Peck, Jr. , and dating it. His signature an extravagant red-ink scrawl. Thank you! and he knows they’re watching him walk away, thrilled. Their one contact with fame.

His old man and especially his lady-lawyer would give him hell if they knew, but they didn’t need to know everything. He was free on fucking bail, wasn’t he?

In the aftermath of a love affair in her early thirties, the last such affair of her life, Marina Dyer had taken a strenuous “ecological”

field trip to the Galapagos Islands; one of those desperate trips we take at crucial times in our lives, reasoning that the experience will cauterize the emotional wound, make of its very misery something trivial, negligible. The trip was indeed strenuous, and cauterizing.

There in the infamous Galapagos, in the vast Pacific Ocean due west of Equador and a mere ten miles south of the Equator, Marina had come to certain life-conclusions. She’d decided not to kill herself, for one thing. For why kill one self, when nature is so very eager to do it for you, and to gobble you up? The islands were rockbound, stormlashed, barren. Inhabited by reptiles, giant tortoises. There was little vegetation. Shrieking sea birds like damned souls except it was not possible to believe in

“souls” here. In no world but a fallen one could such lands exist, Herman Melville had written of the Galapagos he’d called also the Enchanted Isles.

When she returned from her week’s trip to hell, as she fondly spoke of it, Marina Dyer was observed to devote herself more passionately than ever, more single-mindedly than ever, to her profession. Practicing law would be her life, and she meant to make of her life a quantifiable and unmistakable success. What of “life” that was not consumed by law would be inconsequential. The law was only a game, of course: it had very little to do with justice, or morality;

“right” or “wrong”; “common” sense. But the law was the only game in which she, Marina Dyer, could be a serious player. The only game in which, now and then, Marina Dyer might win.

There was Marina’s brother-in-law who had never liked her but, until now, had been cordial, respectful. Staring at her as if he’d never seen her before. “How the hell can you defend that vicious little punk? How do you justify yourself, morally? He killed his mother, for God’s sake!” Marina felt the shock of this unexpected assault as if she’d been struck in the face. Others in the room, including her sister, looked on, appalled. Marina said carefully, trying to control her voice, “But, Ben, you don’t believe that only the obviously

“innocent” deserve legal counsel, do you?” It was an answer she had made numerous times, to such a question; the answer all lawyers make, reasonably, convincingly.

“Of course not. But people like you go too far.”

“‘Too far?’ ‘People like me—?’”

“You know what I mean. Don’t play dumb.”

“But I don’t. I don’t know what you mean.”

Her brother-in-law was by nature a courteous man, however strong his opinions. Yet how rudely he turned away from Marina, with a dismissive gesture. Marina called after him, stricken,

“Ben, I don’t know what you mean. Derek is innocent, I’m sure. The case against him is only circumstantial. The media…” Her pleading voice trailed off, he’d walked out of the room. Never had she been so deeply hurt, confused. Her own brother-in-law!

The bigot. Self-righteous bastard. Never would Marina consent to see the man again.

Marina? — don’t cry.

They don’t mean it, Marina. Don’t feel bad, please!

Hiding in the locker-room lavatory after the humiliation of gym class. How many times. Even Lucy, one of the team captains, didn’t want her: that was obvious. Marina Dyer and the other last-choices, a fat girl or two, myopic girls, uncoordinated clumsy asthmatic girls laughingly divided between the red team and the gold. Then, the nightmare of the game itself. Trying to avoid being struck by thundering hooves, crashing bodies. Yells, piercing laughter. Swinging flailing arms, muscular thighs. How hard the gleaming floor when you fell!

The giant girls (Lucy Siddons among them glaring, fierce) ran over her if she didn’t step aside, she had no existence for them. Marina, made by the gym teacher, so absurdly, a “guard.” You must play, Marina. You must try. Don’t be silly. It’s only a game. These are all just games. Get out there with your team! But if the ball was thrown directly at her it would strike her chest and ricochet out of her hands and into the hands of another. If the ball sailed toward her head she was incapable of ducking but stood stupidly helpless, paralyzed. Her glasses flying. Her scream a child’s scream, laughable. It was all laughable. Yet it was her life.

Lucy, good-hearted repentant Lucy, sought her out where she hid in a locked toilet stall, sobbing in fury, a bloodstained tissue pressed against her nose. Marina? — don’t cry. They don’t mean it, they like you, come on back, what’s wrong? Good-hearted Lucy Siddons she’d hated the most.

On the afternoon of the Friday before the Monday that would be the start of his trial, Derek Peck, Jr., broke down in Marina Dyer’s office.

Marina had known something was wrong, the boy reeked of alcohol. He’d come with his father, but had told his father to wait outside; he insisted that Marina’s assistant leave the room.

He began to cry, and to babble. To Marina’s astonishment he fell hard onto his knees on her burgundy carpet, began banging his forehead against the glass-topped edge of her desk. He laughed, he wept. Saying in an anguished choking voice how sorry he was he’d forgotten his mother’s last birthday he hadn’t known would be her last and how hurt she’d been like he’d forgotten just to spite her and that wasn’t true, Jesus he loved her! the only person in the fucking universe who loved her! And then at Thanksgiving this wild scene, she’d quarreled with the relatives so it was just her and him for Thanksgiving she insisted upon preparing a full Thanksgiving dinner for just two people and he said it was crazy but she insisted, no stopping her when her mind was made up and he’d known there would be trouble, that morning in the kitchen she’d started drinking early and he was up in his room smoking dope and his Walkman plugged in knowing there was no escape. And it wasn’t even a turkey she roasted for the two of them, you needed at least a twenty-pound turkey otherwise the meat dried out she said so she bought two ducks, yes two dead ducks from this game shop on Lexington and Sixty-sixth and that might’ve been okay except she was drinking red wine and laughing kind of hysterical talking on the phone preparing this fancy stuffing she made every year, wild rice and mushrooms, olives, and also baked yams, plum sauce, corn bread, and chocolate-tapioca pudding that was supposed to be one of his favorite desserts from when he was little that just the smell of it made him feel like puking. He stayed out of it upstairs until finally she called him around four p.m. and he came down knowing it was going to be a true bummer but not knowing how bad, she was swaying-drunk and her eyes smeared and they were eating in the dining room with the chandelier lit, all the fancy Irish linens and Grandma’s old china and silver and she insisted he carve the ducks, he tried to get out of it but couldn’t and Jesus! what happens! — he pushes the knife in the duck breast and there’s actual blood squirting out of it! — and a big sticky clot of blood inside so he dropped the knife and ran out of the room gagging, it’d just completely freaked him in the midst of being stoned he couldn’t take it running out into the street and almost hit by a car and her screaming after him Derek come back! Derek come back don’t leave me!

but he split from that scene and didn’t come back for a day and a half. And ever after that she was drinking more and saying weird things to him like he was her baby, she’d felt him kick and shudder in her belly, under her heart, she’d talk to him inside her belly for months before he was born she’d lie down on the bed and stroke him, his head, through her skin and they’d talk together she said, it was the closest she’d ever been with any living creature