‘I want us to return to yesterday.’ Her voice creeps out of the small speakers. In recordings she hears what always sounds an odd echo of herself. Her voice emerges as that of a woman of indeterminate age, though certainly without the lilt of youth she’d once had. It’s free of the humour she likes to feel she possesses, and the emotion by which her husband has always characterized her. That dispassion is intentional now, of course – speaking in just this way, in just this tone, has become a crafted skill – but it still sounds odd to her in the recordings, and she assumes it probably always will.
A pause.
‘What about yesterday?’ The voice that responds is a male’s, its own ambiguous qualities creeping through. Definitely not a child’s tones, but not an old man’s either. Somewhere in the vast expanse in between.
‘You said you killed your wife.’
A far longer pause. Plastic squeaks: the back of a chair bending under readjusting weight. Pauline leans towards the small recorder in its playback, straining to catch every sound.
‘I had to admit it eventually,’ the male voice finally responds. ‘Can’t keep everything bottled up. That’s what you’re always telling me, isn’t it?’ More fidgeting.
‘It’s good to talk,’ she answers with words she’d spoken a hundred times before, ‘to open up about ourselves.’ But not everything about this interview is usual. Some of her words are rarer, less customary on her lips. ‘I’ve been troubled by what you said.’
‘No shit.’ The male voice is flippant, now. The change happens quickly, seamlessly. ‘Can’t say I’m not troubled by it myself, lady. Terrible. Just a terrible, terrible thing. A man shouldn’t kill his wife.’
‘It’s not the killing that’s troubling me, Joseph.’
A hesitation.
‘You’re … not bothered I killed my wife?’ Genuine confusion sounds in the man’s voice. The cassette captures a different, halting rhythm to his speech. ‘That’s just sick.’
‘Killing is very—’
‘No, seriously,’ his words slice across hers. ‘You ought to be fucking revolted. I told you I killed my goddamned wife! Held a pillow over her head till she stopped breathing.’
‘I remember what you told m—’
‘What sort of callous bitch are you?’ His voice is angry now. Pauline recalls how swiftly it had changed, the features of his face altering along with it. ‘You’re always doing this! Playing with me. Finally getting me to open up, then you toy around.’ A pause. His breathing is heavy and angry. ‘Bitch.’
On the cassette, Pauline allows a silence to linger. The man’s breath continues to resonate. Several seconds pass. When Pauline begins to speak again, her voice has a different tone to it. A deliberate strategy, and on hearing it now on tape, Pauline is certain it was the right one.
‘Perhaps that isn’t where we should begin, today. Perhaps it’s too much.’ She’d let her focus remain vague, unclear whether she was speaking to the man or to herself. But then, more definitively, ‘Did you love her? Your wife?’
The question provokes a hesitation, captured on the miniaturized magnetic tape. ‘That’s … that’s a ridiculous thing to ask. Of course I loved my wife.’
‘And you remember that – that love?’
The pauses grow longer and more frequent. ‘You ask foolish questions. How could I not remember being in love? Obviously I remember it. We were head over heels. Full of romance. All that.’
‘It sounds very lovely,’ Pauline answers. Now, as then, his initial response provoked images of perfection. The kind of perfection she’d felt when she’d first met her husband, on those first dates when romance was everything and the world slipped away from her attention. For a time. And that was the key: for a time. Reality always steps back in. Pure romance is meant to give way to the sturdier, though sometimes less flattering, realities of genuine love.
‘Always been a traditional man,’ the male’s voice continues, ‘loving the lovely. She was the traditional woman, too, the kind any guy would want.’
A silence lingers between them. Finally, the sound of Pauline leaning in towards the recorder.
‘I told you before that something was troubling me about your recollection of the murder.’
‘I haven’t forgotten. Your reaction was just … sick. Most people, normal people, would be horrified. But you, you’re “troubled”.’
‘It’s not that I don’t find killing repulsive, Joseph,’ she continues. ‘I do.’
‘Then are you going to get to just what it is that’s “troubling” you?’ Sarcasm clings to his syllables.
There are more sounds of bodily readjustment. When Pauline’s voice returns, it comes from a place closer to the microphone. She’d positioned her body carefully, the memory still fresh in her mind. She’d brought her face closer to his, lined it up directly with his eyes.
‘I’m troubled, Joseph, because there’s a fact of this case that simply doesn’t mesh with what you’ve confessed.’
‘There’s lots of details. Not everything “meshes” in real life, and murder isn’t an everyday occurrence that follows ordinary rules.’
‘No, but usually the pieces fit together, once we look at them. The details of the crime, and of the criminal.’
‘You can’t expect me to remember every little detail perfectly.’
‘It’s not a little detail, Joseph.’ Her instinct, Pauline recalled, had been to offer a compassionate smile, something almost maternal. She’d forced herself to hold it back.
The man’s voice grunts in impatient displeasure.
‘Just get to the point, would you?’
‘Joseph,’ she answers, slowly, ‘the simple fact of the matter is, you didn’t kill your wife.’
Thirty-seven seconds of sustained silence. Not even the sound of breathing. As if the microphone has dropped out.
Then, the last word recorded on cassette #014A.
‘Bitch.’
I’ve chosen a frou-frou coffee for my lunch break today: double latte with caramel syrup and whipped cream. There’s no particular reason I’ve switched from my usual black filter selection; perhaps it’s the slightly overcast sky, the nip of a chill in the air. Some days are bright on their own. Some need to be brightened up and sweetened, however artificial the sweetener.
I walk towards the park along my usual route. I have a full hour for lunch today – an extra fifteen minutes occasioned by the manager training in a new employee. ‘I’ll stay in and watch the counter with her for a bit,’ he said. ‘She can use the practice on the till. Have a good walk.’ That’s Michael. Not a bad man. Looks like death warmed over: pale, gaunt, waxy eyes and a head of hair so sparse that at a polite distance you can make out individual strands emerging like sprouts from a desert dry scalp. And he still manages to run a successful shop that sells health supplements and vegetable-based ‘miracle’ hair products.
Today is a ‘Free Day’ in the SF Botanical Gardens, meaning that as I approach I see larger than usual crowds strolling