Who Named the Knife Read online

  Squinting, I could almost see the events taking place. 1978. The risen moon. The tiny tableau. In an old album, there is a picture of two little girls standing at its cusp looking down at the ocean where the water curls in and out over the reef and where, at night, there is that absent planet, fallen like Lucifer, lit by the moon. Now, looking down at the surf, where children are still and forever playing, I thought of the moray eel I met in that same reef long ago. My brother must have been somewhere ahead, not far away, urging me on, but he was not near enough to save me from the sight of the open mouth and throat. Years of remembering and still there is no way of knowing how such a creature does what he does or sees what he sees of the world.

  In January, three months after the trial, Judge Town overturned Maryann’s 1982 conviction. Local papers again painted her as the villain. TWO-TIME KILLER GRANTED A NEW TRIAL, read a headline in the Advertiser. “He did it! He did it!” I shouted into the phone, because Maryann could not get through to Mike Brennan. I could hear her initial scream of excitement. I could hear her shouting to her friends and to Jesse the dog. Then Maryann got quiet. “I’ll be here a while yet,” she said. “The state will appeal. Mike will offer them a deal and they won’t take it. So there will have to be another trial. It could take years.”

  49

  This year we have goldfinches flashing through the birch tree, where the leaves, turning autumn yellow, make them impossible to see. One hundred years ago, Ayn Rand was born. There is a wolf in a nearby field. Valere has been released. There are photographs of her standing on a California beach.

  This year, I walk to the bank of the river, moving down the rocks like an animal because I know this patch of earth in my muscles by now. The ground between the house and the river is covered by pine needles, so it’s slippery and I move under the enormous trees, which are black as silhouettes.

  In late August the water is a shock. Three minutes, Michael promises. When I plunge then, it is for his smile. Today I notice the wavering lines of light on the trunk of a tree, alternating ribbons of dark and light. Michael is several yards ahead of me, but I shout, “What makes it do that?” I see, now, that trees all around me are doing this – reflecting light. Their trunks and branches appear to be decomposing and I’m astonished and dismayed that every morning I’ve stayed in bed drinking coffee while all this has been going on.

  Across from us are the rapids, which pour and pour until they freeze in the winter and then break up and pour again. Around us, in a great circle, are the riverbanks, except where the channel of the smaller branch of the river cuts in quietly, shallow and swampy, with its beautiful bridge. No more burning, I promise myself, and I swim in the other direction, west, across to the rapids where it’s possible to climb out and lie on the rocks where we often make picnics, taking the food across by canoe: tomatoes, fresh bread, onions, cheese, beer, and fruit. Farther up, we poured in the ashes of my brother and his wife after they died in the crash. But Michael and I are two heads now, moving along like water rats on the surface of this black water, the house back in the trees, where it looks like something we have allowed to happen, containing only tolerance and a hundred after-dinner dances when the table has been pushed aside. Here, while Maryann has been living her life in prison, we have been collecting meals, group and solo swims, games of badminton, flowers and vegetables, children and friends, dogs and jokes, hearts and charades, joy and grief.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My father taught me to think and my mother taught me to tell. I rejoice in these talents and am forever grateful to my parents. I am grateful to Sarah Collins, in Honolulu, who kept me in touch with the legal manoeuvrings there and helped me find people who were lost along with records and articles in various archives. I thank my initial readers: Barbara Gowdy, Constance Rooke, Esta Spalding, Kristin Sanders, and Michael Ondaatje. A reader is the best help a writer can have. Each of these infused the story with insight, ideas, and perspective. I thank Michael Brennan and Dan Weiss and the others who have represented Maryann in her legal efforts over many years. I thank them for that and for being helpful to me. I thank David Fyfe for research, Bill and Sakurako Fisher for particular kindness during the writing of this book, and Susie Schlesinger for being there. I thank Susan Renouf, at McClelland & Stewart, who did more than edit this book, who acted as its shepherd and guardian from the first moment it was suggested to her. No book without Susan. Certainly not the same book. Then, I thank Ellen Levine, my more than agent, who cares about content and meaning and getting it right. I thank Heather Sangster for final touches. I thank Michael, again, as my partner in life and the one who encouraged me and listened to me think and helped me seek out the bone truth of my connection to Maryann Acker, who is the most important person of all to thank. Thank you, Maryann.