Jasper studies the photo and says nothing. His attention shifts between it and me. He’s stone faced until he notices the pens again.
“Pen,” he says.
Officer Gonzales’s eyes widen, waiting for my big reveal. His partner frowns, ashamed at getting his hopes up.
“Jasp, I need you to focus,” I say with more curtness than I intend. It shocks him, and he starts to cry. To wail. I hug my sobbing son, feeling like a terrible mother and, worse, a reactive one.
“He’s not doing it now. But earlier, and at the Café Collage, he pointed and called herGigi,” I tell the officers, who are both staring at me, pityingly so. I squirm, trying to get comfortable. The plastic chair hurts my tailbone, and Jasper digs his elbow into me, causing the baby to roll uncomfortably. It’s hot in this windowless room, and there’s a stale smell that sours my stomach. “We saw her Tuesday. Jasper knew who she was. Then she dies outside our house? That can’t be a coincidence.”
Officer Gonzales closes his notepad. I don’t like that he’s closed his notepad. I don’t like his tone as he asks, “Mrs. Irons, how long have you lived in Venice?” I don’t like that he keeps referring to me asMrs. Irons. It’s patriarchal, even though Irons wasn’t Gabe’s last name before we were married either.
After he proposed, Gabe said he didn’t want our children to bear his father’s name, a name that symbolized cruelty and violence and everything Gabe would never be as a father or husband. I certainly didn’t want to give them my father’s last name, the name of a man I hardly knew. We decided to start anew, not just for the children we hoped to have but for us. I pickedIrons. It was a nod to my profession without being too on the nose. A metal that’s malleable yet strong when mixed with other components, a metal that has been worn throughout history to defend and heal. Gabe liked how it would read on his clinic’s door.
Gabe. He’d be hurt if he knew I was at the police station, making our son my coconspirator without conferring with him first.
“We’ve lived here six years,” I tell Officer Gonzales.
“Then you know it’s a small community. Surely there are strangers you see at coffee shops and restaurants that you don’t know but recognize?”
“What are you saying?” I know exactly what he’s saying. Still, I need to hear it, the totality of his doubt.
“Regina Geller lived in the area. It’s entirely possible you saw her on Tuesday, that you’ve seen her before. Maybe she was nice to him once and he remembered.”
Eighteen-month-olds aren’t exactly known for their long-term memory. Jasper recognizes Claire, the other mothers, because we see them regularly. If one of them goes on vacation and we don’t see them for two weeks, they become strangers again. He wouldn’t have recognized Regina Geller because she was nice to him once. He recognized her because he knew her.
“Mrs. Irons.” I wince each time, not so much at the name as the thought of Gabe learning about our visit to the police station. “We appreciate you coming down. I’m noting the connection to your son in her file. If we have follow-up questions, I’ll be in touch.”
I’m not ready to accept his dismissal.
“Do you know how hard it is to fall into the canals?” I explain the saltbushes, planted to keep people out, the slope of the basins, designed to prevent drowning.
He shrugs. “We’ve gone through your neighbors’ footage—thanks for sending yours in, by the way—and none of the cameras showed anything suspicious. No perps chasing her. No one running out of the canal where we found her. Regina didn’t even show up in any recordings. Our informants in the encampment on Pacific saw her wandering around. And we know she’d been drinking. Our guess is she hopped in off Pacific, walked until she eventually fell.”
“And you think she was so drunk, she passed out in the water, no struggle at all?”
He nods regretfully, then motions to my belly. “As a mother, I’m sure this is scary. You and your family are safe. I promise you.”
Not as a human, a concerned citizen, a rational person. Motherhood is a weapon, one that can be used against you.
Gonzales stands, and his partner, that impotent, feckless shadow, rushes to hold the door open for me. I follow them through the station, Jasper leaning against me, sucking his thumb, as perplexed by the last ten minutes as I am. At the door, Gonzales offers me a nod of encouragement that makes me feel foolish for trusting myinstincts.
“We really do appreciate you coming. I hope it makes you less worried.”
I stare at the door after it’s shut. Does he think I enjoy being worried? That I have nothing better to do? Sure, I worry Jasper isn’t getting enough iron—though he’s an Irons—that he’s a picky eater. I worry that he’s too sensitive. That he will hate being a brother, will resent his sister. In motherhood, worry is a form of love. I have plenty to worry about without Regina Geller, a woman I don’t know. I want to forget her death as much as anyone else, to cast it off as a random tragedy. But I can’t. This involves my son. As long as I can’t explain how he knew her, why she died right outside our home, I can’t trust he’s safe. That’s what Officer Gonzales gets wrong about me. Gabe too. I don’t want this. As a mother, I can’t run from it.
“Excuse me?” I hear someone call. The woman we passed on our way into the station waves as she approaches us. Once she’s a few paces closer, I realize she’s the same woman I saw hurt her knee that morning.
I’ve studied Regina’s picture enough to have her image seared into my memory—all the ways she looks like me, all the ways she doesn’t. This woman’s skin is more olive than Regina’s. The hair that isn’t white is much darker. She has different features, a different energy. But right away, I know. She’s her mother.
“Are you—” She stops a few feet from us. Jasper hides behind my leg. “Here about my daughter? Did you know Regina?”
I’m unsure how to explain who I am to this grieving mother, so I tell her the truth. “I think my son may have known her.”
I wait for her to ask how. If she does, I’ll tell her about the incident at the coffee shop.
She doesn’t ask me this obvious question. Instead, she envelops me. It’s so unexpected, I don’t hug her back right away. Her body curves around my baby, radiating a protective maternal energy, a kind like I’ve never received before.
“Sorry.” She pulls away. “I don’t usually go around hugging strangers.”
