ACCUSATION

The poet got to his feet in preparation. A cheer went up as the blood
pudding arrived steaming and agitating in the pan. The poet held out his
hand expectantly for the knife, and checked the blade when it arrived to
make sure it had been sharpened. If you didn’t do it properly, the blood
would well too quickly, and the filling—pecorino, bread, blood, and
herbs—would spill. He pinched the skin of the casing. His hands shook
as he cut his needle-thin incision, but the pudding held its shape. He set
down the knife and watched the pan as it made its journey down the table.
The shepherd’s boy moved so fast that the poet didn’t even see him get
to his feet. All he knew was the pain. He looked down almost amused at
the sight. The boy had snatched up the knife and slipped its point between
the first and second knuckles of the poet’s right hand, pinning it to the
table. The skin of the poet’s hand had parted easily, and for now, there was
little blood.
Elsewhere in the room, the party continued. The poet tried not to make
a sound. As if his family could somehow be shielded from what was about
to happen. As if the problem of the hand was going to be the only problem.
The shepherd had marched smartly down the room and taken out a pistol, and though the poet knew he intended to use it, the idea was ridiculous. More ridiculous still was that the gun was already smoking, though
the poet had heard no noise.
The din of the feast seemed to have gained substance, to have clotted
and slowed into something viscous. Light and sound were somehow the
same thing. He felt an urge to confront the shepherd, to admonish him
for such an abuse of hospitality. But the rebuke would have been wrongheaded. Vendetta was only hospitality in a minor key. The duty in each
case was the same.
His only sadness was that a line had come to him, and he wished he
might utter it to his wife. He wanted to say to her: You were the song of my
life. In spite of all the years he had spent dealing with the problem of too
much time, somehow there wasn’t any left. His eyes couldn’t find her in
the room, nor could he speak, and there was a curious feeling at the back
of his head as if wet sand had been chucked at it, and he could see from
the faces of those around him that they were beginning to understand.
180
JAMES SCUDAMORE
E S S AY
THE RIGHT
ACCUSATION
John Fischer
You haven’t the first Clue®
On a frigid Saturday in early January, I
came home to find a beige envelope in my
mailbox. It bore a postmark from Washington, DC, but no return address. My
hands were cold and I fumbled to tear
open the flap. Inside was a two-inch piece
of metal, about the size of a drywall screw,
crooked in the middle and threaded on
one end.
At the time I was living in Brooklyn,
conducting a life largely without surprises. I
had a steady consulting job writing presentations about the “brand benefits” of products one might see advertised on TV. This
afforded me a semiobstructed view of the
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, membership
to a gym called Maxim, and enough discretionary income to buy jeans that required a
year without washing to correctly break in.
By my own estimation I was approaching
marrying age and felt confident that I was a
relationship or two away from meeting that
special someone. In other words, I’d come
to equate an untroubled stretch of my late
twenties with a kind of permanent yuppie
kismet.
But the arrival of mystery mail was an
anomaly. I didn’t know anyone who lived
181
PHOTOS PROVI D E D BY TH E AUTHO R
in DC nor why such a person might send
“Weird,” my barber said.
me a small metal screw. Unsure of what
“Weird,” I agreed.
to do, I left the envelope on my desk,
“Why would anyone mail you a toy
where it soon disappeared beneath a
monkey wrench?” he asked.
stack of unread New Yorkers.
I had no idea, but I presumed a connecA month later, I opened my
tion to the screw I’d received a few weeks
mailbox to find a large USPS
earlier. I explained this to him as well—the
pack stuffed inside. My name
threading, the shallow bend, the abstract
and address were hand drawn in
quality, as if it were not a screw as much as
cursive, each
an impressionistic renletter shaded as
dering of a screw. And
though overlapas I described the items
“These are the murder
ping the next. In
aloud for the first time, I
the corner was a
found them snagging on
weapons. Someone’s
cluster of stamps
a feeling of familiarity, of
sending them to me.”
arranged in a sort
having been seen before.
of mosaic: several
Not just their individStar Wars commemual shapes but the sense
oratives, a Simpsons character, and a
that they related in a hazy correlation
scattering of USA Forevers to cinch
from childhood memory. Suddenly they
the arrangement.The zip code of origin
snapped into focus.
resolved to Reno, Nevada. Inside was
“Wait,” I said. “It’s not a screw. It’s a
another padded pack. Inside that was an
pipe. A lead pipe. And a wrench? Did you
envelope containing a greeting card with
ever play that game Clue when you were
a slightly smaller greeting card inside—
a kid? These are the murder weapons.
the postal equivalent of Russian nesting
Someone’s sending them to me.”
dolls. Out of the final envelope fell a solid
“Whoa,” he said. “That’s messed up.”
object: a die-cast toy pipe wrench.
I’d been on my way out for a haircut
Clue is a board game originally produced
and so my barber was the first person to
in England in 1949 under the name
hear about the deliveries. I am useless at
Cluedo. The game takes place in a parody
making the type of light conversation in
of a Victorian mansion where the owner,
which minor life details are bartered, and
Mr. Boddy, has been murdered. Players
I was relieved to discuss a topic other than
move around the board, collecting partial
my plans for the weekend, which mostly
information about the location, weapon,
involved eating meals with my similarly
and perpetrator of the crime. Each accuprofessional friends and rearranging the
mulated clue allows players to posit by
throw pillows on my couch.
process of elimination—I suggest it was Miss
The Right Accusation
183
Scarlett, in the conservatory, with the knife—
fact that they indicated a progression. I
how Mr. Boddy has been killed.
would be receiving four more packages,
The classic version of the game has 324
like a timetable counting down to—what?
possible outcomes, made from nine rooms,
A hooded figure springing from the shadsix characters, and six murder weapons:
ows of my evening commute, wrestling me
a knife, a rope, a revolver, a candlestick,
into a windowless van? A PVC pipe filled
a wrench, and a lead pipe—each cast in
with match heads and broken glass wired
pewter, except for the rope, which is usuto the inside of my mailbox? Whatever
ally plastic. The first player to make a comscenarios I could imagine were to the far
plete and accurate accuend of absurd, and yet
sation wins. In this way
something was waiting
the game is not so much
at the conclusion.
My suspicion was that a
a mystery as it is a puz“Basically you’re being
zle. To agree to play is
stalked,” Katharine said.
woman had sent them,
to already know what
She encouraged me
and that the woman was
has happened. The payto file a complaint for
upset with me.
off is merely that of the
harassment, to estabparticulars.
lish a paper trail on the
unlikely chance that I
I hadn’t seen an edition of Clue, much less
was actually attacked. Then she fixed me
its disembodied pieces, since I was maybe
with a serious expression and asked if I
twelve. And yet here they were in my mailhad any reason to think an attack was a
box. I wasn’t sure whether to find this
real possibility.
funny or sinister, and so I experimentally
“I couldn’t tell you,” I said.
mentioned it to a few close friends as a
“Not even a guess?”
casual Hey, you’ll never believe this but species
I shook my head.
of oddity. I avoided using the words murder
“Things like this don’t come out of
and weapon to the extent that such censornowhere,” she said.
ship was possible. What I got in return was
She was right. My suspicion was that
an elaboration on my barber’s reaction: a
a woman had sent them, and that the
moment of incredulity followed by a betwoman was upset with me. This was
ter-you-than-me laugh. It was definitely
the most plausible explanation. I’d always
peculiar and possibly distressing, and no
been quick to qualify my dating history
one knew what to make of it.
as checkered, and if there was a source
My friend Katharine, a former journalof discord in my life commensurate with
ist and lifelong pragmatist, felt I should go
tiny murder weapons, that would be it. I
to the police. The pieces implied a variety
had, for example, told my first girlfriend
of violent acts. More worrisome was the
that we couldn’t be together anymore
184
JOHN FISCHER
because I no longer found her attractive, and I’d arrived at a version of this
exchange in every subsequent relationship. In college I convinced myself I was
meant to marry the girl I met my final
semester. We moved to New York City,
where I quickly became a source of disappointment. I stayed out late without
calling, picked unnecessary fights, and
eventually persuaded her to leave me. By
the time I was twenty-seven, most of my
friends had found fulfillment in cohabitation and joint checking accounts, whereas
I could cite only missteps and false starts.
I dated with the persistence of a chainsmoker, cycling through people at the
pace of about one every four months. I
became obsessed with the idea of a relationship—an effortless, Disney-cartoonbut-for-dudes specimen of a relationship
that would provide shelter from my shortcomings in the form of perfect honesty
and sex that was never bad. So I remained
one foot out the door at all times, vigilant
for what I believed were signs of incompatibility but were more likely the basic
tasks of accepting another human’s flaws.
The following day I placed the envelopes in a Ziploc bag for transportation to
the police station. The precinct abutted a
block of housing projects on the border of
my neighborhood and appeared far more
serious than I had anticipated. I’d never
seen the inside of a police station and
here was linoleum floor, peeling particleboard trim, and a low expanse of ceiling.
Behind a bulletproof window sat several
uniformed men.
“Excuse me,” I said, tapping on the
divider. “I’m here to report a case of
harassment by mail.”
A heavy-set officer in a rolling chair
wheeled himself over and asked me to
describe my issue.
“I’m receiving potentially threatening objects.” I dutifully retrieved the two
envelopes and slid them through a slot in
the window.
“No way I’m touching those,” the officer said. “Could be anthrax.”
Instead he instructed me to present the
contents myself. And as I dug through the
series of nested compartments to produce
a two-inch metal wrench, I became sharply
aware of how I must look to this man who
had by now registered my scarf, my clean
overcoat, my leather winter gloves and
made his appraisal.
I placed the wrench in the slot and
attempted an explanation that was credible without seeming alarmist. The wrench
constituted an implied threat as opposed
to a direct one. It was a murder weapon
from a children’s board game. Was he
familiar with the board game Clue? Colonel Mustard in the library with the—
“You think we play kids’ board games
here?” the officer asked. “You’ve got to be
kidding.”
I flushed and stammered. I knew how
my complaint must sound, but I just
wanted to take precautions. Maybe there
was a form I could fill out?
The officer asked for my address and
then informed me that I was at the wrong
precinct.
The Right Accusation
185
“Bring them up to Greenpoint if you
want,” he said.
Upon exiting the station, I stood for a
minute on the sidewalk, attempting to corral my shaken dignity. An elaborate prank
had just been played at my expense, if not
explicitly, then at least—as the expression
goes—one involving enough rope for me
to hang myself. So I didn’t take the pieces
up to Greenpoint. I took them home and
pushed them all the way to the back of my
bedroom bookshelf.
There is no one singular definition for
the act of stalking because unlike, say,
murder, there is no singular qualifying act
ascribed to the term. Rather it is a “victim-defined crime.” Psychiatric journals
characterize stalking as “repeated and
persistent unwanted communication and/
or approaches that produce fear in the
victim.” The line that demarcates inconvenient behavior from criminal behavior
is a subjective one. If it disrupts your life,
it’s considered stalking.
Perhaps for this reason, the individual
motivations of stalkers, especially those
who fall outside the “modal” stereotype
of the forty-year-old male with emotional
disturbances, are not particularly welldocumented. Women, young people, and
perpetrators without the excuse of mental
illness or addiction are relative psychological mysteries. Are their actions situational
or a distinct pathology? What triggers
them? Why do they stop when they stop?
From the standpoint of hard research, the
data is rudimentary. Initial taxonomies
186
JOHN FISCHER
have been outlined, but nuance tends not
to go much deeper than “the intimacyobsessed” or “the spurned lover.”
One must suppose that if stalking is
subjective in the mind of the victim, then
it is also subjective in the mind of the
perpetrator. Leaving aside the sadists, the
abusers, and the clinically afflicted, stalking seems less like a criminal act and more
like a complex expression of pain. Perhaps it’s taboo to regard the stalker as a
victim in his or her own right, but it may
also be accurate. Stalking, on some level,
is an attempt to revise history, to heal an
injury real or imagined. It’s like a wound
that binds perpetrator to victim. No one
sits down and thinks: Today I will stalk my ex.
Rather they think: if only, I wish, but maybe,
how could they, and why shouldn’t I, because it
hurts, because I’m lonely, because I don’t know
what else to do.
If it disrupts your life, it’s stalking.
But the better question would be: Exactly
whose life has been disrupted?
Prior to the third envelope’s arrival, I
went from keeping the pieces a secret to
flogging them as a joke. I told anyone I
could: my boss, my boss’s boss, fashionably coiffed men and women I hoped to
impress at parties. It was almost impossible to find a topic of conversation that
couldn’t transition into the story. I’d pantomime my barber’s surprise, stretching
out his Keanu Reeves–style “whoa” like
verbal taffy, or lay into my best fuckoutta-here accent when recalling the desk
sergeant’s derision. I’d widen my eyes,
bask in the cheap laugh, and explain that,
As I said this, I realized it was true. The
yeah, I was expecting another dispatch
Clue pieces contained no other clues aside
from Weirdsville any day now.
from their existence, their signaling a need
The envelope, postmarked Virginia,
to search for something. But that something
bore psychedelic splashes of watercolor
was less a culprit and more a cause. Idenand a sticker of a cartoon panda loungtifying the guilty party meant first identiing on a cloud. Inside was a candlestick
fying what I’d done to provoke her. And
about the diameter of a quarter. I held it
whatever that was, it could only be bad.
between my thumb and forefinger, examThere was, for starters, a college roomining the seam that ran its length, imagmate’s cousin—I’d written her letters for
ining a life-size version
two months after we
swung overhand into
met at a wedding, and
the back of my skull. But
then spent a week in San
If it disrupts your life, it’s
despite a temptation to
Francisco determining
considered stalking.
romanticize my own
that our chemistry had
mortality, I’d concluded
been a figment of my
that I would likely not
wishful thinking. When
be killed. There were no other warning
I boarded my flight home, it was with the
signs to speak of, and although the pieces
intention of never seeing her again. There
were unsettling, the whole endeavor had
was also a former coworker with whom I’d
a quality that was too feminine, too artshad a messy affair—she mailed me postand-craftsy to be a source of legitimate
cards from a trip across Europe, but upon
menace—an assessment with which peoher suggestion that she leave her boyple agreed.
friend so we could date, I stopped writing
What my boss and her boss and the
back. There were others: a fashion designer
fashionable people at parties did not agree
whom I’d dumped loudly and publicly at
with, however, was that the culprit couldn’t
a neighborhood bar, a photographer for
be identified through a bit of amateur
whom I’d once cooked dinner and then
sleuthing. How many people did I know
discouraged from visiting my apartment
who would do such a thing? A jilted ex, a
again, and so on. Hypothetically, it was
secret admirer? They were annoyed by my
possible to construct a register of susunwillingness to hazard a guess.
pects from the overlap between women
“Whoever this person is, she probably
to whom I’d given my address and women
just wants your attention,” Katharine the
who might remain angry with me—which,
former journalist said. “Like she’s trying to
once I began counting, made for a much
deliver a message.”
longer tally than I expected. Actually, that
“Judging from the tone, I’d rather not
wasn’t quite right. The list was just as long
hear it.”
as I feared.
The Right Accusation
187
I began drafting a series of excruciatnervous laugh. She wasn’t sure what she
ingly neutral e-mails, explaining that, hey,
was doing in marketing; she’d gotten a
I know we hadn’t spoken in a while, but I’d
new-media degree from an art school in
recently received a funny letter, and did I
the Netherlands. She was also unqualified
have so-and-so to thank? Was everything
for her job. Her boss, an old-school Madigood? I hoped so and wished well and
son Avenue screamer, kept Anna at the
included whatever optimistic punctuation
office until after dinnertime, called her at
I thought might ease the inconvenience of
home, and wanted to know why she wasn’t
my hello.
“stepping up.” What passed between us
The roommate’s cousin wrote back to
over coffee was essentially a plea for help.
say no, she had done no
For several weeks, I
such thing. But she was
coached her: editing presurprised to hear from
sentations, sourcing staI
required
a
more
obvious
me after what happened.
tistics, talking her down
The former coworker
from the prospect of
source of disappointment
asked what possible reaquitting. If I dig far
than my own actions.
son she could have for
enough back into my
sending me anything,
e-mail, I find a record of
and requested that I not
our exchange that is
contact her again. An Internet date I’d
fawningly sympathetic, patient to a fault.
slept with but refused to introduce to my
This was part of what I would later
friends responded only with a photograph
come to think of as the pattern, the central
of a trash can.
organizing principle around which all my
To the extent that I could cite a likely
relationships revolved. In its first phase,
culprit, it looked to be someone I already
the pattern assured me that I’d found the
knew well: myself.
last person I was ever going to date. It
didn’t matter who she was, so long as I
A year before receiving the Clue pieces, I
could invent those aspects of her personmet a woman whom I’ll call Anna. I had
ality that would save me from a future of
been contracted by a former employer to
middle-aged loneliness.
assist its new research director on her first
Thus I pursued Anna with a certain
project. We scheduled a meeting in a cofdetermination. I invited her to a noise-rock
fee shop near Gramercy Park and when I
gallery show that would appeal to her artwaved Anna over to my table, I realized we
school sensibilities. I took her for dinner
were staring at each other in the slightly
at a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant
stupefied way of people who have stumknown for its soup dumplings and invoked
bled upon a mutual attraction. Anna was a
the specter of my dad’s failing-heart health
former dancer with radiant blue eyes and a
to hint at my emotional sensitivity. I bought
188
JOHN FISCHER
a bottle of wine and suggested we stay in to
watch a documentary about African child
soldiers. Eventually Anna invited me back
to her apartment, in an ungentrified stretch
of south Brooklyn, where she’d hung dream
catchers above her narrow bedroom windows. She told me how she one day hoped
to open a Pilates studio. I stayed late into
the weekend, turning Saturday morning
into Sunday night, proposing we take a
candlelit bath. We did this for about two
months before I lost interest.
Which, of course, was part of the pattern
as well. In the rejection phase I discovered
that my chosen savior was no savior at all.
There was something unpleasant about
the way Anna’s forearms connected to
her elbows, producing a roll of flesh that I
found mildly obscene. Her dream catchers
and amethyst meditation stones ceased to
be charming, instead revealing spiritual
naivety. It wasn’t that anything was really
wrong with her forearms or her dream
catchers, only that Anna could not possibly
live up to the person I’d fabricated. And in
lieu of admitting this to myself, I required
a more obvious source of disappointment
than my own actions.
So I canceled plans; I pleaded headaches and nonspecific feelings of illness. I
postponed dinner until next week and the
week after. I promised to make it up to
Anna, then went a day without returning
her calls. It would be incorrect to say that
we stopped seeing each other, because such
a distinction gives me too much credit for
having ended our acquaintance outright.
Rather, I slowed our communication to
the point of stasis. I figured she’d grasp the
situation and then spare us the unpleasantness of an unnecessary conversation.
Soon, I assumed, I wouldn’t hear from her
at all.
Except then late on a Sunday night,
at nearly two in the morning, my phone
chimed with a message.
Someone broke into my apartment and tried to
hurt me, it read. Please call.
When I got ahold of Anna, she was in
a cab on the way to her brother’s house
in Queens. She relayed the sequence of
events to me in a distant, clinical way:
She’d been woken by the sound of movement in her room and opened her eyes to a
man kneeling on her mattress. He pushed
her down with one hand and attempted to
cover her mouth with the other. Anna had
struggled and screamed, and after a minute
of this the man fled through an open window. When she stood up to call the police,
she found that all her lightbulbs had been
unscrewed and deposited in the trash.
We spoke frequently following the
home invasion to establish that she had
a place to stay, the necessary personal
effects, and no trouble breaking her lease.
This seemed like the charitable thing to
do. The police took her statement and
showed her mug shots. They were nice, she
said, though they saw no real possibility of
catching the man. He had probably staked
out the building and planned his escape
route in advance.
Then Anna asked if I would go with her
to the shuttered apartment for an afternoon while she packed a few things.
The Right Accusation
189
“Uh . . . Saturday’s bad for me,” I said.
“It’d only be a few hours,” she said.
“Isn’t there anyone else you’re closer
with? A friend? Your brother?”
“I need some help right now,” she said.
When I thought of the man standing
over Anna’s bed and the way her screams
would’ve carried across the hardwood
floor, I was filled with an urgent impulse
to accompany her. And yet at the same
time, I hesitated: I was sure that extending
myself would send the wrong message at
exactly the wrong time, falsely advertising
my availability, or worse, my desire. What
had happened was tragic, but I couldn’t see
how my presence would be any comfort.
I was least qualified of all people to assist
with this task. Moreover, I didn’t want to.
As a poor compromise, I volunteered
to keep her company by phone. I’d stay on
the line from the time she walked through
the door until she locked up. Anna was less
than enthusiastic about this but agreed.
And so Saturday, just after lunch, I spent
three hours with my cell phone pressed to
my face while Anna packed. She was preoccupied, leaving me to fill the silence. I
told her about my job writing PowerPoint
presentations, how I disliked it but didn’t
know what else to do, how I thought of
going back to grad school. I told her that
I felt I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere,
that I sometimes doubted the shape my
life was assuming. How I worried about
my father, whose health was in decline,
and how I felt I’d fallen on a tremendous
foolishness in my late twenties. I wasn’t
sure why I confessed these things to her,
190
JOHN FISCHER
only that I had been given space to ramble.
Finally I told her I was sorry.
“For what?” Anna asked. The clatter
on the other end of the line came to an
abrupt halt.
It felt like the moment where I was
meant to apologize, and I did so liberally.
Sorry she was having this experience. Sorry
she had to leave the apartment where she’d
lived for years, that a stranger had invaded
her home and permanently violated her
sense of safety. Sorry that the job hadn’t
worked out. I tried apologizing for everything except myself, and Anna offered only
a murmur by way of acknowledgment. After
she hauled her bags down to the street and
locked up, she thanked me for my time.
“I know you didn’t want to do this,”
she said.
“Hey, it’s not ideal for either of us,” I
said.
After that, Anna was gone.
I received a fourth envelope before the
Clue pieces stopped appearing. Postmarked DC again, this one contained the
dust jacket from a Queen EP called Play the
Game. The cover art featured Freddie,
Brian, John, and Roger all standing against
a wall of fire. Taped inside was a knucklelength dagger, blunt on its business end.
Then a month went by without sign of
either the rope or the revolver, and then
another month after that. For some reason the final pieces weren’t coming. This
was both surprising and discomfiting. Such
an abrupt ending violated the logic of the
enterprise—its entire purpose seemed to be
the buildup to a grand reveal. People asked
the police station, the bitter January cold,
after the remainder of the mystery, but I
the way the game ended so suddenly—that
had no updates. I was relieved, I claimed.
allow it to best hang together. For this reaThis satisfied no one. Didn’t I want to find
son and others, I neglect to include Anna.
out what happened? Didn’t I want closure?
Always when I reach the end, I get the
I checked my mail every day. Often
same question. Did I figure out who did it?
twice a day. I’d linger in the foyer of my
No, I say. To this day I’m not one hunbuilding, my mailbox open, ready for that
dred percent sure. And this is technically
drum-taut kick in the lower portion of my
correct, since I never contacted Anna to
stomach, that moment
ask.
of anticipation when a
Soon theories are
sealed package is still
posed. Someone tells
I tried apologizing for
full of possibility and
about a friend of a friend
everything
except
myself,
not yet the thing that it
whose ex set fire to her
is. I stared into my litcar or who showed up
and Anna offered only
tle province of bills and
unannounced on his
a murmur by way of
junk mail, and I waited.
doorstep from the oppoacknowledgment.
And slowly, waiting
site coast. Everyone
became giving up.
wants to participate, and
the easiest way to end
I still find myself telling the story of the
the story is to give it away.
Clue pieces from time to time. It’s the sort
There are other things I choose not
of anecdote that friends who remember
to include, and which I have omitted
the incident will revisit for a laugh over
from this retelling as well. I suppose their
drinks or dinner. If we’re in my apartment
exclusion is a cop-out, since I knew them
(a new one, now with a semiobstructed
from the beginning, from the arrival of
view of the Williamsburg Bridge, thanks to
that very first crooked metal clue. In my
my continued writing of PowerPoint predefense, knowing and comprehending are
sentations), I’ll rummage around the botnot always compatible activities, but I realtom of my closet to produce the envelopes.
ize that’s pretty weak as defenses go.
I offer them in sequence. People want to
When I first met Anna, she was using
examine the weapons and the configuraher art degree to run what she called a “rittions of stamps, to look inside, to see if
ual consultancy.” It was part conceptual art
they can find a detail I’ve missed.
project, part guided meditation. For a negoThe version I share over dinner has
tiable fee, you could hire her to construct a
been edited for efficiency’s sake. I’ve conritual based on an extensive personal internected bits, elided here and there. I’ve
view about your goals, dreams, and fears.
selected those elements—the interior of
This might involve going to a particular
The Right Accusation
191
hotel at a particular time, checking into the
fitness facilities, and swimming to the bottom of the pool to find a locked box. The
box would contain a key. The key would
open a door in a house where you would
collect five feathers to be arranged in a starshaped pattern. And so on until an essential
truth about yourself was revealed.
Close to the end, when Anna must have
known I was backing away, she sent me a
grapefruit in the mail. She knew I liked
grapefruit and we’d had a conversation
about how you can mail almost anything—
a brick, a single shoe—so long as you affix
sufficient postage. One day I found a Ruby
Red grapefruit in my mailbox, wrapped
in stamps and covered in a layer of packing tape.
I heard from Anna precisely once after
the home invasion and before the pieces
appeared. She sent an e-mail asking why
I’d acted as though I liked her and then
proceeded to treat her like dirt. What was
going through my head? She’d replayed the
events over and over, but she couldn’t make
sense of why I’d behaved in such a cruel
way. She wanted to understand how she’d so
badly misjudged me. She felt I owed her an
explanation. Probably I did, though I never
offered her one, or any response.
And the shame, of course. I choose not
to include the shame.
Shortly after my thirty-second birthday, I
told a friend about Anna and the envelopes she almost certainly sent, the facts in
their entirety this time. Though I told her
in a clumsy attempt at a confession, my
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JOHN FISCHER
friend happened to be the victim of her
own stalking episode. Her increasingly
violent ex-boyfriend had broken into her
apartment and moved her possessions in
ways that only she would notice, ultimately
forcing her to relocate to California for
several years.
“People with these delusions will stop at
nothing,” my friend said, frowning at what
I assume she saw as a hole in my personality where my objectivity should be.
“That’s not what I mean. We were both
the problem,” I said. But my friend was
decided.
An odd feature of the board game Clue
is the possibility that your character can
be guilty without your knowledge: at the
beginning of play, cards representing the
culprit, the murder weapon, and the location are placed facedown in an “evidence
envelope” such that they remain concealed
from all players. The rule book reminds
you that no one is above suspicion, even
your own game piece. In any given game,
you have about a sixteen percent chance of
needing to incriminate yourself to win. But
moving from room to room, testing possibilities, it’s tempting to overlook your own
culpability in the haste to see the board
from your vantage. You’re the one solving
the crime, not committing it.
I suppose I will never prove whether
Anna sent the murder weapons in the mail.
Not because I couldn’t if I wanted to, but
because I now believe that the point of the
experience was one of self-reflection, an
exercise in addressing myself to the person
I am and not the person I thought I’d be.
I spent a long time gathering the substantiation to deem myself a quote-unquote
stand-up guy, selecting those indicators
of my stoicism, my warmth, the equitable
reasoning of my judgment—qualities contradicted by my very insistence on their
accuracy. Because the truth of these assertions lies not in their statement but in
their potential for elimination; as is the
nature of all puzzle pieces. And in this
regard I’ve come to view the incident as a
kind of gift, one that would only be muddied by certitude. I date far less frequently
now, with a hesitance to overpromise, and
with a generous representation of my lessflattering side. I’ve become scared of my
capacity for self-confirmation and I want
to make sure that whomever I end up with
understands this, and is prepared to do me
the long favor of calling it out.
But maybe even that is a form of editing; a congratulatory stance that suggests
the act of honesty is a one-time revelation. It’s hard to tell. Maybe the only way
we ever know who we are is to indict ourselves, and to continue indicting ourselves
for as long as we can. Maybe that was the
meaning of the ritual, the feathers in a
star-shaped pattern, the lesson, whether
intentional or not. I hope so, anyway. I’d
feel better thinking that, in the end, I’ve
made the right accusation.
The Right Accusation
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