The Fall

“It’s not the fall that kills you,” Tom Rafuse always used to say. “It’s the landing!” He’d lift his florid face toward the sun or the ceiling, depending on his location, and laugh and laugh at his own joke. Tom had an easygoing manner, a penchant for pocket protectors, and the meaty paunch and polyester wardrobe of a much-beloved high school shop teacher, which he was.

Millicent Robar lived next door with her cats, Mister Mittens, Princess Poo and Sir Scratchalot. She had seen and heard Tom tell his fall gag many, many times, and those around Tom when he told it never failed to chuckle along. Even those who, like Millie, had heard it many, many times. Tom was that kind of guy. Jovial and a bit obtuse. You couldn’t help laughing at his stupid, repetitive jokes.

Millie didn’t ponder long on her own feelings for Tom, but she often wished that she had a man like him in her life. His wife, Rose, was downright dim, Millie thought. She was always at his side, looking up adoringly at him as he held court on their back porch, a goofy grilling apron across his girth and a spatula in his hand. Their backyard barbeques were such fun affairs: Tom’s monster hamburgers; Rose’s exquisite potato salad and chilled cherry cheesecake. Children and adults alike squealed with delight, and Tom most of all.

Of course, the laughter stopped when Rose Rafuse was found dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs, her neck snapped and her blood pooling under shelves of homemade raspberry jelly and pickled beets. Millie watched first the fire trucks, then the RCMP and, finally, the coroner’s van pull into the driveway or park along the curb across from her kitchen window. It was all she could do not to fly right through the window to find out what had happened.

When she saw Tom emerge from his home, hiccupping with sobs, she ran to him.

“My Rose,” he cried. “She’s gone, Millie. She’s gone!”

It was, indeed, the landing and not the fall that killed her. The coroner ruled the cause of death blunt force trauma. The manner of death she left undetermined.

Millie watched as the tall detective with the odd moustache came to question Tom, carting bulky, space-age devices into the basement to measure angles and gather evidence. These visits were daily and lasted for hours during the first few weeks after Rose took her tumble, but their frequency and intensity eased as autumn leaves fluttered to the ground.

Millie was among the neighbours, friends and relatives who enveloped Tom with support and casseroles in the early days. She was briefly confused when she saw Candy Krauss bounce up the driveway within a week of the accident. Empty handed and empty headed, Millie thought.

Candy chewed gum vigorously and wore a midriff baring blouse that barely contained her perky, 16-year-old breasts. Her cut off jeans rode so high that her left butt cheek was exposed as she stepped up on the back porch, spit her gum into Rose’s prized begonia and knocked on Tom’s door. He must be tutoring the poor girl, Millie decided, to take his mind off his troubles.

Millie redoubled her efforts to ease Tom’s pain. She made it her job to return the green bin from the side of the road even before she returned her own, within minutes of the truck rumbling by. She dead-headed the begonias, weeded the walkway and mulched Rose’s roses. When she offered to wash and fold his laundry, Tom happily handed her a key to the back door.

With access to the house she tackled his sink full of dirty dishes, ran a vacuum over the gold carpet in the front room and mopped the cellar floor with bleach. She reined in her instinct to straighten the entire house, setting a goal of just one casserole and one extra chore per week. She didn’t want to overwhelm poor Tom. Not when he was grieving so and keeping up such a hectic tutoring schedule.

Millie didn’t believe Wanda Wentzel, the cashier at the Super Store in town. While scanning Millie’s cases of Whiskas, she whispered in not-so-hushed tones that Tom had been seen holding hands with Candy at the Boston Pizza out by the Walmart.

“No!” Millie cried with a bit more vehemence than she’d intended.

“It’s true,” whisper-shouted Wanda. “They’re an item.”

Poppycock, Millie thought. She refused to believe that Tom would replace his Rose so quickly. And, if he did, she thought, surely, he would look across the driveway and not to the hallways of Parkview Collegiate. Hadn’t they exchanged a significant look that horrible day of the accident? Hadn’t she been tenderly folding his underwear since Thanksgiving? Hadn’t he told her just last week that he didn’t know what he’d do without her? Millie pushed the trash talk about Candy Krauss from her mind.

But Detective Al Himmelman of the RCMP did not. He was very interested in Tom’s relationship with Candy. That’s what he called it when he knocked on Millie’s door the day after Remembrance Day, a “relationship.”

“Mrs. Robar,” he started.

“Miss,” Millicent corrected him. She did not like this smirking man who reeked of cheap aftershave and condescension. Good breeding, however, dictated she offer him a seat and a beverage.

She led him to her front room and pointed to the pink patterned chesterfield, noting the tilt of his moustache when its plastic cover crinkled as he sat.

Millie remembered the first time she’d met Detective Himmelman. It was shortly after she and Tom had shared their first embrace. He must have seen it, since he seemed fixated on Tom and Rose’s love life. “How was their marriage?” he’d asked. “Any signs of trouble… fights? Other women?”

Millie was horrified by these questions and her disdain for the detective had not abated since then. She was secretly pleased when Princess Poo rubbed up against this leg and then jumped into his lap, spreading her white fur across his navy suit.

“Miss Robar, we have reason to believe that your neighbour, Mr. Rafuse, is having an affair,” he said.

Millie felt the heat rise to her face and hoped the detective didn’t notice. How could he know? She had not told anyone of her growing feelings for Tom, nor of the obvious signals that he had sent her, clearly reciprocating. This smelly man, his obscene moustache and his prurient questions were an affront to decency.

Mister Mittens, perhaps mistaking the facial hair for another cat, jumped up on the couch and took a swipe at the detective’s face.

“An affair?” Millie echoed weakly.

He must have seen her blush. He continued to smirk as he calmly moved Princess Poo from his lap and then set Mister Mittens on the floor beside her. Brushing ineffectually at his pantleg, he said, “We know for a fact that Mr. Robar is in a relationship with Candy Krauss.”

“What?” Millie sputtered. She couldn’t be sure whether she’d said it in her head or out loud; and, if the latter, how loudly. She saw white. Her mind went blank. Princess Poo jumped back onto the detective’s lap.

“Miss Krauss has confirmed for us that she and Mr. Rafuse are romantically involved. I would like you, Miss Robar, to think back to this past summer and the behaviour of your neighbour. Is it possible—a?”

“That can’t be! Candy is a child--”

“—possible the affair began before Mrs. Rafuse’s unfortunate fall?”

“No…no…no. No! N-n-n-n-n-n-no! No!”

Princess Poo and Mister Mittens turned slowly to look at her, reacting to the shouted word in the same way they always did, which was not at all. Sir Scratchalot appeared from thin air on the back of the chesterfield and hissed at the detective.

“Miss Robar, I don’t mean to upset you, but—” The man obviously did want to upset her, he was taking such delight. “—-there is some evidence that Mrs. Rafuse was pushed down the stairs, and I believe that Mr. Rafuse did it. If he was having an affair with Miss Krauss before his wife’s passing, that would be the motive we’ve been looking for.”

Millie ignored the dangling preposition. Rage overtook reason and grammar.  “Tom did not push Rose down the stairs, and I can prove it!”

Millie surprised herself with those words. She was speaking and acting on instinct. She had no idea how to prove Tom’s innocence, but she focused on doing so, so that she wouldn’t have to think about Candy Krauss. Her mind simply could not process that!

What happened next would ensure that Tom’s name would be forever linked to Millie’s, even if he was not.

In a fury she rose, beckoning the detective to follow her through her immaculate kitchen, where she grabbed the key to Tom’s house from a hook by the back door. She’d attached it to a heart shaped fob encrusted with fake rubies that she’d received as a gift from a niece at Christmas.

She led the detective across the driveway, through the back door and into Tom’s kitchen. The cellar door was to the left of the refrigerator where, gathering snow in the freezer compartment, sat a lasagna, two tuna casseroles, a meatloaf and a Tupperware container of chicken and dumplings.

Millie opened the cellar door and Detective Himmelman entered. At the third step, he turned, looking up.

“This is where it hap—”

Unable to look at his misaligned moustache one more minute, Millicent Robar wielded the broom with which she’d so lovingly swept these steps just last week. Jousting with all her might, she shoved the disbelieving detective down.

It wasn’t the fall that killed him.

The cause of death was blunt force trauma from the landing. And, this time, there was no question about the manner of death. It was murder, and the culprit was clear. Detective Himmelman’s body was covered in cat hair.

Millicent Robar and Tom Rafuse were found guilty, in separate trials. Millicent sold her home to pay for her legal bills.

Candy Krauss moved into Tom’s house. There she waited patiently for him to get out of prison while doting on her new companions, Mister Mittens, Princess Poo and Sir Scratchalot.