Puzzling, short story by Stephen D. Rogers, Web Mystery Magazine, Fall 2005

Puzzling

There was only one way to do a puzzle in the Magri house.

First, his mother stared at the cover of the box for five minutes before making Robert stare at it for another five.

Today he could barely see the glossy image through the tears that kept welling up.

Second, the box was opened and the pieces were lifted out one by one. Edge pieces were placed in the middle of the table, face up, with the straight side to the left. Corner pieces were placed below the grid of edge pieces. Interior pieces were placed – face up – on the far end of the table grouped according to color, pattern, or guiding principle.

Third, the corner pieces were examined and placed in their respective corners, the correct distance apart.

Robert could recite the drill in his sleep but then he should be able to after some twenty odd years of it. Mother knew the best way to do a puzzle. She knew the best way to do everything, the best thing for everyone. There was no point in arguing with her.

Fourth, the edge pieces were slowly fitted together until the frame of the puzzle was complete.

Robert sat stiffly while his mother worked the bottom side of the puzzle, her hands sure and quick.

She spoke without looking at him, "You're not being much help today Robert."

"Sorry. I'm thinking about the funeral tomorrow."

"Work on the puzzle. It will free your mind."

Picking up an edge piece, Robert tried to forget that his beloved Jewel was dead, tried to lose himself in the utterly pointless mystery of the jigsaw.

Fifth, the grouped pieces would be assembled and the sections carefully lifted and situated in their approximate resting place within the frame.

Sixth, the last connecting pieces would be used to pull everything together.

Seventh, his mother would stand and stare beaming at the finished product.

Robert rotated the cardboard piece as though he was trying to imagine where it might fit but in reality he only saw Jewel's face, still and paler than usual. His Jewel had been poisoned, taken away from him.

Tonight was the viewing and his mother refused to vary from the routine of the Saturday evening puzzle.

Conscious that his mother was waiting for him to do his part, Robert shook himself and examined the puzzle piece.

A path was leading off the left side; there was a splash of reds along the bottom of the piece signifying the flower bed; the nub at the top of the piece turned green which was the bottom of the hedge. There was little if any doubt where the piece fit.

Robert lifted the piece closer. There on the path...it almost looked like a knife. "Can I see the cover again?"

His mother smiled and passed him the box top.

There was the path leading off the left side of the puzzle but there was no sign of a knife.

Robert felt a moment's dizziness and then it was gone.

The puzzle was a print of an oil painting. What he thought had been a knife must simply have been brush strokes used to darken the path.

Handing the box back to his mother, Robert placed the edge piece approximately where it would eventually lie.

Jewel's father swore that he hadn't killed her, that he had never seen the poison found under the bathroom sink. He said he could never have killed his daughter and Robert believed him even if the police didn't.

Her father had no motive. The two of them had a completely normal father-daughter relationship, untainted by thoughts of homicide. Jewel's father had been happy that she and Robert were talking marriage. Robert had experienced him as supportive and kind.

Robert's mother interrupted his thoughts to suggest that Robert work one of the groups at the other end of the table. "I'll finish the frame myself."

His mother must have seen the knife on that edge piece and wanted to keep him far away from it. She was the type of person who thought she always knew what was best. She enjoyed controlling him like some kind of mindless puppet.

Robert picked at the pieces in the group nearest to him. The patterns of green with patches of red seemed to represent the series of rose bushes from the bottom right part of the puzzle.

Here were two pieces that fit together and there was a third. Working on the puzzle did free up the mind, did give the subconscious free rein to search for patterns.

Connections became apparent that were otherwise invisible.

Robert saw a human leg partially hidden by the bush. He quickly fitted together another pair of pieces and then found the piece that bridged the two groups. Another four pieces and the picture was plain: there was a body lying behind the rose bushes.

It was his mother who was dead this time. He could see the blood spilled by the knife dropped on the path. All his life he had imagined being free of her.

Robert wondered if his mother would notice the body that didn't appear on the box cover and realized that she wouldn't. She wasn't the type to be bothered by a guilty conscience, proud of every horrible thing she had ever done, firmly believing she had been right to do it.

She looked up at him. "Don't rest on your laurels. There's still a long way to go."

Robert started looking through a fresh group of pieces, all swirling fogs of blue and white. These were the sky and there was a lot of it.

The sky was often the hardest part of any puzzle. Instead of colors there were shades; instead of pattern there was dissolution. The sky saw everything and gave nothing back.

On the other hand it didn't poison the only girl you'd ever loved just so you wouldn't leave.

Robert felt his pulse race. Now he knew why his mother had decided to visit the future in-laws. At the time Robert thought she was merely trying to scare them off. He should have guessed that she'd never leave something so important to chance.

As if of its own volition, his right finger traced the dead body that only he saw.

She'd killed the love of his life, his only hope for a life. Somehow left alone in the next door neighbor's kitchen she must have added poison to the soda that Jewel drank, probably telling herself that she was acting in Robert's best interest.

No one suspected her. Who, not knowing her, would? A mother should be glad of a son's happiness. Why expect anything else?

Robert ran his eyes over the puzzle, grateful for once that she forced him to do this thing tonight of all nights. He wouldn't have known what she'd done otherwise, wouldn't know what to do.

His father had never helped with puzzles when he still lived here, he drew the line at that. He hadn't understood that
puzzles were more than printed pieces of cardboard.

Puzzles were a way of re-seeing reality.

Robert was beginning to grasp the power and magic of this thing that was no mere entertainment no matter how much his mother corrupted and cheapened it with her ploys for control.

For the first time since he was struck down by the news, Robert felt truly alive. He had tapped into something mystical tonight.

When Pasteur discovered penicillin, when Einstein discovered relativity, when Beethoven discovered his Fifth Symphony, they weren't producing something from nothing. They were using their mind and soul to find the patterns in the pieces that nature had provided.

Robert wiped the sweat from his forehead and began fitting the sky together before his mother noticed that he was just sitting again.

Could Jewel's father prove that he was innocent? Could the evidence be spun like a knife to point at Robert's mother? No, she was too smart for that. She was the master puppeteer.

There was only one option left to him, an option laid out before him in living color. His mother must die for her crime.

Robert focused on working the puzzle again, concentrated on the empty sky so that he could ignore the body hidden beneath the rose bush.

First they would finish the puzzle. He would give his mother that last satisfaction.

Then, while she was basking in her glory, he would retrieve a knife from the kitchen and do what he wished he had done any of a million previous times.

Robert bit back a sob.

If only he had, Jewel would still be alive. They'd be sitting on the couch laughing, imagining their future together.

Instead, he was facing a life alone, racking his brains for the nearest set of rose bushes where he would bury the remains of his past.