I Mean You No Harm

by Beth Castrodale

  Now, it was time to let Bette go to bed. Layla wanted to hit the sack herself.

  “Well,” she slapped her hands to her thighs, “I guess we should call it a night.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Bette palmed the edges of the beanbag chair, ready to raise herself up. “I’ll show you to your room, and the facilities.”

  She lurched up then fell back, looking trapped in the beanbag, like a ball in a mitt. She gripped the edges and tried again, falling back once more.

  Layla stepped toward Bette. “Let me give you a hand.”

  The “right way” to help someone up was etched into Layla’s mind from the days of taking care of her Grandma Alice: get up close, feet planted, knees bent; encircle with your arms and—one, two, three—lift with your legs.

  The low-slung beanbag made the right way impossible. Layla simply extended her hand, and Bette took it.

  “One, two, three—up.”

  With the up, Layla pulled Bette to her feet. Now, Bette swayed, her eyes wide with panic, maybe fear.

  Layla stepped closer, wrapped her free arm around Bette—this near-stranger, her half-sister, someone who, Layla sensed, wasn’t big on hugging, who appreciated a generous margin of personal space. Still, Bette didn’t fight her.

  Soon, she stopped swaying, seemed steady on her feet, but Layla kept hold of her.

  “I think you should listen to Marla,” Layla said. “I think you should wait on making this trip. Wait until you feel stronger, better.”

  Bette’s eyes narrowed into a glare. “I need to go now. I can’t wait.”

  A theory surfaced from the stew of thoughts and impressions that had troubled Layla since her time at the funeral home: Bette was hiding something from Marla, Jake, and her, Layla. And the something had to do with this trip, which was about more than exchanging one set of possessions for another.

  “Why can’t you wait?”

  Bette pushed away from Layla. “Because I don’t want to pass up on this deal for Jake. And I’m really feeling better, trust me. You should have seen me just a day or so ago.”

  Layla stepped back, a small attempt at deference, respect. “Let me go with you.”

  Bette flashed her old smile-smirk: You’re full of shit. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “I’m not saying you do. Honestly, Bette? I’d be doing this for myself. I could use a little getaway.”

  What she didn’t say was that she had all the time in the world for a road trip. Monday morning, no one would be expecting her at the reception desk of Kline and Cole Insurance. No one was waiting for any of the paintings that were taking shape on her easel or in her mind, and she’d already made her submission for the juried exhibit.

  “Really?”

  “Really. I got a lot of things on my mind, not just the stuff we talked about. Maybe I could work some of them out on the road.”

  Bette raised an eyebrow, as if to say, No shit? “Well, I’m about as far from a shrink as you can get. But if you wanna talk any of that stuff over on the road, I’ll be all ears.”

  “I just might take you up on that,” Layla said.

  Chapter 3

  Post-Funeral Reception,

  La Famiglia Restaurant

  No alcohol before five; moderation thereafter. Layla had started observing this rule years before, when she’d been on constant call as a caretaker for her Grandma Alice. Now, two-plus hours before five, she was halfway through her second shiraz and looking longingly toward the bar.

  No.

  Although she’d be getting a ride back to Bette’s place, Layla couldn’t get drunk, or even tipsy. She couldn’t risk laying into Bette about their clusterfuck of a road trip with Vic: a topic she’d vowed to never bring up. She couldn’t risk the temptation of that velvet box of money, which she knew she’d grab at the first opportunity, if soused enough.

  On the plus side of the wine, the mild buzz of it had calmed Layla, let her study each male face in the dim, red-carpeted function room with less apprehension than she’d felt at the wake or the graveside service. Standing in a corner and mostly ignored, she kept glancing from the entrance to the guests lined up at the bar, to those helping themselves to the buffet of Vic’s favorites (fried chicken, steak tartare, fettuccine Alfredo, coconut cream pie), to those seated at the banquet tables. Still no matches with the drawing.

  Her eye caught on Bette, who’d been making the rounds of the banquet tables, beer in hand. Now, she was standing by the most distant table, listening as one of the guests seated there—a forty-something woman in dark purple—seemed to be telling an amusing story, smiling and gesturing as she spoke. At some point, she beckoned Bette closer and whispered something in her ear. Bette took in the words, then threw her head back and laughed: a full-throated, unembarrassed laugh that cut through the other noise in the room.

  If Layla had seen just this moment of Bette’s life, or known her only from their talk in the attic, or from that road trip all those years ago, she might have had trouble imagining her crying. Bette seemed so tough, so self-possessed. Maybe this was why that moment at the graveside service had made Layla so uncomfortable.

  During the service, she’d sat to Bette’s right, directly in front of the grave and the casket piled with flowers. There weren’t any eulogies, just prayers from a priest. And through most of them, Bette kept her security-guard look, as if unmoved. Then, as the priest read the Twenty-Third Psalm, Bette’s shoulders started shaking. She lowered her head and sniffled, brought a hand to her mouth.

  Had the psalm done it? Or just some thought or memory that had popped into Bette’s mind? She had years of them to draw on.

  A tissue emerged from Bette’s left, from Marla. And Layla, feeling the need to do something, patted Bette’s leg, then drew her hand away, sensing that she was invading Bette’s privacy. Whatever Vic had meant to Bette, whatever the particular nature of her grief, that territory would remain forever foreign to Layla, and unreachable—even if Bette were to describe its every detail.

  Layla knew she’d never grieve for Vic the way she’d grieved for her mom. Or for her grandparents, who for years had been a daily, caring presence in her life. For her, Vic represented mostly absence, absence that his death simply made permanent.

  Still, until she heard that he’d died, part of her—an infinitesimally small and illogical part of her—imagined there might yet be a chance to form a connection to him, even a small one: maybe just a phone conversation that got beyond brief, polite updates. But she never worked up the courage to call him, and now the last chance for that had passed. Maybe, for her, the loss of that chance was all that grief would ever amount to, where Vic was concerned.

  Watching Bette now, Layla thought, Be happy that she has reasons to miss Vic. Be happy that she looks better than she did yesterday.

  Today, Bette was steady on her feet, even in heels. They didn’t appear to hobble her, even at the cemetery, when she made her way along the grassy, uneven edge of Vic’s grave to dump the first, ceremonial shovel of dirt onto his casket. It was that sure-footedness, maybe—or Bette’s heft of the shovel, or the way she chucked it back into the ground, or the bright sky-blue of her dress—that made Layla think that Bette had emerged from whatever illness had taken hold of her.

  Layla’s phone buzzed in her purse: once, then again. Nothing urgent, surely, or even that interesting. Still, she needed a break from this place. She downed the last of her shiraz and exited the restaurant, heading just far enough down the sidewalk to get past a cluster of smokers. Then she checked her texts.

  Message 1: from her cellular provider—the monthly notice of her phone bill, and one more hit to her bank account.

  Message 2: from Unknown.

  She tapped the text, even as fear rolled through her.

  Whither thou goest …

  That’s all it said. The start of a Bible verse, as Layla r
ecalled. What was the rest of it?

  I will go? I shall go?

  On impulse, she glanced all around, though she didn’t know who to look for. She didn’t have a drawing of the person who’d started sending her the mysterious packages, packages with disturbing contents: a violation of one of her paintings, trinkets related to musicals, faux silk thongs. Unknown was as good a name for him—it was almost certainly a him—as any. But was he really the source of this message? He’d never texted, or called, her in the months since the packages started arriving.

  Then again, he might be upping his game. Maybe her impulse to look over her shoulder was warranted. Maybe he knew she was on the road. Maybe he knew she was here.

  Layla glanced around once again, at the smokers making small talk and laughing, at guests entering and exiting the restaurant, at people passing by in cars. None of them seemed to be paying any attention to her. Yet, being out in the open felt uncomfortable now, and she had to pee.

  Inside, as she rushed toward the ladies’ room, Layla almost ran into Bette, who gave her the same smile she’d turned on that table of guests.

  “I thought you might have left us.”

  “Nah. I just wanted to get some air.”

  Bette’s smile faded. “You okay?”

  Layla was glad she’d stopped at shiraz number two. Otherwise, she might have given Bette more of an earful than she’d have liked, especially on the day of her father’s funeral.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. That little break was just what I needed.”

  Bette didn’t look convinced. “Maybe what you need is to go home, get back to your life. I’ll be fine. Really.”

  Layla wanted to believe this, and given the apparent improvement in Bette, it was quite possibly true. But Layla didn’t want to be alone right now. The road trip, and the security of having Bette at her side, might calm her and clear her head. And maybe help her think through what else she might do about the weird packages, including figuring out who was sending them.

  Then there was the money from Vic to consider.

  “My heart’s kind of set on a road trip.”

  “All right. I won’t try to talk you out of it.”

  Something caught Bette’s eye, something behind Layla. Layla turned to follow Bette’s gaze, to the lawyerly-looking man Layla had first spotted at the wake. She hadn’t seen him at the graveside service. Now, he was weaving past small groups of guests and heading toward the exit. He waved at Bette, blew her a kiss, and mouthed what looked like Bon voyage. Then he was gone.

  “Uncle Wes,” Bette explained.

  “Your mom’s brother?”

  “No. He’s a friend uncle, not a real uncle. A friend of my father’s. From the good old days, not the bad ones.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I would have introduced you, but as you can see, he’s in a hurry. He’s hitting the road, too.”

  “To where?”

  “Don’t know. But I’m sure it’s related to his work. He’s always traveling for work.”

  Whatever his work was, Layla decided not to ask.

  Chapter 4

  Space Aliens and

  Other Inspirations

  One made toast in the kitchen.

  Another ran the upright Hoover—battered but beloved by Grandma Alice—in Layla’s bedroom, releasing the usual burned-rubber smell.

  Still another stretched out in her grandpa’s old recliner, cuddling a swaddled, unknown infant.

  These were just a few of the many aliens who now and then appeared in Layla’s dreams, since her grandmother’s death.

  Always, she encountered them one at a time. Always, she walked in on something they were in the middle of doing: banal, homey things. Their reaction to her—if it could be called a reaction—never went beyond the blinking of their almond eyes, huge and glistening: the eyes of nearly every central-casting space alien. Just as standard-issue as their large bald heads.

  Their mouths, tiny slits, never moved. Their clothes, when they wore them, offered the only suggestion of gender—house dresses and sweaters, like her grandmother’s; flannel shirts and corduroy trousers, like her grandfather’s.

  Always, Layla had the urge to say, What the hell are you doing here? or Get out of my house!

  But something about the aliens’ black, staring eyes never failed to sap her anger. They seemed to suggest, I have a right to exist, just as you do.

  The previous night, for the first time, the dream scenes extended beyond Layla’s house, which she once shared with her grandparents. Now, lying in Bette’s guest bedroom in the early-morning dimness, she could recall just one scene clearly: a naked alien gently lowering Vic’s casket into his grave, just as a cemetery worker had done the day before.

  “They’re trying to tell you something,” her friend Kiki had insisted, months earlier, after Layla had first told her of the dreams. “You need to pay attention.”

  Layla didn’t have the heart to tell Kiki that dreams-as-messages theories fit squarely into the Horseshit drawer in her mind, right alongside horoscope forecasts, claims about Ouija boards and smudge sticks, and other occultish bunk.

  “Do they ever try to abduct you?” Kiki asked.

  “No. They actually seem like they’re trying to take care of me, or somebody.”

  With this, Kiki grasped both of Layla’s hands. “They’re telling you what I’ve been telling you, for ages: you need to take better care of yourself.”

  Kiki would be pleased by how Layla felt right now: rested. Despite the dreams of aliens, despite lying in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room, she’d slept better than she had in months. Before drifting off, Layla had been comforted by the rush of water through pipes, by the murmur of voices down the hall, and she’d never missed—or even thought of—the “self-care” measure she’d taken back home, since the packages started arriving: the hammer she’d hidden under her bed.

  Being here, at Bette’s, she realized that what she did miss was the presence of others, of family: in particular, her Grandma Alice and Grandpa Roy. She’d lived with them since toddlerhood, in the same house they’d once shared with her mother, Sara. In Layla’s mind, that house was still theirs, though she was now its sole occupant, and had been for years. She’d never quite forgiven herself that, unlike Roy, Alice hadn’t lived out her final days there.

  Six years ago, not long after Roy’s death, Alice’s memory had taken a slide that felt prompted by the loss. Layla had tried to keep her in the home they shared, getting her to doctors’ appointments and generally dealing with one Alice-related crisis after another. She’d burned through her vacation days and sick time, and once her absences had exceeded her paid time off, she’d gotten a talking-to from her boss and had never gotten back on his good side.

  It had felt like the only thing to do was to place Alice in a nursing home, and that’s what Layla had done. But within a few weeks of being admitted to Pondview Manor, Alice died. Despite reassurances from Kiki and other friends, Layla couldn’t escape the feeling that it had been the move to Pondview that had done her grandmother in, this uprooting from the place where Alice had set up housekeeping as a young bride, more than fifty years before. Where she and Grandpa Roy had raised first their daughter and then Layla. Alice—or, rather, Layla—had traded that home for a bed in front of a constantly playing television, in a yellowed room where no amount of disinfectant could banish the smells of vomit and piss. A room that was the finest that Medicaid could buy and also a devil’s bargain, one that Layla had taken on in the belief that she had no other choice.

  Now, she couldn’t help but think that that belief had been a form of denial, and that the move to Pondview Manor had served no one but herself. She felt she’d turned her back on the woman who had raised her—not just competently but with love and dedication, when there truly had been no other choice.

  Since Alice’s death,
one memory of her returned again and again to Layla, from the time just before the move to the nursing home. By then, Alice was sleeping through most of each day, in a bed that one of the home-care workers had helped Layla move downstairs, into the living room. Even Alice’s breakfast O.J., one of the few things that might perk her up, had mostly stopped doing the trick.

  It had gotten so that Layla would approach Alice’s sleeping form, orange juice in hand, and call, “Grandma?” In return, Alice would wince, or turn her head away, close her eyes, leaving Layla to set the glass on the nightstand. There, the juice would warm until she tossed it out.

  But one morning, Layla walked in to find Alice sitting up on propped pillows, smiling.

  “Sara!” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  It wasn’t the first time Alice had called her Sara, but Layla had never gotten used to it. The same, sickening wave rolled through her, mingling the grief of two losses: of her mother and, now, of Alice.

  “Good morning.”

  It was all Layla could bring herself to say. She never corrected this error of her grandmother’s—if, in fact, it could be called an error in the world Alice had come to inhabit. Given how much Layla looked like her mother, it was all the more understandable.

  Layla handed Alice her orange juice. Then, wanting to take advantage of her grandma’s alertness, she pulled up a chair and took a seat.

  Alice drained the glass quickly and set it on the nightstand. “Delicious!”

  Turning her attention to Layla, she smiled once more, but with an edge of sadness. “I’ve been wondering where you’d gone. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.”

  Layla’s eyes blurred with tears.

  “Don’t cry, darling. Please.” Alice extended her hand, and Layla took it.

  “That’s better now, isn’t it?”

  Layla nodded, unable to speak.

  “Now, you have to promise me something, Sara.” Alice tightened her hold on Layla’s hand. “You have to promise you’ll stay this time.”