Pretty Things

by Janelle Brown

  And then he turns, and flicks the passport over the side of the boat.

  Instinctively, I lurch to catch it. My focus shifts just long enough for Michael to leap forward, quick as a snake, and knock me sideways. My boots lose their grip on the slippery deck and I’m falling, the gun flying out of my hand; and by the time I right myself it’s in Michael’s hand and he has it pointed straight at me.

  He doesn’t even hesitate before pulling the trigger.

  The snow falls in wild spirals, tossed by the currents of the storm. The lake laps greedily at the hull of the boat. The gun goes click.

  Nothing happens. But of course it doesn’t—it isn’t loaded. Why take chances when it didn’t need to be? We were never actually going to kill him.

  Michael looks down at the gun in his hand, a stupid expression on his face. He pulls the trigger again—click—and then once more, panic creasing his face.

  On the third click, Vanessa slams him in the side of the head with the lifeboat oar.

  “Go fuck yourself!” she screams. When he falls, stunned, to the deck, she hits him again, and there’s a sickening crunch that can only be the sound of a cracking skull. She’s still screaming and hitting him—“fuck yourself go fuck yourself”—when I wrestle the oar from her hand and wrap my arms around her chest to stop her from screaming. She shakes in my arms, fighting to break free. She’s soaking wet, and for a moment I think that this is from the melting snow until I realize that no, she’s sweating.

  Blood is pooling along the fiberglass under Michael’s head, staining the snow underneath him pink. We stand there for what feels like forever, as Vanessa’s breath slows; she stops quivering, and stills, and I finally release her. She walks over to Michael and looks down at him. His pale blue eyes stare sightlessly back up at her.

  “Well,” she says softly. “That’s it, then.”

  I run to the side of the boat, and vomit.

  * * *

  —

  Vanessa is the one who takes care of the rest, with a crisp efficiency that shocks me. How does she know how to do all this? The bathrobe that she retrieves from the bedroom closet and ties around Michael’s stiffening body; the heavy boat manuals that she tucks in the robe’s voluminous pockets; the way she knows to push his body off the side, rather than the back, of the deck. “We don’t want him getting stuck in the motor,” she explains flatly.

  At first, Michael’s body floats, the white silk bathrobe wrapped around him like a mummy’s shroud. Snow gathers on his back, which still bobs above the surface of the lake. But then it’s not even a minute before his clothes grow sodden with lake water; and then—just like that—he slips under and is gone.

  I sit shivering on the side of the boat, numb to the snow that is melting on my face, and watch him sink.

  Vanessa mops up the blood with a rag and Windex from the utility closet—it wipes so easily off the fiberglass, no worse than a spilled cocktail—and then tosses it in the water after him, along with the bloody oar and all Michael’s forged documents. Then she wordlessly starts the engine and slowly turns the boat around, and we start motoring back through the storm.

  As we drive away, I look back out at the water once more and think I see something slick and dark floating out there in the infinite blue. A log, maybe. A mysterious creature, risen up from the depths of the lake. A drowned man.

  And then it’s gone.

  I look away, and back toward the shore, and wait to see the lights of Stonehaven.

  Epilogue

  Fifteen Months Later

  SPRING ARRIVES EARLY AT Stonehaven. We throw the windows open on the first day that the temperature tops sixty, let fresh air into Stonehaven’s rooms, chase out the must of another winter. The last crusts of ice are still melting in the shade under the trees, but in the flower beds near the house the first crocuses thrust spikes up toward the sun. One day we wake up and the great lawn, previously brown and matted, has erupted in a carpet of bright green.

  We move cautiously around the house, the four of us, blinking in the clear spring light, still as skittish as fawns around each other. Only one of us is fearless enough to fill the house with shrieks and giggles and wails of disappointment, but she’s only seven months old. Her name’s Judith, but we all call her Daisy; and we dote on her, mother, grifter, and broken brother alike. Daisy looks like a doll with her flaxen hair and her fat pink cheeks and those pellucid blue eyes, the last of which none of us ever comments on, although we all occasionally experience a shiver of discomfort when they fix directly on us.

  I’ve been spending my days going through the rooms of Stonehaven, one by one, documenting the contents of each—this time, with the owner’s permission. Each painting, each chair, each silver spoon and porcelain clock is to be noted, described, photographed, cataloged, and archived. I’m already on my fourth binder. Sometimes I’ll look up and realize that I’ve just spent five hours researching the provenance and history of a Bourbon-era armorial vase, so consumed with cartouche and fleur-de-lis that I forgot to eat lunch.

  So far, after six months of work, I’m on room sixteen out of forty-two. Vanessa and I haven’t discussed what will happen once I’ve finished them all; but I have at least a year to figure it out.

  The job was Vanessa’s suggestion. She came to see me during prison visiting hours, two months before I was released and only a few weeks out from her due date. Her swollen body barely fit in the molded plastic seat of the visiting room chair. She was one of those women whose bodies cling to pregnancy, and every part of her—hair, skin, chest, belly—seemed to be bursting with life. I wondered if she was making up for all those years of fashion-induced starvation.

  “I’m offering you a job as an archivist,” she said, not quite meeting my eyes. “I can’t pay a lot, but I’ll give you room and board and cover your expenses.” She picked at her fingernails, glossy from prenatal vitamins, and smiled nervously at me. “I’m looking into long-term options for Stonehaven. I might donate it to this organization my mom used to support, Mental Health Association in California. They’re interested in starting a school for kids with special needs. Like, you know, Benny?” She flashed a nervous smile at me, and I thought, Oh, so that’s going to be her penance. “Anyway, it’s going to take a while, and in the meantime I’m going to get rid of a lot of the antiques. I need someone to help me figure out what to sell, what to keep, and what to donate.” Another pause. “I figured you’ve probably paid more attention to the contents of that house than anyone has in decades.”

  At first, I wasn’t so sure about this. I’d assumed I’d head back to the East Coast after my release, and see what kind of art world jobs my damaged record might allow. I wanted to get far away from the West Coast and my sordid history here, start over fresh. And it was possible she was just trying to buy my silence. But about what? We both had a lot to lose with exposure.

  The more I thought about it, the more Vanessa’s idea made sense. We were tied together now, she and I; even if I moved four thousand miles away I would never be able to escape that bond. Vanessa was probably my best shot at reclaiming some legitimacy in life. Plus, if I was going to be honest with myself, wasn’t there also a little surge of excitement at the idea of really getting to study Stonehaven up close? To truly learn its secrets after all these years?

  “You trust me not to steal the silver?” I said. “Remember, I’m a convicted felon.”

  She gave me a shocked look, then laughed, a slightly hysterical sound that broke through the cacophony of the visiting room. “I think you’ve already paid your debt to society.”

  * * *

  —

  I arrived back at Stonehaven eight months after my trial and conviction. I’d been sentenced to only fourteen months, thanks to the work of the expensive attorney that Vanessa hired on my behalf (paid for, I’d later learn, with the money we found in Michael’s kitchen). Instead
of a felony, my grand larceny charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. With good behavior and time served, I was back at Stonehaven by November, six weeks after Daisy was born, almost exactly a year since I’d shown up on the same doorstep as Ashley.

  Benny was living here by then, too, helping his sister with the baby. Vanessa had finally talked him into moving out of the Orson Institute and in with her. It was to be a “trial run” at independent living, which so far seemed to be fairly successful, even if the ghost of failure always lingered in the stones: What happens if? But nothing had happened yet, and in the meantime, they were both so careful with each other. Vanessa hovered over Benny constantly, watching as he took his meds, buying him notebooks and fancy pen sets for his drawings. (Mostly, now, he drew Daisy.) He, in turn, was a consummate uncle, content to spend endless hours reading Pat the Bunny and Mr. Silly, drawing on the infinite patience of someone who has spent the last decade of their life just watching bugs crawl.

  They both seemed happy, and honestly, I was happy for them.

  He and I went on a long walk on my first day back, down to the shore—both of us going a little stiff and awkward as we passed the caretaker’s cottage—where we sat watching the boats out on the lake. He seemed a little slower, dulled, not quite the Benny I remembered; and yet something of the teenager I’d known was still there, too, in the way he smiled sideways at me, his neck flushing with embarrassment.

  “I’m surprised to see you here,” I said. “I thought you said you’d never come back.”

  “I didn’t think I would, but someone needs to keep my sister sane so I figured who better to do it than someone who is even less sane than she is?” He picked up a flat stone from the shore and threw it out toward the water, with a schoolboy flick of the wrist that sent it skipping four times before it sank. He turned and smiled awkwardly at me. “Also she promised me that you were going to be here.”

  His smile spoke of heartbreak and loss but also a bit of hope; and just like that I understood the other reason that Vanessa had invited me back here. It wasn’t for my incomparable curatorial knowledge of antiques, or even to buy my silence. I was a lure for her brother. I was there to help glue her family back together.

  Maybe that was to be my penance. If so, I thought maybe I was OK with that.

  “I’m not going to moon over you or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he continued. “I’m not delusional. I mean, I am, but not that way. I don’t expect you to save me, or anything. It’d just be nice to be friends again, you know?”

  “I do.” I thought of the superhero Nina that he had once drawn of me, the one who could slay dragons with her fiery sword. I wondered if maybe I’d finally lived up to the promise of his drawing, and my dragon was currently floating at the bottom of the lake. Or maybe I was the dragon, and I’d slain my worst self; and now that there was nothing left to slay I could finally put the sword down and just be.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, fingering another rock that he’d plucked up from the shore. “I’m sorry that I didn’t stand up to my father when he humiliated you that day. I’m sorry that I let my parents make you feel bad about yourself, and I’m also sorry that I didn’t tell you that I was sorry sooner.”

  “God, Benny, it’s OK. You were a kid,” I said. “I’m sorry that my mom was an opportunistic thief who did terrible things to your parents.”

  “That part wasn’t your fault.”

  “Maybe. But I still need to apologize for a lot more than you ever will.” He gave me a funny look, and I wondered—not for the first time—how much of the rest he suspected. He knows nothing about what you and Michael were up to, Vanessa had told me before I arrived. As far as he’s concerned, Michael just up and vanished on me, and I tracked you down in order to apologize for doubting you. That’s what he wants to believe, so let him.

  I reached out and squeezed his hand, his fingers as long and soft as a child’s. He smiled at me, and squeezed back.

  We sat there quietly for a long time, watching the speedboats, and I thought maybe I could finally be happy, too.

  * * *

  —

  And I still do, although there are nights when I wake up in a sweat, something visceral and cold having risen from my dreams. The feeling of the snow blowing across the bow of a yacht, of boots slipping in a wet slick of blood and ice, of the cold heft of Michael’s body as it slipped into the lake. Of the syrupy blackness of the night; and the adrenaline lift of the storm suddenly clearing long enough to see the distant lights of Stonehaven, a beacon in the dark.

  No one seems to have noticed Michael’s disappearance. Then again, who would? And who would they even know to miss? Lachlan O’Malley? Brian Walsh? Michael Kelly or Ian Kelly or someone else whose name I never learned? His true footprint in the world was kept small by design; this has helped us get away with his death.

  The only person who I know that might be wondering about him is my mother; but I haven’t spoken to her since the day I left her sitting on the porch in the dark. We exchanged just one text, when I informed her that the lease on the bungalow had been terminated and she had thirty days to find herself a new home. You’re going to have to forgive me someday, she replied, almost immediately. Remember that all we have in the end is each other.

  But I’m not so sure about that anymore. Perhaps my mother’s greatest con of all was convincing me that this had ever been true.

  There are days when I am torn with guilt, imagining her living in a cardboard box on skid row, the cancer having returned despite it all; but I know my mother better than that. She is resourceful; she will always find a way. I just don’t want to know what it might be.

  * * *

  —

  Did I mention that Vanessa is a mommy blogger now? She’s gained a quarter million new Instagram followers in the last year, and has started sketching out a branded line of organic-cotton children’s clothes called Daisy-doo. The porch is constantly piled with boxes arriving from her new social media sponsors: eco-friendly diaper companies, makers of artisanal Norwegian handcrafted cribs, and purveyors of pureed superfood pouches. Benny has found his calling as her photographer: He follows her around Stonehaven, shooting mother and child in beatific tableaus that get uploaded to Instagram and cooed over by Vanessa’s voracious flock. Every dirty diaper, every midnight tantrum, is an opportunity for Vanessa to upload motivational platitudes about being in the moment and knowing how to appreciate the lows along with the highs and striving to be the person that your child already believes you are.

  Last week, I noticed that she’d told her fans that Daisy was the progeny of a sperm donor.

  Guys, I realized that I needed to take agency and reach for what was most important to me, instead of waiting for someone to give it to me! I wasn’t going to wait for other people to tell me that I was worthy anymore: I knew I wanted to be a mother and so now I am a mother. I didn’t need a man to define myself.

  The post had 82,098 likes and 698 comments. Go Grrl / You’re an inspiration to all of us mommies / #sostrong / OMG I feel the same / LUV UUUUU.

  Looking at her social media feed, you’d never know that we murdered Daisy’s father and then dumped the body in the lake. But I suppose that’s the point of it all, for Vanessa: to throw herself into the world she wants to inhabit in the hopes of forgetting the one in which she really lives. Who am I to say she’s wrong to try? We all build our own delusions and then live inside them, constructing walls to conveniently hide the things we don’t want to see. Maybe it means that we’re crazy, or maybe it means that we’re monsters, or maybe it’s just that the world we live in now makes it so hard to separate truth from image from dream.

  * * *

  —

  Or maybe, as Vanessa more bluntly puts it, “It’s just a way to pay the bills.”

  * * *

  —

  We’ve spoken about Michael only
once, one night when we’d had a little too much to drink. She and I were sitting in the library—now missing a half-dozen pieces that had been sold to cover expenses (that horrible painting of the prize horse was actually a John Charlton, and brought $18,000 at auction)—and watching Daisy sleep on the baby monitor. Out of the blue, Vanessa reached over and gripped my leg.

  “He was evil,” she said flatly. “He would have killed us both if we hadn’t killed him first. You know that, right? Because we had to do what we did. We had to!”

  I looked down at her hand, the fingernails clipped maternally short now, but still buffed and polished to a shine. But the gun wasn’t loaded, I wanted to say. Maybe we could still have found another way. “Don’t you feel…bad?” I asked, instead.

  “Well, yes! Of course.” Her eyes looked yellow in the flickering firelight. “But I feel good, too, if that makes sense? I feel more…self-assured, I think. Like, I know I can trust my own instincts, finally? Though maybe that’s just the meds that my psychiatrist’s making me take!” A giddy little laugh, an echo of the manic, unpredictable Vanessa that had mostly disappeared since I’d returned. Then she leaned in and whispered: “I do hear his voice sometimes.” When I turned to stare at her, she pulled her hand away from my leg. “But it’s not like Benny’s voices, I swear! It’s like, he’s there as a whisper, trying to get me to doubt myself; and I just ignore him, and he goes away.”

  I wanted to ask her, What does he say? Because I hear him, too, sometimes: his soft, false burr, cutting through my nightmares, whispering bitch, cunt, liar, murderer, nobody. But I was too afraid to know about the dark things that lived inside her head; my own were hard enough to take.