Kith and Kin

by Kris Ripper

  Her minutes as a wandering mystic were over.

  45

  Singer

  77 days with Miles

  They found Emery on the sofa in the living room.

  “Sorry. Felt like I should stay around. Or something.” He rubbed his eyes, more harshly than strictly necessary, and shook his head. “I feel responsible.”

  “For what?” Singer asked, handing him a cup of coffee and sinking down next to Jake in the two-seater.

  “Lisa disappearing. I don’t know. Maybe I pressured her. I was trying to keep it light, keep it fun, it seemed like she’d had so little of that lately.”

  “Well, get in line. You’re at least behind me, Emery.”

  “You’re all narcissists,” Jake mumbled into his coffee. “Lisa left because she wanted to leave. When she wants to come back, she’ll come back.”

  “Thanks for the compassion, Sunshine,” Emery said.

  Jake shrugged. “When Carey ran away from home, he went to Manhattan and stayed there for seven years. And at the time I thought it was mostly my fault. ’Cause he got molested and I’m gay and somehow that’s my fault, that Carey couldn’t look me in the eye or talk to me, and that he flew across the country so he wouldn’t have to. But it was his decision to leave, and his decision to come home.”

  Things never said by Derries, not ever. Singer rested his knuckles against Jake’s forearm.

  “I know you’re right.” Emery’s eyes were deeply shadowed. “But she could go back to them, you know. I was up all night thinking about that.”

  Singer shuddered. He had decidedly not been up all night. Certainly not thinking about Lisa rejoining her cult.

  “I don’t think so,” Jake said. “She likes it here.”

  Jake’s certainty—in the face of so many question marks—was disquieting.

  “How do you know that? That she likes it here?”

  “She left her phone charger.”

  Emery looked every bit as stumped as Singer felt.

  “Listen, when she first got here, she packed everything, every time she left her room. I mean everything. I went in there last night. She cleared out the drawers in the desk for her clothes, you know? So she took them with her, but she unpacked them at some point. That’s kind of a thing.”

  “And her phone charger?”

  “It was probably an accident, but it wouldn’t have happened two or three weeks ago. I’m telling you, she didn’t scrub the room when she went. She didn’t … erase herself. She just went out, like she was planning to come back. So I think she will.”

  Down the hall Miles started making sounds, waking-up sounds. Not crying yet, still waiting for them to arrive. Like any kid. They’d expected sleeping problems, shattering abandonment issues. But they hadn’t wagered on Marie, of course. Miles always seemed to know they’d be there in a minute because for his entire life his grandmother had answered his cries.

  “I’ll grab him.” Jake kissed Singer’s forehead as he stood up.

  “So,” Emery said after a minute. “Jake likes a damsel in distress. Good to know.”

  “Damsel in distress? I thought he was talking like she didn’t need any help at all.”

  “I was referring to you, Singer. You two seem better. Than you were.”

  It was so tempting to think so, but nothing had been resolved. More that it had been put off until some future talk.

  Emery seemed about to say something else—something even more insulting and invasive, probably—when his phone rang. The clumsiness with which he fumbled it out of his jacket, in a pile on the floor with his shoes, somewhat belied his apparent calm.

  “Oh thank god. Lisa? Is that you?”

  Singer accepted the profound relief as answer enough.

  “No, no, not at all, we’re drinking coffee. Where are you? I’ll bring a travel cup.”

  Okay. Okay, then. Singer sank back against the loveseat and allowed himself to worry. Now that he knew she was okay. He let it hit him all at once, a vast wall of self-recrimination and loss.

  “Yeah, pull up Google and text me—something. Coordinates. A town. A road. Farmland? Uh, are you sure? No, no, if there’s a cow, then…”

  A cow? But who cared? She was safe.

  “Is that Lisa?”

  Singer smiled and stood up, kissing Miles’s cheek. When Miles giggled, he did it again. To his surprise, Miles leaned over until Singer took him. And oh god, how right his weight felt in Singer’s arms. He fought back emotion. “It’s her. She’s okay. I mean, she’s okay at the moment.”

  “Good. Okay, Miles, what are we having for breakfast? Should we see what’s here? Maybe we need donuts.” Jake tugged on Miles’s ear and went through to the kitchen.

  “All right, hang out there, I’ll call you when I get in the car. No, it’s Bluetooth. Yes, it’s safe. Give me five minutes and keep your phone on. It doesn’t matter if the battery dies, I’ll find you.”

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Singer said, not sure if he was thanking Emery or Marie’s God or what.

  Miles, for his part, said something emphatic that might have been “thank you” or “donuts” or anything else he’d just heard.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can, and I’ll call you in five. Bye.” Emery stood up. “Okay, so, you guys find a computer and look up farmland, and call me if you have any leads. She said she started walking through the neighborhoods past Frankie’s bookstore and eventually she was on a two-lane road with no sidewalks and then farmland.”

  “Well, we’ll look up a map. You think you can find her?”

  “I can find her.”

  “Are you talking about Lisa?”

  Singer didn’t know when his parents became secret agents, but they’d successfully sneaked up on him a lot in the last twenty-four hours. He turned toward the kitchen doorway. “She called. Emery’s going to pick her up.”

  “Shouldn’t we pick her up?” Dad asked. “She’s our daughter.”

  “She’s an adult, Dad. She called Emery, so Emery’s going.” Singer shot Emery a look and added, “Damsel in distress?”

  “Hardly. Not unless we’ve added clear wireless communication to the fairy tale. Anyway, call me when you find a map. Wait—do you have anything warm she can wear? She said she’s cold.”

  “Here.” Mother went to the hall closet. “Unless you— No, here.” She produced a very old jacket Singer would have sworn had never been in that closet before. Lined leather, but old, dull. Still, he remembered that jacket. It had been Mother’s favorite when they were young.

  “Yes.” He reverently patted it, amused when Miles did the same, then passed it to Emery. “Yes, give her this.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jake stuck his head in from the kitchen. “Here. Don’t forget coffee.”

  “Thanks, Jake. Singer, call me when you figure out where she is.” And Emery was out the door, arm pressing two travel cups to his body while he pulled his phone from his pocket.

  “Where is she?” Dad asked.

  “She’s not sure.” Drive fast, Emery. Singer described it again, and his parents looked at each other.

  “Brentwood,” Mother said. “Though I didn’t know there was still farmland out there. When we were young, all of it was farmland, but now it’s mostly shopping centers and tract housing.”

  “You’re sure?” Brentwood. He thought he might have driven through it once, on the way to somewhere else.

  “You can take Marsh Creek from Clayton all the way out,” Dad agreed. “And that’s where those neighborhoods past the shopping center lead.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” It only took a second to call Emery and verify the direction he was heading.

  Jake pushed through the swinging kitchen door again. “I’m making more coffee, but all we seem to have in the house is bacon. If there are eggs
, I didn’t see them. I can probably scrounge up some bread if anyone wants toast.” He handed Miles a frozen waffle. “Here, kiddo.”

  Dad shook his head. “We’ll go out for something. Just let us get dressed.”

  “I’d like to be here when she gets home,” Mother said to him.

  “Then we’ll have to dress quickly.”

  She shot him a dirty look and walked out the back door.

  Dad stared after her for a moment. “I honestly didn’t mean anything by that.”

  “So even after years of marriage, you still have stupid miscommunications?” Jake said. “Good to know.”

  Hell. Dad raised his eyebrows, then waved and followed Mother to the guesthouse.

  *

  Lisa’s arrival home was anticlimactic. At best.

  “I was only gone a few hours.”

  “Overnight, and we had no idea where, you could have been dead!” Singer clamped his hand over his mouth. “Did I just say that?”

  Lisa yawned. “I’m pretty tired.” She turned to Emery. “Um. So. Thank you for picking me up.”

  “I probably could have given you my phone number sooner. Would that have made a difference? Might have saved you a cold night in farmland.”

  She considered it carefully and shook her head. “No, that was … good. I think. But also, I might be coming down with, I don’t know, schizophrenia or something, so you might have actually saved yourself.”

  “Schizophrenia?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I already called Mom,” Jake said. “She—threatened? promised?—to take you back to that shrink you liked. And I don’t think I’d argue with her if I were you. She’s been a nurse in the ER forever. There’s really no convincing her not to do something, if she feels it’s health-related.”

  “Your mom?”

  Singer nodded. “Cathy held a command center in the living room last night and interrogated all of us about where we thought you’d go. And I’m with Jake. Do what she says and everything will be fine.”

  “Huh. That’s funny, Singer. You found people who are—nothing like our parents.”

  God, that was a whole other ball of wax.

  “They’re probably gonna be home any second, if you want to escape. They said they’d bring breakfast.”

  Lisa slowly shook her head. “No. Breakfast sounds good. And I feel better. I kind of freaked out, and thought I was dying. And then I didn’t. And I’m … okay with that.”

  Okay with not dying. Singer wanted to ask more, wanted to know what that meant, and how long she’d been okay with dying, and how he didn’t even notice.

  Then Miles started waving his hands angrily at Lisa, and she frowned and bent down to see him.

  “What?”

  “Arguh marga fubba!”

  “I think he’s mad ’cause he hasn’t seen you lately,” Jake translated. “You say, ‘Hi, Aunt Lisa.’”

  Miles waved his hands and cursed. At least, that’s what it sounded like.

  “Oh. Uh.” Lisa tentatively put out her arms. “Ugh, Miles, you are way heavier than you look.”

  Miles resumed talking to Lisa, but not as angrily.

  “Oh yeah?” she asked, glancing at Singer.

  “Bubba argh dadadadada.”

  “Did he just say ‘dada’?”

  “Alice swears he has been, but I don’t buy it,” Jake said. “I’m gonna text everyone, let them know you’re okay.”

  “Everyone?”

  Then Mother and Dad walked in, with bags from the store, and Singer watched them catch sight of Lisa, Lisa and Miles, and maybe they weren’t the greatest parents, but both of them looked so utterly exhausted, so viscerally relieved by her presence, that he started forgiving them. A very little bit.

  “Well, I’m glad you decided to come home,” Mother said, clearly trying too hard.

  Lisa met his eyes as she turned, and he thought: a very little bit. But it was enough.

  46

  Lisa

  1 day since finding grace

  She was tired. Very, very tired. Not too tired to say yes when Emery offered—bashfully—his apartment to her.

  “I can sleep on the futon. It’s small, but it’s … quiet.”

  Meaning not full of parents and relatives. Yes.

  She was too exhausted to do more than snap her seatbelt shut before she fell asleep against the window.

  “We’re here. Lisa?”

  “’Kay,” she murmured.

  Emery’s apartment was one big room with a loft bed and a kitchen in what must have once been a closet. He hadn’t been expecting company: clothes were draped over both kitchen chairs, and a trunk stood open, spilling what appeared to be coils of rope into the room, as if he’d set them aside while digging for something else.

  “It’s not much, but it’s better than sharing a house with a bunch of people, which is what I can actually afford. Every time I’m taking pictures at a wedding I remind myself that this is what I’m paying for.”

  “Privacy?”

  “And the ability to have a guest over.”

  She blushed. “Oh.” She looked around, mostly to keep from looking at Emery. “What’s all this?”

  “Bondage gear. I had a shoot last weekend for a local dominatrix.”

  “Wow.” Lisa didn’t touch, but just staring was sort of enough.

  “Sometimes I like that sort of thing, but it’s not a deal breaker. And I can take you home if that makes you uncomfortable.”

  It took a minute.

  “You mean, not for photo shoots?”

  “Yeah.”

  She thought about all those sketches in Alice’s studio.

  “Is this where Alice did her drawings?”

  Emery’s eyes lit. “Wait, did you see those? Did you like them? And no, that was in this gorgeous playroom that I can’t even describe, but it was amazing. I wish I had something like that. But seriously, did you like the sketches?”

  If there was a neutral way to answer that question, Lisa didn’t know what it was. “They were very nice.” Then she looked up and both of them laughed. “I don’t honestly know what to say. Alice’s drawings were incredible, and you were very— There was a drawing of you, which was very compelling. But I don’t know anything about, uh, that kind of thing. Before the farm I just did what everyone else did, and it was mostly pretty lousy.”

  “In a sense, I lucked out.” He sat down on the futon. “I managed to skip a lot of the lousy. I was modeling, and you kind of knew there were … other options. I did some fetish shoots, but I wanted to get behind the camera more.”

  “That didn’t bother you?”

  “People making me look sexy and taking my picture? Not so much.”

  She rolled her eyes. This was familiar, like banter was a language she was only a little bit rusty speaking. “How old were you?”

  “Eighteen, nineteen. I was modeling as a teenager, not glamorous modeling, really bargain basement stuff. But I’d mess around taking pictures on my crummy little point-and-shoot, and one of the photographers—who was also not exactly thrilled to be doing bargain basement work—showed me how to use a real camera. And the rest is history.”

  “Is that what you want to do? Career-wise?”

  “I want to do everything. I love tattooing. I love doing art on skin, it’s a crazy rush when it’s good.”

  “Huh.” She leaned against the ladder to the loft. It was built-in, sturdy. Could you use the ropes over there to tie someone to a ladder like this? Probably. Not that she was volunteering.

  Then again, not that she wasn’t.

  “I don’t have any tattoos,” she said, because it felt like it was her turn.

  “I can get you a deal if you want one.”

  “I’ll, you know, keep that in mind.”

&nbs
p; “So. You want to go to sleep?”

  She did. She also didn’t. “I’m not sure. I don’t really want to stop talking to you.”

  “That’s good. I mean, I don’t really want to stop talking to you, either.”

  She shot him a look. “I told you, I’m fucked up.”

  “I’m not worried about that.”

  “What’re you worried about?”

  He held her gaze for a long second, like he wasn’t quite sure if he should answer. “I worry that you’ve only known intimacy as a somewhat disregarded by-product of very heteronormative sex, and that you think that’s what I’m interested in. I’m not. At all.”

  “You don’t want to have sex with me?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I would like to know you better. Deeper. More intimately. Whether or not sex is ever a part of that.”

  What on earth did that mean? The confusion must have shown on her face, because Emery just kind of sighed.

  “Or maybe I’ve jumped the gun. I could have waited to mention it.”

  “No. No, I’m done playing games. I don’t know what you want from me, exactly, but I’m definitely done trying to guess what’s going on in other people’s heads. So, I don’t know, tell me what that means. Tell me about a time you had this intimacy thing, without sex. ’Cause I don’t get that. At all.”

  “Will you sit? Not that I mind you standing, but I’m going to get a crick in my neck.”

  She could sit. She could, she found, do a little bit better than that. “I might fall asleep,” she warned him, as she lay her head back against the futon to look at him. “You can get closer. I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Good. I’m glad. Okay. So, the boy in Alice’s sketches? He’s a good example. Because restraining someone that vulnerable is a totally intimate experience, but I would never have sex with him.”

  “Why?” She yawned.

  “Aw, he’s sweet, but he’s taken twice over. I’m surprised they let me play with him, though I think there was some sort of Derrie alchemy involved in that.”

  “Derrie alchemy’s a good term for a lot of unexplainable things.” Like me, right now, sitting here with you. “And that’s intimate?”