by Kim Savage
I get you, Temple. I get you.
A siren starts and I jump, falling forward slightly, and my fingers press the drawer bottom. It springs back against my fingertips, and a false bottom pops up. I slip my fingernails underneath as the front door slams shut.
“Vivi!” you call from the front door, urgent. You want me. I wait until your calls move upstairs and into my bedroom before I slip out of the office and onto the parlor couch, pretending to be asleep.
* * *
Of course you like cemeteries.
I suppose a girl whose best friend disappeared when she was nine years old might be hung up on the possibility of death. I will give you this. But chilling at King’s Chapel Burying Ground as the sun goes down has to be among the creepier things I’ve done (and that’s saying a lot). It’s the oldest cemetery in Boston, and the kind of place that likes to remind you that you, too, are going to die, its gravestones carved with winged death’s-heads flying to heaven, and hourglasses with shifting sands.
You lie on the grave of Joseph Tapping. It’s carved with a face-off between a bearded Father Time and Death. Your knees are bent, because in olden times people were short, or maybe just the graves were. It’s not a nice thought.
“I guess old Joseph Tapping wanted more time?” I say.
Your hands are folded behind your head and your elbows point outward and you look uniquely relaxed. I can’t bring myself to lie on a grave, so I lean against one, and it is ridiculous that no one’s kicking us out for disrespecting this historic place, but this seems to be a theme with you, a girl who defies correction in any form.
“Hmm?”
“Father Time and the skeleton facing off. You know: the struggle between life and death?”
“I never thought about it.”
“Temple, why are we here?”
“Because when my parents ask where we were and you feel the overwhelming need to be truthful, you will tell them we went to an ancient graveyard, and they will be completely freaked out.”
She really believes I am a dork. “You want to freak them out.”
“I do. And thank you in advance for that,” you say, and, out of nowhere, “I’m not afraid of dying.”
This surprises me less than the fact that we are hanging out at a cemetery. “Huh.”
“It’s different for you, I suppose,” you say.
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it,” I say.
“Right you are. Henry and Clarissa’s mandate: gotta practice not-remembering.” You smile at the sky, and this makes me smile. A normal sixteen-year-old would be tiptoeing around my special status, but you’re so funny about it, and then so sarcastic about your parents’ warped plan, which smacks of self-preservation (which, as long as it works for me, whatev).
If only I didn’t have to act like mousy Vivienne, you and I would take on the world.
“What are you thinking about?” you ask, but you don’t really want to know, because it’s that drawer with its false bottom.
I go with innocent and stupid. “How life is short and we should make the most of it.”
“Sounds like you got the message. Do you know what I’m skipping right now?”
“I knew you had to be skipping something to have dragged me here. Cello?”
“Wrong.”
“Fencing?”
“That’s tomorrow.”
“Math Team?”
“Nothing. The answer’s nothing. Because I quit French Club, which is what this hour is—was—dedicated to. My parents don’t know, and I’m not telling them. In fact, I’m going to keep quitting things until they find out. And when that happens, it’s going to be epic.”
Oh, Temple. You rebel by quitting “extracurriculars” and, well, yes: stealing poems and Tindering, and taking the occasional party drug. I rebelled by telling Momma’s boyfriends I had bugs “down there” so they would leave me alone. Still, we are cut from one cloth, and even if you think I’m bland Vivi, you also know we are the same, somewhere deep and sweet.
You pat the ground next to me. “Sit.”
I obey.
“Do you remember how we used to tell people we were triplets, but we ate our sister in the womb?” you ask.
I flutter-blink before answering. “Yeah, of course. It’s so funny you remember that.”
“We were impossible. We refused to be apart, remember? We had to wear the same color to school, and chalk our hair, and bring the same exact snacks in our lunch boxes. For the whole month. My mother was a bitch about it, but your mother was sooo patient. I’m not making you sad talking about your mom, am I?”
“No,” I say, burying my head in my knees.
“I can tell you have a hole inside, where your mother was. And I’m sorry for that. I’m really, really sorry.”
You don’t even know, Temple Lovecraft.
But you do know, because you rise and hug me. “I know I’m awkward,” you say into my hair. “I say awkward, awful things. It’s just—”
You pull away. Don’t pull away, not yet. Blood pumping to the farther parts. Heat.
“I always wished I had your mom instead of mine. She laughed at everything we did; she didn’t freak about anything.”
I press my lips together in a pained smile. This would pain Vivi, and it pains me.
“Like that time after school when she let us butter the cat.”
Whose cat? My cat? The Lovecrafts’ cat? Did they have a cat? Don’t panic.
You shake your head slowly. “So wrong and so awesome. It was almost better than the time she let us use your bike air pump to blow up tomatoes. It was spectacular! Little seeds in our hair and on our clothes. We called it our ‘science homework.’ I still have the urge to explode a tomato sometimes.”
I force a grunt that could mean anything.
“Oh my God. Remember spying on the couple who lived two doors down? They always had their shades open and you could see right in from my window seat on the second floor? They were nudists, basically!”
“Basically.”
“We were terrors. Remember how mad your dad got when we made signs saying ‘Sorry for the damage to your car’ and left them on cars parked on Comm Ave.?”
Remember? Remember? I do not remember, and I cannot pretend to remember, because I never did anything like this. I’ve been a working girl my whole life. My after-school activities consisted of stalking cars at stoplights wearing an orange vest and begging for change in my pail marked FOR THE CHILDREN. My version of spying involved hanging around ATMs watching people key in their pins and memorizing them for later when I stole the cards. I did my actual science homework lying across hotel room bedspreads waiting for online “dates” to arrive. I did not have leisure time to do Stupid Kid Stuff. Period. And right about now I’m feeling pretty bad about it.
“We were crazy,” I say. It sounds lame. I am lame. Maybe I’m reminding you how lame Vivi actually was. This afternoon is going wrong in so many directions I’ve lost track, and man, it’s getting dark in this cemetery. I suddenly stand, because this walk down memory lane and these opportunities for getting caught are bugging me out. “I’m super cold.”
You stand too, brushing off your back and your jeans. A leaf is caught in your hair, and I want so badly to pluck it out, but it seems intimate and wrong, because so far, you have done the touching.
“I’m never cold. Or I feel nothing. I think that’s changing, though.” You dissolve into laughter. “That sounded like a seriously crappy song lyric.”
I smile. “I get it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
We stroll through the lines of crumbling graves, taking our time, safe to say what we want among the dead forgotten.
“I lied before,” you say. “We’re not here just because I like to freak my parents out. I like cemeteries because they remind me that I’m mortal. That I have to die like every other person. Memento mori.”
“So slow down and enjoy,” I say.
“Something li
ke that,” you say.
“Memento mori. It’s our new motto,” I say, liking the way us having a motto sounds.
You stop at the gate and face me. Behind you, people rush to catch the train, on a different track than us, in a different world, operating at a different speed.
“But it doesn’t work for you. I would think you’d want to rush forward with your life now that things are better.”
I know exactly what to say. Thank you, gods, for giving me this chance to be the one to do the touching. I move your hair over your shoulder. “Actually, it’s totally the opposite. I’m appreciating everything I have now so much more.” For this moment, I let myself get lost in the things I wish to see, the clear eyes and the pillowy lips and the doll cheeks, and forget the false desk drawer that holds what I do not.
* * *
A moment is an exact point in time and by definition it does not last.
I tell myself this as I stand, paralyzed, at the door to Mr. Lovecraft’s office, hours after Mr. Lovecraft has left for work, Temple has gone to school, and Mrs. Lovecraft drifted away on vague errands. The secret drawer calls to me, and I dread what it might contain. Memento mori. Slow down and enjoy, Jo. Don’t be in a rush to see things that could change everything.
I have an actual excuse that has nothing to do with my fear of what’s in that envelope. There is Slade, inexplicably awake and parked outside the window of Mr. Lovecraft’s office. His SUV sits at the curb, running. Because the dummy can’t find one of the Lovecrafts’ chargers, he’s destroying the ozone layer so he can argue with his girlfriend. He pops a vein as he yells and this will not end well, and it will not end soon, and is seemingly worth losing his sleep over. Across the Common, a meter maid tickets cars. It will take her a while to reach Slade, but she will reach him, and this fight is a doozy, one that means plenty of hate-sex later.
The good con isn’t afraid of information. Also: the good con manages the unexpected.
I drop to my knees and crawl to the office window, catching the cord to the blinds and easing them closed an inch. It is a lightless afternoon made darker by all this wood. Don’t notice the shades have closed partway, Slade, don’t look. Focus on saying cruel things to your girlfriend. My fingers press the false bottom of the drawer and its floor pops. I place the false bottom aside.
Inside is a yellow envelope tied with red string.
A honk, a terrible, endless blast. I lift a slat and peek through. Slade has dropped his head over the steering wheel and smacked the horn. This is the end of his fight or added drama. Either way, my time is short. A stamp in the corner reads Forlizzi & Associates Private Detective Agency.
Leave it. Replace the false floor, close the drawer, and don’t look back.
Except I am alone now, and I don’t have to be Vivi. I can be Jo, whose sticky fingers would be in that envelope already. Open the envelope, Jo.
Mr. Lovecraft’s trinkets glare at me. A brass mastiff, a helicopter paperweight, and a Tom Brady bobblehead, things fondled by him and dusted by the cleaners. Ungrateful girl, they say. Untrusting.
The envelope, Jo.
I unwind the string from the envelope and dump the contents on the desk.
Papers slip and fall from my fingers, clumsy from shock. I am looking at my life.
* * *
On the desk, I feather a packet of research on Jolene Chastain. More accurately, on Patrice Chastain. Here we have arrest records. Here we have citations for vagrancy. For loitering. For panhandling. Mug shots. Momma, her hair oily, eyes glassed. Not a trail of Jolene, not a footprint, because I am a minor, but that doesn’t make a difference. The Lovecrafts know who I am.
My knees shake, and from the sound of it, a meter maid is knocking on Slade’s window. I gather the papers in my arms and drop to the floor, crawling to lean against the wall, the world beyond my eyes gone white and staticky. At the edges of the fuzz I hear Slade, muffled arguing that echoes from miles away. The fuzz recedes, but the electricity remains. Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft suspected I wasn’t Vivienne Weir and paid someone to confirm it. For weeks, they’ve only been pretending that I’m her.
My cheeks drop, cold with horror.
If they know I’m not Vivienne Weir, do you know, too?
A car door slams. I gather the papers and jam everything back into the drawer, messy, but there’s no time to escape, because Slade probably runs up stairs as part of his regular training, though he will be dejected and maybe slower. Sitting in Mr. Lovecraft’s chair would not be cool, so I stand, staring out the half-closed blinds as though it is natural and the view is fascinating. I feel Slade stop in the door frame. He wants to say something, but he senses I am having a moment and is afraid to interrupt.
“Miss Weir?” he says.
“Yes, Slade?” I reply, tilting to give him even more of my back.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“I should ask you the same. How come you’re awake?”
He shifts, hands jammed in pockets. “Sometimes I have business. Things I need to stay awake for.” He is wondering how much I saw or heard, and how much of that I am willing to share with the Lovecrafts. There has to be some kind of behavior clause people like the Lovecrafts make people like Slade sign.
I know what I must do. I’ve seen him run nonsense errands for you more than once—a Frappuccino, a run to the Apple store to fix your cracked screen. “Actually, I’m not okay. I really need an Advil. The Lovecrafts don’t have any in their medicine cabinet. Could you run to the CVS on Newbury for me?”
“You want me to go for you?” he asks, caveman-style.
“I’d go, but the Lovecrafts don’t want me going out alone. For a while, I guess. Until everything dies down.”
He rests his knuckles on his wide hips and straightens to his full height. “That’s not going to work, Miss Weir. You can’t leave, and I can’t leave, either. Not unless there’s a specific change in protocol.”
“Protocol?”
“Yeah.”
“How long did you serve before you started doing private security?”
Slade shuffles his feet. “I went Blackwater before I went PSD after ten months in Iraq.”
He stares at those shuffling feet as he says this, and although I have loads of respect for our soldiers, I do not have time to ask Slade to explain his acronyms, or to be sensitive to his reasons for not managing to stay in the army. Because I now know the Lovecrafts aren’t paying him to protect me. They’re paying him to keep me here. And the time has come to leave.
“Okay, then I think I’ll go lie down.”
I grab a canvas shopping bag on my way up the stairs, groping the rail like I’m blinded by a headache. When I reach the top, I peek down. Slade is hammering at his phone, planning his makeup sex. And if I’m right, Mrs. Lovecraft is going to walk through that door anytime during the next hour. I slam my bedroom door for Slade’s benefit and head straight down to Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft’s bedroom, a pretty place of calm greens and creams. This is one of my favorite rooms in the whole house, the bedroom Wolf and I would have if we were really a couple, but there is no time for daydreaming and I have a cruise to pack for. The Vendeem leaves Boston Harbor every Wednesday from May through August for Montreal. I have known this since I became Vivi Weir, and this is my escape. The tiny safe in this room is no use to me, since I ran out of time to learn the code. I take what I can take, which is limited to Clarissa’s pearls, the tacky Rolex Mr. Lovecraft never wears, and a wad of Clarissa’s “mad money” she keeps stuffed in her bra drawer. I head back upstairs to your room. It is dark and I leave it dark, ashamed to let your things see me. You keep your new laptop on the desk you never use. It’s worth at least $899. I slip it in the sack, which sucks for this purpose, and it also sucks for holding a tennis racket, but I throw it in anyway. Your diamond earrings are pushed through a ceramic jewelry tree. I whisper “I’m sorry” as I unscrew the backs and tuck them in my pocket. I move toward a vanity table with drawers made to hide tiny expensive th
ings, and there are frames with pictures of Vivi that I’ve seen but never studied. You and Vivi next to a big, bronze teddy bear sculpture in front of a fancy toy store. You and Vivi on a picnic blanket with the Esplanade’s Hatch Shell in the background: Fourth of July, some year. Vivi’s third-grade class picture. Vivi cut out of your class picture, in a frame. Black-and-white Vivi eating free Ben & Jerry’s on National Ice Cream Day in an article in a newspaper called Back Bay Windows. I guess a shrine to Vivi is understandable. But the pictures of Vivi, right next door to where the real Vivi is supposed to be lying in bed? The opportunities for physical comparison day after day freak me out. I’m leaving not a moment too soon.
Downstairs, a door slams meaningfully. This is not the habit of elegant Mrs. Lovecraft, or even powerful Mr. Lovecraft, who saves his drama for the boardroom. I hear the muted jawing of Slade, and I need to get into my bedroom fast and hide this stuff or I am screwed. The bag swings and I wince as the laptop knocks into the door, but you are opening the fridge and slamming around and can’t hear me hiding a stolen stash under my bed. Your footsteps fly up the stairs, sounds like gunfire, and you explode in, wearing your school uniform, cheeks aflame, tears streaming. You throw back your head and scream, a sound that starts low and climbs higher and higher until I block my ears. It’s the scream of an animal injured. Then it is over, and you are holding your jaw.