Little Threats

by Emily Schultz

  He knew the hurt showed in his face because she avoided looking at him and focused instead on her new iPhone.

  Everett watched her finger flick over the screen. She hadn’t signed up for Facebook, saying she had no interest in reconnecting with the past after running from it for over a decade, so what was it she found to look at on that thing? The photo on his profile was a selfie he’d snapped in the condo with her in the background. But she wasn’t recognizable so Everett didn’t think she’d mind. It was just her bare knee and her hand, the tips of her golden-brown hair. She’d seen him take the photo but hadn’t thought to ask if he would post it. Why had he done it? She wasn’t his girlfriend, he told himself, though his friends suspected he had one.

  Finally he asked what she was looking at, and her answer surprised him.

  “My sober app.”

  “What’s an app?”

  “It’s like a computer program but on your phone.”

  “You need a program to count your program?”

  “Five months, ten days.”

  She didn’t tell him that it provided inspirational quotes too. She set down her phone. Her glance flicked over the kitchen and settled on the De’Longhi. “When did you get the espresso maker?” She stood up and went to examine it, touching it reverently. “You got the kind I told you I used to have?”

  Her ex had managed to keep it. Her mouth twitched at the corner and he couldn’t decide what the expression meant. Did it make Everett an idiot that he’d run out immediately to get something she wanted as if he could win her? He’d gone out with plenty of girls, but none who made him want their approval. She looked exactly like the girl who had killed his sister—but that was a thought he was good at pushing away.

  His phone rang. It was his mother, and unlike Carter he knew better than to speak to her now. He didn’t like to hear Marly’s voice while looking at Carter’s face. Their face. He already knew what his mother wanted: him to come back to the house in Longwood, only a five-minute drive from the one where Kennedy would be soon with Gerry and Carter.

  Everett had been inside their house once.

  * * *

  —

  When he was twelve and Haley was three years gone, Everett had walked over to Blueheart Woods. He went to the Wynn house at night and observed its stillness. There seemed to be no one left. When he worked up the nerve to look in the bay window he saw Mr. Wynn sleeping in front of an episode of Friends, the one with the cat. Breaking and entering wasn’t like on TV, it had turned out. Everett didn’t need a mask or crowbar or to disarm the alarm system: he just opened the door and stepped in. Everett crept up the stairs and opened both the girls’ rooms.

  Carter’s room was the empty one: the half-bare bookshelves told him that. There was a wicker basket of mixtapes left in the closet and that was all. An old sweatshirt or two. He later figured out she had already left for her attempt at college. Carter was the twin he’d always thought about as a kid. Once he’d fallen off his bike and scraped a long line of red down his forearm. Haley and Kennedy stood there staring, but Carter took him inside the Kimberson house and held his arm under a stream of cold water. She put antiseptic on it while he bawled, and asked if he wanted her to blow on it, even though it doesn’t really make it feel better, she said. He’d nodded.

  He’d felt bad invading her space and gone into what was obviously Kennedy’s room, where there was a collage of photographs she’d made on a poster board, pictures of the twins together and with their friends. Berk Butler, Kennedy’s old boyfriend, shirtless with a mop of gold hair and a tattoo on his shoulder that looked like a ship wheel. Haley was on there too. It made Everett angry that they still had her in their house. The girls’ arms were looped about one another’s shoulders. Kennedy with purple hair flashing the peace sign. Carter leaning in to be closer. We are “Daughters of the Kaos,” Lollapalooza ’92, scrawled underneath by one of them.

  He felt an itchy rage as he flicked open Kennedy’s jewelry box, pawing through the items. Then he saw the lava lamp. He thought about taking it and walking back downstairs. He could smash it over the head of Gerry, sleeping on the couch. But he remembered learning about evidence at the preliminary trial and thought about fingerprints on the glass shards. They might be able to find them, even there, somewhere in the blood and psychedelic wax blobs. He carried the lamp around the room with him while he looked at other stuff. At the last minute he lost his nerve and ditched it on a shelf beside the door to the room. As Everett made his way out of the house he noticed the terra-cotta walls in the dining room and the white wainscoting that seemed to run around the edges of each room, paneling them and sectioning them into little boxes for no discernible purpose. He felt a weird joy at having invaded the space, although what had he really done? Kennedy had taken his sister. He had taken nothing.

  * * *

  —

  As Carter gathered up her things now to go, Everett imagined her moving through the big house in Blueheart and all its splendid rooms. Before she left, she pulled her coat on, glancing at him nervously.

  “I need you,” she said as she did up the buttons. “Please know that.”

  It was the most serious thing either of them had said and he didn’t respond directly.

  Instead he walked over and put his hand at the base of her throat, as if he were examining it like a doctor. He placed his thumb in the divot lightly, barely a touch.

  “This spot is my country. This one inch. When you’re away from me—it’s still mine, do you hear me? I’m planting my flag right here.” He tapped her skin lightly. Then he let his hand fall.

  September 29, 2008

  Assignment 1:

  Write about your mother or another female figure in your life.

  It’s hard for me to write about my mother because in all the novels I read the girls are orphans. When I look for her face in my mind, the face I find wears an expression of disappointment. The trial did that. It wasn’t always that way. When I think of her name—Laine—it’s like a loon’s call out on some mountain lake, forlorn and faraway.

  * * *

  —

  My mother visited me for the final time during the last days of my girlhood. Can I call it that? Girlhood. It sounds so antiquated, like something out of one of the Penguin Classics that I’ve read in here. Almost eighteen, I was in segregated housing until a bed opened up at Heron Valley. In three months of isolation my skin and hair had turned the same color as the cold, humming lights. Laine looked no better when she came to see me. There were no visiting lounges in segregation, only the Plexi window and phone. My mother struggled to stay awake during the visit. She wore a wig to hide the chemo damage, but it was all wrong: it was piled high and artificial looking, like the hair a Dixie widow might have, the kind she made fun of after we moved to Blueheart.

  “This is the last time I can come,” she said into the crackling phone. “They’re not going to let me travel again.”

  I began sobbing, but my mother remained calm. She had accepted this and I had not. She put her hand up to the glass. I did the same.

  “You have to wait for me,” I pleaded into the phone. I didn’t think about how long that wait would have been. It was the last childish request I ever made.

  My mother shook her head slowly. “You’re going to get out one day. Don’t forget that. You’re going to have a life. And Carter. She’ll need you. You’re the stronger one—you always were.” Laine breathed deeply before going on. Her voice, like the rest of her, had weakened, but I heard every rasped word. “But don’t build that life around men. Just . . . be your own person.” Laine took her hand away from the glass, leaving a hand smudge, as if she were already a ghost marking its presence.

  Even through the glass she saw I didn’t understand and spoke more directly.

  “I’m not saying all men are shit. But some of them want to destroy you. God, if we went to trial things wou
ld have come out about Blueheart. I’ve never liked it there.”

  My mother seldom swore, but I had heard this tone from her before. The same year my father’s friends and clients began staring at me as I walked through the living room or down the sidewalk with the other girls. They offered Carter and me rides home in postdivorce Porsche Carreras, with mentions that their pool water was a perfect temperature and we could use it anytime. We never went swimming in their pools or got into their cars, but Haley did. When my mother saw her getting a ride in Doug Macaulay’s new Lexus the spring I was sixteen, I got taken aside and was told that these were divorced men. It wasn’t right and Haley shouldn’t have been taking rides with them. Doug especially.

  Haley lived her short life for men, and it may have been Berk who killed her. It could have been someone else she was seeing, a stranger, or some neighbor. Who knows? Maybe Doug Macaulay, whose face I don’t even remember. The fact that I don’t remember the night she was murdered also means I must always include myself as a suspect when contemplating the truth.

  My mother died a week after the visit, and I wondered whether they buried her in the wig but couldn’t bring myself to ask.

  —Kennedy Wynn

  Heron Valley Correctional Facility

  Chapter 4

  Carter hadn’t meant to be so late. She thought of her sister alone out in the world and felt, for a second, short of breath, but she inhaled her way through the panic and managed to open her car door. The same asthmatic feeling had happened when Gerry had asked her to go with him to pick up Kennedy. The color had seemed to go out of the world around her.

  She pressed the key fob and got into her car, stuck the key in the ignition. Music bounced through the small space of the Honda with the suddenness of firecrackers. It was the Breeders covering “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” She quickly turned it down.

  The dream she hadn’t told him about: She was Kennedy; she was dragging Haley’s body through grass, mud. Her blouse was transparent, yellowy. The hem was trailing and she had this urge to hoist it higher to stop it from getting dirty. The floral print on it almost matched the spots of blood. How did she know she was Kennedy? The way her hair hit her face (Kennedy had worn hers down, over one eye). Kennedy had always insisted she didn’t move the body—she touched it, she didn’t transport it, she said. There were other details that were wrong, yet it had felt so real.

  Carter’s fingers rested on the place on her neck Everett had stroked. She flipped down the visor and assessed herself in the vanity mirror. In spite of the makeup she’d dabbed on, her eyes looked cracked around the periphery and hollow. She’d plucked her eyebrows thin over the years, a subtle attempt to look like someone other than who she was. As she put the car in gear and backed out, her phone rang. Rochester, the call display read, though it was only a nickname and one she’d never told him about. She pulled back into the parking spot and picked up.

  “I just wanted to say—” Everett began.

  She knew. She’d almost said it herself upstairs. Five months, ten days; it was too early. “Traffic’s really bad,” she said.

  “No problem. Just: good luck.” He sounded relieved.

  “You too,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  Carter almost forgot to push the brakes as she spotted Alex’s Scion in the drive of the Wynn house in Blueheart Woods, bumping into it as she finally remembered to stop. She got out and inspected his vehicle, but there were many tiny nicks all over it already. The only damage to her car was a faint tear in the 100% Vegetarian sticker. When she’d moved out he’d asked her if there was someone, and she’d just said that they’d been good for each other, but it was time to move on and they both knew it. He hadn’t known it, he’d said, and so she’d said all the nicest things a person could say while still breaking a heart.

  Gerry opened the door of the house—he’d been waiting. Kennedy wasn’t behind him, and Carter instinctively glanced up at her old bedroom window. Gerry stepped out onto the concrete beneath the portico in his socks and closed the door behind him. Not a good sign.

  She had practiced her line on the way over—It couldn’t be avoided—but she didn’t need it. Gerry was beaming.

  “Kennedy’s home.”

  Haley never will be, she thought, and wondered if she was becoming a Kimberson. Carter pushed past Gerry and placed her hand on the neck divot where Everett had touched her to cover it, hide it from her family.

  Gerry followed after Carter, asking her, “Where’s the cake? You were supposed to bring a cake!”

  “I could have done a better job of today if you hadn’t invited my ex.”

  By then they were in the living room and she wasn’t sure if Alex had heard her. Alex set down his cup of coffee and came over and wrapped his arms around her. He thanked her for inviting him, even though she hadn’t. He didn’t break the hug when he should have and Carter had to step away.

  Alex hadn’t worked in almost a year when she finally broke up with him. Carter told herself this again to justify her actions. Alex was a computer programmer, but after his layoff he’d mostly just played World of Warcraft late at night, or noodled on his guitar in the living room after Carter had gone to bed. Since she’d left him, she had no idea how he spent his time, though she imagined it was much the same.

  The house phone rang and Gerry left the room.

  When he returned he said that the Cains were sending their regrets. Something unexpected had come up. Carter watched as Gerry began to pace, looking out the window as if he expected people to arrive, though they still had an hour. His stress could take over his body, tighten it into a coil.

  * * *

  —

  In the second-floor bathroom Carter sobbed in a quick rush of tears and snot. After she sniffed and her red cheeks faded she turned the exhaust fan off and flushed the toilet, though she had not actually used it. As she walked down the hallway she saw a light on in Kennedy’s room. The idea was as shocking as a haunting, that the room was occupied after all this time.

  “Hey,” she said through the ajar door. “Sorry I’m late.”

  Kennedy lay on top of the purple comforter, her black flats on the floor beside her, making an L shape just the way she’d toed them off. She was wearing one of the dresses Carter had tried on for her—black with a pleated front, almost like a tuxedo shirt through the chest. There was a design of small white and red twists or squiggles along the bottom and the sleeves. It fit a bit looser than Carter had expected. The diet in the jail had left Kennedy slim in the waist but puffy in the face, and pale. She was looking more and more like their mother. And a little less like her, Carter realized.

  “Don’t worry,” Kennedy said, “I’m fourteen years late.”

  Carter saw that her sister stared up at a photo of the heavily lined eyes of Robert Smith: black hair that blossomed out around his head, lipstick red as fire. There was a disturbing beauty in the red smear. Carter remembered, vaguely, the waxy taste from an era when she’d kissed boys who wore makeup.

  When Carter didn’t respond, Kennedy raised herself up on her elbows and said, “That was a joke.”

  Carter walked inside for the first time since Kennedy had gone to prison. She wanted to be close to her, to see her as her sister and twin, but now they were alone—no guards and no tables bolted to the floor—and Carter felt suddenly apprehensive. She looked at the tennis racket standing in one corner of the room and remembered how much stronger Kennedy had always seemed on the court. Strong enough to hurt someone, she thought, then blinked the idea away. Carter gazed around at the posters, the dusty books and CDs, a shelf full of stuffed animals left over from childhood. “He wouldn’t touch this room. I told him he should. It would be better for you.”

  She turned and sat down on the desk chair across from the bed.

  “Have you ever heard about the Cotard delusion?” Kennedy asked. Carter not
iced she spoke softly and low. A jail habit. She’d noticed it there but thought it was just to keep their conversations private. “It’s a psychological condition where you’re convinced you’re dead, that your body is already decaying.”

  Carter bit her lip. “Can we not talk about death? It’s not healthy.”

  “Are you glad I’m home? You don’t look glad.”

  Carter managed a fake smile. “Of course! It’s so fucked up that Dad invited Alex.”

  Kennedy got up and grabbed Carter by the hand. She pulled her onto the bed beside her. “Sit with me. We’ll have to go downstairs soon.”

  Carter crab-walked back over the queen mattress so she could lean against the wall. She could feel an ache in her neck, and her hand crept up to massage it. All her muscles were stiff from the morning spent with Everett. Either that, or they’d locked up the second she saw Kennedy and her father afterward. Guilt came in a spasm.

  “Are you in trouble?” Kennedy asked, her gaze locking on the hand that was massaging Carter’s neck.

  “Of course not.” Carter let her hand fall, aware she must have looked stressed.

  “You stopped coming out to see me.”

  She took a moment, pulled her hair to the nape of her neck, fastened it with an elastic she pried from her wrist. She knew she should cut it out; her sister knew she only pulled on her hair when she was anxious. “I’ve been seeing a therapist, but sometimes I think I’m happier not talking about things.”

  “You mean the murder?”

  “Don’t call it that.”

  “I have to call it that. I wasn’t charged with a euphemism.”

  “But you didn’t do it. You had to take the plea. Right?”

  Carter remembered the morning Haley went missing, Kennedy bursting into her room just after she’d returned from the hospital with Laine, having been up all night. Gerry had driven them home in the big white Cadillac DeVille instead of his usual Acura, as if finding out about the possibility of cancer were a formal event. Both their parents were shut in the bedroom, sleeping, when Kennedy came in, whispering again and again, “I have no idea what happened.”