Little Threats
Page 10
* * *
—
Her jog turned into a sprint and she left the concrete cul-de-sacs behind. As she picked up speed, Kennedy felt the insistent earworm of an old song, and she longed for a Walkman or MP3 player to accompany her. Gerry still had CDs, but Carter would know about that kind of thing. She talked about juggling rent and bills and yet she had all the gadgets.
Kennedy jogged, rounding the final curve that separated the subdivision from the actual Blueheart Woods for which it had been named. She took in the brown tufts of the trees, a string of yellow leaves hanging here or there like forgotten birthday streamers.
Kennedy stopped running for a moment. She could feel the backs of her thighs already aching. She should have stretched more. She stepped off the shoulder and into the grass. She put her shoe up against a tree and leaned into the pain.
She gulped in agony, not realizing how tender everything was. She stared at the leaves underfoot: little curls of red-brown.
She tried not to see the body, the face. But Haley was there in her memory looking up, as if she’d fallen over backward for no reason but to stare up into the sky, compare cloud shapes. She was white and still. It was Haley but not Haley.
She would open her eyes, Kennedy had thought. It had to be a game, an act, the kind of play they would have put on at school—her and Carter—or the scene in Anne of Green Gables where Anne performed “The Lady of Shalott.”
This wasn’t where she’d found Haley though. It was farther, deep in the woods. She’d tramped into them early that morning, thinking that Haley and Berk must have gone in, toward that little clearing. Kennedy could see it all now so plainly, and as she gazed toward that direction, she thought she saw a smear of marigold fabric—the see-through blouse Haley had on—floating, weaving between the trees.
It was nothing, she told herself, squeezing her eyes shut, then opening them again, leaves flying around.
There was a little glade where kids from Liberty High School went to smoke up, drink, make out. Toward the back of the woods. A place you could even pull into with a car if you knew how. Then she remembered: they’d fought. Berk was upset with her when she’d thrown up in his Jeep. His taillights. She remembered how they looked—angry red stars—as they pulled away from the closed Mobil. She and Haley high in the gas station parking lot, hugging each other and giggling into each other’s faces. That was all she could remember until she woke up the next day.
Now Kennedy found herself drawn by the woods. She walked in, stepping over the old trails. She was a mile in when she came to the place.
Haley had been lying half in and half out of the creek. From a distance, she’d looked like nothing more than a log, a patch of moss in her yellow blouse and her suede-brown miniskirt.
Later, it was Kennedy’s boot print detectives lifted from the crime scene, though the sisters were the same size and shared a wardrobe, so no one could say for sure whether it was hers or Carter’s. That was something police pointed out, threatened Kennedy with, taking her sister in.
“Haley was cold,” Kennedy shouted that morning when she told Carter, but Carter insisted it was from sleeping outside all night.
Kennedy had held her own dirty, bloodied hands up to her sister as she dialed. In the background of the call—a moment she would later hear replayed in echoing Pine-Sol–scented rooms in the courthouse—she yelled, “Don’t! They’ll arrest Berk.”
Kennedy knew that when her sister phoned 911 she had no idea what had been set in motion, no idea that suspicion would turn to Kennedy. Or that Carter herself would soon suspect her own twin was responsible.
It was the novel the police had found the hair lying in, like some sad tassel bookmark. Kennedy managed to hold on to the little piece of Haley for a day before police got the search warrant and went through the house on Silver Creek, claiming everything.
She told herself it was love, a girl’s love. A romantic desire to protect her friend and keep some part of her safe, apart from what had been done to her. In front of her now, the creek murmured cheerfully. She supposed it was the kind of spot where teens still came to hike, kiss on the tiny wooden bridge just over that way. Unaware of what had happened here.
Kennedy felt chills up and down her arms and hugged her body as she walked to the bridge, wishing she’d put on more than a sweatshirt for her jog. She put her shoe up on the rotting wood structure, sucked in a breath, and leaned again into the sharp pain.
I wrote you a note, she heard a voice say, almost as if someone were standing beside her. But she knew it was only Haley’s voice in her memory. Something she had said that night.
Quickly Kennedy straightened, and breathed out, and ran back out of the woods, over the cracking twigs, muttering the lyrics to an old Cure song, as if it could ward off spirits.
* * *
—
Out on the road, she turned a corner to head back toward the Blueheart Woods enclave. A vehicle was driving up the street. The driver was an older man, maybe fifty, and beside him in the passenger seat was a younger guy, closer to her age. She didn’t recognize either of them but as they approached her they slowed. Jogging, parallel with them, she glanced over when the window went down. A half-full water bottle hit her in the side, lobbed at full force.
“Dead Kennedy!” the younger man yelled out the window.
The older man leaned forward so he could see her, the vehicle braking. Why were they braking? What else did they intend to do? She raised her hand to the tender spot along her ribs. She didn’t hear what the old guy said because she knew she should run now, really run.
Chapter 13
Carter was handed a perfect Americano when she walked in, an invitation to sit down and be normal. She knew Everett must have spent days mastering the machine, watching videos online and researching beans and grinds, and would talk about it with the same passion as he had the arcane differences between sports quads and utility four-by-fours. Glancing around the condo, she saw he’d hung up Christmas lights along one wall. The door to his bedroom was open and she could see he’d painted the walls a sienna color since the last time she’d been there. It looked inviting.
“This is hard for me,” Carter said. “I feel embarrassed of, you know—the last time.”
“You said that you felt embarrassed then, that you were afraid to be naked with me.”
It caught her off guard.
“Don’t you remember? I assumed it was because you were about to see her. I mean, you never have been shy.”
“The morning before she came home?” Carter shook her head. She blushed. She felt more self-conscious. She didn’t remember anything shy about the last time. She remembered only the sweaty crescendo. “It was hot, wasn’t it?” she said.
Then he said yeah, of course it was. Not just the last time either; it always was.
She registered that he said was instead of is, but she dismissed it as she sat down and unwound her scarf. “I feel out of control. I broke . . . this thing—it meant a lot to Kennedy.” Carter stopped short of telling him about seeing his mother at the graveyard, wondering if Marly might have already mentioned it. “And I feel all this panic I can’t breathe through.”
“Did you see Dr. Brathwaite?”
She nodded.
“What about yoga?”
“I went twice this week.”
He set down a plate of cookies in front of her. “You know, there’s something we should talk about.”
Carter had expected they would have coffee and talk a bit, then eventually they’d let themselves into his bedroom, pretend they weren’t going to, then wind up falling on top of each other. But it was clear from his tone that wasn’t what was on his mind. She hoped it wasn’t the card Gerry had found in Everett’s left-behind blazer. She braced herself.
“You know it’s a competition between her and me.”
“Who?”
She hadn’t expected this and she bit her lip. She’d thought he might discuss his doubts with her, his anger. His saying the words break up suddenly made everything between them more serious, and Carter wished he would take it back. She fingered the sugar bowl’s ceramic lid before removing it. She grasped the small spoon and added a tiny amount to her cup.
He stared at her until she thought it might actually hurt her.
For a second she had the crazy adolescent thought that if she didn’t acknowledge what he’d said, it would go away. She stared at the sugar bowl instead of him. She wasn’t even sure she owned a sugar bowl. What she and Alex had used for years was really just a jam jar, now that she thought about it. They were so punk it had never occurred to her to buy china. They’d gotten sober together and he’d eventually left his band, but their normality had still never made it all the way to normal.
She and Everett sipped their drinks in silence, and the sunlight fell between them. She reached out and took his hand suddenly. “Please don’t. I can’t explain what we’re doing, but it’s important to me. I don’t know if I can do this without you.”
“Do what? Imagine me and your father in a room!” he said, standing up.
She was right. She shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe they would have gotten through the moment and it would have passed.
Me and your father. Her father would start by correcting his manner of speech. Carter laughed, but nothing was funny. It felt like a bubble popping, something delicate disappearing. She thought of Kennedy, how if Everett were in the same room as her, he might become unhinged, capable of male violence. She had seen his expression change whenever she said her twin’s name. Carter felt her eyes narrow and then fill.
“Haven’t you planned the ending,” he asked, “rehearsed it? We both knew it would come. We’ve known from the start.”
“No, I haven’t,” she said. Carter watched him, his face. The lines of his eyebrow hairs all leaned in the same direction; the lines on his lips were pale and dry. His ears stuck out just enough to make his otherwise handsome face seem as if there might be humor in there somewhere. But not today—his eyes were serious and dark. She wished he were joking. She sat there on the uncomfortable plastic chair. She wanted to hurt him. She thought about that awful glimpse of his mother at the cemetery, how it felt like her stomach was falling. “Maybe you only sleep with me as a way to get closer to Haley.”
“You’re as fucked up as Kennedy,” Everett erupted, his voice louder now than it needed to be, his chin tense. “You Wynns, you think you can do whatever you want, take whatever you want. You sleep with me to prove you can.”
He grabbed their empty cups and charged around the small kitchen area, dropping them into the sink and running water in them. She’d never heard him like this before. Watching him from behind, she saw the space between his shoulder blades where she always liked to put her hand. But she didn’t get up to touch him. She’d pushed it. She knew the words were too dangerous spoken out loud.
When Everett turned around, he fixed her with a long gaze, and Carter studied him. It wasn’t just his soft features that she loved, or his toned biceps and athletic build; it was that his sister’s death had left a boyhood tattooed forever on his face: his distant eyes and gaping mouth.
“That’s not why I’m with you,” she said. “I’m with you because you’re the only one who understands what it’s like.”
“What is it like?”
“We’re both broken.”
“Whose sister did the breaking?” Everett asked. He didn’t come back to the table and she felt the distance between them growing longer.
“I don’t—” Carter faltered. Her shoulders stiffened.
“Go on.”
“I don’t disagree with you.” She had thought verbalizing it would place Everett and her on the same side, but he shrank back against the sink again.
He asked the obvious: Had Kennedy finally come out and said it?
“No,” Carter said on a hard exhalation. “I don’t think she would ever admit it.”
Neither of them spoke for a long time.
“Well, she isn’t hiding. She’s on Facebook,” Everett said, wiping his hands on a dish towel with a picture of a fish on it. “Everyone needs a life, I guess. I saw she friended a couple people from Liberty High and she put a photo up. She doesn’t look as much like you as she used to.” He tossed the towel down and put one hand against the edge of the sink.
There was something clouded in his expression and then he said, “I had a meeting with a television producer last week, the host of a crime show. Dee Nash. She used to be a real detective. They want to look at Haley’s story.”
“I found the card. It was in your pocket at my place. But, you won’t. You won’t let them,” Carter said, getting to her feet. She hadn’t mentioned it, she realized, because she wanted to believe in him.
“It just needs to be done. Maybe it will even help you too.” His tone was matter-of-fact, even if his eyes flickered. He said the writing team had already begun to research the murder. They would be going through all the public files from the investigation and any he could help them with from the civil case. It occurred to Carter that he must have had some idea of this already and held it back, that the card in his pocket wasn’t just an offer, an idea: the wheels were in motion the last time she’d been there, when he’d held her wrists and climbed on her, when she’d panted that directive at him to stay inside, as if—what? As if she’d wanted to make a baby, make a solid thing inside her body that spoke of him, make something that no one could deny existed.
She didn’t know what she said in reply because the next thing she knew, she was lying flat on her back on his couch with her eyes streaming. She was gasping for air. She felt like her head might explode: a vise was being screwed tighter and tighter around her eardrums and all the while she was being held underwater. He had betrayed her. She could hear a voice telling her to calm down, and then he brought her something, said he wasn’t doing it to hurt her. He held out a pink pill and some water and she took it without asking what it was. He held her for a few minutes, one hand rubbing her back, and she stopped crying and drew a breath, feeling the air like a long ribbon moving across her tongue.
He told her he didn’t think she should drive, and called a cab for her and walked her out to it even though her car was parked in his space. He kissed her forehead and said goodbye, but she barely heard him.
“I’m sorry. I just . . . have to,” he said, his final explanation. Why was his face so pretty and his logic so simple? He shut the cab door and the driver turned and looked at her, in need of directions.
October 13, 2008
Assignment 3:
Write about something that wasn’t what it seemed.
All stories are like things told in translation. For instance, I could easily find words for the little memories: the feeling of a joint rolling forward into my hand from a cassette case, where the lyrics sheet had been hiding it. The tiny ecstasy of that sensation. How, when I was high, it seemed like the sun was shining on me even when there was no sunshine. How, though, do I get at the bigger things? The simple fact of a person I knew, cared about, instantly gone.
* * *
—
The three of us piled into the boy’s Jeep and headed to the woods. The acid had more of an effect than I had ever seen in Berk before. That was the danger of the drug. Sometimes it was just speedy and made us grind our teeth. Sometimes the stuccoed ceiling of a suburban living room became the white protoplasm of the universe.
In his Jeep, he pushed a cassette into the player and sampled guitars rang out: Trent Reznor singing with Ministry on a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Supernaut.” The song was heavy burnout music I would have made fun of a few years before, when
I won an award in eighth grade for Best “Just Say No” Stage Play, but I was now, technically, a burnout too. When I was with him, we smoked or tripped and the world levitated for a few hours. I didn’t think about my parents’ problems, or the LAPD trial on TV, or Bosnian rape victims, or Waco flames. I didn’t even think about what had happened a few weeks before between Haley and Berk. Our trio bobbed heads in unison as the vehicle drove into the country and the streetlights ended.
He then took his hands off the wheel. “How long do you think we can live?” he shouted over the music. “The drum solo?”
“Fuck off!” I shouted.
“Stop it,” she agreed, leaning forward from the back.
And he laughed that laugh of his that ended in a slight whistle. “Calm down.” He put his hands back on the wheel. He then took them off again.
He could have killed us then, I suppose, innocently. Was it all a joke to him?
“Stop! Let me out,” Haley shouted.
In the front seat I had trouble focusing on the road ahead. The median lines danced, bent, and shimmered. The music throbbed and became my heartbeat. The dashboard lights cast him in demon green, and for a moment his tongue flicked out, forked like a lizard’s. I felt a wave of vertigo. “I’m going to be sick.”
“Oh man! Not in my Jeep.”
All I remembered after that was she and I standing outside a closed gas station on Smoke Line, alone in the beautiful night, listening as cricket sounds turned into electronic rhythms in my mind.
But what about him? That’s the fiction I can’t get at: what he did. Berk said he drove an hour to the coast to sit alone after the crowds had gone and simply trip on the repetition of the waves. He was alibi-less. What if I believe that story and use my breath to mimic those waves, pulling in and out? Imagine there’s only that rising and falling water, and no blood.