In the Vines

by Shannon Kirk

  Aunty Liv told my ex-nun aunt to fuck off and threw a metal pin of California in her face, one week ago, while our house chef pulled a bubbling pizza out of a rooftop oven in Rye.

  I didn’t know how to process any of this drama, the crimes, the secrets, the total freakish oddness. My grief for my mother, it grew again. Mom, what would you do? You’d know what to do. I need you, Mom. I miss you so much. All I could think to do was escape and drive to my Rye fort, sit in the false necropolis, and call the sea to bring me my mother. But I didn’t. No. A tingle of fight came into me. I wish it had been a wash, a full swell of strength to fight off the fog. But it was something, a tingling of a coming to life. I fought off the wish to sit in my dark necropolis.

  I stared at Manny’s back as a way to hook onto something. He still roamed the roof’s edge, skirting around the potted cypress and boxwoods, surveying the Rye lawns on where to put a bullfrog pond, and discussing some other inaudible topic with my father. Perhaps he felt my visual pleas on his back, for he turned around with the biggest smile.

  “Mop, how about this? Your father and I were thinking that maybe we go to the Grand Chesterton this week, relax before grad school starts, and maybe, how about, we start planning the wedding to take place there?”

  The Grand Chesterton is one of Manny’s family resorts in Cape Cod. He looked so excited in that moment on the roof. He had no clue the amount of horror at the table between my aunts and me. And as if I were the type of girl whose thoughts could course-correct at the offer of a trip to a grand resort, I projected the most duplicitous agreement.

  “Sounds great,” I called back. When he turned again in a glass-clinking cheer with my likewise thrilled father (how sweet, in retrospect), I turned evil eyes on Aunty Liv. A definite betrayal of Aunty, in favor of Aunt Sister Mary, an act I never before considered.

  “You’re being rude, Aunty,” I say in a wicked, low-hiss warning. “When I get back from the Cape, perhaps we’ll discuss other secrets. Hmm?” Popover would have been so proud at my delicious, disdainful purr.

  Aunty Liv pulled back, arms crossed. I leaned forward over the table. Aunt Sister Mary, beside me, clasped her wineglass to her chest.

  “Oh, ha,” I mocked in a cheerful lightness while leaning back. “Let’s just enjoy the night. No reason to get upset over misunderstandings over old blood,” I said, looking at Aunt Sister Mary in lightness. And in darkness, I turned to Aunty to add, “It’s not like we have literal skeletons in our closets! Right, Aunty?” I winked at her and smiled. I did not blink, letting her know I meant every single word.

  Aunty ground her teeth and smiled without breaking her lips.

  Something about old blood and skeletons—they never really go away.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  AUNTY

  One week ago

  I’m driving home from that disaster of a dinner in Rye. The pizza—I didn’t eat more than three bites of one slice. I didn’t say any of the things I’d driven all the way over there to say. I couldn’t. I wish I’d never gone. But Mop knows everything anyway. She made that abundantly clear. And I already knew she knew. Before leaving my house, I found her damn journal in the barn with her, and I found Johanna’s orange necklace in the basement by the bones. I put the necklace back on the bitch in the barn, as a reminder to be kind and not kill her.

  Oh, Mop knows, all right. But does she know everything? No. If she did, she wouldn’t be eating pizza in Rye, pitching me shit. No doubt, though, for sure, my jig is up. And Sister Mary with the fucking pin. The fucking pin. How dare she.

  I didn’t work this hard for thirty years to forget that night. Consume myself in other mental consumptions. No.

  I didn’t work this hard for two years to be thrown in jail. I won’t rot in jail. I will retain control of my body and direct the thoughts in my mind, dead or alive.

  I’m going to finish digging a two-person pit behind the barn. I’ll take care of things.

  Mop returns from the Cape in about a week.

  I’m ready. I’m not going to jail.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  AUNTY

  Two years ago

  I just found Kent’s bathtub filled with blood.

  I just found Kent’s bathtub filled with blood.

  I vomited. I flushed.

  I just found Kent’s bathtub filled with blood.

  Johanna won’t pick up her phone.

  Fucking Route 128 traffic and the fucking construction for the fucking new Whole Foods slows me the fuck, fuck, fuck down. I can’t get to wherever the fuck Johanna is fast enough. Is she safe at the Bennington hotel in Gloucester? I can’t get ahold of Johanna. I even try calling Kent’s cell, first time ever. Nothing.

  What a dumb ass. Of course I should call the Bennington.

  Four-one-one patches me in.

  “Hello, Johanna Vandonbeer’s room, please?”

  “Hold on.”

  Motherfucker! Hurry the fuck up!

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, no one here named Vandonbeer.”

  I choke. My face boils. I hang up. I should ask this slack-jaw receptionist a million questions to test him to see if Johanna is there like she said, but my throat is stuffed with gray cotton. I can’t speak.

  Just like it felt, this feeling again, no! Just like when Daddy collapsed and I shivered alone, hiding in the basement chamber. No, stop, don’t go catatonic. Drive. Focus on the road.

  I should call 911. I should get help. But I need to get to Johanna. And I don’t know what Cate did with my vials. Will she frame me?

  Somewhere along this drive, I lost track of where I am. I’m confused. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I fucking am. Where the fuck am I? I’ve never seen that tree before.

  There’s Exit 14. You’re closer now. Relax.

  I’m a nurse. I’m a nurse. I’m a nurse. Stop this panic. Breathe. Get to Johanna. And then call the cops. I look at my phone and realize I failed to check a blinking fact: a voice mail. How could you not check the voice mail? You idiot. Idiot!

  “Siri, play voice mail.”

  “Playing voice mail.”

  Play the fucking voice mail!

  Siri says, “Message one from Jo-Jo, 8:49 p.m.”

  Then comes Johanna’s high, happy voice. “Sugar Cheeks! No rooms at the Bennington! Can you believe it? Now just relax. It’s all going to be fine. I’ll meet you back at the house.”

  Eight forty-nine? Eight forty-nine? An hour and a half ago. Oh my God, I went catatonic at Kent’s! No, no, no, no. Not again. I’m going to lose again because I’m so weak! How long was I out? Where? In the bathroom, transfixed on the bathtub of blood? In the hall when the light vines choked me? Oh no. No! DRIVE THE FUCKING CAR!

  Whipping off the highway, around curves and turns, up hills, down hills, tight country roads, past Annisquam, the beaches on my left, I gain closer to my home at Haddock Point State Park.

  Who leaves a bathtub full of blood and a drip from the faucet to ping it, making a circle of pink where water meets blood? Who does that? Who does that? Who would be so skilled to drain a body the right way, from the right cuts, and not leave a whole house of blood?

  A nurse. Cate is a nurse. Cate drained a body of blood.

  Oh God. Here comes the gray cotton in my mouth and eyes again, my heart out of my ribs again. Like when the estate manager burst into the coach house in Rye, like when he held me at knifepoint and ripped off my pants. Like when he pressed his little metal button in my mouth and told me to bite down with my teeth and hold it tight, or it would fall into my throat and I’d choke. The taste of that metal is what it was, but in memory, it tastes of gray cotton, like now, so I spit. Gray cotton in my mouth again. Like when Daddy burst in and whacked the estate manager with a metal statue, fought him off me. Like when Daddy dropped to the floor, clutching his chest. Like when Daddy lay dying on the floor, and I panicked and I couldn’t breathe and I ran and hid in the chamber in the basement and I couldn’t move and snot dripped into my mouth, t
asting of more gray cotton, and I couldn’t crawl out to lift the phone and call 911. Like when I caused my father’s death. Like when my first baby died and they did the D&C to scrape away remains, and I panicked and couldn’t breathe, thought my baby cried to me from a jar on the sink. And the second time, too, the second loss the same. And when I discovered Sister Mary had an easiness she didn’t deserve, then, too, gray cotton too.

  My lost babies cried to me for help, my father, my babies, and I panicked, my heart pumping like a speeding car, my breath as shallow as a fast wind, whipping across flat ice, unable to breach the barrier of cotton in my throat. Like whooshing and sweat and beating and no traction. I’m panicking. I lose control of the car.

  I’m skidding, a foot from the guardrail. I jerk the wheel to straight, too far, I’m heading into the oncoming headlights of a pickup truck. I jerk back. There is no air in this car, only hot cement. I haven’t breathed a full minute. My forehead is filled with hot lava and spinning, separate from the rest of my hot face.

  I’m straight on the road, huffing, hugging, I’m so out of control, I pass my driveway. Slam on the brakes. U-turn in a burning skid. Speed up my driveway.

  All the lights in my rose house are on. Every single light from finished attic to second floor to first floor to basement. All the lights in the cottage are on. All the lights in my barn are on. My property is ablaze in light. My blue front door is wide open. Johanna’s convertible has the front spot in my driveway, closest the barn. Kent’s gray Jeep is parked behind hers.

  “Johanna!” I scream as I open my Audi door at the same time as jamming the gear to park.

  I’m running for the front door, following a trail of lit tea lights, which start on my front stoop. Who left a trail of tea lights? Following through my foyer, the tea lights go up my front stairs to the second floor. I ignore what could be in the kitchen, or elsewhere. I follow the tea lights, the trail, leading me. I’m screaming for “Johanna!”

  No one returns my calls.

  At the top of the stairs, I’m in my second-floor hallway, and the tea lights go down my hall, past my bedroom, and around the corner to the foot of the L of these upper halls. I follow. I turn the corner. At the end of this hall is a doorway to the finished attic, and on the right, about midway, is the door to Mop’s bedroom.

  Oh God.

  Where’s Mop? She’s at college. Not home until next week.

  “Johanna!” I’m screaming. “Johanna!” Nothing.

  Mop has always yelled to me from this room, “Aunty, Aunty,” in her sweet voice. Used to be for hugs or cups of cold water or to read her another book when she was little and now, in recent years, it’s “Aunty, Aunty, nighty night, love you,” acting like a little girl as our comfort routine.

  No “Aunty, Aunty” meets me back. No one returns my yelling.

  “Johanna!”

  A quick flash of fur races past me, low to the floor. I paste myself to the hall wall, frightened. It’s Popover, hurrying, now disappeared into Mop’s room, following the same path of tea lights I’m following. Popover is escaping something. What?

  I run down the second hall to Mop’s room to the spot in front of her door where the tea lights end. I turn to face the same room Popover entered, Mop’s closet, Mop’s room. Popover’s back is high arched; he’s hissing at me from under Mop’s desk.

  And once again tonight, I’m suffering the disabling, distorting panic I’ve suffered at times in my life. I’m on an arctic glacier with gray cotton in my throat, in my lungs, and I’m sure this time, it will never clear. In skating on the glacier to the interior of the room; I breathe not. I see not. I am blinded by this vision.

  I scrape the clouds away, the second time tonight. Clawing at the thick air before me as if rungs will appear.

  In one blink, I take the vision in, before fainting to the floor and folding into gray clouds.

  Kent is laid out on top of the covers as a corpse. His throat and wrists are cleanly sliced, and I presume these wounds are where Cate bled him. And now his lifeless body lies on Mop’s bed. He’s clothed in a herringbone wool suit, one perfect for a man at his own funeral. His arms are crossed at his waist. His legs are straight. He wears black shoes and black socks.

  Cate must have worked hard to drain every drop into the tub and not spill elsewhere in their house, to be able to run only a mop in one straight line along the upper hall and down the stairs. Unless there was other cleaning I didn’t see. Only a sick, twisted person would do such a thing. And I suspect with him here and the cleanliness of her crime, she aims to frame me. The tub of blood, a psychotic’s tub I’m sure she plans to drain and bleach as soon as she’s done with me.

  What is she going to do to me?

  What has she done to Johanna?

  “Johanna,” I croak out, as I come to in the moldy clouds on the floor of Mop’s room, at the foot of her bed, where Kent lies dead. I have to fight this time. I can’t grow silent and paralyzed again. Save Johanna! The only thing to ever keep me out of gray clouds is when I’m clinical, a nurse. I am a nurse. I am a nurse.

  I hear singing in my kitchen.

  I am a nurse. Go be a nurse.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  AUNTY

  Two years ago

  Some other part of me is driving my body, stumbling backward out of Mop’s bedroom with Kent Dranal dead in her bed, drained of blood, his throat and wrists slit, lying there in the bright of the light of the room, at the end of a trail of tea lights, to make some psychotic point.

  I can’t breathe.

  Whatwhatwhatwhatwhat, where is, where is, where is, where is Johanna? Oh my God, Oh my God. Go, run, run, run, run to the cottage, get Johanna. Who’s singing in the kitchen?

  My active thoughts and my physical condition are in a riotous turmoil. There’s a dichotomy inside me: on the one side, my executive function is driving my actions and narrating to myself what’s happening; the other side is pure panic. Perhaps this is the inner split of how those in shock operate, or a soldier in war is able to walk ten miles in desert sand with the head of a comrade in his hands, so as not to leave his brother behind. It’s like I’m a computer with two hard drives, one malfunctioning, smoking out of the disc mouth, the other running rote C: commands for digitized navigation.

  My mind is split; my brain is splitting. I grab my skull with two hands, squeeze in, try to stop the white-hot pulse.

  Tripping. Feet tied together. I will fall now, untie my feet. The air is not air. Air cement. My neck is swallowing my face, push down, push neck down from face.

  My legs are not tied, but I fall. I’m on the floor, my right leg bruised from hitting the bedpost. Or is the bruise from when I punched myself while driving? I reach for my neck; it is not swallowing my face. I am a nurse. I’m hyperventilating. I close my eyes, inhale through my nose. I am a nurse. I calm my rhythm with a count.

  One, two, thr . . . Johanna, Jo . . . Oh God. Noise in kitchen, bang. Johanna!

  The pain on my right thigh is a sharp eight on the pain scale, a cup-size welt swelling; the hematoma will be black and purple for a good two to three weeks. I am a nurse. I must pull myself to standing and inhale. Two simple steps: stand and inhale.

  Johanna, Johanna . . . where are my feet? Look there, Popover cowers in the corner. Popover, Popover, go get Johanna.

  “Johanna!” I’m screaming, I believe. I am a nurse. Stand. I stand. Kent Dranal is dead in Mop’s bed. This is death. I am a nurse. The walls of the bedroom and the hall walls can serve as brace supports for my feet, which are weak and not working. I believe the eight-sharp hematoma on my right leg is not the cause. The cause is my brain malfunctioning in shock. I use the walls to guide me to the stairs and it is now, this moment, midway down the stairs, when I see a change in the foyer. The change leads through the main first-floor hall to the kitchen, where I heard a bang, above the continued singing. My legs are built of liquid muscles and rubber bands. I catch myself on every tread in my descent.

  JohannaJoh
annaJohannaJohannaJohannaJohannaJohanna. My head, filled with bees, bees, the lights in the foyer, down the hall, to Johanna, Johanna, Johanna, Johanna.

  I’m inhaling in quick breaths through my open mouth; my throat drawing sips of air, not allowing them to fall to my lungs or rise to my brain. I don’t exhale. I’m a nurse; I must exhale. I must then inhale through my nostrils to feed oxygen to my brain. I pause to perform this biological need on the last tread. I take a second to appreciate the change in the foyer and hall.

  Starting at the midpoint of the entrance marble is a line of tea lights, and next to each tea light is a vial of pentobarbital. Are these my vials, stolen last night?

  I reach the foyer and look into the kitchen, only to see shadows moving beyond the doorway. The light is a moonglow amber, the effect I created by buying the right lightbulbs. I wanted my night kitchen alive against the darkness outside. It should feel like a gold glow, and the flowers beyond my kitchen window should be lit by the soft solars, so I can watch the swooping bats beyond the blue tangle of morning glories, which crawl beside the window boxes of hot-pink petunias. But it is no longer a gold glow; this now is a blinding surgical light with new meaning.

  Johanna, Johanna, Johanna, Johanna, Johanna. Don’t say her name, walk slow, then it won’t be her at the end of the line of pento vials. Don’tsayhernameandwalkslow. My neck is choking me. Johanna!

  Beyond where I can see, I believe from somewhere near my kitchen table, a woman’s voice hums Simon & Garfunkel’s “America”: mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm-hmm—mmm-mmm-mmm. I know the lyrics like I know the range of dangerous blood pressure in correlation to ranges of body mass index. Johanna listens and hums this song constantly, like it’s her breath. If you ever catch Johanna unaware, perhaps if you sneak up to spy on her working away at her fashion blog, or her arranging her sea glass into shapes, you can stand behind her a full ten minutes, watching her work away, and listen to her happy humming of the carousel rhythm of “America.” And this is exactly what the woman’s voice does now in my kitchen, but the voice is not Johanna’s. Whoever this woman is, she’s mocking Johanna. She must have been watching Johanna to know her song. I am a nurse. I make quick deductions. I am a nurse. I must step to the kitchen and confirm my theory.