“Guess we better enjoy ourselves while we can.”
“Guess so,” I say, looking away. His hair is appealingly flopping into his face and I grin at him, managing for half an instant to forget about Wilson. I remember that Amory’s an investigator, and don’t want him investigating why I have a hollow look around the eyes from nowhere near enough sleep.
“Say,” he says, and I can tell from his embarrassed but frisky expression what’s coming. “Listen…”
When he doesn’t continue, I nearly pick up the thread and ask him out, just to complete the thought. But I can muster some self-control when the situation calls for it. I have to get away from Amory Porter and his pretty hair, and get on with the things I need to do.
“So I was thinking, there’s a movie I want to see, this afternoon. If you’re not doing anything…”
“Sorry, I promised Mummy…”
“Sure. No problem. Anyway, I’m happy to see you again.” He smiles at me then, and it looks genuine, not one of those standard-issue smiles that get passed out to anybody who comes along. It’s…well, it feels nice, okay? I’ll admit that much.
But no worries—I am not going to flirt with Amory Porter or go out with Amory Porter or anything else with Amory Porter. I know I am in no…I’m not capable of any of those things right now. He absolutely has certain qualities, I’m not denying that. Under different circumstances, I might go to the movies with him, just to see what developed. But right now, I cannot.
I have to keep reminding myself: I am with child. I can’t…I can’t be the old Caroline anymore. That door is shut. Slammed shut.
And because of that, I’ve got crucially important things to do, and not a moment to be lost. My plane leaves tomorrow before the crack of dawn.
A rolling stone gathers no moss. That’s what the jeerlings are mumbling at me this morning, and as is often the case, I don’t get their point. Is something wrong with moss? I like moss. Also, I like being on the move from time to time. Why are these things supposedly mutually exclusive? And what exactly is wrong with staying put? The whole business is truly a bafflement.
I’m flying American and congratulating myself for eschewing martinis, though they have been my pre-flight ritual since I was old enough to order a drink. All I want is to accomplish my mission in California and return to New York without incident. The mission is simple enough, and wonderfully outdoorsy: I am going mushroom picking. Having a day outside in the healthful sunshine, with a packed lunch in an adorable little backpack. Perhaps I shall hum songs from The Sound of Music as I go about my business, though the woods of Oakland are not exactly alpine.
I am making this trip not as Caroline Masefield Crowe, but as Kayley Ann Barker, you remember her? It is very easy to have a false passport made, surely you know this? Of course it does require a bit of money if you want the job done well, and a passport isn’t actually necessary for a domestic flight. But there’s nothing wrong with being prepared.
I am required to dress the part to match my new ID, so my long blonde hair is tucked up into a wig, short and dark. I’m wearing a pair of eyeglasses with clear glass, with a frame-shape trendy a few years ago. I’m wearing sneakers, a big oversized sweater, and Levi’s, just regular clothes for a regular young woman who blends into a crowd like a ghost.
I can report that so far, the world responds quite differently to Kayley Ann Barker than it does to Caroline Crowe. I am both more invisible and better liked. And also: pretending to be someone else is deeply exhilarating. I can completely understand those people who fake their own deaths and create a new character to inhabit. You should try it sometime, even just for a day.
Unfortunately, since the entire point of this exercise is anonymity, Kayley Ann does not fly first-class. There are exactly zero amenities, the seat is diabolically cramped, and it takes forever to get off the plane once the flight has landed in Oakland.
My thoughts keep circling back to that Amory Porter. There’s something so...so goddamned decent about him. Friendly, not in an offhand way, but more like…he seems like the kind of guy who would stick up for you if things got ugly. A guy who wouldn’t turn away easily, see what I mean? Maybe even from a girl who’s gotten herself knocked up?
I swivel a kink out of my neck, close my eyes, and allow myself five short minutes of thinking about Amory Porter. I imagine him at the beach, in the surf, his sleek body slicing through the waves. I imagine a few other things too that I—seriously? Am I not allowed any privacy at all?
I have to focus on the matter at hand. My back is aching as I make my way to the rental car counter, get the keys to my ugly economy sedan, and set off on the short drive to Joaquin Miller Park. I was lucky, weather-wise: after the recent rains, there’s a decent chance that a mycological explosion will be there to greet me. Strictly speaking, picking mushrooms in any of the East Bay Regional Parks (of which Joaquin Miller is one) is not allowed; but Kayley Ann happens to be a cheerful rule breaker, and I don’t anticipate any particular problems unless the park is surprisingly crawling with rangers.
When I climb out of the sedan in the park’s parking lot, I’m expecting a hit of California sunshine, but it’s nearly as gray and dreary as it was back in New York. I peel off the bulky sweater, careful not to take the wig off with it. Some rugged-looking types are lacing up their boots and checking their water bottles. I give them plenty of time for a head start, fiddling around in the car until they’re long gone, and take the opposite trail.
I’ve never been to this place and have no idea where I’m going, only that I’m looking for a particular kind of tree, photographs and descriptions of which I have studied so that I can recognize it. I meet a few people on the trail, who make eye contact and say hello. Kayley Ann is quite friendly and returns their greeting without reservation.
After walking for over an hour, Kayley Ann is hot and parched. She sits on a log and has a long drink of water, wishing she had some blow but not second-guessing the decision to avoid the risk of bringing it on the plane. These days you can get frisked for no reason at all, and attention, and trouble, are the last things Kayley wants.
In the deep shade, under a stand of conifers and beside a stately live oak, I find what I am looking for: a fairy ring of a particular species of mushroom that is nearly twenty feet across, luminous and magical. Instantly I have the intense belief my discovery is a kind of sign, a proof that my plan is the correct one.
A lone jeerling squawks something about fallacies of association but I am too busy plucking the moist nobs out of the earth to pay any mind. I failed to bring gloves so I just pull my hands up into my sleeves and use the fabric to protect me; I have to start being careful, the way any expectant mother would. I don’t require any sort of quantity. Seven seems a good number.
Does it sound loony, the way I won’t let this Kayley Ann business alone? It isn’t exactly that I am pretending she is the one performing this job, taking me one step closer to doing something irrevocable and gruesome. It’s not that simple, or I am not quite that crazy. Kayley Ann is me, in some deep down, beyond Method acting way. She is the person I might be if you could strip off all the Crowe.
I gather no moss as I turn and go back the way I came, like Gretel following the crumbs back home, though my memory is foggy on the conclusion of that particular tale; I cannot for the life of me remember whether backtracking delivered her to safety or to the ravenous witch’s house.
36
Caroline
Back in New York. In my room, I take the plastic bag of mushrooms out of my backpack. It feels a bit like having a pile of live grenades in my hands. I go into the kitchen to get a pair of latex gloves. Rummaging around in a cupboard I find just what I’m looking for, a wire mesh rack whose everyday use is mysterious to me. I put on the gloves, take the mushrooms out of the bag and arrange them on the rack, which I place over the radiator vent in my bedroom. Dry heat pours out of it this time of year, and I bet the fungi will be nicely shriveled up in no time.
/> I need to make sure Marecita does not confront this enterprise when she comes in to clean or bring me my coffee. I’ll just shove the whole thing in a suitcase for those few minutes each day.
I wish I could say that the mushrooms were just insurance, just an option, a backup, a Plan B. But when I said the baby changes everything, I wasn’t kidding around. Everything he wants to do to me is multiplied now, by a factor of infinity, so much worse, unbearably worse.
You must think I’m being coy. But see—I’m taking the drastic step of killing my brother to keep him from talking, so why do you think I’m going to lean into your ear and tell you? That wouldn’t be consistent, now would it?
37
Wilson
“We went to Montego Bay a couple years, maybe three? A villa, one-story, right on the water.”
“Tell me about the villa,” says Sandie. “What else did it look like?”
“It wasn’t fancy, really. A big living room that opened onto a lawn and then the sea. A poinsettia hedge. Caro and I had bedrooms on one side of that big room, and my parents on the other. Hazel, the maid, used to slip me ice cream bars when my mother wasn’t looking. And I don’t think she was looking very often. If ever.”
“Your mother was not attentive?”
Wilson laughs, shaking his head. Any mirth in his expression quickly drops away and he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I keep getting this one flash, this one image…”
“Describe it to me,” says Sandie gently.
“It’s…it’s Caroline. She’s naked.”
Moments pass. Sandie keeps still, waiting. Wilson buries his face in his hands. Finally he murmurs, “I don’t want to say this out loud.”
“I understand.”
He opens his eyes wide and for a moment his expression is innocent, young. “But what I see is Caroline’s top half, her breasts bare, and her skin glistening. I…I get aroused—I mean, in this little snip of memory, I have a hard-on looking at my sister. She has this look on her face, it was nothing I’d seen before? And…reggae playing somewhere.”
“How old were you, do you think?”
“Twelve? Thirteen? I don’t know. Somewhere in the middle of puberty. She had real tits, you know?”
Sandie doesn’t say anything.
“Sorry,” Wilson says quickly.
“Did this happen outside? Was it on the beach, one of those times you were left alone for most of the day?”
Wilson breathes in noisily through his nose, and exhales long and slowly. “I don’t think so. The light was…almost shadowy. Wait…” he closes his eyes and leans back on the sofa. “So…darker stripes going across. Like…Venetian blinds?”
“Very good,” says Sandie. She pauses, then asks, “Do you think Caroline was in your room? Had she come to your room and taken off her bathing suit top?”
Wilson looks at her helplessly. “All I get is that one little snippet.”
“And what about the rest of her? Was she wearing anything below?”
Wilson just shrugs. “I only see the top half.”
“What does it mean to you, Wilson?”
“Mean?”
“A brother seeing his sister topless—it seems like that would be fairly commonplace, wouldn’t it? Especially on vacation, at the beach.”
I keep my expression the same but I am glowering inside. Finally I bring her a memory, a big fat juicy memory at that, a memory that had me puking beside the road—and it’s commonplace?
“Are any other memories starting to emerge, times with Caroline where there was an erotic element?”
“No,” I say. “So you’re saying, you’re telling me, that a guy getting hot for his sister is just the usual thing?”
She leans back in her chair and looks at me. I can tell she’s trying to decide whether to answer or see what will happen if she stays quiet.
“I am not saying that,” she says at last. “The important thing here is your feelings, Wilson, your experience. Not the simple fact of seeing your sister without a top on. Do you follow?”
I shrug. I thought she would be pleased with me, and now it feels like she’s just adding more hoops to jump through.
“Children are sexually curious. It’s quite natural,” she says.
I’m feeling wary, I can feel my pulse hammering in my throat.
“It would be helpful if there were more context,” she adds. “It comes down to a question of coercion, you see. If you and your sister engaged in some exploration…if it was mutual…”
I do not want to talk about what my sister and I did or did not engage in. My mouth has filled up with saliva and I swallow hard.
“This whole process…”
“It’s uncomfortable, Wilson, I understand. It’s difficult to put aside the stories we tell ourselves, and see ourselves as we really are. That’s why so many people fail to do it.”
I am one second away from jumping up from my chair and quitting. One half a second. But then I think about Rebecca, and the son or daughter I’m about to meet, and the urge to flee fades a little. Not that much, to be honest, but enough to keep me in the chair, enough to finish out the session.
I am not doing much of a job of making Sandie Shearer laugh, that’s for goddamn sure. And the thing is? I’m getting a semi just talking about this stuff. I don’t think all the therapy in the world is gonna be enough to get the sick out of my head.
38
Caroline’s phone rings. She snatches it up, sees it’s Wilson, and almost throws the phone against the wall.
“Hey, little bro,” she says, her voice steady. She looks down at her belly, still struggling to believe there’s someone alive in there.
“Look, we have to talk,” he says.
“No kidding.” She scoots to the edge of the bed, sitting up straight, eyes wide. “But you know—this is a conversation we should have in person.”
“Sure, but—”
“I’ll come out. Tomorrow.”
“You’re always a surprise,” says Wilson, wonderingly. “That’s great, Caro, it’s excellent. It’s much better…much better when we see each other. In the flesh.”
“In the flesh,” she repeats, pressing her hand into her stomach as though to feel the outline of the tiny life inside.
“But so—let’s make this just between us. I’m not anywhere near ready to talk about any of this with Rebecca.”
“Sure. Of course. Just between us.”
“So the latest from here…” says Wilson. “Some stuff…I’ve been remembering a little bit.”
“You say that like you’re excavating the world’s most precious site of antiquities. It’s just childhood, Wilson, everyone has one. And everyone—every. single. person—is traumatized by it, one way or another.”
“This isn’t about me trying to be special.”
“Good, because you are special, Wilson, don’t ever forget it.”
“If I could reach through the phone and strangle you right now, I would.”
Caroline laughs.
“So listen, these little bits and pieces I’m remembering—it’s some heavy shit, Caro. Don’t flip out, but Sandie is saying…she may be in a position of having to call law enforcement.”
Caroline presses the phone to her chest for a moment, and looks out at the rooftops across the street. She keeps very still. Then she puts the phone back to her ear. “Law enforcement?” she says, finally, her voice even.
“To be honest, I’m not sure whether she’s saying that because she’s really planning to call them—or because she has to, by law—I admit I don’t know what the rules are, or whether there’s any complication since we live in different states. I guess there’s a chance she mentioned it only because she’s trying to impress me with the seriousness of the things I’ve….”
“What in God’s name are you telling this woman?”
“Our family…Jesus, Caroline…don’t you ever think it’s time to stop keeping secrets? That maybe we’d all be a whole lot ha
ppier if we just quit it? Look, I’ll see you tomorrow. Just come straight to the house and we’ll…we’ll talk. Rebecca’s on her way out and I need to catch her. Bye.”
Caroline lets the phone drop from her hand. It bounces on the bed and onto the floor as she puts her hands over her face. Panic boils up into her throat and for a moment she can barely breathe.
39
Caroline
For obvious reasons, Kayley Ann Barker again pays cash at the airport, and has to leave it to the fates that she will be able to get seats on the right planes. Fly out, do what I have to do, fly back. I don’t need that much time with Wilson, whichever way it goes.
I had sincerely hoped he could work on his mental health and bad habits without bringing the rest of the family down with him. Hoped he would understand that for a family as well-known as ours, the rules are not the same. We aren’t allowed the same number of mistakes that normal people are. The press and the public will be clamoring—giddy! bloodthirsty!—for our downfall once they smell any vulnerability.
Gordon is right. Therapy, just by itself, is weakness. It’s a looming threat to the future of every Crowe, and I will try, once more, to explain that to Wilson in a way he can grasp.
He’s got to give me some wiggle room here, for fuck’s sake. I don’t want to kill him, how many times do I have to say it?
But what choice do I have?
I’m fucking pregnant.
Every time the realization hits me—like someone slapping me across the face, to the accompaniment of chorusing jeerlings—every time, I don’t know whether to laugh hysterically or sob. Or even…even somehow find a way to be glad about a new little person, innocent of all things, who will be knocking on the door in approximately seven and three-quarters months, unless I take steps to end it.
You Made Your Bed: A Novel Page 15