Kisscut

by Karin Slaughter

  Lena stared at the hand, then reluctantly shook it. The woman was tall, with long dark hair and a heart-shaped face. Her eyes were an intense hazel, which Lena noticed because the woman would not stop staring at her.

  “Beer, please,” Lena said, then, “Make it a Jim Beam instead.”

  Judy paused, then walked over to the liquor display behind the bar. “Sibyl never drank,” she said, as if by extension this meant that Lena, her twin, would not drink.

  Lena pointed out, “She didn’t fuck men, either.”

  Judy conceded the point. “Jim Beam?”

  “Yeah,” Lena answered, trying to sound bored as she took some money out of her front pocket. She had changed into jeans and a T-shirt at home before coming here, a decision she now regretted. She probably looked gayer than the women in the corner to these people.

  Judy said, “She liked cranberry juice, though.”

  “Could you make that a double?” Lena asked, tossing a twenty-dollar bill onto the bar.

  Judy glanced at her before filling the order. “We all really miss her.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Lena told her, aware that she sounded glib. She stared at the dark liquid in her glass, remembering that the last time she had anything to drink was the night Sibyl had died. Lena did not like alcohol, because she hated the feeling of being out of control. Not that she had control of anything lately, anyway.

  Lena looked at the clock over the bar. It was five till eight.

  Judy asked, “Who you meeting here?”

  Lena knocked the drink back in one swallow. “Jim Beam,” she said, tapping the glass.

  Judy gave her another look, but retrieved the bottle from the shelf.

  To discourage conversation, Lena turned on the stool, looking out on the dance floor. A lone woman stood there, her eyes closed as she swayed to the beat. There was something familiar about her, but the light was bad, and Lena’s memory did not want to work. Still, Lena watched her, wondering at the self-absorbed way the woman danced, as if no one else were in the room. As if nothing else mattered.

  The song changed, and Lena recognized the tune before the lyrics to Beck’s “Debra” came from the speakers. Mark Patterson popped into her mind again. There was something sensual and disturbing about the way the dancer moved that reminded her of the young man. She watched the dancer, wondering again what the hell had been going on with Jenny Weaver. What was Mark’s hold over her? What was it about him that would make a thirteen-year-old kid prostitute herself? It did not make sense.

  Lena wondered if this was the way Mark Patterson would dance, though she could not imagine the kid doing something so audacious as standing in the middle of an empty dance floor. The thought surprised her, because Lena was not aware that she had put herself in a position to make assumptions about Mark’s personality. She knew so very little about him, yet somehow, her subconscious had assigned him certain traits.

  Lena turned back around to break the spell. Judy was reading her paper, having left Lena’s drink and her change on the bar. Lena was thinking about what to leave for a tip when she noticed her reflection in the mirror. For just a moment, she startled, and Lena imagined she looked much as Judy had when Lena had first walked into the room. In a split second, Sibyl was there, and Lena felt her heart jump at the sight.

  Suddenly, shouting came from outside, and a crowd of people walked into the bar. They were laughing and raucous, all dressed in matching softball uniforms. The pants were black with white stripes up the sides, the shirts white with the word BUSHWHACKERS across the chest.

  “Jesus Christ,” Lena groaned, getting the reference. She stood up as she recognized Nan Thomas in the center of the group. The mousy librarian had a neon-pink athletic strap around her glasses and the front of her shirt was streaked with dirt as if she had slid across home plate. Unlike some of the others in the group, Nan showed no sign of mistaking Lena for her sister. As a matter of fact, she frowned.

  Someone patted Lena on the back, and she turned around, surprised to see Hare Earnshaw standing beside her. He was dressed in jeans and a Bushwhacker T-shirt as well as a hat with a large B on it.

  “How’s it going, Lena?” Hare asked.

  Maybe it was the alcohol, but Lena blurted out a surprised, “You’re gay?” to him before she could stop herself. Hare was a doctor in town. Lena had actually seen him a couple of years ago for a cold that would not go away.

  Hare laughed at her surprise. “I play on the team,” he said, indicating his shirt. Then, he leaned closer, giving her a coy wink. “I’m the catcher.”

  Lena backed up right into Nan. There were people everywhere, though they seemed to be involved in their own conversations about the game they had just played. Lena pulled at the neck of her shirt, feeling claustrophobic. She moved away from the group, toward the front door.

  “Lee?” Nan said, then corrected herself before Lena could, saying, “Lena.”

  “I told you not to call me that,” Lena said, crossing her arms.

  “I know,” Nan held her hands up, palms out. “I’m sorry. It’s just that Sibby always called you that.”

  Lena stopped her. “Can we get the stuff, please? I need to get home.” Her voice went down on the word “home” as she thought about the empty house. Hank had not answered the phone when she called the Hut looking for him. The bastard was obviously ignoring her. It was so typical of him to leave her when she needed him most.

  “It’s out in the parking lot,” Nan said, holding the door open for Lena. Lena stopped, waiting for Nan to go first. It was one thing to let Brad Stephens hold a door open for her; Lena would be damned if she would let some woman do it.

  Nan talked as they walked out to the parking lot. “I tried to keep it the same way she had it,” she said, a forced lightness to her voice. “You know how Sibby liked to keep things orderly.”

  “She had to,” Lena shot back, thinking it was obvious that a blind person would have a system to things so that they would not be lost.

  If Nan noticed Lena’s biting tone, she ignored it.

  “Here,” Nan said, stopping in front of a white Toyota Camry. The driver’s side window was down, and she reached in, popping the trunk.

  “You should keep your doors locked,” Lena told her.

  “Why?” Nan asked, and she really seemed to be puzzled.

  “You’ve got your car parked in front of a gay bar. I would think you might want to be a little more careful.”

  Nan tucked her hands into her waist. “Sibyl was killed in a diner in broad daylight. Do you really think locking my car door is going to protect me?”

  She had a point, but Lena was not going to give it to her. “I wasn’t saying you could get killed. Someone might vandalize the car or something.”

  “Well…” Nan shrugged, and for just a moment, she seemed exactly like Sibyl. Not that Nan was in any way similar to Sibyl in appearance, it was just her “whatever happens will happen” attitude.

  “These are some of her tapes,” Nan said, handing Lena a box that was about eighteen inches square. “She labeled them in braille, but most of them have their own titles.”

  Lena took the box, surprised at how heavy it was.

  “These are some photographs,” Nan said, stacking another box on top of the first. “I don’t know why she had them.”

  “I asked her to keep them for me,” Lena provided, remembering the day she had brought the box of pictures to Sibyl. Greg Mitchell, Lena’s last boyfriend, had just left her, and Lena did not want the photographs she had of him in the house.

  “I’ll get this one,” Nan offered, picking up the last box. It was bigger than the other two, and she rested it on her knee to close the trunk. “This is just a bunch of stuff she had in the closet. A couple of awards from high school, a track ribbon I guess is yours.”

  Lena nodded, walking to her Celica.

  “I found a picture of you two at the beach,” Nan said, laughing. “Sibyl’s got a sunburn. She looks miserable.”r />
  Because she was in front of Nan, Lena allowed a smile. She remembered the day, how Sibyl had insisted on staying outside even though Hank had warned her it was too hot. Sibyl’s black glasses had shaded her eyes, and when she took them off, the only part of her face that was not beet red was where the glasses had been. She looked like a raccoon for days after.

  “…stop by Saturday to pick them up,” Nan was saying.

  “What?” Lena asked.

  “I said that you can stop by Saturday to go through the other stuff. I’m donating her computer and equipment to the school for the blind over in Augusta.”

  “What other stuff?” Lena asked, thinking Nan meant to throw away Sibyl’s things.

  “Just some papers,” Nan told her, setting the box down at her feet. “School stuff, mostly. Her dissertation, a couple of essays. That kind of thing.”

  “You’re just going to throw them away?” Lena demanded.

  “Give them away. They’re not really valuable,” Nan said, as if she were talking to a child.

  “They were valuable to Sibyl,” Lena countered, aware she was close to yelling. “How can you even think about giving them away?”

  Nan looked down at the ground, then back at Lena. The patronizing tone was still there. “I told you that you’re more than welcome to have them if you like. They’re in braille. It’s not like you can read them.”

  Lena snorted a laugh, setting the boxes on the ground. “Some lover you were.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “Obviously, it meant something to her or she wouldn’t have kept it,” Lena said. “But go ahead and give it away.”

  “Excuse me,” Nan said, indicating the boxes. “How many times did I have to call you and beg you to take this stuff?”

  “That’s different,” Lena said, digging in her pocket for her keys.

  “Why?” Nan shot back. “Because you were in the hospital?”

  Lena glanced back at the bar. “Lower your voice.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” Nan said, her tone louder. “You don’t get to question me about whether or not I loved your sister. Do you get that?”

  “I wasn’t questioning you,” Lena answered, wondering how this had escalated so quickly. She could not even remember what had started this, but Nan was obviously pissed.

  “The hell you weren’t,” Nan barked. “You think you’re the only one around here who loved Sibyl? I shared my life with her.” Nan lowered her voice. “I shared my bed with her.”

  Lena winced. “I know that.”

  “Do you?” Nan said. “Because I’ll tell you what, Lena, I am sick and tired of the way you treat me, as if I’m some sort of pariah.”

  “Hey,” Lena stopped her. “I’m not the one playing softball for Suddy’s.”

  “I don’t know how she put up with this,” Nan mumbled, almost to herself.

  “Put up with what?”

  “Your misogynistic cop bullshit, for one.”

  “Misogynistic?” Lena repeated. “You’re calling me misogynistic?”

  “And homophobic,” Nan added.

  “Homophobic?”

  “Are you a parrot now?”

  Lena felt her nostrils flare. “Don’t fuck with me, Nan. You don’t know how.”

  Nan didn’t seem to catch the warning. “Why don’t you go back into that bar and meet some of your sister’s friends, Lee? Why don’t you talk to the people who really knew her and cared about her?”

  “You sound like Hank,” Lena told her. “Oh, I see,” she said, putting the pieces together. “You’ve been talking to Hank about me.”

  Nan pressed her lips together. “We’re worried about you.”

  “That so?” Lena laughed. “Great, my speed freak uncle and my dead sister’s dyke girlfriend are worried about me.”

  “Yes,” Nan said, standing her ground. “We are.”

  “This is so fucking stupid,” Lena said, trying to laugh it off. She slipped the key into the lock, opening the trunk.

  “You wanna know what’s stupid?” Nan said. “What’s stupid is me giving a crap about what you do. What’s stupid is my caring about the fact that you’re throwing your life away.”

  “Nobody asked you to look after me, Nan.”

  “No,” Nan agreed. “But it’s what Sibyl would have wanted.” Her tone was more moderate now. “If Sibyl were here right now, she would be saying the same thing.”

  Lena swallowed hard, trying not to let Nan’s words get to her, mostly because they rang true. Sibyl was the only person who had ever really been able to get to Lena.

  Nan said, “She would be saying that you need to deal with this. She would be worried about you.”

  Lena stared at the jack in the trunk of the car because it was the only thing she could focus on.

  Nan said, “You’re so angry.”

  Lena laughed again, but the sound was hollow even to her. “I think I have pretty damn good reason to be.”

  “Why? Because your sister was killed? Because you were raped?”

  Lena reached out, holding on to the trunk of her car. If only it were that easy, Lena thought. She was not simply mourning the death of Sibyl, she was also mourning the death of herself. Lena did not know who she was anymore, or why she even got up in the morning. Everything Lena had been before the rape had been taken away from her. She no longer knew herself.

  Nan spoke again, and when she did, she said his name. Lena watched Nan’s lips forming the word, saw his name travel through the space between them like an airborne poison.

  “Lee,” Nan said, “Don’t let him ruin your life.”

  Lena kept her grip on the car, certain her knees would buckle if she let go.

  Nan used his name again, then said, “You’ve got to deal with it, Lena. You’ve got to deal with it now, or you’ll never be able to move on.”

  Lena hissed, “Fuck off, Nan.”

  Nan stepped forward, like she might put her hand on Lena’s shoulder.

  “Get the fuck away from me,” Lena warned.

  Nan gave a long sigh, giving up. She turned and walked back to the bar without giving Lena a second glance.

  LENA sat in the empty parking lot of the Grant Piggly Wiggly, sipping cheap whiskey straight from the bottle. She was past the harsh taste, and her throat was so numb from the alcohol that she could barely feel it going down. There was another bottle in the seat beside her, and she would probably go through that one, too, before the night was over. All Lena wanted to do was stay in her car in this empty parking lot and try to figure out what was happening in her life. Nan was right to some degree. Lena had to get over this, but that did not mean talking to some idiot like Dave Fine. What Lena needed to do was get her shit together and stop obsessing about stupid things. She just needed to get on with her life. She needed, Lena supposed, a night of self-pity, where she finally went through the motions of grieving and letting things go.

  She listened to snippets of Sibyl’s tapes, popping them one by one into the cassette player to see what was on them. She should label them, but she could not find a pen. Besides, it seemed wrong to write on Sibyl’s things, even though Sibyl would not have minded. There were a few tapes that were already labeled, most of them Atlanta singers: Melanie Hammet, Indigo Girls, a couple more names Lena did not recognize. She ejected the last tape, which had been some kind of compilation of classical music on one side and old Pretenders tunes on the other, and tossed it in with the others.

  Lena reached around to the back seat and pulled at the last box. It was heavier than the others, and when she finally managed to get it to the front, pictures spilled onto the seat beside her. Most of the photos were of Greg Mitchell and Lena at various stages in their relationship. There were some beach pictures, of course, as well as snapshots from the time they went to Chattanooga to see the aquarium. Lena blinked away tears, trying to remember what it had been like that day, standing in line to see the exhibit, the breeze coming off the Tennessee River s
o strong that Greg had stood behind her to keep her warm. She had loved the way her body felt when he put his arms around her waist, rested his chin on her shoulder. It was the only time in her life she could remember ever being truly content. Then, the line had moved, and Greg had stepped back, and said something about the weather, or a story on the news, and Lena had purposefully picked a fight with him for no reason whatsoever.

  Lena thumbed through another stack of pictures, sipping the alcohol with deliberate care. She was beyond drunk now, but not beyond caring. Looking at the photos, she wondered how there had ever been a time when she wanted a man’s company, or felt like being alone with one, let alone intimate. For all Lena had said when Greg left her, she had still wanted him back.

  Lena found the picture Nan had told her about. Sibyl did look miserable, but she was still smiling for the camera. They were both about seven in the photograph. At that age, they had looked almost identical, though one of Sibyl’s front teeth was missing because she had tripped and knocked it out on the front porch. The tooth that grew in to replace it was snaggled, but it gave Sibyl’s mouth some character. At least, that’s what Hank had told her.

  Lena smiled as she spotted a stack of pictures bound together with a rubber band. Hank had given her an instant camera for her fifteenth birthday, and Lena had used two boxes of film in one day, taking pictures of everything she could think of. Later, she had done her own editing, splicing some of the images together. There was one picture in particular she remembered, and Lena thumbed through the stack until she found it. Using a razor blade, she had made a kisscut over the image, scoring just the surface of the photograph but not cutting all the way through to the back, and excised Hank from the scene. Bonnie, their golden lab, had been glued in his place.

  “Bonnie,” Lena breathed, aware that she was crying openly now. This was one of the reasons Lena did not drink alcohol. The dog had been dead for ten years and here she was, crying over him like it was just yesterday.

  Lena got out of the car, taking the bottles of liquor with her. She wanted to get them out of the car because she knew she would end up passed out if they stayed there. As she walked, she realized that she was closer to this than she had thought in the car. Her feet felt like they did not belong to her, and she tripped several times over nothing in particular. The store had been closed for hours, but she still checked the windows to make sure no one saw her stumbling across the parking lot. Lena pressed her palm against the side of the building as she walked around it, holding both bottles with her free hand. When she got to the back of the store and let go of the wall, she tumbled, her knees giving out from under her. Somehow, she caught herself with one hand and kept from falling, face first, onto the asphalt.