Killing Cousins

by Rett MacPherson

  “So, are you going to do anything about it? How’d you find out, anyway?”

  “After the funeral he confessed it to me. I’m not going to do anything about it. Unless you want me to,” he said. “It was you who he was scaring.”

  “No,” I said. “There was no harm done, really. He was scared.”

  “I figured you’d say that,” he said.

  We got out of the van and walked around to the back. I looked up at Aurora’s house and wondered what sort of reception we would get. This was my peace offering to her. I hoped she would forgive me.

  “So, when are you going to make me a bona fide deputy?” I asked as I unlocked the door.

  “When hell freezes over.”

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  The Gaheimer House is one of the oldest houses in New Kassel, dating back to the mid-1860s,” I said. I was back to giving tours of the house, and I could finally fit into all seven of the reproduction dresses that my boss, Sylvia, had made for me several years ago when I started this job. I wish I could say that having a baby last year had added the extra pounds to my rather short frame, but it really hadn’t. It wasn’t my son’s fault that I had eaten too much and reduced my exercising to chasing my chickens around the backyard. No, it was mine. All mine.

  But a year later and about thirty pounds lighter, I could fit into the reproduction dresses and was giving tours twice a day. I wore my favorite, the 1870s deep blue polonaise gown with an open front that revealed an underskirt of the same color. It was trimmed with chenille-ball fringe in a deeper, almost navy blue.

  I moved the tour of about eleven people into the dining room, my stiff and itchy crinolette swishing as I went. “For those of you who aren’t from the eastern Missouri area, New Kassel was founded by a group of German immigrants in the 1830s. The Mississippi River was an excellent way of importing and exporting, and the town was located not too far from the Missouri River junction. The Missouri River is important because before the great railroads were built west of the Mississippi, the Missouri was the main route west. Unless you went by wagon.”

  On this particular tour, I had a young couple with twin girls, an elderly couple, a threesome of mid-forties women, an ancient-looking man who could have passed for a midwestern version of Rasputin, and a solitary female about thirty.

  “I want to remind everybody as we enter this lovely room filled with delicate china and silver that all of the items in the Gaheimer House are antiques, so we ask that you refrain from touching them,” I said, more for the couple with the twin girls than for anybody else. I’m the mother of three kids; I know how things accidentally get broken. Kids are great. I had been thoroughly amazed at how much I could love a little creature when Rachel was first born, but that didn’t change the fact that kids live to touch things expensive, old, or irreplaceable. And if the twins on this tour were anything like my middle child, Mary, something would get broken.

  “The wainscoting that you see here is made of sycamore. Mr. Gaheimer went to Connecticut on business in the late 1880s and brought back this dining table, which seats twelve. If you’ll notice, the chandelier matches the gilt convex mirror….”

  I could say this stuff in my sleep. I’ve been doing this for almost ten years. I’m also the archivist for the town, compiling things like marriage and land records for Granite County. Sometimes I even write biographies, and I’m usually the one in charge of any displays we put up, as well. I know this town inside and out, and I know the job inside and out. Every now and then, though, if something distracts me, I forget my monologue and end up staring out at the tourists, stammering and stuttering. Just like today.

  The solitary female, whom I mentioned before, was staring back at me. Not staring at me like you’d expect someone might when listening to a tour guide, but really staring at me. She was about my height, maybe an inch taller, and had brown hair and hazel eyes. Something about those hazel eyes disturbed me, beyond the fact that they were boring through me as if she were trying to read my soul. There was a…familiarity, but I couldn’t place it. Dark lashes and eyebrows stood out against her rather pale face. She hung on my every word, my every gesture. And soon it became very difficult for me to speak.

  “And uh…um, this punch bowl at the end of the room was a gift from…from…” Who was it a gift from? I couldn’t remember.

  “Torie,” somebody said.

  “No, not Torie. Susan B. Anthony, that’s it!”

  “Torie,” the voice said, more persistent now. I snapped out of my stupor and realized that my name was Torie and somebody was calling me.

  “What?” I looked over to the entrance, where I saw my boss, Sylvia Pershing, standing there. Sylvia must be close to a hundred by now. Of course, I’ve been saying that for the last twenty years. I just knew that she was old when I was a kid, and now she seems immortal. She’s thin, frail, bony, and full of piss and vinegar. She has never cut her silver hair in her life, and she braids it into twin braids every morning and wraps them around her head. She is the president of the Historical Society, where I am employed, and she owns half of the town, including the Gaheimer House. Her sister Wilma died last year, and Sylvia has not been quite the same since. She can still do more than half of the people in the town, and she can still cut you with her razor-sharp tongue, but it’s as if she doesn’t enjoy it anymore.

  “Yes, Sylvia…what is it?”

  “I hate to interrupt the tour, but when you’re finished, you need to call the school,” she said with a slight tremor caused by age.

  “Oh, all right,” I said. I resumed the tour, wondering just what Mary had done that would require me to go and bail her out. The rest of the tour went much like the first part had, with me stumbling over words and finding myself stealing glances at the woman staring at me. I found myself doing things like wiping at my nose to make sure there were no errant boogers, and cleaning my teeth with my tongue. I mean, was there something gross about me? What was her problem?

  Finally, the tour was over. I headed down to my office as fast as I could. I put sixty cents in the soda machine, got a Dr Pepper, and went to my office. I shut the door and took a long, fizzy sip of my soda. Then I dialed the school, whose number I’ve had memorized since Mary started kindergarten.

  Of course, New Kassel is a tiny town. There’s one school for kindergarten and all twelve grades, and the graduating classes have about forty students each. And so when Francine answered the phone and I said, “Hi, it’s Torie,” she knew exactly who was calling.

  “Yeah, Torie,” Francine said. “We got a problem with Rachel.”

  “Rachel?” I asked. My oldest. This, I hadn’t expected. “Are you sure?”

  She laughed a little. “Of course I’m sure.”

  Rachel. Hmmm. “W-what’s the problem?” I asked. I would have sat down, but you can’t sit down in a dress like the one I was wearing. Potty breaks are an event that take as much organization as the invasion of Normandy. And nearly as much time.

  “She got into a fight,” Francine said.

  “A fight?” I asked. “Francine, this is Torie O’Shea. Are you sure you got the right kid? Rachel O’Shea. You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. She gave Davie Roberts a bloody nose because he flicked her bra strap.”

  “Oh jeez,” I said. Yes, it had been one of the great emotional moments of my life when my prepubescent daughter became pubescent and had to go out and buy her first training bra. She was still a kid, for crying out loud, but boobs are boobs. She was humiliated beyond belief, no matter how many of her friends I could name who were wearing training bras already. It also didn’t matter when I pointed out that usually she couldn’t wait to wear what everybody else wore, so why was this one item of clothing any different? But it was, and she didn’t see my logic at al
l.

  “It’s pretty bad,” Francine said.

  “What do you mean, ‘pretty bad’?” I asked.

  “I mean, I think she broke his nose. His eyes turned purple within twenty minutes.”

  My first reaction was to say, “Well, then Davie should keep his hands to himself,” but that didn’t make what Rachel did right. I don’t know how many times I’ve told my kids, “I don’t care who throws the first punch, it’s the kid who throws the last one—the one who retaliates—whom I will punish.” Yes, Davie should have kept his little twelve-year-old perverted hands to himself, but Rachel should not have broken his nose. “I’ll be right there,” I said to her.

  “Okay,” Francine said.

  “But, hey…are you guys going to do anything to Mr. Frisky Hands?”

  “Yes, he’s getting detention. That is, as soon as he returns to school.”

  “Oh jeez,” I said again, wondering just what Davie’s mother was going to say to me at the next PTA meeting. There was a knock at my office door just as I said good-bye and hung up the phone.

  “Come in,” I said.

  The door opened and in walked the woman from the tour. The one who had kept staring at me. I was a little surprised, but yet…was I really? “Can I help you?” I asked. I sounded a little defensive, maybe even hateful. The woman flinched.

  “Um, I was wondering if I could…I can come back at another time,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I have to go to the school to get my daughter. There’s been a…disagreement with one of her classmates.”

  “Oh.”

  “Could you…I’ll listen to you, if you’ll help me out of this stupid dress,” I said, turning my back to her and exposing the buttons.

  “Oh, sure,” she said, and began undoing the buttons. There was an underslip, chemise, and crinolette, so I knew she wouldn’t actually see any flesh. Women in the nineteenth century were packaged in layer after layer, so the only person who could ever glimpse their bare skin was the person who was supposed to. A satin and lace prison, if you will.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked as I unbuttoned the sleeves.

  “I understand that you trace family trees? You are Torie O’Shea, correct?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I wouldn’t wear these tombs if I weren’t.”

  “Well, I was wondering if I could hire your services?” she asked.

  It was January. No major holidays or projects coming up. No marriages or births. There was no reason I couldn’t take on this job. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to, though. I always react this way. I am a historian. A genealogist. And yet when somebody actually asks me to do my job, I always balk.

  “It might take me awhile. And even then, I can’t say that I’ll have every branch fleshed out as far back as it will go. What I’ll do is establish a certain number of generations and try to fill that in. If I get more in the time allotted, then that’s a bonus for you.”

  I turned around and began looking for my car keys.

  “How many generations do you go back to?” she asked.

  “When were you born?”

  She looked around the room, self-conscious suddenly. It was as if she wasn’t sure if she should answer. How could I trace her family tree if she wasn’t even willing to give me her birth date? “Nineteen seventy.”

  “Then I’ll try and finish eight. That’s about two hundred years. Is that okay with you?”

  “Sure,” she said, and shrugged.

  “All right,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  Again, that semifrightened bunny-rabbit look. Her eyes darted from the Rose of Sharon quilt hanging on my wall, to the window, to the poster advertising all of New Kassel’s charms, to the floor. Finally, she spoke. “Stephanie.”

  “Stephanie…” If I hadn’t been so rattled over Rachel, I would have asked her more questions, like why she had been staring at me so intently during the tour and why she was acting so weird over simple things like her name and age. But my anxiety about Rachel mounted with each moment that passed.

  “Connelly.”

  “Nice to meet you, Stephanie Connelly,” I said, my dress hanging on my shoulders. “I’ll leave you a form to fill out as best you can. And my rates are on there as well, so you can see how much this is going to cost you. But right now, I need to get down to the rest room and change my clothes so that I can go and pick up my daughter.”

  “Okay,” she said, putting her hands in her jean pockets.

  I pulled a form out of the top desk drawer, set it on my desk, and put a pencil next to it. “Just fill it in, leave me your phone number and e-mail address, if you’ve got one, and I’ll get back to you. I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  “Sure, that’s fine.”

  Realizing that my keys were in my jean pockets—where they always were—I picked up my jeans and shirt and tennis shoes from the chair next to the door. “Thank you so much for undoing these buttons. You have no idea how difficult it is to get in and out of this dress.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome,” she said, and smiled brightly.

  Immediately to the right was the kitchen. I walked through it to the rest room that Sylvia had built for staff use. Nobody could see me walking through the kitchen with the dress unbuttoned to the small of my back, unless Sylvia happened to be there. But since Sylvia was usually the person to help me out of the blasted things, I didn’t really care if she saw my slip-covered back or not. As soon as my clothes were changed, I was out the door and on my way to the school. But I couldn’t help feeling a little weird as I left. I remembered an occasion a few years ago when a tourist had approached me after a tour and had hired me as a genealogist. She had ended up dead.

  “I just think you should say something to Rachel, other than ‘Good shot, honey!’” I said to Rudy.

  Rudy, my ever lovable and generous-hearted husband, was leaning up against the countertop in our kitchen. He was eating an Oreo, the inside first, and teasing our dog Fritz with any possible crumbs. He wore his long-sleeved blue oxford shirt and khakis for work, but he hadn’t put his shoes on yet, so our wiener dog kept licking his toes, trying to find crumbs.

  “And why are you eating Oreos for breakfast?” I asked, irritated in general.

  “I’m not eating Oreos for breakfast. I had eggs and waffles for breakfast. I’m just eating the Oreos because I want to and I can eat them anytime,” he said. “Lighten up.”

  “You know…our daughter broke another kid’s nose.”

  “I know,” he said, glowing.

  “You’re seriously missing something here, Rudy.”

  “What? Davie got too friendly with her and she put him in his place,” he said.

  “Look, I agree that I want our girls to be able to defend themselves in case they are ever attacked,” I said. “But we shouldn’t condone Rachel’s actions because a kid flipped her bra strap. I mean, self-defense is one thing, but if we condone this, then who’s to stop her when the next kid just looks at her breasts?”

  Rudy stood up straight. “Hey, that is my daughter you’re talking about. And I don’t want to think about any kid looking at anything but her face.”

  Rudy was having a difficult time dealing with the fact that Rachel has breasts, much less that they are growing. He had equal difficulty with the fact that she was no longer that little girl who used to wear ribbons in her hair and big pleated dresses with gigantic bows. Now, she wears bell-bottom jeans with yin/yang symbols on the rear-end pockets, and her straight hair is parted in the middle—a crooked part, for that’s the in thing—and hangs shaggily around her shoulders. She is still a kid in many ways. She still loves boy bands and Harry Potter, and on occasion, if nobody is looking, she’ll still play Barbies with her sister. But in another year, she’ll be a full-fledged teenager, complete with pimples and boys. Rudy was in denial.

  “Boys are going to look at her, Rudy. And someday they’ll—”

  “Don’t go there!” he said, and held a hand
up and shut his eyes. “I can’t deal with this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I was one of those sweaty, hormone-driven teenagers once, and I know what I used to…She’s not dating until she’s thirty. That’s that. Can I just enjoy my cookies, for crying out loud?”

  “Look, we don’t have to worry about her dating, not just yet anyway. We’ve got a few years. My point is, she’ll be leaving broken bones in a path from here to Arkansas if we don’t do something about this now.”

  “And there’s a problem with that?”

  “Rudy!”

  “All right, all right,” he said. “You’re right.”

  “I’m just saying that she should have gone to the teacher or the principal first, and then if he did it again, she could have taken more drastic actions, but we can’t just condone the violence. Because if we condone it enough, someday she’ll be the aggressor and we’ll be getting phone calls from the school telling us to come get our bully. Not to mention we’ll have to deal with the parents of all the wounded children. As it is, I’m not looking forward to seeing Davie’s parents anytime soon.”

  “I think you’re overreacting,” he said.

  “Probably. But, I just—” I took a deep breath. “One of my New Year’s resolutions was to be more tolerant and accepting. And to be kinder, more forgiving. In this world where people shoot other people for having a soda bottle in their hands, we need to practice and teach tolerance and forgiveness.”

  “Okay, I hear you,” he said, putting his hands up in surrender. “Did you talk to her?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I let her know that I was happy she could take care of herself and that Davie was a jerk. But I also told her that if she ever busted a kid’s nose again for something like this, I would ground her until her wedding day. I mean really, Rudy, was his behavior that bad?”