by Melhoff, D.
The room went silent.
“Be up by six thirty,” Moira said, pursing her lips. “Downstairs at seven.”
Moira raised her hand—here it comes, the slap—and whipped it forward, snatching the silver hair clip right out of Camilla’s hair.
And that was it. The old woman kicked another chunk of glass across the kitchen and walked out of the room with the wet boy pressed to her side.
5
Stag Crescent
At six twenty-five a.m. the next morning, Camilla tiptoed up to the second floor of the Vincents’ house on the balls of her toes. She was dripping wet, clinging to a towel that felt like a ream of sandpaper.
Her legs slid together to lock in every degree of body heat. As her hips rocked back and forth—not that she had “hips” so much as just hip bones—she pictured herself modeling something from one of her favorite fashion houses, maybe Valentino or Givenchy. She had tried modeling in college and was pretty decent at hitting her marks, but after a month of nothing but first and second round callbacks, her tetchy Tim-Gunn-knockoff agent had given her the old, cold boot. “You’ve got the tools, hon,” his lisp was memorably condescending, “but you’re missing the ‘tude.”
He was right, of course. Doesn’t mean he couldn’t be less pretentious about it. Asshole.
And then it hit her: the smell of eggs and sausage links rising up from the kitchen. Oil was popping on Teflon as a spatula scraped the burned rims of bacon off a frying pan two floors below. She closed her eyes, breathing deeper, and allowed visions of greasy breakfast foods in all their glory to chase away her inner model.
The smells summoned another image, this time a full-bodied memory.
She was suddenly in the kitchen of her parents’ old trailer home—a drab den of corroded appliances, permanently stained countertops, and linoleum that curled up from the walls like untrimmed toenails. This “dining room” barely qualified as a kitchenette, yet that embarrassing little nook had fed more mouths with fewer resources than Jesus Christ. Five loaves of bread and a couple of fish would have been a feast in those days; usually Camilla and her mother would split two or three scrambled eggs and a glass of milk as they sat in the trailer’s dining booth and watched the smoke curl off a limp cigarette. The only sound would be their FM radio crackling out the morning show: weather, advertisements, five minutes of banter, more advertisements, Tom Petty, more advertisements. Sometimes they could get through their milk and eggs with enough time to catch the first half of the Hot Talk segment with Bert Blightly, but more often than not, the third Petty tune would get cut short by the sudden banging on the side of their trailer. Camilla swore, even now, that she could smell the odor of booze and urine seep through the screen door and murder every pleasant molecule in the room.
A drop of water rolled down Camilla’s thigh and shot a shiver back up between her legs.
The dripping sensation triggered another memory—a newer memory—which flashed over the old one, causing Camilla to see her childhood trailer’s door crash open and, instead of her father, reveal the soaking wet six-year-old boy from the Vincents’ backyard.
He was white as a ghost.
White skin. White eyes. White teeth in a gaping black mouth.
The apparition burned out like a light bulb, and she was suddenly back on the second floor of the funeral home, alone, hugging her sandpaper towel.
Camilla’s legs carried her up the rest of the stairs as she replayed the previous night in her head for the hundredth time—everything from the silhouette, to Moira’s reaction, to the scar running down the boy’s chest. That last one disturbed her the most.
Who was he? Why was he soaking wet? Why were there towels by the back door? The more she tried to connect the dots, the more it felt like a paint-by-number Picasso. Why was he in the backyard in the first place, and why was Moira…nervous? Yes, nervous…
When she reached the top of the staircase, she spotted a blazer hanging from her bedroom door and a breakfast tray on the ground below it. Instantly she rushed for the food, shelving her thoughts of the mysterious boy for later.
She grinned as her hand shot down and pulled the lid off the tray.
There were no sausage links.
Or eggs.
Or bacon strips.
Instead there were two small bowls: one filled with milky chunks that looked like prechewed oatmeal, and the other with four or five spoonfuls of something gray and clumpy. Technically it might have been yogurt.
Her whole body sagged. I deserved that. She crouched down and picked up the bowl of yogurt, noticing a piece of paper stuck to the bottom.
Carleton: Only mediums. Wear anyway.
Camilla looked at the blazer hanging from the doorknob and frowned. It was a men’s coat with the Vincent crest stitched on the left breast. She glanced back at the note.
P.S. A call came in early. Be outside by six thirty. —M
She reread the last sentence, a spoonful of yogurt paused at the edge of her lips.
“Psst.”
Camilla turned around—still crouched in her towel with the gray goo dripping in front of her mouth—and saw Peter coming out of his room across the hall. He was fully done up in dress pants and a well-tailored blazer.
“I wouldn’t eat that,” he said. “It’s been at the back of the fridge for a year.”
Camilla lowered the spoon, not saying a word.
Peter turned and took off down the staircase. As soon as he was out of earshot, Camilla dropped the food and grabbed her coat, rocketing into her bedroom.
An unmarked van was waiting in front of the funeral home. It was white from bumper to bumper, including the windows that had been painted over to block the interior view from kids and nosy pedestrians. Peter and Lucas were standing by the taillights, arguing with their uncle Brutus.
“There aren’t enough,” Brutus insisted.
“Yes, there are,” Lucas shot back.
“You need three. No exceptions. Three.”
“One…two…” Lucas pointed to himself and Peter, and then at the house as Camilla came stepping out the front door. “Three.”
Camilla looked back at the men and adjusted her blazer, which, as Moira had predicted, was too big. Her hair was pulled back and she hadn’t had time to put on any makeup. At best, she looked frazzled; at worst, manly.
“No,” Brutus said outright. “I don’t care what your mother says, she’s too green.”
“I’m sure she’s seen a thing or two.”
“Stop arguing and get in.” Brutus pushed Peter’s flimsy frame aside and moved for the driver’s seat. But Lucas, being much taller and bulkier, blocked his uncle’s way like a human wall.
“Move, boy. I’m busier than a chimp in a shit-flinging contest.”
“There aren’t enough seats and Camilla needs the experience,” Lucas said. “Either you stay or I do.”
Brutus surveyed his nephew and seemed to weigh the threat. He had tossed Peter aside like a ragdoll but appeared more reluctant to do so with Lucas. His eyes hovered over all of them again, and Camilla could almost hear his thought process: One, two, three. Rule’s a rule.
“Fine,” he conceded. “But watch yourselves. And you”—he turned to Camilla—“I don’t know you yet, but do what they say and don’t get squeamish. A squirmer can ruin the whole goddamn thing.”
Lucas cleared his throat and Brutus gave one last grunt, dropping a set of keys into his nephew’s bear-size paw.
The white van rolled past the steel gates of the Vincents’ manor. Lucas was driving and Peter rode shotgun; Camilla was in the back, perched sideways on a bench that faced a bare gurney, and increasingly excited, despite the rough start to the day.
It was her first removal call, and she knew exactly what that meant. A corpse was ready for pickup. Spectacular.
“That wasn’t easy, you know,” Lucas said, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Uncle B has his rules, and he’s stubborn.”
“He didn’t want me along?�
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“He doesn’t think you’re ready yet. There should always be three people on removals in case something comes up. It’s usually him and the two of us, but we thought you could use the experience.”
“And a break from the house,” Peter added. He caught her eye in his side mirror. “How was breakfast, by the way?”
“I don’t know,” Camilla said. “Ask the toilet.”
Peter laughed, which helped ease the mood.
“What’s funny?” Lucas asked.
“Mom gave her the yogurt this morning.”
“The yogurt? My God, what did you do?”
“Nothing,” Camilla said, not entirely honest.
Peter and Lucas stared in their mirrors. They could smell the lie like a skunk on the road.
“Fine. She caught me sneaking around your kitchen last night.”
“That’s it?”
“Well…Maybe I broke something. But that’s no reason to poison me!” Although that wasn’t technically a lie, it wasn’t exactly the truth either. Still, the situation sounded bad enough without her bringing up the fact that she had almost attacked a six-year-old kid with a meat cleaver.
“Nice. Pete and I used to sneak down all the time.”
Peter grinned. “But there was never anything good. That’s why we started Robin-Hooding.”
“Robin-Hooding?”
“Taking food from removal calls.”
“Wait,” Camilla said, “you stole food from removals? From dead people’s houses?”
“It was Pete’s idea.”
“We put it in Ziplocs and slipped it out in the body bags. Forgot about that.”
“That’s absolutely deplorable,” Camilla said, trying to keep a straight face. “And clearly illegal.”
“It’s awesome,” Peter corrected. He turned around in his seat and handed Camilla a clipboard. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do it too?”
“I don’t think so. Honestly, I don’t need anything but a piece of fruit right now. If we pass an apple tree, pull over. We can’t get in trouble for that.”
“Finally,” Lucas said, “someone with a head on her shoulders. Take notes, Pete.”
Camilla looked at the clipboard that Peter had given her. The word “INTAKE” was stamped in large font across the header with a series of boxes underneath it. Some of the fields were filled in, some were blank.
“A house call like this is pretty standard,” Lucas continued. “People pass away in strange places, and it usually takes two attendants to remove the body. The third person does the paperwork and deals with any difficult family members.”
“Difficult?”
“Sometimes it’s OK, sometimes it’s riot control. There’s nothing easy about seeing a relative get dragged out the front door, right? A lot of sore emotions make people act out.”
Camilla skimmed the details on the intake form. “The family shouldn’t be an issue today, should they?”
“What makes you say that?”
“This claims the neighbor in the basement suite phoned the police. An eighty-four-year-old woman living alone—assumedly widowed or never married—who’s been dead long enough for a neighbor to notice probably doesn’t have family checking in on a regular basis.”
“Good instinct.” Peter gave a quick closed-mouth smile in the van’s mirror.
“Just an insight,” she shrugged.
Peter looked away. Lucas started explaining something else, but Camilla wasn’t paying attention anymore. She was still watching Peter in the side mirror, noticing the way his hair bounced on his head as the van chugged along the gravel road. His cheekbones and jawline were prominent in the sunlight, and his chin was smooth and round, not cleft like his brother’s. For a second she imagined his skin and muscles melting away and admired his textbook skull.
“And behind the form there’s an anklet…” Lucas’s voice faded in and out. “We tag the bodies with our own numbers, even the ones from the hospital…”
Camilla’s eyes wandered down, curious about Peter’s other body parts. She took time to notice his narrow arms and spidery fingers, then his hips, then his legs…
She glanced up, and Peter was peeking back at her in the mirror. Their gazes darted away, and Lucas’s voice returned to full volume.
“Camilla? Hey?”
“Sorry?”
“What’s the house number?”
“Oh.” She looked down at the intake form. “Eighteen.”
The white van took a corner onto Stag Crescent and the numbers on the cottages counted down to their destination: forty, thirty-eight, thirty-six, thirty-four…
The streetlights on either side of the block died off as the sun peeked over the trees and triggered the automatic timers. Up ahead, however, there were two lights that did not go out with the others.
“Oh goddamn it,” Lucas said. “Not today.”
Camilla saw that the two lamps were actually the headlights of a police cruiser angled at house eighteen. A pair of rangers in tan uniforms were leaning against the hood, arms crossed, knees locked. Neither was saying a word to the other.
“Don’t start something,” Peter said.
“I won’t,” Lucas replied, pulling up to the curb and jamming the van into park. “But tell that to them.”
Peter, Lucas, and Camilla got out of the unmarked van and walked to the driveway.
“And here comes the parade.”
The officer who spoke was a tall chunk of gristle. His handlebar mustache alone must have weighed ten pounds. “Where’s Uncle Buck?”
“Uncle Brutus is busy,” Lucas lied. He took the clipboard out of Camilla’s hands and held it in front of the ranger. The ranger grabbed it in his beefy fingers and flipped lazily through the sheets.
“Sign it. Please.”
“Mick’s got the pen.” The gristly ranger passed the clipboard to his partner, a weaselly man with pencil whiskers as bad as the average teen-stache. Mick read the papers just as slowly, dragging out the process to give the Vincents a hard time.
“Sign,” Lucas grunted.
Mick looked up, snickered, then lazily scrawled his signature on the intake form and held it out to Camilla. Camilla grabbed the board, but Mick didn’t let go.
“You just start with these loony tunes?”
Lucas yanked the clipboard from both of them and stood in Mick’s face. “Crawl into your car and get out of here.”
The first officer, a juggernaut compared to even Lucas, straightened up and puffed out his chest. “What was that, Vincent?”
“You heard me.”
Peter put a hand on Lucas’s shoulder, and Lucas shook it off. The bulky officer stared him down, both of their fists clenching and unclenching at their sides.
Mick snickered and popped open his car door. “Come on,” he called. “Their dinner’s getting cold.”
The larger cop sneered, continuing to stare Lucas down, and backed up to the police car. As he opened the passenger door, his partner turned to Camilla and said, “Watch yourself around these freaks.”
Lucas fidgeted. The cops slid inside the car and revved out of the driveway, taking off down Stag Crescent.
“Two minutes,” Lucas said, his hands still clenched. He walked to the house and ducked through the front door.
“Where’s he going?”
“He likes being the first one into the house,” Peter replied, kicking a few loose rocks off the sidewalk.
“Oh,” Camilla said. Silence filled the air, broken only by the distant taps of the morning woodpeckers. Finally her curiosity got the better of her. “Why?”
“He says you never know what you’re walking into. Aggressive pets, aggressive people. This time it’s probably just to blow off some steam.”
Camilla looked at the exterior walls of the house, wishing she could X-ray them to see what Lucas was up to inside.
“He’s protective,” she said. Although it came out sounding like a statement, she had meant it more as a question. The unspoken
“why?” hung in the air between them like a nagging mosquito.
“Luke’s always been like that. At least since dad’s been gone, I guess.”
“How did he die?”
Peter narrowed his eyelids, seemingly trying to remember if he had told Camilla that his father had passed away. Camilla sensed the quick detachment and second-guessed how tactless the question had been.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Your family’s so close, I just assumed it wasn’t divorce.”
“No, you’re right,” Peter replied. “He died when I was six. Luke was ten. Car accident.”
Without warning, Camilla reached forward and took Peter’s right hand in her own. He twitched and his mouth slid open for a second, but then he closed it when she started feeling the curves and the lengths of his fingertips.
“Do you remember crying a lot?”
“What?”
“When your dad died. Did you or your brother cry?”
Peter eyed up Camilla as she examined his fingers. The look on his face said: God, she’s bizarre.
“Yeah. I did. He didn’t, at least not that I saw. But I think he just wanted to be ‘the man’ for mom and the rest of us.”
“Perhaps.” Camilla frowned. She held Peter’s fingers up to his eye level and added, “But see how your index finger is longer than your ring finger? Short ring fingers in men are linked to lower prenatal levels of testosterone. Men with less testosterone grieve with tears; men with more testosterone—presumably your brother—mourn in more discreet ways.”
“You’re saying I cried when my dad died because I have a short ring finger?”
“No. I’m saying your brother didn’t cry because he probably has a long ring finger. The emotions of men with high testosterone move like—like tectonic plates. The aftershocks go on for years afterward, so in their minds they try to find ways to honor the memories rather than mourn them. They’ll take over their dad’s roles. Build something with his tools, fix up the old car.”
“I don’t know. Luke is a terrible mechanic.”
“Maybe.” Camilla shrugged. “But what about removal calls? Was your dad usually the first person to enter the house too?”