Skewed

by Anne McAneny

  Dr. Kyle stopped once more on his way out of the room and took in the sight of my brother and me. “Jackie and Janie,” he said wistfully. “Good to see you two together. As dark as those days were when you kids were born, there was so much hope here at the hospital, so much goodwill.” He gestured to Grandpa. “Barton was a big part of that. And to tell you the truth, if it weren’t for you two coming into the world the day Bridget left us, I don’t think he would have survived. You gave him a reason to continue. Maybe you can do the same for him now.”

  Dr. Kyle sniffed back tears, as did I.

  Filling the vacated space next to the bed, I took Grandpa’s rough hand in mine. He didn’t stir, but my memories did. Not memories I actually possessed, but ones I’d formed by making him tell me the same stories year after year. On that long-ago day when Jack and I entered the world, he’d been forced to name us. He’d never much cared about things like that, but when compelled by the fretful staff to come up with something, he couldn’t see the point in changing our names from what the nurses had been calling us: Fetus Jane and Fetus John. And thus we became Jane and John, which morphed into Janie and Jackie as soon as Grandpa’s sister got her hands on us. Of course, we’d been given our mother’s last name—Perkins. My brother had once toyed with taking the name of his alleged father, but when he found his car keyed the next morning, he’d abandoned the idea—and I’d paid for a new paint job.

  Grandpa Barton opened his eyes. “Janie,” he said, his voice as soft and fleeting as butterfly wings.

  “Yes, Grandpa? I’m here. So is Jack. How are you feeling?”

  He squeezed my hand, though the force was negligible.

  “The words,” he whispered. “Not sure I got them right.”

  The rapid blinking of his eyes disconcerted me. He didn’t seem like himself.

  “What words, Grandpa?”

  “Bridget’s words. Last words.”

  “You got them right, Grandpa. They were Find Grady. And you did.”

  Hadn’t been real hard to Find Grady, as he’d been lying twelve feet away, the proverbial smoking gun in hand.

  “Mighta been . . .” Grandpa drew a labored breath. “. . . find Grady hater.”

  I pulled back so I could see the frail, cracked lips of this fragile man. Was he delirious? Drugged? For three decades, he’d sworn my mother’s last words were Find Grady. She’d been accusing her murderer, just like in the movies. I turned to an orderly who’d entered. His protuberant incisors and blank eyes gave the impression of a dull, hungry shark and did not fill me with confidence, but I had no one else to ask.

  “How medicated is he? Does he know what he’s saying?”

  The orderly shrugged. “I dunno. They all talk crazy. The pneumonia stuff alone makes ’em sputter nonsense half the time.”

  Pneumonia stuff? I slayed him with my eyes and clutched Grandpa’s hand more tightly.

  “Grandpa, what do you mean? Why would she say Find Grady hater?”

  He closed his eyes and his hand went limp. I cursed myself for wasting time with the orderly. After a few attempts to stir Grandpa, I gave up and rested his hand back on the narrow stretcher before the orderly wheeled away the one person who had actually stayed around for Jack and me our whole lives.

  A nagging thought kept knocking around my head: If Grandpa slipped quietly into death from the coma, would his last words prove to be the same as his daughter’s? And if he was right, mightn’t those words change the narrative of my whole life?

  CHAPTER 9

  Bridget Perkins, 30 Years, 9 Hours Ago

  Bridget threw her overnight bag on her twin bed. The pilfered hotel key slipped out onto the pink quilt she’d had since she was fifteen. Her mom had helped her choose it a few weeks before being diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and Bridget knew she would keep it forever. What if I don’t like it when it’s in my room? Bridget had asked as she and her mother had stood in line. Why don’t you live with it for a while and see what you think, her mother had said. If it’s not right, you can add your own touches to make it perfect. Bridget had smiled, already excited to customize the purchase. She’d spent hours laboring over it with small, cross-stitched roses along the edges. But remember one thing, dear, her mother had added with a wink, it’s not the same with a man. Once you bring him home, there’s no changing him, so make sure he’s going to be just right for your home.

  Bridget scooped up the key, smiling at the memory. She laid it on the tall table next to her recent clay project. It was darker in theme than most of her pieces, but it was turning out well, and she sensed it would be one of her favorites, perhaps even her most haunting.

  She pulled out her uniform and changed quickly, then retrieved her newest journal from its hiding spot. She hoped one day to share her journals with her future daughter, but at the same time she was woefully ashamed of how the twins had been conceived. The journals might have to remain a secret.

  Grabbing the jet-black pen she favored, she wrote twelve words, then taped the key chain to the page with a romantic finality, remembering her mom’s perfectly pressed roses. Daddy had framed and matted Mom’s best work in the dining room, and when the extended Perkins clan celebrated Thanksgiving in there, he always raised a toast to his late beloved and said, “Elizabeth, you pressed your love upon my heart as surely as you pressed those roses.” It always made Bridget well up.

  Looking now at the ostentatious key chain and its fancy A, she slammed the journal shut, unsure if the mother would be proud of the daughter’s pressed work.

  With the journal back in place, Bridget left for work, unaware of what a difference her final entry would make decades later.

  CHAPTER 10

  “I don’t know what he meant, Jack,” I said with controlled annoyance. My brother and I were alone in a private area while awaiting word on Grandpa Barton. The thought of a life without him left me feeling like the vague outline of a person. “It sounded like he wasn’t sure about Mom’s final words. Probably carried that with him all these years, tossing them around in his head. For God’s sake, does it ever end?”

  Jack looked at me like I was the slow kid in the back of the class. “Uh, it’s not like there’s ever been any doubt about who shot Mom. Grady admitted it. Besides, we have your photos to back up Grady’s story now. What’d you do with them, by the way?”

  “None of your business.” I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I’d taken his words to heart and brought them to Sophie for analysis.

  “Well, just so you recall, there was plenty of circumstantial evidence to back up the presence of a third person in the living room that night.”

  “Same evidence could have proved that any person had entered through the back door anytime the day before. Leaves on the floor? A mud stain on the rug? Please.”

  “Grady’s getting out soon, either way.”

  “Great. Planning to take him on the campaign trail with you like some kind of warped surrogate father?”

  “It’s not like I thumbed through the books of available father figures and blindly chose. I took what I got, whether you accept it or not.” Jack somehow managed to slurp down coffee, argue, and text all at the same time.

  Suddenly I couldn’t stand being around him, and the nausea that had threatened since they took Grandpa away came on full force. “I’ve got to get out of here,” I said, rising. “Call me as soon as there’s word.”

  Before he could protest, I took off. Let him deal with it for now. As I rode the elevator down, a text came in about a crime scene three miles away. When the elevator opened, I considered my exit routes. Even though the reporters had surely grown bored and departed, I sneaked out the more discreet back door.

  Three spots down from my Explorer, an old man in a wheelchair was struggling to lower himself over a curb because the concrete ramp was blocked off for repairs. I checked the time and figured the smelly body on Ha
lter Street would stay dead another ten minutes while I lent a hand.

  “Help you, sir?”

  The small man looked up. He reminded me of Truman Capote if he’d been a few degrees closer to normal. Round eyes on a puffy face, a permanently puckered mouth topping a stodgy body, and a curious look that seemed a combination of polite and bashful.

  “Oh, my,” he said, a bit taken aback and quick to avert his eyes, “I would be much obliged, but I couldn’t accept your help without confessing that I know who you are.”

  “Please tell me you’re not a reporter,” I said as I grabbed the handles of his chair and leaned him back to ease him over the curb. It was tough, but I’d done too many push-ups in early morning hours to let a wheelchair defeat me.

  “Oh, no, no,” he said. “But I am the uncle of a reporter, and she mentioned to me that your grandfather was here. How is he doing?”

  “Are we off the record?”

  “Oh, quite, quite,” he said, amused by my formality.

  “I’m sure word will get out anyway. They’ve put him in a coma to help him through the pneumonia. I just hope it’s not disorienting for him.” I struggled with the final inches of curb and brought the chair to rest in the parking lot.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “Me, too. But he’s a strong guy.” I blinked away a tear before the man could turn his head. “Where’s your niece? Is she the one picking you up?”

  “Yes, I finished up early and she was running some errands. She’ll be here soon. Told her I’d wait there in the shade.” He pointed to the far corner of the lot.

  “I’ll help you,” I said.

  “Normally, I wouldn’t dream of asking a young lady, but a push would be lovely. I hurt my shoulder last month and I’m not sure I can negotiate this terrain.” He shook his head and guffawed. “Never thought I’d look at flat pavement and worry about negotiating it!” He had himself quite a laugh at his own expense. “I was in the war and everything.”

  I felt bad, but I didn’t have time for a long conversation, so I ignored the questions he was hoping for, the ones that would take him on a stroll down memory lane to first loves, horrid battles, and grand victories. “Happy to give you a lift,” I said.

  “Don’t you have places you need to be?”

  “Yes, but it’s nice to spend a minute among the living first.”

  He peeked back. “You spend time amongst the dead, dear?”

  “I’m a crime scene photographer.”

  He clapped his hands and let out a bellow of excitement. “Ha! I was the battalion photographer in my unit way back when. Could I trouble you with a question?”

  “Sure,” I said, breathing harder as the parking lot seemed to suck up the edges of his wheels with every spin.

  “I’d like to take some of my old war photos and make them digital or what-have-you. You know, put them on a doodad of some sort.”

  “You need a scanner and a flash drive.”

  “Mmm,” he said. “Okay.”

  “Do you know what a scanner is?”

  “Is it something I could get at a thrift store?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I’m hoping to surprise my grandnephews. For Veterans Day.”

  “Can’t your niece do it? She must have a scanner at her office.”

  His head fell toward his chest. “She tries her best and has good intentions, but you know how it is. Life gets in the way.”

  I let his lamentations wash over me and wondered if Grandpa Barton had felt that way about me. I promised him last month that I’d get some branches trimmed from the big hickory at the top of the driveway so he wouldn’t climb up and kill himself. Until this moment, it had completely slipped my mind. I swallowed my guilt. “I’ll tell you what. You live around here?”

  “I’m staying at the Aberdeen Hotel while I get some back treatments. My niece invited me to stay, but her house is three stories with no bedroom on the main floor. It was easier for everyone if I stayed at the Aberdeen. Lovely place, very quaint.”

  “You have your photos with you?”

  “They’re at the hotel. About twenty-five of them I felt were worthy for the kids. Don’t want to bore them to death, after all.”

  Grandpa Barton had often worried he was doing the same when he told family stories, but I’d never been bored. Suddenly, a rush of goodwill washed over me.

  “I’ll come by the Aberdeen tomorrow and scan your photos. Won’t take me long. Will that work?”

  “My dear, it would be a miracle. But let me bring the photos to you and save you a trip.”

  “It’s no problem. I’m in the car all the time, anyway.”

  “You are such a saint.”

  “You can thank Grandpa Barton. I’ll do it in his honor.”

  “In my prayers tonight, I shall give you and your Grandpa Barton many thanks. I’m Humphrey Banfield, by the way. Everyone calls me Hump.”

  “What’s your room number at the Aberdeen, Hump?”

  “I’m in one of the private cottages. Cottage five.”

  I found a shady place to deposit Hump and felt a small weight lift from my conscience. “I need to run, but I’ll see you around five thirty at the Aberdeen tomorrow, okay?”

  “Sounds delightful.”

  I programmed the appointment into my phone. Hump waved as I drove away, and I couldn’t help but notice a satisfied grin punctuating his round face.

  CHAPTER 11

  Early the next morning, I stopped in to check on Grandpa. I held his hand and talked, the words reaching at least his ears, maybe deeper. My cell phone buzzed with two incoming texts. The first was from my lab friend, who characterized her results from the photo analysis as bad news/good news, although I read it as bad news/worse news. First, she’d verified that the mailed photos were genuine, not manipulated into existence by some bipolar lunatic with a hankering for haikus, and second, the fingerprints hadn’t matched anyone in the system. She considered the latter conclusion a plus, but to me, it just meant some bipolar lunatic hadn’t been caught yet.

  The next text was from Sophie Andricola: Come now, please. I have created something that may or may not be to your unwanted expectation. Both promising and dire—a trick Sophie probably pulled off all the time without even trying. I texted back that I’d be over in half an hour. After kissing Grandpa on the forehead and promising to return soon, I headed to the elevators. When the doors opened, out stepped Detective Wexler with two coffees in hand.

  “Wexler, what are you doing here?”

  “Just finished a case two blocks over. Nicholls said you were here, so I figured you might appreciate a morning jolt.”

  I gratefully accepted the quality beverage that put my morning libations to shame. “Wexler, you are the man.”

  “And you the lady,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “As my brother would tell you, I’m no lady; I’m just a drag on a campaign.”

  “I doubt that. He plays off the twin angle every chance he gets.”

  I didn’t hide my surprise at Wexler’s sudden interest in my brother’s campaign habits, and he didn’t shy away from continuing.

  “Did you know there’s an unfortunate number of babies born to mothers like yours, but you two are the only twins?”

  “Curiosity killed the cat, Wexler.”

  “This cat’s just trying to figure you out . . . Perkins.”

  There was that tingle again.

  “Have you heard from Sophie yet?” he said.

  “I’m on my way there now.”

  “I’d like to go with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Just a sense I get and always trust.”

  “But you don’t even—”

  “I concede everything you’re about to say. You only know me professionally and I learned most of your fa
mily history yesterday. But I have this trip wire inside of me, mostly dormant and quiet, until it’s not. Every so often, it vibrates.”

  “And you react?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “This wire—it’s related to me?”

  “This time.”

  I assessed the museum piece before me, wondering if I’d ever crack its protective glass.

  “You’re wired differently, Wexler. That’s for sure.”

  He gazed back straightforwardly, having long ago embraced whatever made him tick, and awaited his invite.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  CHAPTER 12

  Wexler offered to drive. I could see why. His Lexus was immaculate, not a cat hair or used tissue in sight. Not even a loose thread from one of his tailored suits caught in the grooves of the floor mats.

  “What was your case this morning?” I asked.

  “Too bad you weren’t there. Dizzy the Drug Lord’s mother.”

  “Mrs. Dizzy bought it, too?”

  “Neighbors called it in for the smell. Two hundred fifty pounds of fun in a muumuu dress and ginger wig. She was supposed to serve as a warning to Dizzy a few days earlier, but I guess he failed to get the message.”

  “Yeah, corpses don’t come with a blinking red light.”

  “You know what bugged me the most, though?”

  “What?”

  “She was in a recliner and hadn’t reclined. There she was, a TV remote balanced on the arm of the chair, surrounded by cheese cracker crumbs and beer cans, and she hadn’t even reclined.”

  “I’m with you. Who sits in a La-Z-Boy and doesn’t recline?”

  “Nobody.”

  Had I been there, I would have been tempted to yank the wood handle and put her in a more comfortable position, but the sudden shift would have messed with her softening body, maybe even melted it into oblivion. I knew what I would have done, though, had the coiled knot of desire in my gut grabbed hold. It would have been too tempting to ignore. I would have grabbed a book off Mrs. Dizzy’s shelf, maybe a copy of The Five People You Meet in Heaven, and set it on her lap. Her head, surely sunken forward, could easily have passed for someone reading an inspirational tome. I’d have captured it at a forty-five-degree angle from above. A premium addition to my collection—and a far better ending for Mrs. Dizzy.