“Caroline.”
“If I bothered to watch the news, I probably would have heard something about her situation.”
“I don’t know. I don’t watch much news, either.”
He crossed thick arms over his chest, chin resting on his sternum, appraising me beneath bushy eyebrows. I joined the staring contest, hands in my lap. Idle conversation never came easy for me. It seemed like he was the same way. I couldn’t tell if he expected me to say anything, or if he’d just fallen asleep with his eyes open.
Finally, his eyes drifted away from mine to the corner of the room, where his desk sat, pristine and looking practically untouched. “Can you go behind my desk and grab something for me? I’d do it, but,” he knocked on his fake leg, “I’m a cripple.”
“What is it?” I kicked my backpack out of my way and got to my feet.
He shrugged.
I crossed the room, circled his desk, and couldn’t stop a smile once I saw what he’d propped against a bank of drawers.
“You’re getting the beat up one,” he said as I shouldered both guitars by their straps. “I’m taking pity on you, but not enough to give you my EVH Stealth.”
***
I never dated Jeff, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he thinks we did. Men aren’t the wisest creatures. You hang out with them a few times and suddenly they’re asking where the relationship is going. I always thought that was generally the woman’s line. Did he say anything about his online magazine? It’s kind of a start-up, but if he asked you to submit some pieces it’d be good exposure for you. Learn how to work with the people you’ve got, Kat. Everyone has their uses. I’m sure it won’t be long before he’s asking to take you to gallery openings, studio visits, whatever. There’s always tons of people you can meet there, more contacts to make. It’s not all about being talented. More often it winds up coming down to who you know.
Maybe it’s that I’ve never really spoken to him, but I’m still thrown by Sir Cavanaugh, Esquire’s behavior. He must like you or something. I mean, come on, tarot cards? That’s a lame excuse to hang around. I’d say what the hell is he thinking, crushing on an eighteen-year-old girl, but it’s not exactly uncommon. But what man wouldn’t have a crush on you, never mind age. It could be useful somewhere down the road. Be careful what you tell him, though. Tread lightly. I don’t know much about lawyers, but what I do know is they’re slippery. Not a favorable descriptor. I suppose it’s entirely possible you’ve found the nicest of the bunch, but reason states otherwise. I wouldn’t trust him implicitly if I were you. Next time he comes over to moon over you, how about you ask him what the fuck his problem is, ignoring his own goddamn client?
But hey, look at you, juggling two different guys in one night. I’m so proud I could burst.
P.S, you’re being a buzzkill about the ferret thing.
***
I always study in the same position: feet propped on the coffee table, laptop balanced on a ruffled pillow atop my lap. It means serious business, this position, always has. Caroline used to laugh whenever she’d swing through the front door and find me that way.
Ladies and gentleman, the nerd in her natural habitat, she’d announce, wriggling out of her heels, one hand clenching the doorknob. Don’t let that blonde hair fool you, folks, she’s as geeky as they come. She’s read Proust, for God’s sake.
But no Caroline stood in the doorway, mail between her teeth, animated eyes a magnet for me. Just my boring history research paper staring accusingly from the laptop screen. Write me or suffer the consequences.
Well I was pretty used to suffering and consequences, so I switched over to Google Chrome instead, telling myself I’d actually use the search terms French Revolution, but knowing it wasn’t likely.
The French Revolution was Caroline’s favorite. It was a bloodbath, she’d say. Heads rolling around in the street. But Marie Antoinette never said that whole let them eat cake bullshit. God, now I want some cake.
I closed my eyes, pressed my fingertips into my lids hard enough to see red. Something to erase the picture of my sister from my mind. When I finally blinked them open, they landed on The Empress, face up on the coffee table. The only woman to ever scare Kyle Cavanaugh, Esq. I’d pulled that card again during my last self-tarot reading.
And since I had a browser open, I typed his name into the search engine, tacking on Orange County Public Defender.
Hundreds of results, but at the top of the list was Singer & Harrison, listing the man in question as an associate. I clicked the link anyway, expecting it to be someone else with the same name, but the headshot didn’t lie. Dark blond hair. Blue eyes. Slight dimple in the chin. His education information confirmed it, too.
My fingertips tingled, poised over the keyboard.
Kyle Cavanaugh had graduated summa cum laude at USC and moved on to Yale Law, I learned. He’d passed the bar in 2012, found a home at Singer & Harrison immediately afterward; had been there ever since. No public defender gig, no working in the prosecutor’s office a few years for experience’s sake.
He had an email, though. [email protected]. What a great way to get the thoughts you’re a despicable fucking liar across.
I cooked for this man, and he lied right to my face. I’d never cooked for anyone except Caroline. He sat at my kitchen island for hours afterward, telling me how he bartended in college, how it sucked because only the hot female bartenders got huge tips. The only times it was worth the bother had been during bachelorette parties. That moving to the east coast for law school had been hell on his west coast internal temperature. He’d wear parkas in October, everyone thought he was nuts.
So I’d told him about that time I stayed out later than I’d meant to one night when I was seventeen. Caroline scoured Facebook looking for posts to do with teen parties in the area, found the promising ones, and pounded on three different doors before she found me.
Jesus Fucking Christ, Kat, she’d exclaimed, arm wrapped around my shoulders as she towed me to her car. I need to know where you are when you’re out this late. Especially when you’ve borrowed my favorite earrings. And FYI, Natural Ice? Classless. God, babe, have you got a lot to learn.
And then at the fair later that summer, how some unshaven, old drunk guy stumbled over to the blanket I sat on, tried to start a conversation. Caroline had left to get coffee, and the expression she wore when she returned to find him sprawled next to me could have added more flames to the wildfires burning far beyond us. That look was as dark as the ash wafting through the Santa Ana winds.
Oh my God, I’m so sorry, she’d lied, after dumping the entire large, steaming coffee on his back. He hadn’t heard her approach. I didn’t expect anyone to be sitting here with my daughter. Too busy checking my texts, I guess. Is there something I can help you with? And the guy had actually believed we were just that, mother and daughter. Beer goggles, Caroline had explained later. I guess they work in reverse, too. He actually thought he was worthy enough to even look at you.
And the man lied to me?
What are you talking about, Katya? I imagined Kyle saying in an infantilizing tone, that stupid self-impressed smile on his face. I never lied. Never confirmed my public defender status, now did I? Are you usually this short-tempered?
I can’t believe you, I typed into an email headed Kyle’s way. There was me, thinking maybe you weren’t a goddamned prick. I guess that’s why your shoes look so expensive; a public defender couldn’t afford them.
I considered sending another message with the same general idea to Caroline but thought better of it, slamming my laptop closed, tucking it under my arm as I stalked up the staircase.
Kyle Cavanaugh, though only an associate at the firm, had an hourly price tag of four hundred dollars. Not something a flighty artist could easily afford, though I guess her sponsor’s money would help immensely.
Nobody tell the idiot little sister shit, hmm? Her baby ears can’t handle the truth. Turn off the light, shut the door, lock it for
good measure—she’ll crumble to pieces if she knew what was really going on.
I flung Caroline’s bedroom door open and yanked out her desk stool, sending a spool of lace ribbon spiraling to the carpet. Inputted her Bank of America information once again. Scrolled through the list of recent transactions, only to find there weren’t any.
I flopped back in the swivel chair, one knee jiggling of its own accord.
Why would she leave out such important information when she’d never done so before? I realized getting locked up in a mental ward was slightly unsettling, but she’d had ample time to come back to her senses. Ample time to learn Russian, dream up smuggling ferret plans, counsel me on who I should be friends with, leave me inane voice messages and emails. Still pulling strings, even from a loony bin. Still treating me like a child, her child, that ten-year-old orphan with a Barbie vanity.
I tabbed backward through the months on the website, scrutinizing the account history. Something I hadn’t done earlier, probably because of shock. October, September, August. The cash deposits started in August and ended in early September, totaling one hundred thousand dollars, which had been dumped into Caroline’s account to keep her measly one thousand one dollars and fifty-nine cents company.
I kneaded my eyebrow, clicking from September to October to September again. The only debits to the account came on the first of the months; the rent. Nothing labeled Singer & Harrison, no large withdrawal for an attorney’s retainer, which I had come to understand were massive. I suppose Kyle could have taken Caroline on in a pro bono capacity, but why the hell would he? She didn’t know any lawyers, have any contacts in that realm.
He could have seen her on television, found out about her charges that way, but it didn’t seem likely. If that were the case, he’d have wanted to talk to her at length, and all Kyle wanted was to stay as far from her as he could, however long he could get away with it.
I pushed back from her desk and accidentally coasted into her bed, which soon had me engulfed in thick clouds of dust. I swatted the air, rising on unsteady feet.
In movies, hiding places are obvious. Under the mattress. Beneath the loose floorboard, hidden in the vent. One nudge and there it is, the bag of meth, the burlap sack with a dollar sign imprinted upon it. Aha! The detective will say. Light ‘em up, boys, we got a bad guy to arrest.
But at least those actors knew what they were searching for.
I stared around Caroline’s bedroom, eyes scouring the obvious areas. I doubted she’d have ever expected me to dig through her stuff—would she go the obvious route, keep things in her desk drawers?
Two hours later, I’d overturned her mattress, emptied her closet, and pried off the vent, to find nothing but cobwebs. Eventually I settled cross-legged on the floor, sifting through piles of yellowed notecards, stacks of tax information, letters of recommendation kept in boxes she’d painted and hot-glued pearls onto. Thousands of pictures of us, ranging from when I was an infant to present-day. Notebooks packed with school notes, old homework assignments, graded essays and research papers. Clippings of articles she’d written for a variety of media outlets. Nothing useful. Nothing to turn on that light bulb over my head, let me know with sudden, chill certainty who’d given my sister such a massive sum of money.
I shoved the junk off my lap and hunched forward, ducking my head inside the deep desk cabinet, fingertips sweeping corner to corner, until my left index finger caught the corner of what felt like a stiff envelope. It took some time to work it free, and I cleared a patch of carpet free from debris and dumped the contents out.
Some of the documents were photocopied, others handwritten by Caroline and another person.
The letters began one of two ways: Dear Caroline or Dear Graham. I plucked one up at random, the beginnings of something which felt like dread slinking through my skin.
Dear Graham,
Kat had her first kiss yesterday. Her partner in history, I guess, he just up and did it when they were in the courtyard going over their assignment notes. She was so flustered telling me the story, like she couldn’t dream up a reason why or what had possessed him. Ha. Sounds familiar, right? I never miss high school until she comes home with stories like that.
We’re doing okay, but thanks for your concern. I’ve got a few side jobs going right now, so things are tight but manageable. The magazine has been giving me more exciting articles, no more puff pieces on shoes and whatnot. I guess everyone’s got to start at the bottom, though.
No, Mr. Brown, sir, not dating anyone, but thank you for your not-so-subtle inquiry. (See, this is why phone calls would be better, you’d be able to hear my inflection and know I’m joking, and I wouldn’t have to get carpal tunnel explaining myself.) I’m just keeping busy with work and Kat; those are more important than dating. God, she’s going to be in college soon, the time really flies. I don’t want her to have to bust her ass working through school the way I had to. Jesus, do you know how much textbooks cost these days? Those assholes change the editions slightly every year, and you can’t get the course without the current textbook, so you pay an arm and a leg for it, and by the time you try to sell it back to the university bookstore, they’ll only give you $39.50 when it cost $150.00. Focusing on work will at least help me pay for some of her tuition when the time comes. I don’t have a lot saved up, but I’ll get there eventually.
You must be thrilled it’s almost summer. Finally get a break from helicopter parents and dumb students. I’d lose my mind if I had to teach teenagers. They’re all idiots except Kat, I’ve noticed, though recently I had to force her to change the title of one of her essays—it was Emily Dickenson, Commit Suicide Already. Something tells me her English teacher wouldn’t have been as indulging as you were.
Oh, and yes, I would love to get together some time, but it’ll have to be later in June; I’m not sure yet of the dates. This is another shining example of why emails would be better (or handier), if less ‘romantic’ (read: old-fashioned). And the hand cramps aren’t a barrel of laughs, either. Sigh. I’ll just have to suffer in (not-so) silence.
I’ll call you when I figure out which weekend I’m free.
Caroline.
My first kiss had been when I was fifteen, proving this letter was three years old. I knew she’d corresponded with Mr. Brown after high school, but seeing the photocopied letter—lord only knew why she’d bothered making a copy of it to begin with—riddled with glossed-over details and lies, was unnerving. Caroline almost always had dated someone, juggling the prospective suitor, work, and me quite easily. She made no reference to romantic feelings toward Mr. Brown anytime I’d bothered to ask if that were the case, but there it was, in her own cursive. Piles of letters, proof of her deception.
The prose didn’t feel like her. It felt like her Caroline Representative.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d seen her lie to men before, start relationships based off her needs and what they could give her, but something about seeing her writing, all the thought and foresight and calculation that must have gone into spinning this wreath of poisonous flowers and thorns made my heart plummet to my gut.
This man was obsessed, hopelessly infatuated since he’d met her during her sophomore year, and she’d been using that ever since.
Dear Caroline,
Nobody bothers with writing letters anymore. It’s turning into an archaic thing, but I think you’re worth all the hand cramps in the world.
I hope your so-called side jobs aren’t working you to the bone. I’m always here for you, whatever you need, whenever you need it. It can’t be easy being a mother to a teenager at the tender age of twenty-three. She must take after you, your sister, being completely puzzled a boy would pay her any attention. You never had any idea about all the heads you turned, all the love poems you must have inspired. From the pictures you’ve sent, she seems well on her way to being exactly the same way.
The setting of her first kiss is all too familiar. A deserted courtyard, late in t
he school year. It took me a long time to work up the courage. You’d laugh if you knew the depths of it all.
I have to confess I’ve been clipping all the articles you’ve written, subscribed to the newspapers and magazines—flawless. You must have a decent editor, or maybe you’re just that good. I have a feeling it’s the latter. Have you been doing the freelance photography thing as well? I’d hope so, especially with all the praise Burning September got.
I’ve been spending a lot of my free time on that novel I’m working on. Maybe when I’ve finished you’d be interested in reading it. I’m sure you’ll find a lot of parallels, but I hear you’re supposed to write what you know.
I look forward to your call.
Always,
Graham.
I supposed it would turn into some bastardized version of Lolita, this novel he’d been working on, fraught with alleged angst and morality issues, but with none of Nabokov’s talent. Turning my sister into the slutty schoolgirl who’d been begging for it. Sucking lollipops, twisting her pigtails. Caroline had been in high school when I was so young, unable to remember or comprehend any clues or signs of this little affair. I just remembered her bedtime stories, the way her skin smelled when she tucked me in. How she’d tell me I could be anything I wanted when I grew up, but all I ever wanted to be was her.
He’d be there for her, whatever she needed, whenever she needed it, would he? The cash deposits made a little more sense.
I spread the letters out, tried to put them in chronological order based on small details and timelines, and in doing so, I realized why she’d made copies of her letters. So she’d remember her lies.
***
A knock pounded behind my front door that evening, interrupting the pouring of my third mojito. I didn’t have to wonder who it was. The three missed calls from Kyle made it pretty clear.
I flung the door open. He stood there, leaning his weight against the arm he’d propped against the doorjamb.
Burning September Page 8