Burning September

by Melissa Simonson

  “Do you really think they’d care? Caroline isn’t their favorite person, and by extension, I’m probably not, either.”

  “Maybe they won’t care, but I might know someone who will.”

  I raised an eyebrow in a silent question.

  “Karen Stone. The fact she wants to cover this story proves she’s interested. A nice follow-up story of police indifference would be ratings central.” He circled his Audi, running a hand along the hood, and opened the driver’s side door. “I’ll let you know how Nicholas is doing when I’m home, but I’m sure the car ride won’t endear me to him.”

  “Remember to hide anything sparkly,” I said as he got inside the car. “He’s like a fish, he’ll gnaw on anything sparkly—”

  “Do I look like I’ve got anything sparkly at home?” He shut the door and waved through the tinted window.

  I watched him drive off until his taillights disappeared around the corner and headed back into my empty condo.

  ***

  Caroline’s email response to The Missing Cat debacle was the shortest one I’d ever received from her. Come see me tomorrow, 7 a.m. I know it’s not visiting hours, but I gave my babysitters an excuse. Act surprised when you get here.

  Caroline had many stages of anger. The tamest offense would cause nothing more sinister than her muttering filthy words I’d never heard before under her breath. The middle ground sounded worse than it truly was, long cursing rants and frustrated grunts, but it typically came and went quickly. The final stages could be hard to notice if you didn’t know her well, but then, nobody but me had that pleasure. Everything turned clipped and stilted when she was furious, ready to breathe smoke: blank expression, curt words, gaze drifting off into space. That look used to puzzle me when I was younger. Now it just scared me. She wore that look after the breakup with Brian, but of course I’d assumed then that it was depression. It hadn’t been until she’d signed his death warrant that the spell had broken, when she’d painted on big smiles and feigned a change of heart. She wasn’t happy, it was just the way she could buff-shine her hatred. I didn’t know it was all an act until after she’d been arrested.

  It’s hard to get a good read on emotions in emails, but after reading her latest, I was leaning toward door number three.

  ***

  She waited in the lobby for me, hidden behind an enormous bouquet of flowers that smelled fatally of lilies. Her smile was small and forced, more for the receptionist’s benefit than anything, I figured, and she thrust the flowers into my arms as I sat beside her.

  “What’s the occasion?” I held the bouquet at arm’s length to keep the overpowering smell at bay.

  Her voice dipped so low I had to lean in close to hear. “You made it into Jeff’s art magazine, and I couldn’t be prouder. What the fuck, Kat? Have you reported what happened to the police?”

  “Kyle said it wouldn’t make much difference.”

  “He’s probably right.” Her knee jiggled restlessly until she crossed it over her other leg. “Are you scared?”

  If I was smarter I would have been scared. “More like pissed. Who the hell does something like that?”

  She gave me a look as if to say I should have expected as much—after all, she had. “Nothing else weird has happened?”

  I shrugged one shoulder. “Not yet, but give it some time.”

  “I can’t believe I’m stuck in here while this is happening,” she said, eyeing the florescent light like it had done her a great personal wrong. “I don’t suppose it’d be possible for you to go out and buy a gun. The permits take too long to come through, and the last thing you need is to get arrested for carrying concealed without proper documentation. I want you to do something, though.”

  I laid the bouquet on the scarred coffee table. “What?”

  “Go to Staples. Buy some carbon copy paper. Put it beneath the mat by the front door and the longer one near the sliding glass. Don’t step on either when you’re coming and going, and check the paper beneath both doors when you get home, before you go inside. You should see footprints if someone has stepped on the mats. I don’t think anyone would try breaking in through a window since all of them are directly above those prickly bushes. Those things could do a lot damage to a leg; remember when you dropped your favorite pen behind them? If you see any footprints at all, don’t go inside, just get the hell out of there and call someone immediately. If it happens you’ll know it’s definitely not a “Good” Samaritan playing a stupid trick, and you’ll need to set up a hidden camera of some sort, because they’ll be back. And you’ll need proof.”

  It was so tame and lucid, her latest advice. I’d been expecting something far more lethal, not this MacGyver nonsense; a lecture on how to properly slice a carotid, instructions to wear stilettos constantly to impale a groin whenever necessary, a grocery list of items to assemble a homemade bomb.

  “Did you have any brain waves on who it can be?”

  She blinked eyes that looked marigold yellow beneath the florescent bulb. “Not really. But the fact whoever did this didn’t actually harm the cat makes me think it’s a woman. I can’t see a woman hurting an animal, and they’re playing pretty coy; I don’t think a man would. An emoji name tag, seriously? God. Tone down the dramatics, skank. Anyway, the size of the footprints should give you an idea whether this jackoff is male or female.” She bit into her thumbnail, gaze locked on mine. “Tell the neighbors you’ve seen a peeping tom hanging around. He was watching you undress in the living room, or something. They’ve got two little girls. They’ll be on their guard for sure if they hear some freak’s trying to spy on naked women. If they see anything strange, they’ll report it.” She reached for my hand, mashing her lips together. “You’ll be careful?”

  “I’m always careful.”

  She smiled. “I know. That’s why it took me forever to teach you how to swim. You were afraid to put your head under water. You would have been content to wear those Barbie floaties forever if I hadn’t finally put my foot down.”

  I hadn’t been afraid of the water. I was afraid she wouldn’t be there when I came up for air, the same way I’d hated the carousel she’d try to get me on, no matter the fact that she’d found me the best ride, a unicorn with a flowing pink mane and sky blue eyes. What if she wasn’t there when I circled back to her?

  ***

  Karen Stone’s people converged on my condo the next morning, wearing Bluetooth ear pieces and plastic smiles. The queen herself was nowhere to be found. I let Kyle take over the introductions, only looking up to shake a hand now and then. Why couldn’t this interview have taken place in a conference room somewhere? Was it really wise to do it in my living room, which made people feel as though they’d fallen down the rabbit hole and into a Russian opium den? Viewers would take one look at the place and decide I was crazy, and Caroline by extension.

  “I’m just saying, loudly and for the record, doing this here is a bad idea,” I said to Kyle, as soon as the producers and assistants had floated off.

  “Somewhere else wouldn’t be as personal. Doing it here says welcome to my world. Doing it in a hotel room says this is a PR stunt.”

  “This is a PR stunt.” We watched a camera man take a shot of Burning September. “And doing it here also says we’re lunatics.”

  “More like we’re artists.”

  “A lot of people would argue they’re one in the same.”

  He rocked back on his heels. “You’re not going to whine the whole time, are you?”

  I blew out a sigh. You make a few legitimate comments, and suddenly you’re shunned as a complainer.

  ***

  Karen Stone’s grand entrance was understated, not the diva catwalk I’d expected, though a clipboard-carrying flunky trailed behind her, and everyone in her path darted out of the way.

  The wardrobe people had attacked the back of her blouse with silver pins to keep it from sagging in the front. She looked like a reptile with a spiked spine from behind, a war zone of nee
dles cinching chiffon tight around her waist. Her nails had been buffed to high shine, her teeth were bleach-white, and not one strand of hair strayed from her French braid as her haughty gaze grazed the room.

  She slithered out of her viper skin when she saw me, a warm smile gracing her face. “Katya.” She held out her hands to clasp one of mine. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You too,” I said, awkwardly caught in her cool grasp. “And it’s Kat.”

  “Kat,” she said carefully, as though my name was a foreign word she wanted to pronounce correctly. “I’ll remember that when we’re filming, though in the voice-overs I’ll have to use the more formal Katya during the initial introduction of your interview.”

  “I saw you at the press conference. I’m not sure if you remember. Your hair reminded me of Caroline’s.”

  A pretty little dent of confusion etched between her brows, but it left as quickly as it had come.

  I felt a flush crawl up from beneath my collar. You didn’t say stuff that stupid when you met Karen Stone, you said, I love your work, you’re a wonderful role model for young women, won’t you sit down, would you like some tea?

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. She’s beautiful, your sister.”

  I waffled with a thank you but stuck with “I know,” instead.

  “You look nervous. Don’t be. Why don’t you show me around?”

  I looked over my shoulder, back at Kyle, where he stood entrenched in conversation with an assistant. My security blanket otherwise engaged, I swallowed a lump in my throat and turned back to Karen. “Sure. Okay. Where do you want to start?”

  ***

  “I had no idea what hit me,” the Kat on the television said. She looked nothing like me, this creature with movie star makeup laid on like frosting, pale hair falling in artful waves instead of a stick-straight curtain, wearing a blouse some wardrobe assistant had claimed would bring out the blue in my eyes. “None at all. I thought it was a dream. A nightmare, more like.”

  “Tell me about that morning,” Karen said, sitting across from my heavily made-up counterpart onscreen.

  “It was early. Like five-thirty a.m. We’d fallen asleep on the couch, Caroline had been helping me prepare for classes with her old study notes. I woke up when someone started pounding on the door. And then…they handcuffed her. Took her away.”

  “And you had no idea why?”

  “No.” I looked up from my hands, blinked heavily mascaraed lashes at Karen. “Neither of us did.”

  Katya and Caroline Smirnov hadn’t led idyllic lives. They’d overcome more adversity before they were legal adults than most of us will ever endure. But little did they know they hadn’t yet dealt with the biggest obstacle, one no one could foresee, Karen Stone’s voiceover proclaimed, haughty with righteous indignation, making it pretty plain whose side the audience should be on.

  Photos fell like autumn leaves, candids of Caroline at an art gallery, on campus, newspaper office parties, the pair of us at the fair. A snippet of me walking alone in the back garden, feeling remarkably stupid. The camera man had said to ‘act natural’ but there was nothing natural about me being filmed in the yard, wearing clothes that weren’t mine, doing nothing more exciting than plodding through freshly-cut grass that the studio had paid someone to tend to. They’d removed the weeds, pruned the roses, added mulch, rendering the place wholly unrecognizable. They’d stripped it of its charming overgrowth, made it sit up straight and behave, and I didn’t like it one bit.

  “I look so stupid,” I told Kyle, who sat next to me on the couch in his living room. “Who the hell just walks around in their backyard wearing a Chanel top?”

  He cocked his head, chewing a Milk Dud. “You look…pensive.”

  “I look ridiculous.” I stroked Nicholas’s back, inciting purrs.

  One final image fell onscreen. Brian, posing for a selfie in the front seat of his truck, that ugly beard simultaneously bushy and patchy. Caroline had never once taken a selfie. People took pictures of her all the time; she was never at a loss for good photos, and I had never once been visited by the urge to document my occupying the driver’s seat of my car or jaunt in a dressing room. Everyone was so self-impressed these days.

  After the horrifying death of Brian Calvert, Katya and Caroline Smirnov’s life changed forever, Karen’s posh, resonant voice piped up.

  The images onscreen melted into an appalling title and accompanying image.

  “Oh my God!” Nicholas glared up at me for daring to disturb his slumber. “They called it Burning September?” I hadn’t seen such a heavy handed thing in all my life. I never expected to grow to hate that picture as much as I did currently. It wasn’t just a nice photograph anymore, it was a kid taunting me on the playground, a slap in the face, a reminder of all that had gone wrong since, a piece of myself I’d never get back, and I had to look at it on a daily basis. It made me feel naked, like the whole world was looking in on something vastly shameful, and I’d lifted the blinds and opened the door for them.

  “They always try to pick out catchy little titles for these things. This one was ready-made. Can’t fault them too much.”

  The logo of Karen Stone’s network show appeared and cut to commercials.

  I leaned my head against the couch cushion, pressing my eyes shut. “They put too much makeup on me. I remember thinking why do they want me to look orange? when they were getting me ready. They tiger-striped my cheekbones and curled my eyelashes to within an inch of their life.”

  “They had to put a ton of makeup on you so you don’t shine on camera. It’s the same for everyone on TV. They did a good job. You looked beautiful.”

  I snorted. “Past tense? I don’t know whether to be offended.”

  “There’s no winning with you.” He knocked back the dregs of his beer and didn’t use the coasters on his coffee table when he put the glass down. “You’re always beautiful.”

  I didn’t like the way my stomach clenched when he said that, so I pretended he hadn’t, just scratched Nicholas’s cheeks the way he liked. “Has he been a good boy for you?”

  “Generally. He’s really irritating in the morning, all the yowling and leg rubbing. I swear he’s plotting my murder, the way he’s constantly tripping me.” He stood, wagging his empty glass. “You want any?”

  “I don’t know.” I eyed his glass with apprehension. “I can never keep up.”

  “Well, you’re a college girl now,” he called, heading for his kitchen. “That’s where you learn how.”

  I looked down at Nicholas, now fast asleep on my lap, sans emoji collar. Did normal lawyers act this way, hang out with their clients, offer them beer? Was I even technically a client? I wasn’t the one with a murder trial looming over my head, just a client’s underage little sister he felt sorry for.

  “I’ll pass.”

  “You better pause that!” he yelled as the theme music for Karen Stone’s show revved up.

  “You were there the whole time they were filming. It’s not like you missed anything.” But I paused it anyway.

  He slid into place beside me a minute later, slurping from a sloshing glass of beer. “I hope they didn’t edit out the parts about the police department ignoring your statement and evidence supporting her innocence. That idea saturating the jury pool is key.”

  They hadn’t edited it out. It was all there, Karen Stone’s concerned, commiserating face listening and nodding aptly while I laid out every careful lie brick by brick and regurgitated our family history for what felt like the millionth time.

  “The police said exactly that?” Her face creased with phony bewilderment. “You’re a liar?”

  “Oh yes,” the me on TV said, slow-blinking wide eyes which shone with innocence. That wardrobe woman had been right about the blouse. “I would have understood if they’d just shown some disbelief, or yeah-yeahed me out the door,” I said, my shoulders hunching over slightly. “That, I would have got. They think she did it, and they also think her sister wou
ld lie for her. Completely understandable. I wouldn’t like it, but I would get it. But the way they said it…just the venom, for lack of a better word, that I felt from them, was shocking. I didn’t expect blind belief in anything I’d said, but I also didn’t expect to be treated like scum, especially when I really don’t think I needed to sit down with them for that length of time at all. They questioned me for hours a day for over a week. My story never changed, and they didn’t treat me with anything other than disdain.”

  Karen’s disapproval was obvious, oozing out her invisible pores.

  “When did you turn into such a convincing actress?” Kyle gave me the side-eye. “It’s almost scary.”

  Lying had become my natural state, at least as long as there were cameras documenting my every move. “It’s a lie I’ve been telling for so long, it might as well be the truth. You’ve done the same thing, telling reporters the same lies.”

  “Yes, but that happens to be my job.”

  Touché.

  We watched as Karen Stone gave the TV me a hug and warm thanks for having ‘the courage to speak up for your sister.’ The frame switched to a shot of her, alone in a studio, telling the audience that she and her team had been unable to speak to Caroline, the woman at the heart of this disaster, but if and when she agreed to speak, Karen would be back on the case.

  Caroline’s declining of the interview request was something I could only assume had been a strategic move, though not one she’d bothered cluing me in on. It had flummoxed Karen herself, who asked after filming had wrapped whether I would consider asking her myself.

  “She didn’t give any explanation for declining,” Karen had said. “It wasn’t Caroline herself who refused; it was someone from Breakthrough Recovery Center who claimed to be speaking on her behalf. Maybe you can convince her to get her story out there. Viewers would love to hear from her.” She didn’t rub her palms together and laugh malevolently or lick her lips like a predator, but ratings were ratings, and Karen Stone was their queen.