Burning September

by Melissa Simonson

  “You should be ashamed of yourself.” It looked like she wanted to slice me open, feast on my blood. “You and your sister. You’re as guilty as she is.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, taking a step toward her, but for every one I took, she moved two steps back. “I don’t…I’m not sure who you are.”

  Her body didn’t look capable of containing the hot sobs and anger roiling within her. “Your sister—that whore—killed my son.”

  Where she got off calling my sister, whom she’d never met, a whore, I couldn’t say. Brian hadn’t been killed by Caroline’s murderous vagina, after all.

  I opened my mouth. Changed my mind, bit my bottom lip back instead. Looked at the ground, found nothing of interest there, looked back up at Brian’s mother. Back to my role of scared, utterly innocent, flustered sister of a wrongly accused woman. Brian’s mother could scream, threaten, cry, rage, and none of it would have much effect on her public image—they’d label it grief. I couldn’t reciprocate without looking horrible, and Caroline by association. Telling her where to go shove those angry words in front of an army of newscasters would be as bad as kicking a puppy on camera, and I’d never hear the end of it from Kyle.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Calvert. I can’t pretend I know how you feel, but I’m sorry he’s gone. But Caroline—”

  “But Caroline nothing.” Spittle collected in the corners of her puckered mouth. “She’s the reason, and you can save your apologies. Here you are at a party for God’s sake, playing dress up like a princess while my son—”

  “Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security unless you leave,” Jeff piped up. It surprised me how loud his voice was, how it rose so easily over her shouts. I never thought him capable of it, not this soft-spoken nerd too shy to admit he was in love with my sister.

  “Go ahead and try.”

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, showed it to her. “I can. I’ll do it right now, but I don’t want to cause any trouble for you.”

  “She’s caused enough for the both of us.” And with one last parting glare which contained the venom of a thousand angry cobras, she pushed her way through the crowd of reporters, throwing elbows and shaking off questions.

  “Kat?” Jeff grabbed my elbow, his hand as hot on my cold skin as an open flame. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  He made no move to tow me back inside, gazing out at that ocean of cameras and flapping trench coats, countless mouths moving rapidly, spouting endless questions that got swept up into the whistling wind.

  Katya, you’ve never met Mrs. Calvert before?

  Katya, is it true, did you have something to do with Brian Calvert’s death?

  Ms. Smirnov, do you feel even partially responsible for Mrs. Calvert’s pain?

  They rounded on me, just like I knew they would, so I descended a few concrete steps, wrapping my arms around myself to ward off the chill which made the fine mist of hair on the back of my neck stand at attention.

  Katya, are you angry with Mrs. Calvert for publicly accusing—

  I held out my hand for the microphone, and the woman gladly surrendered it.

  “Of course I’m not angry with Mrs. Calvert,” I said, trying my best to make eye contact with as many cameras as possible. “I could never be angry with a mother who’s lost her son. I won’t pretend I know what she’s feeling, or that I can empathize in any real way. She loved her son, just like I love my sister. There’s loss on both sides, but hers will always be greater than mine.” I sucked in a long breath, let it out slowly. “Regardless of how I felt about her son, I’m still so terribly sorry for her, and I don’t wish her anything but peace.”

  I handed the microphone back and looked over my shoulder at Jeff, who stood where I’d left him with his mouth hanging slack.

  “Thanks,” I called, with what I hoped was an apologetic half-smile. “Thanks for inviting me. But I think I’m gonna go.” I didn’t wait for an answer, and kept my gaze on Caroline’s borrowed heels as I made my way slowly out of the heart of the throng and back where I’d parked the Challenger, with the distinct thought that Cinderella’s exit had nothing on mine clanging between my ears.

  ***

  Brittle light filtered through the dusty bulb above my front porch, and the person sitting there cast long, ghostly shadows on the cracked cement walkway. He stiffened, hearing my approach, but was otherwise statue still.

  “I tried calling,” I said, slowly clicking my way closer. “Right afterward, on my way home.”

  “My phone was on silent.”

  I sunk beside Kyle, awkward in the hand-me-down formal clothes, feeling as naked with my shoulders exposed as I would have felt going topless. Caroline used to roll her eyes, try to get me into bikinis, would tell me I forgot my wimple when I wore a one-piece. “You could have called back.” When he said nothing, I added, “I mean, you didn’t need to go out of your way and make the drive.”

  He stared straight ahead, elbows on his knees, one eyebrow dipping low. “Who called the media? You looked surprised to see them on the news.”

  “I was surprised.” I kicked off my heels. “And I don’t know who called them. On the way home I wondered if they could have shown up because of the New Artist event, and finding me was just the icing on the cake.”

  “Every news station in the area wouldn’t show up for something like that.”

  I leaned back on my hands, stretching my legs out, rotating one ankle. The scalloped hemline of Caroline’s dress rode up to mid-thigh, and I tugged it back down. “Then I don’t know.”

  “You handled yourself well.”

  “Guess I don’t need my hand held anymore, huh?”

  “I guess not.”

  “You want to go inside?”

  “Yeah.” He got to his feet and held out a hand. “Don’t forget your heels, Cinderella. I already checked the MacGyver paper. You’re all set.”

  He followed me inside, squinting as I flicked on the switch by the door and bathed him in a yellow glow. Watched me hang the strap of my purse on the banister, shake the persistent pins needling my scalp from my hair. “Brian’s mother gave you a piece of her mind, didn’t she?”

  “I’m just surprised she didn’t start talking to the media sooner, if she was that upset. Caroline said he wasn’t close to his family.”

  “Grief does strange things to people. Maybe she didn’t have the strength until now.”

  I unwound a stubborn strand of hair from its pin. “Do you think she’s the one who could have done the collar thing?”

  “I can’t see some grief-stricken old woman running around after a cat, but I suppose it’s possible. I’ve never seen your hair curled.”

  “It’s from the pins holding it all in place. Took forever.”

  “Then why put it up at all?”

  “Hair up with low necklines.” I shrugged one shoulder, leaning my weight into the knob on the banister. “Caroline’s fashion advice really stuck.”

  He laughed a little, looked away. “Well that’s definitely a low neckline.”

  I made one of those indignant female noises, something between a scoff and a grunt, conveniently forgetting how spectacularly uncomfortable I felt in the dress earlier, thinking the exact same thing. “Screw you.”

  “I’m not saying it looks bad. Just that I’m not sure where it’s appropriate to look.”

  I raised a stiff middle finger. “Right here’s good.”

  I littered hairpins on my way to the kitchen, and Kyle followed them like breadcrumbs. “Anyway. It’s important we find out who called the reporters. It turned out fine this time, you conducted yourself well, but we can’t have them turning up left and right. It’s going to trip you up eventually; you might say something you shouldn’t. They need to show up on our terms, not when some jackass with insider information pipes up. Someone called them, someone who knew you were going. I need names. The reporters were there long enough for Brian’s mother to catch wind—who had time to tip them of
f?”

  I slipped onto a stool by the island. “I really don’t think anyone I know would call them. And they have a guest list, you know. The coordinators of the event. You have to be invited, and your name goes on the list. Any number of people could have found my name off of that.”

  “Who’s that guy you were with? The one who threatened to call security? He stayed there talking to reporters after you left, something about the function you guys were at.”

  “Jeff. Victoria Rasmussen’s undergrad professor. An old friend of Caroline’s. He’s completely in love with her.”

  “With her?” He rolled his eyes at my flummoxed face. “Don’t play dumb, Kat. I’m not buying that. Give me all the big Bambi eyed looks you want.”

  “What the hell is your problem?” Bambi eyes? “You don’t even know him, how can you say that with such conviction? Maybe you should drink a few beers, calm the fuck down. I bet you get cranky when your blood alcohol’s at zero.” He’d only have to be around Jeff for two minutes to realize his suspicion was sorely misplaced. Jeff wanted to hang around me because I was the closest he’d ever get to Caroline, he had no choice but to settle for the knock-off.

  Kyle’s eyelids fluttered closed as he sucked in a breath. “Look,” he said, once he’d opened his eyes. “I know way more about these things than you do. He didn’t have to stand there playing to the cameras after you left, but he did, yammering about some stupid magazine that nobody could possibly care less about. There’s always a few hangers on during media blitzes. Okay? Always. No exceptions. It’s possible that yours is Jeff.” But he said Jeff as if it were allegedly his name, like it tasted bitter as it fizzled on his tongue.

  I stared at him for a while, rusty wheels in my mind turning, turning, scrutinizing and cataloguing the hard set of his jaw, the vales carved into his forehead, his fleeting flashes of eye contact, his white knuckled grip on the side of the island. The way he couldn’t keep his lips still, twitching them from side to side, biting the insides, running his tongue over his gums. I’d seen that look before, but never directed at me.

  “Oh, my God,” I finally said. “You’re jealous. Of Jeff. Wow.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I pushed back from the kitchen island, the better to see his face, contorted into an expression of what I imagined he’d intended to look calmly flabbergasted. Maybe his acting skills would work on a jury, but they would never know him like I did. “You are. You could have called instead of coming over. You didn’t. You saw me on the news, saw him right there with me, and got jealous.”

  “That,” he said, a tight muscle in his jaw tensing, “is ridiculous.”

  I flipped a hand palm-up, raked the other through a wave of my hair. “I don’t think it is.”

  “Whether or not you think I’m jealous has nothing to do with my point. You need to watch what you say to this guy. Something could come back to bite you in the ass.”

  I swung one leg over the other, drumming my nails on the island’s butcher block surface. “Did you decide you were in love with me before or after I accidentally met Crystal? I may be better looking, but she looks like she puts out. I can see why you’ve waffled with telling me how you really feel,” I said, reveling in the flush creeping up his neck like invisible strangling hands. I’d never seen him blush before, didn’t think it was possible.

  “I totally asked for this, didn’t I?” he said, more to himself than to me, shaking his head. “I don’t know why I expected anything different. This may be a classic case of transference. You watch enough Dr. Phil; you know what that means.”

  “He really is in love with Caroline, you know.” I cupped my chin in my palm. “Jeff. You should have seen him moon over her handwriting and stare at old pictures of her last time he was over. Completely disgusting, you have laughed. Once you got over your initial wave of envy, that is.”

  He tipped his head back, sighing at the ceiling. “You’re impossible. Now I definitely need that beer.”

  “I’d go on a beer run for you, but that’d be illegal,” I called, twisting on the bar stool as he made his way out of the kitchen, muttering under his breath. “Something you should have considered before falling head over heels for an eighteen-year-old girl!”

  He shook his head, looking like he was fighting the urge to smile, unwilling to give me the satisfaction.

  “What, you’re not going to kiss me goodbye?” I painted myself in the fiery outrage I’d seen in Mexican soap operas, pressing a hand to my naked collarbone, laughing when he stopped dead in his tracks and made an about face. I didn’t even have time to stop laughing before he’d curled his hand around the back of my neck and flattened my lips with his.

  And he was back at the front door before I finished choking on my own shock and spluttered, “What the fuck was that?”

  He wrenched the door open, and it was him laughing now. “How did I know you were all bark?” He stood in the threshold of the door, blue eyes glittering with amusement, the slight sheen of lipstick shimmering on his mouth, mocking me. “I know I’m right about Jeff. Lock the deadbolt behind me.”

  The door clicked shut. I pressed two fingers to my lips, positive I was redder than the Challenger could ever wish to be. A boulder had formed in my throat, and my lips still burned from the contact.

  “Asshole,” I said to my empty kitchen, bristling at the predictably dull tick tick tick of the clocks, wishing I could tear them off the walls.

  ***

  “Oy vey,” Caroline said after a loud catcall whistle that made the patients in the rec room jump. “You look like shit.”

  “At least my outfit’s better than yours.”

  She shut the door behind her. “If this is your high school rebellion phase creeping up, I think you’re a little late.” She fell in a graceful pile of ugly blue scrubs and flipped her hair over one shoulder. “You had some night. I love how I have to watch the news now to catch up on your life; you’re so glamorous. Brian’s mother’s a real hag, isn’t she?”

  “I guess she’s got a right to be pissy. You’re just mad she called you a whore.”

  She laughed. “No, that was one of my favorite parts. You looked good in my dress. I don’t think I’ll be able to wear it anymore. I’ll always compare myself to you and feel inadequate.” She made two fingers walk up my forearm, trying to get my attention. “What’s up with you? The impromptu press conference freaked you out this much?”

  “Yeah,” I lied. I didn’t want to tell her what happened later, didn’t want to hear her laugh like it was some predictable non-event, some trivial nothing she’d gone through more times than she could even hope to count. It wasn’t funny, far from it. I didn’t want her congratulations, as if I’d done what she did so well, used subtle mind tricks and careful prodding to draw some unfortunate guy into her steel trap web of belladonna and hemlock.

  She arched an eyebrow high on her custard-smooth forehead. “You didn’t look freaked out, the way you snatched that reporter’s microphone. Have you been taking acting lessons?”

  Yeah, I wanted to snap, detesting the note of black humor in her voice. I learned it from you. I watched you playact and wear different costumes my whole goddamned life. No wonder I was good at it once I finally tried my hand at playing your game. What other role models did I have? The drunk loser or the suicidal mess? Of course it was your footsteps I’d fill, I couldn’t hold alcohol well and was too much of a coward to kill myself.

  But I lost my nerve when I looked up to find her concerned about Kat eyes blinking back at me. “I’m just getting used to it now, I guess.” I ran a hand over my face, mentally wiping it of guilt. “Are you going to clue me in on this avoiding Karen Stone thing? I keep getting emails from her producers. They still want to talk to you.”

  “Then they’ll be that much more grateful when I finally give in.” As if she were stating the most obvious fact in the world. Of course they’d be falling all over themselves with gratitude that Her Highness, Reigning Queen of the Lunatics,
had deigned them worthy to speak to. Of course.

  This wasn’t some guy waiting for her to accept his date proposal with bated breath and a bouquet of roses behind his back; she didn’t have possession of the puppet strings this time, she couldn’t conjure hoops for them to jump through now, not from Breakthrough Recovery Center in her lunatic scrubs and ten minutes of internet and phone privileges a day. When would she get that through her perfect skull? I didn’t think I had the strength required to snatch the reins from her vise grip, but Kyle and Karen Stone probably did.

  “I don’t know if this is one of those absence makes the heart grow fonder times. More like out of sight, out of mind. They’ll stop asking eventually, and if you change your mind, you’ll have to crawl back groveling,” I said, appealing to the only religion she practiced, her pride.

  “It’s not out of sight, out of mind, the way they’ve latched onto you. They’ll keep trying. And when the story gets big enough, I’ll tell them I’m ready to talk.”

  “Can’t you make this easy, for once? Things are hard enough as it is, I don’t want to wake up every day to a hundred emails begging me to convince you to reconsider.”

  “What do you think spam folders are for?”

  I wished I had a spam folder for my life, some virtual garbage can I could sweep messes into, deal with them at a later time.

  MARCH

  I’d gone through the pre-entrance rituals of checking the carbon copy paper so often I was on auto pilot these days. Slump up the front door, check the paper, find nothing, repeat it around the corner by the sliding glass door. Always in that order, nothing ever out of place, no footsteps of any kind, until one March afternoon, when there was.

  I blinked at them for a few seconds. Why were they there? It could have been a door to door salesman, though they usually left their business cards wedged in the doorjamb.

  Heading toward the back door, I told myself it was a fluke. Had to be. Don’t overreact, I told the part of my brain that was responsible for my hyperventilating. Who’s afraid of feet? Not me.