“No,” she said. “I just wanted a knife.”
“Why?”
“Protection, Terry. Even before Mal was murdered in our backyard, I could feel things slipping.”
“What does that mean?”
She weighed her words carefully. “Dad sneaks out at night sometimes. Grey is hardly ever around. Mal stole some money from Danny Thompson. We lived in this house with Collie Rand, Terry. What if he was home in bed when he decided to go on his rampage?”
I’d had similar thoughts myself. “Right, but that was five years ago, Dale. He’s—”
And then I understood.
My brother’s legacy was to make us all suspicious of one another. To worry that at any minute any one of us could be overwhelmed by the underneath.
“You wanted to protect yourself from me,” I said. “The knife was for me.”
Her tears were completely gone and she sat straight up. In typical Rand fashion, her expression was nearly blank and her eyes empty of emotion.
“I’m sorry, Terry.”
“Don’t be. It was a smart move.”
She nodded.
I had to be careful not to make turns until she gave me the proper directions. We pulled up in front of Butch’s place. Before we climbed out I handed her the cash and said, “Here.” She took the money without counting it and pocketed it. She said, “Thank you,” and kissed my cheek.
I stepped into his apartment and tried to act like I’d never been there before. Butch was on the couch with two squares of toilet paper stuck to the back of his head. His foot was up on the table atop a pillow leaking stuffing. He was angry with himself and kept saying, “I’m so stupid. I’ve fouled up everything.”
“No worse off than you were before,” Dale said. “Except you’ll have a limp for a while.”
“No, babe, no. I don’t even know what I did. I can’t figure it out. What’d I trip over? Where’d I bang my head?”
“Maybe now you’ll listen to me when I say you smoke and drink a little too much.”
Butch checked the toilet paper, looked at the small spot of dried blood, crumpled it, and tossed it on the floor. “Don’t start.”
He put an arm around each of us and hopped while we carried him down to my car.
“Jesus, you brought the dog?” Butch said. “Why’d you bring the dog? I need to lie down back there.”
“The dog isn’t going to bother you,” Dale said.
“He’s already bothering me. He won’t move. Can you get him to move?”
I snapped my fingers and JFK jumped into the passenger seat. Dale and Butch sat in back, sort of cuddling while he groaned and she whispered. There was a strange kind of music to it. It was a song I knew. Halfway to the hospital I looked at my sister in the rearview. She had Butch’s head in her lap. He had shifted to moaning but not too loudly.
“You’ll need a ride back,” I said. “I’ll wait for you.”
“Don’t bother,” Dale told me. “We’ll get a cab.”
“If I survive,” Butch said.
“You’re going to survive, honey.” Dale shushed him and made gentle noises like she was singing him a lullaby.
“I’ll wait,” I said.
She glanced out the window. We passed some jocks jogging past and she watched them. I had worried about what being a Rand was going to do to her. She was a popular, beautiful girl. She was a teenager. She was fickle. She was scared. She was smart not to trust strangers, even if they were her own blood. She was mature and harder than she should be. She was going to be all right, but she’d made a misstep with Butch. She wasn’t in on the heist, but just hanging around a crew stupid enough to have Butch along might bring the brick wall down. With Butch out of the way, she was going to be safe for the time being. Maybe she’d turn her sights on the team quarterback. Maybe she’d go after some other badass. I’d keep watch.
She turned her head and her brunette hair brushed the glass. She caught my eye in the mirror and said, “What?”
The dead don’t drift. They’re rooted, irresolute, and inflexible as your own past. Sometimes your ghosts chased after you every minute of the night, and sometimes they just couldn’t keep up. I saw Butch back to his apartment and my little sister back home.
Another day passed. Collie was that much closer to his death. I got up early and followed Gilmore to the station, then sat in the parking lot for an hour, watching the cops come and go. I no longer had even a gut feeling about him. He simply reminded me too much of my brother and I couldn’t let a crazy idea go. I wondered if this was Collie’s plan from the beginning, to run me so ragged that I’d explode the way he did. Was it possible that he hated me that much? To wind me up and let me spin out of control over the edge? And then I thought, Yes, it was. It had to be, because I had no other answer.
I started the car and drove without direction. I had no idea where I was going, but my autopilot seemed to have all the usual destinations mapped out. My stomach was still twisted up. I still didn’t know if Collie was telling the truth. I went by the high school, the lake, the Commack Motor Inn. I wove in a wider and wider radius but always returned to the same pattern. I drove past Kimmy and Chub’s house. I never broke 40 mph. I eased along and the hours passed. I put three hundred miles on the car. I thought no one, not even my brother, was wasting his life as badly as me.
I parked across the street from Eve’s house. She wasn’t home yet and I was glad for it. I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I noticed she’d had the window fixed. The lethal lawn gnome had been moved back out in front of the bush.
I played the radio low and listened to some oldies station and my mind went along with it, rolling on the tide of another time. Whenever some image hit me, I pressed it away. There seemed to be no good memories. Everything brought pain. A man should be composed of more than his heartaches, his failures, his missed opportunities and regrets. Even Collie knew love. I turned the radio up. I nodded for a bit.
When I opened my eyes, I saw a little red Mazda come zipping into the driveway. I watched a young woman get out, dressed in blue scrubs covered with pictures of different breeds of dogs and cats. She dropped her purse and stooped to pick it up. It was Eve’s daughter, Roxie. She had curves in all the right places, her long brown hair swaying lightly in the breeze as she grabbed her sunglasses, cell phone, iPod, and stuffed them back into her purse. She looked the way I imagined her mother had looked twenty-five years earlier. But, more than that, she looked pissed.
She took another step toward the front door and her cell phone rang. She answered, angled her face down, and listened for a moment. She said, “Well then, why don’t you just go fuck yourself?” Her voice carried to me as clearly as if she were in the backseat.
Roxie fumbled for the disconnect and stared at the cell phone like it was the face of a lost lover. She tried to stuff it back into her purse and dropped it again. The phone hit the walk and she gave it a nice kick that catapulted it into the garage door, where it broke to pieces.
It was the kind of thing only your first and greatest love could make you do. This would be the pain and passion by which all other pain and passion would be measured through the rest of her life. I thought of what kind of scars and marks Butch would leave upon Dale’s understanding of men. I thought of my eternal draw to Kimmy, Gilmore shattering over Phyllis, and Grey’s never-ending heartbreak at being left at the altar.
I snapped off the radio.
My attention dispersed, then refocused.
My exhaustion over the past several days was making it hard to keep my thoughts straight. My instincts were off. I didn’t know whether Collie had played me across some elaborate game or not. Was Gilmore really a killer, or a bent cop who was closer to my father than I was? I saw Mal crawling across the grass almost directly beneath my bedroom window. The same dream called to me. Go with Kimmy. Drive away.
I looked out the window at Roxie Drayton.
She looked like her mother, the same da
rk intensity, the same lovely features—
She looked like—
She looked a little like Becky Clarke.
She looked a little like Cara Clarke.
She looked a little like—
She looked a little like Dale.
I shut my eyes and twisted my face aside.
She looked like Eve.
My sister had said, Dad sneaks out at night sometimes. Grey is hardly ever around.
I heard Flo’s voice, as loud in my ear as if she were in the backseat. He still comes in here sometimes. Handsome. A touch of class. He knows how to treat a woman.
I knew then who else was trapped in the currents of the underneath. I knew because it was my blood tide. I knew because we looked just alike.
I threw the car into drive and pulled away from the curb. The transmission moaned so loudly that Roxie dropped her purse again. I sped off. I called home and my mother answered. I asked, “Is Dale home yet?”
“Out with that Butch, I think,” she said with disappointment. “I hope the next boyfriend’s a doctor. Is that asking for so much?”
“The next boyfriend’s going to show up next week. Just keep your hopes in check that he’s a B student. Who else is home?”
“Who do you expect to be here? Your father’s in the garage. You want to talk to him?”
“No,” I said. My voice was too blunt. I tried to soften it up. “That’s okay. What about Grey?”
“He’s been out all night.”
“With Vicky?”
She let out a small noise of exasperation. “How would I know? Since when do any of you tell me anything about where you’re going?” The irritation and frustration were taking hold. She’d been through so much, and it wasn’t over yet. She’d given everything she had to holding us together, and we kept falling further and further apart. I heard her place the phone against her chest, the heavy beating of her heart somehow calming me. “We need to sit down as a family again.”
“Pencil me in, Ma. I’ll call again later.”
“We’ll be here.”
I disconnected. I let my mind wander in ways it hadn’t before.
I heard my father’s voice.
I think your uncles have a touch of Alzheimer’s too. I’ve found them out in the yard in the middle of the night a couple of times, looking dazed.
Who could get up that close to Mal to do what had been done to him? Who would Mal trust?
I shook my head as if I had an earache. I slammed my fist down on the steering wheel. I was wrong, I had to be wrong. I phoned Vicky and Eve’s television station. Like the last time, it took me ten minutes to work through the menu. Finally I got her.
“Hello,” Vicky said. “Victoria Jensen.”
“This is Terrier Rand. I’m looking for Grey. Is he with you?”
“No, he’s not, Terry, I haven’t seen him.”
I shook my head again. My throat was beginning to constrict. I coughed and licked my lips. “You haven’t seen him?”
“Not since the funeral.” I waited, and the pregnant pause took on all kinds of meaning. I had a feeling I knew what she was going to say next. He’s no longer interested in me. But no beautiful woman wants to admit that out loud. “I’ve been very busy with work. I just haven’t found the time to return his calls. And you know, Terry, I don’t want to speak out of turn here, but you and Eve make a wonderful couple. I think that—”
I cut her off. “Vicky, this is something of a rude question, and I’m sorry for it, but did my uncle stay with you that night we had the double date?”
“No, Terry, he didn’t. He said he didn’t feel well.”
“Thanks.”
“Tell him I’ll talk to him soon.”
I hung up.
Grey had slept with Eve. He had met Roxie. I thought about the peeper at Eve’s window watching the two of us in bed. Becky Clarke strangled during Collie’s spree. The missing knife.
Grey with his ladies’-man looks, owning a thousand women but not the one he’d truly wanted, the one who’d rejected him forty-five years ago. Like any of us, he was capable of violence.
“No,” I said. “No.”
Where had Grey been spending his nights?
I drove home. I’d been thinking of someone close to the family, someone who might have followed Collie that night, someone who knew our ways. I’d been thinking of Gilmore. I stepped harder on the gas pedal and jockeyed through the traffic. I kept pushing. Someone said, “No.” Someone had been saying that for a while. I checked the rearview. My lips were moving, but I didn’t know the voice.
I slowed when I got to the corner of our block. I eased up to our house and saw Grey’s car in the driveway. I pulled in, got out, and stepped up the porch. I wondered if I’d gone over the big ledge. I wondered if I was finding madmen around every corner because I’d already become one myself.
My mother and father were in Gramp’s room, cleaning and changing his pajamas. My grandfather’s eyes were focused on the ceiling but it still felt like he was looking at me.
My parents glanced at me. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure about what I’d found out or if I’d found out anything at all. The pulse in my belly was throbbing heavily. My father said, “Don’t stare, Terry. Old Shep’s got some pride left.”
“Oh, sorry.”
I turned away and started back down the hall. I moved to the bottom of the second-floor stairs. I looked up and could see shadows playing against the corridor wall. I heard the creak and thrum of water rushing through the pipes. I took a step, thinking, Maybe I should wait.
“Jesus God, what the fuck am I doing?” I whispered.
“Who’s that?” Grey called.
I climbed the rest of the stairs and stood in his doorway. Grey was stripped down, with a towel around his waist, about to step into the running shower. He was laying a suit out across his bed. Steam coiled through the air.
I said, “Can we talk for a minute?”
“Let it wait until I come out, right? This goddamn floor is like ice.”
“Sure.”
He padded to his bathroom and shut the door. I had maybe ten minutes to search the room. I hit all the key spots where anything of importance might be hidden. I found forty g’s in cash split among three caches but nothing else of note. If Collie’s knife was here, I couldn’t find it. No trophies, no newspaper clippings. I needed proof. I needed to know for sure. His wallet was on the corner of his bureau. I went through it and discovered nothing that mattered.
I checked the suit he was about to put on.
I reached into the inside jacket pocket and found a photo.
It was old. It showed a pretty teenage brunette smiling happily, head half turned over her shoulder, her hair a wild flurry in the wind, dark and blurred branches of shaking trees in the background. I didn’t have to guess who she was. The only girl he’d ever truly loved. She looked a little like Rebecca Clarke. Roxie Drayton. Dale. All this time later, all the times I’d heard the same story, and I still didn’t know her name. She’d left him at the altar and broken his heart, and in his sickness she continued to haunt him, crawling through the seams of his mind. Every young pretty brunette became a part of the same obsession. My mother had said it herself. An older man who can’t let go of his own youth, who’s preoccupied by the past … Too much silk and not enough sand. She just hadn’t realized how far he’d gone.
Inside jacket pocket. Right over his heart.
I could see him putting the suit on, working the tie until it was perfect, then slowly dragging his thumb across the left side of his coat like he was touching the cheek of the woman.
Maybe I should do a more thorough search, check the rest of the house, his car. Maybe I should wait and watch him longer now that I suspected.
But I wasn’t a patient man. I couldn’t imagine leaving him alone in this house another night with my sister near him. I didn’t know how far into the underneath he was. I didn’t know if I was right or wrong about him. Maybe Col
lie was going to his bunk each night laughing himself to sleep that I was out here running in circles. Maybe Gilmore hid his trophies elsewhere. Maybe there was a killer in the woods watching the house right now. Maybe my father had gone to see Kimmy for some other reason.
I had to get Grey alone.
I went to my room and shut the door. I thought of all the years I’d spent here feeling safe, surrounded by my family, my father and uncles on watch. I could feel the underneath tugging at me, that insane sense of panic trying to make me jump the wrong way. Vertigo made my legs wobble and I reached out to touch the wall. Behind it was our legacy, three generations of junk.
I sat on the bed and put my head between my knees. When the dizziness passed I called information and got the number for Rocko Milligan’s pawnshop. He answered on the fifth ring with a flamboyant, “Yallooo?”
“Rocko, this is Terry Rand.”
He sucked air. “Holy shit, a ghost from the past. Let me guess, you’re on the narrow and you met a girl you want to marry, and now you need a good deal on the ring. You know I’m the man to talk to about that.”
“Not entirely on the narrow yet, Rocko, but if I ever gear up for marriage, I’ll get the ring from you. Now listen to me. Do you ever sell my father figurines?”
Rocko coughed out a chuckle. “Terry, not for nothing, but your father is loopy for the fucking things. I don’t get it. They’re not worth shit.”
“When was the last time he came by?”
“He hits me up every month or two. Been a while. I think he goes out east, checks the antiques shops in the Hamptons for this crap. The old ladies out there like their porcelain too. Or they did years ago. Now their grandkids are inheriting it all and dumping it at garage sales.”
“I want you to call him for me,” I said. “Tell him you’ve got a few nice pieces in.”
“I never call him, Terry, he just comes in on his own.”
I listened to Grey moving around in his room, getting dressed across the hall. I almost hung up because it all suddenly seemed so stupid to me. I’d been wrong about everything so far, why should this be different? But I continued to clench the phone to my ear. “I’ll square up with you and make it worth your time.”
The Last Kind Words: A Novel Page 28