“Wow! What’s that?”
“It’s sort of a Halloween ornament,” Rick said, handing the figure to Cody. “In Mexico they make all sorts of skeleton decorations for the Day of the Dead.” Involuntarily he shivered, but forced himself to go on. “Usually they’re made out of papier-mâché, but I made this one out of metal.”
Cody turned it in his small hands. “You made this?”
He couldn’t help being pleased as hell. “Yes. When I was twelve or thirteen. Do you like it?”
“It’s cool!”
“Would you like to have it?”
“Yeah!” He turned it in his hands. “What’s he holding?”
“Leaves. They aren’t too good, are they?”
Cody shrugged. “Why’s he got leaves?”
No jack stories, Rick thought. “The Mexican figures usually hold something representing a person’s profession or hobby. A doctor might have a stethoscope or hypodermic, a singer might carry a guitar—”
“This one’s a gardener, right?”
“Right.”
Cody continued to turn the figure in his hands, and his happy expression filled Rick with more pleasure than he’d felt in a long time. Smiling to himself, he looked back in the cabinets, saw his other, lesser efforts, and remembered how much he’d enjoyed working with his hands. Maybe I’ll take this up again, he thought. Maybe Cody would like to learn how.
A sculpture hidden behind some copper squares caught his eye, and he lifted it gingerly from the shelf. It was a small, angular horse, the last thing he’d worked on before he’d left home. He turned it in his hands, thinking the workmanship wasn’t too shabby. The horse and its saddle were complete, but he’d never even started the horse’s rider, Don Quixote. Knight of La Mancha, he thought fondly. Slayer of windmills. His hero.
Pretty weird hero, Piper. But there was something grand about the character, something he had always admired and identified with. You identified with the quixotism, Piper, because you were as nuts as the don was.
Fondly he turned the figure in his hands, thinking that he’d like to do this again someday. He envisioned a life-size Don Quixote mounted near the koi pond, his tribute to Cervantes and Daumier, and craziness. What the hell. I think I’ll do it. It would be a talisman to keep his own imaginary demons at bay.
“Daddy!”
Rick whirled to see Cody backing slowly away from the shrouded car. He took three quick steps forward and snagged his son up, scratching his wrist on the skeleton the boy clutched to his chest.
“What’s wrong, Cody?”
“There’s somebody in there.”
Rick could feel Cody’s heartbeat hammering against his hand. He tried to sound calm. “Why do you think someone’s in there?”
“I looked. I looked under the sheet, and somebody looked back.”
“From where? The car?”
“Uh-huh.” Cody buried his head against Rick’s shoulder.
“Cody, listen to me. You didn’t see anyone. You just imagined you did.”
Ricky, you didn’t see anything. You imagined it. How many times had he heard that himself? And now he was saying it to his own son.
“I saw it.”
“I’m going to set you down and we’ll both look, okay?”
“No.”
Relieved, Rick patted his son’s back, keeping his eye on the car. “Listen, Cody, I’m sure there’s something under there, but it’s just a rat. A big old rat. That’s probably what you saw, that or your own reflection in the glass.”
“Uh-uh. No way.”
“If you’re sure, then I have to look, Cody.”
The boy backed into the workshop’s doorway. “Okay. Look.”
Heart pounding, Rick flung the tarp back. But there was nothing in the car but mounds of antique trash and stuffing from the seats. He took a deep breath. “It’s rats, Cody. They’re nesting in the upholstery. He dropped the tarp back over the Rambler. “Let’s go in now, son. Tomorrow we’ll buy some traps.”
15
Shelly returned from the mall with a poet shirt, a pair of Guess jeans, and eighty-five cents in change, knowing her dad was going to be pissed. He was totally hung up on value-shopping, as he called it, which meant he thought she should buy last season’s clothes for next season, or worse—for the following year. Christ, he could be a pain in the ass.
She locked the car and knocked on the front door, and Carmen, who seemed okay but kind of nosy, let her in. As she carried her bags up to her room, she thought that at least Dad probably wouldn’t make her take the clothes back—he’d say she should, but he was a softie, and she’d get off with the same old lecture, which was an annoying but small price to pay. She removed the tags from the clothes before putting them away, just in case.
Dad wasn’t that bad overall, she guessed. He was just really, really ignorant. He’d always tell her he’d get smarter when she was twenty-five or so, and she knew that was supposed to be a joke, but it really pissed her off. The man could be so self-righteous.
Closing the closet, she crossed to the north window and opened it, breathing in the cool, citrus-scented breeze. Below, she could see the shingled roof of Carmen’s little house rising up in the middle of the citrus orchard. It’d be great having all that fresh-squeezed available anytime she wanted it. Except for squeezing it, of course—but maybe Carmen would do that.
In a way, she realized, she was glad they moved here, because her father probably wouldn’t be on TV anymore. Almost all her friends—her girlfriends—went nuts over him, always wanting to come over and stuff. They’d act stupid and flirt when he was around, and when he wasn’t, they’d tell her how lucky she was, how cute he was, blah, blah, blah. That bimbo Sally Dugan, who was a grade behind her, for Christ’s sake, even had the audacity to ask if she thought her dad would go out with her. Shelly wanted to freak, but instead she told Jill to go ahead and ask, because if there was one good thing about her father, it was his frigging code of honor. That’s what he called it.
The good part was that she knew he’d never screw around with her girlfriends, even if he found a whole pile of them in his bed. The bad part was that he quizzed her dates to hell and back and he didn’t approve of half of them. He’d let her go out, but he didn’t approve. To his credit, he’d only forbidden her to date two guys. The first was Sterno Stevens, who rode a hawg—and she was sort of glad Dad had interfered since Sterno was trying to talk her into getting his name tattooed on her butt. The other was Starman Henessey. That happened only a few weeks ago, and she’d almost run away over it. Dad would shit a brick if he knew that Starman himself had talked her out of it.
She turned to the west window and pushed it open. There wasn’t much to see, just a flagstone path leading toward the front yard and the little roof over the kitchen door below. And a lot of green. Grass, pine trees, honeysuckle, junk like that. Sighing, she flopped on the queen-sized bed. Dad sure made life hell when he didn’t like her dates. That’s why she’d tried to keep Starman from him—he was twenty-two and definitely off limits, if Daddy had his way.
She sat up and looked around the room. Something was missing. A television set.
There was one downstairs in the living room, and she decided it was time to get acquainted with it. She rose and left the room, going around the corner to the main staircase since she didn’t want to go through the kitchen and have to bullshit with Carmen.
Entering the living room, she quietly approached the TV.
“Girl, what’s your name?”
Shelly jumped about out of her skin, then whirled to see a gross old lady sitting in the easy chair, a pair of whining poodles in her lap. Jade.
“I gotta go,” Shelly said.
“No, girl. Sit down. What’s your name?”
“Shelly.”
And hell began. She sat there and listened to the old battle-ax yammer on and on and wished she hadn’t come back to the house so soon. She even started to wish she’d taken the Celica back over the Cajon Pas
s, and had just kept driving until she was back in Las Vegas.
Jade was telling her all about her poodles, but Shelly was thinking about the day. She’d checked out the town, and decided it wasn’t as nerdy as she’d feared. The mall was small, but it contained all the right stores: The Gap, The Express, and Nordstrom’s. And on the outskirts of town there was a real prize, the A & W root beer stand her dad had mentioned. The parking lot had been filled with mini trucks, four-by-fours, Trans Ams, and restored classics, the kind of cars acquired by rich teenagers—the kind she wanted to be friends with. Her spirit had soared as she pulled Dad’s flashy little Celica into the lot. Inside, she found extremely cute guys behind the counter, who, it turned out, would also be seniors at Santo Verde High. One of them introduced her to some of the other kids in the restaurant, and by the time she finally left, she felt like she’d already made some friends.
Now here she was, back home, ready to forgive her father, at least as long as he didn’t bitch too much about the new clothes. But he was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she was trapped by Jade, who was every bit as horrible as her dad had said. And more.
“What kind of name is ‘Shelly’?” The old Ewebean fixed her beady little eyes on her. “What’s it short for?”
Shelly resisted the urge to shrink back in the ratty gold easy chair. She glanced out the living room window, but no one was coming to save her. “It’s not short for anything. It’s my name.”
Jade sniffed, and the smelly poodles at her feet both looked at her. “Poor excuse for a name. It’s not surprising, I suppose, considering your father.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Richard was always a . . . a weak child. He had no backbone. He was afraid of his own shadow. A weak man chooses a weak name.” The old bat shook her head.
She’d never thought about her name much, but now she felt like defending it—and her father—but she couldn’t make herself meet that steely-eyed gaze. She looked at her knees instead. “My father,” she said softly, “isn’t afraid of anything.”
“Shelly, you’re back early.”
She looked up to see her dad standing in the dining room doorway, along with Cody. His dark hair was windblown, and his normally pale skin was flushed with color. He looked like he’d been running. Her brother’s eyes were bright as he trotted across the room and thrust something copper-colored at her.
“Look, Shel, look what Daddy gave me. He made it when he was a kid.”
Normally she would have said something obnoxious, but she was so glad to see them, she took the thing and turned it in her hands. “Cool,” she told Cody. “What is it?”
“It’s a Mexican Halloween skeleton.”
“For El Día de los Muertos, “Dad explained, as if that was supposed to mean something to her.
Jade snorted. “Useless junk.”
“I like it,” Shelly said, looking up at her father. “I didn’t know you were an artist, Dad.” She threw Jade a fuck-you glance.
He looked amazed, then smiled and shrugged. “It could be better. Did you have a nice afternoon?”
She nodded. “I put in job apps at The Limited and Miller’s Outpost. I met some kids at the A & W, too.”
He smiled. “That’s where I used to hang out. Everybody showed off their cars there.”
“They still do, Daddy. All the kids had cars, nice cars. Do you think . . . I mean, the high school is so far away . . .”
“We’ll find you a car, hon.”
Shelly hardly believed her ears. She’d wormed a promise to think about it out of him while they were driving here, but this was a voluntary statement: It meant a whole lot more. She handed the metal skeleton back to Cody, then grabbed her father and hugged him. “Thank you, Daddy.”
He beamed at her. “A girl’s gotta have wheels, right?”
“Right,” she said, vaguely aware of Jade’s disgruntled snort. “Can I have a VW Bug?”
“Maybe. If we can find a good used one.”
“What kinda car did you have, Daddy?” Cody asked.
“I didn’t have a car,” he said, staring in Jade’s direction.
“Why not?” Shelly asked in amazement. “Your family was loaded.”
“He didn’t need a car,” Jade intoned. “And, Richard, she doesn’t need one either.” She pronounced the last word “eyether,” which further irritated Shelly.
“I’ll be the judge of that, Jade.”
The old lady stood, her poodles tumbling forgotten to the carpet. “Why don’t you be a man for once, Richard? Don’t buy the girl’s affections. Be a man. Your brother, he’s a man.”
Shelly saw her father’s face go dead white, his lips thin to a grim line. “Robin died before he became a man, Jade,” he said.
“You’re wrong, Richard.”
“Shelly,” her dad said, in his scary calm voice, “have you seen Carmen?”
“No.”
“She’s in her house,” Jade said, settling back in her chair. “Feeding her husband. Come on, Mister Poo,” she said, her voice turning to a sugared coo as she patted her lap. “Come kiss Mama, Stinkums.”
The poodles jumped onto her lap and began licking her ugly red cheeks.
“Cody,” Rick said, “go on up to your room and get ready for bed.” Shelly thought he sounded really weird.
“But I didn’t have dinner yet.”
“Then go up to your room and get ready for dinner,” he said in the quiet voice that meant trouble. “Now.”
Shelly nudged her brother, and he took off; he recognized the voice, too. The poodles yapped madly as he tore up the stairs.
“Shelly,” he said, ignoring Jade, “would you go out back and ask Carmen if she’s cooking tonight? Tell her it’s fine if she doesn’t want to. We’ll go out.”
“She already said she’s cook—” She paused, realizing he was trying to get rid of her. “But I’ll go make sure,” she finished quickly.
“Thanks, hon.”
She entered the hall, then moved into the shadows to listen.
“Jade,” her father said a moment later. “As I told you before, if you want to remain here, you will not question how I handle my children, nor will you insult any of us. But there’s one more condition I forgot to mention earlier. You won’t mention my brother again, in front of me or my children.”
“Too bad you’re not more like your brother, Richard.”
“He’s dead, Jade, so don’t talk about him like he isn’t. He’s been dead for a long time.
“Only to you. But you wanted him dead, Richard. You were so jealous of him, so jealous of your poor little brother.”
Confused, Shelly listened closely. She knew her father had a brother—a twin, not a “little” brother—and that he’d died a long time ago, but that was all she knew. Dad didn’t like to talk about him.
“The subject is closed,” her dad said.
Jade just giggled like an over-aged schoolgirl. “How I love him, his attentiveness, his charm. He’s afraid of nothing. He’s not like you at all, Richard. And you, you had the legs. What a waste. He should have had legs, and you should have been the freak.”
It was everything Shelly could do to not burst back in and ask what they were talking about.
“Be quiet, Jade.”
“You had legs, but you were so jealous of him,” Jade continued. “He tells me, you know. Him with his poor little body.” Her voice became dreamy. “Such nice, strong arms. And so much fun. His eyes glint with fun. He’s not a poop, like you. He knows how to live. How to love a woman. He’s a real man.”
“You whore,” he said in that same deadly quiet voice. “You slept with your own nephew, you filthy, fucking whore.”
Shelly, shocked, stepped backward and bumped into a dining chair. It crashed.
“Shelly!” Her father’s voice was serious and stern.
“Yes, Daddy?” she peeped, scared to death. He never, never used words like that.
“Come here, please.”
She did, wondering what he was going to do. He sounded crazy-calm, like he did when he’d told her Mom had died.
She almost flinched when he put his hand on her shoulder. Behind her, she could feel Jade’s eyes boring into her back. “Shelly, did you eavesdrop just now?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad.”
“You’re glad?”
“Because I have to tell you some things, and I’ve been putting it off. Now I have to tell you. Please go check with Carmen, then meet me upstairs, in the study.”
“Study?”
“The room with all the bookshelves.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
This time she didn’t wait to hear more.
16
“So, Shel, to sum it up, I had a crummy childhood. I was a chicken, and my brother was a bully. We were a charming pair. There were a lot of hard feelings. Things we didn’t work out before he died.” Rick hesitated, then added, “Things we probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway—and that’s why I’ve never told you much about my brother. There’s nothing very good to tell.”
Shelly nodded thoughtfully, and Rick had a glimpse of what she’d look like as an adult.
“Dad? Can I ask a question?”
“Sure.”
She hesitated. “It’s really gross.”
He could guess what was coming, and controlled the urge to say no. “Ask away.”
“Did your brother really sleep with Aunt Jade?”
Yep, that was the question. Although he was glad he’d told her the basics, he would have just as soon skipped this part. “You shouldn’t eavesdrop.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t do it again.”
“I promise. So is it true?” she persisted, too eagerly.
Well, he told himself as he looked into his daughter’s sharp green eyes, the truth will out. “Yes,” he said simply. “It’s true.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw them.”
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