Audrey nodded. Right before Shelly screamed, while they were in the front foyer indulging in a little lightweight necking, weird sounds had come from the old lady’s room, moaning and whispering. Rick looked embarrassed and explained that she did that almost every night.
“Come on, Cody,” Audrey said. “I’ll see you to your room.’
Rick was gathering poodles and dropping them in an empty packing box still in the room, his face distorted by an expression of utter disgust. He looked up. “Thanks. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Cody took her hand and practically dragged her out of the room and around the corner to his room. “Come on! You gotta see my wallpaper! My dad had it too. It’s the same paper, I’m keeping it.”
He talked a mile a minute as he took her around his room, showing her his treasures, which seemed to involve Legos and plastic dinosaurs more than anything else. “And you know what? There’s secret tunnels in the house.”
“There are?” Rick had mentioned that he’d kept that information from his son. “Who told you?”
“Bob. He’s my friend. He talks to me at night. Someday he’s gonna show me the tunnels.”
“Come on, you get in bed now.”
“Okay.” He dimpled up at her and jumped into his red race-car bed by the window.
A tree limb just outside scratched the screen lightly. That’s the tree Rick hated.
“Kiss me g’night.”
She smiled and did as he ordered. “Good night, Cody.”
“Is your brother a boy or a girl?” he asked abruptly.
“A boy,” she said immediately.
“How come he has boobies?”
Boobies? “Well, um, why don’t you ask Duane about it when he visits? Or ask your father.”
“Who’s Duane?”
“Dakota. His real name’s Duane. Dakota’s his stage name.”
Cody lay down. “Okay, g’night,” he said.
As she left the room, Rick approached, carrying the box of dogs. He looked upset. “I told Shelly to make sure she locks her door from now on.” He paused, grimacing. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about this.”
“Don’t be silly,” she told him as they started down the stairs. “It’s not your fault. By the way, Cody knows there are passages in the house.”
Rick stopped in his tracks. “He does?”
“He says Bob told him.”
Understanding dawned on his face. “Jade probably told him.” He adjusted the box in his arms, his upper lip curling with distaste. “I’ll just have to make sure everything’s sealed up.” He put the box of poodles on the floor at his feet. “I can’t keep her in control. She must have gone up the front stairs while we were in the kitchen and put these things in there to scare Shelly.” His face clouded.
“But Shelly said a noise woke her up, so it must have happened just before we got there.”
He smiled grimly. “I have an answer for that, too. She went up the back stairs while we were out here.”
“But we heard her making noises.”
“Only for a few minutes when we first came out. We were out here for”—he consulted his watch—“almost half an hour.”
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” she said, smiling a little.
“Yes, it does.” He reached for her, and she started to snake her arms around his waist. Then, from Jade’s room came a moan, followed closely by Jade’s clear, loud voice crying, “Fuck me!”
Shocked, Audrey looked at Rick. He looked back.
“Fuck me.” Louder, more demanding. The words were followed by a series of obscene grunts and groans.
Rick turned beet red, and she was pretty sure she’d done the same.
“Fuck me!”
“Rick? Maybe she has, uh, marital aids? She’s not all that old, is she?”
“Early sixties. Carmen told me she takes hormones.”
“Fuck me!”
Audrey snickered. “Better tell the doctor to cut her dosage!”
Rick started laughing, pulling her close and burying his head on her shoulder to muffle the sound. She felt hilarity rising from a tickle in her abdomen, up, up, into her throat, and it exploded from her mouth, gales of it. She clung to Rick, trying to keep quiet, but he was shaking with stifled laughter also.
“What a night,” Rick whispered, his words hiccuping over the laughter. “Fine Italian cuisine, slapstick movies, coffee and ghost stories, and”—he swept one arm grandly toward Jade’s room—“and, the pièce de résistance, stuffed dogs and sex-crazed old ladies.”
He laughed again, too abruptly to be able to muffle the noise. Audrey would have doubled up if she didn’t have him to cling to.
The noises from Jade’s room stopped abruptly.
“Oops,” Audrey managed. “She heard us.”
“Yeah.”
“Or she shorted out her vibrator,” she couldn’t help adding.
Rick snickered again, and they silenced as they caught each other’s gaze. Another good-night kiss was coming up quick.
Before their lips met, Audrey heard a key click in a nearby lock. She and Rick pulled apart, and as she watched the handle on the louvered door start to descend, her legs turned to jelly.
Rick simply picked up the box of dogs. Four stiff pink legs poked out of the top. She couldn’t help herself; another hysterical giggle escaped.
The door opened and she beheld Jade Ewebean for the first time. She gasped, then clamped her hand over her mouth to trap the laughter that wanted to escape.
Jade’s black hair floated in a tangled mess around a face coated with red lipstick, thick eyeliner, red circles of rouge, and sparkly white powder that had creased into her wrinkles so that they looked like scars. Mascara had smeared beneath her eyes. She looked like Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? The face made Audrey want to scream. It belonged in a house of horrors.
But the tall, bony body made her want to laugh. The woman wore a peignoir set of red polyester and black lace. Thank God she put on the robe, Audrey thought, barely controlling herself. It was as sheer as the gown, but the double layer faded her body from what would have been horrific pornography to moderately disgusting translucence.
Rick had moved toward his aunt, and Audrey remained in the shadow of the staircase. The old bat didn’t see her, but her reaction to Ricky was amazing.
“Richard,” she crooned. “My sweet little Ricky. You’ve come to see your auntie, haven’t you?”
“Jade—” he began. Immediately she cut him off.
“You’re so like your brother, Richard, but you still look like a little boy.” She unbuttoned her robe and let it fall open.
I’m in a Felini film. Audrey moved slightly so she could see around Rick. Oh, my God! she thought, shocked.
Jade’s robe dropped to the floor, leaving her saggy body backlit by the lamplight from her room. The gown was short, and even in the dim light, Audrey could see the blue veins knotting her legs. Her gaze traveled upward and stopped. Jade had huge breasts, trussed into the gown’s flimsy black lace bra. She squinted, not believing her eyes. A Fredrick’s gown, she thought, seeing that the nipples thrust bare from the lace. They, too, were big and damp and lumpy, like two wads of red bubble gum. They looked rouged.
Jade kneaded one in her gnarled hand. “Come to your aunt Jade, Richard. Let’s give you a kiss.”
Rick’s back had stiffened the moment she’d entered the room, and he hadn’t moved since. Now he spoke, so low Audrey could barely hear.
“Don’t do that.”
“Why? Are you a bad boy? Got a stiffie for your dear old aunt?”
“You make me sick.” The words dripped cold fury. “There are children in this house, Jade.”
“I don’t see any children now, Richard. Come here.” She stepped nearer.
“What you do in the privacy of your room is your business, but don’t bring it out here,” he said icily. “If you do this again, I won’t even send you to a rest home. I’ll have you committ
ed. Stay away.”
She made an obscenely childish face. “You’re no fun. You never were. You’d be so nice if you were like your brother.”
“My brother is dead!” He nearly yelled the words, then was silent a moment, regaining control, Audrey realized. “Get out of my way, Jade.”
“What?”
He stepped toward her. “Get out of my way. These belong to you. They belong in your room. I’m going to put them there, and they’re going to stay there. If they don’t, I don’t care about the cost, you’re out of here. You scared Shelly half to death.” As he spoke he pushed past her, shoving her out of the way with the box. He disappeared into the room, and Audrey heard thumping as he dumped the dogs on the floor. “Don’t upset Shelly or Cody again,” he warned, reappearing in the doorway.
At that moment she spotted Audrey. Jade’s painted face was almost comic as it raced through a series of reactions. Then she laughed. It was a horrible sound, like fingernails raking a blackboard. “I see why you don’t want your auntie, Richard. You fucked that flat-chested little whore instead.” She sniffed. “You have shitty taste, nephew. Shitty.” She spat in Audrey’s direction. “Whore.”
Rick’s face had hardened into a stony scowl. He took a step toward Jade, his hands coming up. She couldn’t see his face. If she could, Audrey thought she’d run. The open boyishness that so attracted Audrey to Rick had disappeared entirely, replaced by anger so potent that it seemed to come off him in waves. “Rick,” she said tentatively. “Rick, it’s okay.”
He ignored her, hands level with Jade’s neck, eyes glittering and furiously intent. Another step and he’d be on her.
“Rick!” Audrey cried. “Stop it!”
For an instant he focused on her. But then his hands closed on Jade’s shoulders—not her neck, Audrey saw with relief. His fingers made white marks on the skin below her collarbone, and he forced her to turn around.
Audrey ran forward, reliving her own old fears. “Don’t hit her!” she cried. “Rick! Don’t—”
He turned the woman around and slowly forced her up against the wall. “I won’t hit her,” he said without taking his eyes from Jade’s face. He kept her shoulders trapped against the wall. “She used to hit me all the time, Audrey. I didn’t tell you about that. She used to take a belt to me. Once, she whipped me until my pants were shredded. I had to stay out of school for a week. She thought it was funny. Didn’t you, Jade? You thought it was funny.”
“Richard, don’t be so mean.” Jade’s voice quavered. “You’re hurting my shoulders.”
“Rick,” Audrey began, then stopped. There was nothing she could say.
“Richard, please!”
“Daddy?”
Audrey looked up, saw Cody rubbing his eyes at the top of the stairs.
“Go back to bed, Cody,” Rick called, his voice only slightly strained. “Everything’s okay.”
“Okay.”
Audrey was amazed that the boy obediently did as Rick asked.
Rick drew a deep breath and released it with a shudder, then let go of Jade. He bent and picked up the red robe and threw it at her. “Cover yourself up and never leave your room dressed like this again. My children and my friends do not need to see you like this. Neither do I.”
“You’ll never measure up to your brother, you little prick!” Jade spat at him as she flounced past, pulling the door closed behind her.
“My brother’s dead,” he said quietly as Jade’s lock clicked home.
“Rick?”
He turned and looked at her, his face open again, boyish, but heartbreakingly sad. “Audrey? I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’ll understand if you don’t . . . I lost control.”
She went to him and took his hand. “You didn’t lose control.”
“Yes, I did.”
“No. I lived with a man who had no control, and because of that, I thought for a second that you were going to hit her. I’m sorry. If I hadn’t been hit, I wouldn’t have thought it.”
“I wanted to hit her. I wanted to kill her.”
Slowly she pulled him forward and put her arms around his waist. “I wanted to kill her, too, Rick.” She smiled up at him. “Anyone in their right mind would want to kill her.”
“Does this mean you’ll see me again?” She felt his body relax against her slightly. His voice trembled with caged emotions. She wished he would cry, but knew he wouldn’t.
“Yes, I want to see you again. I mean, it can’t get crazier than this, can it?”
He studied her a long time before answering. “Yes, it can.”
Something in his voice, a finality, a surety, troubled her, but she looked into his eyes and said, “We’ll just take it one day at a time, okay?”
“Okay.”
They kissed chastely, and he saw her to the door. She thought it was odd that he didn’t accompany her down the walk to her car, but then, he’d been through so much.
On the drive home, she wondered about him, thinking that there was more under the surface than she’d realized. At first she thought he was a sweet, sincere guy, sort of shy, very intelligent, and stamped with her brother’s seal of approval, which was damn hard to come by. There was a darkness lying just below the surface, though, and she didn’t know if it was something that could be exorcised or not. She also thought the cousin in Scotland didn’t exist.
29
“Quint?” Rick called as he locked his bedroom door behind him. “Quint? Where are you, cat?” He waited a moment. “Here, kitty, kitty. Time to eat.”
The cat wasn’t answering. Christ, he thought, on top of everything else, this is all I need. “Quint?” He walked into the dressing room, automatically looking at the cabinet, relieved to see the hanger holding it shut. He scanned the floor and the shelves above the clothes racks. “Quint?”
The cat wasn’t in the bathroom either. “Here, kitty, kitty.”
Then he heard a hiss behind him and returned to the bedroom. “Quint?”
A low growl emanated from behind the headboard. Grabbing his flashlight from the nightstand, he got down on his hands and knees. “Quint?”
The cat was crouched at the halfway point in the eight-inch-wide space between the bed and the wall. Its ears were back and its eyes reflected green in the flashlight’s beam. It growled menacingly.
“What’s wrong, cat?”
Quint’s only answer was another hiss.
“Okay, have it your way.” Rick rose and went into the bathroom, poured fresh Iams in the dish and replaced the stale water. Usually Quint would come running when he heard the crunchies tumbling, but not tonight. Why?
A scrabbling sound in the wall gave him the answer. Rats. Quint wouldn’t know a rodent if it bit him on the ass. Maybe he’d seen one, smelled one, something. After all, Rick hadn’t checked for entries into the room other than the passage. He squatted down in front of the bathroom vanity and opened the door, inspecting the openings the plumbing traveled through, and saw a small opening between the pipe and the cabinet. He reached up and retrieved his flashlight from the counter, shined it on the cabinet floor, behind the rolls of toilet tissue.
A mouse turd, just one, lay in the back of the cabinet. “Uh-huh, I see,” Rick said, rising. “Ouch!” he cried, banging the back of his head on the counter. “Shit!” He rubbed the sore spot as he returned to the bedroom, got a bait trap, and placed it in the cabinet. “Here you go, you little son of a bitch!” He rose, successfully this time, and brushed his teeth, then stripped to his shorts. He’d had enough showers for one day.
After he climbed into bed, the cat joined him almost instantly, plastering his body against Rick’s side, draping his head and arms over his shoulder. “You’re a big baby, you know that? Big cat like you, afraid of a little bitty mouse.”
The cat stared at him, unperturbed.
Usually Rick read himself to sleep, but tonight he snapped off the lamp and lay in the dark, absently stroking Quint’s fur. “It wasn’t a good day for me either, fur-ball.”
The cat purred.
He didn’t know what to do about Jade. She’d frightened Shelly, called Audrey names, and caused him to stop thinking and almost do violence. My god, he thought, if he hadn’t been brought to his senses when he heard Audrey’s anguished “Don’t hit her!” he actually might have done it.
What if she parades around like that in front of Cody? The thought filled him with dread. Maybe he could rent her an apartment. She didn’t really need a retirement home. She wasn’t so old and feeble that she needed one. Or crazy enough to be locked away. And unless he buckled under and took the TV job, he couldn’t afford it, so his threats were somewhat empty. Rent her an apartment, he advised himself, and get her out of the house. But even if he was only putting out another thousand or so a month for her upkeep, he’d still have to take the TV job, that or give up good restaurants, the theater, the symphony, and the occasional rock concert. There were other expenses to consider. Now that he had the room, he wanted to buy a real piano so that the kids—and he himself—could learn to play. His primary computer was getting old and crotchety, and he wanted a laptop so that he could work in bed, too. The kids needed things, the house, too, all items that he could eventually afford without going into debt if he just left Jade where she was.
Put her out on Sunset Boulevard and let her hook her room and board. He smiled devilishly. You don’t owe her a place to live.
That was the ultimate truth. The Ewebeans had been their guardians, if you could use that word without laughing, after their parents died, but from the first, they did it only for themselves. The Ewebeans were just like the innkeeper and his wife in Les Misérables. He remembered clearly the day they showed up, a few weeks after their parents’ death.
October 1, 1975
The arrival of Jade and Howard Ewebean from Larkin Hill, a little nest of inbreeding located in the northernmost reaches of California, did not fill Ricky with joy. These, his only living relatives, were people who rightfully belonged only in small, backward towns in the middle of nowhere. Here in Santo Verde, they qualified as the cream of the crap, as his father used to say. As they pulled up the drive, Ricky, watching with Carmen, had the sinking feeling that the Beverly Hillbillies were moving in.
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