Bad Things (12 page)

“Dad?”

“What, Shelly?”

“Which way is the room?”

“It's right there,” he said, leading her to the first door on the right.

She pushed it open and walked in. Then he heard her moan. “Gawd, this is
gross.”

“Of course it's gross,” he said, irritated.

“What?” she whined.

“Nothing.” He entered the room, not remembering the cowboy wallpaper until he saw it. He'd loved it, but it explained Shelly's reaction to the room.

“It's just the same as it was when I was little,” he said softly. “But we'll take care of that, pronto, Shelly. First project, I promise.”

She didn't answer, and he just stood there, staring, and feeling far less fear than he'd expected. He remembered being terrified here, between Robin's tricks and the greenjack stories, but now it was just a room that he'd shared with his brother until Carmen and Hector moved into the cottage and he inherited her room. He'd rarely entered this room after he was nine or ten years old.

“Daddy!”

He turned to see Cody behind him, grinning like he'd won the lottery. “What, Cody?”

“Please, I want the cowboy room! I love it! Please!”

Damn.
“Cody, we'll put new wallpaper—with cowboys or spacemen or dinosaurs, anything you want—in any other room. I think your sister needs this great big room. She has so many clothes that she'll want that whole wall of closets.”

“He can have it,” Shelly mumbled as she turned and left the room.

Thanks a lot.
“Cody? Wouldn't you rather have new wallpaper? This is kind of dirty and old. Look, there's a rip in it.”

The rip—a gouge, really—was right over his old bed. Sudden images assaulted his brain, visions of Robin sitting on his chest in the dark, grinning and giggling and stabbing a butcher knife at the wall above his head.

No,
Rick told himself,
this is just another example of your oversensitivity.
Robin had been teasing him with a toy knife, a rubber dagger, and he'd twisted the memory into something that had never happened.

“I don't care about an old rip. I want this room. I like it. I really, really,
really
like it.” Cody showed his dimples.

“But . . . why? I'll get you new wallpaper.”

“I like it because you had it when you were little. Please, Daddy?”

He was about to arbitrarily say no, but common sense made him hesitate. What could it hurt? Even if the knife had been real—and of course it wasn't—what did it matter now? Robin was gone and the past was . . . the past. Cody knew nothing of Rick's twin or of the greenjack stories. “Sure,” he said, finally. “I guess you can have this room if you really want it.”

His newfound nonchalance deserted him as he spoke the words, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
Grow up, Piper!

“The rooms all suck.”

“Shelly, you're back.”

“I guess I'll take the one at the end of the hall. The one with the bathroom.”

“Sorry, kid. That's the master suite. It's mine.”

“You said I had first choice.”

“I also said the master is mine.”

“I'm the girl, I should get the bathroom.”

He grinned at her. “But I'm the grown-up.”

If looks could kill.
“That's not fair.”

“Fairness has nothing to do with it, darling. This is a family, not a democracy.”

“But I should get the bathroom. I'm the girl—”

“And when you're the girl—woman—paying the bills, you'll get to claim the room with the bath.”

She set her lips in a thin line. “Maybe I'll run away.”

One. Two.
He wouldn't lose his temper.
Three. Four.
Maybe he would.
Five. Six.
Running away was a new threat.

Seven. Eight.
Maybe he should just give her the suite.
Nine.
Maybe he should send her to a nunnery. Or a military school.
Ten.

“You may choose from any of the other bedrooms on this floor,” he said, surprised and pleased at the firm finality in his voice.

She tried to make him spontaneously combust with her eyes. “Then I'll take the yellow one. The one as far away from you as possible.”

“That's fine, Shelly. As I said, you can choose your paint.” He smiled pleasantly. “Anything but black.”

She moaned and rolled her eyes, then flounced out after he complimented her, quite sincerely, on her uncanny imitation of Lurch on
The Addams Family.

A moment later, Rick realized that she'd chosen Carmen's old room, the one that would allow her the most freedom. Its door was around the corner from the main hallway, and the kitchen staircase was immediately accessible. He almost went after her, suspecting that her prime motivation in making the choice was the ease with which she could sneak out of the house.
Don't accuse her unjustly,
he told himself, knowing that, not only would he feel terrible for misjudging her, but that he didn't want to plant the idea in her head if she hadn't thought of it herself.

“I'm starved!” Cody yanked Rick's hand insistently. “I wanna eat.”

“Well, then, we'd better feed you.” Rick checked his watch. It was almost two in the afternoon, and he wondered how the kid had held out so long. Excitement, maybe.

Although Shelly had her license, he had never let her drive the Celica in Vegas. He made a few brownie points with her now by asking her to drive into town and pick up lunch. It was miraculous how her sullenness let up as he dangled the keys over her hand.

McDonald's had never smelled so good. When Shelly returned a half hour later bearing burgers, fries, and chocolate shakes, Rick was pleased to see that his daughter was actually working at maintaining her sour attitude. He detected a trace of enthusiasm lurking behind her studiously indifferent stare and Walkmanned ears.

They ate in the kitchen, which still had the yellow spoon-and-fork wallpaper Rick had helped his mom put up at age five or six. The 1950s round-shouldered refrigerator, gingerbread trim above the window over the sink, and yellow and white counter tile gave the room a kitschy look, as if it had been done over by a nostalgia nut. Rick liked it very much, but he always had: It reminded him of his mother.

The cat, lured downstairs by the perfume of Big Macs, made its grand entrance shortly after they opened the sacks. After taking his due, a quarter of a patty and a piece of bun, the cat stalked back into the dining room.

“ 'Scuse me a minute.” Rick shoved the last of his sandwich in his mouth and followed Quint, somewhat concerned about hidden poodles and open windows. There didn't seem to be any, but when the animal came to the closed doors to Jade's quarters, it sniffed, put its ears back, and growled, then assumed the imbecilic openmouthed, cross-eyed position of felines who didn't like the smell of something. Obviously Quint didn't like poodles.

Rick chuckled, until the cat suddenly turned around and sprayed the entry doors with everything he had, not once, but twice.

“Quint!” Rick scolded. The cat's acknowledgment was a scathing glance, then it flicked its tail, cat for
fuck you,
and marched back upstairs.

Rick looked around for something he could use to wipe up the urine, secretly pleased with the cat's editorial comment. Locating a box of Kleenex on a lamp table, he took a handful and wiped up the mess. Rising, he looked around to make sure the kids weren't watching, then tried the center latch on Jade's doors. It was locked from the inside, which was just as well: A herd of dead poodles lurked within, and he didn't want his son discovering them by himself.

“Dad?”

At Shelly's voice, he whirled guiltily.

“Yes, sweetheart?” He hid the wadded Kleenex in his hand, feeling like he'd been caught doing something wrong.

“Can I take the car again? I'd like to drive by the high school.” She gave him a killer smile.

“Well,” Rick began as Cody bounded by on the way back up to his new room, “I don't know . . .”

“I won't be too long, I promise, and I'll be really, really careful.”

“I guess it would be okay,” he said finally. He knew her charm tactics were purely false, a manipulation she knew would work, but as he handed her the keys, he told himself that the sooner she got to know her new home, the sooner her pleasantness wouldn't be an act.

“Thanks, Daddy!”

He watched her drive off, then headed back up the stairs, deciding it was time to investigate the so-in-demand master suite. He paused to check on Cody, who was happily counting sheriff's badges on the wallpaper, then continued on to the suite.

They died in there .
. .

He swallowed hard, staring at the closed double doors. Why did he want this room, with its horrible memories, memories he'd never been able to block, no matter how hard he tried?

Perhaps it was a knee-jerk thing: This was the grown-ups' room, after all. Or maybe it was the fact that there were good memories associated with it too. That was it. He smiled with the realization that Cody wanted his old bedroom, dingy cowboy wallpaper and all, for the same reason he wanted this one: because it was his parents' room.

He felt like he was six years old again as he opened the doors. The room was nearly as large as he remembered, with shining hardwood floors beneath scattered braid rugs, and aging white curtains over the windows. The double bed was the same one his parents had slept in.

He shut off the thought. It was the same 1940s waterfall headboard, but a different mattress, not his parents' mattress. This mattress had a history he didn't want to think about for various tawdry reasons, the primary one being that it had been Jade and Howard Ewebean's conjugal bed for many a year, and the secondary being the occasional, unthinkable visitors Jade had invited into it.

He wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen it.

Disgusted, he studied the yellow hobnailed bedspread. It belonged to the Ewebeans.
The stories it could tell
. His parents had a handmade quilt, with a white background emblazoned with a blue and green wedding ring pattern, It had been stained and sodden with blood the night he found them.

At least you don't believe in ghosts, Piper.
Purposefully he crossed the room, flopped down on the bed, and found the mattress to be an unendurable landscape of hills and valleys. Too small, too. He was used to his king-sized water bed, warm in winter, cool in summer, and only fifty percent waveless because he'd decided a little sloshing would keep him young. He stared at the ceiling and decided that the minute the furniture arrived, he'd get rid of the dark forties stuff and install his smooth bleached oak furnishings, his spread and curtains. It had all been dearly acquired on Gallery Road in Santa Fe, southwestern as all get-out and perfect for this house, primarily because it would help exorcise the memories of his parents' murder.

“Merowlll.”
Quint thunked his feline bulk onto the bed and nonchalantly padded onto Rick's stomach, centering himself. The cat hooked Rick into his stern orange-eyed gaze, and began kneading some serious bread in the breastbone region.

He scratched Quint behind the ears. He had the right idea, and Rick decided to take a lesson from the animal and make this house his own. He'd put his mark on it just as surely as Quint had on Jade's doors, though, he amended, with perhaps a tad more savoir faire.

He smiled, comfortable for the first time since they'd arrived. Gently Rick pulled the fuzzy paws forward, and the cat settled down, eyes dosing, purr rumbling. A nightly ritual done in daylight, he thought as his eyelids drooped, a good omen or not?

“Oow! Jesus! Get off me!” Rick's eyes flew open to see the cat, ears back, tail huge, clinging like Velcro to his chest. Its claws sank deeper into his chest as Rick tried to pull it free.

“Damn it, Quint! Get off me!” He shoved the cat, and this time the claws ripped free, taking skin and cloth with them. “Damn! Jesus Christ!” Quint hissed and sprang away. A moment later, low growling commenced beneath the bed.

Rubbing his chest, Rick sat up and looked around the shadowed room, disoriented, his brain muddled with sleep. “Be quiet!” he whispered, but Quint ignored him, and continued to growl steadily. Rick's mind started clicking things into place, and suddenly registered alarm. The last time Quint had acted like that was when a burglar had broken into the apartment. Swinging his feet off the bed, he thought

Rationality took over an instant later, and disgusted with his first reaction, he crossed the room and switched on the light. His watch read five o'clock—he'd been asleep for more than two hours. Where was Cody? Shelly? His car? He hadn't meant to leave them alone.

The cat's growl suddenly swelled, almost covering the sound of a door opening downstairs, and volleys of high-pitched yipping heralding the arrival of Aunt Jade and her poodles. “Lord, give me strength,” he whispered as Quint swatted the heel of his shoe from beneath the bed. The cat was going completely out of its mind now, making high-pitched growling-yowling-chewing noises full of evil intent. “Come on, kitty,” he coaxed. “Calm down. They're just dogs. They're no match for you.”

Quint, always a smart cat,
huffed
a couple times, then quieted.

“Cody!” Carmen's contralto overrode the yapping. “Hi, Cody!” As Rick straightened his clothes and combed his hair, he heard his son say something, though Rick couldn't make out the words. An instant later, hands clapped, once, twice, and Carmen snapped a command in Spanish that Rick recognized from his childhood. She'd told Jade it meant “Hush, love pups,” but the true translation was something like “Shut up, you stinking little turds!”

Next he recognized Jade's gratingly nasal voice complaining about something. Knowing Jade, it concerned the presence of a child in her house.

My house,
Rick corrected.
And the old bitch is razzing my son.
That, he decided, as he closed his bedroom door and headed for the stairs, wouldn't happen more than once. Jade had been the evil stepmother incarnate and had made his childhood miserable. Not Robin's, just his. Robin had entertained her. “You bitch,” he muttered, reaching the stairs. The fear she had instilled in him as a child had turned to hatred about the time puberty hit. And that was good because if he'd had anything more to be afraid of, he would have lost his mind.

“Ricky?” Carmen called as the poodles renewed their yapping. Steeling himself, he reached the bottom of the stairs.
Here we go,
he thought, stepping into the living room.
Show time.

“Daddy!” Cody, safe in Carmen's arms, giggled happily “Lookit! Those are the doggy rats you told me about in the car, huh, Daddy?”

Carmen grinned as she approached him. Transferring Cody to her ample hip, she hugged Rick with her free arm, then soundly kissed his cheek. “You're so handsome, Ricky. So handsome.”

He felt himself blush. For a moment he couldn't hug her back because there was something, some little thing on the edge of his memory, something about Carmen Zapata that worried him, though what it was, he didn't know. More subconscious hooey, he decided, and forced himself to return the hug.

“You haven't changed a bit,” he told her as he began to relax. He'd forgotten that being hugged by Carmen was one of the better things in life. He'd forgotten how comfortable she was, how warm and safe she felt. Even now that he was taller than she, he still felt engulfed by her. Suddenly he felt good about being here because she was exactly what Cody needed.

“You're a good boy, Ricky, to say I haven't changed. But I'm an old lady, fifty-five.”

“That's not so old.”

“You can see the gray hairs and the crow's-feet and you still say that.” She beamed at him. “Thank you.”

He pulled away.

“What's wrong?”

“Daddy's funny,” Cody said.

A throat was cleared. Dogs whined, and a grown man winced at the noise, which sounded like sandpaper on dry snot.

“Aunt Jade,” he said smoothly, “I hope you're well.”

“Doggy rats,” she intoned. “Explain doggy rats.”

She stood by the sofa, her dogs' red leashes wrapped around her. All he could see of them were their snarling, cowardly muzzles poking out from behind her legs. Jade herself had changed little, except that the tall, heavy-boned woman was thinner and slightly stooped now.

As always, she wore too much makeup. Her foundation had sweated into the loose wrinkles on her face, emphasizing the clownish circles of rouge ornamenting her prominent cheekbones. Worse, mold blue eyeshadow covered her eyelids from the clumps of mascara on her eyelashes all the way up to her plucked-out and painted-on eyebrows. A single wart with two wiry black hairs grew on the side of her nose.

The woman, Rick thought, was a witch, and her expensive but out-of-date—and season—clothing only emphasized the effect. She wore a long black batwing jacket and matching straight skirt that ended, regrettably, above her bony knees, and her red scoop-necked blouse showed off her crepey cleavage to great disadvantage.

The only change was her hair. Formerly mouse brown, it was now jet black and swept up in some sort of beehive throwback. More than anything, Jade Ewebean looked like Cruella DeVille with a hangover.

“I'm waiting for an answer, Richard,” Jade said.

Do you have any idea how much I despise you? The
woman had made his life hell, though he had to admit that she'd had one positive influence on his childhood. If she hadn't made him quite so miserable, he might not have graduated high school early and had an extra year away from her.

If you hadn't been such a wimp, Piper, you might have gotten away even sooner.
His feelings ranged from disgust to amusement when he thought of how he'd removed himself from his impossible home life. He got straight A's, then ran away to college. It never occurred to him to do what kids did in books and movies. He could have run away and joined the army or even gone hog-wild and run off with the circus.

The circus. The carnival.

The name brought a physical jolt.
Delia.
Oh, God. Delia. She'd been with the traveling carnival that arrived in Santo Verde each July. He'd met her on the Fourth of July only a few days before his parents died. How could he forget about Delia? She was the first girl he'd ever kissed, the first he had loved.

“Ricky? Ricky?” Carmen shook his elbow. “Is something wrong?”

“No. It's just strange to be back here.”

“Yeah,” Carmen said, pointedly glaring at Jade. “Some things never change.”

Jade stared down her nose at Rick. “I'm waiting for your explanation.”

I don't have to answer her,
Rick thought.
I can tell her to go to hell
. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
I'm an adult. I should be civil.

Luckily, Carmen spoke for him. “You leave him alone. This is his house and he's the boss now.”

Jade harrumphed, but something in her posture changed. Obviously she was aware of the truth in Carmen's words.

“Richard,” Jade sniffed, doing a turnaround reminiscent of Shelly's teenage manipulations, “this woman doesn't know her place. I worked my fingers to the bone taking care of you, and what do I get in return? A rude maid that I can't fire.”

Thank God.
“If you'll recall,” Rick replied calmly, “my parents stipulated in their will that the Zapatas would stay on as caretakers as long as they wanted.” If it hadn't been for Carmen, he never would have survived long enough to leave Santo Verde. The Zapatas were free to leave, of course, but the Ewebeans had been forbidden to fire them.

Jade strode toward Rick, bringing the poodles and an almost visible cloud of perfume with her, Rick tried not to recoil as she laid a spotted hand on his wrist. As tall as he, she looked him straight in the eye.
“You
can fire her, Richard. I did everything for you; I think you should do this one thing for me. Fire her. Get me a nice maid, one who shows me some respect.” Her grip tightened.

“No.” He'd never directly crossed Jade and her horrible temper before, and he found it felt very good.

Her nails dug painfully into his flesh. “You
must.”

“I won't fire her, Aunt Jade.”

“I insist.”

“No,” he repeated. “But maybe . . .”

“What?” The claws loosened slightly.

“Maybe you would prefer to live in a nice retirement home?”

The hand flew from his wrist and slapped his face, hard. “How dare you, you—” She drew her hand back to strike again. Rick caught it and held on, which wasn't easy. The woman was surprisingly strong. Somewhere in the background he heard Carmen first call on the Mother of God, then cut loose with a stream of Spanish invective centered around the word
puta.

“Don't do that again, Jade,” he said with deadly calm.

“Boy, is Daddy p.o.'d,” Cody told Carmen. “He only talks real quiet like that when he's p.o.'d.”

One of the poodles yipped, then attacked his leg, not biting, he realized, but wrapping its paws around him and rubbing.
Just like his mama,
he thought as he kicked it away without taking his eyes off Jade. “Listen carefully, Aunt Jade. If you ever do that again, I will send you and your dogs away. Behave yourself, and you may stay in your apartment. Do you understand?”

Immediately she switched back to simper mode. “Oh, Richard, I'm just an old lady. Sometimes I just blither on, you know. You'll forgive me, won't you, dear? My, my, you're so handsome. You look so like your brother, but you have a kinder face. A younger face, more boyish.”

Carmen had warned him that Jade was losing her mind. God, she gave him the creeps talking as if Robin were still alive. He let go of her hand. She didn't move away, but stood her ground, keeping that brown-nosed smile painted on her face. The old bat, he believed, was possessed more of cunning than senility. He cleared his throat. “Abide by my rules, you can stay. Upset my family and you go. Another thing. Keep your dogs in your apartment. I don't want my cat upset either.”

“A cat?” Her lip curled. “You have a cat?”

“Yes.”

“She knows that already, Ricky,” Carmen hissed.

“I hate cats.”

“I hate poodles.”

“Cats live outside.”

“This one's a house cat. He never goes outside.”

“Where are you going to keep him, then? In your boy's room?”

“The cat gets the run of the house, except for your apartment.”

“But I was here first,” she said in a victimized voice.

“No,
I
was,” Rick said firmly. “I just left for a while.
I
own the house, not you.”

“My poor little puppies are used to their freedom.”

“Don't let her fool you, Ricky,” Carmen said. “I never let those dogs loose in the house. They pee everywhere.”

Rick took sudden perverse pleasure in knowing the poodles would be blamed for Quint's misbehavior.

Cody squirmed out of Carmen's arms and squatted to peer at the animals. “What're their names?”

Jade said nothing, so Carmen leaned down and whispered something in the boy's ear. He giggled with delight.

“She told him something dirty,” Jade sniffed. “Do you want a dirty woman like that around your boy?”

“Yes.” Rick found Carmen's occasional earthy language delightfully creative, and she saved any true obscenities she deemed necessary for her native tongue. The Spanish epithets for the Ewebeans had helped get him through his childhood. They thought the words and phrases were respectful; they were anything but.
Tia Puta,
as far as Jade knew, meant “Aunt Beautiful.”

“Carmen says the dogs' names are Mister Poo and Stinkums,” Cody announced. His giggling reached hysterical proportions.

“You can't touch my babies,” Jade said haughtily.

“We wouldn't dream of touching them, Aunt Jade.” Rick said demurely. Outside, he saw Shelly pulling into the driveway.

“See that you don't.” Jade turned, almost tripping on her dogs, inserted a key in the lock on the folding doors, and slipped through, revealing none of the interior. Rick heard the lock click on the inside.

“Good riddance,” Carmen muttered. She opened the front door just before Shelly knocked, and smiled at the girl. “You must be Shelly. I'm Carmen.”

“Hi,” Shelly said as she walked in. At least she'd used a pleasant tone of voice.

“You just missed the doggy rats,” Cody told her. “They smell yucky.” He giggled, then added, “So does Aunt Jade.”

Shelly sniffed the air, her nose curling. “Opium,” she said. “A whole case of it.”

Cody considered this a long moment. “She should just say no.”

“Dad?” Shelly asked, her tone perceptively sweeter. “There's a mall here. Why didn't you tell me?”