Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) (38 page)

“Charge me with what?”

“Two deaths. Something like,
you can come in on your own or we’ll issue some type of document making sure you do
. What are you gonna do?”

“Shit! Really?” I looked back down the staircase. The walls edged closer. “Alright,” I said. Voices came from the corridor below. “First off, who told you this?”

“Vic.”

“Right.” I listened for Victor’s voice. The voices came and went and came again. Short little bursts, but indefinable. I whispered, “Well, nothing’s been served on me and you’re my only recent call.”

“But what are you gonna do? Is there something I can do? A lawyer?”

“Now they’ve got a record of you calling me.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“But you may.”

“You didn’t do that did you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

He chortled. “You don’t think so?”

“I don’t remember.”

“That was Nixon’s line. Are you serious?”

I looked down the corridor. “Gordon, I don’t think I have time to talk to you. Will you have your cell with you?”

“Yes. But where will you be?”

“It’s better that you don’t know. Besides, it’s uncertain. Like the weather.” I hung up.

Two deaths. Another pattern? All those cases I’d read about, that had captivated me as a young girl. Sleepwalking killers,
usually
murdering family members. Schizophrenia, hearing voices, pleas of insanity and short-term memory loss from others. Killers of all sorts, none of whom remember what they did. Things they did, asleep or wake, that science could not resolve.

Harold irritated the hell out of me at times, and I often went to bed worried about him interfering with my work. Now the other lovers. The secrets. Maybe I already knew. Maybe I knew he was unfaithful. To me? To Johnny Ray? And my luxurious Octagon apartment? Not without Harold’s estate.
And . . .
The blank spaces.
Come with me.
Those damnable blank spaces.

I turned left into the narrow wainscot hallway that led, barely lit by a frosted transom, to his office. I moved quickly. At the door I found a handwritten note. I removed my shades. There, a phone number and a name to call if interested in renting the space.

Come with me
. I tried the door. It opened. Someone else had inhabited the space since Harold. Walls painted sky blue. Same old oak desk, different chairs stacked in a corner, the freestanding lodge pole coat rack laid across them, one of its thin tines broken off. None of it well organized. Dusty. Atoms stirred; resonant water surrounding me as I submerged. Numinescence.

I closed the door behind me.

“Come with me,” Harold said, holding out his hand, smiling beatifically, as peaceful as I’d ever seen him. “Together,” he said. “Away from this world,” he said. “Together always.”

I took two steps back, confused. “Don’t!”

He loves me
.

“It’ll be easy,” he said. “Together. I’ll show you. You’re the only one. Nothing is so beautiful as us. Nothing can ruin this.”

He climbed upon the desk. He threw the thick rope over the thick beam. “Forever.” Once more he adjusted the cord. “In the drawer.”

He pointed to the oak desk. “Together. Come with me.” He placed the cable around his neck. “Forever.”

He stepped off the desk.

“Harold!” I said aloud to the empty office, as much questioning my memory as him. But I knew I’d been there as he’d stepped off that desk. I’d been there and lost the memory in a squall of atoms, electrons and quarks. I had walked away. But his broken neck?

To get to the desk drawer I had to remove the damaged coat rack. I held it for a moment, distracted by the cracked tine.
Harold’s neck; it had snapped because of his small bones, his brittle musculature
. I pulled apart the stacked chairs, shifted a cabinet, reached over and tugged on it. It was locked, just as I’d left it after his death, when I’d found nothing. That was the way Harold had always kept it, ever wary that someone might invade his space. And then what? So, out of respect, I’d re-locked it. But he’d given me permission to see anything of his and in fact had encouraged it, I’d thought until the recent revelations.

A voice in the hallway. I didn’t move. After a minute, when I was sure the voice had disappeared, I locked the door.

Back to the desk. I felt for the key along the inner rim of the desktop, sliding my fingers this way and that till I came upon it, still taped there and surprised that the detective hadn’t taken the time to unlock it. Or perhaps he had and had simply replaced the key. I’d told him about it.

Reaching over, I considered the advisability of
knowing
. I envisioned a nautical rope.
Stop imagining
.

One last breath before I inserted the small key and turned it, then pulled the middle drawer toward me. There was no rope. I swiped my hand back and forth. Nothing.

I relaxed.
It’s all in my head
; Harold and sailors jumping to the call of something deep. I
had
been there! I had been part of this. But still there was blank space.

Then, remembering the smaller secret drawer to the left that simultaneously unlocked (and that especially pleased Harold), I leaned over the cabinet. Knowing that it frequently jammed in the warmer weather, I wrenched it open.

No rope visible. I shuttled my hand inside. There was something! A folded piece of paper and, withdrawing it, I could tell it was a sheet of accounting ledger. It could have been anything: a faulty formula, a scrap notation. But not a rope.
Not a rope
.

I unfolded the perfectly quartered and scored paper. So Harold. It read:

“If you find this, I know you loved me. You were willing to consider my offer. You can love. But I could not take you with me, as much as I wanted to. Together always, in this world and others. I love you –H”

***

I ached. I cursed its untidiness, its lack of pure definition, leaving me without borders. But I knew at last what I’d found beautiful in Harold: his compassion. Not just for me, but for everyone, everyone but himself. He could see beauty where others could not. And it confirmed my earlier thoughts on the vulnerability of beauty.

No police cars in our driveway. I walked, disoriented, into the farmhouse. I was shaken into the present. Roddy sat at the kitchen table with Lyle and Momma.

“Come join us,” Momma said merrily, raising a beer.

“You promised not to be mad,” chipped in Lyle, as Roddy stood and wrapped his arms around me.

Momma, Roddy, Lyle!
I could’ve died. But no one acted as if anything was wrong. So, for a luxurious opening in time —I can’t tell you how long— I was diverted by Roddy’s warm, singular smell: sweat, wood smoke and oranges. He wouldn’t let go till I put my arms around him, which I did reluctantly, and then it was I who didn’t want to let go. He was so . . . comforting.

“How nice,” said Momma.

I opened my eyes. Roddy pulled away. I questioned Lyle with a glance. He showed no urgency.

“Lyle invited me,” said Roddy.

“Everyone wants to hear my boy sing.” Momma waved her Keystone triumphantly.

“
I
wanted him to hear me sing.” Lyle was steadfast.

I knew better. I’d tell him it was preposterous, but I wanted no quarrel with Lyle, his eyes so ringed in red, doing his best to sit upright. “Really?” I said, still not looking at Roddy. “I never thought you were such buddies.”

“Friendships arise.” Roddy smiled at Lyle. Lyle nodded in accord.

“And,” I continued to Roddy, “I never took you for a country music fan.”

“I like all kinds of music, I’m open-minded.”

Perhaps a jab at me but I quickly dismissed it. “Where are you staying?”

“On the couch.” He pointed to the living room and his bag sitting by the sofa. “Lyle suggested it.”

“The more the merrier,” said Momma.

The old couch, lumpy and stained. I felt shame for Momma and the whole house, and that Roddy should see this as my environment. “It reminds me of my Aunt Maxine’s sofa,” he said. “As a kid, I always felt safe sleeping on it. I’ll be fine.”

Carly came through the back door. “Hi everybody!” Sport bag in hand, as if
she
was the party everyone was waiting for, she smiled. Then seeing Roddy she ran her hands through her hair, tossing it back, and running her tongue across her full lips. “And who is
this
?”

She came close enough to Roddy that her well-heralded breasts were quickly upon him, compelling him to steady himself on the kitchen table to avoid falling on it.

“Jerrod,” I said instinctively, hoping to protect him.

“Roddy,” Roddy said, trying to find room to raise his arms and shake Carly’s hand.

“Lyle’s friend.” Carly held his gaze.

“And Eunis’s,” Lyle said.

Carly faced me, pursed her lips in a didn’t-know-you-had-it-in-you expression, from which I didn’t retreat. It occurred to me that even Carly could have disposed of Atara. She had the strength, though I doubted she had the guts.

“Hello, Carly.” Momma’s jaw twitched.

“Oh, hi Momma.” Carly waved but didn’t look at her. “Everyone should have
friends
.” Carly sized up Roddy.

Prickly heat ran up my neck. Knocking Carly down was an option, but then I wondered why. Rather than explore the question, I asked, “Any calls for me?”

No one knew what I was talking about? Calling Gordon might make matters worse for him. I excused myself. “Well,” I said, threading past the bodies in the kitchen. “I’ll be downstairs if anybody needs me.”

I passed Carly’s duffel bag, all covered in bright stickers from Mexico, Costa Rica, even Paris, and I thought about asking her where
she
planned to sleep. Then I decided I’d rather not contemplate her choices.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

I stood by the woodpile, then walked away from the farmhouse to the rusted caboose and looked back. Even in the late afternoon haze the farmhouse showed its insincerity, ever more present seen at a distance, despite my good intentions. Its vanity and hollowness sadder even than before its rehabilitation.

That unfinished business again, thinking paint would hide the mind of the place. Because that’s what it was: the mind, not the soul. It was too late to undo, and unless I aimed to work the
whole
property . . . I couldn’t imagine that.

Yet unfinished was so undisciplined. And unfair. To what? To whom? To Papa Karlyle? It wasn’t the work, I enjoyed the physical, the hands on. It wasn’t the property, I could make it attractive, even in its scraggily environment. It was the mindset: Momma’s. I was ashamed of Momma. And for a moment I was five years old and sitting in front of the vanity mirror, Momma applying cosmetics to my baby face.

It was all about choices. Momma’s, Harold’s, mine. Was Gordon truly my friend? Was his call premeditated to elicit a response? The police hadn’t contacted me. I bounced down and did five quick pushups, stretched my neck a couple of times, then circled around to the shed. Even I knew better than to enter it, the slightest whisper liable to cave it in, first tearing, then burying, any trespasser. I was amazed it hadn’t happened years before.

Nevertheless, wading through the spikey spring weeds, which left trails on my bare legs, I stepped over the downed barbed door and through cobwebs, ducking my head, careful not to touch the doorframe. Even so, I almost fell against it, losing my balance as I pulled viscid spider traps from my face and swatted at imagined creatures dropping into my hair.

Someone had added paint cans to the floor plan but otherwise it hadn’t changed in thirty years, another graveyard of unfinished business. Choices. I stooped to the cans and, brushing aside their caked dust and mud, saw that they’d never been opened. I lifted one up to verify and sure enough, it was full, the weight of it surprising me so I almost lost my balance again before my arm anchored to a small patch of clear, dusty earth. I pondered what I was doing there.

Standing straight up was impossible lest I bring the roof down upon myself. I bent over and stepped tactically onto lattice that snapped under me, between a large perforated washtub and a shattered glass washboard, and over the boat paddle that had lain on the same dirt floor moldering for half a century. Stepping into the dingy in the corner where Nemo and I once cuddled, I settled in very carefully, the sides giving way with a crackle to my slightest pressure, a sizeable splinter wedging under my thumbnail as I let myself down. “Damn!” I shook out my hand and sucked on it.

Besides the front door, the only invading sunshine came from three small overcast shafts squeezing between slats on the far wall, never reaching me. For the first time I wondered how the dingy made its way into the shed through the door. It was as if the shed had been built
around
the dingy. Had the boat ever sailed? Who in my family had ever been a fisherman? No one.

Fishermen. The two at Little Bass the day they found Atara’s body at Kingdom. One could have been Victor’s friend whom I’d seen only a half hour earlier outside the Drink ‘n’ Dive.

My phone rang. “Yes?”

“Eunis?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Levi.” He sounded tight.

It wasn’t a train’s signal but the clanging of a cable car. “You were in San Francisco when it happened, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

No longer on my suspect list.

“I told them you were authorized to take the body for me,” he said. “You’ll have to go in to sign for it. They’ll deliver.”

“I’ll take care of it.” My confidence grew. But something still troubled me. “Levi?”

“Yes?”

“What about the tape? Atara mentioned something . . .”

“I don’t know anything about a tape. She was probably bluffing.”

“She didn’t strike me as the bluffing type.”

“I told you, I know nothing of a tape.”

“Sis, you in there?” It was Lyle.

“I gotta go,” I said to Levi. “I’ll keep you apprised.” I hung up.

“Lyle, don’t come in here, it’s dangerous.”

“I can see that. What
you
doin’ in there?”

An excellent question. “I needed a place to think.” Both foolish and insufficient. “I’m too big for under the staircase.” Even more ludicrous.

“Well come on out, we need to talk. An fer god’s sake, be careful.”

“Okay, okay, I’m coming out.”

And when I did, he said, “What are you doin’? You’ve got more at stake ‘an I do. Come on.” He led me over to the old caboose where we sat against the sleeper timbers on the sunny south side, sitting side by side, looking away from the house, away from its cluster of black ash and box elder trees, and out the driveway, up the rutted road. We didn’t speak for several minutes. The last remaining scent of creosote wafted in and out.

“You know why Momma never got rid of this caboose?” he finally asked.

“She was lazy?”

“Nope. I don’t think that was it.”

“She thought it was art?”

He turned to me with a surprised soft smile. “In a way, you’re right.”

I gave him a curious tilt of the head.

“If art comes from dreams,” he said, his shrug signifying
seems right to me
. Then his eyes traveled up the road. “It was Papa Karl’s hack, his caboose, ya know. He salvaged it from the Burlington. He loved it, with its cupola. It was considered a helluva caboose in its day with its coal stove. It was art. It was his dream, and it became hers too. Saw a picture of it once. It was red, I mean really red, alive, before nature and all the seasons got to it, before we ever saw it. Momma once told me that Papa Karl was gonna trick it out and they were gonna hitch it with his connections and ride it all the way to New Orleans when they’d saved enough money. They’d go on some high adventure.”

He breathed deeply. “Course they never made it, what with Papa’s accident and all. She blamed it on Papa Karl for not believing in the dark spirits, the
tussers
, the
mylings
. Or the Christian ones.”

Lyle scuffled the dirt in front of him with his boot. “It was their boat down the Mississippi. They never made it. That’s somethin’ the three of us have in common —me an Papa Karl and Momma. Not like you and Carly.”

It sounded too much like a farewell, and I didn’t want him to go. “You’ve got time. Every day they’re finding cures.”

“Naw.” He shook his head. “I’ve run out of time, it’s okay. Had my chances. Danced up a storm, just never danced with any direction.”

I put my hand on his arm. It was atrophied and, I suspected, brittle.

“I wanted to thank you, Sis.”

I shook my head, resisted the clouds rising in my eyes.

“No really.” He focused on the dirt, his eyes also beginning to brim with dampness. “Tomorrow night, that means a lot to me.”

“We can talk about this later, after —”

“No, listen. That guy, that Roddy, he’s a real man. You were in New York, what’s the Jew word? Mesh?”

“Mensch.” My dimple may have shown for an instant.

“He’s that, and you should be nicer to him.” Lyle scratched at the dirt. “I needed someone . . .” His voice caught. He stopped for a moment, wiped his nose with his sleeve, regained his composure “. . . but I thought I don’t need no one. All that shit Momma told us, all that scary shit . . . those folktales, those myths. But you taught me better. Sis, you taught me better.”

I rubbed his shoulders.

“So I got a lot to thank you for, and we ain’t even sung our song yet. But you listen to your brother Lyle, okay? This ole caboose,” he waved weakly at the lacerated hulk behind him, “it only has thirty-nine feet of track now, but it was a beauty and it could travel anywhere and people would notice — Papa had those plans — but now the only thing it has left is worn edges, which is all most of us will have at the end. You’re strong, you got curves — I see the way men look at you — and you got brains and heart and somethin’ else, somethin’ not quite the same as everybody else. Somethin’ special. Don’t sit up on blocks yet, okay?” He started to cough.

“Okay,” I murmured as his coughing escalated. “You okay?” His body quaked more and more violently with each cough.

“Lyle!”

They came faster, louder, deeper. He signaled:
Get me back to the house.

***

Once I had Lyle lying down in bed, his face regained color. But not much. I covered him in the stained white comforter and waited till he drifted asleep. I moved the hair off his face and tucked it behind his ears before quietly closing the door behind me.

There were voices in the kitchen. I turned away, routinely, the way I’d done at Little Bass Stump that day. Then, this time, I changed direction.

“It was, it was!” said Momma. Carly and Momma sat at the table, each with a beer: a Keystone for Momma, a Modelo for Carly, and no knives drawn.

“He was cute, wasn’t he?” continued Momma. “Always that great voice.”

“Yes, Momma, always that great voice.” Carly saw me in the doorway. “Well, come on in, for chrissakes. Have a beer. Mom’s are pisswater —”

“Carly Renay!”

“So I suggest you have one of mine.”

“I’m good.” I contemplated the empty chair.

Carly jumped up, snatched a bottle from the fridge and set it down with a clunk in front of me. “Sit.” She placed both hands on my shoulders and pushed me down in the chair.

I threw her hands off. “Don’t.”

Carly raised both arms and backed away before settling into her own chair again. I sat eyeing both Momma and Carly. I wanted to talk about Lyle but I was afraid he’d hear and I didn’t really know how to start the discussion or what the point was. We all sat there, suddenly quiet, each eyeing the other.

There wasn’t even a spring wind to rattle the screens. “What you been up to?” said Carly sipping her beer, breaking the silence.

“Up to? Me? Like starting when?”
Like starting when you had no interest in me? Like forever?

“Recently.”

“Oh,” interjected Momma, “you can see what Eunis did with the outside of the house.” She smiled at both of us.
Unreal
.

“I was assisting genetics research in New York.”

“Yes,” said Carly. “That’s what Roddy said.”

Then why
did you even bother to ask?
But instead I said, “Where is Roddy?”

“Went to the lodge,” said Momma. “A gentleman; said Carly should get the couch.”

I turned it over in my head.

“You can stop worrying, Eunis,” said Carly. “I’m not gonna hit on the guy. But I
do
like the lodge,” she said with a leer.

My eyes definitely bugged out.

“Just kiddin’, he’s not my type at all.”

“What
is
your type?” I lowered my head, ready for battle.

“All kinds, but they gotta be good looking.”

“You bitch!” I accidently knocked over the beer then quickly righted it and blotted at the spill with a napkin.

“No, no, that wasn’t meant as a swipe, really. If he’s studly to you, that’s all that’s important.”

I fixed her with contempt.

“
Really
,” offered Carly, rightly apologetic.

“He’s handsome,” I said, turning to Momma. “Don’t you think?”

“Well,” said Momma, “I think he’s very nice. Seems very nice.”

“But good looking, I mean.”

She let out a rheumy cough. “I’ve seen handsomer, if you want the truth.” Momma glanced at Carly and managed a swig from her Keystone.

I focused again on Carly. “You really don’t think he’s handsome?”

“Like I said, whatever blows your skirt. It’s not like I think he’s
bad
looking.”

“What would make him better looking — in your opinion?”

“Geez, Eunis, what does it matter? Do you love the guy or not?”

“Love! Who said anything about love? The man is my lawyer.”

“You have a lawyer?” said Momma, impressed.

All I could think of was how blind I’d been to his features.