Killer's Cousin (12 page)

“Hey,” I said.

After a pause, Frank dog-eared a page and closed the book. After a longer pause, he nodded hello. Over his shoulder, I squinted down at the title of his book.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
.

On impulse, I pulled out my Star Market card and offered it to him. He stared at it, and for a moment I thought he might not know about swapping. But then he grinned—nearly everyone did when you offered to swap—and pulled out his wallet. I gave him
ELLIS O
'
DONNELL
and he gave me
JOANNE STANBRIDGE
.

“That's new,” I said, indicating the Zen book. “How are you doing with that other guy? Abu-something.”

“Abulafia. Fine. What about you? Have you finished
The Guide for the Perplexed
yet?”

“I'm listening to it on tape,” I said. “In the original Arabic.” And then I laughed because, after all, Raina had kissed me.

Frank stared at me. I sat down next to him. I picked up the Zen book and looked through it a little. “You believe any of this?”

Frank said, “I
want
to believe.”

It was a near-perfect imitation of David Duchovny as Fox Mulder. I almost choked. Frank looked at me blandly.

“You watch
The X-Files
?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

“I wouldn't have thought it would be your kind of thing,” I said.

“Why not? Too weird?” His mouth twisted. “Not weird enough?”

I stifled another laugh. Frank noticed but didn't seem to mind. If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought there was the start of a smile on his face. “I don't know,” I said. “It's TV. I guess I'm surprised you'd watch TV.”

Frank stretched out his legs. “Why's that?”

“I'd have thought you'd think it's all crap,” I said.

“A lot of it
is
crap,” said Frank. “So I usually read something while I'm watching.”

Now that was not a surprise. “I'm hooked on
The X-Files
,” I found myself confessing.

Frank said, “I'm into
Looney Tunes
. I've seen every Road Runner cartoon multiple times.”

I looked at him. He looked back. And then, as if on cue, we chorused together: “Wile E. Coyote.
Super
genius.”

“Brilliant stuff,” said Frank.

“Yeah,” I said.

But later that afternoon as I climbed the stairs to the Shaughnessy apartment, I was feeling itchy again, wary. Relief flooded through me when I didn't see or hear Lily. I had run into Lily the night before, when I came up after Raina kissed me.

Lily had been sitting on the floor of the living room, headphones jacked into the stereo, bare toes just visible beneath the hem of her flannel nightgown as she hugged her knees. Neither of us said a word, but I was conscious of the soft murmur of voices in the other end of the apartment. Vic and Julia, of course.

Lily's eyes tracked my progress across the room in
the near-dark. I felt them on the back of my neck as I fumbled with the doorknob of the attic stairs. I fancied that Lily could smell me from across the room. Could smell Raina's perfume. Incredibly, I'd felt a fiery blush rise on my neck and face. It seemed to take forever to get the door open and closed behind me. And even after I'd gotten myself upstairs, I'd imagined Lily listening from below, hearing my footsteps on my floor, which was her ceiling.

Why did Lily make me feel so uneasy? I had to get hold of myself. Had to be mature. I couldn't go on tiptoeing around, hoping not to see her. She lived here, and so did I. We were going to see each other. It was just a fact.

As I changed to go running, I thought again of my cousin Kathy. I pulled out the photo and looked at her. It was a senior-year photo; she had been my age, more or less. There was a certain defiance in her smile. I wondered about her boyfriend, the one with the long hair who'd dumped her. I wondered if she'd ever brought him home. I bet she had, especially after she'd begun paying rent. I bet she'd enjoyed bringing him home, leading him upstairs under the noses of Vic and Julia.

Had Vic and Julia been talking to each other then? Had Lily carried messages for them? What had the seven-year-old Lily thought of her big sister, the favorite child who had finally managed to lose her parents' favor?

And as I straightened up from tying my running shoes and leaned against the wall at an angle, balancing for calf stretches, an answer to my own question
floated into my head.
She was glad. She was thrilled. Don't you see, she was suddenly the favorite
.

I couldn't help myself; I whipped around. And I saw—I swear I saw—the faint outline of the figure I'd seen and sensed many times before. A slender girl. Kathy. I knew now it was Kathy. I recognized her. I took in several deep, shallow breaths.

Then the figure was gone. I stared at the place it had been. I stared until my eyes felt raw. The late-afternoon sun sent weak rays through the windows and onto the floor. There was nothing there. There had never been anything there.

Ghosts were for entertainment. For television. For
The X-Files
. They were not part of real life. I, for one, emphatically did not believe. Ghosts could not be real. For if they were, I would surely not be haunted by my cousin Kathy. I would be haunted—as I deserved to be—by Emily.

I grabbed my keys and bolted down the stairs to run all the craziness out of myself.

O
ver the few weeks that remained in the year, I saw Raina once or twice a week. It was casual; she did not kiss me again. Part of me was disappointed, but a larger part was relieved. I certainly made no move.

It was good, though, just hanging out with someone. We spent some hours together in her apartment, Raina drawing or painting, me working on college applications—due by January 15th. Even as I kept myself apart, I got to know
her
a little. She loved her myriad step- and half siblings, but was wary of her mother. She was fully capable of unplugging and forgetting her telephone for days on end. She ate canned soup every night with undiminished enjoyment. She'd had two significant boyfriends, one of whom she still had feelings for. “But, you know, he'll never leave El Paso,” she said. “And I had to.”

Raina didn't seem to need to discuss exactly what
our
relationship was, or where, if anywhere, it was going.

There was only one really bad incident. Once, I looked up and found that she was sketching me, in charcoal, when she was supposed to be working on a still life for school. I was furious—literally saw red—but she seemed sincerely surprised to discover what her hands had been doing. She stared at her drawing for some moments as if it astonished her, too.

And I—thank God, thank God—calmed down. Quickly. The red faded from before my eyes; the abyss receded. Nothing had happened. No reflexes had kicked in. I had not even moved. Nothing.

I knew then that Frank was right. Fear was never far from me.

“Come look,” said Raina, oblivious.

After another moment, I did.

The still life she'd been working on was a winter piece: bare branch, pinecone, shallow bowl of water, a dried chrysanthemum. However, a broken face was intertwined with it. An eye blinked from the center of the pinecone. A nose lay alone on the table beside the branch. A mouth gasped for air at the bottom of the bowl of water.

My features. My face. One glance was enough. I looked away.

Raina moved her shoulders. “Well. You can have it.” And she gave it to me. “I'm sorry. I told you I wouldn't do this.”

Once I got upstairs, I tore it up and burned the fragments in the sink.

Outside, the days were short, the temperature dropped well below freezing and stayed there, and it snowed with extraordinary frequency and ferocity for Boston in December. Once or twice a week I shoveled the driveway and sidewalk with Vic, who insisted on joining me even though I said I could handle it.

“I'm not
that
old,” he told me. “And with you helping, it's the right amount of exercise.”

Vic was looking great. There was an air of cautious contentment about him. He held his shoulders straighter. And Julia, too, seemed different. She smiled at me on the few occasions I ran into her, and asked me about my day, and how my parents were.

“I can't believe you've always done the shoveling by yourself,” I huffed at Vic. The latest snow had been wet and heavy. It stuck to my plastic shovel and was difficult to shift. “Haven't you ever thought of buying a snowblower?”

“Well, Lily often helps,” Vic replied. He dumped his own shovelful of wet snow with an expert, economical arm movement. “You wouldn't think she could do much, but she's not bad.”

“Oh,” I said neutrally. Lily had not been conspicuous with a shovel after the last few storms. I heaved more snow onto the hillock we'd built at the far end of the driveway.

“Bend your knees more, you Southern boy,” Vic advised me. He laughed when I misfired, tossing the snow into the street instead of on our mound. He said genially, “You're wondering where Lily is today? Well, I asked her to come out, but she said no.” He looked a
little sad, but then brightened. “It's to be expected. She's growing up. And she's been a little moody lately. Before you know it she'll be into those teenage years.”

We continued shoveling in silence. I wondered if that truly was Vic's interpretation of Lily.
A little moody
. Were he and Julia blind? Didn't they understand that their reconciliation had upset Lily? Changed her life?

Involuntarily, I glanced up at the second floor of the house, where I could see the floral curtains framing the living room windows. I didn't really know if Lily was up there, watching Vic and me. But I thought so.

The very next night I came face-to-face with her.

I had spent the evening defending Fox Mulder on alt.tv.x-files, and then following a craving for potato chips over to Star Market. Coming home, I trudged upstairs in my boots as quietly as I could.

I saw Lily as I shucked my coat in the Shaughnessy hall. She was standing outside her parents' bedroom, with a drinking glass pressed between her ear and the wall.

I couldn't believe it. She was eavesdropping. No. She was
spying
.

She snapped around to face me. Slowly she lowered the glass, her fingers tight around it. For a second I thought she would hurl it at me. Instead, she gritted her teeth. She was in her threadbare flannel nightgown again.

“Lily?” I said softly. I held out my hand. “Give me the glass. I'll put it away.”

For a long, long moment she didn't move. Then, still clutching the glass, she tilted her chin and walked slowly to the kitchen.

I followed uneasily. I watched her carefully rinse out the glass and place it in the dish drainer. There was only a night-light on by the sink; Lily was a gray shadow. I said her name again, quietly. “You shouldn't eavesdrop on your parents,” I said. “It's wrong.”

She didn't turn. Her voice even softer than mine, she said, “Who are
you
to tell me about right and wrong?”

Her words struck me in the throat like a knife.

“I don't care if you tell my parents,” she added then, and the childish comment eased the pain her first had caused. Partly.

I forced myself to focus. Julia and Vic had a right to know about the kind of spying Lily was doing. But … well, this was all very tough on Lily, too, and her parents didn't appear to realize that. I said, “I won't tell them.”

“I don't care if you do,” Lily insisted. She straightened her shoulders, and turned, giving me a straight look before wrapping her arms around herself. She was shivering; it was too cold for her to be standing barefoot on the linoleum.

“Go to bed,” I said. “You have school tomorrow.”

Lily ignored me. “Do you know what they were doing?” she said. “Do you?”

Until that moment it actually hadn't occurred to me to wonder. I had assumed Lily was listening to a conversation, but … a picture formed in my mind.

“You do,” Lily accused. She took a step toward me.

I groped frantically for something to say. “Look, Lily,” I finally managed. “The best way to deal with, uh … parental sexuality is, uh, not to think about it.”

Lily's face twisted with contempt. “You are just a jerk,” she whispered. She took another step toward me, eyes narrowing. “Maybe your parents”—her voice slipped into perfect mimicry of mine—“experience parental sexuality. But mine
fuck
. That's what they're in there doing, right now. Okay?”

Something about hearing that word from Lily. And imagining Vic and Julia—

My shock must have been apparent. Lily laughed, scornfully. But then the scorn faded from her expression, and that other look returned. The betrayed look. The vicious look. And beneath all of that, the despair. The fear.

I wanted desperately to go upstairs to the attic, to crawl into bed and unconsciousness. I didn't understand Lily. I didn't trust Lily. She unnerved me. But—

Tomorrow, maybe, I'd talk to Vic. Find some gentle way of suggesting a therapist for Lily, who clearly needed to talk to someone.

“They never used to do it,” Lily said, almost as if to herself. “But—they do it now. Why?
Why
?” She stared at me accusingly.

I had nothing to say. I turned to leave. I would deal with this, somehow, later.

But Lily darted across the kitchen and grabbed my arm. Her little nails pinched fiercely through my shirt. “It's all your fault,” she said. “If you hadn't come here, this would never have happened. Things would still be the way they were.” She brushed past me and disappeared down the hall. Her bedroom door clicked quietly shut.

After a minute I trudged on, upstairs to Kathy's attic, where I put on all the lights.