Killer's Cousin (18 page)

I flipped through the remaining empty pages of the
scrapbook, and found something else. Stuffed between the last page and the back cover was a college blue book, carefully labeled
Anthro 104. Prof. Farris. Midterm exam. Kathleen Shaughnessy
. Idly, I opened it; the first page contained a straightforward attempt to answer an essay question. Kathy had successfully filled one page with vague, rambling comments about adulthood rites in various tribal cultures. But on the second, she faltered. “… and I don't care,” she'd written in suddenly dark, sprawling print. “What possible difference does it make? You're a jerk, anyway. You should throw out that tie. You're so boring, everyone just dies. Dies dies dies. What if I leave right now? What if I just get right up and walk out in the middle of this test? What would you think of that? What would everyone else think?” And that was all.

I wondered if she actually had walked out of that midterm, if I was looking at the last piece of work she'd done before quitting college. There was no way to tell. Maybe she had finished that particular test. Maybe she'd gotten another blue book, rewritten her essay in it, completed the exam, and turned it in. Slogged on. That was what I would have done. Was doing.

But I knew it wasn't what Kathy had done. I closed the blue book, replaced it in the scrapbook, and tossed the whole thing onto the coffee table. And then I could hear Kathy's voice, once more. Humming, at first. Then,
Help Lily
, it whispered, inevitably.
Help Lily
.

I looked around but didn't see her. Still, the voice continued. And, finally, I answered out loud. “No,” I
said to the air, to the attic. “I can't. Kathy, don't you see? I have nothing for Lily. I have nothing for anyone.
I can't help
.”

There was silence for only a second or two. Then the humming began again. It had a frenzied quality.

I put my hands over my ears. “No!” I shouted.

Then all the noise did stop.

T
he next day, I came back to the most alarming Lily-trick yet. Nothing.

At first I couldn't believe it. I did my usual fast circuit of the attic apartment, and couldn't spot anything wrong. Previously this had merely meant that Lily was being subtle. So I did a second and then a third circuit, checking the contents of drawers, all the electrical appliances, and even shaking out the books I'd left lying around. My anxiety increased with every item that Lily had left untouched. I knew something, somewhere, had to be wrong. I remembered the time Lily had put a rubber band on the spray faucet in the kitchen sink—I hadn't discovered that one until I turned on the faucet and got water full in the chest. But at that time I hadn't known how and where to look. I hadn't fully understood how Lily's mind worked.

Still … nothing. I stood in the middle of the apartment
an hour later, having torn it apart myself in my increasing frustration, and I regarded the chaos. Shelves pulled away from the walls, clothing pulled out of drawers and dumped on the floor, my computer doggedly running redundant loops of virus scans. I could taste the acid panic at the back of my throat.

Nothing.

Lily was downstairs. At that very moment she was lounging on the sofa in the Shaughnessy living room, watching an old movie. I knew she knew I'd ripped the place apart myself, searching for nothing. I knew she knew she'd pushed me almost to the edge.

I knew it.

The bile rose again in my throat and threatened to choke me. In my mind, perfect as a photocopy, I conjured up the page of insanity symptoms from
Abnormal Psychology
. I read them again, and this time … this time I thought,
Yeah. Maybe
.

Yes. Finally crazy
.

And I found myself sitting on the floor, the floor I'd swept maybe twice in all the months I'd lived there. My chest was heaving, and my breath pumped too quickly in and out of my lungs. And before me, suddenly, I could see Greg and Emily, just as they had been that afternoon, alone in their parents' living room, red-faced, screaming at each other.

Emily didn't even see me; she was crying, crying and screaming and shoving Greg, shoving, and Greg was so much bigger than her, and high and angry and I was afraid he would hurt her, because she wouldn't stop, this was Emily and she wouldn't stop, and he wouldn't either …

I just meant to stop it. I just meant to punch Greg.

I could hardly see the attic around me. I had to put my head down between my knees. I tried to breathe slowly and I heard the air wheeze and rattle in my chest. My ears were blocked. I knew too late that I should have gone running; I could have pounded it all out on the pavement. I shouldn't have been there in that cold room, with sweat pouring off me. Remembering was not a good idea. Letting go in any sense was not a good idea.

Did you feel powerful? Did you
—

No! I had to deal with the present. With Lily. With Vic and Julia. How could I forget that? How could I lose sight of that?

After a few minutes, somehow I managed to get up off the floor. I held myself upright with one hand on a chair back. I wiped at my face, and my hand came away damp and dirty. My legs steadied. I looked around the room at the havoc I had created.

This could not go on. Lily wanted to play, but I didn't have to. I could deal myself out of the game. I could get some peace and quiet.

Why didn't I leave? Why couldn't I just leave?

Wearily, I reached out with my mind for Lily—Lily who I did not need in my life, Lily who would not go away—and I found her.
I'm leaving
, I told her.
I'll find a way to leave, and you can have this place to yourself. If that's what you want, you can have it
.

Lily didn't reply, even though she was there, even though she heard me. She didn't reply.

And then she did. I heard a loud knocking on the downstairs door, immediately followed by Vic's voice. “David? Lily says you want to see us? What's going on?”

“What is it
now
?” said Julia.

I didn't answer. I didn't have the breath for it. I remembered that I hadn't fastened the new chain lock. And so, inevitably, I heard the door open. Determined footsteps came up the stairs. A staccato tread, different from Lily's or Vic's. I had time to wonder if Julia had ever been up to the attic since I'd come. I didn't think so.

Julia stopped dead just inside the doorway, staring at me. First Vic and then Lily came up the stairs in her wake. I heard Vic gasp as he saw me in the middle of the torn-up room. The only other sound was the ticking of the kitchen clock as they stared at me.

I knew what I looked like. I knew what the apartment looked like.

Finally Julia said, “You won't be claiming that Lily is responsible for
this
mess, will you?” Her voice was not unkind. But her glance took in everything I'd done in my mad search for Lily's prank of the day.

Involuntarily my eyes sought Lily. She too was taking
in the wreck. Her mouth was ajar. She looked … awed.

Yeah
, I thought at her sourly.
When I want to be, I'm better at wrecking a place than you are
. Her eyes snapped to mine and for an instant she smiled. Her head made the tiniest of nods.

I said aloud to Julia, “I did this.”

I didn't look at Vic because for some reason I couldn't bear to. I didn't look at him even when he spoke. “I'm going to call Eileen.”

“No,” I said reflexively. “Call my father. I'll give you his pager number, and he'll call back. Don't call my mother.”

“But—” I knew Vic had always had trouble talking with my father. So did I. But still, he was the one I wanted.

Julia cut in. “Do it, Victor. Eileen will be no use at all.”

I moved slightly then, and Julia flinched. “Don't worry,” I told her. I was unable to keep the edge of sarcasm out of my voice. “I'm just going to sit down.”

I did that. I sat on the sofa, and told Vic the pager number, and Vic dialed my father. My father called back quickly. I didn't listen to what Vic said to him. It's possible to block things out when you truly need to. Somewhere deep inside I even found room for a little sick humor: At least nobody was telephoning for the men in the white coats to come with a straightjacket.

Yet.

Vic hung up. “Stuart's catching the next shuttle out of National.”

“That's that, then,” I said aloud. And I looked right
at Lily, ready, waiting for her reaction. I said to her, “I'm leaving. It's what you wanted.”

I expected her to smile, however covertly. After all, I had conceded completely—and at terrible cost. I couldn't even begin to imagine what would happen to me next. Banishment to Baltimore with the parents that didn't want me? The loony bin? Anything was possible. Lily had more than won. She had destroyed me.

I expected to feel a heavy wave of satisfaction from her. But I stared at her, and she stared back at me, and I could feel what she was feeling, and it was
not
satisfaction. No. It was something quite different. A mix of things. Surprise. Terror. Panic. Fear. I picked them up loud and clear. I kept staring, confused. She didn't want me to leave?

Well, too bad. This was not about her. It was about me. And
I
wanted to leave; I wanted to get as far away from Lily as possible. From Lily, and from Kathy. From every Shaughnessy on every plane of existence.

I shut Lily right out of my head.

B
efore my father arrived I set the attic to rights again. When I began by shoving a bookcase back against the wall, Julia made a little noise and I thought that she was going to stop me; force me to face my father while surrounded by the chaos I'd produced. With complete clarity I knew I couldn't bear that. But just then Lily got up abruptly and started to help me.

At that moment I'd have taken help from the devil. Lily threw some clothing back in a drawer and pushed it closed, and after that I could almost feel Julia cautiously settle down. Following a few silent minutes of Lily and me working together, Vic too began to sort and fold and pick up and restore.

It didn't take very long to put things back. After all, I hadn't damaged anything. Once we finished, there was an uneasy, waiting feeling in the room. I stood numbly against one wall; Vic and Julia sat side by side; Lily
wandered. I supposed, largely uncaring, that Julia and Vic didn't want to leave me alone. No telling what else I might do.

“Do we need to go to the airport to get Stuart?” asked Julia eventually.

Vic shook his head. “He said he'd take a taxi.”

“Wasteful,” commented Julia. And then suddenly, in a sharply different key: “Lilian! What do you have there?”

Julia's tone penetrated my numbness.

Lily was kneeling on the floor by one of the bookcases, quite near me. She had Kathy's scrapbook in her lap, and she was flipping through the pages rapidly, avidly. At her mother's words, she hunched more closely over the scrapbook, but it was her only reaction. She didn't look up.

“Lilian!” Julia said again as she approached.

Lily's hands tightened on the scrapbook. She had stopped at the page with the picture of Kathy grown-up, beautiful, laughing and toasting the camera. Lily stared at it and stared at it. Julia came up beside her and looked down as well, momentarily silent.

“I thought maybe I'd forgotten what she looked like,” Lily said finally. It was almost a whisper, and I had the eerie feeling that she wasn't talking to any of us, but to herself.

“Lily …” Julia's voice broke. Her eyes met Vic's in a silent plea, and he came over as well. He was a little bit behind Julia in comprehension; he didn't seem to recognize the scrapbook.

“What's that you have?” He reached out. “Lily, can I see what—”

Lily slammed the scrapbook shut and clasped it to her chest. “It's mine!” She glared at Vic, then at Julia. “You can't have it!” She looked a bit demented, face pale and hair mussed, clutching the scrapbook, eyes darting from one parent to the other. “No!” she shouted at Vic, at Julia as they leaned in. “No! Get away!”

“But Lily,” said Vic. “What—”

Julia was clearly still incapable of speaking. I said, “It's a scrapbook about Kathy.” They all looked at me. “I found it up here. I hadn't had a chance to give it to you yet.”

“You looked at it!” Lily snapped, oddly.

“Yes,” I said to her. She was very upset; I could almost see the fear and panic pulsing beneath the surface of her skin. Or maybe I thought so only because I could
feel
it, pushing, pushing at the barrier I'd set up in my mind between her and me. “I was curious about Kathy,” I said flatly. “I remember her too, you know. Of course I looked.”
And I know
, I thought at her.
I know
.

There was a choked little noise from Julia. “We don't speak about her!” she said fiercely to me. “We don't talk about her, we don't … don't you …” She put one hand briefly to her eyes. She whirled abruptly. Her heels clattered frantically down the wooden staircase.

Vic cast one swift glance at Lily, then at me, and then, making his decision, ran after his wife. “Julia, are you okay? Sweetheart …” His footsteps raced into silence.

Alone with me, Lily wrapped her arms even more tightly around the scrapbook, and she rocked slightly
with it. Seconds ticked past; a minute. Two. I watched her, and despite myself, despite my numbness, something in me stirred.