Killer's Cousin (6 page)

“You want me to move out,” I said flatly.

Vic looked shocked. “No! No, I was just saying … I realize that you think you're the problem here, David, but it's not you. It's Kathy. It was always Kathy.”

“Oh,” I said. I felt acutely uncomfortable.

Vic rubbed at his face. He said to his hands, “Julia thought we should have been stricter … Especially after Kathy dropped out of college. But I said let her live her own life.” He shrugged. “Julia thinks it was my fault, what happened. She says I always under-mined
her. I never showed a united front.” He lapsed into silence.

“Oh,” I said again.

“So, does Eileen know?” Vic asked abruptly. “About Julia and me? About … about how we live?”

I felt like a snitch. “Yeah.”

“Maybe I'm glad,” Vic said softly. He got up, his movements suddenly decisive. “You invite your parents for Thanksgiving, David. You do that. It'll be good to see them, good to talk. I'll tell Julia—” He met my eyes and smiled briefly, unhappily. “I'll tell her myself.”

Happy Thanksgiving
, I thought sourly. I said, “Okay.”

Vic dropped his hand on my shoulder. “I'll talk to Julia myself,” he repeated, as if he needed to promise. “We have to move forward. We have to stop having Lily talk for us.”

I nodded. I got up to accompany him to the door. “That's probably best for Lily, too,” I said hesitantly.

Vic stopped midtread and frowned at me, puzzled. “Best for Lily? What do you mean?”

I blinked, equally confused. “Just—I just meant that it must be uncomfortable for her, being in the middle.”

Vic looked surprised. “We love Lily,” he said. “It's the one thing Julia and I agree on. Lily knows that. She knows she doesn't have anything to do with our fight.”

For one very long moment my mind went completely blank. I was no authority on psychology, but …

Vic was still looking at me. “Don't you think Lily knows she's loved?”

“Of course,” I said. “I'm sure she does.”

“That's all that matters,” Vic said, satisfied. He went on downstairs. I followed and closed the door behind him.

A wisp of a Beatles song floated past my inner ear:
All you need is love
.

Ha. In the middle of a frightful marriage, Vic still believed it. Naiveté? Strength? Stupidity? It didn't matter why. He did.

From my distance, I envied him his belief, even though I knew with my whole soul that he was wrong.

Dead wrong.

A
lthough Frank Delgado was in only one of my classes, it didn't take me long to confirm that he was exactly the outcast he appeared to be. He sat alone in the cafeteria, walked alone through the halls. He even ignored—or was ignored by—the other misfits.

Dr. Walpole liked him, however. More than liked, I soon realized: valued. “What do you think so far, Mr. Delgado?” she asked him at the end of a class in the sixth week of school, just after the bell rang. It was a quirk of hers to address all her students formally.

Most of the other kids had bolted for the door. But Frank had only just completed the process of standing up. He always moved with concentration, as if an unplanned motion might inadvertently disconnect an arm or foot.

I began idly rearranging the contents of my backpack. I was not going to miss this. I hadn't yet
heard the skinhead utter a complete sentence. He never volunteered an answer, never participated in discussion. And Dr. Walpole did not prompt him, or try to draw him in. This despite the fact that she didn't permit anyone else in class to disengage.

He didn't seem to be mentally handicapped. I had wondered about that at first, until I saw the books he toted around and pulled out whenever he had a spare moment. He had a way of hunching over a book so that you usually couldn't tell what it was, but a couple of times I had caught sight of titles.
The Book of Mormon
. Poems of Paul Celan.
Vathek
. Perhaps most bizarrely:
Diana: Her True Story
.

I couldn't help wondering why Dr. Walpole did leave him so thoroughly alone in class. The class was too small for it not to be noticed. And nobody liked Frank for it. How had Dr. Walpole missed that? She wasn't doing the guy any favors.

“Well, are you bored yet, Mr. Delgado? Please, don't hold back on my account.” Dr. Walpole's voice was dry and slightly amused.

Instead of speaking, Frank glanced at me. Dr. Walpole followed his eyes. There was a little silence, and I felt my jaw tighten. What was the big deal? It wasn't as if Dr. Walpole had asked him for the password to the Fort Knox computers. “Yeah,” I said to Frank Delgado. “I'd like to know too. You bored, buddy?”

“No,” said Frank Delgado. His watery eyes focused on me; I felt like a bacterium beneath an electron microscope. “I'm not bored. You are.”

It was as if Dr. Walpole weren't there. I was the first
to blink. And when I did the skinhead added, just as expressionlessly, “And scared.”

If he wanted to get me to leave, he couldn't have chosen his words better. I picked up my backpack and walked out of the room. And as I left I heard him shout, unexpectedly, after me.

“Hey, Yaffe! What are you going to do about it? Anything?”

Oddly, the tone wasn't challenging. It was merely … curious.

“
I
t's all settled for Thanksgiving,” my mother said the following Sunday. But she gave no details of her conversation with Vic, instead concentrating on how big a turkey she planned to buy and how she would transport it from Baltimore in a cooler. “Uh-huh,” I said, and found myself hoping the humming shadow would keep herself quiet while my parents were there. If I were to hear and see her in their presence—and they didn't … I couldn't bear the thought.

I spent the rest of the morning running my daily loop around North Cambridge. Afterward, I bought a newspaper, and ate two donuts and drank three coffees at Verna's Coffee Shop.

I was finishing up a satisfying mental list of the peculiarities of Frank Delgado when I came to and found myself staring, pen in hand, at the Sunday crossword. I
got up from my table and left Verna's, heading to the Shaughnessy house.

Lily was raking leaves in the tiny front yard. Her head was down, and I watched her plod to the sidewalk, place her rattan rake on the edge of the grass and then turn away, grasping the rake handle with both hands behind her. She paused for a moment as if gathering her strength, and then walked the twelve-foot width of the yard with the rake bouncing along behind, dropping as many leaves as it gathered.

I didn't like Lily. I couldn't like Lily. For reasons I couldn't—or wouldn't—pinpoint, she made me uneasy. But right then she reminded me of myself at her age, doing chores as slowly and inefficiently as possible and hoping for early release. It made me smile. The smile felt strange on my face. “Do you get time off for good behavior?” I asked.

Her head shot up. I glimpsed her glare for an instant before she began another trek across the lawn. Behind her, the rake barely skimmed the ground. I went over to the front stoop and sat down to watch.

“Lily, have you ever seen the movie
Conan the Barbarian
?” I asked, after a few minutes. “There's a scene where Arnold Schwarzenegger is enslaved at the mill. He walks around and around, year after year, pulling a two-ton grindstone and building his muscles.”

Lily dropped the rake. She turned to face me, hands on her hips. “So?”

“So you remind me of Arnold,” I said. “Hard at work.”

Lily turned her back again and bent to get the rake.

I sighed. “Hey, would you like some help? We could make a pile for you to jump in.”

“No. My father asked
me
to rake. He didn't ask you.”

“I'm sure he wouldn't mind.” I waited. “Come on, Lily. It's always more fun with someone else.”

Her look said she doubted it. I shrugged, and went off to the toolshed in the back, where I found another rake; old, metal, and heavy. I began cleaning up after Lily. A few minutes later, I tried once more: “Do you want to make a pile? We can borrow some leaves from next door.”

“It would just make more leaves to bag.”

I gave up. We finished the raking. Lily held open a large garbage bag for the leaves while I stuffed them in. Up and down the street, neighbors had packed their leaves into orange and black jack-o'-lantern bags to make Halloween displays, but the Shaughnessy bags were the regular kind, plain brown paper, destined for immediate disposal.

“I guess that's it.” I brushed my hands off on my jeans and reached over to pick up the rakes. “I'll just put these away.”

“I'll do that.”

“No, really, it's—”

“I said
I
would do it,” Lily burst out. Her face was reddening. “
I'm
going to do it!”

I held out my hands. “Hey—”

She grabbed the rakes, nearly staggering under the unexpected weight of the metal one before managing to steady herself, propping the ends of both rakes against the ground and keeping them upright with her hands, leaning her weight into them. “You're always
interfering! Why don't you mind your own business? Why did you come here, anyway? We didn't want you!”

“Lily—”

“I wish you'd leave!” She was panting. Involuntarily, I took a step back from her. She was clearly on the edge of hysteria.

“Lily,” I began, “I just want—”

She cut me off again. “I don't care what you want! Why should I? What
I
want, that's what matters!” She was shaking with rage, and a sound—almost a growl—emerged from her throat. Her hands tightened around the rakes, and she tried to throw them at me. But while she might have been able to hurl the rattan rake, the other one was too heavy for her. It slipped from her hand as she raised it and fell with a thunk to the ground between us, the rattan rake falling feebly next to it.

We both looked at the rakes on the ground. Then Lily turned away. I heard her gasping for breath, saw her shoulders rise and fall. But I was afraid to try to comfort her. I had no idea what this was about, or what I had done to set her off. I couldn't tell if she was already crying or was struggling to hold tears back.

I prayed neither Vic nor Julia would come outside and find us like this.

Finally Lily managed to calm down. Even though a big part of me thought it would be better to say nothing, I couldn't stop myself. “Lily, what have I done to make you so angry?”

Lily mumbled.

“I'm sorry. I can't hear you,” I said.

This time she flung the words over her shoulder. “Why were you talking to my father about me?”

What did she mean? Then I remembered.

Lily had turned to face me. Her fists were clenched. She had not been crying. She was not near tears.

She said fiercely, “Aren't you going to answer me?”

I tried to fumble my way. “Lily, I'm sorry. Your father and I were just discussing Thanksgiving. You came up …” For some reason I felt like I was getting myself in deeper. I switched my approach. “What did your father tell you we'd said?”

“He was talking to my
mother
,” Lily said. Her voice was filled with … disbelief? Astonishment? Pain? All of them. “Not to me.” She flashed me a look of hatred. “About Thanksgiving. About your parents coming.” Her tone made it plain they were about as welcome as I was. “I heard it.”

“Yes,” I said. “My parents will be staying upstairs with me, but we'll all have Thanksgiving dinner together.” I weighed whether to tell her I didn't particularly want my parents to come either, but decided against it. “They're looking forward to seeing you.”

The expression on Lily's face made me stop talking. “You interrupted me,” she said.

I opened my mouth to apologize, and then closed it. When had control slipped from me to Lily? She was standing there, facing me, perfectly self-possessed despite her rage.

She waited until she was sure I wouldn't interrupt her again. Then she said, “You told my father to talk to my mother instead of me.” She leaned forward suddenly.
“Didn't you?”

The answer popped from my mouth. “Yes,” I said.

Lily caught her breath. “I knew it was your fault.”

My fault. I was very, very tired of everything being my fault. “Lily,” I said. I leaned over and took her firmly by the shoulders. “Listen to me.”

Lily tried to twist away. She kicked out, hard, just missing my crotch. Then she clawed for my eyes. I had to grab her hands, her arms, try to hold her away. “Hey,” I said, “calm down. Calm down! Will you just calm—”

She spat in my face.

I caught myself a split second before slapping her.

I was holding Lily with my left hand, and actually had my right hand upraised to strike. My stomach roiled.
Reflex
. It's the body's betrayal of the mind. It's only a reflex.

As if that mattered. As if I were someone who could dismiss a reflex as “only.”

I lowered my hand. I gave Lily's shoulder a very awkward pat. It was stiff. I stepped back, away from her, away from myself. “Lily, I'm sorry,” I said. “I would never hit you.”

She froze at my words, almost seeming to need a moment to translate them. Then the rancor disappeared from her face as if it had been wiped off with a clean wet rag. She looked at my lowered hand; at my face.

She leaned forward with the intensity of a drill sergeant. Her eyes filled with …
something
. She said, softly, so softly,
“Are you sure?”
And in my head I heard her other question, from before:
Did you feel powerful?

For a moment I had the insane conviction that Lily had intimate knowledge of all my worst nightmares.