Killing Kate (10 page)

The day they took Jack away, Devin
and I sat on the sofa and watched as the cops tore through our old house, our
first house.  Stuffing was pulled out of pillows and mattresses, drawers opened
and clothing strewn everywhere.  I don’t know what they were looking for, but
they never found it.  What they did find was a brick of cocaine and got Jack
for possession and intent to distribute.  At his trial apparently they got
enough people to say that he sold them drugs to put him away for fifteen years,
and he got out in eight.  Jack had a finger in every pie, but he probably never
thought cocaine would be the final straw.  They never got to bust him for
anything that they really wanted to.  I got to talk to a social worker as did
Devin.  They knew I was getting raped but they didn’t have proof, and proof is
what they needed to put him away for a very long time.

After that we lived with Frank and
Mom.  What our mom lacked in parenting skills we got through Frank, and besides
getting knocked around a bit by our mom when she had too much to drink, those
were the happiest moments of my entire childhood.

I look up at Devin and push my
plate away.  I know he hurts right now, maybe more than I do.  He is waiting
for me to tell him it’s okay.  “Come here,” I say and hold my arms out.  Within
seconds his arms are around me and I am letting him cry into my wet hair.  “It’s
okay, it’s okay,” I whisper and we sway a bit.  I think it comforts both of
us.  I would never tell anyone about these things that we have to do, holding
on to each other for dear life or else we might be lost.  We stay like that for
a few minutes and don’t say anything.  I ponder whether this is our life now, a
brother and a sister living together like an old married couple in separate
bedrooms, sharing our past and all of our secrets.

“What parts do you remember?” Devin
asks me finally.  “Anything?  Nothing?”  I know he’s moved past last night. 
He’s asking about way back when.

I sigh and sit back down.  He sits
next to me.  “I remember chunks but nothing to make a full picture,” I explain. 
“It’s like every now and then I am in a moment that I’m pretty sure happened.  What
I don’t remember are faces.  Oh, and Jack.  I always remember where Jack was
when something happened.  He’s the brightest spot in the picture.  Usually he’s
next to me, talking to me or telling me what to do.”  I look over at him. 
“What do you remember?”

“Sounds,” he murmurs.  “Fear.”

I tend to forget that everything I
went through was Devin’s life too.  “Is this what you talked about in therapy?”
I ask him.

“After rehab, yes,” Devin tells
me.  “And on and off I’ve seen therapists.  They can’t prescribe me enough to
really get me through it.  I can’t go through that again.”  I remember it all. 
That part of my life is crystal clear.  Devin on pills, heroin, crack, speed,
meth, coke, anything he could get his hands on.  I won’t let him slip again,
and I nod in agreement.

It’s almost noon.  We have a lot of
unpacking to do, and get some light clothing on since it’s another hot day.  We
need to empty the truck, and I feel like shit, but I ignore the feeling and we
get started.

We decide to set up the stereo
first and Devin attaches his phone to it so we can listen to his music as we
work.  Within an hour I hear a combination of Talking Heads, David Bowie,
Pixies, Butthole Surfers, Morphine, and even Velvet Underground.

“This reminds me of Dad…Jack,” I
say, faltering.

“Me too,” Devin admits, “but it’s
still a favorite,” and I have to agree.  The song is “Pale Blue Eyes” and
reminds me of something.  Not an event “something”, but a feeling.  Like when
things were good.  I know Devin is feeling the same way, but we just give each
other a smile and go back to lifting, sorting and emptying boxes.

At around 5:00 we have to stop. 
The truck has been emptied into the garage and we are exhausted.  Devin has to
return the truck.  Since I can’t drive, he calls Justin to follow him in his
car and drive him back to the house.  When they leave, I set to unpacking some
more boxes.  The boys are planning to return with some dinner, mostly because
when I checked the fridge, all that’s left of Louisa’s leftovers are two
meatballs and a roll, which means Kate must have been hungry last night when
she came home.  Devin only bought breakfast stuff from the market that’s within
walking distance so we definitely need to do some serious grocery shopping
soon.  I need graham crackers or cookies or something to snack on when I’m
sitting around.

As I open boxes in an attempt to
organize them by room, I come across canvases of Devin’s that have been painted
and stuffed into a box.  This strikes me as strange since Devin so carefully
packed all of the projects he was currently working on and covered them so as
not to damage them.  I can tell these works are older.  His technique had been
honed over the years and these paintings are rough and almost primal.  As Devin
matures and calms down, so does his painting, but as a teenager, his artwork is
angry and uncontrolled.  They are brilliant, though there is a definite
difference.  His colors are darker in these paintings I am pulling out of the
box.  The subjects are much more obscene than I’ve ever seen from Devin.  A
woman with her legs spreading and flies pouring out from between her legs.  A man
eating the face off of another man under a bridge.  A boy crouched in the
corner of a room looking dirty and shamed, eating his own hand.  Everything
makes me sick, yet I can’t look away.  I feel horribly strong emotions with
each painting I see.  Shame.  Guilt.  Anger.  Rage.  Nothing I see leaves me
feeling warm and fuzzy.  Then I see something I know I should not.

It’s me, I know it.  I recognize
the pitiful look in the girl’s hollow eyes.  The small scrawny body still
belongs to me, only it’s softened up a bit, though not very much.  The girl in
the painting is nude, draped on her back across a bed, in a position so awkward
and uncomfortable that it tells me the girl is broken.  There is a shadow cast
across the girl’s body.  I can tell it’s a man, with horns on his head.  Maybe
the devil, but I know it’s Jack.

“Quite a vision you were back
then,” I hear Kate whisper in my ear.  “Like a rag doll.  Torn up and
discarded.  Used when needed and tossed away.”

Tears spring to my eyes.  I see “To
Store” written on the side of the box I have open.  The secret contents splayed
out in front of me make me wish I’d seen what was written on the side before I
decided to check what was inside.  “Fuck you!” I whisper, whirling around to
hit her.  She ducks my hand and laughs.  “Get away from me, Kate.  What the
fuck did you do last night?”

She smiles and sits down next to me
and traces the portrait girl’s face and then spits on it.  “Why not call Drake
and find out?”  With horror, I scream and leap at her, but she runs out of the
room and away and I know she will be gone for now.  She is starting to show up
less and less with me and more as me, and it’s scaring the shit out of me.

I stand up and walk to my room and
find my phone.  With shaky fingers I dial Drake and hear it ring once.  “Hello
Jenna,” he says.  “Or should I say Kate?”

I am shaking all over, but I keep
my voice calm.  “Excuse me?”

Drake pauses on the other end. 
“That was quite a surprise you gave me last night,” he tells me.  “I will say black
lingerie isn’t really my thing, but you seemed to make it work.”

I take a breath and decide to play
along.  Better he think I was roleplaying than bat shit crazy, right?  “Well
you’ll have to let me know what your thing is and maybe I’ll deliver.”

“I’ll have to think about that,” he
says.  “Come by tonight.  Leave the lingerie at home, though.  I much preferred
that little yellow thing you left in the back of my car with no bra.”

“Perhaps I can,” I say.  I want to
know more about what happened last night but I don’t want to blow it.  “It will
be much later, though.  I’m having dinner with my brother and a friend.”

“As long as it’s not a good
friend,” Drake replies, stressing the word “friend”.  “Take a cab if you want. 
I know you don’t drive.  I’ll pay for it if you call me when you get here.”

“Okay,” I say, not really sure how I
got roped into seeing him, but I have to see him.  My fingers trail down
between my legs and feel that his voice is making me wet already.  I want to
see him tonight.  I realize I will have to sneak out.  Devin is going to be
watching me closely after what he witnessed this morning.

“Goodbye Jenna,” he says, and we
hang up.  My hand reaches down inside the waistband of my shorts, and my
fingers send a volt of electricity through my body, and then I hear the door
open.

“Jenna!” Devin calls out.  My hand
snaps up and then I realize that the paintings are all sitting out on the floor
around me.  Fuck!  I scramble and begin to put them away.  “Jenna, where are
you?”  Devin walks in to the front room where I am standing over the forbidden
box.  “What the hell are you doing?”  His face turns red and he storms over and
snatches the canvas out of my hand.  It’s the one of me.  It rips as he pulls
it away.  We both stand and look between us at the destroyed painting.  “Why
did you open this?” he shouts.

I see Justin in the doorway,
watching this scene.  He doesn’t say anything and looks awkward, knowing he
walked in on something he shouldn’t see.  “I’m sorry,” I say.  “I just started
opening it.  I didn’t know it wasn’t meant for me to see.”  The last words come
out sounding a bit threatening.  Devin thinks I can’t have secrets from him but
he’s been keeping these from me for a reason.  It’s obvious he didn’t want me
to know this side of him.

“Just let me put them away,” he
says calmly.  If Justin weren’t in the room, I know this would be a screaming
match.  I stand aside and watch Devin put the ripped canvas and all of the
others I took out back in the box.  He walks them over to his bedroom and puts
the box inside and comes back out, closing the door behind him.

“Hi Jenna,” Justin says.  “We
brought ribs, chicken and beer.”  I follow him to the kitchen and we begin to
unpack the bags.  I find some paper plates and napkins and knives and begin to
set the table in silence.  Devin comes in and he and Justin and I sit at the
round table and eat silently for a bit.  Justin breaks the ice by asking “Did
you guys eat all of those leftovers already?  I swear Ma cooks enough for
twenty people even when I tell her it’s just us.”

Devin smirks after a long swig of
beer.  “Jenna got the munchies late last night and demolished them.”

I glare at him.  “I had a little
help,” I say.

Justin grins.  “Boy, you two are
going to be awesome roommates, I can tell already.”

I sort of hate him for lightening
up that particular topic, but we can’t continue to argue while we have company. 
I wolf down an entire rack of ribs and a wing and thigh of Greek chicken, which
Devin knows is one of my favorites.  I forget how hungry I am.  Justin stares
in shock as we inhale everything on the table and sit back contentedly.  “I
think now would be an excellent time to engage Justin’s help in setting up the
TV,” I tell Devin.

He shrugs.  “I’ve been putting it
off because I feel like once it’s hooked up we’re going to end up like mindless
drones and not make any progress on the unpacking.”

I stick out my lower lip like a
small child and play the drama queen.  “De-vin!  I haven’t had a TV in years. 
How could you possibly deny me this?”

Justin steps in, as usual.  “How
about you guys have some rule about not having the TV on between the hours of
9-5?”

“Yeah,” I pipe in.  “Devin, you
know you want to sit on the couch tonight and veg out with a beer in one hand
and a bowl of popcorn on your lap and perhaps a viewing of Fiddler on the Roof
or something.”

Devin’s eyes light up.  “You still
have all of your musicals?”  I nod, slyly.  I have an ulterior motive.  I
happen to know that three of Devin’s weaknesses happen to be musical theater,
my stove popped popcorn and passing out in front of the TV.

After we clean up dinner, Devin and
Justin get to hooking everything up for our entertainment and I get to finding
my popcorn pan.  It’s the one kitchen tool I took with me from my apartment. 
In my room I find two boxes labeled “movies” and figure out which box is packed
with my appropriate movies.  I stash the other one away in my closet.  I also
take the time to find the lingerie that Kate was apparently able to locate for
her little outing last night.  Sure enough, in a box on the floor of my closet
is the black lingerie Kate must have ditched before putting on a t-shirt and
passing out.  The box is full of everything I would rather Devin not find and
know about his little sister, along with my second box of DVDs with less
appropriate movies.  I’ve never shared that box with anyone except Kate.  I’d
probably die if someone else knew what was in there.

I recall what Drake said on the
phone and rifle through the box and find a pair of red lacy panties and a
matching bra.  The only reason I happen to keep this pair in my box of shame is
because the panties are crotchless.  I figure they are a nice middle ground
between Jenna and Kate.  Kate wears black bondage gear, Jenna wears no bra…red
crotchless panties might just serve as a happy medium.  I undress and put them
on and put the same clothes back on over them.  Devin and Justin will be none
the wiser of my intention to get laid and actually remember it.