My Sister's Voice (12 page)

Read My Sister's Voice Online

Authors: Mary Carter

BOOK: My Sister's Voice
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Definitely not. And it wasn’t on her Web site or in the book, she was sure of it. Did he actually say he wanted her to call someone so he could hear Snookie bark? He was off his head. Totally off his head. He was probably Ted Bundy. A charming sculptor / serial killer. He probably encased his corpses in steel. And she’d left Tina alone with him! She had to call her, warn her. Yet Tina had been there to hear the whole thing, and she was still hanging on. Desperate, the woman was so desperate—
Monica slumped farther down into the tub. He wasn’t a serial killer. And he wasn’t comfortable lying. Which is why he got all squirmy when she asked what he thought of her workshop. He hated it. She could tell.
She was so absorbed with her thoughts, it took her a while to realize the phone was ringing. She climbed out of the tub, swiped a towel from the rack, and wrapped it around her wet body. She padded out of the bathroom and headed for the bedside phone, leaving wet footprints in her wake. She stubbed her toe on the bed and fell forward. She grasped for the handle and banged her knee into the end table. Her hands slipped again on the receiver, and she whacked her chin with the phone before she finally brought it up to her mouth. She was laughing when she said, “Hello.” She wouldn’t have to take pills or drown herself after all; at this rate, her own clumsiness would do her in.
There was no answer. “Hello?” she said again. Suddenly, she wanted someone to be there, someone to talk to. No one spoke, but they were still on the line, she could hear them. She lay down on the bed, holding the phone, oddly comforted by the strange silence. “Talk to me,” she said. “Are you there?” Was it him? What was she doing? There was another moment of breath-filled silence, then a distinct click, followed by the hollow rejection of a dial tone. Disappointment engulfed Monica. She felt like a child playing a game of telephone with cans connected by a string. The other can had been dropped in the dirt, abandoning Monica as she held up her end, straining to hear something, anything, in the silence.
Chapter 10
“
I
can’t believe her,” Monica said. “I just can’t believe her.” Joe didn’t answer right away. He was pushing eighty miles an hour in an attempt to get them there. Monica clutched the door handle, something she did that Joe absolutely hated, and prayed he wouldn’t retaliate by kicking the Toyota up to ninety.
“He seems nice,” Joe said. “Tina seems crazy about him.”
“She just met him,” Monica said. “She’s desperate.” Monica tried the radio again, but the closer they got to Moosehead Lake, the worse the reception. She clicked it off in disgust.
“They can go to the cabin without us,” Monica said. “Let’s go somewhere else. Anywhere else.”
“I don’t get you,” Joe said without slowing down. “It’s paradise. The woods, the shooting range, a fully stocked kitchen—how many fireplaces?” Monica took a deep breath. She didn’t want to be a bad sport but she certainly didn’t want to listen to Joe wax poetic about the hunting cabin. There were three fireplaces, but she didn’t offer this.
“And you love hiking,” Joe said. “What is it with you and that cabin?”
Monica looked out the window, tried to lose herself in the trees hugging the highway, the oblivious blur of green. What was it about the hunting cabin that filled her with dread? She had good memories of target shooting with the Colonel, or berry picking with her mother, even a few family Scrabble games around the fireplace, yet she still dreaded going there. And as Joe implied, “cabin” was a misnomer; it was indeed a fully equipped hunting lodge, twice the size of the Victorian home where Monica grew up. There were woods to lose yourself in, vines lying in wait across creeks, fields of grass to play hide-and-seek, and furtive deer (those lucky enough not to be shot, stuffed, and mounted in the Colonel’s study) skirting through tall pines.
“I don’t know,” Monica said. “I guess it makes me feel like a little kid again, under my mother’s shadow and my father’s thumb.” And then there were the nightmares. As far back as Monica could remember, every bad dream she ever had revolved around the cabin. She’d be lost in the woods, staggering through overgrown bushes, screaming for help. Often she was barefoot and bloody, dressed in torn and dirty rags, as if she’d been plucked out of “Hansel and Gretel,” having just escaped the witch’s oven, wandering, searching for someone to save her.
“I love it there, ” Joe said. “Maybe it’s a guy thing.”
“You just like the moose head in the guest room,” Monica teased, trying to lighten the mood. Joe put his hand up to his heart.
“His big, glassy eyes follow me wherever I go.” Monica laughed. Joe gave her a quick glance and boyish smile before adjusting his glasses and focusing on the road. He was a good guy. Hard worker, very intelligent, he had the whole sexy-professor look going on. Sandy hair, wire-rim glasses, navy blue eyes. Tall and trim. Predictable. He liked golf, hunting, and planning. Oh, how he liked planning. Without Joe, there never would have been a book. And he truly liked people, went out of his way to be friendly. He absolutely adored her dad, and treated her mom like gold. Even Aunt Grace—
“Oh shit,” Monica said. She slapped her hand on her knee.
“What?”
“I left Aunt Grace’s present at home.”
“That’s it? You shouldn’t startle me like that.”
“We’re only what? Forty minutes?”
“No.”
“Joe.”
“Honey, I’m not going back now. You can mail it.”
“It’s not the same.”
“We have copies of the book in the back; you can give her one of those.” Monica glanced in the backseat, where umpteen copies of
The Architect of Your Soul
were stacked up. Next to them, Snookie snored in his crate. Monica was dying to wake Snookie and cuddle him, but it would start a fight with Joe. He said taking Snookie out of the crate was like plucking a kid from its car seat. At least he was sleeping peacefully; he’d whined the first twenty minutes.
Here’s your proof, Mike,
Monica thought.
Maybe I should wave Snookie out the window like a courtroom exhibit. Why is he here?
To see you, to see you, to see you—
“Aunt Grace doesn’t need the book,” Monica snapped. She immediately felt guilty; it wasn’t Joe’s fault Mike was following them. But did he ever think about anything other than the book? Did he ever think it just might be total crap anyway? And why did Aunt Grace let the Colonel talk her into having her party at the hunting cabin anyway? They could have rented the Dew Drop Inn in Portland. Monica knew her aunt loved the quaint inn with views of the ocean, and the restaurant down the way with the best lobster and champagne for miles. This was all her father’s idea. Grace always let the Colonel bully her. What a pair. Where the Colonel was hard, Aunt Grace was soft. She was like a hummingbird: precious, nervous, and fragile. Aunt Grace you loved, whereas the Colonel you feared. She had a smile line etched into her face, whereas he had a permanent crease across his forehead, deep as a trench behind enemy lines on the battlefield of his face. Maybe it was the age gap; Grace was fifteen years younger than her father. She was obviously a “whoops” baby. Maybe her grandparents had been easier on her.
“What’s wrong?” Joe asked. “Did the workshop not go well this weekend?”
“Since you ask,” Monica said, “several participants say they thought the disco lights and music were totally cheesy—not at all in line with my style.”
“Talk to Josh Paris,” Joe said. That was Joe. Practical. She’d only met Mike and he’d been completely passionate about her—well, maybe not her—but the stupid music and confetti—it was as if he were invested in her and her vision, cared about her as an artist. What the hell was she doing? She just met this guy. He didn’t know her, he didn’t care about her. Joe knew her. Joe cared about her. Thank God he couldn’t read her mind. Monica put her hand on Joe’s thigh.
“Let’s pull over and have sex,” she said. Joe swerved. The tires squealed and when they lurched back into their lane, Tina beeped at them. Joe tapped the horn and waved back.
“Jesus, Monica,” he said. “Don’t do that.” Monica didn’t dare look back. What was Mike thinking? What on earth were they finding to talk about? Was he grilling Tina about her? How did he know about her birthmark? It was still bugging her. His explanation was total BS. If there was one good thing about his coming, it was that she was going to force him to tell her how he knew. “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?” Joe asked.
“I was trying to be spontaneous,” Monica said. “It’s in my blueprint. Remember blueprints, Joe? Your idea, right out of ‘our’ book.”
Make a map or blueprint of the life you want to live.
Goals became “rooms” with specific measurements; the book even included several drafts of architectural drawings so the reader could sketch in various blueprints. Later they’d be allowed to decorate it, and even switch out the decorations, showing that goals were permanent, but the routes by which you get there could be switched around, like adding a new throw pillow to a couch—
That had been Monica’s contribution. There were a lot of fun and practical things in the book. She shouldn’t be so cynical. But if it really worked, why wasn’t Joe ravishing her by the roadside right now?
Because you can’t blueprint other people. Exactly what Monica tried to tell Tina about Mike—
“Making love under a dead moose is spontaneous,” Joe said, gently removing her hand. “Dying in a fiery crash is not.”
Yes, you couldn’t blueprint other people. So why should that stop her? Why couldn’t she follow her plan anyway, without Joe? Monica was going to do just that. She unbuttoned her jeans and stuck her hands down her pants. It took Joe a lifetime to notice, and when he did he was anything but turned on.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to arouse you.”
“On the interstate? Really?”
“I’m in the mood.”
“Tina and her boyfriend are behind us.” Monica yanked her hands out of her pants.
“He’s hardly her boyfriend,” she said. “She just met the guy.”
“What is with you today?”
“I want sex, okay?” Monica said. There, she’d said it. “I want passionate, exciting sex.” Joe shook his head.
“We’re going to your aunt’s birthday party where your father—the Colonel—keeps a hundred and twenty-two polished rifles.”
“Air rifles,” Monica said.
“Honey, you can play with yourself all you want, but it’s not happening.” Joe was right. Between the moose, the rifles, and the endless target activities, there wouldn’t be any spontaneous sex this weekend. They’d be lucky if they got through the weekend without the Colonel making Aunt Grace cry. That was the fragile part about her; she’d be smiling up to a point, but Richard eventually got under her skin, and family functions often dissolved into fights, which for Aunt Grace meant lots of tears. There wouldn’t be any spontaneous sex this weekend—unless it was Tina and Mike.
Over her dead body
—
What was wrong with her? She needed sex, that’s what. It was a myth that men were the only ones who went crazy without it. Because Joe wasn’t spontaneous anytime, anywhere. He’d never do it anywhere but a closed bedroom. Never in a million years would he take her in the woods, on the beach, against an abandoned building. And she knew, no matter what he said, or how many blueprints she drew up, he was never going to make love to her under that freaking moose.
 
The long, winding driveway leading up to the cabin was littered with cars. There would be a spot for Monica and Joe saved at the front of the line. Tina and Mike, who’d stopped at a shopping center just before the turnoff, would have to fend for themselves. Monica told Tina they didn’t need to bring anything; she was annoyed they obviously didn’t listen to her. Was Tina going to have a quickie with Mike in the car behind the Stop & Shop? And if she was, what business was it of hers?
The Colonel was holding court on the wraparound porch. He was holding his latest Thermal Pneumatic Double Pump Air Rifle in his arms, showing it off to an appreciative crowd. A box filled with cartons of eggs lay at his feet. He saw Monica, grinned, and pumped the rifle in acknowledgement. Joe waved his hand in a huge greeting, and his grin nearly swallowed his entire face. Poor Joe, her father was never going to love him like he wanted. Nobody would ever be good enough for his little girl, didn’t Joe get that? It was heartbreaking to watch. The Colonel picked up an egg and hurled it at Joe.
“Duck,” Monica said. But Joe stuck up his hand to catch it. It cracked on impact; yolk dripped out of his palm and onto the ground. “Dad,” Monica said.
“Last one here’s a rotten egg!” her father yelled.
“You should have saved it for Tina, then,” Monica said. She reached into her purse and handed Joe a Kleenex. He was still grinning.
“Is that it?” he asked the Colonel, gesturing to the rifle in his hand. “Is that the new one?”
“Hot off the press,” the Colonel said. “What do you think, offspring?” It didn’t matter how many times Monica asked him to stop calling her that, at the very least in public, her father never wavered.
“It looks good,” Monica said.
“Are you going out to the range?” Joe asked, eyeing the bucket of eggs. The range was a large fenced-off parcel of land in the back, set up for target practice.
“What else?” the Colonel said. “You think I’m making an omelet?” The crowd laughed.
“Dad,” Monica said. He was always putting Joe down. And Joe, who loved the Colonel like his own father, never seemed to notice.
“Did you bring a rifle?” the Colonel asked.
“No, sir,” Joe said. Monica pinched Joe’s small love handles. How many times had she asked him not to call him “sir”?
“Well, I don’t know what you’re going to shoot with, then,” the Colonel said. “Mine have been claimed.”
“This is why I was driving so fast to get here,” Joe whispered to Monica.
“Did I just hear you say you were speeding with my precious offspring in the car?” Richard belted out. Joe looked like a deer in one of her father’s crosshairs.
“No. No, sir.”
“Maybe Monica will let you borrow her rifle,” the Colonel said loudly. Monica gave her father a look and shook her head. He grinned back. He really enjoyed giving Joe a hard time.
“Would you, Monica?” Joe asked.
“I don’t have the slightest idea where it is,” Monica said.
“Just saw it this morning,” her father answered. “George,” he called to the man behind him. “Would you bring us Monica’s rifle? Joe wants to use it.” Monica reached over to squeeze a warning into Joe’s arm, but he’d already moved away from her, toward the Colonel. She should go inside instead of staying to witness the upcoming accident. Damage control, she told herself when she didn’t make a move, although a teeny tiny, demented part of her wanted to see the look on Joe’s face when George handed him her rifle. When it came to her father, would Joe ever learn?
Monica heard the laughter before she saw the rifle. George made his way through the crowd, then thrust it at Joe. It was Monica’s tenth birthday gift: The Pink Pumpmaster. It was, as its name implied, completely pink. Joe turned red as laughter exploded from the crowd. Nobody laughed louder than the Colonel. To Joe’s credit, he laughed too, although his face remained as bright as a Maine lobster.

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