The Kind Worth Killing (3 page)

I swam in the pool, anyway, for the first half of the summer, telling myself that at least I had it to myself. The water turned green, and the bottom and sides became slippery with dark algae. I pretended the pool really was a pond, deep in the woods, in a special place that only I knew about, and my friends were the turtles and the fish and the dragonflies. I swam at dusk, when the cricket whine was at its highest, nearly blocking out the sounds of parties starting up on the screened porch at the front of the house. It was on one of those dusk swims that I first noticed Chet, a beer bottle in his hand, watching me from the edge of the woods. “How's the water?” he asked, when he realized he'd been spotted.

“It's all right,” I said.

“I didn't even know this pool was back here.” He stepped out of the woods and into the remaining light of the day. He wore a pair of white
overalls that were spattered in paint. He sipped at his beer, foam clinging to his beard.

“No one uses it but me. My parents don't like to swim.” I paddled in the deep end, glad that the water was green and cloudy, so that he couldn't see me in my bathing suit.

“Maybe I'll go swimming sometime. Would that be all right with you?”

“I don't care. You can do what you want.”

He finished his beer in one long pull, making a popping sound when he pulled it away from his lips. “Man, what I really want is to paint this pool. And maybe you'd let me paint you in it. Would you let me do that?”

“I don't know,” I said. “What do you mean?”

He laughed. “Just like this, you in the pool, in this light. I would like to create a painting. I mostly do abstracts, but for this . . .” He trailed off, scratched at the inside of his thigh. After a pause, he asked, “Do you know how goddamn beautiful you are?”

“No.”

“You are. You're a beautiful girl. I'm not supposed to say that to you because you're young, but I'm a painter so it's okay. I understand beauty, or at least I pretend to.” He laughed. “You'll think about it?”

“I don't know how much more swimming I'll do. The water is kind of dirty.”

“Okay.” He looked into the woods behind me, slowly bobbing his head. “I need another beer. Can I get you something?” He was now holding the empty bottle upside down by his side, drips of beer falling onto the unmown grass. “I'll get you a beer if you want one.”

“I don't drink beer. I'm only thirteen.”

“Okay,” he said, and stood watching me for a while, waiting to see if I would get out of the water. His mouth hung open slightly, and he scratched again at the inside of his thigh. I stayed put, treading water, and spun so that I wasn't facing him.

“Ophelia,” he said, almost to himself. Then, “Okay. Another beer.”

When he left I got out of the pool, knowing that I was done swimming for the summer, and hating Chet for wrecking my secret pond. I wrapped myself in the large beach towel I'd brought to the pool and ran through the house toward the bathroom nearest my room on the second floor. My chest hurt, as though the anger inside of me was a balloon, slowly inflating but never going to pop. In the bathroom with the rattling vent turned on and the shower going, I screamed repeatedly, using the nastiest words I knew. I was screaming because I was mad, but I was also screaming to keep myself from crying. It didn't work. I sat on the tiled floor, and cried until my throat hurt. I was thinking of Chet—the scary way he looked at me—but I was also thinking of my parents. Why did they fill our home with strangers? Why did they only know sex maniacs? After showering, I went into my bedroom and looked at myself naked in the full-length mirror on the inside of my closet door. I'd known about sex for almost my entire life. One of my earliest memories was of my parents doing it on a large towel in the dunes on some beach vacation. I was three feet away, digging in the sand with a plastic trowel. I remember that my baby bottle was filled with warm apple juice.

I turned and looked at my body from all sides, disgusted by the patch of red hair sprouting between my legs. At least my breasts were barely noticeable, unlike my friend Gina who lived down the road. I pulled my shoulders back and my breasts completely flattened out. If I held a hand between my legs I looked the same as I had when I was ten years old. Skinny, with red hair, and freckles that darkened my arms and the base of my neck.

I dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, even though the night was still sweltering hot, and went downstairs to make myself a peanut butter sandwich.

I stopped swimming in the pool. I don't know if Chet continued to look for me there. I would see him sometimes on the top step that led
to the apartment above my mother's studio, smoking a cigarette and gazing toward the house. And he was occasionally in our kitchen, speaking with my mother, usually about art. His eyes would find me, then slide away, then find me again.

My father took off that summer for about three weeks. It happened immediately after a visit from several of his English friends, including a young poet named Rose. He introduced us by saying, “Rose, meet Lily. Lily, meet Rose. Do not compete. You are both beautiful flowers.” Rose, skinny and with large breasts, smelled of clove cigarettes, and when she shook my hand she stared at the top of my head. I was worried that after my father disappeared Chet would show up in the house more often. Instead, another man showed up, with a Russian name. I liked him, but only because he had a beautiful shorthaired mutt named Gorky. We hadn't had any animals at the house since Bess, my cat, had died three months earlier. With the Russian around, Chet disappeared from view for a while, and I was beginning to feel safe. Then Chet came to my bedroom late on a Saturday night.

I knew it was a Saturday because it was the night of the
important
party, one that my mother had been talking about for over a week. “Lily, darling, take a bath on Saturday because of the party.” “Lily, you'll help your mother make the spanakopita for our party, won't you? I'll let you hand them out the way you like.” It was strange that she cared about this particular night. She had parties all the time, but usually with teachers and students from the college. For this party, people were coming from New York to meet the Russian. My father was still gone, and my mother was nervous, her short hair sticking out at the back because of how often she ran her fingers through it. I stayed away from the house for most of that Saturday, walking through the stretch of pine trees to my favorite place, a meadow edged with stone walls that abutted a long-abandoned farmhouse. I threw rocks at trees until my arm began to ache, then lay back for a while on the soft hummock of grass near the willow. I daydreamed of my other
family, the imaginary one with boring parents, and seven siblings, four boys and three girls. The day was hot. I could taste salty sweat on my upper lip, and as I lay there, I watched dark, swollen clouds build in the sky. When I heard the first low rumble of thunder, I stood, brushed grass from the back of my legs, and returned to the house.

The thunderstorm pelted Monk's for a dark hour. My mother drank gin and pulled things from the oven, telling the Russian how perfect the storm was—how she couldn't ask for a better sound track to her party—although I could tell she was upset. When guests began to arrive the skies were blue again, the only evidence of the storm the cleanness of the air, and the steady dripping from the swollen gutters. I passed appetizers to people I'd never seen before, then snuck away to my room, bringing two cold Pop-Tarts with me for my dinner.

I ate in my room, and tried to read. I had taken a paperback from my mother's stack of books by her side of the bed. It was called
Damage,
by Josephine Hart, and I'd heard her talking about how she didn't like it, how it was just trash dressed up as something literary. It made me want to read it, but I didn't really like it either. It was about an Englishman, like my father, who was having sex with his son's girlfriend. I hated everyone in it. I gave up and pulled a Nancy Drew from my shelf. Number ten:
The Password to Larkspur Lane
. I knew I was too old to be reading Nancy Drew but it was by far my favorite. I fell asleep while reading it.

I woke to the sound of my bedroom door being opened. Light fell in from the hallway and I could hear loud rock music coming from downstairs. I was curled on my side, a single sheet pulled up to my waist, facing the door. I cracked open my eyes and could see Chet standing in the doorframe. The light was coming from behind him, but he was easy to identify because of the beard, and the dark-framed glasses, an edge of which had caught the yellow light from the hall. He swayed a little, like a tree in a strong wind. I didn't move, in the hopes that he would go away. Maybe I wasn't who he was looking for, even though I knew I was. I considered screaming, or trying to run
from the room, but there was a steady thump of bass and drum throughout the house and I didn't think anyone would hear me. And then Chet would kill me for sure. So I closed my eyes, hoping he would go away, and with my eyes closed, I heard him step into the room, quietly shut the door behind him.

I decided to keep my eyes shut, pretend I was asleep. My heart beat in my chest like a jumping bean, but I kept my breathing regular. In through my nose and out through my mouth.

I listened as Chet took a few steps forward. I knew he was standing right over me. I could hear his own breath, ragged and wet, and I could smell him. The fruity, musty smell, mixed with the smell of cigarettes and alcohol.

“Lily,” he said, in a loud whisper.

I didn't move.

He leaned in closer. Said my name again, a little quieter this time.

I pretended I was in a deep sleep, and couldn't hear a thing. I pulled my knees up a little tighter to my body, moving the way I thought a sleeping person would move. I knew what he was doing in my room, and I knew what he wanted. He was going to have sex with me. But as far as I knew that was only something he could do if I was awake, so I planned on staying asleep, no matter what he did.

I heard the creak of his knees and the rustle of his jeans, then smelled the sour, beery smell of his breath. He had crouched down beside me. The song from downstairs—its thumping bass—stopped, and another song, that sounded the same, started up again. I heard the sound of a zipper being slowly unzipped, one tiny, metallic pluck at a time, then a rhythmic sound, like a hand being rubbed rapidly back and forth across a sweater. He was doing it to himself and not to me. My plan was working. The sound got faster and louder, and he said my name a few more times, in low hoarse whispers. I thought he wasn't going to touch me but I felt the air shift a little in front of my chest, then felt a finger graze along the pajama fabric that stretched across my breasts. It was warm in the room but cold prickles coursed
over all my skin. I willed myself to keep my eyes closed. Chet pressed his fingers against my chest, his sharp nails pinching, then made a sound that was halfway between a grunt and an intake of breath, and he pulled his hand away from my nipple. I listened as he zipped his pants back up and quickly backed out of the room. He thudded into the doorframe on the way out, then pulled the door closed behind him, not even trying to keep quiet.

I stayed in my curled-up position for another minute, then got off the bed, took my desk chair and tried to jam it up under the doorknob of my door. It was something Nancy Drew would do. The chair didn't quite fit—it was a little too short—but it was better than nothing. If Chet came back it would be hard for him to open the door, at least, and the chair would fall over and make a noise.

I didn't think I would sleep that night, but I did, and when morning came, I lay in bed, thinking about what I should do.

My worst fear was that if I told my mother about what had happened, she would tell me that I should have sex with Chet. Or else she would be mad that I let him come into my room, or that I let him watch me in the pool. I knew that this was something I needed to take care of on my own.

And I knew how I would do it.

At nearly midnight, I stood on the front steps of the bay-fronted brownstone I owned with Miranda, the taxi's red lights receding down the street, and tried to remember where I'd stowed the house keys when I'd left for London a week earlier.

Just as I was unzipping the outside pocket of my carry-on, the front door swung open. Miranda was in midyawn. She wore a short nightshirt and a pair of wool socks. “How was London?” she asked, after kissing me on the mouth. Her breath was slightly sour and I imagined she'd been asleep in front of the television.

“Damp.”

“Profitable?”

“Yes, damp and profitable.” I shut the door behind me, and dropped my luggage on the hardwood floor. The house smelled of takeout Thai. “I'm surprised to see you here,” I said. “I thought you'd be in Maine.”

“I wanted to see
you,
Teddy. It's been a whole week. Are you drunk?”

“The flight was delayed and I drank a few martinis. Do I reek?”

“Yes. Brush your teeth and come to bed. I'm exhausted.”

I watched Miranda climb the steep stairs to our second-floor bedroom, watched the muscles in her slim calves tense and untense, watched the nightshirt sway back and forth with the movement of her hips, then thought of Brad Daggett bending her over the carpentry table, lifting her skirt . . .

I went downstairs to the basement level, where our kitchen and dining room were located. I found a carton of red curry shrimp in the fridge and ate it cold, sitting at our butcher-block island.

My head was starting to ache, and I was thirsty. I realized that without having fallen asleep I was already hungover from all the gin I'd had in the airport lounge, and then on the flight.

The redhead from the bar had also been seated in business class, across from me, and one row behind. After boarding the plane, we'd kept talking across the aisle, even though we'd temporarily ceased our discussion of my wife's infidelities. The old woman next to me in the window seat saw us talking and said, “Would you and your wife like to sit next to one another?”