Tigers in Red Weather (38 page)

I’ve noticed that all houses have a feeling, like a particular perfume that you can smell when you walk in. Anna’s farm had the odor of something erased and tired. Blown out. Tiger House, on the other
hand, normally smelled of things well cared for, furniture polish, starch, chiming clocks. Ding ding, every hour. That night, there was something else in the air. I felt my hands begin to tingle, like they did when something interesting was about to happen.

When I got to my mother’s room, I was certain of it. It’s true, her hair looked crazy, like some kind of bird’s nest. But it was her face that was really altered, jerky and strained.

When Daisy left us alone, my mother pretended to be busy putting on her makeup. I could tell she had something on her mind. Ever since she’d gone to the hospital, she’d had this way of saying one thing and meaning another. I guess that’s what they taught her to do, although I wasn’t convinced this was a sign of mental health.

“How are you feeling, Mother?”

“Just fine, dearest,” she said.

I waited and when she said nothing else, I said: “What happened to your hair?”

“I’m afraid I had a little run-in with the hairdresser. Daisy’s treat. I suppose I was feeling a little blue this morning.”

I noticed that she was wearing a blue dress, but it was the tigers that caught my eye. They sort of glittered in the light. She patted her big hair down and eyed me through the mirror.

I looked back at her and forced my hands to be still. I was beginning to feel a little light-headed.

“Did you say hello to your Aunt Nick?”

“I haven’t seen her yet,” I said. I thought about the cake my mother had fed to the dog.

“It’s nice that Tyler could make it for the dinner.” She started fooling around with some gold tube she’d pulled off the dresser. “I know how well he gets along with the family, especially your aunt. Although …”

There was something in her voice, the watchful eye, the electricity in the house.

“I must admit, I do wonder sometimes if it makes Daisy uncomfortable. He does dote so on Aunt Nick.”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s watching her.”

“Then again, Daisy’s so lovely, she’d never say if it hurt her.”

“What are you trying to say, Mother?”

She paused and turned to face me and I thought:
Here it comes
.

“I just wouldn’t want to see Daisy get hurt, that’s all. Nor would you, I imagine.”

So that was it. She had picked Aunt Nick for the villain. That’s what the cake had been about. Still, it was nice to see my mother trying to take some kind of control over her life. And maybe she was right. Maybe Aunt Nick was a villain. She wasn’t an honest person, that was for sure. And as long as I’d known her, she’d been trying to control Daisy. Daisy just couldn’t see it, through no fault of her own. I thought about Aunt Nick hurting Daisy and it made me go all still inside.

“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t let that happen.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” my mother said, picking at her dress. “It’s just that your Aunt Nick, well, she can be stubborn when she thinks she’s right. Sometimes, people like that need to be forced to see how dangerous their behavior can be. Do you know what I mean?”

I knew what my mother was up to. She wasn’t very good at this game. My father had been a much better player, and I’d watched him do it to her over and over again when I was a child. A sort of master of the long con. But when I’d realized he’d been playing for peanuts, I have to say, I lost respect for him. Finding the essence of one dead actress isn’t exactly a life’s work.

I made up my mind to get a better lay of the land before I decided what to do about the Aunt Nick problem. I realized I’d been distracted, that I hadn’t really been watching my family closely enough. For one thing, my mother seemed to be going off the rails again.
That wasn’t really a problem for me, but it might become one if she needed someone to take care of her. And if Aunt Nick was causing that trouble, well, something might have to be done to fix it. She was my mother, after all.

Then, of course, there was Daisy. That was another difficulty.

I began my research during cocktail hour. The first thing I noticed was that my mother was drinking and that Tyler was being his usual self.

“I want to thank you, Tyler,” my mother said. “It really was so lovely of you to bring Ed with you for my little celebration.”

“It was my pleasure,” he said, which it obviously had not been. “Nick knew how much it would please you, and Daisy wouldn’t let up until she’d tracked him down. Where was it, sport? Iowa? Housewives and Hoovers?” He turned to me.

I had to keep from smiling at this point. If he only knew. “Yes,” I said. “Exactly. Housewives and Hoovers.” I wondered what he’d look like with a plastic bag over his face. If there was anything that would come to the surface, or if he would just let out one stupid breath, and be done.

When Aunt Nick came into the room, I saw his eyes move like magnets toward her. He watched the movement of her legs, first. And then her breasts. But mostly he watched her face.

She said something about hating dinner parties, which wasn’t true, and Tyler’s whole body moved in time with her words. Hands in hair, smile creeping across his face, his hips turning toward her.

“I, for one, am with Nick,” Tyler said.

Daisy narrowed her eyes at him. It would be better if Daisy could be made to just hate him. But I knew it was too late for that.

When it was time to go to the table for dinner, Aunt Nick went to the kitchen and Tyler followed, offering to help with the plates. I hung back, pretending to see something interesting on the porch. Instead, I crept down the hall toward the summer kitchen, careful not to be seen from the dining room.

“I’ve found a good band for the reception,” Aunt Nick was saying.

“Good,” Tyler said, “because I want to dance with you.”

“Tyler …”

“Nick.”

“This has to stop. I mean it.” To be fair, she did sound like she meant it.

“I’ve tried.” Not as much conviction from him.

“It’s cruel, Tyler, and I won’t be a part of it.” Her voice had dropped to a harsh whisper.

There was a silence and then Aunt Nick said in her normal tone, “Here you go, darling, take these out.”

I didn’t move and Tyler jumped a little when he saw me leaning against the wall outside the kitchen door.

“Jesus,” he hissed, but he hurried into the dining room without saying anything more.

I followed behind him. The table was covered with pink flowers and my mother was sitting at the head of it, wearing some bizarre paper crown, which made her look foolish and, honestly, a little creepy.

I seated myself next to Daisy. I looked at her face, her bright eyes, small bare feet under the table. I felt a strange pain in my stomach. I was reminded of the Wampanoag arrowhead I had found the summer Frank Wilcox had killed Elena Nunes. I had just joined the Scouts and we had spent the morning skinning rabbits up on Gay Head, and then digging in the cliffs. That’s where I had found the arrowhead. I had given it to Daisy and watched her turn it over in her hand, her thumb brushing the rough surface. I had experienced that same pain then, just above my stomach, and it had made me uneasy. So, I had told her about the rabbits and then she threw up in the toilet.

“You’ll never believe who I saw at Morning Glory Farm,” Aunt Nick said. “That disgusting toad of a man, Frank Wilcox.”

I had one of those moments when my brain waves felt like they
were misfiring. Had Aunt Nick read my mind, or had my mind conjured the conversation? Hearing someone else speak his name took my breath away slightly. I couldn’t believe he was as real to anyone else.

“I didn’t know he was still around,” I said, wanting to ask a thousand questions. I felt, rather than saw, Uncle Hughes’s eyes flicker over me.

“Neither did I,” Nick said. “But there he was, large as life. You know, it was odd, but seeing him made me furious, for some reason.”

“I hadn’t thought about all that in forever,” Daisy said.

I thought about it all the time. That night, eight years ago. The night that everything began to come into focus for me. At that point, I already had some inkling of what my work was going to be, but when he killed her, I couldn’t believe it. It was like a kind of joy was released in me and it was the closest thing to love that I had ever felt.

I had been watching them all summer and I’d been going to their secret place during the day, when Daisy was at tennis, just to be there, to be around it and think. I had collected a few items, a bracelet she had apparently lost during one of their sessions, and a pack of cigarettes that had dropped out of his pocket. I was mesmerized by the two of them. They were like animals, but animals with no skins on, changing shapes and grunting and moaning. Sometimes, she almost sounded like she was singing. Mostly, I was fascinated by the violence with which he handled her. I had seen something similar, not long before, with Bill Fox and my mother, but my mother had seemed so passive, as if his words just slid right off of her.
You really are a slut
. But not Elena. It was like that was exactly what she wanted, like it set her free or something. I was enchanted. Of course, I was somewhat less enchanted when Uncle Hughes caught me there. But then he went back to the city to be by himself, which is what he really liked anyway, so it was fine.

That night, I had followed them to the tennis courts, again. They
had been arguing on the path, an argument I had heard before. She wanted him to leave his wife, he said he needed time. Even I knew it was a lie. She must have known. She got very angry and slapped him. He pushed her roughly down the path until they reached the shelter.

Then she started begging. A mistake. This time, he hit her and she began to cry and he started tearing her clothes off. At that point, I thought it would end like it always did. But she fought back. I wasn’t more than fifteen feet away, but it was dark and, oddly, their fight didn’t look all that different from their sex. He was on the ground, groaning. She had kicked him in the balls. He started cursing and crawling and that’s when he must have picked up the rock, because he lunged at her, pulling at her hair with his free hand, pulling her down, and hitting her in the head with the other.

She only cried out once.

But he kept saying: “Fucking bitch, fucking spic bitch.” All the while hitting her, thud, thud.

Then he just stopped. He looked at the rock in his hand like he didn’t know where it had come from. He looked at her. I could hear him panting. He shook her, a small jerk, the kind you’d give to someone who’s having a nightmare. She let out a little half gurgle, half groan. Without hesitating, he straddled her, put his hands around her throat and throttled the life out of her.

Before he was finished, I saw her torso lurch up for a second and I could have sworn she was about to tell him something. Then she was just dead.

I wanted to stay around, to see what he did next, but my head was light and I was afraid I would cry out, or do something else to give myself away, so I staggered as quietly as I could in the direction of the old ice pond. I didn’t get very far before I fainted.

I remember waking up, the tall marsh grass around me. The ground was damp and I could see the moon. The first thing I thought was:
Daisy
.

*  *  *

After dinner, we had more cocktails, and my mother was getting quite drunk by this point. Then we were all dancing to a record Daisy had bought, my mother pressed against Nick and the saddest look in her eyes.

One by one, everyone went off to bed, including me. But after lying there for a while, I got up again. My mind was full with the idea that Frank Wilcox was back on the Island. He had a new wife. I wondered what she looked like. I dressed and sat by the window in my bedroom and thought about what Aunt Nick had said earlier. How she could smell fall in the air, how it smelled like death and change.

I decided I had to find Frank. I couldn’t sleep, anyway. I made my way quietly down the stairs, thinking about Uncle Hughes patrolling the house all those years ago. It made me smile. I planned on looking Frank up in the phone book, and was heading toward Uncle Hughes’s office when I heard them whispering.

They were in the blue sitting room, which was the only way to the study, so I was forced to stop outside the door.

“I’ve told you,” Aunt Nick was saying.

“I’ve heard what you’ve said, but it’s not what you mean. It’s not what you want. We’re two of a kind. You have to stop pretending we’re not.”

All the lights were off downstairs and I inched forward so I could see them, making all my thoughts go still. Aunt Nick had her back against the wing chair and Tyler was standing close to her, gripping her upper arm.

“No,” Aunt Nick said, not looking at him.

“Don’t tell me that all this is enough. That it’s ever been enough for you. I’m not blind, Nick.”

“You have to stop this, Tyler. I’m sorry if I’ve given you the wrong impression …”

“God, I want to kiss you.”

“Don’t force me to hurt Daisy.” Aunt Nick’s voice had a sort of pleading tone. “If you care about either one of us …”

“You think I want to hurt her? But she’s just not like us. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just the way it is.”

“It is somebody’s fault,” Aunt Nick said, wildly. “It’s my fault. Oh god, this is all my fault.”

Tyler moved in to kiss her, but I didn’t wait around to watch; I had already seen enough to know what was going on. It was what was always going on with Aunt Nick.

I had to wait until the following night, but I did go see Frank Wilcox. I found his address in the telephone book. He was living in Katama, and I had to bike out there. It was around midnight and there was no moon, so the road was very dark, but I managed to find his drive.

It was a modest house, set a ways back from the road, a new-build from the looks of it. He’d obviously come down in the world. I did a little reconnaissance and found the downstairs was one big room, with a small kitchen off to the back. The nights were getting cooler, but their windows were still open. I pulled out my old Swiss Army knife, the one Uncle Hughes had given me, and cut the screen out of its frame. After taking off my Docksiders, I stepped inside.