What Remains of Me (3 page)

“I hate disco but I still think John's sexy,” Bellamy said. “My dad knows him.”

Kelly's hand flew back. She felt herself blushing.

Bellamy smiled at her. “I met him once.”

“You did?”

“I wanted to touch that chin dimple so bad.” She leaned in closer, dropped her voice to a whisper. “I wanted to put my tongue on it.”

“Make it a fattie,” said one of the soccer boys. He was talking to Len, who was sitting on the edge of Bellamy's princess bed, rolling a joint intently.

“If this were my room,” Kelly said, “I'd never leave.”

Len said, “Few hits of this, you might not be able to.”

“You want to spend the night?” said Bellamy. “My parents are in Switzerland, so it's just me and the staff till Friday.”

Kelly swallowed. She hadn't even called home, and she knew Mom wouldn't approve. “
Keep away from those Hollywood types
,” Mom would always say—even though she'd sent her girls to Hollywood High, where the sports team was called the Sheiks after a movie character played by Rudolph Valentino. Nearly everyone at school was a Hollywood type in one way or another—what else would they be? Mom may as well have said to Kelly and Catherine, “
Don't make any friends
,” Kelly following the rule, Catherine dying for breaking it. “My . . . my mom . . . I don't think she . . .”

“Hey, it's cool,” Bellamy said. “Some other time, though, okay?”

“Yeah, I'd love to.”

“Lotsa nice red veins in this stuff,” Len was saying, the two boys oohing and aahing over it. They were both short and stocky with floppy hair and pink cheeks. Kelly didn't know either one of them, and they didn't seem like jocks at all. They reminded her more of two puppies from the same litter.

“Ladies first,” said Len. He gave Kelly that slippery smile. Kelly nodded at Bellamy. “You can go first.”

Bellamy plucked the joint away from Len. She put it to her lips and pulled off it deeply.

Len said, “Bet you wish that spliff was my Johnson.” The soccer boys chuckled.

She pursed her lips to keep the hit down. “The spliff's bigger,” she said finally, smoke curling out of her mouth.

Kelly laughed.

One of the soccer boys said, “Burn!”

“Baby,” Len said. “You
know
that ain't true.”

Bellamy rolled her eyes, though her cheeks flushed a little.

Kelly took a closer look at Len—the tight black T-shirt, the veiny arms, the thick belt buckle, shaped like a coiled rattlesnake. He seemed so old. She imagined Bellamy with him and the thought of it made her feel kind of strange, panicky . . .

“Earth to Kelly.” Bellamy was holding the joint out to her.

“Sorry.”

Kelly started to take it, when Bellamy pulled back. “Get out,” she said—not to Kelly, to Kelly's left shoulder. When Kelly turned, she saw a skinny boy with Bellamy's same black eyes standing in the doorway.

“Hi,” Kelly said.

The boy smiled at her. He wore a
Star Wars
T-shirt, spindly pale legs sticking out of white shorts. He couldn't have been more than ten.

“Don't say hi to him. He's Satan's spawn.”

The boy blew a raspberry. One of the soccer boys laughed, and Bellamy got up from the bed in a rush. She slammed the door in his face. Locked it. When she turned around, her face was an angry pink. “My brother Shane.” She said it to Kelly like a swear word. “I swear to God he won't leave me alone.”

KELLY HAD TRIED POT ONCE, WITH CATHERINE. THEY'D BEEN THIRTEEN
at the time and Catherine had brought it into their room along with their mom's pink lighter. Kelly had asked where she'd gotten the stuff, but Catherine had refused to tell her. “
Just try it
,” Catherine had said.

“What if I freak out?”

“
Would it kill you, Kelly? Would it kill you to freak out just one time in your entire life?”

Kelly had inhaled too hard and coughed it all up and felt nothing.

This time, though, it had worked. At least Kelly thought it had. Her head felt soft and fuzzy, as though someone had rubbed lotion all over her brain. Bellamy had agreed to take the soccer boys home, seeing as they both lived nearby, and when Kelly had said good-bye to her, she'd seen her face in flashing frames.

Kelly had accepted a ride from Len—something she hadn't thought very much about until now, but as she slipped into the front seat of the Trans Am, that panicky feeling flooded through her again. She found herself focusing too hard on each movement. The click of the lock echoed in her ears and the leather seats squeaked and clawed at her. Kelly felt Len's syrupy gaze on her too, and when she turned a little, there was Len's face. Close. God, he was so old.

“Good stuff, huh?” His breath was hot and sticky. His eyes blurred into one.

“Really good.”

Len's hand slipped up under her peasant skirt and rested on her thigh. Her whole leg stiffened. The car did smell good, she thought—like warm leather and pine.

He leaned in and kissed her, his mouth spongy and lax. His lips were too wet and the pencil mustache scratched at her nose. He thrust his tongue into her mouth and then just let it lay there on top of hers, slimy and sleeping.

My first kiss
. She hadn't expected it to be like this. Catherine had once said her first kiss would feel like magic and she'd wanted to believe that. But then again, how was Kelly supposed to know what magic felt like? She closed her eyes, tried to relax. His mouth opened wider, so he was biting into her cheeks. What part of this was supposed to feel good? There had to be something. She tried running a hand through his greasy hair and he moaned, his wet lips vibrating.

The weed made Kelly nervous. It was getting hard to breathe, but she didn't want to pull away because she didn't want to have to look at Len. She didn't know what to say to him.
Thanks? That was interesting?

At one point, back at the house when the boys were laughing about something, Bellamy had set her head on Kelly's shoulder. “
I knew we'd be friends,
” she had said. The memory of it relaxed her.

Len pulled away. Kelly's mouth still tasted of him, a sour taste. “Better get you home,” he said. “Unless you want to stop somewhere first.”

She didn't want to stop somewhere with him. But she didn't want to go home either. She heard herself say, “I don't care.”

Len started up the car but kept his hand on her thigh. Kelly closed her eyes and leaned back, Bellamy's voice from this afternoon still in her head, making the hand feel lighter.

“
You're like me.
” Bellamy had said it into Kelly's ear, in a soft, pressing whisper she could feel more than hear. “
You have secrets
.”

K
elly gripped the wheel—one hand at ten o'clock, the other at two. She glanced into the rearview. No one behind her or next to her. No one on this entire stretch of the 10 sprawling east and into the desert, but still she clicked her blinker before switching lanes and checked the mirrors again—both of them, rearview and driver's side. She had to be safe. She couldn't break any rules.

She thought about turning the radio on, but decided not to.
What if it's on the news?
Instead she switched off the air conditioner, opened the window, and let the warm air wash in, feeling the roar of it, listening to the gallop of the wheels on the road. There was so much passion in driving alone at night. Kelly could always get lost in it, even now.

Kelly had learned to drive only five years ago, a month or two after her release, so it was still so new and exciting. Her husband had taught her over an eight-day period that must have felt very long to him, after business hours in the big empty lot outside the Costco in La Quinta.

He'd been so patient with her, never raising his voice—not even when she braked so hard the whole car convulsed
and the backs of their skulls slammed into the headrests. “
Okay, we're definitely stopped
,” Kelly's husband had said, once they caught their breath. “
Next time, try to be a little less emphatic about it.
”

Kelly glanced at the clock on the dashboard. 2:47
A.M.
Please be sleeping
, she told him in her mind.
Please don't wake up and see that I'm gone
. Then she shut the drawer on her husband's face, his name. She locked him away.

One hour left. Just forty-five minutes more on the freeway and then ten or fifteen minutes on surface streets and then . . .
She checked the rearview again. Peered hard into the glass and searched for headlights beside her, behind her, far back as she could see . . .

No one had followed her.

Kelly closed her eyes for a few seconds, breathed in and out. When she opened them again, she was thinking only of the drive—of the rush of air on her skin and her hands on the wheel and the vast, empty lane in front of the headlights, leading her into the darkness, bringing her home.

SHANE MARSHALL WAS UP AT SIX, AS HE ALMOST ALWAYS WAS THESE
days, as he'd been for the past five years, every morning, up with the sun, up as soon as the pills wore off, watching his wife sleeping.

Shane brushed his hand against the side of her face, lightly so as not to wake her.

Twenty-five years of knowing her, fifteen years of marriage, five in the same house. The whole time, the same questions. The same wondering, and wanting to know her and not wanting to know. The same ache.

Kelly stirred. A lock of hair fell across her eyes, gold streaked with silver. Shane liked the way the soft morning sun made the silver hairs
glisten. He put his camera up to his face. He wouldn't take the picture—that would be too invasive, wouldn't it? But he would watch her through the lens. He would take in her cream-colored skin and her round shoulders and her silence.

“I love you,” he whispered.

She stretched, eyes shut tight, mouth curling into a smile, or maybe a grimace. He wasn't sure. She was so hard to read, his wife of fifteen years.
What's on your mind, Kelly Lund? Who is on your mind?

He snapped a picture.

Kelly's eyelids fluttered.

“Good morning.”

“Shane?”

“Expecting someone else?”

“Funny,” she murmured. “What time is it? Six?”

“Catching the golden hour.” He snapped another shot. The desert sunlight dappled her face. “Catching you.”

“Shane,” she said. “Please don't take my picture.”

“I can't help it. You're beautiful.”

She opened her eyes—those sad, opaque gray eyes. Shane was forever trying to see inside them, see through them and now . . . watching her eyes through the lens, he saw a coldness in them, something he didn't understand. Something new.

“Stop,” she said, her face changing again, the eyes softening as though someone had dropped a veil over them. Why couldn't he figure her out?

He put the camera down.

“Did I sound harsh? Sorry. I'm just . . . God, I'm so tired.”

Gently, Shane touched Kelly's face. “It's okay,” he said. “I shouldn't have taken your picture.”

She took his hand in hers, pressed her lips against his wrist. She held his palm to her smooth cheek, every part of her so soft—her skin, her mouth, like a silk scarf over a knife.

He wrapped his arms around her and held her to him, feeling her sweet breath at his chest, the filmy fabric of her camisole, inhaling the clean scent of her hair. He wanted more, even though he knew better. He kissed her neck.

“Shane,” she said.

“I know.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I understand,” he said, trying again. That was their life. Shane trying, Kelly pulling away. Kelly apologizing. Shane understanding.

God, he was so tired of understanding.

The phone rang. Shane started toward it, but then he realized it wasn't the bedroom phone ringing. It was the phone in the kitchen—his work line. At six? He rushed into the kitchen, plucked the receiver off the base. “Hollywood Photo Archives,” he said.

“Shane.”

How strange life could be. Just this morning, waking up, he'd thought about his sister for the first time in God knows how long.
Maybe Dad's right
, he had thought.
Maybe we should try and get along
. And now, here she was after five years of not speaking to each other, feeling the same way as Shane at the same time of morning? How was that possible?

“It's Bellamy,” she said. “Are you alone?”

“I know who you are,” he said. “Why would I be alone?”

“Oh God. I can't do this.”

“Why are you calling me?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, Bellamy breathing in and out, loud enough for him to hear the breathing. Shane's jaw tightened. This was the Bellamy he knew, the Bellamy who loved her
loaded silences, her mind games, the Bellamy he'd stopped speaking to for good reason. Was she drunk? High? Or was she tape-recording him for one of her projects?

“I'm hanging up now.”

“No, wait,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

He swallowed.
Sorry
. “What is it?”

“Dad.”

“Did he put you up to this call?”

“
What?
No. God, Shane. Oh my God I can't . . .” Her voice broke.

“Bellamy?”

“I can't say it.”

More breathing. An awful feeling burned in the pit of Shane's stomach, rose up into his throat. A swelling dread. “What happened?”

“I can't.”

His heart pounded. “Bellamy, please.”

“Can't say it.”

“
What happened to Dad?
”

“
Don't yell at me
.” She was crying now.

“
Tell me.
” He fought out the words, as though someone were strangling him. And when he looked up, he saw Kelly, standing at the far corner of the room.

“What?” Kelly said.

Shane shook his head hard, to shake his thoughts together and at the same time ward off Kelly, so he could be alone with them. He needed to be alone.
Go away
.

“What's going on?” Kelly said.

“
Go away!
”

Through the plastic earpiece, Bellamy was saying sorry again. Bellamy who never said sorry, Bellamy who never cried, breaking into sobs. Shane asked her no more because he knew.
Dad,
she'd said, the word
crumbling to pieces.
Dad is dead.
“I'm sorry, Shane, oh Shane, I'm so, so sorry.”

“SHOULD I COME WITH YOU?” KELLY ASKED, DURING THAT ONE BRIEF
moment after Shane hung up, when she forgot who she was and what she'd done and saw only her husband, his loss.

“No, Kelly.”

“Oh,” she said, remembering. “Okay.”

“I mean—”

“I get it.”

Shane grabbed his denim jacket out of the coat closet. He opened the front door, and a warm breeze swept in, like breath. He turned and stood there for a while, facing her with the desert sun haloing all around him. “You'll come to the funeral, right?”

“Yes.”

“You'll hold my hand.”

“Yes.”

“I love you,” Shane said. His face was in the shadows, so Kelly couldn't quite see his eyes. She was glad for that.

“I love you too,” she said.

AFTER SHANE LEFT, KELLY STARED AT THE CLOSED DOOR FOR A WHILE
before walking back into the kitchen. She made a pot of coffee, toasted some bread—no sense in cooking a big breakfast if Shane wasn't going to be around. The whole time, she didn't think about Sterling Marshall. She didn't think about anything. She just listened for the birds.

The desert was so quiet, especially compared to Carpentia where there had been so much noise. All that shouting and clanging all night long, everything echoing—footsteps and singing and screams. Some
body would weep, it didn't matter how late at night it was or how far away the weeper was from Kelly's cell, the sound of it would travel. It would weave its way into her thoughts and wake her up if she'd been lucky enough to get to sleep at all. She used to wad up toilet paper, shove it in her ears, but that did no good. The sounds vibrated. She could feel them.

Here, though, in Joshua Tree, you had to strain to hear birds. Kelly leaned against the kitchen window. She put her ear to the glass as the coffee bubbled, listening for the
wow, wow
of the Gambel's Quail, the cry of the golden eagle, the death-rattle clacking of the roadrunner's beak.

When she'd first gotten out of Carpentia and she and Shane had moved here, Kelly had bought a guide and memorized all the desert species—their names, their field marks, their calls and nesting patterns. She'd put a few feeders outside to draw the braver ones closer, and now she wanted to hear more of them, the flap of their wings, the chirping and rustling as they landed and ate, and most of all, those subtle sounds she couldn't hear from indoors—the sounds they made leaving, knowing they'd come back.

IT WASN'T UNTIL KELLY HAD TAKEN HER COFFEE AND HER TOAST BACK
to her workspace in the bedroom that she thought about her father-in-law again—and only then when she saw the news story on her home page.

Kelly's brain had a way of doing that.
Avoidance,
the shrink at Carpentia had called it, but she thought of it more as organizing her emotions. It was as though Kelly had a big file cabinet in her head and she could take her feelings and slide them into drawers and lock them up, deal with them later.

Problem was, lately, the drawers kept flying open.

Kelly stared at the picture: a dashing young Sterling Marshall, as he appeared in his Oscar-winning role in the 1950s war movie
Guns of Victory
. She clicked on the link and skimmed the article:

Movie legend Sterling Marshall is dead at the age of 79 of an apparent suicide . . .

Marshall had recently been diagnosed with cancer . . .

. . . though sources say he may have left behind a note, the contents of the alleged suicide note have not been revealed . . .

Suicide? A note?

Kelly's cell phone was on her bedside table—resting next to its charger, because she hadn't plugged it in last night. Kelly was always forgetting to charge her phone, forgetting so consistently that it almost felt intentional, almost as though she
had a need to see the phone die
. Shane had once said that to Kelly after failing to reach her one night. He'd apologized immediately—so obviously mortified over his own choice of words that it made Kelly's cheeks flush. “
I'm just not used to modern technology,
” she had said.

The phone still had a few gasps in it. She plugged it into the charger, tapped in Shane's cell number. It rang a few times, then went to voice mail. “The news reports are saying suicide,” she said into the phone. “They say your father had cancer. Did you know, Shane? Had he told you about it before? I wish I could help or . . . I don't know what I wish. I'm sorry. I hate to see you hurt.” Kelly's voice sounded strange to her. Tinny and insincere. It didn't matter. She was speaking to no one, having ended the call before saying any of it. Kelly turned back to the computer.

The actor's daughter, Bellamy Marshall, 48, a multimedia artist who came to fame in the mid-'90s with a series of controversial painted photographs, accompanied by tape-recorded interviews . . .

Kelly stopped reading. Her gaze drifted back to the picture—the wavy dark hair and the cleft chin, the black eyes that were Shane's eyes and Bellamy's eyes—velvet-soft and fathomless . . .

Kelly shut her eyes, an old afternoon flooding her mind. A sunshiny, spring afternoon in 1980, when Sterling Marshall was only Bellamy's dad and his house was only Bellamy's house and Shane was nothing more than Bellamy's annoying little brother.

On this particular afternoon, Kelly had been curled up with Bellamy on her zebra print rug as they so often were back then, watching British music videos on Bellamy's enormous TV—first VCR Kelly had ever seen—a bag of Doritos nestled between them. They'd been stoned out of their minds, piling chips into their mouths and crunching away, their fingers stained that salty orange. Kelly could remember Mr. Marshall cracking the door and poking his handsome head into the room. “
Please turn the music down, girls.
”

Without even thinking about it, Kelly had said, “
Okay, Dad.
”

“
Did you just call him Dad?
” Bellamy had said. “
Oh my God, that's so cute!
”