“He’s probably hiding in a closet somewhere. The knocking freaks him out.”
She rustled around, removing items from the shopping bags. “Eat before the sandwich gets soggy. I made sure Manny made it five minutes before I left.”
She’d been a waitress at Denny’s my entire life. Most people took pity on her based solely on her job description, but she did the best she could with the cards she’d been dealt. She’d been a sixteen-year-old mother, my father hadn’t stuck around.
I sat at the kitchen table and took a big bite out of the BLT to make her happy. The bread tasted like old gym socks. “I have to call in to a meeting soon.”
“Trying to get rid of me already?”
“I’m just saying.”
“That’s fine. Maybe I can help you clean up a bit. And…” She turned her back to me, collecting cellophane bags, stuffing them into a ball. “And I thought maybe I can do some packing.”
I swallowed a lump of wet bread. It might have been a boulder, the way it scraped down my esophagus. “Pack what?”
“Oh, you know.” She shrugged, hair she religiously bleached swaying around her shoulders. “Just some of Carissa’s things, you really—”
“Mom. No.”
“You really shouldn’t be the one to do that job, you know—”
The thought of my mother touching all the clothes Carissa had so carefully maintained made my insides glacial. Her hands fumbling through Carissa’s underwear drawer, her lip curling back as she examined complicated lingerie. She’d never come right out and say it, but I knew she’d never approved of Carissa, the way she’d scrutinize her wardrobe choices, the looks she’d give me when the three of us were out to dinner and Carissa hardly ate a thing. She thought Carissa was an oddity, a nice enough girl, maybe, but not the right girl.
It used to drive Carissa crazy, how she never impressed my only parent. She tried so hard to make my mother like her, went out of her way to cook dinners for all of us, made a point to ask my mother how work was going. She’d burst into tears one night, spreading tin foil over the leftovers, swiping away the black streaks mascara had left on her protruding cheekbones. I’m in a fucking apron, for Christ’s sake, I just don’t know what she wants of me, what she expects me to act like. I don’t get it. You know that I’m trying, right?
I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell her that was exactly the problem. My mother was suspicious that Carissa tried so damn hard. What’s she trying to hide beneath all her designer clothes and fancy desserts and perfect makeup? Asking me about work as if we both know she doesn’t think waitresses are beneath her, who does she think she’s kidding, exactly? She’d never say all that, but she didn’t have to. My mother would never be impressed by those things. At best, it made her take pity on Carissa for putting so much effort into things that meant nothing. At worst, it made her think Carissa was superficial, exactly what she looked like on paper—a fashion journalist slash blogger who cared more about proper eyeliner application and finding that perfect little black dress than anything real. My mother didn’t even know about all the blowouts we’d had, huge screaming arguments every other week about anything, everything—armed with that knowledge, my mother would have declared me an idiot for proposing instead of just nodding mutely, pasting on a plastic smile when I told her my plans. If I wasn’t me, I’d have called myself an idiot too, but I loved Carissa so much. I could take the fights; I couldn’t take not being with her. I’m sure if I ever bothered making a Pro/Con list, there would be way more negatives, but I couldn’t deny all the positives, how being with her made me feel. If I had to deal with shouting matches and thorough tongue lashings to get all the good things, so be it, I’d do it, it was nothing I couldn’t handle.
“I don’t want you touching her things.” I regretted saying it as soon as I had, swallowing a shard of lettuce. “I’m sorry, that came out wrong, I didn’t mean it like that. I just want to do it by myself.”
She nodded, her eyes shiny as glass when she looked up at me. “Eat your lunch. I’ll go hunt down that cat.”
“I love you, Mom,” I told her back as she started for the staircase.
She paused, one hand snared around the banister. “I love you, too. Eat your sandwich.” I heard her plant her foot on the first step as she disappeared around the corner, could practically feel her hesitation rolling off in guilty waves. “Kylie’s been asking about you. I know things are…aren’t good, but she misses you.”
A rush of heat washed over me as my cousin pulled her front door open after my knock. Her blonde hair was tied in a haphazard knot at the base of her neck and dark with sweat around her temples. A ladle hung limply from her hand.
“I heard some sweet young thing was asking for me,” I said, jamming my hands into my pockets.
Alanna laughed and stood aside, waving me inside with the ladle. “You heard right.”
I followed her into the kitchen, near the hissing stove, and flicked a glance at her twin boys glued to the television in the cramped living room.
“Hey, boys,” I called.
“Hi, Ben,” they chanted, though they didn’t look away from Teen Titans Go!
Alanna gave whatever was in the pot a vigorous stir, steam billowing into her face. “She’s—Christopher, if you say that word one more time I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap—she’s in her room, Ben.”
“She doing anything weird lately that I should know about?”
“Oh, probably.”
She didn’t elaborate, so I headed down the hallway, the light spilling from the kitchen growing steadily dimmer, until I arrived at the last door on the left. It stood ajar. No lights were on that I could see, not until I pushed it open and stood in the center of the bedroom and found a vein of yellow light worming from beneath the bed skirt.
I knelt and lifted the ruffled material. “Hey, princess,” I said to the little girl lying on her belly beneath the bed, a flashlight hovering an inch above a book, its spine pressed flat against the carpet.
“Uncle Ben!”
That nickname had been the butt of many a joke in my family. I wasn’t technically her uncle. We were cousins, but when Kylie was four years old, she simply refused to believe that. You’re too old to be a cousin had been her rationale, and she wouldn’t hear a word against it.
“I heard you’ve been asking for me.” I held the bed skirt up as she wriggled out from her hiding place. “What are you doing under there?”
She waved the flashlight, sending beams of erratic light around her bedroom. “Reading.” Like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“What book?”
“One of Mommy’s old Babysitter’s Club’s. We haven’t gone to the library in a while.” She wrapped her spindly arms around my neck. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too.” I inhaled her green apple shampoo as I hugged her back. “Sorry I haven’t come to see you sooner.”
“It’s okay.” She pushed her pink glasses up further on her nose. “I heard Mommy telling Daddy that you need time to put yourself together.”
“Did you?”
She squinted, shining the flashlight on me. “You look together.”
I swallowed the laugh building in my throat, knowing Kylie had probably imagined a Picasso-like Uncle Ben, a big nose protruding from my forehead, eyes where my ears should have been, tangled limbs.
“I’m better now that I’m hanging out with you.”
“Wanna play a game?”
“Candyland?”
Her little face twisted into a frown. “That’s for babies. Declan told me.”
“Your brother likes to tease you. I played Candyland with him until he was a year older than you.”
The bits of her features I could see around the ghoulish beams the flashlight splashed over her face didn’t look convinced. She clambered to her feet and flicked on the light switch, and I promptly wished she hadn’t. On her dresser, beside the nail polish rack Carissa had given her two Chri
stmases ago and above the ballerina jewelry chest Carissa had gotten for her last birthday, sat a glossy framed photograph of my dead fiancée herself, painting Kylie’s nails a vampiric shade of red at my kitchen table.
Kylie’s gaze followed the path mine had taken. “Mommy got that for me a few weeks ago.”
“Yeah.” I blew out a sigh, leaning back on my hands, cross-legged on the carpet. “It’s nice. I remember when she took that picture.”
Kylie blinked at me, her eyes very bright behind shiny lenses as she clutched the flashlight to her chest.
“Let’s go to the library tomorrow, princess,” I said, a transparent attempt to move the conversation into less choppy waters. I needed to read some instruction manuals on talking to children about death before speaking to Kylie about Carissa. “We can get you some new books. How’s that?”
She didn’t buy my breezy subject change, I could tell by the way she pressed her lips together, her gaze flickering back to the photo. “We’ll have to ask Mommy.”
I heaved myself to my feet and held out a hand. She linked her clammy fingers through mine. “Maybe I can pick you up after school tomorrow.”
S till frame images bloomed behind my eyelids at night. Nocturnal flowers that needled my heart until I fell asleep, if I was even lucky enough to sleep.
I’d shut my eyes and see Carissa pulling off her nightgown, getting ready for work while I pretended I wasn’t staring at the long line of elegant knots snaking up her spine. Or something that looked like a slow-motion gif, her lips pursing around a cigarette as she took a long drag and exhaled languid clouds of smoke. How her mouth had actually formed an O of surprise—I’d always thought that only happened in novels—when I asked her to marry me, her finger trembling as I slid the ring into place. The way her eyes shone in the sun, they looked so much different in daylight. Goosebumps would always pepper her skin whenever I kissed her behind her ear and wrapped my arms around her waist as she stood on her tiptoes, trying to get a teacup out of the cabinets. I was about a foot taller; I always got it for her, made her kiss me as thanks. She’d call me a Norse god every time I unscrewed a lid she couldn’t get off, her hand at her heart, lashes fluttering. The way water would bead on her throat when she took a bath and I made excuses to ask her questions, stick my head around the bathroom door.
I’d think how I’d always want to remember her that way, me walking in on her accidental beauty. She’d be a flower pressed between pages, forever preserved. But then that image of her in the tub would fade, shrouded by a much different scene. I’d remember how ragged that cut across her throat had been when I found her dead in that same bathtub, blood everywhere; marbling the drain, splattered on the shower tile, rivulets dried brown and flaky on her pale skin. How awful that engagement ring looked on her dead finger; I’d wanted to take it off immediately, but I’d been too afraid to touch her, that would make the fact she was actually dead real. How I’d whirled around and found Dexter staring at me from the hallway off the bathroom, blood caked on the white paws that had always looked like socks against his orange fur. It had been the first time he hadn’t looked at me with abject hatred, but then that might have been my imagination. I don’t know how long we stared at each other, frozen in the hallway decorated with bloody paw prints, but I remember he followed me as I walked in a daze to the kitchen and pulled out my cell phone to dial 911.
W hy are there so many people here?” Kylie asked as we fought our way inside the library, and I found myself wondering the same thing. It wasn’t exactly Patriot Place during a football game, but I’d never seen more than a few people milling around the bookshelves during my infrequent library trips.
“Oh.” I pointed at a handwritten sign propped against a table at which an old woman was seated. “It’s a used book sale. Wanna check it out? You won’t have to return them if you buy some books.”
She lurched off, pink pompom on the top of her beanie bouncing, and I followed at a considerably calmer pace, hands jammed in my pockets, nodding at the old woman after she’d smiled at me.
“I was thinking something more along the lines of Nancy Drew,” I said, snatching the battered copy of Lolita out of Kylie’s hands.
“It’s got a pretty cover.”
I couldn’t think what to say to that; half of a naked ass with a fly on it was a long way from lovely, at least as far as I was concerned. “Your mom would have my head if I bought that for you.”
“She says I’m an advanced reader.”
“Not that advanced. What’s wrong with Goosebumps?” I started for the row of children’s books. “The kid section’s over here.”
But she had already sunk to her haunches, pulling out other books, catching her fingers on the slight tears in the covers. “Have you ever read Little Women?”
“Nope.”
She looked up from her crouch, the overhead panel lights reflecting off her glasses. “Mom won’t get mad if I want it, right?”
“I don’t think so. What about The Boxcar Children?” I waved a copy. “How about it?”
“Are they homeless?” She wrinkled her nose. “Why is there a boxcar?”
I sighed and slid the book back onto the shelf as she buried her face between the pages of Little Women. It could be worse, I thought as I settled myself in beside her. At least Lolita was off the table. I rummaged through her stack of possibles and suddenly paused, resisting a sigh. “The Art of War, kid? Are you planning something I need to know about?”
“It just looked interesting. Can I have it?”
“Sun Tzu might be a little too outside your normal realm.” I flipped the book over and scanned the back. “You might have a hard time understanding half of this.” I glanced down at her expectant face, all big eyes and pink cheeks, and blew out a sigh. “We can read it together, then. But I’ll keep it at my house. I don’t think your mom would approve.”
H old out baits to entice the enemy,’” I read aloud in the children’s section of the library half an hour later, adjusting myself on the miniscule chair and feeling faintly blasphemous. Who read The Art of War amidst picture books and bean bags? “‘Feign disorder, and crush him.’”
“Does that mean, like, setting a trap?” Kylie had planted both elbows on the scarred plastic table, fists jammed under her chin.
“I think so, something like that. Like when you lay out treats for Dexter and snatch him up when he’s in the middle of eating them. ‘Number twenty-one: If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him.’”
She squinted up at me, disapproval in her voice. “So, run away?”
“It’s about being smart.” I knocked on the side of her head. “Why stick around if the other side will squash you? Don’t start fights you don’t have a chance of winning. Run away and come up with a different plan. ‘Twenty-two: If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him.’ Like what you do to your brothers when you want the TV remote. Bug them when Mom’s out of the room so they finally blow up at you when she comes back in. They get sent to their room; you get the TV to yourself. Sun Tzu would be proud. ‘Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.’” I ran my finger down the page to the footnotes. “‘Wang Tzu, quoted by Tu Yu, says that a good tactician plays with his adversary as a cat plays with a mouse, first feigning weakness and immobility, and then suddenly pouncing upon him.’”
“But mice are cute,” Kylie said in scandalized tones, eyebrows pulling up.
I clapped her shoulder. “It’s just an analogy.”
“Does Dexter play with mice?”
“Oh, no,” I lied. “Dexter would never. Twenty-three: ‘If he is taking his ease, give him no rest.’ Twenty-four: ‘Attack him when he is unprepared; appear where you are unexpected.’”
Twenty-four echoed in the silence for a few seconds, sinking in horribly.
I blinked back the blood of Carissa’s crime scene threatening to obscure the pages of The Art of War. She hadn’t been prepared for that
fucking asshole; the only asshole she’d been expecting was me, slinking back home from the bar after the fight. And I sure as hell hadn’t expected the sight that greeted me that morning. Welcome to Nightmareland Ben, it’s as fucked up as it sounds. Make yourself at home; you’re gonna be here for a while.
“What’s the matter?” Kylie’s high voice asked, sounding very far away.
“Nothing.” I closed the book with a sharp snap and wedged it into my back pocket. “But I think that’s enough war strategizing for now. You’ve got enough material to give Chris and Declan hell for a long time. Wanna start Little Women?”
T he first of December was the date I’d been dreading. You’d think I could have prepared for it, knowing it would eventually roll around, that I could have beefed up my defenses and talked myself through letting the day pass like any other. If I could make it through her death, I could make it through the day we were supposed to get married.
None of that mattered at all when I cracked my eyes open that morning. I had to hold onto Dexter like he was a life raft and I was bobbing alone in the Atlantic. I didn’t let his dirty looks dissuade me, and I didn’t let him go, even though it earned me more than a few scratches on my forearms.
Carissa wouldn’t let me see her dress, citing bad luck and a few old wives’ tales, but I found it in her closet a day after she died. It hung there mocking me, pearls on the top section winking beneath the light of the chandelier she’d insisted I install above racks of her clothes. She would have looked perfect in it. The neckline was low enough to show her clavicle and the rest would have been snug until her calves, where it flared out like smoke. A mermaid dress was how she’d described it to me, the only hint she’d give after denying my request to see her in it. She’d been big on wedding superstitions. Something borrowed, something blue, something old, something new. The dress was new, check. She’d bought antique diamond earrings, those were old. A friend had the perfect pair of heels she could borrow. And your eyes are blue, I’d told her, but she just snorted and said you don’t wear eyes, babe. The blue thing will have to be the garter, or something.
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