Some of them handled it better than others. Augustus hid his, for the most part. Colleen and Evangeline, both healers, never struggled the way the other girls did, and even rose to the occasion when help was needed.
Madeline, with her intense empathic senses, Maureen with whatever delusions caused her to wake screaming in the night, were reminders that not everyone was happy with the lot they’d been dealt.
As for Charles, he only had a touch of telepathy, and it worked best when he wasn’t anywhere near the rest of his family, or their home. He used it to his advantage when he could and dismissed it when he couldn’t.
But Elizabeth’s was less a nuisance, and more of a curse. And where Irish Colleen often tried to downplay what her youngest daughter’s foresight was doing to her sanity and her soul, likely in hopes Elizabeth would come to believe this as well, Charles knew better. When she cried out in the night, it was he who stood at her door to show her she wasn’t alone, or crawled in beside her in bed to hold her until she fell back asleep. His bedroom was the farthest from Elizabeth’s, so he knew he could not be the only one hearing her nocturnal fits, but he was the only one who ever sought to comfort her.
Elizabeth is in danger of losing her mind if she can’t learn to deal with these visions in a healthy way, Colleen said once. Indulging her, validating her fears only makes them more real.
Charles had never wanted to hit a woman as much as he did his sister in that moment, though a part of him suspected she was right. As long as Elizabeth believed her visions were terrorizing her, they would.
But there was knowing and there was doing. And oftentimes when he found her, awake and crying, her nightshirt was covered in the dampness of her own tears and fear-induced sweats. He couldn’t let her suffer, especially when everyone else in the house seemed determined the suffering was for her own good.
So, he comforted her. Loved her. Protected her.
And if he had to go beat the asses of every fifth grader in Elizabeth’s class to do these things, then so fucking be it.
* * *
Elizabeth hadn’t said which of the kids had harassed her, and neither did the teacher, so if he couldn’t get one of them to turn rat fink and narc, then he’d punish them all.
Charles reasoned that first recess would come an hour or two after the start of school, so he stood outside the wrought iron gates at eight in the morning and waited.
A shrill bell ripped him from his reverie. He turned to see a haphazard line of ten-year-olds streaming from the double doors of the large brick façade. A brief wave of nostalgia hit Charles as he saw kids make a beeline for their favorite section of the schoolyard. Some girls staked their claim at the white outlines of the hopscotch. A group of boys and girls flung themselves at the swings and in seconds were flying high into the air. Others gathered around in a huddled circle on an empty swatch of pavement, prepared to play jacks.
To be that innocent again, thought Charles.
The sentiment didn’t last long. These children were not innocent. These insolent, bullying little shits had kept Elizabeth sleepless and crying the past couple of nights.
Charles checked his pocket for the brass knuckles. Still there. He wouldn’t use them, but these little assholes didn’t know that.
He’d just decided to make the circuit, starting with the hooligans on the swings, when Elizabeth finally exited the building. She hung her head, hair falling around her face like a shield. Behind her trailed five or six children, stepping on her heels, slapping at her arms. He couldn’t hear their taunting words from where he stood, but he didn’t need to.
This definitely made it easier for Charles, who would have struck the fear in God of every last kid on the playground, but preferred to only harass those who deserved it. It would be better to attack where the problem existed, and here was the problem, flashing in neon lights like a Dixie Beer sign.
Charles tossed his cigarette into the cobblestone street and squeezed through the narrow opening of the fence, near the baseball diamond. He jogged across the field until he hit cement and then slowed his pace, winded. Charles the football star had, in the past few years, been replaced by Charles the hard-partying playboy, but even in front of a bunch of sniveling kids he had an image to maintain.
By the time he reached the cluster of shits antagonizing his sister, Charles was well recovered. He straightened his collar and stepped right into the middle of their bully-fest, wedging himself between the other children and his sister. Elizabeth, at first surprised and then, eyes filled with complete awe, pressed her small body into his side and burst into tears.
“Huck,” she whispered, and that seemed to be all she could say.
“I take it you little pisswads are the ones fucking with my sister?” He beamed a smile at them. His teeth gleamed, and he hoped he looked less like the handsome heir the world saw him as and more like the monster emerging from their closets and under their beds.
The children sputtered their responses. None put together words anywhere near resembling a sentence.
And then one brave boy managed, “She’s our friend. We’re just playing.”
Charles ran his hands over his baby sister’s matted hair. “Playing? Swell, let’s play a game where I make all of you cry, too. Yeah? Sound like fun? Sounds like so much fucking fun, right?”
One little girl, with long black hair tied in the ugliest bow Charles had ever seen, burst into tears.
“No?” Charles laughed. “Well, it sounds like fun for me. Because if you can dish it out, you can handle it, you spoiled, ungrateful little assholes.” He smiled at the little girl crying. “Not so much fun when you’re on the other end of it, now is it? Not so much fun when you’re not king of the fucking jungle anymore?” He moved his hands around the small group, noting a larger group had gathered to watch. “Are we having fun yet?”
“She… she… said my uncle was going to die,” a little boy stammered. “She started it!”
Charles sighed and leaned in. “I don’t know how to tell you this, son, but if Elizabeth says your uncle is going to die… well, the old man’s a goner.”
The boy erupted in tears. Elizabeth whimpered at Charles, clutching her hands around his waist.
“So, look. Here’s how it’s gonna be, you spawns of Satan.” Charles squeezed his sister. “If I hear of any of you touching my sister… no, so much as looking at her sideways, I’m coming after you. You might be thinking, he can’t do anything to us, we’re kids!” He nodded, smiling, leveling his toothy grin on every single child individually. “True. But I can hunt down every single one of your fathers and beat their asses into oblivion. I can have them blacklisted from every financial establishment and country club in New Orleans, and you’ll all be eating Cracker Jacks out of toilet bowls, ya dig? And there isn’t a judge in town I can’t buy or persuade to let me walk for doing it.” He cackled. “And you know it, don’t you? You know who Elizabeth is, so you know who I am. And you know that when you’re visiting your daddies in Touro Infirmary, after I put them there… on your bus pass, since that’s all you’ll be able to afford when I’m done with your families… I’ll be drinking cognac and partying my way up and down Uptown, free as a bird.”
There must be a darker side to himself, something far past troublemaking and veering into the territory of outright wickedness of the soul, for Charles drew great pleasure from the fear in the children’s faces, fear he’d created. The urge to say more, to say far worse, crept to the tip of his tongue, and oh how wonderful it would be to see them dissolve into a puddle of their own tears! These hateful, terrible shits who hadn’t been raised to play nicely with others; whose parents were likely bullies, too.
But the face of his father appeared before Charles, and he stilled the venom bubbling up within him. Any signs of mischief had faded from the eyes of these children, replaced by the kind of deep terror that reduces even adults to helpless infants. The other kids, those looking on, shared that fear, and he knew that, by the time the bell
rang again, all the children of the school would know the price of messing with Elizabeth Deschanel.
Charles knelt and kissed Elizabeth on the forehead. “And you’ll tell Huck exactly which of these little assholes don’t abide by the rules, won’t you?”
Elizabeth nodded, playing along, though they both knew she would never share names, for his words were true. He would go after their fathers and would never see consequence for it. And, just like with that Evers douchebag, he wouldn’t lose a minute of sleep.
“So, we square?”
Charles didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled Elizabeth along and walked away from the crowd of whimpering children, and lit a cigarette.
* * *
That night, Charles lay awake, his baby sister’s hair spread across his chest. Her light snores lulled him slowly into restful sleep. He had no doubt what he’d done was right and was good. He would do anything to right a wrong done against his family.
Anything.
This was why he was heir.
* * *
Charles awoke to his mother’s screeching from the doorway. It wasn’t the first time he’d risen to this sound, and it would not be the last, but this particular decibel of shrillness set his alarm bells tingling.
Elizabeth had returned to her own bed sometime during the night, but he’d left his arm looped back over the pillow and now it ached from the lack of movement. He squinted against the light spilling in from the hallway and propped himself half-up with his good arm.
“What time is it?”
Irish Colleen stormed into the room. She towered over him, despite her small stature. “It’s time for you to pull your life together, Charles. It’s time for you to understand consequences so maybe, maybe, you’ll understand you cannot do as you please, whenever you please. This time, you’ve ruined someone else’s life.”
“Ma, I have no clue what you’re running on about.” Charles shielded his eyes and groaned.
“Running on? You and your mouth, Huck. I swear on the Holy Cross, not even St. Jude the Apostle would take on this lost cause,” Irish Colleen hissed. “I have always said, I don’t care who you run around with, but use protection! Is that so hard?”
“Ma, please, just tell me what I did already, so we can get this over with.”
Irish Colleen threw a folded piece of paper at the end of the bed. Charles massaged his dead arm as he watched his mother with growing caution. He narrowed his eyes and reached for the letter.
She snatched it from his hands before he could read it. “It will take you too long to read it. You got a young girl pregnant, and I do mean girl. She’s a freshman in high school.” Irish Colleen’s mouth turned into a disgusted sneer. “Pregnant. I should have known this would happen eventually! What luck, that this floozy is the first. You are not the man your father was. August is rolling in his grave, and I hope to heaven he doesn’t blame me for any of this.”
Charles didn’t hear the rest of what she said. Pregnant. A girl was pregnant, and he was the father, and… how? He’d always used protection.
Eh, not always. Not when he was too high or drunk to remember. Not if pulling out a rubber dampened the mood.
“Who is she?” he asked, and then braced himself for his mother’s venom.
“Her name is Shelly, but I suspect that doesn’t help you narrow it down, now, does it?”
It didn’t help, except that he was able to exclude most of the girls he and Dan Weatherly ran with, as there were no Shellys in the trust fund crowd, not that he’d met. But it didn’t exclude Dan’s wider net of girls not quite as privileged, but certainly eager. His parties were filled with girls like this.
“Must have been someone you trifled with this spring, because she’s several months along, according to her mother.” Irish Colleen closed her eyes. “They didn’t ask for money, but I’ll have the Sullivans send enough to take care of this mess and then some.”
“I thought abortion was a grievous sin?” Charles couldn’t resist. He was no angel, but then, neither was his mother, despite what she liked to portray.
“You’re not too old for me to whip you.”
“Or slap me,” Charles quipped.
“I won’t have some illegitimate bastard coming after your inheritance, Huck. Whether you care, or understand, or care to understand, your father, God rest his soul, left me in charge of your future. Unless you plan to marry this girl you can’t even remember, then this cannot happen. And I will answer to God for this sin, yes, but I’ll be damned if I don’t do what my husband asked me to do, as his soul slipped on to heaven.” Irish Colleen crossed herself and looked up. “Your transgressions are my cross to bear, for my sins.”
Charles rolled his eyes, but inside, his chest tightened. His stomach fluttered. While she rambled on about his sins, he’d searched for the answer, as to who this girl might be. He narrowed it down to the eclipse party. Spring. Freshman. Shelly. He couldn’t remember her name, but he would never forget the, I’m fourteen, daddy. Even Charles had some scruples, and he’d felt sick about his tryst with a girl no older than Maureen. But then he’d forgotten about it, shelved it next to the rest of his sins, until now.
“Shelly,” he said, for the first time aloud, something he hadn’t known when he’d let her ride him through the weirdness of the eclipse, drug-sick and far from himself.
“Yes, Shelly, not that it matters,” Irish Colleen snapped. “Whatever her name is, she isn’t going to bear your child, Charles August Deschanel. No woman who is not your wife will ever bear your child. I won’t allow it.” She stood, folding the letter. She placed it neatly into the fold of her apron. “What’s more, it’s time, I can see now, to move forward with what I’ve been putting off too long.”
Charles closed his eyes and looked away. He was numb.
“It’s time to start planning a marriage for you.”
Irish Colleen closed the door, and the room was again swathed in darkness.
Thirteen
White Rabbit
Twenty-seven was too young to die.
This was Madeline’s last coherent, lucid thought before the acid really took its hold. There was always that waiting period, sometimes ten, twenty, or even thirty minutes, after the hit had dissolved on the tongue, but nothing had shifted in the outside reality. Each time, though she knew it took time to stretch through the system and into the brain, she wondered if it was a bad dose, if she’d be stuck in sober reality while her friends floated through the world, tripping daisies, oblivious to all but the moment.
Jill and Josh didn’t wait for the LSD to make its mark. They were squirreling around on the floor before the hits even dissolved, and Madeline didn’t know if they wanted her to watch or just didn’t care if she did.
“Get a room,” she said as her eyes rolled.
“This is our room, sister,” Jill mumbled between sloppy kisses and the crinkling sound of Josh fumbling with the condom wrapper, and Madeline realized with a sinking dread that if she stayed, she would be trapped in the back of this tiny, smelly van with the sound and smell of their sex.
The dread deepened when she understood she’d have to go home and ride out her trip there. If she couldn’t manage to hide in her room for the next twelve hours…
Slurp. Suck. Moan.
Madeline stifled her disgust at the quickly escalating situation and reached for the old rusted van door. With a grunt and a heave, she flung it open. It made a pained squeal as it moved along the rutted track. For a moment she forgot where she was. An empty parking lot yawned ahead, and the only other inhabitants were some abandoned shopping carts and the garbage not yet picked up.
She hopped out onto the cement. Her effort to close the ancient door behind her was only half-hearted, and it reopened again, but the lovers inside didn’t notice.
The Schwegmann’s off Tchoupitoulas. Not that close to Oak Haven, but not exactly Timbuktu, either. Far enough that walking would take too long, but she had no money for a taxi. That left only one option.
Her thigh still ached from the assault borne by the needles at the tattoo parlor earlier. She’d always wanted the butterfly etched into her flesh, the wings that would carry her away. Now that she had it, she was distraught to discover she felt no more capable of flying.
Madeline slung her beaded bag across one shoulder and stuck her thumb into the night.
* * *
Evangeline was halfway through her psychology studies, serving out the remainder of her nightly homework sentence with eyes glazed and utterly unfocused, when Madeline came stumbling through the front door of Oak Haven like a bull in a china shop.
Had her entrance been less dramatic, Evangeline might have had time to warn her. Mama is on a warpath, and the target is you, sis.
Irish Colleen launched into sentry mode in the foyer before Madeline could settle on a place to drop her ugly bag. Madeline was too busy spinning—for reasons Evangeline couldn’t begin to comprehend, though she suspected heavy drugs, because it was always drugs with Maddy—to notice, but Irish Colleen’s heavy disappointment boomed through the house with such force that Evangeline inadvertently let her notebook slip off her lap and land on the floor. It remained there, forgotten, as she waited to see how this particular family episode would unfold.
“What are you on?” cried Irish Colleen, sniffing about her daughter as if LSD had a scent. She snapped her fingers before Madeline’s eyes, further demonstrating the lack of depth in her knowledge of how drugs worked. Madeline erupted into what Colleen liked to call, “pothead giggles,” though they were now mostly everyday giggles for Maddy.
“What am I on? What am I off?” Madeline parroted between her uncontrolled and inexplicable laughter. Her face was a sheen of sweat and runny makeup, and Evangeline wished she could hit pause long enough to go in and wipe her down. It wasn’t helping the already unhinged situation.
The Seven Boxed Set Page 14
