In Her Skin

by Kim Savage

  They ought to be living in the moment.

  If they were living in the moment, they would have seen that my beaded clutch bag is bursting at the seams because of the black tights and a white shirt I have stuffed in there to change into. They would have noticed that I stole Mrs. Lovecraft’s credit card and downloaded an Uber app on my phone linked to the credit card. They would have discovered the duffel bag under my bed containing rubber gloves, a half-face respirator, and an ax.

  They would have seen the lime-green sweater tied to the railing of the fire escape, rippling in the wind.

  But I choose to live in this moment, and for this and other reasons, I wonder who the con really is. I am enjoying the mini tartes flambées and salmon tartare and cucumber cups with vichyssoise, French hors d’oeuvres that I cannot spell, passed in my honor. The room looks magical, with white lights and short candles on tall tables and gauze and glass. And flowers, so many flowers, all white, because there’s something virginal about being adopted: a fresh start. The guests’ faces are pretty, or else frozen, and sometimes that can be pretty, too. They congratulate me and hold my hands when they do. There is a band playing a mix of old-timey and current music, but I am finding I like the old-timey better, because it suits this fancy place. Gerry is my constant companion, and he would look dashing in his tux if he were not so dour.

  You linger at the edges of my vision.

  You think of killing as art; on the opposite end of the spectrum is creation. The party is the finishing touch. At least that’s how it seemed earlier. But now something is bothering you; even across the room, I have witnessed a swing from manic socializing to dark lurking. I suspect it is me enjoying myself. I suspect you see me relaxed. I no longer act trapped, because I know I am leaving soon.

  The good con feeds on other people’s mistakes.

  I have no room for mistakes. I extract myself from a dull conversation with a horse-faced couple and cross the room to you drinking a third glass of champagne after Mr. Lovecraft took the first and then the second from your hand. Around us, people laugh and talk.

  “This is the worst night of my life,” I say.

  “You seem to be enjoying yourself,” you say accusingly.

  “It’s hard—” I start.

  “Being Vivi?” you ask. “Because of Mrs. Weir’s relatives being here? Yes, I imagine it is. Of course, you’re lucky they live abroad and never saw Vivi much. There’s that.”

  I nod. I will let you fill in the rest, what you think my discomforts are. What you want them to be.

  “I imagine it’s hard for you to fake stuff like this. Basic etiquette stuff, like how many hors d’oeuvres to take, returning glasses to trays. How to politely leave a conversation.”

  You needed so little to figure me out. But I needed so much from you.

  “You don’t even know who’s important in this room. Like over there: that’s Dick and Anne Marie Connolly.” She nods at a handsome couple surrounded by other couples across the room. “The Boston Symphony Orchestra couldn’t operate without them. That guy? John Fish, Fish Construction? Dad’s closest competitor. Keep your enemies close, right?”

  I look for Gerry, recessive Gerry, who is standing on a high level behind a railing now, watching us. That’s the kind of distance I’ve been waiting for all night, and now I’m caught in a conversation with you. I check my watch, which I insisted on wearing with my dress, though Mrs. Lovecraft gave me the stink-eye, calling it “indelicate.”

  “I usually do,” I say.

  You like that, when I admit to my con tricks, and you soften, wrapping your arm around mine. “I’m sorry, Vivi. I know things have been strange between us lately. It will get better.”

  Until it doesn’t. Until you decide that killing me is a good way to make your parents sweat it out like they have for the last seven years, or until you convince them that my knowledge, the knowledge you gave me, makes me too dangerous. Or maybe it’s just until you have to answer to your bloodlust. Your parents know that one of these things may happen, will happen, and they’ve set it up once again for you to get off, free. It doesn’t matter. I am not waiting around for one of these motives to take hold; I will not find myself rattling bells inside your wall.

  You lean into my ear and say, with predictable kinkiness, “After all, we’re sisters now.”

  Mr. Lovecraft approaches. He wears a pink pocket square that matches my dress, and Mrs. Lovecraft, in tasteful silver-gray, waits a few feet behind, talking with a woman responsible for making sure things run smoothly. “It’s time, girls.”

  He holds out both his arms, and you take one and I take the other and we float to the stage, and this shouldn’t feel as nice as it does. My face is hot, and I wish you had been especially cruel this time, because I need fresh pain to remind me why I am running. Momma said if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, and she was right, wishing is for the common and the hopeless. I need to stop wishing and make things happen.

  The band finishes its last song and the warped sound of a standing mic being repositioned blares over the room. This is it. I will be introduced, kind things will be said, and it will all be a streaky blur. Then I get to step down and sit with my parents at our table and for exactly eight minutes, the director of Adoption America will talk, and this is when I disappear. Mr. Lovecraft speaks first, his women by his side (and I am one of these), and he speaks touchingly of how I came into their lives, and left, but now I am back, and nothing else matters. If I really was Vivi, I bet Vivi wouldn’t agree, because being locked in a shed for seven years matters when it comes to everything.

  He wraps up his speech by staring at the podium for a count of ten.

  “A man doesn’t always get a chance in life to set things right when they go wrong. But on behalf of myself, and Clarissa and Temple, I venture to say that this city has been handed a miracle.” He pauses, this time, for a count of five. “And her name is Vivienne Weir.”

  They are crying. The audience is crying. John Fish is applauding and ugly-crying. Dick Connolly is raising his glass to me. My hands are blocks of ice. Do they expect me to say something?

  And as Mr. and Mrs Lovecraft hug me and sob, you step to the microphone. It takes everyone a minute to regain themselves, but they do, and you wait for them, poised and perfect as that first day I saw you in your carrel with your poems. You hold a folded piece of paper.

  The microphone whines. You readjust it to your height with one hand, and it is awkward, and I want to help you, damn me.

  “Hi everybody. For those who don’t know me, I’m Temple Lovecraft,” you say, in a voice younger and smaller than your own. Humble is the way to go tonight, you have decided, and it hits the right note, because already people are oohing and aahing because Temple is going to speak and she looks darling and she’s gotten so big and what character she must have, to be composed during such a strange time.

  “I wanted to read a poem in honor of Vivi coming home. It’s by Emily Dickinson, and it’s a favorite of ours.” You pause and smile at me shyly. “It goes like this: ‘A death blow is a life blow to some, who till they died did not alive become. Who had they lived, had died but when they died, Vitality begun.’”

  You pause dramatically.

  “To me, this speaks to a second chance for Vivi, and for all of us. We’re so blessed.” You turn to me with bright, glassy tears. “I’m so glad to have you home, Vivi.” You hug me, and we rock, and you are crying and laughing, for a solid minute, it seems, and the guests are now heaving with collective sobs, and I am thinking this is it, you are right, this is my home. This room loves me. This room loves us. I don’t know for sure that you’re going to hurt me; it’s natural that you should be a little jealous, I mean, they’re having a coronation for me. You have confessed things that scared me, but I have known worse, have loved worse. Wolf told me he fantasizes every single time about killing the men he is with. I imagined training pigs to devour the Last One’s flesh.

  Still.

  Whil
e the others sit, I excuse myself and head into the bathroom to pull myself together. The door swings and a maid holding towels in the corner shuffles out. I throw my bag on her empty chair and weep. I have set Wolf on a path and I have no way of letting him know we have to stop, that this was all a mistake, this is a world I can live in, even if it means keeping constant watch on you.

  I look into the mirror and pull my hair away from my face at the temples. “Who are you?” I hiss.

  A man slips into view behind me. I nearly scream.

  Gerry tries to hand me the clutch I abandoned on the chair. “It’s time to go,” he says, in that elegant voice.

  I spin to face him. “What do you mean?”

  He nods at my bag. “I will lie, say you feel sick and are getting some air, but that you are watched by me and there is no worry. When I return, I will tell them you have escaped. Go.”

  I rub a streak of mascara across my cheek with the heel of my hand. “I’m not going. This is where I belong. This is my life now.”

  “A life never knowing when you are going to die is not a life worth living,” he says.

  Tears well, and tears are like wishes: useless. “None of us know when we’re going to die,” I say.

  “Let me put it differently. People will pretend to be your comrades. They will make you do things that braid them to you. But because you did these things does not mean you are these things.”

  Gerry is right and you are wrong. I am not a natural-born killer. If I was, I would have killed the Last One back in that hotel room the night he killed Momma.

  “I have seen the eyes of girls who want to die. For them, it would be better. These girls are not you.” Gerry looks at the door. “This is your last chance. Go.” He looks at his watch. “You have six minutes.”

  I turn to the mirror. I don’t want to die.

  Gerry thrusts the clutch at me. I grab the clutch from his hand, fumble for the phone, and call the car. He nods and leaves as quietly as he came, and I pull my dress over my head, stashing it in the trash can. The black pants and white shirt work perfectly—instantly, I am catering staff—and I slip from the ballroom and into the night while applause roars down behind.

  * * *

  By the time I reach the town house in my Uber I am in a full-on panic. The phone started ringing wildly, and I pitched it out the window before we made the turn off Huntington. My best calculation has the Lovecrafts—or the cops they call—arriving at the town house between four and eight minutes behind me. If Wolf has not finished his job, we are done.

  I fumble with my key. With the lights off, the town house is eerie. The puppy runs to me and pounces at my feet. I grab her and stuff her in my shirt. Wolf appears in the door frame wearing his respirator, like something out of an apocalypse movie. His clothes are covered in plaster and he holds the duffel in one gloved hand. It sags with the weight of its contents. Beyond, I see the gash Wolf has chopped in the wall, and the ax on the floor, its blade powdered with plaster.

  I stare at the duffel too long. Longer than we have.

  “She’s inside?” I say.

  Wolf nods, wild-eyed.

  I gather my courage and shake off the fear. “Then we can go,” I say.

  Wolf peels off his mask and heads for the front door.

  “No!” I yell, and run up the stairs, and he follows me to my bedroom and out the window and onto the fire escape. “They’re right behind,” I huff, steadying the puppy squirming at my neck.

  We stay in the alleys and the shadows and unlit storefronts, making our way across the city to the waterfront. It is far and hard and long, and we duck every time we hear sirens, and we hear sirens a lot. Wolf suffers under the weight of the duffel, under the weight of her bones, and I have to help, but I can’t help while holding the dog, and so I let her go. She follows us for a while until she can no longer keep up. I don’t look back at her, because if I do, I will stop, and there is no stopping. When I take the bag from Wolf, I am surprised at how much bones and hair and scraps of material weigh. When I slow, I imagine Vivi wanting us to go faster. I feel the pull of Vivi, the way she refused the fate the Lovecrafts had given her, biding her time until I came along to free her. “Don’t stop,” I hear her saying in her little-girl voice, and I run faster, am lighter, more agile, dodging the streetlamps and headlights that make us look like the fugitives we are. The first whiff of the ocean hits us as we get to the end of deserted State Street and cross the highway to Atlantic Avenue, exposed and broad, with no alleys and night workers in hard hats. It is the only way to Seaport Boulevard, but we get there, then cross to Northern Avenue with its accusing lampposts staring down upon us from both sides.

  Wolf staggers, breathing hard. Maybe he has begun smoking again or is having a reaction to the plaster dust. Either way, he needs to move if we’re going to make it to the ship in time. We have no clothes, but we have stolen mad money and a bag full of bones that are enough evidence to keep the Lovecrafts from chasing me for the rest of my life. A turn onto Tide Street, then Drydock, and Wolf is nailed by a coughing spasm, and I yell for him to move ahead of me so I can push him along. When his hand dangles at his side, I see a flash of bright blood he coughed into his palm.

  We reach the Black Falcon terminal just as the ship calls final check-in. We move through empty lines marked by velvet ropes. Fat couples belly up to the deck rails, too full of anticipation to show us much attention. I shove my tickets bought with money stolen from the Lovecrafts, my inheritance, into a bored man’s hand, along with our fake IDs. We are made to fill out a form promising we haven’t been sick lately. I kick Wolf to straighten up, and he shoves his bloody hand in his pocket. We look like a young couple crazed by the thought of missing our cruise, I tell myself. We ran into traffic on 93, I tell the man with a giggle. We are so psyched for this vacation. My husband needs it, he came straight from a carpentry job, didn’t even have time to change clothes. We would have been sooo bummed to miss our only vacation, in, like, forever!

  Wolf puts his free hand on my hand holding the duffel. I was swinging it, hard, without realizing. I clear my throat.

  The man points to a tiny camera where our pictures are taken and we are given “cruise cards” in the names of Patrice and Charlie Silver. Pretty names that I stare at a second too long. The cruise cards will get us into our room, and pay for our meals, and give us handy-dandy schedules of each day’s events, including Zumba and mah-jongg. But the Silvers will not leave their room. The Silvers (with their guest beside them) are going to sleep for a long time.

  We scramble up the gangway and follow directions to our room, a crappy, tiny thing on the lowest deck. Wolf is pale and I want only to get him into a bed with a shower going to make steam. I know the TB cough from Tent City, and I know Wolf’s lungs, already weak from infections, will not stand up to it. When we turn the corner, I stop and feel his flaming forehead. I nearly knock him over. He falls to the bed and is asleep before I turn on the shower.

  The duffel sits where I left it on the carpeted floor next to the door. Wolf breathes, wet and sticky.

  “Okay then,” I whisper. “It’s just you and me. I want you to see something.”

  I hoist the duffel onto my shoulder, wincing at the rattle of shifting bones inside, and close the cabin door softly behind me.

  * * *

  You’re wondering if I threw Vivi’s bones overboard.

  It took me five sets of stairs and landings before I found a length of rail unoccupied by cruise-goers taking selfies and making clichéd remarks about the tiny lights of Boston Harbor and the black nighttime sea.

  I opened the zipper partway and held up the bag. It was the first of many times that I have spoken to her since. “Can you see, Vivi? That’s the ocean. The real ocean, not the slice of it that you see from the beach. It’s a dark place that you can get lost in, which is exactly what we need right about now. I don’t know if you got to see it in your lifetime, but I’m pretty sure you did.

  “A friend once
reminded me that I didn’t want to die. And I know you didn’t either. We have that in common.

  “We’re going to be friends now, you and me. And I’m going to teach you something that my momma taught me. The only thing we have to fear in this whole wide world is not remembering. I didn’t remember who I was for a while, and it got me in trouble. I am Jolene Chastain, and you are Vivienne Weir.

  “I am Jolene Chastain. I am Jolene Chastain. I am Jolene.

  “And we’re going on a trip, Vivi. Wolf won’t last, but you and I will. We will be together forever.”

  After that I gave her a good long look at the ocean before I zipped her back up, which felt cruel.

  * * *

  You never came to get me. According to the police report, when you and your parents and the police saw the hole in the wall, you were the one smart enough to yell, “Someone stole the safe!” Quick thinking, you. So many pieces had been put into place, it was easy to pin my disappearance on my bolting disorder, the culmination of a day of excessive stimulation. The damage to the parlor wall was an everyday Back Bay B and E. I have to think Detective Curley is spending his retirement working on both cases in his spare time, combing over the facts at his dining room table under an old cuckoo clock. The clock will chime, and he will still have no answers, day in, day out. He will die frustrated.

  Montreal is the New York City of Canada. It’s where people go to lose themselves and become new people. The problem with cities like Montreal and New York is that you’re always running into new transplants with ambitions, and as I’ve learned, those are dangerous. Better to accept who you are in this life and get on with it. That’s what I figure Gerry did; covered up his betrayal, and stayed working for the Lovecrafts. Gerry knows true evil, whether it’s in the bush or Back Bay, and he can make a home inside it and survive.

  When you accept who you are, you can tap the brakes when you feel yourself veering toward your worst tendencies. For example, every time I want to pretend that I know French, I bite my tongue. I am proud of my new self-control. I have a job waitressing at a place called Frites Alors where they serve grilled cheeses with apples and honey and french fries with mayonnaise and when I go home, Vivi is there, waiting. She lives in a Lucite box now—the duffel bag encased in a Lucite box, that is—because I couldn’t imagine what would happen if I couldn’t get all her parts out during the transfer. She is my insurance, my most valuable thing, and you keep valuable things protected. We talk every night, and she is a good listener.