A woman from the cleaning service was the only other person who had been in Kennedy’s room, but years ago, after Gerry had found some jewelry boxes and notebooks moved, the curling iron and the lava lamp all shifted around, he had switched services. Everything has its spot, he’d told her repeatedly. He’d told the new one not to bother with that room at all.
Now Gerry tentatively unmade the corners of the old bedding, working around the half-spilled crates of tapes and crammed racks of CDs. A button stabbed into Kennedy’s corkboard read Hope Not Fear Clinton Gore ’92. Earlier that day he’d been sure to take down the Obama/Biden sign, one of only two in their neighborhood, before he got a letter from the homeowners’ association about the election’s being over.
The duvet was dark violet with a spray of a lilac pattern across it. Everything had been purple that year.
He recalled the name of the little tub of trouble she’d used on her hair: Manic Panic violet. Kennedy had stained all the towels with each dye job. Gerry remembered Laine had cried over the steeple-gray Williams Sonoma ones blemished with streaks of violet; she shouted that Kennedy didn’t respect her. Kennedy shouted there was more to life than money. He thought he’d have to draft a lawyer’s letter to force the two women to communicate again. The tops of Kennedy’s ears were violet for weeks, like she had a bad sunburn.
Laine and Gerry had hated their girls’ style choices at the time, each new one cutting more, the short, bell-shaped dresses; the clunky, mannish boots; the distressed clothes from charity stores. What were they rebelling so hard against? He couldn’t believe it when he started seeing the Salvation Army on the credit card bill. He took it as a slight against all that he’d worked for. The girls were honors students at the best public school in the county. Even if it had some lower-income residents from Longwood, Liberty High School had a great arts program and athletics, the kind of place that he’d dreamed of attending when he was a kid.
Gerry lifted the duvet up and smelled it. It didn’t smell like Kennedy. The scent was musty, like old cigarettes, though he’d quit and no one had smoked in the house in at least a decade. He still had time to clean it. Gerry stripped the bedding quickly—years since he’d made a bed himself. How was this to be done? He stepped on a cassette case on the floor and felt it crack. Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet, the cassette read when he picked it up. He set it on the bookshelf. He tugged the new mauve sheet over the mattress. After years on a prison cot, a person deserved a well-made bed.
When Gerry was satisfied, he gathered up the old duvet and went across the hallway to his home office. He dropped the duvet in a leather chair and went to the phone on his large carved desk. He had Carter’s cell number programmed into his speed dial, and although she almost always picked up, this time it went to voicemail.
“Carter, it’s Dad,” he said, cringing at his own adherence to tradition; she’d insisted on calling him Gerry since her days in rehab at twenty-two, when she said they needed to deal with each other on adult terms. “I really think you should plan to be here for more than the dinner. Come on the drive out with me. Just come by and we’ll ride together. Leaving at ten.” He hoped the deadline might work.
Gerry set the phone down and scooped up the duvet. Downstairs in the mudroom, he crammed the whole thing into the washing machine, but as he measured the liquid soap, he looked down and noticed a zipper ran along one edge of the purple cover. The cover should probably be separated from the duvet, Gerry realized. He yanked the bedding back out and unzipped the duvet cover, shaking and pulling. The white, fluffy comforter inside tumbled out. With it came a perfectly folded one-by-one-inch square of notebook paper, the end of it tucked inside so it formed a little envelope made out of itself.
Gerry stared at the shape of it against the porcelain tile of the laundry room. He left the bedding where it lay and picked up the tiny note. As he stooped to pick it up, he felt a burning sensation in his fingertips. His cardiologist had warned him about leaning over—avoid raking leaves, or taking the golf bag out of the trunk, the man had said, as if Gerry had had the nerve to show his face at the club in the last fifteen years. His fingers fumbled for the thin paper before grasping it. He breathed deeply and straightened. Holding it between his thumb and index finger, he peered at it like it was a fossil discovered on a beach. If the police hadn’t found it all those years ago, Kennedy must have shoved it so far inside they’d overlooked it—or perhaps it had felt like a tag and they didn’t pull it out.
He carried it across the hall to his office and set it gently on the desk, staring at the tiny white square shape it made there in the middle of the leather blotter between the stapler and the letter opener. He reached out and slowly unfolded it.
Chapter 2
Kennedy rode with her father for an hour with the flowers he’d brought clutched against her chest, breathing in, smelling them. She had been surprised when she saw that Gerry had laid an old jacket of hers from the closet across the front seat. It had a cluster of round pins still clinging to the lapel—one for the band the Smiths, an AIDS awareness button, and one that she knew had made Laine and Gerry glare with worry: No means no. She pulled the jacket around her more than put it on. She’d wondered if there would be some sad polyester shirt or crushed velvet top to be returned to her upon release, but they had only her wages for her. Between the flowers and a McDonald’s milkshake Gerry insisted was once her favorite, he was like an eager boy who had come to take her on a date.
The drink was a punch of sweet that delighted and then quickly nauseated her. Kennedy was overwhelmed. The smell of the daisies, the world flying past her beyond the window—it was all starting to seem like a trip: the point where the cresting acid would make the banal world beautiful. She gripped the inside of the car door with one hand. It was dizzying.
Gerry drove fast and talked fast. “I’m sorry Carter didn’t come. I’m sure she’ll be at the house.”
But Kennedy said nothing. She didn’t felt like speaking. She just wanted to breathe in the delicate air.
Gerry tapped some buttons on the BMW console and connected a call. Kennedy listened to the ringing, an ordinary thing that seemed alien to her, coming as it did from within a car. After the ringing, her sister’s recorded voice came out of the speakers. “You’ve reached Carter Randall, I can’t pick up.” Then silence.
“Carter? It’s me. I’m out,” Kennedy said to the windshield of the car when Gerry nodded at her.
“Give us a damn call, how about it!” Gerry exclaimed.
Carter Randall. Kennedy had almost forgotten she still went by it. Carter had discarded their surname, Wynn, years ago, like a baby-doll dress. At the height of the media coverage it made sense to all of them for Carter to hide under their mother’s name. No one in her family had thought any of this would be permanent. It would right itself like any other record-skip in suburban life, no more serious than a possum in the garage, a quiet separation, or a DUI. Her dad was a lawyer after all. He had told Kennedy all the charges would be dropped. He had told her the defense attorneys were looking into the possibility that the crime was connected to the Colonial Parkway Murders—a string of lovers’-lane murders a few years before that had never been solved. I-64 ran practically past the woods, he’d argued, and these victims were all young people too.
A year after Kennedy went to jail, Carter had brought in a page from SPIN magazine showing Trent Reznor wearing a homemade “Free Kennedy Wynn” shirt during his Richmond concert. It was a rush, and for a minute Kennedy felt free from the not knowing—all the thoughts of Did I do this? But ultimately it only put murder groupies onto her family. People who clipped things from newspapers or, a few years later, found case details online. Those fans dubbed her “Dead Kennedy,” just like the kids in high school had done. Carter tried not to tell her about the emails and phone calls that still sometimes made their way through filters. Men wanting to get in touch with Kennedy, others telling Carter, �
��You’ll do,” because of their resemblance.
Carter had once been a mathlete and won scholarships to Drama Summer Intensives, but Kennedy had attended more college inside of a prison than Carter had managed to outside of one. She often wondered what Carter might have been without her as a twin.
There was a faint scent of perfume on the collar of the shapeless black dress Carter had chosen for her, which Gerry had brought to the prison. Kennedy wondered if she’d tried it on.
She noticed that Gerry took a different exit from the highway, one she didn’t remember. It meant they didn’t have to drive down Smoke Line, past the woods.
“Here we are,” Gerry said, pulling up to the house in Blueheart.
Kennedy hadn’t realized they were there already: after fifteen years away, the neighbors’ houses all looked generic to her. She saw their house was bigger and more ostentatious than she had recalled. The Wynn house was pale brick and stucco. The roof peaked in four separate places to imitate a Victorian skyline. The portico columns held up nothing. The front hall towered, the highest peak, even though it was an empty room used for little more than removing one’s shoes. They always did remove their shoes, even in high school, when she and Carter wore Docs that could take a half hour to undo.
Gerry was gently cursing about the fact that Carter’s car wasn’t there yet, but Kennedy barely noticed. She opened the SUV door and got out, feeling suddenly shaky on her legs. She stared up at her old home.
“Where does she live now?” Kennedy asked. In all the visits over the years, Carter had mostly told her about Gerry, or about current music, films, or trends. The visits, she supposed, had been meant to distract her from her surroundings, and Carter had been good at it. She’d heard about Carter’s boyfriend and sex life over the years, but they’d never discussed Haley. It was only at her final visit, six months ago, that Carter had brought her up. “I still miss Haley,” she said, and when Kennedy only nodded, Carter pressed. “Tell me honestly . . .” Carter faltered and didn’t ask, though her face said everything.
Kennedy reached for her mantra: “I don’t know what happened that night.”
“I think I’m a little tired of that line after fifteen years.” Carter’s visits stopped abruptly after that. She wasn’t there for visiting hours the following weekend and had not returned since.
Gerry waved his hand. “She and Alex broke up. I don’t get it. She moved into an apartment in the Museum District. It’s all right, they’ll get back together soon.”
Her father pocketed the keys and began to detail the afternoon plans: catered lunch, neighbors and family he’d invited to stop in. Plans. Plans were something she hadn’t had in a decade and a half. She glanced down the cul-de-sac at the stately houses, their blank windows, wondering if people were watching her arrive home and if they’d really come by later.
Kennedy remembered how Carter had complained about their parents’ need to impress after moving to Blueheart Woods from the city, how they were hippies turned yuppies turned people who yelled about welfare reform during the 1992 election. The girls’ natural distrust of their parents had been inchoate until the night Carter made Kennedy watch Manufacturing Consent, the documentary about Noam Chomsky. Politics were always beyond Kennedy; she’d spent civics class with her head down, hair hiding her sleeping eyes. But when the double videocassette from the library and three joints were finished she saw her parents as one part of a larger, oppressive agenda. The word hegemony was stuck in her head for weeks, like a curse.
Now Kennedy gazed up at the dormer windows that had been hers and Carter’s as girls. Gerry was already moving away from the BMW SUV, expecting she would easily walk back into this world, this affluence that wasn’t understood and made no impact at Heron Valley. They’d sent her away because the state wanted to make an example of her, send a message that rich kids go to jail too. That’s what their lawyers had told her and her parents. They’re threatening life no parole if we don’t plea out. After they’d been fighting for over a year it was Gerry who finally told her to take it. Even Laine had worn down.
Kennedy stood there so long that Gerry turned back, gave her a questioning glance.
In the garden in front of the dining room window the glass globe still shone atop its wrought iron stick: a recycled-glass sphere the size of a bowling ball, coiled with gold and teal strands of color. “I gave that to Mom for her fortieth birthday.”
Kennedy remembered Laine had cried when she opened it. Although now she wondered if her emotion came from some other place. Both girls had known their parents were heading for divorce, that they had turned into Bill and Hillary, keeping separate schedules for everything from dinner to TV watching. Eventually, their mother had moved out, three months before her death, because only Laine Wynn would initiate divorce while going through chemo. Taking care of her had been Carter’s job; taking care of Kennedy had been Gerry’s.
“You’re back, and she would be proud of you today,” Gerry said decisively. He clapped his hands together as if dusting them off. Done with it. Done with a long-ago tragedy in that way in which men try to own death, deciding when and where it matters and how long to grieve.
“I made up your room,” he said.
It hadn’t occurred to Kennedy that anything would need to be done. She edged into the foyer, removed her shoes, a new pair of black Mary Janes purchased by Carter—a little-girl shoe, almost as if her twin couldn’t conceive of her having aged in the time she’d been in prison. She noticed a wall had been removed between the foyer and the sitting room. The paint and furniture looked new: teal curtains, white paint, a textured brown wallpaper on the accent wall, and a long chocolate leather couch. Everything crisp, masculine. Like a luxury hotel where no object had meaning. She crossed the room and gazed at the new gas fireplace. Gerry came over, excited to tell her about the fuel efficiency and show her how to turn it on.
Above it, there was a large wood frame surrounding a photograph of Gerry just after Kennedy and Carter were born. His hair was longish, sandy, and he sported a mustache. He was holding a girl on each forearm, bundles light as loaves of bread. Kennedy had seen it many times, but in an old album years before.
“My decorator, Laura, found it, did some cleanup work on the print, had that specially mounted.”
“Which am I?” Kennedy asked.
They both stepped closer, peering at the long-ago babies. The one that had Gerry’s attention was crying. The other small face, only a few days old, was placid.
Gerry chuckled. “Laine didn’t always mark the photographs with your names, because she thought it was obvious which was which. And it was to us, at the time.”
He walked over to the sound system and flicked it on, keen to show her everything. He paused. “You looked identical, but you were different. She was born first . . .”
Ten minutes before her, but Kennedy was the more dominant personality from the start. Their mother said it was like that even in the womb—there was one side of her belly that kicked harder and she always implied it was Kennedy who did the kicking. Kennedy had always suspected Carter was her father’s favorite too—until Haley Kimberson was found in Blueheart Woods. Then he’d turned his attention to Kennedy, and she became his project.
Kennedy saw her reflection in the glass frame as she frowned and said, “She stopped visiting me.”
“I know.”
Kennedy nodded. She’d felt abandoned by her in the last few months of her sentence. But that wasn’t fair, was it? It sounded like her sister had gone through some things, if she’d really moved out from Alex’s. Life had gone on and Kennedy had been a madwoman locked in a tower. Who wants to deal with those bitches?
* * *
—
The chafing dishes set up along one side of the dining room presented a buffet dedicated to Kennedy’s favorite foods from age sixteen: lasagna, onion rings, fried rice, egg rolls, mini tacos, and m
ini samosas. There were ceramic bowls of dill pickles, egg salad, Chex Mix, and various sugared sour candies. The offerings would have been better suited to a kid’s birthday party than a welcome-home party with a guest list of two adult women and a fifty-seven-year-old man. Gerry told her the rest of the family would be there at one thirty. Even though Kennedy was pretty sure he hadn’t spoken to them in a decade, he’d apparently invited her mother’s sister, Aunt Jackie, and the cousins from that side. She remembered when catered buffets had been a normal part of her life—now “chow” meant a cafeteria line with barely recognizable offerings.
Gerry walked up behind Kennedy as she stood in the dining area. He put his hands on her shoulders and pressed down, gently massaging her. She realized she had stiffened. In fifteen years of living and speaking only with women, no one had once touched her without asking. They heard a car in the drive, and Gerry’s hands fell away.
“It’s Alex!”
Gerry paced eagerly to the window. His belly had expanded slightly, pushing against his shirt buttons, and his hair had grayed—things Kennedy didn’t notice when he came to visit at Heron Valley but that she saw now, observing him in contrast to the house and her memories of him there.
“If they’re not together why did you invite him?” Kennedy asked, defending her sister even in her absence.
Little Threats Page 2
