Little Threats

by Emily Schultz

  “And it was violence that caused that? Funny.” She lit a cigarette and pushed the newspaper around on the table.

  “What?”

  “That violence would be powerful enough to do that for eternity, but happiness doesn’t cut it.”

  * * *

  —

  Everett opened a box in the computer room, which had previously been Haley’s bedroom. He reached in and thumbed books and knickknacks uncertainly, suddenly having a difficult time distinguishing between her possessions and his mother’s. He removed a yellow binder. Inside, his sister’s neat penmanship detailed the French Revolution. Tucked in one of the binder pockets was an ad for United Colors of Benetton. It had been torn from a magazine. Farther down in the box were drawings from her early years that his mother must have saved. He found a mood ring Haley had worn for a few months, insisting it “knew things,” like when it glowed bright turquoise someone she liked was close by. There was a bottle of men’s Eternity cologne with a quarter inch still in the bottom. Haley had dabbed it on because she loved the smell, and wearing men’s cologne was considered cooler. Everett uncapped the bottle. It was like looking at his sister’s smile.

  He stashed a few things in his knapsack, then put the box back and went over to a bureau that had once been in the dining room. Now it was full of stationery, old bills, and uncompleted sewing projects. In a drawer divider, beside sewing scissors and markers, was a stack of patches. Everett reached in and pulled the small tray closer to the front of the drawer. At the back of the divider was the jackknife.

  “Goddamn!” he yelled. “Ma! Ma!”

  Marly appeared in the doorway. “What, Everett? What?!”

  He didn’t want to touch it. After all these years, he didn’t know if it still counted as evidence. The investigators had turned the house upside down as they searched for the possible weapon—Everett remembered even his bedroom being pawed over and sifted through.

  “Oh, that old knife. I found it in the garage four or five months ago. Not too long after you moved out. Swept it up in my dust pile. It was so coated I didn’t know what it was. Guess it fell behind that deep freezer we don’t use anymore.”

  Everett reached into the drawer and pulled out the whole tray that held the scissors, buttons, patches, and knife. He set it on top of the bureau.

  “And you didn’t tell me? Didn’t call anyone? What the hell, Ma!”

  Marly’s voice was flat, beaten. “Well, what for? Who knows—who cares—what knife it was?”

  “Don’t you understand this totally changes the nature of the crime?”

  Marly stubbed out her cigarette. “How? It was a violent crime, and it’s still a violent crime.”

  Everett pushed past her in the doorway and went and got a large Ziploc from the kitchen. He returned and shoved the whole tray inside the plastic bag.

  “Don’t take my good sewing scissors,” Marly protested.

  Everett grabbed his knapsack from the floor and slung it over his shoulder. He picked up the tray, keeping it level so the contents didn’t spill. “When was the last time you even used them?! You stopped living when she left us. I raised myself and tried not to let you die of grief. I was twelve years old the time I threw all your disposable razors out because I didn’t trust you. Pa was the alcoholic, but at least he got sober. He opened himself up to change. You, there’s no change. You think you see her, talk to her, but do you care about her? Or do you only care about pinning everything on the Wynn family? Because let me tell you, there’s three individuals in that family and they’re not all the same.”

  Marly had begun to cry. “Why are you talking like this, Ev?”

  “Go ahead and cry, Ma. But I have to take this somewhere. I have to see this through. For Haley.”

  Everett snagged his coat from the kitchen and ran to his car. He was already on the expressway before he realized he’d left the stereo on from the drive over and it was playing Sister, by Sonic Youth. It was Haley’s CD. The chords to “Schizophrenia” rippled through the interior as the Mustang flew into the left lane, passing the other cars as if they were only phantoms. He felt the tears, the mucus in the back of his mouth.

  Chapter 31

  When Carter pulled up outside her apartment, she saw what looked like Everett Kimberson’s Mustang parked across the street. It was the parking spot she usually tried to get. She passed it and found a parallel spot farther down the block. He wouldn’t just come there without calling, she told herself. She reached into the backseat of her car and took out the shopping bag, which was packed with things she’d picked up for Christmas. Even if Kennedy had stopped speaking to her, she couldn’t skip buying her something for Christmas. Carter glanced up and down the street as she walked back.

  Her place was one of the colonials she’d always hoped for, but the main floor had been divided in half. Hers was the apartment in the front. She got the porch; the woman who lived in the back got the backyard. It was grand on the outside, at least, she told herself. She hefted her bag and grabbed the mail from the box before she stepped inside. There was an acknowledgment of receipt from one of the schools she’d applied to after the lunch she had with Kennedy and Gerry that had left her wondering what she was doing with her life.

  She wouldn’t know if she’d be admitted for several more months. She had no idea how she would pay for or manage such a thing without Gerry’s help. But she’d decided she’d wasted too much time in her life. She had to make the first step and worry about the rest later.

  Carter was in the middle of taking off her boots when the doorbell rang. She pushed the one she’d just taken off on again. If it was him, Carter at least wanted to look put together. She turned around and tripped over the shopping bag stuffed with gifts. She gathered the things up quickly and shoved the bag against the wall. When she opened the door, Everett was there. His eyes were puffy.

  She felt the air thicken, and if she hadn’t been on the Lumalex, she might have called it an overwhelmed feeling. But now she simply breathed back out again.

  “I tried to call you from the pay phone at the store on the corner.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, as if she didn’t know where her own corner store was.

  She smelled the winter on his collar. The leather was cold, like he’d been walking around outside. He permitted the hug, though she kept it briefer than she wanted to. She had her pride.

  “Come in.” Carter drew him by the arm into her hallway. “What happened?”

  “I guess I left my phone at my mom’s.” He sank down onto her couch.

  “No, I mean what happened?”

  “Please don’t hate me.” Everett’s shoulders slumped. He pressed his hands together between his knees and stared at her floorboards.

  “I don’t.” She sat beside him but wasn’t sure if she should touch him again. She didn’t know yet what it meant for him to come there. Lines appeared in his forehead, running vertically up from his nose. His nostrils broadened as he drew in a breath. She knew she was supposed to get up, offer coffee, make things easy, comfort him casually, maybe tell him about her life, what she’d been up to. But she couldn’t actually talk, couldn’t move. All she wanted to do was stare at his face.

  “I’m not even speaking to her anymore,” she said finally.

  Everett straightened and looked at her, silent.

  “I told them about us, and Gerry just hangs up on me since then. Kennedy—she’ll probably come around eventually. If I keep reaching out, but I don’t know why I should.” Carter got up and pulled the shopping bag over to the couch. She stacked the gifts. “Stupid, isn’t it? That I’d buy them things.”

  “She’s your sister,” Everett said. He reached out and thumbed through the objects. He touched a tiny wooden box there.

  “That’s for you,” Carter said. “I don’t know why. Turn the handle.”

  Everett took the miniature handle an
d cranked it. The golden spool inside turned, the bumps plinking off notes—complicated for such a basic piece of hardware, haunting and sad. Carter watched as his mouth pursed and eyes got shiny. It was Sinéad’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” She’d found it among a row of other boxes that played contemporary songs. The Doors, the Beatles, Queen, Celine Dion, Elton John.

  “Silly, right?”

  Everett swiped at his face with one hand. He laughed. “Makes more sense to me than Rochester and Jane. Why’d she fall in love with him? That part about him regaining his sight at the end is bullshit. Why not let the maimed and afflicted stay that way?”

  “You finished reading it.”

  He nodded.

  “So many reasons. He fits the image of the complicated, moody man, right? Then he’s handsome, well-off. And some might say they’re intellectual equals.”

  “What would you say?” Everett turned to her with those bright hazel-green eyes. She noticed his hands were shaking slightly where he held the box.

  “I would say I was young when I read it, and we latched on to it, called your sister Helen instead of Haley, because it was a thing we could all buy into. I mean, fiction is bonding, more so than reality sometimes. A romantic fantasy, in a curriculum of mostly male characters.”

  “You always were the smart one,” he said.

  Carter stared at him. “But if you look at Jane and Rochester it’s also the first time in a long while she has a home, a sense of family.” Carter stopped talking as Everett played the music box again.

  “I know she didn’t do it,” he said.

  She watched his lips saying the words, heard them slowed down. I know she didn’t do it. That wasn’t really what he’d said.

  Carter stood up, moved away. “Why do you know that? I don’t even know that and I’m her sister. I’m not sure if Kennedy knows.”

  “Because I know,” he said, and she watched him hunch and cry.

  * * *

  —

  The knife lay, bagged, inside the tray on his front seat. Everett and Carter both stared at it, his car door open, neither reaching for it. Before he took it out to show her, he’d already borrowed her phone to call and ask Dee Nash if they could meet.

  “What does it mean?” she asked. She felt her whole body shaking.

  “I think it means my father—” Everett stopped short, unable to visualize what had happened to his sister.

  Carter looked up at him and understood now why he’d been crying. It wasn’t just about her—their relationship had never been about only them.

  “He wouldn’t just toss it behind your freezer, would he?” she asked. It wasn’t the hiding spot of an adult man who had done the worst thing imaginable. But she knew Haley hadn’t liked Ted Kimberson; it was one of the reasons she spent so much time away from home at the Wynns’.

  “I don’t know. Did she ever tell you about . . . things that might have happened between them?”

  “What? Shit, that makes sense.” Carter straightened from peering at the knife. She held her coat closed at the collar, suddenly cold. “But I mean, you would know if your own father . . .” She let her voice trail off, uncertain.

  “I honestly don’t know if I would,” Everett said, his voice suddenly sounding bewildered and boyish. “Here’s what I do know: the police searched for this, and Kennedy didn’t have access to our garage.”

  Tears came to Carter’s eyes. “I doubted my own sister.”

  She felt him reach up her arms and pull her into him. His mouth went into her hair, then to her cheek. She’d thrown on her coat but not her scarf, and he found that hollow at the base of her throat and put his thumb there lightly. He might have kissed her on the mouth then—she wanted him to—but the rattle and ring of her phone went off in her pocket and she jumped.

  She accepted the call, then heard her own tone change, going sharp as tin. “I have to go,” she told Everett.

  Chapter 32

  Kennedy heard the mail-slot sound, a faint ting and a whoosh. The mail truck outside started up again and pulled down the curve and around to the next neighbor’s home. She stood up and walked over to the foyer. A letter for her sat on top of a pile of magazines and mail for Gerry.

  How can time change everything except the way you shape a letter, the way you hold your hand around an object? Kennedy wondered as she kneeled down and slowly picked it up. It had a post office stamp on it and had been mailed the day before. Kennedy Wynn, the envelope said, and the address. All uppercase, tight scratchy letters, like a messy boy trying to be neat.

  She felt air pass over her teeth and she inhaled. She felt the edges of the envelope. There was something hard inside, a card. A part of her didn’t want to be alone when she opened it. A part of her did. She was grateful Gerry was out. He went out for an hour to the Starbucks, mostly in the afternoons.

  She went upstairs to Carter’s old room, which she’d begun sleeping in since the open house, as though her own room had become haunted. Carter’s bed was newer anyway, she told herself.

  She placed the envelope on the bed and went across to Gerry’s office to get the letter opener. She couldn’t find it. It wasn’t in the drawer or on the desk. She thought she might have seen it on the file cabinet, standing upright in that old mug with some pens or something, but when she turned she realized the file cabinet was missing. She opened the closet door. The file cabinet was there, wedged in against the wall. The mug that had been on top of it was gone, and so was the decanter. At this point, she knew she should go back to the letter, but she couldn’t help wondering what had prompted him to move the file cabinet there. It was a weird place for it. She pulled out the drawers, riffled through the hanging files. Then she reached out and ran her hand along the edges of the cabinet. Her fingers touched the line in the paneling where it came apart.

  She jostled the cabinet over to the side and felt the wall until she found the twist latch that unlocked the panel. She remembered a plumber coming in once when she was an adolescent. She felt the wood open. There was black plastic coating on the other side, but when she looked down she could see that there were several inches of blank space and, at the floor, a book had been set down, leaning between the wood and the plastic. She put her hand down to touch it. She withdrew it. Sex, it said. The Mylar sleeve was gone and it was just the engraved silver cover. She went to put it back inside without opening it, but a small one-by-one-inch square of paper fell from the book.

  She knew immediately what it was. A note. From her to Carter, maybe. But when she picked it up, she saw it was folded in a way she couldn’t have done, more intricate. Haley had had her own ways of folding: she could do a tiny rectangle with a pull tab; she could do heart shapes; she could do fans. There had been too many notes among all of them to know what it contained. Any notes she’d had from Haley were gone years ago, taken from drawers and put into evidence bags. She crammed it in her jeans pocket. She returned the Madonna book to the wall, popped the panel back in place, shifted the file cabinet back over. She had a vague and queasy memory of Gerry’s confiscating it from them.

  Back in the bedroom, Kennedy grabbed the letter that had come in the mail. She put her finger into the fold and pulled across the top, tearing it sloppily. It wasn’t a card but two Polaroids. She knew when these were from: a few weeks before Haley died.

  In the first, she and Haley lay on a futon on their stomachs, propped up on elbows, their eyes wide and spun. Haley was laughing and blurry. Kennedy could see at her throat the velvet stripe of the yin-yang necklace. Kennedy stared at the camera, a trying-to-be-sexy pout on her lips, her cheeks rounder, chubbier than she remembered their ever being. Her hair was violet fading out to pink. One hand was yanking her square neckline down as if to show off her cleavage, though there wasn’t much to show. Only the top of a purple bra, its shoulder strap, and the implication.

  They had decided it would be fun to taunt him. />
  She turned the Polaroid over. Berk had written: More where this came from.

  In the second, Haley had her tongue out, pointed at Kennedy’s neck, miming a sexual act more than engaging in one. Kennedy was shirtless, still wearing the bra, but shooting the photographer the finger. Her lips had been painted with Velvet Crush sometime between this photo and the last. The photos said, Look at us. And: How dare you look at us? If Kennedy hadn’t already been shaking she might have marveled at how perfectly they captured adolescent female sexuality. But she was shaking. She could feel a shiver running all the way from the base of her spine to her neck and down the back of her arms.

  She could guess what the other photos showed. How had Berk kept them from being claimed by police in the investigation? He’d hidden them—well. Just like the yin-yang necklace. What else had he hidden?

  Chapter 33

  The homes of Georgetown all looked like the same dollhouse to Berk. As he drove in agonizing circles looking for parking he realized he hadn’t been to DC since Lollapalooza ’92 and parking was the main reason. His old roommate Julian had not returned his email so Berk pieced together his address from searches and the White House web page. He knew Julian worked as an aide for the Bush administration, but he wasn’t about to stalk him outside the Eisenhower building and get shot.

  The two had already connected on Facebook, or rather, Berk had sent several friend requests to Julian after meeting with Dee Nash. The producer from her crime show kept phoning, even after that first meeting. Berk hoped his threats to Kennedy had been heard and that she wouldn’t take part in the show but now, just the day before, he’d looked out at the store and noticed one customer in a blazer and baseball cap, taking pictures. If the producers decided to delve back into his relationships with the girls, Berk knew he might not even be pushing apples at Butler’s.