Sweet Karoline

by Catherine Astolfo

  "I'll make hot chocolate for you drenched rats," Dee offers.

  Dembi skips off toward his room.

  "Come with me," I urge Miriam, pulling on her sleeve.

  While I change into dry clothes, she examines the cache behind the cupboard. I explain its significance quickly but we don't have much time.

  "We have to talk to Dembi at some point," I say.

  "Let's wait until tonight. I need to think first. And we need to talk."

  "Agreed."

  But my pulse has quickened again. I'm excited, almost greedily so. I try to tamp down the intensity of my exhilaration.

  We rejoin Dee and Dembi in the kitchen. The hot chocolate is thick and creamy. Dembi appears to have returned to his old self, cheerful and good-natured. He and Rolly play with a string on the kitchen floor while we women sip our drinks at the table and talk.

  "Is it supposed to clear up for tomorrow?" Miriam asks.

  We have begun to assume that Dee knows everything.

  "So the weatherman says," she answers, because she does in fact know everything. "The rain should stop some time during the night and the prediction is that the morning will be lovely."

  "Do you think Memé is up to attending the powwow?" My turn.

  "I do. I can't believe the progress she has made. And as I said, the organizers always have boards and planks spread around. There are lots of elderly people who come to the powwows."

  For the first time in weeks Memé sits at her kitchen table for lunch. Although she is unable to say much—her voice is low and lacks the power of oxygen—she breathes out each of our names. Her eyes sparkle now. Life has crept back into them. Her crooked grin is a permanent fixture.

  Afterwards, our mother has a nap while Dee cleans and fusses. The alarm company representative is scheduled to arrive later this afternoon and clearly she wants to be ready. Dembi and Rolly play in the hallway with a ball of twine that they roll back and forth. The only sound is Dembi's delighted laugh and the scrabble of the cat's claws.

  Miriam and I take one of the bags of paintings from my cupboard and huddle in the parlor with the Bible.

  Miriam points to the records in the Bible with one of her short, clear nails. I look down at my own fingers, aware that I haven't noticed them in nearly two weeks. They are no longer long and shapely. My hair is no longer L.A.-primped. It's more rural-woodsy. I wonder if Ethan will recognize me. Which suddenly reminds me…

  "Miriam, Ethan is going to try and get a flight here for Sunday. Is it okay if he stays for a few days?"

  She grins at me. "Of course it is! This is just as much your house as it is mine."

  It is? My house? My home? I lower my head and look at my toes, which are also scrubbed clean of their bright pink nail polish. How can things have changed so rapidly? Am I still that shallow? Was I that unformed?

  Miriam brings me back from the shadows.

  "And besides, I can't wait to meet him. I feel like I know him already."

  A bunch of goose bumps congregate on my arms. Miriam is a wonder.

  "I'll prepare Memé and Dembi for his arrival." I add, "After the powwow."

  Miriam nods. Back to business.

  "Memé's brother, Cornwall the Third or fifth or whatever—Junior multiplied—was born in 1918. So he'd be 65 now. He disappeared around 1955. We have no idea if he was married or had kids because nothing is recorded here."

  "And we don't have any pictures either. Vera is our source, obviously."

  "If she even knows. You said she ran away when she was quite young. Maybe before Cornwall married or disappeared. The only time she returned seems to be when she came and got you."

  "Yes and after that she pretended the farm and all her siblings didn't exist."

  "Maybe she pretended way before that, too. She must've been ashamed of them."

  "Or frightened of them? If we believe Melody's tales, Vera would've had reason to fear them. The parents and their gang were drunkards and abusers."

  Miriam's face clouds with grief.

  "Those poor girls. Memé and Vera probably had it worse than the boys. Vera could've been sexually abused, too."

  I begin to feel even more sympathy for my adopted mother. Miriam is right. After all, Vera rescued me from probable abuse and gave me the best upbringing she could. Her limited emotional skills were likely a product of a dysfunctional childhood. She must have had to become callused to survive as a runaway, too.

  I reach into the bag and haul out a painting.

  "This is definitely a CoJon. It's so similar to the one we have on our living-room wall."

  I notice the 'we' and the 'our' but that painting is still attached to Karoline in my head.

  "Cornwall Johnston. CoJon."

  Miriam's voice is a whisper of awe. She lifts another painting out of the bag and studies it.

  "I didn't pay much attention when Karoline started buying paintings for her boss. But I do remember that CoJon was an enigmatic figure. No one ever interviewed him or had photographs of him. He was reportedly a native but they only based that on the style of his paintings. As it turns out, if we're right, which we are, he was part native."

  "With black and white mixed in," Miriam says. "A hybrid like us."

  I always thought of myself as a mongrel but I don't say that. Hybrid has a ring of pride to it.

  "CoJon sold his originals exclusively through an agent. Karoline said there were always rumors going around about both the agent and the artist. Like they were same sex lovers or the agent was really the artist. Or CoJon was a drunk who lived on the streets and the agent exploited him. All that kind of sensational stuff."

  "Probably helped to sell his art," Miriam responds.

  We are so engrossed in the paintings and our theories that we don't notice Dembi come into the room. Not until we hear him. At first, his keening is a low rumble in his throat, but before long he flaps and probes. The moan builds into a screech. He's fixated on the paintings, so I snatch Miriam's and stuff both hers and mine into the bag.

  My sister rushes over to Dembi and tries to gather him in her arms. He screams louder, the decibels so high that they vibrate in my soul. He turns on himself. Slaps and punches his head and face. He inadvertently slaps Miriam. I am afraid of him and for him. I remain rooted to my spot.

  Dear Diary,

  Do you think a person can fake insanity? I mean, there's abnormal behavior, and then there's psychosis. I wonder if a person could pretend to be nuts by their behavior. They could do bad things and blame it on madness. I've read about lots of cases in L.A. where they say they're not guilty by reason of insanity. Are they just clever? Or do you have to be crazy to even think about doing something horrible and then claiming to be insane?

  Chapter 24

  Melody lumbers into the room. Her face displays the same fear. She tries, along with Miriam, to pin Dembi's arms, but he gouges his skin. Blood spurts from his cheeks and arms.

  I can hear Memé respond to his distress with a wailing of her own. Muffled by the oxygen tent, it's a loud rumbling in her chest. It sounds as though she pounds the bed with her legs.

  At last I move. By now Miriam and Dee have wrestled Dembi's arms. They hang onto them like squirming snakes.

  "It's okay, Dembi, I've got a safe hiding place." Inspired by some message from the air, I add, "Other Anne said for me to protect it."

  Our brother's arms stop flailing. His screech becomes a quiet moan. His eyes are still wild, bulging as though he's consumed a psychedelic drug. Miriam and Melody hang on to both hands, murmuring soothing words. I continue to hear Memé's anguish in the background.

  "Dembi, we have to go and see Memé. Listen. Listen. She's so upset. You have to see her so she knows you are okay now."

  The moan stops. Dembi yanks his hands away from the other two women and disappears down the hallway. Miriam and Dee follow.

  I pick up the bags and race to my room where I store the paintings on the shelves once more. When I arrive at Memé's door the scen
e continues to be dramatic. Dembi is curled up on the bed beside our mother, rocking and moaning. Dee straightens the oxygen tent and puts the covers back to normal. Miriam sits on the end of the bed, patting their legs. Her touch begins to calm them.

  Melody looks up as I enter.

  "What on earth happened?"

  "We don't know, Dee, I told you."

  For Miriam, this is a testy response. I follow her lead.

  "Something upset him but we're not sure what. We'll find out."

  Memé is quiet now. Her arm rests on Dembi's body as he rolls around beside her. Just then the doorbell rings.

  "What now?"

  Melody is not her usual patient, calm self. I'm surprised at how much this incident has unsettled her.

  "It's probably the alarm company," I say, gently putting one hand on her elbow. "Will you go, Dee? If you handle that we'll take care of Dembi and Memé."

  "Should I tell them to go away?"

  "Why don't you sit with them in the kitchen and look at their information? Tell them what we want and ask for cost estimates. Ask all the details about installation, like when and how long it will take, and so on."

  The big woman looks unconvinced but she disappears out the door. Miriam and I take long, shuddering breaths. Clearly Dembi's sighting of the paintings in the house instead of their church hiding spot has completely unhinged him, but we're not ready to share the discovery with 'not family'.

  "Dembi, I'm so sorry I moved the paintings." I am close enough to him to whisper. "They are safer now. I have a treasure hiding spot in my room."

  He stops rocking long enough to stare at me. "Hiding spot?"

  "Yes, a really good one. Safer than the church or your cave. No one will find them."

  Tears spill down his face. He puts his fingers in his mouth and mumbles. It sounds like 'drown' but I'm not sure. Then he closes his eyes and rocks, though more slowly. I think he is less upset.

  Miriam and I gather at Memé's side. Her eyes blink up at us and she says, "Diable."

  This time, the word feels like a message. Our mother wants to tell us something. Information? Or a warning?

  "It's okay, Memé," Miriam says.

  "We'll take care of you," I add. "You and Dembi."

  The rocking has ceased and now we see why. Dembi is fast asleep.

  Memé squeezes our hands and closes her eyes, too, her arm crooked over her son's huddled form. Tears sprout from the lump of grief in my stomach. These simple, sweet people do not deserve to feel so vulnerable.

  "Who is Diable? Who is the devil?" Miriam asks and I see that her eyes are filled, too. "She's been saying that for three or four weeks now, every once in a while."

  I gulp down a cry. Memé wasn't calling me Diable. That was my guilt, my anger and insecurity. She was telling me something even then.

  "I remember you told me she was saying other weird things," I say as we head toward the kitchen, an unspoken agreement to see what's happening with the alarm system.

  "She could speak when I first got here but as she got sicker, she gradually went to the one-word speech that you're used to. And she seemed to get scared."

  "How long ago?"

  "I'd say about a month, maybe six weeks. By then she was in a lot of pain. She'd undergone all the tests and some chemo. She just didn't seem to be able to handle it. She stopped speaking, though the doctors had no idea why. There didn't seem to be a medical reason. They thought it might have been psychological or a result of a loss of oxygen when the cancer started moving into her lungs. For all the tests and treatments, we had to make long trips to the hospital in Hamilton and she hated it. I chocked all her behavior up to stress. Then suddenly she started repeating single words again. Like Diable or knife. Punch or kick. Once or twice, she said drowned."

  Drowned? Didn't Dembi say that, too? Is all this violence a memory of the past abuse that Memé suffered? Maybe she passed on her fears to him.

  Miriam is silent for a moment. We stop in the hallway within earshot of a murmur of voices from the kitchen. She keeps her voice at a whisper.

  "Larue. She called out for him a lot. There was another name, too, but I could never make it out, other than it ended with n. At the time I thought it was Anne. I thought she was referring to Karoline."

  "That's something I don't understand. Why did Memé think Karoline was me? Obviously she knew that I was your triplet and ought to look like you and Dembi even in adulthood."

  "I never knew to ask. Karoline was here well before I ever visited. I have no idea how she ingratiated herself. Memé seemed to accept that she was our sister Anne. And of course I never doubted it, so I didn't even think about it."

  The layers of Karoline's deceptions threaten to overwhelm me again. I can't think about any of this right now.

  "Dembi is terrified because I moved the paintings. Who is scaring him? Diable?"

  Miriam looks at me. "It was smart of you to tell them they were safe. What made you tell him that Other Anne said to move them?"

  "I honestly don't know. I started thinking that Karoline had to have something to do with the whole CoJon thing. I have no idea how she was involved. But there wasn't anyone else I could think of who might have manipulated Dembi. And maybe even brought home a painting or two."

  "I see what you mean."

  Miriam looks at me with eyes that show thoughts racing back and forth. Questions and doubts cloud her brown depths. It occurs to me that she has no reason to trust me.

  "Miriam, I promise, I am as confused as you are. I truly have no real idea of what Karoline did or was up to or thought…I swear to you. I was kept in the dark and had my head too far up my own ass to look around."

  My sister can't help but laugh. "Anne, after these last few days, my intuition tells me that you are completely trustworthy. To be honest, there was always a little voice in my head that warned me about Karoline. Something not quite right, a false note. But I ignored the signs. With you…we're part of a whole, you and I."

  I turn and throw my arms around her. "I love you."

  There's that L-word again. It's getting a little easier every time I say it.

  "I love you, too, Sis," she says and I am filled with gratitude and joy.

  "Let's go pretend we are interested in this alarm shit."

  Several brochures and plans later, we make an appointment for the alarm company to return on Monday. We've decided to wire up the whole place and it's going to cost a fortune but I don't care. Despite her protests, we send Melody home.

  "You've been working for nine straight days," I say. "And we need you for the powwow tomorrow. We can handle everything here for the rest of the day."

  Finally, she concedes. Her car kicks up a huge spray from the driveway. A thick drizzle continues to plow into the wet ground. I wonder how on earth we're going to get to the powwow. Or if.

  Miriam and I spend the rest of the day tending to our patients. Dembi sleeps through most of it, sucking on his fingers, regressed to infancy. Rolly curls up at his back. I am heartsick. My meddling has caused my brother's suffering. I wish I'd never found those fucking paintings.

  We bring dinner but neither Dembi nor Memé eats very much. Miriam and I have sandwiches in the room as we watch them sleep. We are too overwhelmed and confused to even discuss the CoJon issue or Dembi's reaction or the powwow or Karoline. We just sit and stare off into our own spaces.

  When it's dark I go to the parlor to call Ethan. The receiver feels even heavier when combined with tinny silence. The telephone is dead. I wonder if the storm last night has had anything to do with its malfunction. Miriam surmises that there's a line down somewhere. I feel so terribly empty, as though I am starving to death.

  I go around the house checking locks before I head to my bedroom. Under the duvet I shiver and sniffle. My new awareness is not much fun. I try to remember if I ever felt depressed, sad or lonely in the past and I can't. I don't think I felt much of anything other than a flat level of satisfaction and smugness. I don't recall p
ure joy but I don't have any memory of this dreadful loss, either.

  All at once I notice a profound silence. The rain has finally stopped. Now the creaks and groans of the dampened old house skitter back into my hearing.

  I jump out of bed. My feet stick to the old hardwood and linoleum as I try to run on tiptoes up the hallways. At Memé's bedroom, I brake and peer around the half-open door. My mother and brother are sound asleep. The oxygen machine sounds like a third person.

  I open Miriam's door. She turns over, blinking at my shadow, as sensitive to sound as I.

  "Miriam," I whisper so she's not frightened.

  She moves over and pats the other side of the bed. I crawl under the covers and snuggle up to her. She's warm and soft. I give a little mew of happiness. Being fully aware and fully alive is worth every low point. I am wrapped in my sister's arms, secure, loved. Strong together. I wouldn't trade places with anyone.

  With a rush of insight I realize that I've never experienced this kind of relationship before. My 'sisterhood' with Karoline, or my friendship with Parris, never came close to my feelings for Miriam. When a sister is also your friend there is nothing like it. I know we didn't grow up together, but we shared a womb and that seems to erase all the lost years. My sister knows me better than anyone. She accepts who I am but helps me to aspire to my personal best, too.

  I tamp down on the 'ifs', which threaten to keep me awake. If only Memé hadn't given us away. If only I'd never met Karoline. If only I hadn't gone out onto the balcony that night.

  Once they are filed away, I drift off to a healing sleep, warm in the heat of my sister's body, wrapped in her unconditional love.

  Dear Diary,

  Do you believe in the devil? According to a bunch of religions the devil is an angel that's been turned. A fallen angel. There's often some head guy who convinces everyone else to become a devil. Does this mean that angels are gullible and easily led? Why are they called angels then? Maybe they should just be called human, since human beings are, essentially, very stupid and easily duped.