Donald retreated to the aquarium, his expression revealing his distaste for Renee’s emotional outburst. If he only knew what his partner was saying about him, the tanning-bed brown of his skin might have flushed to red.
“Listen,” came the voice from the end of the line. “Don’t waste your breath lying. I don’t care what you do no more. But I need you to do something.”
“Please, Jake. You need help.”
“Oh, yeah. Right. A round of skull sessions. Fixed me up good the last time, didn’t they?”
“It’s not just for you, honey. For us.”
“There ain’t no ‘us.’ There’s just you and me and him.”
“You’re drifting like you did after Christine died.”
“Except there’s one major difference . . . Mattie’s dead, too.”
“The doctor said drinking is risky in your condition.”
“I’m sober as a fuckin’ Republican judge.”
“Tell me where you are,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”
“I’ll bet you would. Because you’re probably playing Donald, too. I reckon he got a million or two laying around.”
“Jacob, seriously.” She didn’t know how she was still breathing. Some animal part of her brain had taken over her functioning. All she felt was the numb weight of the phone and the grief grinding her soul into ethereal sausage. Sometime during the last blurred minute, Donald had slipped out of the room.
Even though she could have screamed, she whispered instead. “Listen. You know you’re not yourself. When Christine died—”
“When Christine fucking died. Stop pretending.”
“It was a hard time for us, Jake. Mattie, too.”
“The problem with Mattie was she was too much like you.”
“You—” She pulled the phone away from her head, clamped it in her fist and looked for a corner in which to hurl this insanity from her life.
But she was compelled to listen again. The line carried only shallow static for fifteen seconds.
“You want to know the deal?” he said.
“Yeah,” she whispered. At least Donald had the decency to close the door behind him. Now she could slip to her knees on the floor, let the tears crawl down without restraint. It took all her willpower to remind herself Jacob was ill. She would have to endure, that’s all.
“Okay. Here’s what I want you to do. You got the money?”
She nodded to no one. “I’ve got the money.”
“Good. I want you to bring it to the cemetery.”
There was only one cemetery in their lives. Heavenly Meadows, where Christine was buried. “Why there?”
“Family reunion, honeybunches.”
Honeybunches. Jacob had only called her that once before. Years ago, during that hot August night Mattie was conceived in violent passion. He was cracking and she wasn’t sure she had enough band-aids this time around. She summoned enough air to respond. “When?”
“Thursday morning. And no doctors or police.”
“Please, Jake—”
“And tell Donnie Boy to go fuck himself. Unless you want to help him with that.”
“Can’t you see what’s happening to you?”
“Sure, honeybunches. Like you said, I’m not myself. See you Thursday.”
Before she could warn him to stay away from the Wells farm, the soft click came that cut her off from the man she loved.
Renee was finished crying by the time Donald returned. She promised to be strong, for Jacob and the memories of her children, and for the God who had promised blessings for those who kept the faith. But some rewards were only paid upon pain of death.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Sure, honeybunches. Like you said, I’m not myself. See you Thursday.” Joshua hung up the phone and turned to face Jacob. “Damn. It was real hard to keep the Tennessee out of my voice. How did you get such a sissy accent?”
“I like what you’ve done to the place,” Jacob said.
“Mom always did have great taste in ugly. She and old Queen Victoria had a lot in common. In fact, if it wasn’t for us being born, I’d have sworn she never got laid in her life. Can I ask you something, brother to brother?”
Jacob rubbed the itching skin of his cheek, still raw from healing. “I could never keep a secret from you.”
“How do you get through it?”
“Get through what?”
“Your damned kids. How do you deal with it when they die? I mean, ain’t it supposed to ruin your life, make you blame God and all that shit?”
“You get by.” Jacob squirmed in the uncomfortable chair.
“No, really.” Joshua lit another cigarette, crossed the floor and loomed over Jacob. “How does it feel? You got to be honest with me. We always shared everything. Or at least we did, until dear old Daddy came between us. But he’s out of the way now, so it can be just like old times.”
“You wouldn’t understand. You have to love somebody before you know what it’s like to lose them.” Jacob’s gaze crawled past his twin brother to the fireplace, where he saw Mattie’s peeling face in the curls of flame. He was relieved that he could remember his daughter, but frightened that she would always carry that association.
“Hey, I know what love’s all about. It’s about getting what you need. Ain’t that right?”
“Shut up.”
“You loved Mom. She’s dead. You loved Dad. He’s dead. I guess you loved your kids. They’re both dead. And Renee—”
Jacob clenched his fists, leapt up, and shoved Joshua, who dropped his cigarette and staggered back against the bookcase. He fell with exaggerated awkwardness, knocking over the fire poker and ash shovel. A few books tumbled to the floor.
Joshua wiped at his mouth where a thin line of blood had collected in one corner. “They lose and you win, huh? A Wells never fails.”
“I never asked for any of it.”
“But you got it all, don’t you? And every time somebody dies, you get a little more.”
“I’ll wring your goddamned neck if you don’t shut up.”
“Jake, Jake, Jake.” Joshua wheezed a laugh. “You looked in a mirror lately? We’re not kids anymore.”
“I don’t have to put up with your shit. I put up with plenty of it when we were kids, but you’re right. Those days are over. And you can add one more person to my list of dead people.” Jacob started for the door, then whirled and jabbed out with his finger. “You.”
Joshua rose, the poker in his hand. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Jacob kept walking, entered the foyer with its high ceiling and haunted walls. The front door was locked. The shiny, key-operated deadbolt was new, its bright glint out of place in that dim room.
“You’re home, Jacob,” Joshua said, tapping the poker on the floor as if it were a cane. “Get used to it.”
Jacob yanked on the door. One of his parents’ favorite punishments was to lock naughty children in their rooms, and many of the doors in the house could be locked from either side. “I’ll bust a window if I have to. Or your head.”
“Such anger. I thought the doctors taught you to deal with it. But it’s handy to claim you don’t remember what happened.”
“What do you want?”
“What have I always wanted? To be you, hotshot. I had the bad luck of sliding into the world after you did. And you beat me to everything else, too.”
“Look, I didn’t want Dad’s blessing, I didn’t want the inheritance, and I sure as hell didn’t want any Wells birthright. I fought against that with every breath, same as you.”
“Until just before he died. Funny how that happened. How you got in good when it counted.”
Jacob pressed his hands over his ears. If only he could shut off that taunting, accusing voice. Or maybe squeeze hard enough for the memories to squirt from his brain like pus from a festering boil. He hadn’t gone to Warren Wells’ deathbed and begged for forgiveness, had he? But he couldn’t shake the image of that pal
e wrinkled hand reaching to pat his head, and those watery blue eyes staring in pride and victory.
Joshua approached, the poker raised before him like a fencer’s foil, his lips curled in triumph. Jacob had nowhere to run. Even if the door were open, there was no place in the world to escape the past. He stared into the face that looked like a savage mirror, a reminder of all those dark secrets and sick, hidden things.
Joshua stood close enough for Jacob to smell the stale cigarette tar on his lips. “Take it easy, brother. You’re acting like you’re here against your will. As if you haven’t thought of this house every single day of your adult life.”
Joshua put a hand on Jacob’s shoulder. The hand was as cold as a lizard tucked under a creek rock. “Come on. Let me show you to your room.”
Jacob let himself be led across the foyer to the polished stairs with their worn runners. They paused as if both were admiring the splintered baluster, an awesome relic that had resisted repair. Then Joshua nudged him up the stairs. Each riser took Jacob closer to the past, though memory seemed to elude him. Instead of clear and prolonged reels, he saw the events of their childhood in flashes of blurred and fractured images.
Step. On the floor, the sun shining through the window, making a yellow river between them, Joshua bringing a wooden train caboose down hard on Jacob’s knee.
Step. Jacob’s fingers caught in the corner of the crib, his screams filling the world, Joshua grinning while yanking the covers away.
Step. In the dark behind the curtain, holding his breath, something terrible scratching at the door.
Step. Mother entering their room, smiling, bearing a silver tray with China teapot and mugs.
Step. Father smirking around his pipe, holding out a dollar bill and seeing which of his sons could leap the highest and be the first to snatch it.
Step. The window broken, the jagged glass smeared with the dark blood of the bird that had flown into its own reflection.
Step. In the night, Joshua giggling from his bed across the room. A separate giggle echoing from the closet. Jacob with his head under the suffocating safety of the pillow.
Step. Mother at the head of the stairs, her legs trembling, eyes gone wild toward the ceiling.
Step. Jacob’s comic book collection scattered across the floor, the crotches of the cartoon women neatly clipped out.
Step. An arm reaching up from beneath the bed, fingers pale in the moonlight.
Step. Father locking the closet door, threatening to leave the boys in there until they turned to skeletons if they didn’t learn to behave.
Step. A fleeting stench of sulfur, then a small flame crawling up the sheets.
Step. Joshua making him promise to never tell, cross his heart and hope to die.
Step. The doctor bending over, smelling of sweet decay, his round face bright with kindness.
Step. Mother with the silver tray, this time bearing pills and a glass of water.
Step. A scattering of coins on the walnut dresser. Joshua with three whole dollars because he was Father’s favorite.
Step. Rummaging through Joshua’s laundry, trying on his brother’s favorite red shirt. It fit perfectly, better than any of Jacob’s own clothes.
Step. Jacob with his head under the pillow. The closet door creaking open.
Step. The doctor telling him it was just a dream, and dreams could be scary, couldn’t they? But, see, there’s nothing here now.
Step. Mother at the head of the stairs.
Step. Father at the head of the stairs.
Step. A crashing sound, bone softer than wood, meat with little give.
Step. Promise not to tell ever.
Step. Jacob at the head of the stairs.
He blinked and looked around. The dust was like a fine silver-gray carpet, the threads shimmering and almost ethereal in the dying daylight. The hall was paneled with cherry. The closed doors stood like solid slabs of unforgiving darkness. Cracks as crooked as the legs of spiders stretched across the ceiling.
The last door on the right led to the room he and Joshua had shared as young children. Despite the expansiveness of the house, Mother had insisted the boys be together as much as possible. Their parents’ bedroom was two doors down, the neighboring room serving first as a nursery, then as a guest room after the boys had been weaned from the crib. It wasn’t until Jacob and Joshua were twelve that they each were allowed their own rooms. But when Jacob thought of the house, he didn’t think of “his” room. He thought of “their” room. To him, the room on the corner with the view of the barn and the field beside the river was where he had grown up.
That’s where his feet carried him now. The floorboards creaked with damp age, though he still unconsciously avoided the weak spot that had first alerted his parents to his sleepwalking. How many times had he walked this strip of faded carpet? Probably more times than he remembered.
“Attaboy,” Joshua said. “Don’t fight it no more.”
Jacob must have entered a brief fugue state, because the next thing he knew, he was standing between the twin bunks that stood against opposite walls. Jacob’s childhood bed now seemed too impossibly small to have held all those terrors and shivers. The closet door at the foot of the bed was ajar and he studied the harsh angle of blackness for any signs of movement.
Joshua sat on his own bed and made an awkward attempt to stretch out. “Brings back a lot of memories, don’t it?”
“Not really,” he lied. “My childhood is just sort of one long blur. Why would I want to remember it?”
Joshua sat up with a hard groan of bedsprings. “Because I want you to, dear brother. Those were best days of my life, and I’d like to have them back.”
Jacob shook off the malaise that had engulfed him. “Is that why you hate me? Because I finally had some happiness? Because I succeeded while you ended up in a slave-wage job in Tennessee? Because I had a loving wife and kids while you were shacking up with some trailer-trash slut? Because I left all this behind and you had to live in it day after day because it’s all you ever had? Is that why you hate me?”
Joshua smiled, his lips like those of the zombie-doll heads hanging from his car mirror. “I don’t hate you. I love you. Why else would I go to all this trouble?”
“It’s not trouble. It’s luck. You happen to show up here just when I hit bottom.”
“You got a nice, soft pile of green to catch your fall.”
Jacob stared into Joshua’s eyes, those deep, soulless, hazel-ringed holes that swallowed any light that struck them. He wondered how closely his own eyes matched Joshua’s. In the mirror, he never saw himself as merciless. But he wondered how others saw him. Could anyone really escape the corrupt taint of their genes?
“I’m not like you, Joshua. I don’t feed on the pain of others.”
“Like hell. You turned into the old man. A chip off the fucking block. As much as we used to despise him, looks like he had the last laugh after all.”
“You didn’t even know him. At least he had enough of a soul left at the end that he could face his sins and apologize. But you don’t even think about making amends. You just keep on digging a deeper hole, getting closer to hell with every shovelful.”
“Mighty fancy words for a make-believe poet. But at least I’m not burying my kids.”
Joshua reached to the shelf above his bed. The shelf was built into the wall and held the artifacts of a lost childhood. A ragged teddy bear flopped against a baseball glove, and an amputee G.I. Joe doll stood sentry over a stack of baseball cards crimped by a rubber band. Without looking, Joshua ran his hand over a Rubik’s cube and a dented Tonka dump truck. He pushed the toys aside and pulled a dusty book from the recesses of the shelf.
Jacob recognized it instantly, though he hadn’t seen it in more than a decade. “My diary. How did you get that?”
“It’s my story, too, Jakie. Hell, I coulda wrote it for you if I wasn’t so lazy.”
Jacob stood. The past was sealed in its vault, yesterdays were the
stuff that filled coffins, memories were for those who lacked the strength to bury them. Skeletons weren’t meant for closets, they were to be hammered into a thousand bone fragments and scattered to the far corners of the world. Driven to dust. No evidence must ever remain.
No evidence. . .
“Give me that.” Jacob’s blood was frigid lava.
Joshua leaned back against a faded pillow, cracked the book to somewhere in the middle, and began reading, all trace of his rural accent gone.
“‘January 17: Cold and gray. Looks like snow. Joshua got me in trouble in school today. He marked over part of my homework and drew pictures of naked girls. He made an A and I got sent to the principal’s office.’”
Joshua looked past the diary, his grin that of a devilish boy’s. “Hey, I’d forgotten all about that. Good thing you wrote it down, or it might never have happened. What else did you say about me?”
“That’s none of your business. Give me that.”
Joshua flipped through a couple of pages, the paper rustling like the lungs of a dying man. “Oooh, here’s a good one. ‘February 3: Cynthia Chaney sat with me at lunch today. I had peanut butter and jelly. She gets free lunch because her family is so poor. Cynthia said she’s scared of Joshua because he spies on girls going into the restroom.’ Hell, brother, you ought to give up real estate and go to Hollywood. With some of this stuff you make up, you’re bound to be a hit.”
“That really happened. It’s all true.”
“Bullshit. I was the one who ate lunch with Cynthia Chaney. Walked her home. Screwed her in the bushes behind the trailer park. She had this crazy idea that I was gonna marry her and rescue her from her pathetic excuse for a life. Dumb bitch.”
“Cynthia was a nice girl. She couldn’t help it that you ruined her.”
“Cry me a goddamned river. Any girl that spreads her legs when you whisper the word ‘love’ deserves everything she gets.”
“She had to move to Florida after the abortion.”
“If you believe all the other stupid sluts. I’d bet money she was looking for an excuse to drop out of school and came up with that one because nobody would blame her. People are real good at arranging the truth to fit their needs. And I wasn’t the only one to ride that little pony, anyway.”
Disintegration: A Mystery Thriller Page 12
