Charlie, Presumed Dead

by Anne Heltzel

  These thoughts are running through my head as Aubrey and I follow Dana through what can only be described as a foyer—though not a very nice one—into a large common area where dancers in various stages of undress are applying makeup. Aubrey reaches out and squeezes my hand unexpectedly, then drops it again without looking at me. I glance at her, surprised by the random burst of affection. She’s not exactly the touchy-feely type.

  “Meet the ladies,” Dana says wryly. “We all live here. Sleep here. Do pretty much everything here. The younger ones go to school here.”

  “In this room?” Aubrey whispers, incredulous. Her expression is a mixture of guarded and shocked, like she’s doing her best not to offend Dana.

  “Yeah. It’s a pigsty, but it’s free, okay? I’ll get my own place someday soon. This is just . . . my starter pad.” She cracks a grin and glides gracefully toward one of the mirrored tables. I notice that the room is lined with small vanities, almost as if it’s a makeshift dressing room for a bizarre, low-budget stage act. Then I get it: that’s exactly what it is.

  “Who pays the rent?” I want to know. Dana grins again.

  “Ignorance is bliss,” she says, rolling her eyes. I raise my eyebrows. “Just kidding,” she adds. “It’s the guys at the bar. They let us crash here in exchange for a certain number of hours. Anything after that is take-home pay. But,” she sighs, plopping herself down on a rickety folding chair and reaching for an eyeliner, “you’re not here to hear about that. You want to know about Charlie.” At this, one of the other dancers nearby glances up at us suddenly, knocking a tube of mascara from the vanity as she does. She has long dark hair and wears a sequined red bra with a black pleather skirt. Dana frowns in her direction, then turns her attention back to us.

  “You say Charlie came through here.” Aubrey’s voice is tense. We’re standing next to the mirror, huddled in a clump like agitated birds. Dana pulls two pillows out from under her chair and tosses them in our direction, motioning for us to take a seat. I sit cross-legged and Aubrey tucks her legs up under her modestly, and now it’s like we’re two children at story hour.

  “Charlie and I didn’t grow up together,” Dana starts, lowering her voice by a few pitches. “At least not consistently.” She lines the slope of her mouth in between words. I watch her fill in her lips with a dark wine red color. I try to picture her as she must have been before she became a kathoey. Thin and angular, with the cheekbones of a model—all of that would have remained the same. What might have changed is the curve of her hips, the fullness of her chest, the lack of facial hair. Maybe she changed her gender before she ever grew facial hair; maybe she never really felt what it was like to be a man, only a young boy. “I actually never liked Charlie when I did see him,” she continues. “He used to make fun of me, I guess because he sensed I was different. I tried to hide it for a long time.” Dana pauses again to apply another coat of lipstick. I feel restless and eager to get to the point, and I can tell Aubrey feels the same way; she’s picking at her sleeve the way I’ve seen her do so many times.

  “He’s no good,” Dana says unceremoniously. “He only came here last week because he was desperate. He was in a bad place. Needed some cash. Needed to disappear.”

  “Why did he need cash?” I ask. “Charlie had tons of money.”

  “And why did he need to disappear?” asks Aubrey, who is practically jumping out of her skin. “Do you know where he went?”

  “I wouldn’t try to find him if I were you,” Dana says. “Look at what he did to you. And you should have heard the stuff he said. But you won’t. I wouldn’t tell you if you were my worst enemy. Just trust me, you’re better off.”

  “Can you just start at the beginning?” I elbow Aubrey and give her a hard look, hoping she’ll take the hint and hold back instead of pelting Dana with questions.

  “Look,” says Dana. “I have to be onstage in two hours. I have this whole routine I do before going on—get my som tam, chill backstage with the girls, play a hand of solitaire. It’s kind of my thing.”

  “That’s fine,” I tell her. “Just the basics.”

  Dana sighs. “I don’t know how to tell the basics without getting into the backstory,” she says. “I’m Charlie’s half brother. Obviously. Both Price parents are white as snow. I never knew my mom—she was probably some sex worker my dad knocked up while he was out here on business. I never really found out. Charlie’s parents—our dad and his mom—they’re a train wreck. I’m sure you know that if you’ve spent any time with them.” She looks to us for confirmation, and I nod. I actually have a soft spot for Charlie’s mom, who despite being super screwed up and depressed and boozy is a good person deep down.

  Charlie’s dad, on the other hand, is a jerk, down to the core. Never there—and when he was, nothing was good enough. To me he was always engaging and friendly, but in a sort of fake way. Like you couldn’t tell what he was really thinking. Charlie’s mom had the shakes every time he was around. It was sad to see. It was something that always made me feel compassion for Charlie . . . until I realized belatedly that it probably also messed him up in ways that would affect me.

  “So, all along I know I’m different, right?” Dana continues. “I know it, they know it, everyone knows it. I mean, I regularly raid my aunt’s closet, I clearly like boys, I feel uncomfortable in my own skin. It’s hard to explain to people who don’t get it. I referred to myself as Charlie’s sister. People were confused. Their friends thought it was weird. Charlie’s dad—our dad. Sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve thought of him as my dad too.” It’s odd the way she stumbles over calling him her dad . . . but it occurs to me that when you’ve been ostracized, you have to cut yourself off emotionally.

  “Anyway, our dad was gone all the time, totally uninvested in the whole family thing. They’re still married, but I guess it’s for appearance’s sake or some bullshit. His mom actually tried, when I came along—at least at first. Like really tried, took me in. Treated me like her own kid—this was back when she still had her shit semi-together. And then everything worsened between his mom and our dad, and I guess I reminded her of the things she was trying to forget—his string of affairs, the reason I was there in the first place. Her anxiety got worse, and she kind of cracked. She raised a huge fuss and said she couldn’t deal with me anymore, she had enough to handle, and my dad needed to be more present in my life. So I started to travel all over the world with him. I went to schools in the cities where he was stationed. He tried to instill some ‘real discipline,’ tell me how to walk, talk, dress.” Dana’s face darkens at the memory. “But at least he didn’t discipline me the way he did Charlie.”

  “How did he discipline Charlie?” Aubrey asks.

  “Charlie was tougher than me,” Dana says. “More rebellious, and he used to piss our dad off royally. I remember this one time when we were very little, Dad held Charlie’s head underwater in the bathtub for a really long time after Charlie misbehaved. Like, long enough that I was freaked out. I tried pulling my dad’s hands off him, but I was only, like, seven or something. I think I knew I couldn’t do anything. I remember feeling like Charlie was going to die and there was nothing I could do. Finally my dad let up, but he was laughing, like it was a big joke. He said he was teaching Charlie a lesson. It was fucking scary.”

  “My god,” I whisper. I had no idea it was like that. Charlie never said. “Where was your mom?”

  Dana wrinkled her forehead, thinking. “She was out with friends or something. I don’t really remember. I was going to tell her, but Charlie yelled at me. He swore he’d kill me if I told. Said I was being a pussy. He actually said that, at, like, age five. Stuff like that happened a lot back then. Our dad really beat up on him, and Charlie would never tell. Like he was defending our dad, even though our dad almost killed him. He was so calm about it. I was the one freaking out. I would feel bad for Charlie if he hadn’t gotten so mean as we got older. I was scared of them both as far back as I can remember.

  �
�We’d all get together on the holidays and stuff back then, up until we both finished middle school. I wanted to be close to Charlie. He was nice sometimes, when we were hanging out alone. But sometimes he’d change . . . just be a totally different guy. I think maybe he was afraid of what our dad would do if he thought he was spending too much time with me. He started beating up on me a lot when we were in elementary school even though he was two years younger. I think he thought if he showed our dad he was tough—that stuff like that didn’t bother him—he’d be proud. He was still living in Paris back then.”

  “You were just young kids,” I say. Charlie was fourteen when he moved from Paris to Bangkok.

  “Yeah,” says Dana. “I split when I was fifteen. The bath thing happened when we were really little. I think I was maybe seven. But that was just one example. God,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m almost twenty-two now. It feels so long ago. Anyway.” She shakes her head again quickly, as if ridding herself of the memories. “You don’t care about these sob stories. I only saw Charlie twice after I left. Coming here was the obvious choice for me. We’d traveled here when I was young. I knew my way around. Like I said, I saw Charlie twice after that. Ran into him once when he was a freshman at the American School here, just after I had split. It was a shock.” Dana shakes her head yet again, laughing a little. “He shows up at the bar where I’m at and I’m like, ‘That’s Charlie. That’s my little brother.’ But he doesn’t recognize me at all. I go up to him and I pretend to be a random girl just to mess with him, but he freaks. He thinks I look familiar and he can’t figure out why. Then it dawns on him and he’s totally spooked.” Dana laughs and runs a brush through her long hair, then twirls it into a haphazard bun at the nape of her neck.

  “Back then I didn’t look like I do now, but I looked different enough. We talked for a while. He seemed okay. He apologized for what he’d done to me, how mean he’d been. Playing me against our parents and all that crap. He apologized but he still didn’t seem trustworthy. I asked how his best friend was, this guy named Phil. And he was all, ‘Who?’” Dana raises her eyebrows like a clown, in a mock expression of confusion, and laughs. “And I was like, ‘Dude, you’ve known that guy forever,’ and he claimed he’d never been friends with him at all or some shit. Same thing with family stuff. I was laughing about the time we rocked out to the Dr. Dre our mom wouldn’t let us listen to—we had to sneak that kind of thing around her—and smoked a joint and accidentally spilled cranberry juice on our parents’ white sofa—and then our parents thought the cat knocked over the glass, even though it was all Charlie. I was cracking up over it, and I remember he gave me this blank look. And he swore up and down it never happened. Like I care. Like I’m going to rat him out or something after all these years. It was the most pathetic thing.” Dana shakes her head, frowning at the memory.

  “It was like he needed me to believe he wasn’t there. Or like he needed to believe it. He got all upset, said I was thinking of somebody else, because he doesn’t smoke, he’s straight edge, and furthermore he doesn’t even listen to rap, never has, couldn’t name a Dre song if you held a gun to his head. But like, we had had good times that night. We bonded over the whole sofa thing.” Dana looks disturbed. “I thought he was fucking with me. Then I realized. He didn’t remember it. It was like he blacked it out.” Dana trails off, seemingly forgetting about the makeup in front of her, the show she needs to dance, her preshow routine that should have started five minutes ago.

  “And what about the second time?” Aubrey asks it so softly I can barely hear, but Dana seems to snap out of her reverie.

  “That was two weeks ago,” she says. “Or maybe not quite. Maybe ten days. And seeing him . . .” She trails off, her eyes widening. She has caught sight of the tattoo on my wrist, exposed when my sleeve drooped back as I was tucking my long blond waves behind my ears. She pales.

  “What?” I ask, confused. The tattoo is crude, even ugly; but her reaction seems extreme.

  She appears to recover easily. “Nothing,” she says. “I’m just afraid of needles. Your tattoo looks . . . painful.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I tell her. “I have no memory of it.”

  “Really.” The word is loaded. “How did you pick a lamb? That’s what it is, right?”

  “Again, I don’t remember,” I say, my tone sharper. “What were you saying about Charlie?” She takes a breath, dragging her eyes from my wrist back to my face.

  “I was saying that seeing him scared the shit out of me. He’s seriously fucked up, that one,” she says. “If I were you, I’d get the hell away from him as fast as you can.” Then she frowns, looking worried. “Do you have flights back? Because I can book you. I have a guy. He can hook it up for cheap. Like less than two hundred. He’s got an in at United. You should go, really,” she says. “I don’t know where Charlie is now, but I’m pretty sure he’s still in Bangkok. You should go before he finds you.” The last line sounds like a warning, and I tense. I’m quite sure there’s something Dana isn’t telling us.

  “What do you know?” I ask. “What aren’t you saying?”

  Dana brushes on a quick coat of mascara but doesn’t answer me. “I’ve gotta go,” she says, then stands up quickly. “That’s all I’ve got for you. Sorry.” Aubrey and I pull ourselves to our feet. My heart is beating fast, and I feel the back of my neck dampen.

  “No,” I say. “There’s something else. I’m right, aren’t I?” Aubrey looks uncertainly from me to Dana. I’m blocking Dana’s path to the door, and a few of her friends are giving us wary looks. I’m not sure how long my confidence will hold.

  “Look,” Dana says quietly. “There might be more. But you don’t want to know it. Take my advice and get on a plane soon. Tomorrow. You can stay here tonight. Just stay here while I’m gone. You’re safe here for now. I’ll hook you up with tickets, but you’ll have to give me a little incentive.”

  “My ring,” I blurt, pulling my sapphire band off my right hand. It doesn’t matter now that I’m losing an heirloom; all that matters is getting home. Dana examines it closely while Aubrey watches my face. Finally, Dana nods. I breathe a sigh of relief but place my palm over her hand, the one that cups the ring.

  “I’ll give it to you when you hand over the tickets,” I tell her.

  Dana releases the ring from her grasp without hesitation. “You seem like nice girls,” she says. “So get the hell out of here as soon as you can.”

  23

  Charlie

  You know it’ll take something else, something more than just an explosion and poof, vanished. There’s your mom, for one. She’s not dumb, and she cares. She cares more about you than you’ve ever cared about anyone. You know she won’t settle for a downed plane and a missing body—she’d have the cops plus a dozen private investigators all over that one until the money ran out, and the money isn’t ever going to run out.

  And there’s Aubrey. She has so much hope underneath her fragile shell. She acts like she’s made of something hard, but glass shatters if you want it to. She wants you to care, she wants you to show her, she wants you to visit her, she wants you to be this thing she can parade in front of her parents, but she needs you to keep up the act even though you know she knows there’s something going on with you that she can’t explain. She needs you to stay alive for the sake of her guilty conscience. Because if you were dead, it would destroy her. She’d feel responsible because of what she did with Adam. You’ve known about her and Adam for a long time, even before she finally confessed. You know all about her guilt. She needs to feel like a good person, even if she’s a cold, heartless bitch.

  You used to be a good person. You don’t know what happened. You don’t know why you couldn’t manage it all, the way your father manages things. His lives, his homes, his mistresses.

  For all this to work, you need your mom to let go of you and you need Aubrey to hang on.

  Lena’s a smart girl. She comes off wild and impulsive and flaky, but she’s got a cr
azy sixth sense. She’ll know exactly what happened . . . eventually. She’ll find the note you’re about to leave in the top drawer of your bedside table at your parents’ house, the drawer she likes to snoop through when she thinks you’re not looking because she thinks by doing so she finds out more about you. Lena’s always one step behind you, but she’ll catch up. She’s no fool. That’s partly why she’s become so much trouble. She sees the Bazooka Joe wrappers you put there and the set of pogs and the note to the Easter Bunny from when you were (supposedly) five. She assumes you’re hoarding remnants from your past. These things make her feel safe, make her feel like she knows you. But why does she need them? Why did you need to plant them there for her to find in the first place? Because she didn’t feel safe. That’s why. Because she sensed something about you that was off. Something she’d rather ignore.

  You need your mom to let go and Aubrey to hang on and Lena to know the truth . . . at some point. You need Lena to be the leader of this charade. And besides, you’ve always loved her. She deserves to know the truth. (Aubrey you could have loved, but she ruined it. She went and cheated with that douchebag from the American School in Bombay. Is there a way to get rid of him too?) So you plant a note, may as well be a note to the Easter Bunny because it’s just as fake as that one was—and you phrase it like maybe you want to kill yourself. It’s almost too easy. Then you put it right on top of that drawer for Lena to find, and you address it to “Mom.” (Your mom knows better than to dig through your drawers.)

  Suicide is not what you want. You don’t want to die. Why should you suffer more than you’ve already suffered?

  You want someone else to suffer for a change.

  Once the note is in place, you drive a knife into your thigh and stanch the wound with your Oxford blazer. You twist the knife deeper, biting down on a rag to quiet your urge to scream. There needs to be plenty of blood.