Pieces of My Sister's Life (16 page)

I watched the look that passed between them, and in it I thought I could see what had happened: Eve coming to Justin dressed more or less like I was now, an attempted seduction and his refusal. And now me and Justin, we’d been playing out a script. Had she been waiting for Justin to react just this way?

A tear of sweat slithered between my breasts. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“There’s something wrong with Justin, Kerry, not me. I’d think you’d get that by now.” Her face was pale, almost frightened, but she narrowed her eyes at Justin and slipped her arm over my shoulders. “You want the virgin or you want sex, Justin, make up your mind. Although I guess you were wrong, it looks like Kerry could give you both.”

“You bitch!” I shoved her away, then strode from the theater past the throng of people staring at me, my cleavage, my legs, all whispering and wondering. My breasts flounced under my braless bodysuit as I started to sprint, my ankles twisting in the heels. I finally hurled the shoes into the bushes, my bare feet screaming with each pounding step against the rough road.

At home I ran up to the bedroom, pacing to the window and back, window and back, as pissed at myself as I was at her. I wasn’t that gullible. I knew Eve always had ulterior motives, so why hadn’t I made myself look deeper? It was like trusting a shark not to eat you just because it looks like it’s smiling, and because you like sharks.

I imagined Eve and Justin in the tiny darkened theater, eyeing each other in the romantic moments, holding each other’s hands at the scary parts. I saw Eve turn to him and shake her head. “What the hell got into her?” she’d ask. And Justin would shrug and then he’d smile and take her hand. “Frankly, I can’t deal anymore,” he’d say. And then they’d make out.

I tore off the skirt, black buttons clattering to the floor. I went to Daddy’s bedroom and pulled his terry robe from the closet, wrapped myself inside it. And I huddled inside its smell of Irish Spring, its pocket still weighted with his sloshing tin flask of scotch.

It was still dark out when I woke up on Daddy’s bed. In the light from the hall, I could see Eve’s silhouette above me. “I’m sorry,” she whispered hoarsely, smoothing her hand against the bedspread.

I slapped her hand away. “What’s the matter with you?”

She hunched her shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. Oh fine then, no problem. That explains everything.”

“There’s things going on, stuff I can’t tell you, and I was just…” She shook her head. “I know you don’t get it but it wasn’t about you. Not to hurt you.” She reached to touch the collar of Daddy’s robe, then pulled back. She stayed a minute with her arm frozen midair, then brought her hands to her face, dragged her fingers down and squeezed at her cheeks.

I watched her, running my stale tongue against my unbrushed teeth, then finally pulled her down to the bed beside me. There was a quick wet inhalation through her nose, and then a keening from behind closed lips, a cry I’d only heard from small children. What did it mean? An apology? Or was it that she was scared of herself? I imagined her jealousy as a tumor she could only see now that the cover of Brad Carrera had been stripped away. I imagined her seeing that tumor all at once, and I put my other arm around her, cradled her head against my neck and we rocked, both of us hiding inside her sobs.

17

J
USTIN AND I WALKED
out to Mohegan Bluffs, the air bright with the scents of apple and salt, road gravel scuffing up into my sandals. In a month this parking lot would be crowded with cars. Tourists would hike down to see the view, how the bluffs dipped and folded before they plunged down to the sea, chokecherry buds dotting the hillside in random patches like a splatter painting. But now the bluffs were bare and there was only us, not speaking, not holding hands, just focusing on the sounds of our feet.

We climbed down the rickety wooden steps that cut into the hillside, took off our shoes and sat on a huge boulder facing the water. I waited for the rhythmic ocean dance to slip me away, take me to the place where the only movement was ebb and flow, tide in and out, again and again and again. “The clothes, they were Eve’s idea,” I said finally.

“No kidding.” He squeezed my knee. The gesture seemed patronizing and I pulled away. Below us a cormorant swooped to perch on a rock and spread its wings to dry them.

“Something’s different in her,” I said. “Since Brad, I guess. Sometimes in the mornings she’ll lie in bed, just lie there. And her eyes are open but they’re not really open, not looking at anything.”

Justin watched the ocean, his face flat and unreadable.

“And there’s other stuff too, Justin. I was looking through her drawer the other day and there was all this…new underwear, thong kind of thing.”

“Thong underwear?” Justin smiled crookedly. “Thong underwear.”

“And this bag of liquor bottles. So I was wondering where she could’ve got the money, and how she could possibly be buying liquor underage, and then I realized she hadn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? She stole them, Justin.” I pressed my bare toes against the rock. “She stole them.”

Justin glanced at me, then looked back over the horizon. “You stole those clothes.”

I shook my head.

Justin bent for a handful of stones and started tossing them one by one into the ocean.

I scanned the bluffs, the Southeast Lighthouse where we’d climbed with Daddy on foggy summer nights to watch how the beams drew their slow-weaving ribbons across the sky. Back then it had seemed like the highest point in the whole world. “I didn’t want to, Justin. But she really did, and not like that should matter but the way things’ve been with us—”

“I have to tell you something.” His voice was unsteady. He threw his last rock and watched it skip across the water. “It’s about Eve, okay?”

A wave swept beneath our feet, rattling the stones around us like scattered applause. I brushed the dirt from my feet without answering, then slid them back into my sandals. I needed shoes on because he was going to tell me she’d tried to kiss him, and then I’d have to either run away or kick him.

“Thing is, I think she shouldn’t work at Dad’s shop anymore.”

“What?”

“There’s been money…” He cleared his throat. “Missing. There’s been money missing. I’m just telling you in case my parents ask about it, so you’re prepared with what to say.”

I shook my head.

“It started when you first came to work for us. In the beginning it wasn’t all that much and we thought maybe it was problems with the books, but recently it’s been more. Over a hundred dollars last week.”

He watched me, waiting for me to respond, and when I didn’t he said, “I know it wasn’t you, you wouldn’t do that.”

“Neither would Eve!” This was, I realized full well, a lie. Because I’d known, hadn’t I? Part of me must have known.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you. Dad asked me about it the other day and I was scared he’d come to you. I just wanted to make sure I talked to you first.”

“It’s some kind of mistake.”

Justin held my eyes, his expression wide with something I didn’t understand. There was something else here, something he wasn’t telling me.

I turned away. “You don’t know,” I said. “It could’ve been somebody breaking in, it could be somebody didn’t pay what they should’ve.”

“Kerry…”

“You don’t know!” I jumped off the rock without looking back and ran up the steep stairway.

But when I reached the top and did look, winded, I saw he hadn’t even tried to follow, which is, of course, the real thing a person wants when they run away. I was sure that Justin knew this. But if he did, he apparently didn’t care.

I lay with my feet against the wall, head hanging over the edge of my bed, waiting. The front door clicked shut and I sat up and quickly lit a cigarette. I leaned back on my elbow and tried to look casual.

When Eve came in, she raised her eyebrows. “What’re you doing still awake?”

I shrugged. “Just thinking.” I took a drag on the cigarette. It burned down my throat and I struggled to keep from choking. I wondered if I was going to puke.

“God, Kerry, since when did you start smoking?”

I shrugged and pretended to take another drag. How people got addicted to this was beyond me.

Eve nodded at the line of ash trailing to the bed. “I think you need an ashtray.”

“Right.” I reached for a hand mirror, tapped the ash onto it. “You want one?”

“Smoking’s bad for your lungs.” Eve reached into her purse and pulled out a wad of bills. “Before I forget, put this away for next month’s rent. I ran into some luck.”

The Caines’ money? I fingered the bills, a fifty and six twenties. For months we’d gotten the pity money in blank brown envelopes, placed anonymously on our doorstep. And so I’d been able to rationalize it, had pictured our neighbors pressing the bills into her palm. “Just a little something,” they’d say, a bigger something each month. But how many islanders had this much money to spare? Not any that knew us well enough to care if we were broke.

Eve pulled off her blouse and reached into the bureau. I narrowed my eyes and admired the line of her shoulders and the graceful curve of her neck. She was wearing a scarlet underwire bra I didn’t recognize, and it made her look globular, like she’d had a boob job.

I sighed. “God, I think I drank too much.”

She stared at me. “You were drinking? Good little Kerry?”

“Very funny.” I gestured at the trashcan, the empties I’d stolen from the Caines’ garbage bin. If you went by the number of bottles in the trash, I should’ve been dead by now. “Me and Justin, but I think I must’ve had more than him. It was fun while we were doing it, but now my head’s starting to kill.”

“Aspirin,” Eve said, looking at me funny. “That helps, and lots of water. Jeez, Kerry, what’s got into you?”

“Nothing.” I lay back on the bed, crossed my legs and looked up at the ceiling.

“Good little Kerry becoming a boozer. Who would’ve guessed?” She shrugged. “Maybe I will have a cigarette.”

“Help yourself.” I pushed Eve’s money under the blanket so I wouldn’t have to look at it, then stared at the tip of my cigarette, the red glow biting through the blackened paper. It was kind of pretty, if you didn’t think about it being carcinogenic. I cleared my throat. “So where you been?”

Eve grinned and came to sit on the bed beside me. “I was with this guy.”

I took a half drag on my cigarette and held the smoke in my mouth until my eyes started to water, then spat it out. “Really?” I said.

“I think this could turn into something, Ker, I really think. God, is he gorgeous. Movie-star kind of gorgeous.”

I gave her a quick hug, trying to think who she could be talking about. “He’s an islander?”

“He’s so completely different from how Brad ever was. That was a fling, but this…” She shook her head. “I think he’s falling in love already. It’s the kind of thing, if I could get him I could get just about anybody. But when I’m with him I keep thinking who knows, maybe I’ll never want anybody else.”

“So what is this, twenty questions? Is it somebody I know?”

“I guess. Yeah, you know him.” She glanced at me. “I can’t tell you yet, okay? He wouldn’t want me saying anything.”

“You embarrassed or something?”

She blew a long curl of smoke from the corner of her mouth, a strange look on her face. “Look, I’ll tell you eventually, it’s just too new.”

“Animal, vegetable or mineral?”

Eve ground her cigarette on the mirror and stood. “Tell you what, Ker, you mind your business and I’ll mind mine.”

“Well, excuse me,” I said, stubbing my cigarette next to hers. “You
are
embarrassed, aren’t you?”

“Get a life, Kerry. If you had a life, you wouldn’t have to try and piggyback on mine.”

My face flushed hot. “I know you took the Caines’ money,” I said.

Eve froze. “What?”

“Justin told me there’s money missing from the shop. God, Eve, how could you? After all they’ve been doing for us?”

“You’re crazy. How the hell can you accuse me?”

“Obviously I’m not as crazy as you.”

Eve rolled her eyes. “Grow up.”

“No, you grow up. Now the Caines are going to basically fire you because of this, and how the hell are we going to pay rent then? Can’t steal from the shop anymore, right? Pretty self-defeating.”

“What exactly did Justin say?”

“He’s going to have you arrested.”

“Kerry…”

“Look, he doesn’t even know for sure it’s you. He just knows there’s money missing and Mr. and Mrs. Caine suspect, but what I think is they put on blinders because the alternative, that we might steal from them, is so awful they don’t even want to imagine it.”

Eve’s face was red. She stood a minute facing out at the hallway. “So they trust me more than my own sister does,” she said finally.

“That’s because I know you better.”

“Fuck you.” Her voice was unsteady. She swallowed so loudly I could hear it.

I had simultaneous urges both to hold her and to slap her. She spun away and strode from the room, and I smiled widely so I wouldn’t feel the bruising in my gut. And it worked; by the time Eve got back, I felt nothing at all, not even anger. She might as well have been a stranger sleeping in my room, someone I’d put up with until she found somewhere else.

This is where it really started, the night I learned the identity of her mystery man. Everything else was preparation, but this was the first little Big Bang. There’s times in life like that, I think, when life turns a corner and then there’s no going back.

Eve had left straight after dinner, her fourth night out that week, and after an hour staring blankly at the same chemistry formula, playing the letters across my tongue like they were words, I decided to get away from the echoing emptiness of the house.

Maybe it was luck that led me to Old Harbor or maybe something deeper, Eve pulling at the threads of my subconscious. I walked along the waterfront, hunched against the wind, watching the silvery reflection of moon on water. It had gotten warmer over the past few weeks, but the damp could still cut through to the bones. Spring was like this on the island. It showed its face in daffodils and longer days, but still wouldn’t give up on the idea of hibernation until June.

The spire on the National Hotel was lit an eerie, vacant blue. In the dock the moored boats creaked and clucked against each other, a conversation.
Alone,
they were saying,
I’m wet and empty and alone, and covered in slime.
And there was Daddy’s boat,
Double Trouble
printed on its side in faded red script.
Double Trouble,
named for his twins. The Caines had suggested that we sell the boat, which would get us a good amount of money and plus we wouldn’t have to pay the docking fee. But we couldn’t stand to sell it. In a way this was Daddy’s tombstone. And his murderer.

The boat was swaying. That was the first thing I noticed, the roll of it heavier than the calm water. I walked closer. The door leading to the hold was closed, but the pole that usually locked it had been lifted. I stepped onto the deck and walked to the door. Daddy had never used the hold, its closet-sized bedroom and side bathroom with toilet and shower. He’d bought this bigger boat five years ago on a whim with money he didn’t have, and even though the bed never got slept in, the shower never got run, we’d all thought it was a huge luxury, a sign of having succeeded in a way.

And now it was unlocked.

I crept forward and pulled slowly,
click-click,
at the door, bracing myself, getting ready to confront whoever was trespassing. I peered down the stairs into the darkness, the flicker of candles against the floor planks. And I saw her.

I knew it was her because I saw her L.L. Bean windbreaker. Daddy bought us the jackets a year back, hers a bright greenish blue and mine identical but in red. And now here it was, thrown at the foot of the bed. Two bodies on the bare mattress. Gasps and groans. Bare skin.

The music echoed from Ballard’s bar down the street, Mexican or Spanish with castanets and heavy rhythm,
shake-a-shake Arriba!
It made the whole thing seem almost comical, like a scene from a Woody Allen movie.

I ducked behind the door and watched, struggling between horror and fascination. I heard Eve laugh, but it wasn’t her real laugh, it was the laugh we used when strangers clasped their hands and squealed over our twinness. It was the laugh she’d used back in the days when I’d reported the details of my nights with Justin.

Her arms were tied above her head with a red silk scarf, knotted on the headboard posts. And he was on her, this man with dark hair and a pale gray sweater, his pants pulled to his knees. As I watched, he untied the scarf and crawled to the end of the bed, kissing down her belly. Eve threw back her head in a moan and in a sudden dizzying shift I saw myself, how I would look under this man, her face my face, twisted like she was in pain. It was horrifying and weird and embarrassing. I felt coated with an opaque sheen, like a skin of soap, and I wanted to turn away but was completely and totally unable to move. She clamped her legs around him, and with a force that shocked me she rolled him over and pulled him down.

And I saw his face. I saw and I stared for a moment of numb disbelief. It was Ryan Maclean.

Congressman Maclean whose sons we’d babysat, whose wife had brought banana bread to Daddy’s funeral reception. Mr. Maclean, Rhode Island representative, millionaire and husband and father of two. And as the horror of it sank under my skin, some deep knowing inside of me understood that Eve was on the brink of something that would destroy us both.