White Cat

Page 18

I walk through the house and put the phone down next to Philip’s plate of pie.
“In my day,” Grandad says. He’s in the middle of one of his speeches. “In my day workers were still respected. We kept the peace in neighborhoods. It was illegal, sure, but the cops looked the other way if they knew what was good for them.”
He’s clearly drunk.
Barron and Grandad go into the living room to watch television, while Philip talks to Mom on the extension in the loft. Maura stands at the sink, scraping food into the whirring garbage disposal. She scrubs a pot, and her lips draw back from her gums like a dog before it bites.
I want to tell her about the missing memories, but I don’t know how to do it without pissing her off.
“Dinner was good,” I say finally.
She spins around, relaxing her features into some pleasant and vague expression. “I burned the carrots.”
I put my hands in my pockets, fidgeting. “Tasty.”
She frowns. “Do you need something, Cassel?”
“I wanted to thank you. For helping me out the other day.”
“And lying to your school?” she asks with a sly smile, drying the pot. “They haven’t called yet.”
“They will.” I pick up another dish towel and start mopping the water off a knife. “Don’t you have a dishwasher?”
“It dulls the blade,” she says, taking it from me and sliding it into a drawer. “And the pot had too much gunk stuck on the bottom. Some things you still have to do by hand.”
I set the rag down on the counter with sudden decision. “I have something for you.” I walk out to where my jacket is hanging and reach into the inside pocket.
“Hey, come sit down,” Barron calls.
“In a second,” I say, walking quickly back to the kitchen.
“Look,” I say to Maura, holding out my hand to show her the onyx charm. “I know what you said about a worker’s wife and being—”
“Very thoughtful of you,” she says. The stone shines under the recessed lights like a spilled droplet of tar. “Just like your brother. You don’t understand favors, just exchanges.”
“Get a needle and sew it into your bra,” I tell her. “Promise?”
“Charming.” She tilts her head. “You look like him, you know. My husband.”
“I guess,” I say. “We’re brothers.”
“You’re handsome with all that messy black hair. And your crooked smile.” They’re compliments, but she doesn’t sound complimentary. “Do you practice smiling like that?”
Sometimes in intense situations I can’t help grinning a little. “My smile’s naturally crooked.”
“You’re not as charming as you think you are,” she says, walking up to me, so close that her breath is warm and sour on my face. I take a step back, and my legs bang against the edge of her counter. “You’re not as charming as him.”
“Okay,” I say. “Just promise me that you’ll wear it.”
“Why?” she asks. “What kind of amulet is so important?”
I glance at the doorway. I can hear the television in the other room, some game show Grandad likes.
“A memory charm,” I say softly. “It’s better than it looks. Say that you’ll wear it.”
“Okay.”
I try a smile, as non-crooked as I can make it. “We nonworkers have got to stick together.”
“What do you mean?” She narrows her eyes. “Do you think I’m stupid? You’re one of them. I remember that.”
I shake my head, but don’t know what to say. Maybe it’s better if I wait for the charm to show her the truth before I try to argue with her over things that don’t matter anyway.
“Grandad’s passed out,” Barron says when I walk into the living room. “Looks like you’re going to have to stay over. I don’t think I’m going anywhere either.” He yawns.
“I can drive him,” I say. I feel suffocated by all the things I can’t say, about all the things I suspect my brothers of doing. I want to get home and start packing.
“What did you tell Mom?” he asks. He’s drinking black coffee from one of Maura’s good cups, the kind with a saucer. “It’s taking him a while to calm her down.”
“Just that she knows something she’s not telling me,” I say.
“Come on, if we had a dollar for everything Mom never told us, we’d have a million bucks.”
“I’d have a lot more money than you would.” I sit down on the couch. I can’t just leave without at least trying to warn him. “Can I ask you something?”
Barron turns toward me. “Sure. Shoot.”
“Do you remember when we were kids and we went to the beach down by Carney? There were toads in the scrub brush. You caught a really tiny one that jumped out of your hands. I squeezed mine until it puked up its guts. I thought it was dead, but then when we left it alone for a moment, it disappeared. Like it sucked in its guts and hopped away. Do you remember that?”
“Yeah,” Barron says, with a shrug of his shoulders. “Why?”
“How about when you and Philip got all those Playboy magazines out of the Dumpster and you cut out all the breasts and covered a lamp shade with them. And then it caught on fire and you gave me five dollars to lie to Mom and Dad about it?
He laughs. “Who could forget that?”
“Okay. How about when you smoked all that weed that you thought was laced with something? You fell in the tub, but you refused to get out because you were convinced the back of your head was going to fall off. The only thing that would calm you down was reading out loud, so I read the only book in the bathroom—one of Mom’s romances, called The Windflower, cover to cover.”
“Why are you asking me about this?”
“Do you remember?”
“Sure, yeah, I remember. You read the whole book. It was easy to clean up the blood once I got out. Now, what’s with the interrogation?”
“None of those things happened,” I tell him. “Not to you. You weren’t there for the toad thing. My roommate told me the story about the boob lamp fire. He paid his little sister to lie. The third story happened to a guy Jace in my dorm. Sadly, no one had The Windflower on hand. Me and Sam and another guy on our hall took turns reading Paradise Lost through the locked door. I think it actually made him more paranoid, though.”
“That’s not true,” he says.
“Well, he seemed more paranoid to me,” I say. “And he still gets a little weird at the mention of angels.”
“You think you’re so funny.” Barron sits up straighter. “I was just playing along, trying to figure out what your game was. You can’t play me, Cassel.”
“I did play you,” I say. “You’re losing your memories and you’re trying to cover it up. I’ve lost memories too.”
He gives me a strange look. “You mean about Lila.”
“That’s ancient history,” I say.
He looks over at Grandad again. “I remember you were obviously jealous that I was dating her. You had a crush or something and you were always trying to get me to dump her. One day I walk into Grandad’s basement and she’s lying on the floor. You’re standing over her with this stunned expression on your face.” I suspect he’s telling this story just to needle me, just to get me back for embarrassing him.
“And a knife,” I say. It bothers me that the thing I most remember—my horrible smile—is absent from his telling.
“Right. A knife. You said you didn’t remember anything, but it was obvious what happened.” He shakes his head. “Philip was terrified that Zacharov would find out, but blood’s thicker than water. We covered up for you—hid her body. Lied.”
There’s something wrong with the way he’s describing the memory. It’s like he’s remembering a few lines from a textbook about a battle instead of actually remembering a battle. No one would really say blood’s thicker than water when their memory should be full of smeared, clotted redness.
“You loved her, right?” I ask him.
He makes a gesture—a wave of his hands—that I can’t interpret. “She was really special.” A grin lifts a side of his mouth. “You certainly thought so.”
He must have known what was in the cage in his spare room, what was crying and eating whatever he gave her and soiling his floor. “I guess it’s true what they say—I have loved too much not to hate.”
Barron tilts his head. “What do you mean?”
“It’s a quote. From Racine. Also, you may have heard, there’s a thin line between love and hate.”
“So you killed her because you loved her too much? Or aren’t we talking about you and her anymore?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m just talking. I want you to be careful—”
I stop as Philip comes into the doorway.
“I just got off the phone with Mom,” he says. “I need to talk to Cassel. Alone.”
Barron glances at Philip and then back at me. “So, what is it you suspect is going on? You know, that I should be careful about.”
I shrug my shoulders. “I’d be the last to know.”
Philip leads me back to the kitchen and sits down at the table, folding his hands on the stained white cloth. Around him are a few remaining plates and several mostly empty wineglasses. He picks up a bottle of Maker’s Mark and fills one of the used coffee cups with amber liquor. “Sit down.”
I sit, and he regards me silently.
“What’s with all the grimness?” I say, but my fingers reach down unconsciously to rub the spot where the pebbles rest under my skin. The soreness is reassuring and as addictive as touching the tip of my tongue to the raw socket of a recently lost tooth. “I must have really upset Mom.”
“I have no idea what you think you know,” Philip says. “But you have to understand that all I’ve been trying to do—all I’ve ever tried to do is protect you. I want you to be safe.”
What a line. I shake my head, but don’t contradict him. “Okay, then. What are you protecting me from?”
“Yourself,” he says and now he looks me in the eye. For a moment I see the thug that people are afraid of—jaw clenched, hair shadowing his face. But after all these years, at least he’s finally looking at me.
“Get over yourself,” I say. “I’m a big kid.”
“Things are tough without Dad,” he says. “Law school isn’t cheap. Wallingford isn’t cheap. Mom’s legal bills alone are staggering. Grandad had some savings, but we burned through that. I’ve had to step up. And I’m doing the best I can. I want us to have things, Cassel. I want my son to have things.” He takes another slug from the cup and then laughs to himself. His eyes shine when he looks over at me, and I wonder just how much liquor he’s already had. Enough to get him pretty unwound.
“Okay,” I say.
“That means taking some risks. What if I told you there was something I needed you for?” Philip says. “Something Barron and I both need your help with.” I think of Lila in my dream, asking for help. The overlay of the memories is dizzying.
“Do you need my help?” I ask.
“I need you to trust us,” Philip says, tilting his head to one side and giving me that superior older brother smile. He thinks he’s teaching me a lesson.
“I should be able to trust my own brothers, right?” I ask. I think I manage to say it without sarcasm.
“Good,” he says. There’s something sad and tired in the sag of his shoulders, something that seems less like cruelty and more like resignation. It makes me unsure of my conclusions. I think of us being kids all together and how much I loved it when Philip paid me any attention—even the kind of attention that came in the form of an order. I loved to scramble to get a beer out of the fridge for him and pop the top like a bartender, then grin at him, waiting for the offhanded nod of acknowledgment.
And here I am, trying to find a way where he isn’t the villain. Looking for the nod. All because he finally looked me in the eye.
“Things are going to be different for us real soon. Vastly different. We’re not going to have to struggle.” He makes a sweeping gesture that knocks over one of the wineglasses that Maura didn’t clear. There’s only a little bit of liquid in it, but it rushes over the white cloth in a tide of pink wetness. He doesn’t seem to notice.
“What’s going to be different?” I ask him.
“I can’t tell you details,” he says, and looks toward the living room. Then he stands up unsteadily. “For now, just don’t rock the boat. And don’t mess with Mom. Give me your word.”
I sigh. The conversation is circular, pointless. He wants me to trust him, but he doesn’t trust me. He wants me to obey him. “Yeah,” I lie. “You’ve got my word. Family looks out for family. I get it.”
As I stand up, I notice the wineglass he knocked over isn’t as empty as I thought. Some kind of sediment remains at the bottom. I lean over and drag my finger through the sludge of sugar-like granules, trying to remember who was seated where.
Over Maura’s protests and Barron’s annoyed insistence, I half-carry Grandad out to the car. My heart beats like I’m in a fight as I turn down the offers to sleep in the study or on the sofa. I say I’m not tired. I invent an appointment Grandad has with a bingo playing widow in the morning. Grandad is heavy and so drugged and drunk that he barely responds.