My shoulders shook. I can’t do this, I thought. I can’t pretend in order to make him happy and keep him from doing something terrible to me.
It was making me too sick inside. Tears began to trickle down my cheeks.
How would Haylee handle this? I wondered. There wasn’t anyone, including teachers, who could intimidate her. Where was the Haylee in me when I needed it the most?
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t do this. I shouldn’t have led you on to believe I could. It was immature of me to flirt with you. I’m not right for you. I really don’t believe anything I said about us. You shouldn’t want me here. I’ll just disappoint you constantly.”
He stared hard, his eyelids narrowing.
Then he broke into a wide smile. Was he going to let me go?
“It’s just one dish,” he said in a tone completely opposite to the one he had just used. “Don’t make a federal case over it. The dishes are a bit brittle, old. Maybe we should have a new set of dishes. Yeah. I’ll buy new dishes for a new home, but until then, try not to break any more, okay? Go on, set the table. I’ll clean up the mess. Go,” he ordered, and returned to the food.
He really doesn’t hear anything he doesn’t want to hear, I thought, or he just refuses to. Ironically, Haylee could be like that, too. She was the one with the bag of excuses: I didn’t hear you. I didn’t understand you. And of course, to Mother, that had to mean both of us.
I continued to set the table. What else could I do?
“Get the music going,” he said as he mixed our salad. “You know how to use them things better than me. I was thinking of getting you a pair of headphones, too. I might get tired of the music you like. But then I thought I shouldn’t do that. I shouldn’t dislike anything you like. See? I’m willing to make changes for you. You should be willing to do the same for me. Go on. Get the music going. I’ll light the candles.”
Where was this leading? What would happen tonight? Obviously, he thought we were going to have a romantic dinner. He opened a bottle of wine at the table while I was getting the music going. When I looked at the CDs, I realized they were indeed singers and songs Haylee preferred, some of which I didn’t, some of which I actually hated. Why would she put those on the list? There were even some that she hated almost as much as I did.
There was so much fear rising in my body as I envisioned where all of this was headed. What had I done by being so cooperative? Perhaps all I’d done was support his mad belief that I wanted to be here after all. I had trouble manipulating dials and switches. My fingers were trembling, but if he noticed, he didn’t say. In his mind, he was probably telling himself I was excited about everything.
The music started.
“Perfect, he said, and sat at the table after he had cleaned up the broken dish. He served our salads and poured the wine. “Yeah,” he said. “This is sweet, like our first dinner should be. C’mon. Sit. Tell me more about that crazy mother of yours and how she drove your father nuts.”
He sipped his wine and began to eat, looking around and nodding as if we were in some fancy restaurant and not in his hidden basement apartment.
“Well? Tell me.”
“I forget what I told you.”
“You said she wouldn’t let you decide a thing for yourself. What’d ya call her? An ogre. That’s the way I often felt about my mother, too. I mean, she’s your mother, but you can hate her, too, right?”
Haylee had told him that? Was she simply trying to make him feel comfortable about his own parents? She couldn’t hate Mother that much, could she?
He nodded at my salad. I had yet to touch it. “It’s all fresh stuff, crisp, and that salad dressing is made to perfection. I made it for my father and mother once, and my mother liked it. My father did, too, but he wouldn’t admit it. He wouldn’t admit that anything I did was done good. Stubborn bastard. I bet Death’s unhappy he met him,” he added, and laughed. “He got a heart attack right out front of the house. I was down here playing with my dart game. Oh, I got that in a closet, and I’ll bring it down for you. So,” he said, chewing.
“How did you know, then?”
“Know what?”
“That your father had a heart attack?”
“I heard my mother screaming for me. Go on, eat,” he said. “We don’t waste food. My father used ta make me eat for breakfast what I didn’t eat for dinner. He’d shove it in front of me and say, ‘Eat this or starve.’ ”
I started to eat. It was good; it was fresh, and the dressing was not bad at all. My whole body wanted to revolt against liking anything, but I was hungry, and that overpowered my reluctance. Keep him talking, I thought. Maybe he’ll say something I could use to help me escape. “What did you do when you heard her screaming?”
“I ran up the stairs and outside, and sure enough, there he was spread-eagle on the sidewalk he built out of slate. He looked like he was trying to fly or something. I swear, the first thing I did was laugh. You wanna see someone get mad, you shoulda seen my mother. ‘Don’t laugh, you idiot,’ she said. ‘Go see about him.’ She pushed me forward. She had long fingernails. Did I tell you that? Thought it made her glamorous or something. My father didn’t like it, but she wouldn’t give in to that. Her fingernails stung like a knife when she pushed me. I didn’t know what to do. I never saw a dead man. I poked him and called to him and tried to turn his head, and then I just shrugged and said, ‘Ma, he ain’t right.’ ‘How’s that?’ ‘He ain’t right.’ Truth is, he was never right to me.”
“Didn’t anyone else come to help?”
“Who’d come? We don’t exactly have neighbors close-by.”
“No one driving by could see?”
“We’re up from the road. It ain’t easy to see someone lying on his face.”
“What happened next?”
“Ma ran to the phone and called the police, I think. Took a while for an ambulance to come. Maybe they knew him and didn’t want to come,” he said. “I knew you’d like that salad.”
“How far did they have to come?”
“Far enough.”
It sounded like we were on some back road with so much undeveloped land around us.
“How’s the wine?”
I sipped some. He was waiting for my response. “It’s okay,” I said.
“Just okay? That bottle was expensive. I wanted something extra special for our first romantic dinner.”
“I don’t know much about wine.”
He thought a moment. “I coulda sworn . . . you said you did. You mentioned some wines I never heard of, said your father liked them. I’m sure this is one of them. I wrote it down when you said it. You even spelled it out for me. You said you wanted it for our first dinner together, just like you wanted the candlelight and the music. You ordered what we’d eat, too.”
“I lied, just like I lied about everything else,” I said. “That’s why I’m sorry, but this won’t work. I’m not old enough for you, Anthony.” I’ll force him to listen, I thought. “I’m too young to be anyone’s wife. I don’t even know how to cook anything. We had maids when we were young, and my mother did everything for us.”
“Naw. In half the world, girls are married younger than you. You’ll learn stuff. I’m a patient guy.” He drank some more wine and then picked up our salad plates and returned to the stove.
“You should have someone older,” I insisted. “Someone who can make things easier for you and not harder.”
He turned and looked at me. “When I look at you in Ma’s dress there, you remind me a little of her when she was young. I seen her pictures. You know, she was married just a year older than you are. But you knew that. Don’t be afraid to tell me when I’m repeating stuff,” he said. “We should be telling each other new stuff.”
He brought our food to the table, serving me first and then himself.
“You know,” he said when he had sat again, “after Ma called the police and the ambulance was coming, I went back out and took my father’s watch off him. I
bet they would have stole it, huh? I was going to pull off his wedding ring, but it was as good as soldered on his finger. Ma got it later and put it in a drawer.” He held up his hand to show it to me. It was a simple silver band. “I put it on the night you arrived.”
Then he reached into his pants pocket and took out another ring.
“Give me your hand,” he said. I started to shake my head. “Go on, don’t be shy, now, Kaylee. Your left hand,” he commanded. “Do it!”
I held it out, and he slid the ring onto my finger as if he had known it would fit because he had sized it. I stared at it in disbelief. It was silver, too, but with very tiny diamonds embedded in it.
He held my hand. “Do you, Kaylee Alexander, take Anthony Cabot as your loving husband?”
“That’s not my name,” I said. “My name is Kaylee Fitzgerald.” Haylee had given him a false name.
“It doesn’t matter what your name was. Now your name will be Kaylee Cabot. Well?”
I tried to pull my fingers out of his hand, but he tightened his grip so hard that it hurt.
“Our food’s getting cold,” he said. “You’re supposed to say ‘I do.’ ”
He didn’t loosen his grip. I started to cry again.
He smiled. “All brides cry a little on their wedding day and their wedding night. That’s perfect. So?”
Daddy, I thought. Daddy, please come home and help me. Please.
Anthony picked up his knife. “You don’t say ‘I do,’ we won’t be married, and then you won’t need the ring or a finger for it.”
He put the blade on my finger.
“I do,” I said.
5
Haylee
They came early in the afternoon. I was still in my room, having told Daddy that I didn’t want any lunch when he had stopped by to ask.
“I know what Dr. Bloom said, but I can’t eat,” I said. “My stomach is tied in knots. Maybe later.”
He didn’t know, but before, while he was in with Mother, I had gone down and gotten a banana and some cookies. When he knocked and entered this time, I was lying in bed in the fetal position. I’m sure my body looked as tight as a fist. He stood there looking at me so long that I opened my eyes.
“What is it? Any news?” I asked, sitting up quickly.
“The detectives are here, Haylee. They want to speak with you. Come downstairs.”
“Is Mother downstairs?”
“I got her to eat some toast and jam, but she’s better off not being part of this,” he said. He sounded very tired.
“What? Why not? Won’t she be angry if she’s not included?”
“Just come down,” he said, and left.
I got off the bed slowly, actually feeling afraid for the first time since Kaylee hadn’t returned to the movie theater. Detectives, I thought, and recalled the good-looking one, Simpson. I hoped he was here, too. Just in case, I changed into a light-turquoise sweater. Everyone thought that color was very attractive on me, which of course meant Kaylee as well, but she wasn’t as fond of it as I was. I changed my jeans, too, putting on a black pair, and slipped on a pair of low-top black sneakers with pink laces. When I glanced at myself in the mirror, I wondered if I might look a bit too cheerful. I really liked how I looked but thought twice and then quickly changed into a dull gray sweater and a pair of worn blue sneakers instead. I looked back at my turquoise sweater and those low-top sneakers mournfully as I stepped out of my room.
Soon, I told myself. Soon you’ll be able to come back to life.
But not just yet.
I prepared myself for the interrogation I knew was coming and descended the stairway as if I were descending into a pit of gloom and doom. Daddy stepped out of the living room when he heard me.
“In here,” he said.
I moved quickly and entered the room. The same two detectives were here, Lieutenant Cowan and Detective Simpson. Neither smiled. They were seated on the sofa looking glum, actually angry.
“Sit,” Daddy ordered, nodding at the chair across from them. I did.
“What is it?” I asked. I clutched my hands together like someone who was expecting to hear terrible news. “Kaylee?” My eyes quickly teared up.
“Tell us again how you learned about what your sister was doing,” Lieutenant Cowan began. They were looking at me like doctors searching for the symptoms of some Third World disease or something.
But I wasn’t nervous. I certainly didn’t want to look nervous. “What’s happened to Kaylee?” I asked, instead of answering.
“Just tell them what they want to know, Haylee. Please,” Daddy said, standing to the side, his arms folded across his chest.
“I can’t remember the exact day, but one afternoon when we got home from school, she came into my room very excited to tell me she had met someone she liked. I was surprised, of course. My sister and I rarely did anything apart from each other, and if she had been with a boy from our school or even from another school, there wasn’t much chance I wouldn’t know anyway.”
“She said ‘met’?” Detective Simpson stressed.
I shrugged. “Yes, ‘met.’ Before I could ask her anything, she started talking about him, how mature he was, how sensitive and sweet. I remember she said he was polite and timid. Before he asked her anything, he would say, ‘May I ask you something personal?’ Then she said she had been talking to him for days, almost a week, I think. You can imagine how surprised I was to hear that.”
“And all this was conducted on her computer?” Lieutenant Cowan said.
“That’s what she told me.” I glanced at Daddy and then looked back at them. “Of course, I warned her about having contact with any stranger, especially a man, on her computer, but she tossed off my warnings as if I didn’t know half of what she knew and just kept talking about how mature he was and how he would tell her very personal things about himself.”
“How personal?”
“She just said personal. Oh, like he had never slept with a woman. He was a virgin, because he believed relations between a man and a woman were something holy, just like we were taught. I told her that he was probably lying, but she wouldn’t hear of it. How could I say such a thing without knowing him like she did? Then she told me that the relationship was her big secret, and if I ever revealed it, she would hate me to the bone. I remember her saying that, ‘to the bone.’ We shared secrets, of course. She knew things about me that I didn’t want anyone to know, so I promised, but I kept trying to get her to stop.” I looked at Daddy again.
“And you never saw her on her computer carrying on with him?” Detective Simpson asked.
“No, sir,” I said. “She didn’t want me in her room when she talked with him. She wanted that to be her own thing. Privacy was not something we had enjoyed very much of, so when we finally had it, we respected each other’s. For most of our lives, we were practically conjoined twins. My father can attest to that, right, Daddy?”
He looked at me and then turned to them. “They weren’t allowed to have their own rooms until they were nearly thirteen,” he said.
“Nor could one of us do something without the other. We were just used to it, but when we got older . . .”
“She never said she had any other contact with him except through her computer?” Lieutenant Cowan asked. “You’re absolutely certain of that?”
I shook my head. Of course I knew why, but I asked, “Why?”
“Nothing was found on her hard drive that would trace to anyone talking to her on any of the usual websites or private chat rooms. We have some very sharp computer geeks working for us,” Lieutenant Cowan said. “Any one of them could work for the CIA. Her computer is clean.”
“What does that mean?” I looked at Daddy and then at Detective Simpson. Were my eyes big enough?
“She didn’t have contact with any man over the Internet using her computer,” Detective Simpson replied. Good, I thought. I’d rather be talking to him.
“She lied about that?”
“She
obviously met him somewhere, somehow,” Detective Simpson said. “Can’t you think of anything she might have done or a place she might have gone without you?”
I looked down just the way anyone trying to remember might. Then I looked up at Daddy guiltily.
“What?” he said. “This isn’t the time to hold anything back, Haylee.”
“I’m just so surprised that she lied to me, but maybe she was afraid I would say something, and you or Mother would have her computer taken and studied just the way the police did.”
“So?” Daddy demanded. “Talk, Haylee! Answer the question. Where else would she start a relationship with someone?”
“There were times we weren’t together after school,” I said, in the tone of a confession. “If Mother would have found out, or even if she finds out now . . .”
“Tell them everything, Haylee. A lot of valuable time and energy has been wasted.”
“Well, not because of me!” I wailed. “She lied!”
“Just make sure you tell the truth. All of it, and now,” Daddy stressed.
I nodded, looking like poor trapped me. “There were weekends . . . we had Mother take us supposedly to a friend’s house or to a movie matinee, and we’d split up. I was going with someone I didn’t think Mother would like. Kaylee would go off on her own to give me time to spend with him.”
“Where exactly?”
“Mostly at the mall.” I brightened, acting as if a lightbulb had gone off above my head. “I suppose she might have met him at the mall and then used every opportunity to meet him elsewhere. She could never be with him that long, because we had to get back to where Mother had dropped us, just like she was supposed to do at the movie theater this time.”
“So she might have called him on her cell phone?” Lieutenant Cowan asked.
“I don’t know. I never saw her talking to anyone we didn’t know.”
“You said you left your cell phones home. Where’s your sister’s?” Detective Simpson asked.
“It should be in her room in the drawer of the nightstand by her bed. It’s where I keep mine,” I said. “Mother wanted us to keep our things in similar places. Our rooms are exactly the same, same furniture, everything.”