Killer's Cousin (10 page)

I'd have felt sympathy for Lily, but just then she elbowed the butter dish into my lap, and I'd swear it was deliberate.

Before this, I'd dreaded spending time alone with my father. But after a couple of hours with the Shaughnessys I was relieved when the meal ended. My mother stayed downstairs talking with Lily, but my father and I went upstairs and watched football in almost complete silence. And it was okay.

After the game, we went back downstairs, and my mother suggested a stroll outside. I thought at first she meant only my father, but she turned to me and said, “Coming, David?” She even made a little face, jerking her chin marginally toward Vic and Julia, who were seated stiffly together on the sofa.

“Okay,” I said.

“Lily?” said my mother. “Will you show us around the neighborhood?”

“No,” said Lily flatly.

“But we really would love you to come,” said my mother.

“I want to stay here,” said Lily. She did not look at her parents.

“But—” said my mother.

“Eileen,” said my father quietly. “It's Lily's decision.”

My mother sighed. “Well, Lily. Feel free to come and catch up with us if you change your mind.” But before she was half through with her sentence, Lily had turned her back and gone to sit on the sofa. Between her parents.

“Let's go,” said my father. We started downstairs.

“Stuart,” said my mother softly.

“Not here, Eileen.”

I feared I would be asked about Lily. I dreaded it. I prayed suddenly, intensely, for a distraction, and I got one. Raina Doumeng was on the porch.

“Well, hello,” she said. She had a huge, soft-looking black shawl wrapped around her, a portfolio under her arm, and an uncertain smile on her face. She looked at my parents curiously.

“Hey, Raina,” I said, a little nervously. “Meet my parents.” I performed introductions. I even remembered to say “Museum school” about Raina.

“How impressive! The Museum of Fine Arts program doesn't take many undergraduates,” said my mother, who knows everything. “And how long have you been living here?” She gestured at the front door of Raina's apartment.

“A little over a year,” said Raina, shifting on the heels of her boots. Failing to notice that my mother had begun another polite comment, she said, “David. I have something for you.” She began fumbling with the ties of her portfolio; her shawl slipped unnoticed down her shoulders to hang in the crooks of her elbows.

“Maybe later,” I said. My mother was watching Raina with what I felt was undue interest.

Raina didn't look up. “Later I might have lost it.” She had the portfolio open, and was sorting quickly through the contents. She located a newspaper clipping, and held it out to me.

I took the clipping. It was a review of an art exhibit at M.I.T. “Anxious Salon: The Naked and the Dread,” read the headline.

“Thanks,” I said. Raina looked expectant, so I began scanning the text.

“No, no,” said Raina impatiently. She stepped next to me and leaned in, pointing. She seemed to have completely forgotten that my parents were there. “Look at the
picture
.”

It was a detail from a painting, showing a nude, muscled young man in an ass-head mask. Around his neck was a necklace of thorns, with a swastika hanging from it. His head was completely bald.

I thought,
I shouldn't have talked to
her
about Frank Delgado either. Everyone's overreacting
. But I hadn't had much I
could
talk about. Frank had seemed a safe enough topic.

Raina's voice was surprisingly loud as she spoke to my parents. “David was telling me about the kid in his class with the shaved head, and then this exhibit pops up. There's quite a movement going on with this stuff in the art world …” She chattered on, responding to my mother's questions, my father's eyebrow. She didn't appear to notice my silence. I was furious at myself. Why had I mentioned Frank Delgado to Raina, in one of those silent pauses over tea? I did not want to make a big deal over him. He wasn't a neo-Nazi. He just had a shaved head. He was just a weird kid with a shaved head.

“The article's reproduction is pretty bad,” Raina was saying to my parents. “Apparently the artist is getting to be well known … Yes, absolutely controversial … painted in Berlin … No, just because he paints this stuff doesn't mean he himself approves of it. But then again—well, I'd have to see the whole exhibit,
read some critics … Yes, there's certainly something sexual, Mapplethorpeish about this one … Oh, yes, I'm sure David will want to see the exhibit—”

“No,” I said. “I don't.”

They all looked at me. “Well, fine,” said Raina. “Then don't.” I knew she was offended.

“David, are you sure?” my mother asked. “It's nearby, and I'd love to see it. We could go tomorrow.”

“I thought we'd go for a hike in the Blue Hills,” I said. “I hear there's a terrific view of Boston.”

There was a pause.

“I'm not the hiking type, dear,” said my mother dryly. Then her face brightened with an idea. “Stuart, you and David could go for that hike, while Raina and I—” She swiveled and looked at Raina. “You do want to see this exhibit? How about tomorrow? Are you busy?”

“Well …,” said Raina. She was looking a little flustered. “I hadn't planned … that is, I'd love to.”

“Excellent,” said my mother, beaming. “And perhaps you'd like to come upstairs for dinner afterward. I plan to cook salmon.”

I could feel my father next to me. I imagined us alone together for hours and I panicked. “Changed my mind,” I said. “I'll go to the exhibit too.”

“All right,” said my mother quietly, after a moment.

I did not look at my father. He did not look at me.

Raina said good-bye, and went inside. And we went for our walk. “A nice girl,” said my mother about Raina, but thankfully she left it at that. We three walked through the North Cambridge streets for a full
hour, and spoke only about the neighborhood. It was what I had wanted. No questions about Lily, or Julia, or Vic, or Raina, or even about Frank Delgado.

As we neared the Shaughnessy house again, my father said, “Perhaps your mother and I will take another turn around the block.”

“Okay,” I said. I knew I had hurt him when I dodged the hike. I tried not to be hurt now. I left them. I went in alone.

Running up the inside stairs in the gloom, I nearly tripped over Lily. She was sitting on the top step outside her parents' apartment. Without looking at me, she squeezed her body to the left. I stepped by. If she was going to ignore me, then I would ignore her.

But then, about to nudge the door closed, I hesitated. “Lily? Aren't you coming in?” She didn't answer. I took a deep breath. “Aren't you cold?”

From deeper within the apartment, I heard Julia's laugh, and then Vic's. At the sound of their laughter, gooseflesh rose on my arms. It was so … so tentative. And it sounded so peculiar, in that house.

There was no laughter in that house. Only shadows, humming, and silence.

I looked at the back of Lily's neck, at the way she sat, upright, on the stair. I stood there for several minutes as the gooseflesh settled. Finally, I closed the door, leaving it unlocked behind me. Let Lily sit there if she wanted, if it helped. She'd get over it.

Surely she would get over it.

M
y mother liked Raina. By the time the salmon dinner was eaten the following evening, it was clear to me that my mother liked Raina very much.

My father, as always, was harder to figure. I caught him watching me, and I knew that unlike my mother, he had not rushed into assuming Raina was a potential new girlfriend.

The four of us were in the attic apartment. My mother had invited Vic and Julia, and Lily, and had bought plenty of fish and vegetables, but Vic and Julia had other plans.

“There's a movie at the Capitol,” said Julia, “which Vic and I have decided to see.” She named a Meg Ryan romantic comedy. There was a faint pink tinge on her cheeks. My mother beamed at her. “Lily will come to dinner,” said Julia.

But Lily had not come. And when I was sent down
to fetch her, I found a locked bedroom door and silence behind it. She didn't respond to me, or to my mother, or to my father, and finally we left her alone.

“She'll get over it,” said my mother uncertainly as she cut lemon for the fish. My father had gone back downstairs to tell Lily we would put a plate for her in the kitchen. “And the salmon and asparagus will be fine cold.”

I nodded. Then my father came back, with Raina, who had actually changed for dinner.

She wasn't ever going to be my girlfriend. That kind of thing was over for me. But even so, I could hardly breathe for a moment as I looked at her. She had on a short skirt and black tights covered with tiny white dots. She abandoned her shoes at the door when she came in, and sat down in a corner of the sofa, folding her long legs up under her. Her lipstick shimmered.

Her shirt was unfortunately very baggy.

I listened to her chatter unself-consciously with my parents: her classes, her three part-time jobs, her paintings, her hopes.

Soon I managed to forget Lily, alone downstairs, and things went very well until after dinner, when my mother pulled a little photo album out of her purse. Her sly, happy, sidelong glance toward me made me tighten in fear. I winced under the weight of the normalcy she wished me to reclaim.

I went to the kitchen, made coffee, and scooped out ice cream for everyone.

Raina flipped through the photos one by one as my mother provided the primary narration and my father, on my mother's other side, threw in the occasional
comment. “These are great, Eileen,” said Raina to my mother, about halfway through, and the name sounded so odd. Emily had always called my parents Mr. and Mrs. Yaffe.

“Here's David on the swings,” said my mother happily, and I grimaced. I handed around the ice cream and coffee and leaned over the back of the sofa, where I had an excellent view of Raina's legs and a less-than-excellent view of the photographs.

“David's Little League team,” said my father. “David is, uh—”

“Right there,” said Raina, unerringly picking out the ten-year-old me in the lineup. I was impressed. Even I had had trouble locating myself in that one.

Raina turned the page. “Oh, look. There's a picture tucked behind this one.” She pulled it out. I knew instantly who it was.

I said, “Kathy.” And as I spoke her name I had a flash of déjà vu, as if I'd seen her recently. For the barest instant I heard the humming, and I froze. I looked around, but no one else appeared to have heard a thing. I pulled myself together.

“My cousin,” I said to Raina. “Vic and Julia's older daughter.” I was aware, again, of Lily downstairs. “Lily's sister.”

“She looks a lot like you, Eileen,” said Raina to my mother. “Where is she now?” But my mother was staring at the photo and didn't answer.

“She's dead,” I said, and my voice was much too loud in the apartment that had been Kathy's.

“Oh!” Raina flushed. “I'm so sorry. How sad.” She paused. “She can't have been very old.”

“Eighteen.” My mother took the photo. “I'm sorry,” she said to Raina. “I was just surprised …” Then she turned to me. “I went through all the photos before coming, because you said there weren't any of Kathy downstairs. I must have missed it somehow.” She exhaled. My father put his arm around her and she leaned against him. “Thank God this didn't happen in front of Vic and Julia. I can't imagine what I'd have done … especially now.”

“It didn't happen,” said my father.

“Yes, but what if—”

“It didn't happen.” He smiled at her, and after a moment she smiled back gratefully.

I looked at the photo. Raina was right; Kathy did resemble my mother. I said so.

“It's the jaw,” said Raina, the portrait painter. “And the nose, the brow; the underlying structure. It's only the coloring that's different.” With a finger, she traced the lines of Kathy's face in the photograph. I followed her eyes to my mother's face and I could see what she meant.

“Can I keep this?” I said to my mother.

She frowned. “Well, if you want. Just don't let Julia—”

“I'll be careful,” I said.

There was one of those pauses. “Well,” said Raina, and I knew she was about to leave. Part of me wanted her to, immediately. That part of me resented the illusion her presence created—the illusion that I was okay, had a girlfriend, was back to normal. But the other part of me welcomed it.

Surprisingly, my father said, “Eileen, let's go downstairs and try again to talk to Lily.”

“Oh, yes,” said my mother.

And Raina didn't leave. Instead, she reached for her melting ice cream. “They're nice, your parents,” she said after they'd gone.

“They like you,” I said. I paused, embarrassed. “My mother seems to think …”

“Yeah. Don't worry about it,” said Raina casually. She finished her ice cream and put the dish down. She stretched out her legs. I wanted to say something, but didn't know what. I was conscious of the cooling coffee, of the ice cream dishes. Of Raina's legs, and of her eyes examining me. I was glad when she spoke.

“I can't help being curious about your cousin Kathy. She died very young. How did it happen?”

Again I was aware that this had been Kathy's apartment. Raina added, “Of course you don't have to tell me if it's too painful or something.”

“No,” I said, “it's okay. It's just …” I cast around and seized upon a random excuse. “I should do the dishes.”

“I'll help,” said Raina. “You can tell me while we do them.” We gathered everything up and transferred it to the sink. I washed and Raina dried. Her eyes were expectant, and I had no reason not to tell her. None.