Category: WritingCommunity

Chapter Twenty – Mourning

He banished me to Skylar’s room to sleep alone. I wandered into my old room, but someone had been camping out in there. Must be Spike, judging from the camouflage sleeping bag and the mustache grooming tools. I wondered why. If his mom or his girlfriend kicked him out, couldn’t he just tell us?

As I tossed and turned in Skylar’s old bed, I wondered if Spike moved in to protect me, the way Trevor used to sleep on the floor outside my room so many moons ago. I admit it comforted me to think so. Several times I snuck out and put my ear to Trevor’s door. I could hear him in there. Sometimes he played Haydn. There was light beneath his door.

Toward morning my body betrayed me and fell asleep. I awoke all of a sudden, propelled out of a bad dream as out of a cannon, sitting up fearful and guilt ridden. I’d killed Colleen. Someone killed Colleen.

Then I remembered. Trevor killed Colleen; the same way Oz murdered my mother. It came on the sound of an echo; a short, sharp sound like a shot. Had I dreamed it or was it real? I bolted out of bed. Jake’s door was open, his music playing, but he and Shelley were gone. Was it a door slam that I heard?

How Shelley, Spike and Jake be so clueless as to eat breakfast? Couldn’t they taste the air and just know it changed forever? How could they act like it was just another day?

I put my ear to Trevor’s door and listened. Violins. Haydn’s Creation. A very bad sign.

I worried what was he doing in there. He used to cut himself when he was younger, but I didn’t suspect he’d regressed that far. Working on a plan to turn himself in? I couldn’t let that happen. I hammered on the door.

“Trevor!” I shouted. “Don’t do it! Let me in!”

Nothing. I could feel him alive in there. I swear I could feel him, I could still feel his love for me. I would make him listen. I ran through Jake’s room and bathroom to the other door, but Trevor had thought to lock that one as well.

“If you don’t open this door,” I lied, “I’m going to do something terrible to myself!”

He opened it instantly and leaned out. I was so relieved. Did I think he had killed himself? He seemed at peace. I drank in his beautiful face and tired unfocused eyes fading to pewter-color. He wore just a t-shirt. Not yet dressed for court.

He kissed my forehead.

“Don’t you dare do anything terrible to yourself,” he said, smiling as if making a joke. “What a loss that would be to literature. Don’t you realize everything terrible has already been done? Now it’s time for the wonderful things.” He looked me up and down, leaning out of the death room into the light. Into life. Kissed me, right on the lips. His lips were so real, so warm. For the first time ever he broke away before I did.

“I was crazy to think I could pass you off to another man,” he said.

He sniffed the air, hungrily, like a patient recovering from illness. “I’m starving. I could eat anything.”

“Egg foo yung?”

“Sure. Whole-wheat toast. No jelly. Bacon, if you can find it.” He closed the door and I heard him lock it.

I walked toward the stairs, just in case he was listening. I didn’t believe him for a second. I knew he was lying to get rid of me. In Skylar’s bathroom door there’s an old-fashioned skeleton key. Fortunately Vermillion has such antique locks they are easy to pick. In a house where every key is a skeleton key, every day is Halloween.

I thought I heard the music stop. Then I heard the door unlocking. I peeked around the stairs.

The door opened, then closed again. Re-locked.

There was now a note on the door. I tiptoed up.

On a plain white sheet of paper, written in capital letters, this is what it said:

BRONTË, THIS IS YOUR BIG BROTHER SPEAKING.
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO COME INTO THIS ROOM.
CALL 911 IMMEDIATELY.

I was still reading it when I heard the shots. There were two of them. So the shot that woke me was a prophecy, not an echo.

Spike said afterward that people think you can’t shoot yourself twice in the head with a pistol, that it’s just a reflex, but he says he’s known of cases where it’s happened. You just have to be very determined and have plenty of follow-through. Trevor was always gifted in that department.
He was on the bed, the bed he would never let us share because it so enshrined his self-disgust.

His head was mush – the eyes were gone – and there was blowback – what had they called it in the courtroom? – high velocity spatter along the white wall. Whatever had been Trevor was gone, now, his brain and his future blasted into space. Trevor my father, my mother, my lover, my brother, the giver of all my life’s good gifts, was no more. In a world without Trevor, who would ever know who I really was?

That dead thing was still his body, his so-familiar body lying half along the bed and half along the floor, but I didn’t touch it. I should have been afraid of him before; but I was much more afraid of him now. Poor Trevor, this death was foretold from the moment he killed Colleen. He had grown up cutting away pieces of himself he thought he could live without; this time he guessed wrong. The Luger had spun away from him along the once-polished floor. I stepped over it on my way to the mantelpiece.

You couldn’t miss the envelopes, lined up neatly in a row. Four of them. One was marked, The Prosecutor, one was marked For My Father, one for Jake and one said, Brontë. I was thinking fast and clearly. Who was the poet that said death is the silver backing on the mirror that allows us to see anything at all? I knew what I had to do, and there was no time. I owed him. In spite of what he had said our guilty pleasures were my responsibility. I especially regretted using Jake’s come-on line. And I owed Oz. Maybe it was revenge, the way Craig said, but what did I have left? Oz took away my mother. That is the crime beyond forgiveness. I would have to make sure he would never get away.

I grabbed all four envelopes and the pad he had written them on. I found the note Oz wrote in Trevor’s wastebasket, a basket empty of false starts—because Trevor knew exactly what he wanted to say. I locked in Skylar’s room when I heard feet on the stairs, and voices.
“What was that?”

“Brontë? Trevor?”

I could hear them running and whispering. Pounding up and down the stairs. Someone screamed. Shelley’s voice.

They would be in here in a minute.

I turned on the Skylar’s shower for the noise and sat down on the tiled floor next to the toilet exactly as if I was about to vomit. But what I planned to regurgitate was Trevor’s last words.

I opened the letter to me first. It was written in Trevor’s backward sloping hand, the penmanship he hated because he thought it made him look “dumb.” He could never master Oz’s confident loops and swirls. It read,

Cherry Vanilla,
Forgive me for everything. I write this knowing that you will, because I know for certain that you love me. Knowing that makes it all worthwhile, even the things that I did that were wrong and I regret. I don’t so much regret what I did as who I am, but what I do next will wipe regret away. Last night you wouldn’t listen to me when I told you of your absolution. Let me once again emphasize that fact. Go, be free, and spread your wings. God loves you as much as I do. He made you the way you are to have the best of everything. And I know you will. Bless you. I demand you have a joy filled life. I die happy in that certainty. None of this was ever your fault (underscored many times). I kiss you and hug you. I wish I could be with you on your wedding day the way I always imagined, but from heaven or hell or wherever I’m going, know that I will be looking back on you with pride. I’m eternally grateful to you for being born and for making me so happy. Trevor

I put that letter in my shirt. I was so glad he didn’t mention the murder. If he had I would have destroyed this letter, too, because that has to be erased, but as it was I could save it forever, pack it away in my “trousseau” trunk with my poems and diaries.

The letter to Jake began with “Brace yourself, bud,” said Oz told him the prosecution would announce in court that Shelley and Brontë were his sisters, and abjured him to start conducting himself accordingly. There was no reference to the murders except for the oblique closing line: “Forgive me. Remember, nothing is bad or good but thinking makes it so.”

He hadn’t been able to believe that himself. Well, at least that letter was OK, too. I decided to give it to Jake later, and tell him Trevor told me to.

I destroyed the note from Oz. Tiny pieces, flush flush. The other two letters were longer. Both were full confessions. He told Oz he never intended to let him take the fall and he just couldn’t believe the jury would convict him, but now that it looked as if they might, he had to take action. He didn’t mention the death of my mother. He didn’t mention finding out that I was his real sister. Right at the end he was protective of Oz’s feelings, Oz, who used his son like a canary in a mineshaft.

Flush, flush. The letter to the prosecutor was the same confession he had given me, but in more stilted language. He added some details he hadn’t told me. For example he said he looked in the window and saw Oz sleeping on the sofa. I’m pretty sure that was a lie he thought up in his effort to get Oz off the hook, otherwise he would have mentioned it.

I found it much easier to picture Oz standing in the darkness, watching the inevitable unfold, feeling smug and safe. Somebody allowed Colleen to bleed out while Trevor rushed back to the party. In the unacknowledged war between father and son, Oz must have felt he was the lifelong victor. Was it his plan that Trevor would stand up in court at the eleventh hour and rescue him?

Ironic that the son who couldn’t trust his father was so trusted by that same father! But Oz’s solipsistic universe can’t envision suicide. Probably he pictured to himself a sensational last minute public confession to the delight of jury and press.

He fatally underestimated his son’s sense of shame because it was an emotion he couldn’t feel himself. Was the suggestion that I get pregnant an end run around this very possibility, subtly trying to undermine Trevor’s right to take his life if it became unbearable?

The letter didn’t even mention my mother, didn’t mention our newly exposed connection. He told them Oz was an innocent man and they should let him out right now.

Flush, flush to all of it, even the envelopes, even the first blank sheets of Trevor’s writing pad. Far from grudging Skylar her updated amenities I welcomed them. My toilet would have clogged, but Skylar’s Quadraflush swirled everything effortlessly away down into darkness.

The sirens grew stronger. Why were they in such a hurry? They couldn’t put Trevor back together. Not all the king’s horses or all the king’s men could ever do that. Did they think we were all the captives of a crazed gunman, were they sending the SWAT team, what Spike calls “the green boys”? Spike himself had worked his way through the first door and found out my hiding place. Now he was shouting, hammering on the bathroom door.

The door splintered under his weight and Spike fell into the room. His stricken face melted at the sight of me.

“Jesus! I thought he killed you!”

Poor Trevor! Barely dead and already subject to misinterpretation. This too, was Oz’s fault. It was a good thing I hadn’t left the fate of his memory in his own hands.

Spike picked me up and rocked me like a baby, murmuring, “Dangerous, dangerous man.”

Did he mean Trevor, or Oz? No sense in arguing. Like a rabbit in the mouth of a very big dog, I felt it best to go limp.

It’s pleasant to be rocked. I am the baby after all. Still, the Brontë in me challenged him. “Why would Trevor ever kill me?”

“Well, obviously he could never really have you,” said Spike.

Poor Spike! Imagine being that big and that strong and that old and still not realizing you can never really have anybody. He nuzzled my neck like a mother bear trying to recognize a cub feared gone for good.

Jake appeared wild eyed in the doorway. “Why did he do it? Why? Why?”
I roused myself for one last volley.

“Oz confessed to him,” I told them both. “He’s as guilty as hell of both those murders. Trevor was sure he’d be convicted and die.”

Jake and Shelley both began to cry. I closed my eyes and felt the vertigo of a future in which my mother’s and my father’s, murderer and murderee’s tendencies warred within me. But even if temperament and talents are inherited, isn’t what I do with them entirely my own choice? No more court for me, not ever. At last I was free to leave this place and become myself. I was finally all grown up.

Spike was kissing, kissing my face and neck. Who would have thought such a big man, a Hulk, a Python, capable of such butterfly kisses? Men are eternally surprising. If I closed my eyes I stretched out again on that hot dock years ago, when Trevor kissed me back to life. Trevor had won after all. Death locked me into his template harder than his life could have. And if I wasn’t finished with Trevor, I was free to seek him still. He laughed at reincarnation, but said that love is immortal. Aunt Shea says someone you love is inside you always. So I lay there smiling while Spike kissed me with Trevor’s lips.

THE END

Chapter Nineteen – Murderous

It was a single sheet of paper. I read it over his shoulder.

Dear Trevor, it read,
I strongly suspect the following information will not be news to you. Tomorrow Buford will announce in court that DNA results prove Brontë and Shelley are my blood daughters, and therefore, your sisters. You truly share designer genes.
Both Renée and Mary Elizabeth asked me never to tell a soul, and I gave them my gentleman’s word, but circumstances have clearly conspired to relieve me of that pledge.
It was simple, it was logical and it was planned. Mary Elizabeth was frustrated in her efforts to become pregnant through her husband, was impressed by my bloodline, and so solicited my help through my wife, your mother, Renée.
I was glad to oblige. Mary Elizabeth wished to have a daughter and so I accommodated her by coming as close to coitus interruptus as is humanly possible to still deposit seed. Scientifically it is well accepted that deep thrusting produces males. Female sperm may be slow, but by an amusing trick of fate they have far more stamina than the male of the species!
Our efforts were successful; resulting in the birth of Shelley and Mary Elizabeth was so pleased that when she judged her time was right she requested my services again.
I know you love those girls as I do and therefore alert you to use your best judgment, either to prepare them for a fact I suspect will secretly delight them, or even to keep them from court if you think it best.
In haste – your loving father – Oz.

I saw Trevor’s face literally empty of blood. His eyes shuttered, his color fell away. His skull poked out of his face and gasped at me.

“Jesus Christ,” he moaned, “We’re white trash.”

I thought he would fall. In grabbing for him I dropped my glass of wine. It spilled red across the floor, running in bloody rivulets between the wide, uneven floorboards. I pushed him down into a sitting position in an armchair, trying to get his head between his legs.

He seemed to have stopped breathing. A rasping noise exhaled from his exoskeleton. His past and future were sucked right out of his body. His waxy, frozen skin rubberized at my touch. I tried to make him drink my but my own hands were shaking too much to hold it to his lips.

The death’s head spoke.

“I knew this day would come,” he said.

He was blaming himself. Trevor’s so predictable! I could see it happening and I was helpless to prevent it. I was mad enough at Oz to murder him, myself, right here, right now.

“I knew this would happen. Carnal desire got in the way.”

“But Oz knew the truth all along,” I reasoned. “He knew, but he didn’t he tell us. Ask yourself why.”
Trevor flicked away my question like a bug. He always was pigheaded.

“He gave his word.” He looked away from me, out the window, beyond the world. What did he see?

“He could have discouraged us. Instead, he did the opposite. We were just his experiment. His little bit of fun.”

“You’ve always been unfair to him,” said Trevor colorlessly. “It’s weird, because of all of us you’re the most like him. You go your own way. You have his life force. You always get what you want and that’s a fact.”

I just don’t lie about it! Trevor tried to get what he wanted too, and look at him now, dying right in front of me.

“Oz makes mistakes – I’m not denying he made mistakes,” Trevor went on, “Don’t you see they come from his exuberance? That life force. He didn’t understand that we couldn’t live up to it.”
“Oh yes he did!” I spluttered. “He knew you had a conscience. Stop apologizing for it.”

I couldn’t believe it. He was making excuses for his father! Abruptly I stopped talking about Oz. I’d reach him another way. It was my turn to save him.

“We made a mistake,” I said. “We were lied to. We didn’t know. In the absence of truth we have to carry on as best we can. Come on. Let’s make a pact not to be ruined by this.”
Trevor had collapsed in his chair, folded his shoulders and put his head in his hands. A little boy again. Was this the first time roles had been reversed and I had comforted him? It seemed impossible but I couldn’t remember another occasion. I knelt beside him trying to worm my hot hands into his closed, cold ones. I ran through everything I could think of that might make him feel better.

I knew it wasn’t the time to debate about civilization, its conventions and its discontents, to tell him that Lord Byron loved his sister all his life and it was a good thing, otherwise he never would have loved anybody, or to argue that because we were only half-sibs it was only half as bad. If I couldn’t get him angry at Oz, the author of all our misery, there still had to be something I could say.
“We can make up for it,” I suggested as gently as I could manage. “We can atone. Aren’t the Christians big on redemption? Now that we know the facts, all we have to do is promise that we’ll never touch each other – that way – again.” It was going to be hard, but if we were in different states obviously it could be done.

He rendered me a scary smile.

“You’re just looking for an excuse to leave,” he said. “So we can have a relationship in letters, like Heloise and Abelard. “From the flame to the flame.” Don’t you see it’s too late for that? It’s too late for everything.” He rose and began prowling restlessly around the room, leaving me still sitting, helpless and uncertain, on the floor. He began picking things up and putting them down again, a candlestick, a paperweight. He went to stand by the window, looking out. His back to me. He muttered something to himself, but I couldn’t be sure what it was. It sounded like, “I’m so fucking worthless.”

“I seduced you,” I reminded him. “I talked you into it. Remember?”

He glanced over at me with a horrible leer.

“Brontë the rapist?” Hollow laugh. “I don’t think so. I groomed you. I plied you with drink, I wooed you with gifts. It was always my responsibility. It was always my idea. My obsession.” He shuddered. “I knew it was wrong. Your conscience is the part that hurts when everything else feels good.”

He opened the window and shouted out into the rainy afternoon, “I fucked my little sister!”

I pulled him back and slammed the window. This craziness was disturbing.

“You have to calm down. It was an accident. A mistake. You’re always saying sins can be forgiven. It’s not the sin against the Holy Ghost.” Trevor’s told me no one agrees what that sin is, but whatever it is, it can’t be incest.

For a frightening moment he seemed to contemplate striking me. Then he gave me a terrible, sly look I will never forget. It was a look of contemptuous abandonment. He thought I was abandoning him because my love had never been as big as his.

“Remember how I spanked you and you hated me? Turns out that’s the only thing I did right. I should have spanked you and spanked you, even if it drove you away. Instead, I fucked you.”

I recoiled. You can’t argue with a person who’s out of his mind. Plus, he’s way stronger than me.
“That’s the kind of big brother I am,” he went on. “You can come to me for anything, but you’ll only get one thing. Now I have to challenge myself to a duel.”

He laughed. “What a worthless loser.”

Those were Oz’s favorite insults. Worthless. Loser.

I was still casting about for ways to save him. He liked church so much. He believed in it. He always wanted to go more than any of the rest of us, even Colleen.

“Why don’t we get a priest?” I offered. “Tell him everything. Confess and repent. Don’t you believe that? The priest can’t tell on us, he has to keep it secret. We say we’re sorry and he absolves us. Then we separate and promise never to do it again.”

He looked into my face hungrily.

“I don’t think I can promise that,” he said, and he began kissing me. Not like an older brother. For a scary minute I thought we might end up having sex right there.

At that point I didn’t know what to do. It’s not like I had never heard of addiction, but how do you manage it? I was afraid of him now. He was too much for me. It’s seductive to love someone who knows you so well, but they also know your defenses. There’s no retreat, no privacy.

Time to make up my mind. Who did I want, anyway, the older brother who cared for me, sheltered me, promoted my interests, looked after me but saw himself justified in correcting me, or the lover who adored my body and whispered eternal devotion in my ear? Restless under bondage, I had chosen the lover, but only because like the vine that’s part of pole it clings to, I couldn’t imagine myself without him.

Fortunately his powerful will stopped him just in time.

“See?” he said, “You’re just bursting with self-control.”

It wasn’t fair of him to accuse me! I was fighting for air, trying to stay on top, riding his madness the way Oz rode the bulls, rode the hurricanes. I did it because I had to; Oz did it because they were the most dangerous things he could find. Besides himself.

Trevor began slamming his fist against the wall, so hard his knuckles bled, crying with each blow, “We—knew—it—was—wrong.”

I was afraid someone would hear us and come in. Where were Shelly and Jake, anyway? Probably down in the gym fighting over the oblique machine.

I no longer knew if I was winning or losing.

“Let’s go to Reverend Beasley,” I urged, “We’ll tell him. Ask him to forgive us.”

“Yes, someone will have to know,” Trevor agreed. The old Trevor looked desperately out at me, a prisoner behind the shadowed eye sockets. “Come here.”

I didn’t want him to see my hesitation as he reached out, enfolded me in his arms and hugged me. I tried not to shrink away.

“I’m sorry about you,” he said. “This has all been so terrible for you. I promised always to take care of you and never to hurt you, and look what I did.”

This latest persona caught me so off guard I burst into tears. It felt good to cry.

“It’s been terrible,” I agreed. “Don’t you see it isn’t our fault? Oz lied to us on purpose. He played with us like he always plays with people.”

“Children think untruth is the worst thing,” Trevor assured me, stroking my hair. “You know what’s worse? Being in charge and making the wrong decision. Having to live with that.”
His pain seemed to have eased, so I pressed on.

“I know there’s a way out of this,” I said. I think I had some kind of confused vision of shaved heads and saffron robes. We should leave this place, this accursed haunted house. Burn it to the ground. Give Skylar the money. Writers work better when they’re dispossessed. Some would argue it’s a precondition.

“Of course there is,” said Trevor, kissing the top of my head. “You’re absolved. You were always innocent. Go in peace.”

I was so scared for him. Did he think he was God, or at the very least, Reverend Beasley? Trevor was the last member of our family I would have speculated was in any danger of going insane, but here we both were in looney-town.

I tried agreeing with him. Maybe that would work. “You’re absolved, too.” I echoed. “I mean, it’s not one of the worst sins, is it? It’s a sin of love. Don’t they call sex one of the “warm” sins? I mean, it’s love. It isn’t murder.”

He stared at me intently. “Oh, it’s murder all right,” he said. “It’s murder, too. Go over there and sit down. You need to be very grown up right now.”

I was beginning to cringe like a dog at this “sit down” command because something terrible always followed, but in truth I was glad to get away from him.

I pulled up a chair. We were eye-to-eye, face-to-face. He held my hands.

“I’m sorry about all of it,” he said. “Believe me; I didn’t intend for any it to happen. Not this way.”
“What?” I tried to brace myself for something awful. What could be more awful than what we had already lived through?

“I killed Colleen,” he said.

At first I couldn’t comprehend the actual words. I could see his mouth moving, but it didn’t seem to be English. I creased my forehead, making a supreme effort to understand.
“I killed Colleen,” he emphasized.

Then I got it. Then I understood. It was the Jesus thing. He was going to take on Oz’ sin and rescue Oz. He was feeling damned, so he would offer himself up as a sacrifice to get his soul back. That would be his penance. If he was in jail for the rest of his life he wouldn’t have to worry about self-control, or lack of it, would he? On top of that he’d be getting constant punishment all over the place.

Now it was Trevor who needed rescue. It would be so cruel if Trevor’s fetish for playing the knight in shining armor became his own undoing. Oz had blinded his son with lies, replaced him with this sacrificial mock-up. Trevor was the replicant.

Our father. No, his father, I rejected that DNA. How Oz must have exulted in his good fortune at having a son so hungry for serious responsibility, so much easier to manipulate than that not-very-bright, self-obsessed clone Jake.

I knew I had to choose my words carefully to find the ones that were most effective. Get him to see that in his father’s lifelong quest to sharpen and rarefy his own exquisite appetites, Oz had turned into a monster. Oz’s deliberate wildness meant he alone reserved the right to teeth and claws.
Could I sell this concept to poor blind Trevor? He’s too accustomed to thinking that he’s the only one who can see things clearly.

Couldn’t he understand that we had already suffered enough, that even our most memorable celebrations were games played in a graveyard?

Now the puppeteer was in jail where he belonged. With luck there would be no money for appeals. I refused Oz’s fathership. Now I treasured the elusive Mr. Barringer – in the permanence of his absence, he was anyone I wanted. Even if I was in truth my father’s daughter, I must be also my mother’s.

So I had to try.

“This is all Oz’ fault,” I began. My hands were hot; his hands were so cold, lying passively in mine. He stared into my eyes, downloading his soul into mine, as if he’d have no need of it again.
“Maybe,” agreed Trevor. He continued smiling in that oddly distant manner. Was he drifting too far from me? “Don’t you see that’s a ‘chicken and egg’ argument? Maybe it’s all Oz’ father’s fault. Maybe it’s Cain’s fault. Maybe Cain was Adam’s fault. At some point somebody has got to accept responsibility.”

It’s usually a bad sign when a conversation goes Biblical. I felt dizzy, as if the oxygen in the room was slowly being replaced by some poisonous substance.

I tried changing the subject.

“I think Oz may have killed my mother,” I suggested.

“Oh, I know he did,” said Trevor. “He told me. But he didn’t kill Colleen. He shouldn’t go to jail for a crime that I committed. That wouldn’t be right.”

I just stared at him. Speechless.

“Colleen was contemplating abandoning us,” said Trevor. “I protected you from knowing how bad it was. She had already abandoned you.”

There seemed no way to stop this runaway craziness. My mind was a blank. I massaged his limp hands, trying to push life into them, the way he had pushed his life into me. Isn’t love a question of balance, of who at any given moment has more to give? This time he was the needy one.
“You can’t have done it,” I told him. I’d boss him, the way he bossed me.

“I gave her chance after chance. I gave her plenty of chances. It was bad enough that she wouldn’t put you through Napier—“

“I hated Napier,” I interrupted. “I didn’t want to go. They threw me out, remember? I was happier in public school.”

He shushed me. In his upside-down world what I thought or wanted was of no importance.
“This is not about happiness, you poor idiot,” he corrected. “Or we would never escape the sty. You needed to graduate from a decent school and she didn’t care. She could have gone to bat for you, could have talked them out of it. Other parents do it all the time. She chose not to. I overlooked the real pearls just for Skylar, all the designer clothes. Always Skylar had to have everything just a little bit better. When Colleen said you should go to the University of Arizona just because it was free, when she said she wasn’t going to sell any more stock options but was keeping them for retirement, that was it for me. That’s when I lost it.”

“I didn’t mind any of it,” I protested. How to explain to him about writers and dispossession? “It was OK with me, OK with Shelley, too. We got it. Skylar was Colleen’s real daughter.”

He looked at me as I’d just said I’d be perfectly happy eating junk food for the rest of my life.
“Unfortunately your tastes are notoriously degraded,” he lectured. “It isn’t up to you to see what you can live without. It’s up to me to get the best for you.” His face contorted. “Oz did fail us. Oz was a wimp. He couldn’t stand up to her. And that wasn’t all of it. She wanted to sell this house. She was angry about the termites. She as much as said our family wasn’t worth it. She actually had a realtor come over and give her a quote. She said once we were all in college there was nothing keeping them here.”

“But the house was Oz’ too. They would have to make the decision together.”

“But don’t you see? She was manipulating Oz. It’s like blackmail.”

“No one could manipulate Oz,” I scoffed.

“She could. She called the police on him. She knew all about him and she had all the money. He’d already spent all his money, buying this place, taking care of her. Of us. He was too generous.”
I certainly understood Colleen wanting to flee to some small apartment. If she wanted a rest, she was entitled to one. It’s harder picturing Oz in a condo. He requires an estate, a kingdom. A principality. But how to get Trevor to see that a hovel is better than a blood-spattered swimming-pool?

Trevor continued, “Oz told me what he had done to your mother, all those years ago. For exactly the same reason, I might add. She was threatening to separate us. She had no idea what a proper upbringing was all about! She was going to take you to the States – thanks for all your assistance, bye bye and have a nice life. She would have raised you Catholic! She knew he couldn’t afford to follow. She just looked on him as a stud. Of course it made him angry. What she didn’t know was that he had set himself free from the “cult” of the “mother”. He knew he was the better parent.

“You’re above that, Brontë, you were raised better, you’re not familiar with the way those women think. It’s greed. They misinterpret gentility as docility. They force men to get rough with them. “What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine.” A man takes up arms. That’s the definition of a man; he’s a tool-using animal.

“So he stood up to her, and she wound up dead. Tell some people the truth and their heads explode. He knew he’d been clever. He knew I was the only one who could appreciate what he’d done, knew I was the only one he could tell. Seemed foolproof to me. Your mother didn’t even have an autopsy! Of course people would think it was an accident. Brilliant! It happened overseas, years ago, so I didn’t think there would be anyone besides Oz who even remembered it.

“That’s why I suggested we get the pool repaired before your graduation. The Urquhart’s party was the perfect opportunity. I knew Colleen wouldn’t go because, after all, it was only for the kind of people whose children go to public school. I thought Oz would be out, or at least spending the night on his computer like he always does.

“Pretending to get drunk was easy. No one even knows what you’re drinking if you never put down your glass. Fayette didn’t want anything to do with me because I acted like I might throw up on her. When all eyes were elsewhere, I ran through all the back yards and no one saw me except Woofer and Tweeter. They’d never bite me. They’re my buddies.

“Colleen always stepped out for a smoke before going to bed, and I thought I could rely on her to be too cheap to turn the pool lights on. I was exactly right. I went up to her and said I had something important that she ought to see. She came right away. When she asked me what I was doing home I just said it was a bad party and I’d left early. She thought I’d had a fight with Fayette. She—“

“What about Oz?”

“What about him?” Trevor halted in full spate. “It never even occurred to me that he would be suspected. I figured actual innocence is always the best defense; I never thought the police would frame an innocent man just because they didn’t like his lifestyle. Call me naive. I admit it. The only evidence against him that amounts to anything is in your mother’s case.

“What happened to the benefit of the doubt? I mean it could have been an accident. We’ve got all those experts to say so. What are they, idiots? If it has to be murder, then why couldn’t someone break into the back yard to kill her, climbing the fence, which is what really happened?

“But they never gave a damn about anything except proving it was Oz. Without me stepping in, that jury is going to convict him. It’s been a real education in American jurisprudence I can tell you. Forget ever being a lawyer. I don’t know how those guys can stand themselves. Being a used car salesman would be far more honorable.”

“As he spoke his inner rage was building. His face had darkened under ancient bruises. I thought suddenly of the time a deer wandered through the gates and got trapped in the pool house. It went crazy in its new environment; we found skin and blood and broken glass everywhere. Oz said later it fought to the death against its own reflection.

I believed Trevor now. I had to. It was a depraved heart murder after all. Trevor was the lion Oz teased and tormented, then loosed upon the world.

At last I saw the threat Trevor tried protecting me from for all those years. He had met the enemy, and he had become him.

“How could you call yourself a Christian and kill Colleen?” I demanded. Everyone’s a freakin’ hypocrite! Even Trevor.

He sighed. “People won’t read scripture. They’ll do anything to get out of it, and as a result, they’re uninformed. God says, sometimes what’s necessary is not peace, but the sword.”
I turned away so he couldn’t see the tears in my eyes.

“It couldn’t have been a sword. So what did you hit her with?” Ten thousand spots of blood. How could anyone actually do something like that to another human being? Someone who’d loved them? How could he?

He worked his jaw furiously, remembering.

“One of Bobby Urquhart’s titanium golf clubs,” he said. “At least, it was supposed to be titanium, but do you know it broke? It was probably adulterated – everything’s worthless nowadays. That scrappy Colleen wouldn’t die. I had to keep hitting her. I was so surprised when I heard those two women had the same number of cuts on their heads. Made me feel close to Oz. I thought I hit her at least a hundred times. I had to keep hitting her because she kept getting up. It was like we were mechanical figures, marionettes on a cuckoo clock. I was committed to keep hitting her as long as she was committed to getting up. My arms ached for days.

“Looking back on it, she should have pretended to be dead. That would have fooled me because I was so eager to get out of there. All that courtroom crap about waiting for her to bleed out was bull. I’d worked the timing out to a half an hour. Nobody thinks anything about losing sight of somebody at a party for a half an hour. As far as all the other drunks know, you’re still there. People lose all sense of time.

“Plus they automatically lie about where they are, who they’re with and what they’ve been doing, at a party. God knows how long that killing really took. While I was in the thick of it I was so afraid you’d come out at sunrise and I’d still be there, slugging away. You’d think these women would be delicate. Oz said after the initial push he scarcely touched your mother at all.

“But with Colleen I was up against that white-trash ancestry, that half-Injun great-grandfather of hers who worked along the railroad. The minute she stayed down I gave thanks and lit out running. I put the golf club safely in the Urquhart’s trash, but old Mrs. Urquhart actually saw me in my bloody clothes. Asked me if I’d had an accident. I said Fayette had thrown a vase at me, and that was almost true. It just happened on another night. Mrs. Urquhart was the one who insisted on getting me Bobby’s clothes to wear. Said he wouldn’t even miss them and I guess he didn’t because he never asked for them.

“Blue shirt, blue blazer, khaki pants, striped tie. Everyone has those. I knew old Mrs. Urquhart would never think of talking to the police. She said something about “going to the beach house” so I assumed she’d be out of town. I just put my bloody clothes in a garbage bag with rest of the Urquhart’s party trash. Must be in a landfill somewhere. The ridiculous thing is that the police could have found everything they were looking for if for one second they’d opened their minds to the possibility that it might have been anyone but Oz. They just took against him from day one.”

People do have that reaction, and that’s definitely Oz’s fault. Oz cultivates it. I walked to the window. I was afraid if Trevor touched me, he would feel my fear of him.

“I saw you in different clothes,” I said wonderingly. “But I figured you’d been sick. There was a lot of that going on.”

Trevor, the designated driver, can play a terrific drunk when he has to. He sure fooled me. I remember putting my arms around him, helping him upstairs. That was the first time I’d taken care of Trevor.

Had I fallen for him at that second, as I contemplated the power of role reversal? Funny how many true things come out of lies. Lies are hard as cement, but the jungle of truth keeps growing insistently up right through it. The deeper I fell into Trevor, the less I really knew him. I had lost the writer’s advantage, being on the outside looking in.

“They’re not going to convict Oz,” he told me solemnly. “Don’t worry, I won’t let it come to that.”
I felt completely helpless. Oz had finally done it. He had committed the perfect crime, the one where you get someone else to do it for you without even asking them, and then they’re glad to take the fall. How had Trevor not realized that of course they would come after Oz in force? He believed what he wanted to believe, just like the rest of us. Face it — Oz absent, me in Trevor’s bed and himself helming the household, wasn’t that irresistible, lifelong dream?
He would never see it but I couldn’t give up.

“Oz made you do this, don’t you see? He used us. He made us do everything.” Thus I threw to the winds those magic nights. I had to.

Trevor’s face took on that frozen Praetorian dog-like stare. Impenetrable by such as me.
“With his hypnotic powers?” Trevor shook his head. ”That’s not the way it works, Brontë. I don’t hold with this fashion of being the victim, blaming authority for everything and you shouldn’t either. Of course we’re programmed, we’re all programmed. But we also have free will. I’ve had more of that than most. I’ve always been able to do whatever I wanted to do. No one put that golf club in my hand. I’d like to be sorry. I’d like to wish it all away. Every time I think of those things Colleen was saying about you—if you knew—“ his jaw worked angrily. “When she saw you with that dreadlocked dude, she said you’d gone “native”.”

I couldn’t believe Colleen would ever badmouth me to Trevor. The most she would have done was compare me unfavorably to Skylar. He should have taken it in stride.
“I bet Oz told you that, right?”

Oz had played him, no mistake. Oz knew Trevor’s weakness. And Trevor’s weakness was me.
“Oz told me everything,” said Trevor confidently, conveniently forgetting that something Trevor could have really benefited from knowing – namely that we were brother and sister – was a deep-dyed secret until only yesterday. If I reminded him, he would only make excuses, better ones than Oz could be bothered to think up for himself.

That withholding look suffused Trevor’s face. He would never let me win this argument. He retreated from me, cutting off my power like yanking a light cord.

Chapter Eighteen – Misbegotten

Trevor appeared in the doorway to the bathroom wearing a pair of Jake’s silk boxers. Shaving. Ah, the homey morning scenes of winter.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” he said. “We’ve got to do laundry today.”

I reached out and grabbed his leg. It was hard and strong, pumping with blood. So alive. My leg. The part of myself that was male. Accessible any time.

He patted my head like I was his pet.

“You all right?”

It was all coming back to me.

“I had a horrible nightmare,” I said, shuddering. For once I wanted no retrospect. I just wanted to be rid of it.

“I noticed. What was it about?”

I almost didn’t want to tell him. Sharing it gave it more life. But if I didn’t try to give it away, it might stick to me forever.

“I dreamed about my mother. She was really there. She looked right at me. She tried…she tried to speak to me.” My own voice trembled as I spoke. Could there be any moment more fearful than when the dead rise and accuse us? Isn’t every horror based on that? Trevor detached his leg gently and wandered back into the bathroom to wash his face.

“Well, you know what Jung says about dreams,” he threw over his shoulder.

I crawled deeper into the bed. It was too cold in the world. Maybe I wasn’t ready for the quotations of Great One.

“No, what does Jung say?” No comfort to be had in our cave of sex. He was right about the inevitability of laundry. Everything stank of sweat and blood. His sweat, my blood.

“Jung says you’re everyone in your dream. So it was you, yourself, that you dreamed about.”
Trevor isn’t often wrong but I knew he was wrong this time. Funny that he who formally pays homage every Sunday to the power of the spirit could be so dismissive of my Big Moment. I spoke to the dead. This time Aunt Shea was right: my mother was trying to open up an avenue of communication. But what was she trying to say? I, who was notoriously bad at languages, needed to learn hers.

I threw back the covers. The butterfly bloodstain on the bed was a Rorschach to the one on my own thighs. Bloody scenes of winter. What if my period lasted the whole trial, my body weeping in sympathy to the spatter evidence?

In court today the state was putting on the crime scene expert, to walk us through the “slaughterhouse” our swimming pool had become. Every day was blood-day. Trevor might think a visit to the laundry room would fix things; I knew better. I could defer my dreams like the rest of them; no Olympic fencing school for Jake, no college for Shelley, no job for Trevor and no writing for me, or I could stand up for myself. Take charge of my own life.

“I’m not going,” I said.

“What’s that?”

Trevor appeared in the doorway, his face glittering with the freezing cold water Oz always recommended as the final step of a gentleman’s toilet.

“I’m not going to court,” I said. “I’m never going again. I think he’s guilty as sin.”

He lifted me out of bed with such force I thought he was going to launch me out the window but instead he threw me over his lap and spanked me. I had never been spanked before, not by anybody, though Oz had often threatened and even as I heard the loud, openhanded smacks and felt the sting on my flesh I couldn’t believe it was happening. On my bare skin it hurt like hell. I didn’t make it easy for him. Rocking, kicking and thrashing, I ultimately slid back down to the floor and looked up at him.

His face was filled with blood, his eyes glowed electric blue.

“That’s what happens to spoiled brats. After all he’s done for you. Don’t you ever say that again, to anybody.”

Volcanic rage sprang me to my feet as I flung myself at the door. How dare he! He was a monster, sanctimoniously disguising his hunger the better to eat me alive. Even if he was prisoner of his moods, I didn’t need to join him. I fumbled for the lock but he caught me easily.

“You haven’t even heard the defense,” he asserted, exactly as if what had just happened was a debate instead of a beating.

“Don’t touch me,” I spat at him, “Don’t look at me, don’t speak to me. Ever again.” I was fighting to get out.

His face crumpled. Behind the mask of fury the little boy peeked out. He had come to save me from the bully but the bully was himself. He fell to his knees embracing my hips, kissing my sore rear. He buried his face in my stomach. I tried kicking him away.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I’ll never do it again. Do you want me to cut my hand off? I’ll cut my hand off now.”

He had successfully immobilized me.

“Don’t be disgusting.”

He wouldn’t let me go, carried me back to bed.

“It was the demon. Remember the demon that we talked about? If you don’t forgive me, Brontë, I’ll kill myself.”

“Just let me go,” I begged. He was too intense, I was too young, but suddenly he was making love to me all over again, pushing me backward with the power of his desire, licking the blood off of my thighs. It really was disgusting this time.

“Why would you want to run away from me?” he asked me. “Stay with me. Stay with me.”

I locked my legs and pushed him away.

“Stop,” I said. And he stopped. I turned my face away. I felt the tears on his face where he rested against my shoulder. Some people define love as loss of control, when aren’t yourself but are lifted up by something much more powerful. I had thought that before, but I didn’t like Trevor out of control. Did that mean I didn’t love him?

There was a knock on the door and Mina’s voice said, “Get a move on, you two.” She knew exactly where to find us.

Now Trevor was kissing my neck and hair, so tenderly, with the touching little butterfly kisses I used to find so irresistibly seductive. Was the old Trevor back?

“I give up,” he said. “Whatever you want. If you don’t want me anymore, then I’ll have to live with it.”

“I just don’t want to go to court any more, ever again. It’s like being flayed alive.”

“Except that.” He shook his head. “You have to go.”

He had me pushed right up to the door so I couldn’t move. I still refused to look at him.

“Then afterwards I want to go to the University of Arizona,” I said. “As soon as this is over.” It was the meanest thing I could think of to say. But I was finished playing house.

He was silent for a while, but I could feel his breathing. His eyelids quivered like an epileptic’s.
He said, “OK.” He didn’t move.

“I can’t get up until you forgive me,” he said.

“I forgive you.” Said coldly. Withholding.

He stood up and looked down at me.

“I’m really sorry,” he said. I didn’t like him looking at my naked body. I didn’t want to expose to him my burning bum.

“Hand me a robe.” Not a request. An order.

There was no robe. Everything was dirty. He stripped the sheet off the bed.

“And I’m wearing whatever the hell I want,” I said.

Jake was right, we were all in hell. If Vermillion hadn’t been haunted before, it was haunted now. In Colleen’s closet her ghost offered me her bright yellow Easter suit.

I soon regretted my choice, because the foetogs took extra pictures of me. Isn’t it maddening when someone you’re furious with turns out to be right? If I’d only dressed the way he told me to I could have had the cloak of invisibility I always claimed I was trying to achieve. Maybe I didn’t know myself as well as I thought.

Oh well, back to my day-job in hell. Now that it was no different from my night-job, what did it matter where I was? On the stand was the head crime scene tech, a gangly, loose-jointed bald man named Ditmer wearing someone else’s suit. A slight lisp made him a particularly annoying witness. Trevor and Jake took one look at him and mouthed to each other, “Hand job.”

Ditmer testified that he’d counted more than ten thousand separate drops of blood. He was one of a kind. I wondered how many little boys say to their mothers, “I’m going to count blood spatter when I grow up!” A character in a novel I haven’t read yet, I can tell you that.

And wouldn’t you know it, he had photographs. Lots and lots of huge color slides. The jury opened their collective mouth at the crazed-looking washes of dark red on the pale blue walls. After a moment, Shelley covered her eyes. I couldn’t look either.

Ditmer said he spent three days “stringing” the scene. I remembered that. I had seen him playing “Charlotte’s Web” out there.

“String theory,” said Trevor, and everyone smirked but me.
“What does that mean, exactly?” Fawna Fryssen asked him.

Stringing means he ran a string from each dot out into space, trying to figure out where it had come from. When he had enough strings he checked where they all crossed and voila, that was where the blood originated.

“In other words, where the first blow was struck?”

“Objection!” shouted Craig. “Putting words in the witness’ mouth!”

“Well, she doesn’t say what caused the blows,” said the judge. “I assume the fact that Ms. White-Hawke died of blows and bleeding is uncontested. It’s what caused the blows that’s the subject of this inquiry. Objection overruled.”

“Why doesn’t he swear himself in so he can testify?” Craig muttered to Oz as he sat down.
“If you look at the conjunction, here,” Ditmer pointed at his proudly photographed knots of string, you can see the blood originated from a point in space.”

“You mean that Ms. White-Hawke’s head was in space when the blow was struck?”

“She hit – something hit her – that is no longer to be found. Several blows. Here, here and here.”
“So they didn’t originate from her striking her head against a surface?”

“No, that looks quite different. See, here’s a mark on the concrete floor where she hit her head. It’s more of a smudge.”

“How could blood come out of a head in space in the manner you describe?”
“Well, she must have been struck by something. Some object.”

Jake yawned. Shelley’s eyes were closed and she was slumped as if asleep. I wondered what she was thinking. As for me, my butt hurt too much for me to be thinking of anything. I had discovered why some people like being beaten. It certainly takes your mind off other things.

I stopped listening, staring instead at Ditmer’s back while he lurched around in front of the jury explicating his fossil record of pain. There was another string, this one hanging from the back of his suit coat. If you pulled it, would his case unravel?

As for Oz, his back was ramrod straight as he craned his neck to see. What was he thinking as he gazed at this handiwork? I knew him very well, so I must know what he was thinking. Survival of the fittest. “Might makes right.” Words that echoed through my childhood.

What had my mother called him? An anarchist? An absurdist?

How could we ever have suggested with a straight face that this in any way was accidental? The only amazing part was that he thought he could get away with it.

Maybe he didn’t think. In spite of his pose of constant, complex ratiocination, I recall times when Oz behaved blindly. Rage was usually attached. I could see them having some kind of drunken dispute about his checkbook or sex life. Poolside, alas.

My only question at this point was, did he kill my mother too? Or did her easy, unremarked expiration simply give him the idea?

“Your witness,” said Ms. Fryssen.

I snapped back to attention. Craig rose, swelling to his feet like a big dangerous fighter coming out of his corner.

“Would you like us to take down the slides?” Buford asked his rival courteously.

“You can leave them up,” said Craig as if they didn’t matter a damn. He eye-locked his quarry.

“Do you know that in 1996 your lab was the focus of a complaint filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

“Objection!” cried Buford. “That was before this witness’ time. This witness is not bound by anything that might have occurred at a place where he was not employed in 1996.”

“He may not be, but his lab is,” said Craig.

“Well, the lab is not testifying. Next question, please,” said the judge. But now the jury was aware of it and that’s all Craig cared about.

Craig rowed his burly shoulders through the air, closer, closer to Mr. Ditmer like a shark sighting lunch.

“Are you aware of the work of Dr. Pring?”

“Everyone’s aware of the work of Dr. Pring,” responded Ditmer with hauteur. The lisp spoiled the effect somewhat.

“Are you aware that Dr. Pring recommends lasers because stringing is imperfect?”
The victim shook his head like a bobble-headed doll and gazed nervously in the direction of the jury.

“Different departments have different budgets. Stringing has always worked for us.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s always produced the results you wanted,” Craig said silkily, then, before Buford could object, inquired, “I believe you said something before about 10,000 drops of blood?”
The witness nodded mutely.

Now Craig’s arm included the crime scene slides.

“Isn’t it true that you treated the blood evidence with Luminol?”

“We did,” agreed the witness cautiously. “Some of the less visible portions. In order to bring out the—”

“But doesn’t squirting the liquid cause the blood to run? Aren’t these run-marks? Here? Here? And here? Please show the jury where you sprayed the Luminol?”

“I don’t know, because I didn’t spray it personally,” spluttered the witness.

Craig threw his arms into the air in disgust.

“I put it to you that you and your minions have dramatically altered this crime scene.”

“I don’t think so.” Ditmer managed to raise his head and yet flinch at the same time.

“Don’t think? But don’t you need to know beyond a reasonable doubt? Have you any photographs of this crime scene before you interfered with it?”

“I didn’t take the photos,” said Ditmer. “I don’t know—”

“Your Honor,” said Craig, “Improper foundation. Move to strike the entire testimony of this witness. This witness cannot testify to these crime scene photos. He didn’t take them.”

“Your Honor,” protested Buford, pushing out from his corner, “The witness was testifying to a specific matter – connecting blood dots – and using the pictures to illustrate his work.”

“But how can he connect “dots” he – or others – have smeared?” said Craig, making sure the jury was getting an earful.

“He has a point, Mr. Buford,” said the judge. “You’ve got to lay your foundation. Introduce the photographer and then whoever sprayed the Luminol, then you can bring this witness back.”
“Your honor, we can’t get those two witnesses out here at such short notice. Can’t we just stipulate that the evidence is out of order for…for housekeeping reasons?”

“I’m not stipulating to anything,” said Craig. “A man’s life is at stake.”

“How about if I give you the afternoon off and you put them on tomorrow,” suggested the judge in his abrupt do-things-my-way-or-I’ll-have-you-all-executed voice.

See what court is like? Hurry up and wait. It must wreak hell with the digestion. Imagine what a terror this guy is at home. I’d be willing to bet he’s a screamer and a pill-popper.

“Your Honor,” said Buford, “Tomorrow we have the DNA expert in the Mary Elizabeth Barringer matter. He’s flying in. That’s the only day he can appear.”

“Then you’ll have to put your crime scene techs on after that,” said the judge. “Your scheduling is not my business. It’s your lack of scheduling that’s my business. Don’t disappoint me. Court reconvenes tomorrow at nine am.” He banged his gavel.

DNA results in the Mary Elizabeth Barringer case? What could that prove? It couldn’t prove she was not my mother. I had seen her face.

We were all starving and stopped for Chinese food at the Party Doll. It was only eleven o’clock so the place was empty. Our small group was glad to eat alone.

Wrapped in the ecstasy of General Tso chicken and Moo Goo Gai Pan I forgot all about the damn case, my aching bum, everything. I can see why people get fat. If love is uncontrolled, pleasure needs careful calibration. Otherwise you can’t feel anything.

Craig moaned with ecstasy over his bird’s nest soup. “That’s good enough to raise the dead,” was his comment.

An overstatement, alas.

After lunch Trevor went shopping for my laptop but I refused to go, choosing the grocery store with Shelley and Jake. If Trevor thought he could seduce me with a laptop he was very much mistaken. Craig and Mina drove up to D.C. to confront and threaten Dr. Pring.

When Spike dropped us off at home there was a FedEx guy waiting, trying to get a signature for a letter. It was for Trevor, from Oz, but it was really light. Oz likes explaining himself. Would a confession be so short?

I thought of ways to steam it open, but it had one of those pull strings so it seemed impossible to avoid detection. I’d just have to wait.

I was eating Trevor’s share of leftover Chinese food in the honeymoon suite when Trevor finally came home. Skylar’s fireplace may be gas, with fake logs, but the heat given off is real.

Maybe that was why I felt my face flushing as I demanded, “Where the hell have you been?”

“I have a lot of things to attend to,” he said. I noticed he was carrying a bottle of Arbois Pupillin les Terasses and made a mental note to soak off the label. A bottle of wine and two glasses. I was too proud to ask him if he’d purchased my laptop.

“I thought you never wanted to see me again,” he said, using the corkscrew from his Swiss Army knife.

“You got a letter from Oz,” I said, waving it.

He poured us each a glass. He took a sip from his and sighed.

“Go away so I can read it,” he challenged, holding out my glass.

I took the glass. I did not surrender the letter.

“I think it concerns me,” I told him. “Aren’t we in this together?”

I didn’t know how right I was.

Chapter Seventeen — Mortality

We ordered Italian but it hardly mattered. Horrendous testimony removed the edge of pleasure from that meal. Shea was right about one thing; I was glad I missed it. My appetite, at least, was intact. Court had been dismissed for the day, ostensibly for some juror’s medical appointment, but more probably because no one could face food after the morning’s testimony. The sibs were divided on whether the worst moment came from the pictured avalanche of gay porn found on Oz’s computer or from Fryssen reading aloud Oz’s description of what he required in a partner.
Jake said, “I wouldn’t have figured him for a bareback rider.”

He was the only one who could joke. He suggested that maybe the jury members got aroused and were frisky to go pouncing on each other.

“You know everyone on that jury buys porn,” said Jake as we attempted to picnic unfestively in the limo. “It’s like the number one U.S business. They’re the usual bunch of hypocrites.”

My memory pulled up their sourdough faces. Could the prosecution have managed to assemble the only group of twelve non-porn consuming people left in the US of A?

“Why did Oz describe himself as “cut”?” whispered Shelley.

“It just means circumcised,” Jake told her. “Everyone who’s anyone is cut.”

“It could mean he’s ripped,” said Trevor.

First they get the little cut, then they get The Big Cut, I thought. Then they have to be “ripped”. No wonder men are so angry all the time. I was getting an education all right. I considered teasing Craig but he would know Mina told.

“The jury doesn’t know it was for fun,” worried Shelley. “They’ll think he wanted to replace Colleen with some twenty year old cadet.”

“I thought we’d established that they don’t think,” said Trevor.

“Of course they’ll think it’s awful,” exploded Craig. “That’s what inflammatory means. The prosecution wants them making the most important decision of their lives in a haze of crazed revulsion. Face it, we’re screwed on this one.”

“Let’s not get neurotic now,” said Mina, who was nibbling around the edges of her sandwich like a little mouse. Seeing the black look on her boss’ face, she amended, “Ok, let’s all get as neurotic as possible.”

“It’s not like he was advertising for a snuff flick,” said Jake. “Just a little B & D. I mean it’s like caviar, how do you know you don’t like it if you don’t try it?”

“And it’s all just jargon anyway,” Craig insisted, “Everybody uses the same words in those ads. But the only way I can prove it is to introduce a thousand other ads, and this jury can’t handle it and this judge won’t allow it. The world has changed and I, as the messenger of that unwelcome information, must be punished. I’m telling you, we’re screwed. We’ve got to get this case to another court any way we can.”

Trevor studied me thoughtfully. I must have been crazy to think I could keep anything from him. Spike wouldn’t tell him a direct lie, not even to protect me. I’d have to confess eventually.

“You look terrible,” he criticized. And after all that time I spent repairing myself, too. No one else had noticed. “Want to tell me about it?”

“Did you rat me out, Spike?” I demanded.

“The press ratted you out, cutie,” he said. Spike, too, could eat. His appetite was unaffected. “It’s a big story.”

Yeah. Tears, melted cheese…it has everything.

“So someone clue me in,” said Trevor.

I hated telling him with the rest of them listening. This was all Spike’s fault.

“I went to see Aunt Shea,” I admitted. “She wanted to give me something.” I turned to Shelley. “Did you know the Chagall belonged to our mother?”

“That woman is a Pechvogel,” said Trevor. I hate hearing Oz’s words out of his mouth. They are not the same person. “She wants to separate us. You should never listen to the Shorts. Everything in the house is yours one way or another.”

“I think most of it belongs to Skylar,” I said. I hate it when Oz calls my relatives “the Shorts.” They might be fat and plebeian, but I’m the only true shorty here.

Shelley licked her lips like an appetite-less anorexic.

“I don’t know how you can stand being reminded we’re even related to those people.”
“Well, we are,” I said. “Aren’t you the least bit interested in reality?”

“I don’t know,” said Shelley, “Maybe she wasn’t our mother, really. Maybe we were adopted, or stolen. You know how people lie about things. And when it happens overseas…”

In answer I silently opened the white leather photo case and handed it over.

“Wow,” said Shelley. “She looks like you.”

“Brontë is a replicant,” sneered Jake.

Shelley’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t look like anybody,” she wailed. “I don’t fit in anywhere. No wonder Oz tried getting rid of me.”

Trevor embraced her, put her head against his chest. “We can’t let this trial drive us apart,” he told her. “That’s what they want. Remember Oz saw each you being born? We all belong. Nobody’s a replicant.”

Shelley accepted his handkerchief.

That night my mother came to me. I awoke running. Running from the torch-bearing villagers who wanted to kill me because I was unlucky enough to be a member of the cannibal family, and I ran into that same dusty crypt I had seen hundreds of times in bad-to-worse late night movies. Looking for a place to hide. Ah! A sarcophagus! The unimaginative villagers wouldn’t have the guts to look for me there. But when I slid off the heavy granite lid, my mother was inside. She opened her eyes to look at me.

She was wrapped up like an Egyptian, holding a pair of riding whips in her crossed hands, her face painted blue and gold, but I recognized her immediately. It was my mother, and she was younger than me. Younger than I had ever been. With that weird intelligence found only in dreams I knew that although I was only dreaming she was coming to me the best way she could and I was bizarrely grateful. It meant some part of her was still alive.

Between our eyes shot a jolt of lightning, her mind downloading into mine an avalanche of terrible pictures in which she and Colleen became one. I had to wall them off, delete or save or look at later. It was too much. My memory was weak, just as Oz’s computer always warned us, and I was lacked the firewalls of age. Her eyes pleaded with me, the pupils deepening, opening out like flowers.

I didn’t want to hear what she was trying to say. How could I be my mother’s keeper? She acted like it was up to me. Was she saying, “Save me,” or was I saying them? I heard the words ringing in my head; sharp and clear as glass. She tried moving her lips as if to speak, but prying her lips apart cracked open her mask, and I saw the corpse inside. Her broken, bloodied teeth could not hold back the bubbling blood. It poured out, engulfing us. We were awash in it, the coffin was floating, and I was clinging to it as if to a raft.

If I didn’t wake myself up I was going to drown in my own mother’s blood. It was too terrible to be borne. With a massive effort of will I hauled myself up out of the dream, hand-over-hand into the choked stillness of the darkened room.

Was this real life? Where was I? I wasn’t in my own bed. Not that I “owned” anything, it seemed. Trevor wouldn’t allow me in his bed, so we must be in Skylar’s. The mosquito netting hung from the canopy, like cocoon-like wisps of the dream chrysalis from which I had exploded.

Was I caterpillar or butterfly? I couldn’t be anything without Trevor, he must be somewhere, he was my lucky charm. Only his absence gave the nightmare the power to come and get me. I wanted to go back, to long before this mess, but if I went back too far I risked losing the good as well as the bad. If Colleen wasn’t dead, then Trevor had never loved me. Somehow I convinced myself that life and death, everything, was up to me. I shot out of the bed, tangled my feet in the blankets and hit the floor sobbing.

I wasn’t alone, after all. Trevor pushed out of the shadows, gathered me up, held me, rocked me, comforted me. Trevor was there to stroke me, kiss me, suck my nipples, roll his cheeks in the cavern of my belly, hoist me up by the hips into himself. We had the power together, between us, to summon up light against the forces of darkness, even if we burned our own bodies for fuel.
If you could magically find out the last time you would ever make love to somebody, would you want to know? Oz says everyone should live as if they’re just about to die. Make love every time as if it’s the last time. My atoms into your atoms, says Whitman.

Chapter Sixteen – Mortgaged

Oz says regret is an inherently degrading emotion. On that point he and Colleen were agreed; nostalgia is one thing, but there’s no percentage in second-guessing. Preserve at all costs that forward motion.

I lay in bed staring at my new dark suit without enthusiasm. I definitely didn’t want to wear that again. I was always surprised that after a bout of nocturnal wrestling, I didn’t wake up taller.

Shouldn’t we have exchanged more than fluids during the night? I teased myself imagining what it would be like to be Trevor for the day.

I’d be knotting a pink tie to go with my white shirt and my dove-colored suit, looking beyond myself deep, deep in the mirror.

“That’s not a “mourning” color,” I said. Two can play the criticism game.

“It actually is,” he said. “It’s a color called “ashes of roses”. Do you need to be dressed?”
It wouldn’t be the first time.

“No,” I yawned. “I have to take a shower.” I smelled like chum. “What’s it doing out there?”

He glanced out the window. “Raining.”

“See? The universe itself feels our pain.”

“The pathetic fallacy,” he said, and kissed my forehead with a feather’s touch. Then because I was the most pathetic of the fallacies, he brought me coffee and a dark pink dress of Colleen’s. Not really ashes of roses, more like cerise. I thought it had a rather old-fashioned cut, with its high waist and pencil skirt.

“Would look nice with pearls,” he suggested meaningfully.

I covered my face with the blanket. I knew it would be hard work talking him into letting me wear my turquoise jacket. Artists use color to repel pathos. Substituting one fallacy for another.

“Listen,” he said, taking me into his lap, “At least we’re going through this together. Think about poor Oz.”

Yes, think about poor Oz, in “protective custody” so he doesn’t wind up incarcerated with men who don’t realize that he is a “top”, always a “top” and only a “top”. Poor, poor Oz.
Trevor placed me in the shower and turn the spigot. The tardy are punished. There was no hot water left.

Eventually I added my cold one to the array of haggard faces in the limo. Craig was clutching a can of Red Bull, Jake looked like he had forgotten to remove his eye makeup, Shelley’s hair seemed lank and uninspired and Mina’s glasses were smudged. Was nobody getting any sleep? Only Spike appeared chipper as usual.

As I claimed my corner of the groom’s bench it was Spike who put a note in my hand. Written on Marriott Hotel stationery it said,

Brontë, I would love to catch a glimpse of you before I leave. I have something of your mother’s that I want to give you. I’ll be having lunch at the Marriott at exactly noon today if you or your sister want to join me. Believe me, today will be a court day you’d like to miss.
Love, Aunt Shea

That was clever. Clever to address the note solely to me. She must know Shelley wouldn’t speak to her. Leaving the inclusion of Shelley strictly up to me, she minimized her chances of a turndown.
I decided not to tell Shelley. Why tell her, when she not only wouldn’t go, she would probably insist on my not going too? She might even tell on me, “for my own good,” that’s the sort of thing older sisters are primed to say. As if Shelley, who spends her evenings making out to French porn, knows anything about my “good”. I knew the “gift” thing was probably a ploy. Should I subject myself to emotional blackmail just to receive some unlustrous object of specious provenance?

Still, doesn’t hurt to dream. Kind of a necessity since I missed my dreamtime last night. My whole body ached like I had played the Super Bowl. I allowed the motions and counter-motions of court to flow over me as I contemplated a mystic, magic item, waiting for me in Aunt Shea’s suitcase, a portal sent by my wizard mother; an item of psychometric alchemy transporting me back in time to meet her face to face. Damn I wanted it bad.

My mother was so far dead as a result of this damn trial that any clue was precious. Oz might call Shea a witch, but think, what if she was? What if she possessed a sorcerer’s rabbit hole powerful enough to launch me back into my mother’s arms?

My mother. I was familiar enough with the work of the Brontë sisters to know “the little brown wren” thing was just a disguise. She was only trying to navigate the universe, to maximize knowledge and pleasure, minimize pain and prejudice, just like the rest of us. If death is an unmasking, then my mother was free. I still needed all the masks I could get and I would be grateful just to touch with my hand any discarded masks of hers.

Shea was smart to choose a public place. She couldn’t throw things, rend her garments or try to manhandle me. I could leave if she got obnoxious. I think at least by now I’ve learned how to leave; I know how to get out of places where I don’t want to be.

When Shea said I’d want to skip today’s session, I knew she referred to the computer expert. He was supposed to testify about the pornographic images and emails found on Oz’ hard drive and Craig was battling to keep out what he could.

I let them fight it out till eleven thirty when we gained a bathroom break.

But instead of stepping into a stall, I only had to step through the double doors and I was free.
Or almost free. Spike came right after me.

“Don’t you know it’s rude,” I said to Spike, “To read other people’s private mail?”

“Special circumstances,” he grinned at me. “How did I know it wasn’t a death threat?”

“Well, now you know it was just an invitation to lunch.”

He bobbed his head in a mockery of servitude. “And the lady needs a ride.”

I had been planning on taking a cab and sticking Aunt Shea with the bill, but, what the hell. Why not show up at the Marriott in a limo? Let the old bat know I was well taken care of.

I was sitting up front with him so I saw him pull out his cell phone.

“Don’t you dare tell them where we’re going.”

“I’ll just tell them we’re getting lunch. Otherwise Trevor will send the cavalry after you.”
True, I thought. Smugly.

“To the Marriott, Jeeves,” I directed, “Unless you’d rather find a skeezy dive and do shots.”

“I’ve had all my shots,” said Spike.

The Marriott is between the highway and mall.

“Come back for me in a half an hour,” I ordered.

“Not on your life,” said Spike.

Valet parking is always happy to look after a limo. Spike went to sit at the bar. Catching up on those inoculations, presumably. I felt reassured when I saw him swivel his stool around to watch me. Would he rescue me if she made me cry? Would he rush forward, guns blazing? It was comforting, knowing he was there.

She was sitting right in the window, just like a person who doesn’t have to think about hiding from the press. Well, so far they hadn’t followed us. I stood looking at her a moment until her psychic perimeter alarm went off and she turned and recognized me.

She was wearing the same baggy zebra outfit she’d worn in court, so either she was traveling light or she’d hit the Krispy Kremes full throttle and nothing else fit.

She smiled and gestured to the other seat. It was the other side of the table, so outside the danger zone. I sat down.

“It was nice of you to come,” she said in a formal way. “I’m sorry we had to meet under these circumstances.”

I tried picturing her as a little girl. She was the eldest, the Trevor of that family, so maybe she’d never been young. I tried picturing her and my mother as two little girls cuddled under the blankets giggling together. It was hard because she was just a plump, middle-aged lady sitting without makeup in a patch of full sun. She looked old; faded; unimportant. I was glad of it, because that made it easier to steel my heart against her. In case there was any steeling to do.

“I’m on one side and you’re on the other,” I said. “I don’t want to get into an argument about it.”
I didn’t go so far as to say he was innocent. None of us was innocent; I had been on trial for quite awhile in my own head and I was not coming out of it very well.

“I understand,” she said.

The busboy came to try to look down my front as he noisily poured water. Both Shea and the busboy looked as if they were trying to think ways to touch me. Fortunately, neither of them tried.
“I’ll have the croque monsieur,” said Shea.

Imagine mistaking a busboy for a waiter!

“I’ll git yr wyter,” he said with that unmistakable mountain twang. You have to have an ear for it. Sometimes it’s incomprehensible. Here’s a boy who should keep his mouth closed at all times.
To my relief Shea didn’t make me beg for my trophy. She felt around in her massive flocked carpetbag-purse thing and produced a small, white leather case. It was shabby, some of the leather peeling away. It looked to be a traveling picture frame, the kind you can carry with you anywhere, then set it up where you happen to be. Ideal for me, really, in my evolving restlessness. I held my breath as I opened it.

I knew it was a picture of my mother. But it looked like a picture of me.

“It’s your mother at eighteen,” said Shea. Unnecessarily.

I realized then; I knew what I’d lost. As the tears spilled out I felt enough anger to explode the planet. I couldn’t even feel the rage through the horrible pain to the roots of my hair. Shoot her, Spike. Shoot her now.

I rubbed my face with the huge white napkin, not caring where my eyeliner went. I tried so hard to stop the tears and harden them inside me.

“She’s not gone,” said Aunt Shea, patting my hand with such a light touch I wasn’t able to bite her. “I speak to her every day. When you’ve really loved someone – I hope you find out – they’re inside you always.”

I cried and cried. It was awful. Where was Spike?

“She’s recently bereaved,” Aunt Shea explained to the waiter. “I’ll have the croque monsieur.”
“Water,” I gasped. “Evian.”

I was so glad no one was here, no one knew about this. Maybe I could pretend it never happened. Could I stifle Spike if I had to?

Curiosity kept me looking at the picture. It was easier than looking at Aunt Shea. My mother’s hair was a little longer than mine and exactly my shade of red, but unlike me, she’d tried to straighten it instead of allowing it to explode in all directions. She didn’t seem to be wearing makeup and I couldn’t see the telltale freckles, but that was my own face, all right. She wore just enough of a summer dress to show off her knobbly shoulder bones. Thinner than me; a young woman with appetites either unrecognized or under fierce control.

Her expression, also, was one never seen on my face. It was sweet, full of hope, unembarrassed about being caught dreaming. I imagined having a conversation with that face. It would probably be interesting and easy; she looked so sympathetic and thoughtful.

I wondered what she would say about Trevor and me. Would she forgive me? Maybe it was her fault in a way; giving me a genetic code that longed for deathless ardor.

“So where have you decided to go to college?” Shea asked in a bright, false manner. I lowered the picture and looked at her unwillingly.

“Georgetown.”

“Georgetown, oh my,” she said. Impressed. It made me like her less, if that was possible, that she should be so much like everybody else. Predictability being the opposite of freedom. Or was it me who was predictable, for wanting to go Ivy?

“Maybe I won’t go there,” I spluttered. “It’s expensive. I have a free scholarship to the University of Arizona.” I got that on my own, so I should be proud of it.

“I would think the Chagall would take care of school for both you and Shelley,” she sniffed. “That was one of your mother’s favorite pieces. Unless he’s already sold it .”

He hadn’t sold the Chagall. When Shelley started Sweet Briar Oz did sell something. He sold the folding leather camp bed reputed to have belonged to Gilles de Retz, and he complained a lot about it, too. But everyone agreed Sweet Briar was the perfect place for Shelley.

Funny he’d never mentioned that the Chagall was ours. I was kind of surprised he hadn’t sold it because he called Chagall “middlebrow.” I assumed it was Colleen’s.

“Oh, we’ve still got it,” I said. Lied. “We don’t sell things.”

I was angry about all the insulting financial testimony about how desperate we are. I bet if I opened her checkbook and looked inside, I wouldn’t see anything to brag about. A retired art teacher nobody’s ever heard of!

Her sandwich arrived, gooey melted cheese over two kinds of meat, sporting a pair of sword-pointed toothpicks. In case we wanted to duel. Could I defend myself without Spike’s help?
Shea sniffed at my assertion. “Needs must when the devil drives,” she said.

Even though I was clearly drinking Evian, the busboy came and poured more water. He would have given me a bath if I’d asked him. I might have liked that, actually. A lunchtime wet t-shirt contest is just what the boring old Marriott needs.

I was calmer now. The other side of my mother’s picture was a mirror. I dipped the napkin in the busboy’s water and tried to clean my face.

“Any idea for a major? Favorite subject?”

What is this? The Spanish Inquisition? I looked pointedly at my watch.

“Writing,” I said. “I want to be a writer.”

Shea smiled, her facial creases opening like crevasses. “Your mother would love that, of course. She tried to guarantee it by giving you your name. Do you see yourself working in publishing?”
How to explain that I don’t see myself working? I loathe being told what to do.

“I see myself traveling the world,” I said.

“Who are your favorite writers? Alice Hoffman? Anita Shreve?” She made a massive effort. “Anne Rice?”

Who the hell were those people?

“I like the Russians,” I said.

She nodded officiously. “The Brothers Karamazov,” she offered.

I adore Dostoevsky, but why admit that to her?

“I prefer Pushkin, Goncharov, Turgenev,” I said. “Goncharov’s my current favorite. He wrote only one novel and he never finished it.”

“Oh. Like Mendelssohn. Unfinished Symphony.”

Honestly, the woman was an idiot. First off, he was a musician. And Mendelssohn composed more than one thing, but why argue with her?

“I confess I don’t know the writers you mention,” she admitted, busily chewing and speaking with her mouth open. “Education never stops.”

She slid a card across to me. “Let me know your address. When you get settled.”

Was there any possibility anybody would be speaking to anybody after all this was “settled”? I took the card. I noticed she had a website called RealArtByShea.

“What kind of art do you do?” I asked her.

“Found pieces. Sculptures. Collages. Some jewelry.” She fingered her necklace. “These are antique Christmas lights.”

They were little glass balls, strung together on golden thread. I had to admit they were charming.
The press had found us. A shape appeared right in front of me flashing away. I reeled, dazzled. Spike was at my side in a moment, elbowing them aside. He isn’t afraid to knock people down. He took me out through the kitchen.

“Any way out of here?” he asked a pair of Mexicans wearing chef hats.

Nobody argues with Spike. They gestured. Soon we were out on the loading dock. He used his cell phone to ask the parking valet to bring the limo around.

I regarded him suspiciously, “Why are you being so nice to me?” Maybe he’s the one selling secrets to the tabloids.

Spike tucked in the collar of my jacket.

“You remind me of a kitten I used to have. Same color and everything.” He patted my back. Once again, the baby needed burping. “Jesus, you look horrible. So how was it?” he inquired.

I didn’t want to talk about it. “God-awful.”

“We’re supposed to get lunch. Anything special you’re in the mood for?”

I gave the matter my deepest consideration. It’s the flywheel of my personality that I’m always hungry. Why should Aunt Shea be the only one to eat?

“I could really go for a meatball sub.”

Chapter Fifteen – Masochism

Back at home the newly feisty Persian cat had left a thank-you string of giblets draped across the doorstep like wild valentines; “This way to the crime scene.”

It was Spike’s turn to cook.

“What are we having?” I asked Spike. Everyone has a specialty. Mine hasn’t been figured out yet.

“Squid dogs,” says Spike.

“I’m allergic to calamari,” warned Jake.

He’s not. He just hates those little feeler things.

“It’s because you’re an octothorp,” I told him. Jake stuck his tongue out at me, but he needn’t have worried. “Squid dogs” turned out to be crab-stuffed manicotti. They were good, too. Add a bagged salad and some chunks of bread and cheese and you’ve got yourself a meal.

According to the wine book we had two bottles of Cuvėe Emile Peynaud to go with it, plus a Le Pin, a Trotanoy, and a Cheval Blanc, “for the ladies”, said Trevor. Ladies subsisting on white wine is a cherished illusion of Trevor’s. I’m partial to Southern Comfort and tequila when I can get it, and in this case, the ladies drank everything.

Once again we layered the table with chintz and Limoges; once again candlelight stained the hurricane glass, once again the company effervesced.

“Colleen would have been so proud,” said Shelley.

But would she? As so often throughout history, the writer was the only one pierced by the ironies. If it had been up to me, we’d have dined in front of the TV like the Clampetts.

Craig lectured us on the death penalty and the innocence project and how often it had been conclusively proven by DNA that juries sentence the wrong guy.

Shelley wasn’t eating. “Food just makes you fat,” she said sadly, clutching tight her glass of wine. Shelley can’t eat when she’s upset. I’m made of sterner stuff. I need to last a long time, not just till I’m thirty.

That evening Craig got really drunk. Not since Trevor on the night of my graduation party have I seen anyone so determined to get loaded. At first I thought he was celebrating because even Court TV said he made the prosecution look like a bunch of lame-footed idiots, but during one of his frequent bathroom breaks Mina told us,
“He’s depressed about Pring.”

“Well, what’s the matter with Pring?” we all wanted to know.

“He won’t say what we want him to say. He loves critiquing the police; that’s his specialty; he’ll say anything about them. He’s shakier on manner of death. He’ll say it could have been an accident, but he won’t say it was consistent with accident.”

“That’s fine,” Jake said. “Could have been an accident is all we need. Get their minds off of murder.”

Trevor gave his brother his “watch the fetal alcohol syndrome” look.

“It wasn’t murder, Jake,” wailed Shelley.

“I’m not saying it was murder,’ said Jake, “But if the jury decides that it was, then we need to prove someone other than Oz could have done it. That’s what I’m saying.”

“The defense isn’t supposed to have to prove anything,” said Mina. “Also the forensic animator says he can’t be ready in time and Craig says cartoons are all this crowd understands.”

Craig reeled out of the powder room with his shirttail zipped into his fly, stretched out on the dining room love-seat and began snoring.

Mina glanced at him, then said calmly, “I’m trying to talk him into getting a synchronicity expert.”
“A synchronicity expert?” demanded Trevor in his “how-much-is-this-going-to-cost voice. “What’s that?”

“An expert in coincidences. We have to explain this other case somehow, and the truth is, coincidences are a lot more common than people think. You only notice them because they’re so noticeable. Link recognition is the basic component of human reasoning.”

“How totally ad hoc,” said Trevor.

“You can only declare a coincidence in hindsight,” said Jake. “That’s messed up.”

Spike said, “I had a friend who slammed his car into the exact same tree his brother hit ten years before. They both died.”

“Wow,” said Jake, “what are the chances of that?”

Craig, blowing like a whale, rolled off the sofa and hit the floor with a crash. And that was the end of that party.

“Bedtime for Bonzo,” said Trevor.

Spike hoisted Craig in a fireman’s carry. “I’ve got him,” he said. “Here we go, Jefe.”

Dessert, since it came on a stick, could be eaten in front of Court TV. Trevor abstained.

“Harridan watch,” he said, dismissing that cross-eyed pit-bull of a woman he particularly hates.

She was introducing a clip of Ira McWhiggin interviewed on the steps of the courthouse to make him look taller.

“I just can’t see Oz with that dwarf,” I said. Of course I’m prejudiced against short people.
“No accounting for tastes,” said Trevor. “Oz has a low boredom threshold.”

“And variety is the spice of life,” sighed Shelley. Was Jake getting restless already? Shelley probably wouldn’t object if he asked her to wear a sheep costume.

“It’s all just role-playing,” said Jake, “You know Dad’s never been interested in kids. He was just messing around. The dwarf thing is tame. Hell, bestiality is legal in Sweden.”

“The jury isn’t sequestered,” Mina said, holding a stack of plates and standing in the doorway. “You know they’re glued to this.”

“They swore they wouldn’t watch it.” That was me. Still naïve after all these years.

She shrugged. “People lie. Everyone lies.”

“Then we should be able to expose them.” Writers want to expose everybody. It’s in our blood.
“They lie without even knowing they’re lying.”

A particularly unflattering picture of me, looking like I’d been eating red-hots, flashed across the screen. I shuddered.

“Trevor, may I dye my hair black? Please?”

“Over my dead body,” said Trevor. He turned away toward the kitchen, and I followed like a puppy expecting a treat.

I was willing to start coffee but determined to avoid garbage detail. When Trevor and I get our apartment, I thought, we’ll have only chopsticks. And we’ll only eat takeout.
Spike came whistling down the stairs, shooting back his sleeves like a man who’s completed a difficult task.

“I was getting worried,” said Mina. “I know he can be a handful and I know you have this need to beat people up.”

Did Spike have a need to beat people up? Was that why they hired him? I regarded him with fresh interest.

Spike chuckled. “Naw. He was a pussycat. I just made sure he said his prayers.”

“Bet I know what he prayed for,” said Mina.

Unwilling to let this rich fantasy go, I asked Spike, “You beat people up?”

He smiled at me lazily. “Say the word.”

I told him I’d think about it. There are so many people who deserve a thumping.

Jake and Shelley loaded the dishwasher with Colleen’s fine wash-by-hand china, and then Jake said,
“Shelley and I are going to make out at a French porn movie. Want to watch?”

Trevor almost spilled his coffee. “You’re going out?” he asked as incredulously as if his brother had announced plans to escape from Alcatraz.

“Don’t worry. Spike will drive us. They can’t see into the limo anyway.”

“Evasive driving 101,” said Spike, spinning an invisible wheel.

Mina slammed cabinets. “Pick up some dish detergent,” she said. “The greaseless kind.” Who knew ham leaves a ghostly memory?

“Please don’t go out in public. Not tonight.”

I’d never actually seen Trevor beg his brother for anything. I don’t think that’s a good way to manage Jake. It wasn’t in this case. Jake just smiled and shrugged.

“It’s just a porn movie. Everyone’s anonymous, everyone’s “absolutely elsewhere”. No trial rats, that’s for certain. They’re writing up their blogs. And hey, if I spot a member of the jury, we can do business.”

“And we’re going to wear disguises,” piped Shelley. “Like a costume party.”
See what I said about the sheep costume? I knew it was coming. That’s Jake for you. He loves costume parties. His Nazi Nun was the hit of the 2008 party season. I was congratulating myself for not falling into his trap. It’s so hard being rejected as “not quite enough.”

“You come, too,” Shelley pleaded. Lonely.

But Trevor said, “I don’t come in groups.”

I thought, but didn’t say, that wasn’t what I heard.

“Nah,” I thanked her. I don’t need to make out with Trevor in public. “You can see the same thing on the Playboy channel.”

We had almost finished cleaning the kitchen – I got sucked in after all — when Shelley came down the stairs holding hands with another girl. The girl was Jake. He spun around while we whistled and catcalled. I recognized the wig from Colleen’s collection.

“Am I hot?” asked Jake in his unsettlingly masculine voice. “Am I hot or what?”

“Finally a real sister,” said Trevor. “My life is complete.”

Spike began singing Lady Marmalade. “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?”

Spike! Speaking French! It was like those talent shows in high school where the silent kid shows up with a boombox and a pair of chainsaws.

“You’re too pretty to be a guy, Jake,” I told him. ”Are those eyelashes real?”

“All mine,” said Jake. Shelley did my makeup. I admit the boobs are fake. See my garters? I’m going to toss them to the crowd.”

“Isn’t he gorgeous?” said Shelley. “Look at his legs! He shaved.”

“Wow, and he didn’t even have to!” I exclaimed. “So men are the masochistic ones after all.”

“I did have to,” said Jake. “I’m wearing hose.”

“Attention to detail,” said Trevor and,
“La Vida Loca, baby,” said Jake.

Spike announced, “Your chariot is at the door. It’s been fun but it’s time to blow this dive.”
“I like your French,” said Mina.

Spike smiled his trout in the milk smile. “I’ve often been complimented on my Frenching.”
He did look as if he knew his way around a tongue lock.

“Then I’m coming too,” said Mina, spilling coffee in her haste.
Trevor called. “See you in the tabloids.”

Thank God Trevor and I were getting an apartment together. The old, stable married folks who like to be in bed by nine. I had already had it with dorm life.

In our honeymoon suite Trevor kissed me through my underpants.
“Leave them on,” he said.

Seems white cotton is his thing. Me wasting La Perla!
“Wow,” said I, “That’s one way to guarantee safe sex.”

“This sex is going to be unsafe at any speed,” he said, pulling off his shirt, “Brace yourself for the attack of the blue-gilled monster.”

But I was still thinking about today and Trevor was the only one I could ask.
“When you were four and your Mom was drinking so much, do you think it was because Oz was whipping her?”

Deflated the gills of the blue monster. Just a bit.
“Oz never “whipped” my mother,” said Trevor, speaking the word as if it was impossibly antiquated. “I’m sure of it.”

“How can you be sure? You were just a little kid.”

“Because he told me. OK. Time to lose the underpants.” Kicking Oz out of our bed, he lit the candles, fetched the citrus lotion. I guess it was my turn to be the buzzkill. That’s what a mutual relationship is all about. You get to play each other.

“But how do you know he wasn’t lying?”

“Because Oz never lies to me.”

I thought about the meaning of all this. It seemed unlikely. Oz cared too much what Trevor thought of him. But if Oz told Trevor everything…
“Then he did whip Colleen?”

“If Oz was whipping Colleen, it had to be sex play that slipped out of bounds. She forgot the safe word or something. You know, Colleen could be a problem.”

See what you can find out, sleeping in the corridors of power? “You don’t think he whipped her as a punishment? He beat you.”

Trevor gave up on rousing me.

“This is a little beyond your pay grade, Cherry Vanilla. And it’s hardly pillow talk, but you should know that if there’s buried hostility in a relationship, domination/submission is a dangerous game. She was threatening to get rid of Vermillion, saying we couldn’t afford to keep it up. She must have known how that would devastate him.”

“Oz had a whip collection, though. I saw it. Did he have them when you were little?”
He rolled me over and began lotioning my backside.

“Oz has always been a rider. He doesn’t like borrowed equipment. “ He looked at me with a spice of frustration. “You’re making me sorry the police took them all. Where’s a good whip when you need one?”

Oz’s major complaint about Vermillion is that by the time he bought the house all the land had been sold off piece by piece. Nowhere to keep horses. I was getting close to the secrets. I couldn’t give up, not even for Krakatoa.

“He and your mom fought, though. You told me that.”

Trevor sighed, his chest collapsing. Naked in the candlelight he looked eleven again. Maybe thirteen. “Whenever he got physical with my mom it was because she deserved it. She’d get drunk and out of control. He was trying to stop her from hurting either him or herself. He was in better physical shape and she was a couch potato. Res ipsit loquitor.”

Using Latin to push me away. Returning the lotion bottle he jostled a candle so that it squirted wax across his skin.

“Ouch,” I said, feeling the pain as if it had been mine.

Yet he watched calmly as it hardened. Then peeled it off.

“See?” he said. “There are advantages to experiencing pain.” He smacked my backside sharply. “I think you’re done. Don’t you?”

How could I be done? “Done” is impossible; it’s almost as bad as “away”. Besides, the definition of youth is we’re only getting started. Bowing to the sacred desire that can never be ignored, I slid face first between the pillows.

Chapter Fourteen — Machismo

Tuesday began with the judge telling the jury to forget all about the mysterious letter that had been waved in front of their noses yesterday. But forgetting isn’t so easily achieved. Maybe like a lot of other things in life; the more you want it, the less you can have it.

Craig’s fresh request for a mistrial was again denied – I could tell he was happy enough keeping the letter out, and the medical examiner took the stand. She turned out to be a tall, gawky, geeky broad named Rakyel Zackary.

Dr. Zackary looked like the kind of girl whose parents sent her to a single sex school so she wouldn’t be distracted from her studies, and when she finally lifts her nose from the grindstone she discovers the party has moved on. She’s forty-five and tired, divorced from a deadbeat and in thrall to a daughter who thinks she’s a dork. Let’s hope a job for cutting up dead people for the state with a pension and benefits makes it all worthwhile.

She had dangly earrings and one of those “au naturel”, pyramid-shaped, semi-cool, frizzy hairdos that goes in an out of style. Right now it’s out.

“Did you have occasion to read a letter from a woman named Shea Shortall in July of this year?”
The speaker was Buford, neck spilling out aggressively over his shirt collar, his jowls threatening to take over the Court. It was a battle of the jowls, between him and Craig, quivering and wattling at each other like a pair of turkey cocks. There was Buford’s Mama, beaming from the front row. According to Court TV she brings his lunch every day, favoring childhood delights like catfish, fried pie, home-made tortellini and hush puppies. Making sure Junior gets enough fuel, like some monstrous kiln. Craig probably never had a Mama. Much more likely to have been a science experiment with a Petrie dish and a dash of Clarence Darrow’s “eau de vie”.

This was a different letter they were talking about now; I’d been warned. The letter that started the whole thing. We glared at Aunt Shea to let her know what we thought of her busybodying. Suspecting sin is sin itself! So there!

“It was brought to my attention by you, Mr. Buford.”

“Do you recall the gist of the letter?”

“It said that Mr. White-Hawke’s wife – excuse me, friend – had died fifteen years previously in the exact same way as his recent wife.”

“At that time did you comment on this information?”

“I did. I said I thought we ought to see if the family would allow an exhumation.”

“And what subsequently happened?”

“The exhumation was set up and I flew out to Petaluma, California to meet with one of their medical examiners, and with his assistance, to perform a forensic autopsy on the body of Mary Elizabeth Shortall Barringer.”

“Was it your understanding that this was the first time the body had been autopsied?”
“It was. I had the verbal assurance of Dr. Namnoun Bouzidi, who operates as state coroner in Bouclem, Tunisia. He wasn’t coroner at the time of her death, but he sent me what records they had. Because the death was ruled accidental and occurring to a foreign national on the grounds of a foreign corporation there was no autopsy. It was clear we needed to take a look for ourselves.”

“At autopsy, what did you find?”

“The body was very well-preserved. It was the body of a slightly built but well-nourished woman in her forties who had borne children. Her internal organs were in excellent shape with no anomalies. I found no evidence of disease whatever.”

“So you could see a cause of death?”

“I could not. The body had sustained a great deal of bruising, but that would be consistent with a fall from a height. There were no broken bones. The eyes seemed normal, without petecchiae. Hyoid was intact.”

“I thought she’d had kids,” hissed Jake.

“The hyoid is a bone in the throat,” whispered Trevor. “Shut up.”

The medical examiner told the courtroom, “Cause of death was supposedly a brain aneurysm, so I thought I’d better take a look at the brain.”

“Have you ever heard of a brain aneurysm being diagnosed without opening up the brain?”

“Not unless there was a medically diagnosed pre-existing condition, as there was not in this case. It would be simply guess work.”

“So what did you find?”

“I shaved the skull. At that point I found seven cuts – representing distinct blows – to the back and top of the head.”

“You honor, request entering State’s exhibit 14 into evidence.”

“So ordered,” sighed the judge.

“I would like the jury to take a look.”

“Allowed.”

Craig said nothing. At least they didn’t flash it up on the big screen. Trevor squeezed my hand. This was just a drawing. Some artist’s rendering. That’s how Mme. Tussaud got started — they gave her the fresh-cut heads to model. One at a time, jury members studied the picture of my mother’s head.
“What struck you about this discovery?”

“That it was exactly the same number of cuts – sustained in the same area – which I had found on the skull of Colleen White-Hawke.”

“Would it be possible to sustain blows like these falling into a disused swimming pool?”

“I don’t see how. You might get one or two bangs, but how could you get so many actual cuts? That presupposes a sharp object. And even if there was one—a sharp edged metal ladder, say, how could you keep falling on it in the exact same way? All the wounds clustered in one spot seemed very suspicious to me.”

“So what did you do after you had photographed and measured these wounds?”

“I opened up the skull and took a look at the brain.”

“Did you locate cause of death?” Buford waggled his eyebrows at the jury.

“I did. Massive internal bleeding caused by blunt force trauma.”

“Did you locate any aneurysm?”

“I did not. The brain was in good condition before the blows.”

“Would you have seen an aneurysm had one been there?”

“One couldn’t miss a ballooning or ruptured artery.”

“Can you speculate about what weapon was used?”

Would Craig object? He only crossed his legs and hummed.

“Something long and thin and cylindrical, with distinctive structural integrity. Such as a fireplace poker or a gutta percha walking stick.”

Trevor and I looked at each other. The Scary General had just such a walking stick in his later years; you can see it in the photographs. He died long before Oz went to Tunisia. So perhaps Oz had inherited it.

“Why gutta percha?” The prosecutor inquired.

“It’s the hardest wood I the world, that’s what makes it popular for walking sticks. It doesn’t break.”
I thought the prosecution was trying to imply that the death might have been caused by an object that wouldn’t alarm the victim, one that could be naturally carried along for an evening stroll.
“Thank you. One further question. Would you compare for us the autopsies of Ms. Barringer and Ms. White-Hawke?”

At this Craig objected but the judge shot him down. Zackary never looked at either of them. She was looking at us. I found her gaze uncomfortable.

“The wounds to the bodies were astonishingly similar. In my expert opinion, the similarities were beyond the bounds of coincidence. It was like viewing two works by the same artist.”

The frenzy in the court resulted in two members of the press being ejected by the bailiffs. Trevor stood up in front of me, trying to say something about “kangaroo courts”. I pulled ineffectually on his coat, fearful that he would be removed; finally Spike got him down by sheer brute force. The judge pointed his little hammer in our direction as if it was a ray gun.

“One more…” he threatened, “One more disruption and my patience will be gone. I have been very tolerant under the circumstances, but I warn you, tolerance cannot last forever.”

Was he addressing Spike? Spike gave him a chop to the head; a half-salute.

Craig phrased his usual objection — a demand for a mistrial, the judge parsed the usual denial and we were back with Buford, who had been standing beside the witness box, blinking at the fray like a groundhog flushed from its burrow by a false spring. He swiveled back towards Zackary.

“Were there, however, wounds that you found on the body of Colleen White-Hawke that were not present on the body of Ms. Barringer?”

“That is a leading question!” shouted Craig. He seemed to know something was coming. Mina shuffled papers frantically, while Craig twitched like an ant before a thunderstorm.

“It’s a perfectly fine question,” snapped Buford. “When I ask a leading question, you’ll know.”

The judge banged away angrily. I wondered if he might have a seizure, and if he did, would they let Oz go under some kind of double jeopardy loophole?

“I’m ruling here,” the judge snapped. “The question is legitimate. Please proceed.”
“Ms. White-Hawke’s body bore long, narrow healing cuts on her back and buttocks. I counted thirteen. They resembled whip marks to me.”

The audience made a useless attempt to control its frenzy but the press surged like unruly children hearing a distant bell. Oz bowed his head as if in prayer. But who would he pray to? The jury looked as if they might be the ones with whiplash, their necks jerking back and forth between witness and defense table. I heard a whoosh and a slam, and I saw Skylar’s back disappearing through the double doors.

“Prejudicial, your Honor. Pointlessly inflammatory,” suggested Craig with an air of desperation.
“I need this evidence to make my case, your Honor,” said Buford. “I have drawings of photographs.”

“I also object that this testimony is out of order,” said Craig after a hurried conference with Mina.
The judge considered. “I think the subject at hand was the differences and similarities between autopsies,” he ruled. “That will be allowed, but make it brief. No drawings or photographs until you get to your case-in-chief.”

Shelley and I looked at each other in absolute horror. Photographs? Again? I yearned to follow Skylar. Maybe this was the prosecution’s strategy, emptying the room of possible Oz supporters. I wished we were anywhere but here.

Craig almost leaped over his table.

“Your honor, I had a ruling against photographs.”

“Not in the White-Hawke autopsy,” said Buford.

“Well you can’t present anything twice,” said the judge testily. “That would be inflammatory.” He seemed to grit his hen’s teeth. “ Keep going.”

“Jeez,” hissed Jake, “This judge is the prosecutor’s bitch.”

I could easily imagine this judge in drag. Maybe it’s the long black dress they have to wear. On the other hand, he didn’t seem Buford’s type, judging from the fan club of well-upholstered older women hanging dreamily on the prosecutor’s every word.

Buford gave them their money’s worth as he returned serenely to his task. “Could you judge the age of those marks?”

“Some were old, old enough to scar. Others were more recent.” She shrugged. “That’s all I can say.”

“Then I have no more questions of this witness.” Buford sat down.

Craig made the fastest recovery of any human being I’ve ever seen. When he rambled over to the witness box with his hands in his pockets, I wondered if anyone else figured he must be trying to conceal his clenching, jerking fingers. The jury looked at him curiously, even impassively. Impossible to read those French-fry-fed faces.

The first question was mild. Even friendly.

“How long have you been employed by the state as a medical examiner?”

“Since I graduated from Virginia State Medical School in 1990.”

“That’s not quite true, is it? Didn’t you take a leave of absence in 1995?”

“I took maternity leave when my daughter was born.”

Craig consulted a paper in his hand.

“I believe your allowed maternity leave was three weeks long? Yet you took a year?”
“I felt my daughter needed it,” said Zackary.

“Didn’t you lose your seniority? Effectively, when you re-upped, you were starting over?”
“I didn’t look at it that way.”

“But that is the truth, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.” Zackary looked at him as if he were some kind of poisonous spider.
“And now, you’re considered part-time?”

“That just means I can’t take over-time.”

“You are listed as a part-time employee?”

She sighed. “That’s correct.”

Craig flipped a few sheets.

“You began as a forensic pathologist and became medical examiner in the year 2000?”
“That’s correct.”

“So you’ve never been employed as a doctor by any body other than the State of Virginia…how about teaching? Done any?”

“Your Honor,” barked Buford, “What’s going on here? This is pointless harassment. This witness has been qualified as an expert already.”

“Not by the defense, she hasn’t,” snapped Craig.

The judge’s color deepened. He seemed mightily offended on behalf of the state of Virginia.
“Mr. Axelrod, are you challenging this witness’ credentials?”

Craig shook his paper in the air.

“Looks like I’m going to have to. This witness has taught nowhere and published nowhere. She is a part-time employee of the State of Virginia—“

“She has taught! She has published!” insisted Buford.

Now Fryssen joined the fray, rising threateningly as if she’d like to clean Craig’s clock.

The judge summoned them all to the bench. I could see Oz rocking with glee but I thought the jurors looked even more stony-faced.

“Why’s he doing this?” I whispered to Trevor.

“Sloppy experts. Inadequate experts. Exclusionary and self-dealing qualifications. Grounds for appeal.”

But for an appeal to occur, Oz had to be convicted. It was like they had given up on getting him off.

Mina passed Trevor a copy of the resume currently under fire and I peeked over his shoulder while he read it. Dr. Zackary had taught classes…for Virginia law enforcement officials and she had published in State of Virginia publications. None of that would count with Craig, of course, but wasn’t he just pissing off this homegrown jury? Don’t surround yourself with yourself.

The attorneys were leaving the bench. Craig was so calm and smiley you would think he’d won, but the judge announced,

“The previous line of questioning has been stricken because this witness has been qualified as an expert by the Court. Get something going, Mr. Axelrod.”

Craig looked like he thought he had plenty going. Probably he was thinking two can play at the game of leaking things into the jury’s minds and then telling them to forget about it.

He asked the doctor, “Are you familiar with the fact that falls are a leading cause of death in this country?”

“Among senior citizens,” said the doctor, lifting her chin. “Of course, falling into empty swimming pools is extremely rare.”

Craig smiled his alligator grin. “Have you any literature on the subject?”

“All I can say is that these are the only two cases I found searching the Internet.”

She puffed like a runner when she spoke. I began to think maybe Craig had challenged her credentials just to upset her, throw her off her game.

“You wouldn’t call it impossible. How many other falls have you autopsied?”

“Two. Maybe three. And they didn’t present anything like this.”

“So what you’re telling the court is you’ve seen two – maybe three — victims of falls in your entire practice, but you want to tell this jury that even though falls are accepted as a leading cause of death you and you alone understand the “right” way for a fall victim to “present”.”

“I wouldn’t expect them to have several blows to the top of the head,” said the doctor austerely.
“Oh? Were all the others killed immediately?”

“Perhaps not immediately. But they were rendered unconscious and died subsequently of severe hematoma.”

“So you want this jury to believe that it is impossible for a woman who has struck her head on cement after falling nine to twelve feet to stand up, then fall down and strike her head again?”

“Nothing’s impossible,” said the doctor. “But I wouldn’t expect it to look like this. I wouldn’t expect the blows to be equal in force, for instance.”

She was a fighter. You kind of had to admire that about her.

“I believe you mentioned the cuts you describe could have been caused by a sharp object? Have you seen a photograph of the swimming pool where Ms. Barringer died?”

“No. No one has. Such a photo does not exist,” retorted the doctor.

“That’s right,” says Craig, looking around him meaningfully. “No one in this courtroom today knows what was in that swimming pool…it could have been full of razor wire for all we know. Are you familiar with the work of Dr. Victor Pring?”

“Everyone is familiar with the work of Dr. Pring.”

“Do you respect his work?”

“Usually.”

“Are you aware that he is going to testify for the defense that certain unlucky candidates could die in exactly this manner by slipping repeatedly on their own blood, attempting to climb out and striking and re-striking their heads? Provided, of course, there was a sharp object present?”

“I don’t know what Dr. Pring is going to say. I am testifying that in a case of such an accident as you describe I would expect at least some of the blows to strike somewhere other than on a restricted surface at the back of the head.”

“I don’t think this man’s life ought to be subject to your expectations, Dr. Zackary,” sneered Craig, emphasizing the title as if she wasn’t really entitled to it. “Apparently one of your expectations is to put in a thirty hour week and retire at sixty with a taxpayer-funded pension.”

“This is outrageous,” sputtered Buford, rocketing out of his seat like a pheasant. You could almost see the feathers flying.

“Was that an objection, Mr. Buford?” asked the judge, glacially.

“Withdrawn. I have no more questions for this witness,” spat Craig.

“State reserves the right to recall Dr. Zackary for its case-in-chief,” chanted Buford.

“Granted,” said the judge, shooting his sleeves, “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Dr. Zackary gave Craig a very dirty look as she left the stand.

Chapter Thirteen — Misogyny

Talking Trevor into a mall trip was not difficult. Craig and Mina would be tied up reading the famous letter and thinking up reasons it shouldn’t come in. Besides, we needed clothes and haircuts; Trevor wanted to buy me a laptop. Jake, Shelley and I love the mall. Trevor hates it. At the mall, I’m ashamed to admit I made Trevor cry. Some people wouldn’t have been able to tell, but I saw the telltale moisture stain his eyes. In a life of embarrassing things to wake you panting at two a.m., I rate that the worst.

I was already feeling sort of emotional, what with the trial and everything. And then there was that terrible thing Oz said, niggling at me. I wanted to yell at Trevor because I felt I’d been played, but how could I really? I still needed him so much. And what, exactly, is Oz’s excuse?

I know Oz’s raison d’être in life used to be go ing around shocking people, and you could certainly argue that all men suffer from such a serious case of womb envy almost as bad as their penis envy, but I still couldn’t get rid of it. Couldn’t put it out of my mind.

Partly I was angry at myself. It’s the old story; why hadn’t I said anything right then? I pride myself on never being at a loss for words, but I guess I’m still shockable. He really got me that time.
Me! Having a baby as a high school graduation present, like someone in a trailer park! So not gonna happen. It wasn’t a question of Trevor or anybody. Trevor would probably be an OK father someday; I mean clearly he needs to loosen up; he’s just a mass of rules at present. Let’s finish this murder trial, OK, one way or the other, and then allow poor Trevor to at least have adolescence and then we’ll see.

Trevor plans on marriage someday but it can’t be to me. Duh. And single parenthood? No, merci! I don’t think I ever want to be a parent; it’s that “hostage to fortune” thing. I’ve been a hostage; it’s loaded with problems, some of which we heard about today in court.

Partly I was mad at Trevor; if he hadn’t needed to brag to his father that he’d got the unattainable we could have kept this whole thing quiet and personal, where it belongs. Men! Mostly I was mad at Oz. Hadn’t he learned his freakin’ lesson for freaks sake? Brought up on charges. They were trying to execute his bony ass.

I’m eighteen freakin’ years old with my whole life ahead of me and he wants me to get pregnant with his freakin’ son’s freakin’ child? The more I think about it the madder I get. The cat would really be out of the bag then, wouldn’t it? I know we’re not really brother and sister but you can see how the world would look at it; just one more outrageous insult from the hedonism cesspit.

Why couldn’t he just leave us alone and concentrate on his own freakin’ problems? How could he even think of bringing a baby into the mess we already had going? This trial might be over in nine months but Trevor and Craig were already talking about the “appeal phase”; it could turn into a lifelong project, like a family business. Craig says it takes over a decade to put someone to death. Didn’t this make nonsense of how supportive he’d been about my writing for all those years? Did he think I’d get a nanny, or give the baby to the Shortalls?

It really upset me. Trevor could tell, but he thought it was the trial. The letter and all that. He kept trying to hold my hand in between steering and downshifting.

That was the other thing that pissed me off. How could I tell Trevor? Trevor would be shocked. He might decide to deny me sex and I needed it too much. He’s the suffering-builds-character-spokesperson. I could see him smacking his forehead expostulating, “What were we thinking?!” Trevor’s always looking for something to nobly renounce. He might make do on self-abuse, self-mutilation and Haydn but it’s too late for me. I’ve got to have my fix or I can’t get through this trial.
Goddamit. I could never share it with him, so I would be forced to bear it alone forever. Document and file. Is it possible that Oz, with his obsessions about having a “Plan B” and playing the long game, intended this all along? Believe me, he’s capable of it. Didn’t he realize he risked ruining it by seeming to promote it, if you know what I mean?

The mall was almost empty. It would pullulate with foetogs except security won’t let them in. “No solicitation, assholes.” Second good thing, at least we split from Shelley and Jake so I could focus on just one relationship instead of three cubed. Although isn’t a relationship between four people four to the fourth power? I don’t even know how many it is, that’s how bad I am at math.

“Don’t let them shave you bald this time,” I suggested to Trevor my subtle way. “You don’t have to go through life looking like a concentration camp victim. Why don’t you get a fade? Have my initials put over your ear.”

“Ha ha,” said Trevor. “That would be funnier if I wasn’t so worried that Jake and Shelley are getting tattoos right at this second.”

“Are they?” I gasped. Riveted. Oh how I wanted a tattoo! Virginia malls have tattoo parlors – there’s another cool thing about living in the country. Why was I always where the party wasn’t? How could Brontë be an artistic free spirit when she’s locked in perpetual mourning?

“Oh let’s get tattoos! Come on! I’ll put your name right here,” gesturing to my appendicitis scar. “And you could cover up the scars on your back.”

“Yeah, your husband would really thank me for that,” said Trevor as we settled into barber chairs. “Tattoos! What kind of a world are we living in where cosmetics are permanent and relationships ephemeral?”

So we each got what we always get, a little off the top. So exciting. Then we went to Brooks Brothers like a pair of pathetic job applicants where he bought each of us a suit. I admit mine wasn’t as bad as I’d feared; it had a line of charmingly colorful embroidery around the hems of both jacket and skirt. If you looked closely enough, they looked like those irises, Colleen’s favorite flower. It wasn’t even black, but it was dark navy. I contemplated my future. Mourning, mourning, mourning.
Trevor began to see I was smoldering, so at the jewelry store he tried to buy me pearls. He never got over the fact that Colleen gave me cultured for graduation while Skylar got real. Who the fuck cares? I adamantly rejected the pearls; setting my heart on a cloisonné box but he wouldn’t buy me that.

I threw a tantrum right in front of the salesman. A shit fit. I admit it. I hate writing it down, but if I start lying now, where am I? Misremembering, forgetting, deceiving. Never going to be good enough for me. My only excuse is, shit happens. I screamed at him in the jewelry store, just like Fayette.

“You are such a blight!” I shouted at him. “You never want me to have any fun! I don’t love you at all! I hate you!”

It was the worst thing I could possibly say, and I knew it. He put his face in his hands right there in the middle of the Cross Country Mall and sobbed. People stared, but thank God they didn’t seem to know who we were. A mall is a wonderfully leveling sort of place. This trial has really helped me to understand the gift of anonymity. I never want to be recognized again.

Heartsick, I put my arms around him and got him out of there. How can couples think of having children when they have to take care of the baby within each other?
“God I’m sorry,” I said. “I lost it. I didn’t mean it. Forget it.”

He was still quivering.

“I’m the sorry one,” he said. “Everything’s been such a bitch lately.” Did he mean I had become, for him, the bitch everyone said I was? Trevor went on, “Nothing has gone right, but I thought at least I had you. I’m sorry. Get whatever you want.”

Of course I didn’t want the goddam chintzy little thing. I didn’t want to go back to that store ever. I wanted a tattoo, but I didn’t even want that if I had Trevor staring at me all moisty-eyed. I was struck with that horrible cold fear – if I continue to act like a jackass I’m going to lose my supply. I’ve got to stop pushing it, get control of myself. The truth is I never imagined I’d have this kind of power. It’s not like I had never seen Trevor cry – he was a crier when we were growing up – more than me actually. It was because of Trevor that Oz posted the “No Sniveling” sign on his study door. The only times I can recall Oz hitting him were for crying, whereas with Jake it was for trying to blow things up. But I had never been the one to make him cry. And I hadn’t seen a tear in ten long years.
No more shopping for us; I didn’t even want a laptop, so we were the first to get to Starbucks. We waited half an hour for Shelley and Jake.

“Please forgive me,” I apologized, trying to hold his hand while we sipped our lattes. “I just snapped. It was like I was possessed by a demon or something.”

He had recovered himself, but he seemed kind of distant. “I know what that’s like,” he said.

I looked around, envying the ordinary people going about their business. I used to be so happy to be me, felt so proud and lucky all the time, but now I envied everybody, even the waitress with such severe overbite she looked like a harelip. Wouldn’t it be great not to be wanted by anybody?

“Maybe I should just take the first job I can get,” I suggested dispiritedly. “Let the rest of you go to court.” As if Trevor would ever let me!

“Great,” said Trevor, putting a hand over the pulsing vein in his head, “We’re in such desperate need of your pathetic four cents an hour. No fucking way.”

This is why couples argue all the time. They just can’t stop insulting each other.

“ Don’t be so controlling,” I snapped.

“As if anyone could control you,” said Trevor.

Maybe it was true. Could I even control myself? On top of it all Jake and Shelley were late, all happy and burdened with packages. Trevor groaned as he collected credit card receipts, and he punished them by making them get their coffees to go.

“Did you get a tattoo?” I whispered to Shelley.

“Yes,” she hissed back, “It’s on my butt. I can’t show you until we get home. Love your hair.”
My hair was nothing special; in fact it looked exactly the same, just a bit tidier. Shelley is so loyal. I can be so mean to her sometimes too. I despise myself.

In the Lexus I let Jake sit up front and I collapsed in the back from all the emotion of the day. I was starting to see why people want sex without feeling.

We’re not like Russians, after all, I thought sleepily. More like Egyptians. Didn’t the Egyptians have to marry their sisters because no one else was sufficiently royal? No one else understood the in-jokes. When I was eight I entertained company by reciting from The Book of the Dead and I still remembered some of it. Out loud I murmured,
“My flesh is gold; my bones are lapis lazuli…”

Interior music is so sustaining.

“We need to pick something up for dinner,” Jake said to Trevor. See? Eat, eat, eat. Buy, buy, buy. It never stops. Any way off the carousel of carnage? Yes. When I’m at college and I’m hungry I’ll go to the dining room and eat something. Maybe standing up at the salad bar. And then I’ll go away.
“Get a ham,” said Shelley. Colleen always had a ham. A spare country ham “wintering” in the wine cellar. Looking like hell and covered with newspapers.

I opened one eye. Country ham is delicious. Didn’t Tutankhamen die hunting wild boar? It was worth it. Also he very young and we all know what that’s like. Trevor was driving a little too fast right now.

“You have to order those weeks in advance,” said Trevor, Mr. Buzz-kill, but Jake, suddenly all thrifty and helpful, said, “You can get an regular spiral ham at Costco.”
Made me wonder if his tattoo said, “Buy in bulk.”

Back at the house Mina was cleaning up from the night before. And me thinking she was playing lawyer on our dollar! Feeling guilty I rushed to help. As always when labor threatened, everyone else melted away.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said falsely. I’m telling you now, it’s impossible to get through life without lying.

“I come from a big family, so I’m used to it.”

She already had the dishwasher humming, and she was working on the big pots. Soon we had a rhythm, she washing, me drying.

“Trevor got us a ham for dinner,” I offered. Just making conversation, the way Colleen had taught me.

“You can do anything with that man,” said Mina admiringly.

Not something I cared to discuss. I changed the subject. “So what got you into law?”

She gave the question such intense consideration she stopped washing. Memories flickered over her eyes like shadows and I saw the reason for the off-putting little glasses with their heavy black frames. Not for her looking out, but for us looking in. Whatever she thought of, she rejected it, attacking a Dutch oven with ferocity.

“Can I plead insanity?” she said lightly.

Sounds like an interesting story.

“No, really,” I begged.

“I grew up in a family with a lot of violence.”

“You got hit?”

“I was the youngest. Actually I was the only one who didn’t get hit. Sometimes I think just watching the violence is worse. You know the blow is coming and it keeps you up late, stiffened up and waiting.”

I knew just what she meant. Oz was never harsh with me, but when he yelled at Trevor it hurt worse than if he had attacked me directly.

“I would have expected you’d be more attracted to law enforcement,” I said. “Some place where you get to carry a gun.”

“The way it started was I wanted to stay in school forever. I was such a good little student and it seemed a safe place. I think I’m allergic to brutality. Call it sin-aesthesia.”

“I think I have that allergy too,” I said. It occurred to me that Craig yells a lot. I wondered how she could stand him? I like silence, myself.

“Then once I discovered what the law is about, I was hooked.”

“So what’s it really about?” I asked her. Punishing people, I would have said on a quiz.
“Our whole legal system is built around the issue of intent. There couldn’t be a more interesting puzzle, if you like puzzles. Intent – that’s kind of like motive. Intent is character. Think how interesting that is. What did the defendant think would happen and what were they capable of imagining would happen? It’s pretty fascinating.”

“Some defendants are so dumb,” I objected. “Like one-celled organisms.”

She looked at me shrewdly over misted glasses.

“And some of them are pretty smart.” She turned away, holding her shoulders rigidly, so I knew she was thinking of the case at hand. I wondered how much I could get her to tell me.

She shrugged, dodging neatly.

“We don’t have to deal with the dumb ones if we don’t want to. That’s the fun of working for the defense.”

“So what’s it like working for Craig?”

She shrugged. “I’m learning a lot.”

“Why doesn’t he ever let you stand up in court? Fawna gets to stand up.”

“He says women aren’t intimidating enough on cross. He says we lack the killer instinct. Anyway, I’m not sure I want to be a litigator. He says he might let me do the character witnesses.”
She seemed unexcited about the idea.

Time for some girl talk.

“He ever proposition you?”

Mina sighed. “Only when he’s desperate. I think he secretly likes it that I’m not gaga over him. Every other one of his assistants was scheming to be the next Mrs. Axelrod. This way, we can actually get some work done.”

“He doesn’t attract you?”

She peered at me over her little glasses.

“Craig? He’s too married.”

“I thought he was divorced.”

“As if that mattered. He has four wives for Pete’s sake, and they all call him practically every day, wanting something. He maintains four homes, yet he sleeps in a studio apartment over his office and lives mostly in hotels and airplanes. He has eight kids.”

“Eight kids!” Talk about a trailer park!

“That’s what you get when you have four wives. Finally he got wise and went for The Big Cut.” Mina made snipping gestures.

“The Big Cut?” Seeking elucidation. Or just gossip.

“That’s what he called it. No more little Axelrods, ever.” She sighed. “You can’t imagine the rivers of cash running through that man’s life.” (Sounds like Oz!) “And he can’t hang on to any of it.”
“So he needed this job?”

“He needs six of these jobs.”

I tried catching her off guard.

“So do you think Oz did it?”

But there is no “off guard” with Mina. Remember? She’s the one who stays up late. Stiffened and waiting.

“We learn not to think like that,” she answered smoothly. “He says he didn’t do it, and he tells a perfectly plausible story. He’s entitled to the best defense he can get.” She could change a subject a lot more adroitly than I.

“So Craig can’t have kids. Not that I dream of that. I just think I should want them. I mean, if you don’t have kids, you end up alone. Maybe I don’t have a biological clock. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve been playing for the wrong team. Maybe it’s just that brutality thing. All men suffer from testosterone poisoning. And I can’t get over it.”

Trevor doesn’t, I thought smugly. He yells, all right. He can get angry. He’d even smash something, if it isn’t too valuable. But he prides himself on being civilized. Being a Christian. Being a gentleman. Trevor wouldn’t hit.

“So I find myself thinking,” Mina went on, “What it would be like with a girl. Mirror images, right? Both of you slow and sensitive? Waiting for the other to come?”

Am I slow on the uptake, or what! She caught me completely by surprise. I just stared. Then, because work was at a standstill and the water wasn’t even running and she obviously expected me to say something, I ventured,
“I’ve never been with a girl. So I don’t know. Actually.”

“Oh.” She looked away. Work started up again. “I just thought — you being so adventuresome and free and all.”

“No,” I repeated awkwardly. Had I just been propositioned? Did she not know about Trevor? Was she looking for a threesome?

“It’s not that I’m not attracted to men,” She elucidated. “I just don’t like the level they take things to.”
I was grappling mentally. “Pass,” I said finally. Just to make sure Trevor and I didn’t experience Late Night Visitations.

She smiled, pushing up her glasses with a soapy finger. “Don’t worry. I passed “Don’t Fuck the Clients” in law school.” Under her breath she added, “Although a whole lot of people were sick that day.”

Trevor and Craig appeared at exactly the same moment, so I assumed they’d been together. Trevor looked like a man who had paid and Craig like a man who’d been paid. The inflated one smiled at us and commented approvingly, “How, I love watching women plying the domestic arts.”

Mina threatened him with a soapy barbecue fork.

“We’re having ham for dinner,” I said, easing the moment. I was starting to think there was no telling what Mina might do.

Craig sniffed the air with excitement. “Shouldn’t it be cooking?”

“It’s a spiral ham.” Trevor warned disparagingly. “Those things only need to be heated up.”
Good enough for the help, apparently.

“Then I’ll make my famous red-eye gravy!”

Behind his back Mina made throat-slitting motions. I found out later the “red-eye” part comes from coffee. Maybe Trevor is right. He’s abstemious about sauces, ordering everything “on the side.”
That was the night we drank the Montagna Magica and the Hungarian port. I went down with Trevor to help him choose. Since Oz had been gone we had used up an entire wall in the wine cellar. Of course, we had three walls to go. I struggled with the necessary mathematical calculations.

“Think this trial will last till spring?” I asked Trevor as he made his selections. Worst case scenario.
“No,” said Trevor. “Craig says it’s going fast because it’s the most expensive trial the county has ever had, and if he can just get a mistrial, the state will have to move the second trial somewhere else.”

“If we have a mistrial, we’ll run out of wine for sure,” I decided.

“We’ll never run out of wine,” Trevor told me with comfortable certainty.
“Why not?”

“Because the world will never run out of wine. Better to go without food than wine, Brontë. There are some things a gentleman can’t compromise.”

He sounded so exactly like Oz when he said that. Why argue? Who needs sauce when you have The Sauce?

There were more memories of Oz at dinner. Craig was almost as entertaining with his bizarre legal stories. He told us about how they used to embalm corpses with arsenic and it leaked into the groundwater and poisoned an entire New England village. He told us about another case where churchgoers were poisoned by the nickel in the chalice while taking communion and they all started having the same hallucinations. Thought it was the Second Coming.

“Odd they would all react in the same way,” said Trevor.

“Apparently it’s so common in Europe there’s a word for it. “The madness of crowds.” Everyone knows it was ergot poisoning from bread that caused the whole witch frenzy. Ergot is a fungus similar to LSD!”

“Bread and wine,” said Jake, “Who’d believe it?” He nudged Trevor. “You Christian devils!”

“Fascinating to see a medical problem express itself culturally,” said Mina. “The mind-body dilemma writ large. Different expressions of mass consciousness.”

“There is no “mass consciousness”, said Trevor. “That really is the madness of crowds. Educated people have their own consciousness. They rise above it.”

“Except if you’re inside it, you don’t see it,” said Mina. “Aren’t we all victims of our programming?”
“Ah yes,” quoted Craig, pausing in stuffing himself. “As Shakespeare said, what nourished us, consumes us.”

“I’m not,” said Trevor. “A victim of “programming”.”

We looked at him skeptically. Had Oz succeeded in raising one free child? I know I’m not free, or why aren’t I in college? Why do I go to this friggin’ trial day after day?

I guess Trevor was so threatened by our scene he bought not only the ham but also my favorite Moo-lage bars. Even though he disapproves not just of artificial sweetener but anything eaten off a stick.

He passed, and went upstairs. So I ate his.

After dinner Mina and I tried to talk Craig and Shelley into doing the dishes. Jake had already vanished. No sale. Craig is above that sort of thing. We’re just another three-star hotel as far as he’s concerned. So I had to do the dishes again with only Shelley to help.

I could hear the shouting a hundred feet away. When I topped the stairs Trevor and Jake were shouting at each other. Trevor’s face was twisted with red rage.
In our boudoir I asked him.

“What the heck happened?”

“Oh, Jake suggested a foursome,” he snorted angrily as he flung himself out of his suit. “That asshole. He’s so out of his gourd!”

Creepy! “So what did you say?”

“Told him not to be a fetal pig.”

He came over to help me undress. I wasn’t going fast enough for him. I was his stress medicine like he was mine.

“It is kind of disgusting thinking of us all naked in bed together,” I said.

“Oh, we’ve done that before,” said Trevor. “Don’t you remember? That little experiment of Oz’s? Of course, you were little.” He laughed at the memory. “You didn’t like it at all. You said you wanted to sleep with only me.”

I didn’t recall any of it. I wish we hadn’t talked about programming at dinner.
“Sounds like I got my wish.”

“We got our wish,” echoed Trevor.

Once again I was bothered. I pride myself on my good memory. It’s the most important attribute of a writer, but some things are just gone. I made a note to ask Trevor exactly how old I had actually been. Ask him someday when he wasn’t wearing my hips for a hat, telling me if there was reincarnation he wanted to come back as my jeans.

Craig has taken cases based on the falsity of “recovered memory”. People remember things that didn’t happen. He says it’s been scientifically demonstrated that there’s also implanted memory, and not only that, people have been confessing to things they didn’t do for hundreds of years.
So what even is “programming?” What is memory? What can you trust? I was starting to think maybe art is the only thing that tells the truth. I should stop writing this diary right now and venture on a novel. But how?

Afterwards as we lay there exhausted I thought of so many things I wanted to know.

I mean on the face of it, Jake’s question to Trevor was the most ridiculous thing. Unless…

“You’ve had fourgies with Jake before?” I asked as lightly as I could manage. Otherwise I didn’t think he would tell me.

“Drunk people will do anything. I’m living it down, aren’t I? We’ve all made enough degrading mistakes.”

What was my degrading mistake? I didn’t even want to think like that.
He hauled me to my feet, his face settled mulishly.
“Shower time. Come on, I’ll soap you.”

The great thing about taking a shower late at night is that the water is finally hot. I closed my eyes and held the handrails, feeling like a blissful horse after a particularly challenging steeplechase, while he pounded me. A horse that needs to rest up, because it’s going to get another big run soon. He pounded hard enough to raise bruises, and yet I liked it. I guess I just can’t write that novel. There’s still too much I don’t understand.

This water was surely hot enough to wash degrading mistakes away – along with several layers of skin. Wouldn’t we emerge pristine again, like infants? There was just that one last thing to get off my chest.

“You know, Jake came on to me once.”
Wicked of me to tell?

The water pouring off over his brows and chin made him look like an angry sea god.
“Jake comes on to anything that slows down long enough,” growled Trevor. “He needs shock shorts. He’s going to get every STD that’s out there.”

“Oh, poor Shelley,” I worried.

“You said no, of course?” He separated my legs, the better to get up and into all the nooks and crannies.

“I said no.”

I didn’t tell him how I’d been tempted by all those miles of shiny muscle.

He pulled my naked body to his chest and let the water cascade over both of us.
He grunted while he worked.

“You saved a life.”

But he didn’t say whose.

Chapter Twelve — Mendacity

Morning found us all back in our own little circle of hell; like chum cast upon the haters.
Fawna was in fine form decked in navy blue and white, hair sharply cut and curled. She smiled at the jury and they smiled back. Our guy, Craig, looked like an unmade bed.

“The state calls Shea Moira Shortall.”

A woman I recognized as my aunt rose to her feet and moved with the forward lope of someone unused to high heels. I regarded her with a well-nourished hostility. This was our sworn enemy, the woman whose letter to the prosecution had opened my mother’s grave. She was having more peace there than she could ever have again. Artists competed now to sketch her wounds for the public in all their ghoulish glory.

Aunt Shea wore one of those mass-produced, vaguely African-themed outfits favored by big women –identifying with hippos, I guess, or elephants. She had a mess of what looked like zebras running across her back. Alone among my mother’s happily married sisters she was the anomaly, the single one, the “artistic” one. She had no children. When she was at art school there had been some kind of abortive attempt at a fake green card marriage that soon collapsed; Oz called her as “the dyke”.
She sent me art kits every birthday and Christmas; origami sets suitable for a five year old received on my fifteenth birthday. If I ever had talent, we’ll never know now; she must claim responsibility for my loathing of the graphic arts.

Her hair looked a bit more presentable today than yesterday; less of a bird’s nest. It was twirled up artfully and secured with jeweled combs. Maybe they had a salon at the hotel to pass the time, while Oz read Spinoza and I ate beef. She might have even been wearing makeup. She stared at the jury, bright-eyed, and they looked back at her with interest.

Like a big animal trainer, Fryssen marched her witness through her paces.

“My name is Shea Moira Shortall,” said the witness, touching the Bible like she knew her way around it.

There was one lie, anyway. I happen to know that when she was born those names were reversed. She was Moira Shea Shortall.

“I live in Prairie Nouveau, Nevada, and I am a retired teacher of art.”

“Did you once have a sister named Mary Elizabeth?”

“I did. She was a year and a half my junior.”

“Can you recall the circumstances in which you learned of her death?”

“I received a transatlantic phone call in the middle of the night from a man calling himself Oz White. He told me my sister had passed away and I should inform the rest of the family.”
“Did you know who he was?”

“I thought he had something to do with the school where she worked. I asked him if we should hop on a plane and come over but he said instability in Algeria rendered air travel uncertain and he promised he would personally escort the body and the children to wherever we wanted them to go.”

“And what did you say?”

“I was very upset, but to the best of my ability I thanked him. I said I’d have to speak to my sisters to find out whether they wanted her in the family plot in California or out in Arizona where we all lived. I took down his numbers and asked how she died.”

“So what did he tell you?”

“He said the doctor described it as an aneurysm. He said they need to embalm bodies very fast in the hot countries and asked if we wanted her embalmed or cremated.”

“What did you say?”

“I said in our religion, cremation was a sin. We needed the body whole. For the resurrection.”
Little did she know what resurrection lay in store! I shuddered and Trevor moved his shoulders comfortingly against me.

“Tell us what he said.”

“He made some flippant remark… I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it certainly disparaged our beliefs. I thought it was very inappropriate, bordering on cruel. That’s when I realized he was just a friend of Mary Elizabeth’s and not in the employment of the Franciscans. They would have known better.”

“What was the next thing you recall happening?”

“I rang off. I guess I was in shock. I woke my sisters with a conference call and we all agreed on the family plot. I called him back in the morning to give him the details and spoke to his wife.”

“Renée White?”

“That’s correct. She seemed a thoughtful person. She said he was unavailable, so I gave her the information.”

“Did he at any time mention that he was the executor of your sister’s estate?”
“Not then.”

“Did he mention he was the administrator of her dead husband’s estate?”

“He did not.”

Jake jerked at Mina’s collar and demanded to know why Craig didn’t object. Mina hissed that it was better not to prolong this testimony.

“Did Mr. White or the girls actually attend the funeral?” Fryssen had a way of standing alongside the witness box with her back to the jury and staring at Oz as she spoke. Then they all stared at him, like he was a captured alien.

Shea had been awaiting this question. She spat out her indignation as if it was a poisoned tooth.
“They did not. He called me from his new home in Washington to say he had thought about it and decided it wouldn’t be good for the girls. That’s when he mentioned that Mary Elizabeth had appointed him guardian before her death. Of course we had assumed they would come to us and had made our preparations in that regard. Mr. White – he wasn’t remarried at that time – described funerals – especially open casket services – as barbaric and unnecessarily traumatizing.”

“How did you respond?”

“I was incredulous…I barely understood. I told him there wouldn’t be an open casket service because our funeral director described the body as “excessively embalmed”– beyond repair. I really think his objection was to any service whatsoever. He seemed to think “out of sight-out of mind” – about their own mother – would be better for the children!”

Her voice quivered with outrage and set to vibrating the various scarves and necklaces strewn about her person.

“What disturbed you most about this phone call?”

“This awful fact about guardianship…I couldn’t believe it. None of us had daughters. We were so looking forward to welcoming them, to telling them about their mother. About their family. Mr. White told me he would be sending copies of the documentation.”

“Did you ask him anything further?”

“I did. I had got the death certificate interpreted; it said “aneurysm subsequent to a fall.” That was the first I ever heard about the swimming pool. So I asked him about that.”
“What did he tell you?”

“That she had been out walking late one night and fallen into a disused swimming pool. That there was no one around to hear her cries or help her to get out. Apparently she succumbed to her injuries. Alone.”

Fawna swiveled her hips to check the jury out and make sure they were getting all this. She then changed course, resting her elbow on the side of the witness box as if leaning into a friend’s car to chat.

“Let’s switch to this recent case. When did you come to hear about the death of Mr. White-Hawke’s current wife Colleen?”

“My sister Gemma clipped her obituary from the Post. I think that was in July. I went on the Web and looked up the stories about this so-called-accident. I thought” —

“Never mind what you thought, what did you do?”

Unchewed words fell from her lips like crumbs of disappointment.

“I wrote a letter.”

“Addressed to whom?”

“I didn’t have a name so I addressed it to the Head Prosecutor whom I have come to understand is Mr. Buford. I pointed out the similarities between my sister’s death and Mrs. White-Hawke’s.”
“Thank you,” said Fawna. “No further questions.”

Craig rose and simply looked at Shea for quite awhile, as if she was a particularly interesting specimen. I knew he was feeling aggressive because he played with his tie.

After a moment he shook his shoulders and said,

“Permission to treat as a hostile witness.” He had figured out how to use this judge’s thirst for speed to his own advantage.

“Granted,” said his Honor, crisply.

Craig continued to gaze at the witness for a moment, arms akimbo. Then he said,
“How many legal actions have you and your sisters brought against Mr. White-Hawke?” Emphasizing Colleen’s name.

Shea sat up as straight in the witness box as a pointer dog and said, “Two.” Sharply.

“Describe these actions. What were their dispositions?”

“The first was to contest Mr. White’s guardianship of the children.” That one was dismissed, to our sorrow. The second was directly for custody of the children. We dropped that in 2003 because the case ran on too long – he did everything to block it and the children were getting too old.”

“Too old for you to love?” Craig mocked her.

“Too old to have guardians.”

“You really mean too old to be compelled to do something they don’t want to do, don’t you?”

“Objection!” shouted Buford, “Argumentative.”

“Hostile witness, counselor,” the judge chastened, “not hostile attorney.”

I saw Mina write that down.

“Move on.”

“The first suit was really about depriving Mr. White of his position managing Ms. Barringer’s estate, was it not?”

“She didn’t leave him any money personally. It was all for the children’s benefit. He was just a trustee. We would have liked to see an accounting.”

“Wasn’t the money primary and the issue of the children secondary?” Craig asked silkily. “I have a copy of your suit if you’d like to refresh your memory.”

She was wearing makeup; I could see it now, standing out in patches against her reddening skin. Third witness in a row to testify in blood. Craig did have a way of getting to people. Her voice rose to a squeak.

“We wanted the children to have what had been their mother’s! We were trying to have the entire will set aside!” As an aside she muttered, “We realized too late”—and stopped herself. Too late.
“What did you realize?”

“We didn’t care if he kept Mary Elizabeth’s things. We just wanted the children. That was the burden of the second suit. Certain facts about his character were emerging…it had come to our attention…”

“Or your private investigator’s attention”—Craig interjected.

“That Mr. White’s behavior was questionable as a role model. And then there was the way they lived—“ “Please don’t just ramble, Miss Shortall. Answer the questions that I ask. Why did you drop the case?”

“We had some communication with the children before the suits, but afterwards…that stopped. It just seemed…self-defeating.”

Was that a tear in her voice? I was beginning to be enough of an old hand to realize that trials bring out the actor in everyone.

Craig said sonorously, “I put it to you that you dropped the case after the judge interviewed Miss Brontë White-Hawke and she said she did not wish to change families.”
“I believe I heard something of the sort.”

Aunt Shea looked at me for the first time and I braced myself for a death-to-the-enemy-shot from my tongue ring but her eyes flickered over me gently. Trevor put a hand on one of my wrists and Jake covered the other. Seems they thought I might vault the defense table.

“Of course she was loving and loyal to the family in which she was raised.” Her voice softened. “It was a characteristic of my dear sister.”

She wasn’t going to give Oz any credit at all, if she could help it.

“Did Mr. White ever express to you his own love for these girls?” Craig was going to get her to admit it.

“Many times. I take their absolute lovability as a given. Anyone would love them.”

“Didn’t he tell you that he had to spend their entire estate fighting the case, that he was supporting them with his own funds, but that he didn’t care because he would never give them up?”
“Hardly,” said Shea coldly. “He offered us Shelley.”

There was a stunned silence.

Then pandemonium broke out. I thought I’d heard wrong. I think Shelley stood up, then staggered forward. I thought she was going to fall. Trevor and Jake grabbed for her but they were too late because they’d been concentrating on restraining me. They found themselves wrestling with an empty coat. She was gone. Spike shot out after her.

“Objection!” cried Craig. “Your Honor, this is a setup!”

“You opened the door, Mr. Axelrod. Now you’ll have to walk through it.”

The angry defense attorney said coldly to his witness, “I put it to you that this is a lie engineered to divide the family.”

“It is not! He wrote it in a letter!”

Buford lifted a paper above his head. “Your Honor, we would like to offer this letter as –”
“Mistrial!” shouted Craig. “The defense has not seen this purported document. I understand surprise witnesses are de rigueur in the glorious state of Virginia but surely surprise documents are too “star chamber” even for this great commonwealth. If not offered during discovery it should be irrelevant.”

Mina disappeared after Spike and Shelley. Oz put his head in his hands but when Trevor touched his shoulder, he whispered, “Go after Shelley.” Jake rose obediently. Trevor and I were alone.

“The prosecution concealed something – who knows what – to spring upon us at this moment in order to further upset this family and violate this defendant’s rights. This is clear ground for a mistrial.”

Buford stepped into the center of the room wringing his hands in a palliative fashion.
“Ms. Shortall moved recently and she only just recovered the letter, bringing it East with her. There was no bad faith here. I have a copy for the defense. The state—“

“Mistrial, your Honor! I demand a ruling. We were deliberately blindsided.”

The judge tossed his gavel around in a nearsighted manner.

“Mistrial motion denied,” he said.

“Then I ask that this letter not be admitted and the witness’ words stricken.”

The judge spoke. “Mr. Axelrod, I don’t see how the defense is encumbered by this little matter. It concerns a subject entirely ancillary to the case at hand.”

“This entire testimony is ancillary to the case at hand,” Craig insisted doggedly.

“Court is dismissed until nine a.m. tomorrow pending my ruling,” said the judge.

And this is the judge so in love with speeding these things along! Trevor steepled his brows in my direction.

There was Jake hovering outside the ladies room, and Shelley inside, crying her eyes out. When I hugged her, I could feel her heart hammering away.

“He always loved you best,” she wept.

That’s bullshit,” I insisted. “Trevor says every kid always thinks that about the other kids.”
It was too claustrophobic in the toilet stall and was she was holding me too close for comfort. I don’t like feeling small; it feels like I’m going to disappear. Anger at Oz made me want to thrash and flail, but there was no room and in any case Shelley wouldn’t let me go.

“You know when they finish with Oz, they’ll be coming after us,” she gasped, her mouth quivering. “We’ll have to change our names and run away.” She dried her eyes with toilet paper. “I always wanted to live in Paris.”

Did she mean the prosecution or the Shortalls? In just a couple of days I’d been offered Georgetown and Paris. I wondered if I could talk Trevor into going to the Sorbonne. We needed to survive this first.

“I’m afraid to go back to college!” she wailed. “Remember that seventeenth century Scottish cannibal family? The law killed them all, even the children.”

I had always wondered why she seemed so taken with that grisly tale of a family of highwaymen who not only robbed travelers, but ate them.

“That’s just a nightmare,” I said. “Long ago and far away. Not going to happen. Come on. The judge is letting us out of here. Let’s go to the mall. Besides, Jake is waiting for you.” I laughed as I kissed her. “You know he always loved you best.”

She blew her nose but refused to be comforted. “Take my advice, Brontë. Never love a guy who’s prettier than you.”

“Don’t worry,” I told her. I like the Bad Boys.

Spike had been keeping everyone at bay, re-directing them to the first-floor john. As soon as Shelley emerged Jake pounced, gabble at the ready, grabbing the back of her neck to guide her to the conference room.

“Oz explained it. He was playing for time. It was just a legal ploy to slow down the case. You were almost of age, so it didn’t matter. He knew you wouldn’t agree… He suggested everything he could think of… things he never would have actually done…”

In the conference room Shelley threw herself into Oz’s arms.

“I’m sorry I made a scene,” she gasped. “It’s been so hard. We’ve all been on edge.”
Shelley was apologizing to Oz for disrupting his murder trial! Now that’s what I call perfect manners.

He patted her back.

“Don’t even think about it. It was just something my lawyers suggested…”
He hugged her, then pulled me in too for one of those disappearing-act embraces that I loathe so much. “You girls are my heart,” he said as he knocked our heads together. “I was there when both of you were born.”

We had heard that story already, many times before. Oz was our mother’s labor coach and attended both our births, cut the cord because our own father wasn’t there. Oz hadn’t been allowed to attend his own sons’ births because his wife didn’t want him seeing her like that. In my opinion that squeamishness really backfired on her, the way squeamishness often does. Without all the mud and the blood, what do we really have of each other? Nothing.

Craig ordered lunch and we had a family picnic that would have seemed almost normal if it hadn’t been for the gunslinging deputies guarding the door. Oz regaled us with his contemporary version of scenes from The Life of Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower.

Before court reconvened he made a point of pulling me aside.

“I’ve never seen Trevor looking so happy,” he told me, eyes bright. “I didn’t think he even had the happiness gene.”

I was thinking Oz always knew exactly what to say when he tightened his grip on me and whispered, “The two of you would make such a fantastic kid. Are you using protection? Don’t.”

Chapter Eleven — Metamorphosis

The men declared a need for beef. Big, big, beef. It started when Craig announced that he and Mina would prepare dinner. He was determined to grill. Beef.

The men were as enthusiastic as Eskimos on a seal hunt, so it seemed unsporting for me and Shelley to point out that we’d pretty much stopped eating red meat. That was Colleen’s influence; she was vocalized about toxins lurking in one’s cells causing death and damage to the skin. She claimed she could smell as well as recognize beef eaters. I was starting to think there were other forms of damage she should have paid attention to.

Craig says hindsight’s the only truly twenty-twenty vision. Oz was in agreement; the-living-forwards, understanding-backwards thing. I take it seriously. If I didn’t keep a diary how would I even know what’s happening to me?

Oz didn’t make it up. It was probably a quote; something borrowed, trailing provenance. Oz loved history, he was less excited about originality. The following unoriginal rule applies entirely to myself; I pledge to eat anything if only someone else will cook it.

Beef was another one of those things Spike turned out to be an expert on. Did you know there is a black market in restaurant-grade beef? Of course there is and it’s flourishing right here, (Jake says there is a black market for everything.) I went along, on the theory that writers should see all there is to see. As an artist I try to stand outside the capitalist frenzy – these people haven’t heard that by getting and spending they are laying waste their powers.

Court was dismissed early so that’s when the party started. Leaving the pursuing press in his dust (he has tricks aplenty) Spike drove us to a collection of storage lockers on a hill outside of town. Craig insisted on coming to check out the beef although as an “orifice of the court” – what he calls himself – he isn’t supposed to observe anything illegal. (He says it’s not up to him to figure out what’s illegal — that’s the prosecutor’s job. I thought he solved the problem neatly by concentrating on his silver flask. If at least one person is having fun, isn’t that the definition of a party?

Spike took an unbecoming glee in dumping the beef right on Craig’s lap, still in its black garbage bag serial killer wrapping. Craig lifted up the duct tape, peered inside. We all observed a pregnant hush as Spike asked,

“This OK?”

“This is gorgeous,” said Craig, gathering the ripply red and white hunks to his bosom and staining the oxfordcloth beyond repair. Now he looked like a crime scene. Why is it men like that marbling on food and not on women? Life is so unfair. I suppose they need to be able to tell the difference between dinner and a date, even “three sheets to the wind.” As Oz would say.
The sellers looked Asian so God knows where this meat was from. Trevor paid them in hundred dollar bills.

Over Vermillion the sky was dark. The press had set up tents that the rising wind began to threaten.
I took a long hot shower in Skylar’s bathroom to flush away the indignities of the day while the men set up a grill on the back terrace, beneath the portico. I had survived the first day of what Craig called “the trial within a trial” and I needed to be alone, to think about what I had seen and fit it in with the rest of my knowledge.

Just when you think you understand something the Matrushka doll breaks apart, revealing hidden versions of itself. The suspended animation of waiting for the trial to be over meant I was living a life inside my life, just as my stepped-up relationship with Trevor was a relationship-inside a relationship. So how could I write anything new? It seemed to me the poems assembling in my head were chopped up versions of what I had seen.

Outside the shower I found a spiral of blood along my towel. My period wasn’t due, but I had noticed that my untrustworthy body had a habit of punishing my passing enthusiasms. Colleen used to say that her periods came whenever she traveled – that is when she used to get them – just to make life hard. You’d think a person feeling that would welcome menopause.

If my body was determined to squelch my sexual escapades I wouldn’t give it the chance, I was already feeling that delicious build-up to a promised night of sexual adventuring where one can do anything and be anybody; heart-pounding exercise followed by a deliciously new depth of sleep. Every touch on my body was inherently masturbatory. I looked different, being loved; had to tear myself away from looking at my naked self emerging in the steamy mirror. If Trevor had come upstairs for any reason I would have fallen on him like a wolverine.

I stuck my head in Shelley’s room to borrow a tampon; she saw my pinned-up hair and asked, “Are you dressing for dinner?”

“Of course,” I answered. Good idea! The best presents are the most exotically wrapped; we are willing to cut and bruise ourselves to open the inside. “Are you wearing your body-stocking dress?”
She sighed happily, “Jake hasn’t seen it.”

It’s a wonderful outfit, an Arabian Nights tale of a gown that seems to consist only of gold coins stuck randomly across her pale body.

I would have to work hard to be worthy of my sister, but I had a dress in mind; Colleen’s ruby-red velvet. As a child I was fascinated by the little looping chains across the arms that shimmered and fell whenever she moved. I recall reaching up my hands to touch them, Colleen laughing as she pulled away. She hadn’t worn that dress in years but I had seen it in her collection. I guess it was mine now.

Tampon in place, wearing only a towel, I ventured into the other side of the house. I always consider it the height of luck to find myself alone and I was lucky again this time; the others were preoccupied.

Searching for black stockings I found gorgeous lace underthings still sporting their LaPerla tags. I guess those were mine now, too. Could mere youth and will dispel the inherent creepiness?
When I saw my gorgeousness in black lace and garters even I was intimidated. Had she had bought these for Oz? Because I couldn’t imagine him buying them for her; alas. No man buys black lace and garters for his valet.

Thankfully I was clothed when Shelley came in search of me. I’m not sure I should even let Trevor see me thus transformed.

“Looking good,” she whistled, zipping me. The dress was so tight my breasts mashed upwards, giving me some unexpected cleavage.

“I remember this dress,” said Skylar. “God, Colleen was tiny.”

Was that why we liked and trusted her so much the day we first met. She was like an intermediate adult.

“I’m not tiny,” I snapped. It is the greatest sorrow of my life that I am so short. Look at Shelley in her stilettos, gracefully towering over everyone. If intensity of will could add inches, I would be so tall!
“You’re not tiny,” Shelley comforted. She’s so loyal. “You’re the biggest person here.”

“But what can I do with my hair?” I asked my sister.

“It looks perfect exactly the way it is,” said Shelley. “Let me put in a clip to hide the rubber band and we’ll pull more tendrils down.”

As she snapped in a rhinestone butterfly I studied myself in Colleen’s Empire mirror. Tendrils released by the hot steam fell around my face. I looked so different to myself, darker and more grown up, my eyes expanding into depthless pools. Was I inhabited now by both Trevor and Colleen or did they cancel each other out? There can be loving, as well as demonic possession. Oz used to say we belonged to him until we were old enough tom belong to ourselves. Had that time finally come and if so, what accomplished it? Sex? Orgasms? Murder trials?

As we descended the stairs we were rewarded by a chorus of gasps.
Jake said, “Wow.”

Spike sat down hard on a chair far too small — it struggled but held.

Craig, looking clownish in floral mitts and a matching apron, said, “My eyes. My heart. My arthritic loins.”

Trevor, dusty in the basement doorway, snapping the wine cellar key back on his watch chain, declaimed, “Rose Red and Snow White stepping out of a storybook to toy with our frail hearts.”
Mina, sweatily stuffing potatoes, said, “Good God, y’all. Am I going to have to get my French maid’s outfit?”

Jake said, “Please.”

“Well, too bad for you. I gave it back after Halloween.”

I, armpits stinking of Trėsor, attacked the job of setting the table. Colleen’s got lots of beautiful, beautiful things and I used all I could find. The Havilland china, the damascened chargers, the Baccarat crystal, the Georg Jensen silver with spoons like trowels, the pearl handled steak knives like little Moroccan daggers.

“Go for baroque,” Oz suggested. I guess it’s my nature to understand excess.
Shelley brought in candles and hurricane lamps as I laid out the dark green damask napkins edged with lace, napkins Colleen deplored because they needed dry cleaning. All the flowers in the vases were dead, but at least I could strew the table with their still-fragrant petals.

The red-walled room with its black cherry wood furniture was transformed into a cave of enchantment. I did consider hanging a sheet over the leering, disapproving portrait of Oz’s father, The Scary General. Looking at him explains why Oz seems to have spent the majority of his childhood on his knees; I never met He Who Must Be Obeyed, but even in his portrait his face bristles with rage.

In the end I left him alone; I thought it might do him good to observe the scene. Unless the afterlife evens up our deficiencies, resetting us to “start” so to speak, he was in dire need of softening up.
Outside it had started a depressing Virginia winter rain. Trevor appeared silently behind me, leaned down, kissed my neck and rubbed his cheek in the downy hairs of my nape.

“This is so good of you,” he said, and set himself to opening the wine. Trevor treasures family dinners.

I almost snapped, “I’m not doing it for you,” until I thought how rude that was, so I said nothing. I don’t like quid pro quos in sex and love and until now I’d planned to get along without them. His compliment meant I had to ask, why was I doing it? You almost escape, then they pull you back in. It’s a writer’s truism that nobody knows why they do anything. That’s why they need us.

Was this somehow symbolic of the dinner parties my mother attended and enlivened, the ones we heard about today? Did she watch me in my black stockings and ruby red velvet, and if so, what was she thinking? Maybe it was a coming out party for the maiden chosen by the eldest son, or a case of lighting-the-lights-and-banging-on-the-pots to scare away the dark and ghosts?

Speaking of ghosts, did you know living people can have them? Oz might be absent, but his presence vibrated strangely among us, his power increasingly erratic like a vanishing power source. Though I would never have confessed it, in some ways he felt deader than Colleen. Tonight we used the tools she chose; he had approved, loving history and quality, but surely these possessions belonged to the one who cleaned them and preserved them. As a result Oz, lost in the playgrounds of flesh and ideas, had melted away.

Or were the different stories I had heard about him this morning transforming him before my eyes? Would he ever come back, to dine with us in this room? Perhaps we celebrated now for the same reason people no longer delay sex until after marriage, because the longer you wait the sadder things get. In my experience you have to do things when you have the energy if you want them done at all.

I felt understood everything the moment Trevor put the first glass of blood-red wine in my hands and I drank. I understood everything. That’s why they call it “stun-gravy.” The revelation drink. It may be completely specious, but it sure feels authentic.

Mina had prepared a plain green salad, garlic bread and a recipe she likes to call “once, twice, three times a potato.” The miracle of that dinner was the beef, charred on the outside, raw on the inside, soft and buttery, delicious beyond compare. It made you want to eat it with your hands.
“I hope nobody has allergies,” Mina told us as she passed the potatoes. “There’s a little bit of everything in here.”

Oz and Colleen raised us tough, guaranteed to gag down our peck of dirt before we flew. Proud of being tough. Disapproving of finicky eaters, Oz forced on us kidneys, sweetbreads, brains and tripe. If he told the story about the meshwi at which he was given the honor of eat ing the dead sheep’s eyeball once he told it a hundred times. Surely there was no longer a germ we could catch. We thought ourselves invulnerable.

Looking in Colleen’s wine book I can see that night we drank three bottles of Domaine la Grange des Peres Rouge 2001 and three bottles of Domaine de Trevallon Rouge 2001. Both were judged “rude, rough and aggressive” by Craig whose signature is almost illegible; I made a note that I preferred the Trevallon.

Did we drink all that wine to soak up the beef or did we eat all the beef to soak up the wine? I used to be accused of bringing home “undesirables” when I invited fellow public school denizens to sample the contents of our refrigerator; watching Jake and Craig fighting over the meat juices I wondered if I had done it again.

Over the meal we discussed religion, of all things. Craig introduced the topic by shouting, “That fucking religion! I blame it for every bad thing happening to this country.”

“It’s not religion that’s the problem,” corrected Trevor, who never seemed to show the effects of alcohol, “It’s education. People can only think with the brain their education gives them.”
“It’s genetics,” said Jake. “You have to have a brain to think with.”

“Let me get this straight,” asked Mina. “You’re blaming Christianity for how the trial is going?”
“I am,” said Craig, drawing himself up and puffing out his reddened cheeks, “Face it, Mina. Christianity is a conspiracy of old women against the male libido.”

“Hear, hear,” said Jake.

“That’s so totally untrue,” Mina challenged him, and Trevor backed her up.
“Jesus was a man,” he pointed out.

“Not so you could tell,” grumbled Jake.

“All religions were invented by men to control women,” said Mina. “Name me a religion started by a woman.”

“Uh oh,” said Jake. “Feminazi alert.”

“Christian Science,” retorted Trevor.

“Yeah? And what’s the first word of that? Doesn’t count. It’s a modification of a pre-existing religion.”

“You can’t lump all religions together,” Trevor insisted. “It’s ignorant. It’s like talking about “all education”. There’s good education and bad education.”

I knew all about his thoughts on that.

“Or sex,” I said. “Because there’s good sex and bad sex.” Was that Trevor kicking me under the table?

“You think this jury is going to differentiate between good sex and bad sex?” asked Craig sourly.
“I thought you did a pretty good job setting up the parameters today,” Jake said, lifting his glass.
“You definitely exposed the weaknesses of their witnesses,” Trevor agreed.

“They don’t have a case,” snapped Craig. “Just wait till I get my hands on that family.”
I knew who he meant. My mother’s sisters.

“If only it mattered.” Craig collapsed, boo-hooing into his booze. “I feel like I’m trying this case in a foreign country. Asking them about their religion is a no-no and yet it’s going to control the outcome.”

“People don’t tell the truth about themselves anyhow,” said Mina. “I think the best we can hope for is a couple of closet gays. And maybe some of those women have kids that are gay.”

Craig snarled in disagreement. “This case isn’t going to turn on homosexuality; it’s going to turn on recreational sex, period. Did you hear that woman call him a “swinger”? Codeword! Who cares what happened in Tunisia fifteen years ago? Who cares what he did with his weekends? None of this has nothing to do with his stoned wife falling into the deep end of an empty swimming pool. I saw those women’s faces. They just want to punish him for jumping the fence.”

“The prick wants what it wants,” intoned Jake.

“I don’t think it’s the women we need to worry about,” said Mina. “Women are a lot more forgiving of sexual peccadilloes than men are.”

“Bullshit!” exploded Craig. “Men are naturally polygamous.”

“Not any more than they are naturally murderous,” argued good old Trevor. He’s s cute. “A commitment’s a commitment. Civilized people make them and keep them.”

He was going to make some lucky girl a fabulous husband someday. I knew I would never get one as good. I felt downright envious.

“Everybody knows its women who are the possessive, jealous sex,” Craig insisted.

“No, they’re not.” Mina seemed to enjoy arguing with her boss. “This whole marriage thing was invented by men and I can prove it.”

He gaped at her. “You’re on.” Slapped down a Benjamin.

Mina rattled her empty wine glass, calling for more. Spike sprang into action.

“Imagine a religion – an institutionalized religion — big, successful, millions of adherents — where ten guys share one woman. I dare you.”

God. She had us there. All were silenced. We couldn’t imagine it.

“Boo-ya,” said Spike. “Talk about mayhem.”

He made a ceremonial show of filling Mina’s wineglass. “Touché. Lady takes table.”

He’d been so quiet before, sitting in the outsider’s position, eating quietly just outside the circle of light. That’s the writer’s position. Where I should have been. Enviable ability to disappear into background, especially when you’re big like he is.

Mina scarfed up Craig’s Benjamin and inserted it where she should have had cleavage.
“So how do you think it’s going to go?” I asked Spike. Our man in Havana played it safe.
“No telling with juries,” said Spike.

There was a slow deflation of energy – like the expulsion of a sigh — across the table. This was still only the beginning. The next day hung over us, and the day after that. Not like television where you can change the channel.

“I don’t think I can stand it,” I said aloud.

Jake spoke for all of us. “Isn’t one of Dante’s circles of hell sitting in court day after day? What did we do to deserve this?”

Just beyond the candle glow, something ran across the Chinese rug. Shelley rocketed nervously to her feet.

“It’s just a chipmunk, Shelley,” I reassured her. The cats had taken to bringing in their prey and releasing them inside, prolonging their amusement. It might not have been a chipmunk at all, but I know chipmunks are something Shelley’s not afraid of.

“The poor thing,” mused Shelley, sitting back down. “Like trapped on a strange planet.”
If the wine was gone it must be time for coffee.

“Dessert?” I queried, hostess-like, knowing my dessert waited upstairs in the Bed of a Thousand Kisses, where Trevor would crouch above me, balls coiled like springs.

“Pass,” said Jake, rubbing his stomach. “I ate too much.”

“You didn’t eat that much,” I said to Trevor, who is always abstemious. “Want ice cream?”

“No, thank you,” said Trevor.

“There’s brandy,” Jake suggested.

Accepted by all but Trevor, who asked rhetorically, “Who appreciates food more, the glutton or the hunger artist?”

“Don’t pay him any mind,” Jake said, filling Craig’s glass, “Professional buzzkill.”

But I knew what he really meant. A special glance passed between us. Keeping himself in fighting trim for later. I put a hand over my brandy glass.

“You know what we need,” said Jake. “That Perry Mason moment. You know, you put someone on the stand and he says, “I did it!” No offense, Craig.”

“None taken,” Craig agreed glumly. “At this point I’d appreciate a miracle. I wouldn’t look in the horse’s mouth. Know who I really want to put on the stand? Colleen.”

“She probably doesn’t know who did it,” said Trevor. “She was stoned, remember?”

“She knows now,” I said excitedly. “Let’s ask her! Let’s have a séance!”

“That’s a terrific idea,” said Shelley. “I’ll get the Ouija board.”

“You don’t need an Ouija board for a séance”, said Mina. “We just ask her to manifest herself.”

“This is in the worst of taste,” objected Trevor.

“Hey,” I told him, “You’re the one who insists there’s an afterlife.”

“I’ll ask the questions,” said Craig. “I need to get a lot of things straight.”

“I’m going out for a cigar,” said Spike, and Trevor said, “I’m joining you,” until I grabbed his hand.
“Stay with me.”

He sat reluctantly back down.

“We should all hold hands,” I suggested. This made it less obvious that Trevor and I were holding hands. Mina moved into Spike’s chair and extended her fingers.

“Sorry,” she apologized to me. “My hands are always cold.”

She had little bony fingers like a monkey’s.

Jake said, “We should get something of Colleen’s.”

I said, “Everything was Colleen’s. Look at this table.”

“Something intimate. Personal.”

God. I was wearing the underwear she’d chosen. But how intimate can it be if it still has the tags on?

Shelley said, “Brontë is wearing Colleen’s dress.”

Jake gave me an unflattering look. “It looks completely different on you,” he said snidely in a once-a-squirt-always-a-squirt voice.

“Well then,” said Mina, “We’re ready to start. Everyone close your eyes.” She cleared her throat. “Colleen White-Hawke, we summon you from beyond the grave.”

The things you don’t know about people! I would never have figured Mina for a medium.
For a long space of time I listened, sorting out the different sounds. Craig’s wheezing breath, Jake breathing through his “perfect” nose, broken once by Trevor and again by a Bulgarian fencer, re-built by experts. Trevor began stroking the palm of my hand with his middle finger. It occurred to me that spiritualism is a religion invented by a woman. So there.

“Colleen, we feel your presence,” whispered Mina. “Speak to us. Let us know who caused your death.”

Through the slits in my eyelids I could see pools of wax overrun the flower petals like lava. Was that a foot touching mine? Bare foot out of a shoe? Couldn’t be Trevor; he wore lace-ups. There was a long silence, then a thump as something hard hit the table. Shelley screamed and her chair turned over. We all pushed back and Trevor hit the lights. But it was only Colleen’s Persian, licking up meat juices. There’d been a kill so he thought himself invited.

Spike came running in, a cigar in one hand and a 45 in the other.
“You can’t shoot ghosts, Spike,” said Mina.

“Or cats,” I said.

“There are no ghosts,” said Spike, but Craig quoted,
“Yet as the old lady said, I’ve never met a person who wasn’t haunted.”

“Get out of here!” Jake shook his napkin at the cat, who absolutely ignored him.

“Colleen says let him have the rest of it,” I said, putting the tray on the floor.

“That’s it,” proclaimed Trevor. “I’ve out of here. Totally bushed.”

There was general agreement that the party was over. Shelley and Jake looked at each other longingly, and I saw the benefit in avoiding Trevor’s bathroom. Why witness my sister canoodling with Brownie, the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome poster child? Upstairs in the Honeymoon Suite Trevor wrestled me impatiently out of my dress.

“I’d say this is one size too small,” he said. “At least.”

I’ve got news for him; girls don’t like hearing this. It was true I’d eaten too much at dinner and was probably puffy from my period. When finally I fought free of the damn dress I rose up to my full height (such as it is) and said, “Ta da!”

My erotic display fell flat. Trevor turned away.
“Take them off.”

Was this the “buyer’s remorse” I’d heard of? Indio would have killed to see me in this outfit. He was always very critical of my patched Lady Jockeys.

“What’s the matter? Aren’t I perfect anymore?”

“Don’t gild a lily until it stinks,” he said, undressing himself. Still turned away from me. “You were born perfect. That’s not the issue.”

“What’s the issue?” I joined him in nakedness on the bed. He lifted one shoulder to embrace me, smiling. He began kissing me all over my face, light butterfly kisses.

“You and I are beyond fetishes, beyond mementoes,” he said. “Don’t you see? I’m a man with a plan, put upon this earth to make sure you become yourself, and don’t get derailed onto someone else’s template.”

Still I felt somewhat cranky and offended. Was he really saying I couldn’t grow up and change his idea of me? I know I was gorgeous in that lace, so gorgeous you would not believe.

“Georgetown is going to accept the real me?” I queried in a spoiled child way. “They’re not going to force me into their template?”

He rolled me over, pulled back and looked down at me with pride. Pride and love.
“I’ll be there to make sure they don’t,” he said. “Admit it’s possible that I know you better than you know yourself.”

“It’s impossible,” I objected. “By definition.”

“Why can’t you trust me?”

Why couldn’t I? I had to give him that one.

“I do trust you.”

“Well,” he said, smiling, “I trust me, too.”

Softening me up. I’m beginning to see why men will do anything for sex. If you know you’re going to get an orgasm like the eruption of Krakatoa out of it, it becomes a whole different deal.
He certainly was the best kisser in the Western hemisphere, playing with my mouth, my lips, my tongue, with his own soft lips. Yet I hesitated to let myself go. What was wrong with me? I know lovers don’t need to agree about everything just to have sex. But I felt some need to badger him. Maybe it’s the power equation. You know. That brother-sister thing.

“Maybe when we summoned Colleen, we got her,” I teased. “Do you think Colleen’s soul went into her Persian?”

He interrupted his palpating and savoring long enough to say, ‘How can a person go to church for fifteen years, be baptized and even confirmed, and remain so theologically naïve?”

“Maybe I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I’ll say you weren’t. I had to personally wipe the drool off your face countless times.”

I loved it when he talked about my childhood. It lived on in him; I could enjoy it without the obligation (and the pain) of reliving it. All pleasure. No powerlessness.

“There’s no reincarnation,” he lectured patiently. “There’s no transmigration or transmutation of souls. Cats don’t even have souls.”

“So Colleen’s in heaven?”

“Sleeping till judgment day, presumably,” he said. “Not up to us. Fortunately.”

“I think your religion is just impossible,” I argued. “When you get to heaven and see the cats are in charge, won’t you be surprised.”

“I’ll be very surprised,” said Trevor, gnawing on my hipbone.
“And then she’ll be judged? We’ll all be judged? Oz too?”

“Oz too.” He licked my inner thigh. “Thank God for mercy, eh?”

He had reached my crotch. I had forgotten about my tampon.

“Oops,” I said. “Sorry.”

Delicately he removed it with his teeth.

“Oh Cherry Vanilla,” he sighed, “You know I love all your flavors.”

Even through shuddering blasts of pleasure I recognized truth when I heard it. He’d been licking clean my cuts as long as I could remember.