The Turnout(91)

(“Don’t,” Dara said. “Don’t bring her into this.”

She remembered, of course. She remembered climbing those stairs, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, and then, a blur of limbs, seeing them both, seeing the serene pleasure on her mother’s face, all her nakedness laid before Charlie, a mere boy . . .)



* * *



*

    He never would have thought he could have done it, he said once more, shaking his head.

But it turned out he could.

And now he couldn’t believe himself. Didn’t understand himself.

The relief in her voice when he called to tell her what had happened, what he’d done. Her husband, the villain, was gone. It was something almost like happiness. (Even as there was a funny briskness to her after, wanting to get off the phone with him so quickly, saying she needed to start taking care of things. Reminding him they shouldn’t be talking on the phone anyway but especially not now and he’d better not come around for a while. Maybe a long while.)

Two people, tightly twined, can begin to convince themselves of anything. There’s reality and then there’s the shared experience, which feels so much more real.

Two people, needing each other, can come to believe things. Can come to believe wanting something was the same as making it happen. That it wasn’t a choice, in the end, but the right thing to do, the fulfillment of some deeper calling.

Two people, even three, a family, he said, looking at Dara, can make their own world.



* * *



*

You forgot one thing,” Dara said, her fingertips tracing the cake crumbs, sliding along the wax paper, the serrations of the old bread knife.

“What?” Charlie looked at her, tender, lips like a bow. Like a little doll. A wooden doll, with pointed teeth.

“The money.”

Charlie paused.

“What money?” he said finally.

Dara looked at him and he looked away. It was so disappointing—crushing, really.

“The insurance policy,” she said, her voice creaking. “The fat payout you’re both expecting. That you’ll share, I guess.”

Charlie paused again. Then, his expression dazed, impenetrable, he said, “I don’t know about that. We never talked about that at all.”



* * *



*

They sat for a long moment. Dara thought she could hear someone moving somewhere. Marie. That floorboard in the front hallway that creaked all winter long.

Maybe Charlie didn’t know about the insurance. The payout. Or maybe he did, but only in part.

She didn’t care, not now. She didn’t care and he could see it on her face.

“Dara, you have to understand,” he said, voice high and desperate now, “it’s not my fault.”

Dara’s eyes lifted toward him, not even quite believing that he’d said it.

“Don’t you dare,” Dara said, her voice such a boom that Charlie nearly jumped.

“I mean, it is. It is,” he said, reaching for her hand before she pulled it away. “But, Dara, please.”

“You need to leave,” Dara said. “Leave before I scream fire. Before I start a fire right here.”

She could hear Marie breathing from the hallway, shallow, fast breaths like a little girl.

“We’ve all been trapped here and I never even asked,” Charlie was saying, softly, fumblingly, his head in his hands. “I never asked to be here forever. I was just a kid and your mother, she . . .”

The only thought in her head: He has to leave, he has to. The things he was saying, like a stain spreading. In this house, their home.

“Don’t. Don’t,” she said.

“But, Dara,” he said, head lifting, eyes searching again for hers. That wet-eyed-waif look she knew so well. The same one he had when he first arrived, nearly twenty years ago. When he was that wet-eyed waif, uncorrupted and hungry for love. “She was your mother. You saw what she was doing.”

“Don’t you dare talk about her. Don’t you dare bring our mother into this—”

“I don’t blame you,” he said, his voice speeding up now. “You were afraid of her. Afraid of both of them. We all were. We wanted to leave, remember? You and me. And then they were gone, so we stayed. But they were still here, weren’t they? They’re still here now. And we just live inside it.”

“Stop—”

“You forgot somehow. You forgot why you wanted to leave, why we had to leave if we wanted to live. You forgot and just kept going. But I couldn’t. Marie couldn’t—”

“Get out!”

Charlie rose abruptly, his chair skidding back, and faced Dara.

But looking at him was impossible. That face, like a statue, hopelessly perfect. That body, how precious it was. And how rarely he offered it.

“Get out,” came a voice and it was Marie standing in the doorway. “Get out. Get out. Get out.” Over and over again, rising to a scream.

Charlie turned to Dara, panicky now.

“But,” he said, and his face, his voice—suddenly he was thirteen years old again, “where will I go?”

Looking at him, that boy face, Dara felt a well of feeling—messy, tangled—rise in her. Don’t, she told herself. Don’t.