In Her Skin(57)

The band finishes its last song and the warped sound of a standing mic being repositioned blares over the room. This is it. I will be introduced, kind things will be said, and it will all be a streaky blur. Then I get to step down and sit with my parents at our table and for exactly eight minutes, the director of Adoption America will talk, and this is when I disappear. Mr. Lovecraft speaks first, his women by his side (and I am one of these), and he speaks touchingly of how I came into their lives, and left, but now I am back, and nothing else matters. If I really was Vivi, I bet Vivi wouldn’t agree, because being locked in a shed for seven years matters when it comes to everything.

He wraps up his speech by staring at the podium for a count of ten.

“A man doesn’t always get a chance in life to set things right when they go wrong. But on behalf of myself, and Clarissa and Temple, I venture to say that this city has been handed a miracle.” He pauses, this time, for a count of five. “And her name is Vivienne Weir.”

They are crying. The audience is crying. John Fish is applauding and ugly-crying. Dick Connolly is raising his glass to me. My hands are blocks of ice. Do they expect me to say something?

And as Mr. and Mrs Lovecraft hug me and sob, you step to the microphone. It takes everyone a minute to regain themselves, but they do, and you wait for them, poised and perfect as that first day I saw you in your carrel with your poems. You hold a folded piece of paper.

The microphone whines. You readjust it to your height with one hand, and it is awkward, and I want to help you, damn me.

“Hi everybody. For those who don’t know me, I’m Temple Lovecraft,” you say, in a voice younger and smaller than your own. Humble is the way to go tonight, you have decided, and it hits the right note, because already people are oohing and aahing because Temple is going to speak and she looks darling and she’s gotten so big and what character she must have, to be composed during such a strange time.

“I wanted to read a poem in honor of Vivi coming home. It’s by Emily Dickinson, and it’s a favorite of ours.” You pause and smile at me shyly. “It goes like this: ‘A death blow is a life blow to some, who till they died did not alive become. Who had they lived, had died but when they died, Vitality begun.’”

You pause dramatically.

“To me, this speaks to a second chance for Vivi, and for all of us. We’re so blessed.” You turn to me with bright, glassy tears. “I’m so glad to have you home, Vivi.” You hug me, and we rock, and you are crying and laughing, for a solid minute, it seems, and the guests are now heaving with collective sobs, and I am thinking this is it, you are right, this is my home. This room loves me. This room loves us. I don’t know for sure that you’re going to hurt me; it’s natural that you should be a little jealous, I mean, they’re having a coronation for me. You have confessed things that scared me, but I have known worse, have loved worse. Wolf told me he fantasizes every single time about killing the men he is with. I imagined training pigs to devour the Last One’s flesh.

Still.

While the others sit, I excuse myself and head into the bathroom to pull myself together. The door swings and a maid holding towels in the corner shuffles out. I throw my bag on her empty chair and weep. I have set Wolf on a path and I have no way of letting him know we have to stop, that this was all a mistake, this is a world I can live in, even if it means keeping constant watch on you.

I look into the mirror and pull my hair away from my face at the temples. “Who are you?” I hiss.

A man slips into view behind me. I nearly scream.

Gerry tries to hand me the clutch I abandoned on the chair. “It’s time to go,” he says, in that elegant voice.

I spin to face him. “What do you mean?”

He nods at my bag. “I will lie, say you feel sick and are getting some air, but that you are watched by me and there is no worry. When I return, I will tell them you have escaped. Go.”

I rub a streak of mascara across my cheek with the heel of my hand. “I’m not going. This is where I belong. This is my life now.”

“A life never knowing when you are going to die is not a life worth living,” he says.

Tears well, and tears are like wishes: useless. “None of us know when we’re going to die,” I say.

“Let me put it differently. People will pretend to be your comrades. They will make you do things that braid them to you. But because you did these things does not mean you are these things.”

Gerry is right and you are wrong. I am not a natural-born killer. If I was, I would have killed the Last One back in that hotel room the night he killed Momma.

“I have seen the eyes of girls who want to die. For them, it would be better. These girls are not you.” Gerry looks at the door. “This is your last chance. Go.” He looks at his watch. “You have six minutes.”

I turn to the mirror. I don’t want to die.

Gerry thrusts the clutch at me. I grab the clutch from his hand, fumble for the phone, and call the car. He nods and leaves as quietly as he came, and I pull my dress over my head, stashing it in the trash can. The black pants and white shirt work perfectly—instantly, I am catering staff—and I slip from the ballroom and into the night while applause roars down behind.

*

By the time I reach the town house in my Uber I am in a full-on panic. The phone started ringing wildly, and I pitched it out the window before we made the turn off Huntington. My best calculation has the Lovecrafts—or the cops they call—arriving at the town house between four and eight minutes behind me. If Wolf has not finished his job, we are done.