House of Skin (29 page)

“I love you. You know that. I changed my life around for you, and—”
 

“I never asked you to do that.”

“I know,” he said, trying not to show how hurt he was, “and I’m a grown man who’s responsible for the things I do. It’s just,” he paused, thinking. “It’s just the stuff I know about those people—though they don’t deserve to be called people—are so—”

“That’s what I’m talking about.” Her face, her voice, were suddenly fierce. “You talk about Myles and Annabel as though they were less than human, like you’ve never sinned or done anything you’re ashamed of. What makes you so vicious toward them?”

Sam gaped at her. “What makes me so vicious? What do you think, I’ve made everything up? That everyone in town doesn’t hate them, isn’t scared to go out there because of the terrible things they’ve gotten away with? Barbara, those stories predate my arrival here, it’s not like I’m the one who made them up. They’re true. Those people are the worst kind of scum. They were responsible for the death of five children. Of too many men and women to count.”

“You’re impossible,” she said and reached for the passenger door handle.

“Wait,” he said and reached for her.

She swatted at his arm. “Don’t touch me.”

He sat back in his seat, unbelieving. “Jesus, Barbara, I’m not trying to hurt you.”

She opened the car door, put one foot on the ground. “No, you just want to own me.”

“Own you?” he asked, getting out of the car. He faced her over the roof. “Where’s all this coming from?”

Her green eyes flared. “From you, Sam. That’s where it’s coming from.”
 

“Will you just get back in the car so we can talk?”

She was heading toward the porch. “I’m done taking orders.”

“I’ve never told you what to do.” Seeing her climb the steps, he felt something in his chest constricting.

“Whatever you say,” she said. She reached for the door.

“Wait,” he called. He moved around the old black car, the one that had replaced his state cruiser. His stomach was a frozen knot. “I’m sorry if I’ve been a pain. I’m not very good with words sometimes.”

She turned, looked down at him, and the woman he loved was gone. In her place was someone distant, a woman who was moving on.

“You know what, Sam? Sometimes I think you were a trooper too long. You’ve let it go to your head. You take people and put them in one category or the other—good or evil—but people aren’t like that. We’re all of us good and bad at the same time. I know Myles has his faults, but there’s also nobility in him.”

“Nobility?” he said. For a moment he forgot his fear of losing her. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“Sure, Sam. You believe that.” She opened the door, saying, “You go on believing you and Myles are from different species, that you’re the saint and he’s the sinner.”
 

He opened his mouth to protest, but the slam of the screen door and the bang of the heavy wooden door behind it stole his words.

Seeing Emily again was strange, particularly because of the way she was looking at him.

Her brown hair, usually shoulder length, was shorter now, and as usual, she wore no make-up. She didn’t need to. He’d always secretly considered her his opposite. Naturally healthy, untinged by chemicals and substances, she looked like an actress in a commercial for facial wash. She wasn’t a bombshell like Julia, but she was pretty in her own way. The white skirt she wore showed her figure to good advantage. As she came down the steps, her eyes wide with incomprehension, he noticed she was barefoot as she usually was and hoped she hadn’t hurt her feet walking across the sharp gravel.

He was surprised at how short she looked. He couldn’t tell how much of their height disparity could be attributed to his improved posture, but standing there in the fading afternoon light she seemed tiny, like a child.

He liked the way her eyes kept traveling from his face to his torso and back again, and he could almost hear her wondering how it had happened. He tried putting himself in her place, remembered times when he’d seen people after long periods of separation, been amazed at the weight they’d gained or the hair they’d lost.

But this was the reverse, and he could tell she’d expected the opposite, for him to fall apart here all alone. He couldn’t blame her. He had expected that too.

She reached up, ran a hand over his cheek.

“You’re so thin,” she said. “What’s happened to you out here?”
 

“Too much to tell.” He looked down at her, at her happy face, her brown eyes and her straight white teeth, and remembered how it’d been when they first met.

She moved in and gave him a hug. He returned it, though something deep within him held back.

When she released him he asked, “How did you find this place?”
 

“You left your landlord the address in case any mail needed forwarding.”

“You’re quite a detective.”
 

“You’ve been lifting,” she said, her eyes scanning his chest, his shoulders.

“Running, too. Can you believe it?”

She grinned, shaking her head.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “You can say it.”

“No, it’s just,” she paused, met his eyes. “It’s just a pleasant surprise.” Her face clouded. “Maybe getting away from Memphis really was what you needed.”
 

He shrugged. “This is a better life for me.”

She took in the woods around them, glanced back at the house.

“That’s not to say I haven’t thought of you, though,” he said.

She stayed quiet, watched him.

He turned his head, stared at the garage a little sadly. “I’ve thought a lot about how things ended. The way I acted. Choices I made.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He nodded toward the house. “Let’s talk about it inside.”

February, 1983

“Can I come in?” Barbara asked him.

Sam had been asleep. Had actually dozed off after too many beers and too much solitude. He saw on the clock over the couch it was only five-thirty in the afternoon. Christ, he thought. Not even six yet and already in the bag.

He followed her through the kitchen out to the screened-in porch. It was where they always sat, enjoying the quiet of the cornfield that bordered his back yard. In the summer it was nice, but now it was freezing. Sam watched her, worried about her thin jacket, the way her breath turned to smoke when it hit the air. She looked bad. Her nose was red, her eyes wet, and if he didn’t know her better he’d guess she had a bad cold. As it was, he suspected what was on her mind had more to do with her appearance than any flu.

“We could sit indoors,” he said. “I had a fire going the other day.” It was a lie, but he didn’t like her thinking of him sleeping and drinking away his time in a cold house.

She shook her head, distracted. “It’s good for me. I’ve been inside all winter.”

“Does Myles drive you back-and-forth from the farmhouse?” he asked, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

She nodded, wiped her nose.

He waited. She was looking out at the patches of snow, the dead stalks of corn laid out like starved refugees.

He thought of asking her why she hadn’t returned his calls, had ignored him when he saw her at the grocery store. He’d even tried writing a letter, and if that didn’t show he cared about her, he didn’t know what did. He hadn’t written a personal letter since the sixth grade, and that was to impress a girl who’d gotten her titties before everyone else.

He watched Barbara and thought of telling her how she’d hurt him.

Instead, he said, “It’s nice having you here again.”
 

It made her cry. Alarmed, he sat forward on the cold chair and wondered what he’d said wrong. He put out a hand to touch her shoulder, pulled it back. The last thing he wanted was to scare her away.

“Can I help?” he asked.

She shook her head, face frozen in a sob. She had bags under her eyes. He wanted to wipe her nose for her, do something to help the crying.

“Is it Myles?” he couldn’t help asking.

That doubled her over, her sobs coming in convulsive waves. After a time, she got it under control, took the tissue box he’d brought from the living room.

She blew her nose, looked at Sam gratefully.

“You’re so good to me,” she said, her voice breaking.

“You’re my girl.”

It set her off again, and seeing the way her tears were frosting her cheeks he took her arm and forced her to move back inside. He left her on the couch to get a few wedges of firewood. She didn’t look up when he returned.

“Now tell me,” he said as he knelt to open the grate, “what’s got you so shaken up.”

She looked up, saw him feeding wood into the hearth, and said, “Really, Sam. I can’t stay.”
 

She stood.

He couldn’t keep the impatience out of his voice. “Will you tell me what’s going on? I’m not going to yell at you, for chrissakes.”

“Something’s happened,” she said.

“I figured that.” He stood, watched her from across the room. She was facing the door, but hadn’t yet moved to leave.

Barbara said, “I should have known this would be the hardest part.”

“Did he hurt you?” Sam asked. He imagined getting Myles down, bashing his face until there were no features left.

“I did it to myself.”

Sam felt ill, though he couldn’t say why. “Barbara, what are we talking about here?”

“I did it to you, too, Sam.”

He waited, dread gripping him by the throat.

“The first time was New Year’s Eve. He brought me home and invited himself in. He’d been so good to me, and I’d been drinking…”

Sam turned to steady himself on the mantle. He felt the beer in him sitting like lead in his belly. He wished she were making it up, but he knew it was true.

“It happened more often then,” she continued, sniffling. “The other morning, I felt sick.”
 

“Is it…” he stopped, having no idea what to say. He hadn’t the strength to catch his breath.

“I’m going to have it, Sam.”

He turned then, looked at her. She didn’t look up.

“I’m going to have his baby.”

The tears surprised him because he felt nothing at all now. He buried his eyes in his shirt sleeve, leaned on the mantle and willed her to leave, which she did. He let himself down on his knees, sat back on his heels and went over on his back. After he lay there awhile he went into the bedroom, took the lockbox from under the bed. His fingers closed on the little gray box inside. As he walked through the house and out the back door the velvet on the box felt stiff, frozen. He crunched over snow and brittle grass. With a final effort, he planted and hurled the box and the engagement ring into the field, dropped to his knees in the snow, cursed God and Barbara and Myles Carver.

Myles Carver most of all.

The real Emily surfaced.

“The bar looks nice,” she said, and from the look on her face it was obvious she was asking if he’d been drinking. He opened his mouth to tell her she need not worry about that, he’d gotten it under control, but stopped, wondering why he felt the need to explain himself.

“It’s one of my favorite parts of the house,” he said.

She was watching him, he realized, with a look that was part curiosity and part anger. She was waiting for him to tell her how much he’d missed her.

“Do you want a drink?” he asked.

She gave him a thin look. “What do you think?”

“Should we go outside?” he asked.

She strolled up to him then, a languorous expression altering her face. “Maybe later.”

She drew him down and kissed him. Julia filled his mind and he pulled away, but then he remembered her angry voice, her eyes full of loathing.

“Come on,” Emily said, crowding him. She kissed his chest, snaked her arms under his. “Let’s be friends again.”
 

Though he kissed Emily back this time, his thoughts tended first toward Julia, then Annabel. He closed his eyes and imagined making love to Julia on the blanket under the fireworks, grew furious with himself that he hadn’t. The vision of Julia’s glorious body brought him alive, intensified his kissing of Emily. She responded, kneading his rigid back muscles and moaning against his lips.

He thought of Annabel gazing up at him from the forest floor, the earth soft and cool beneath them, golden glints of sunlight slanting through the canopy of branches.