The Pact (13 page)

“I don't feel like it,” he said, and nobody pushed him.

He sat with Em on the couch in front of the fireplace, her leg propped up on the coffee table. They watched the flames and talked, Chris telling her about the hare, Emily confessing her guilt about ratting on him. They joked about getting the Sambuca from the freezer, while their parents were out of the condo. He was reminded of what it had been like when they were little, how he could think his thoughts and they'd wind up in Emily's head.

It was not until the fire crackled loudly, water bursting within wood, that Chris realized he'd fallen asleep. He glanced down and saw that Emily had drifted off, too. She was still sleeping. And somehow she'd wound up tucked under his arm.

She was kind of heavy, and uncomfortable. He felt the damp heat of her cheek through the cotton of his shirt; measured the amazing length of her eyelashes. Her breath smelled like berries. Just like that, he was hard as a rock. Flushing bright red, he tried to adjust the fly of his jeans without waking Em. But that only made his arm brush against her chest. Her breast. For God's sake. This was Emily. The same Emily who'd used his high chair when he'd outgrown it; who had helped him dry up slugs with salt; who camped out with him for the first time in his own backyard.

How could a girl he'd known his whole life suddenly be someone he didn't recognize at all?

She stirred, blinking a little and pushing off him when she realized she was draped across his chest.

“Sorry,” she said, still close enough for her word to fall onto his lips; so that even as Chris shrugged, he could taste her.

Chris didn't think he'd ever get her alone.

For three days he'd tried to finagle ways for Emily to lean on him, brush against him, touch him. He wanted to kiss her. And his golden opportunity was vanishing before his eyes. Their parents were supposed to be going to a New Year's party thrown by Sugarloaf. But Melanie and Michael were reluctant to go, afraid that if Emily needed them they'd be unreachable. The four of them stood in their snazzy black evening clothes, trying to come to a decision.

“I'm thirteen,” Emily said. “I don't need a baby-sitter.”

“If anything happened,” Chris added, “I know how to drive. I could always just take the other car to the base lodge.”

Gus and James whirled around. “That,” James said dryly, “is something we didn't need to know.” He turned to Michael. “Take your keys,” he said.

Melanie, sitting beside Emily on the couch, felt her forehead. “I broke my leg,” Emily groaned. “I don't have the flu.”

Gus touched Melanie's shoulder. “What do you think?”

Melanie shrugged. “What would you do?”

“Go, I guess. There's nothing else you can do to make her comfortable.” Melanie stood up, smoothing Emily's hair back from her forehead. Emily scowled and fussed it back into position. “All right. But I may come back before midnight.” Melanie smirked at Gus.

“And you're a liar, you know. If that was Kate you wouldn't go farther than three feet away.”

“You're right,” Gus said amiably. “But didn't I sound convincing?” She turned to Chris. “You'll get Kate to bed on time?”

Kate, upstairs, wailed. “Mo-o-om,” she cried. “Can't I stay up till midnight?”

“Sure,” Gus yelled back. She glanced at Chris, speaking more softly. “When she conks out on the couch in a half hour, carry her upstairs.” Then she kissed her son and waved to Emily. “Be good,” she said, and with the others, left Chris and Emily to their own devices.

Chris's hands TWITCHED in his lap. They ached, waiting to touch Emily, who was all of ten inches away. He curled his fingers into fists, hoping they wouldn't betray him by crawling over toward Emily's thigh, skimming her hip.

“Chris,” Emily whispered. “I think Kate's out.” She nodded to her left, where Kate was curled asleep. “Maybe you should carry her up.”

Was she trying to say she wanted to be alone with him, too? Chris tried to catch Em's eye, to see what she really meant, but she was scratching the itchy skin around the top of her cast. He scooped his sister into his arms and hauled her to her bedroom. He tucked her in, then closed the bedroom door.

He made sure to sit closer to Emily this time, stretching his arm along the back of the couch. “Can I get you something? A drink? Popcorn?”

Emily shook her head. “I'm okay,” she said. She took the remote control and flipped through the channels.

Chris let his thumb graze the edge of Emily's sleeve. When she didn't jump, he added another finger. And another. Until his whole hand was brushing her shoulder.

He couldn't look, just couldn't. But he felt Emily go absolutely still, felt the temperature of her skin increase by faint degrees; and for the first time that night he began to relax. In THE FLURRY of the quandary whether or not to leave Emily alone, everyone had neglected to notice that the party invitation said “Bring Your Own Booze.” James volunteered to run out and get a bottle of champagne, Gus reminding him to return before midnight.

He did not bother to check his watch until after pulling into the parking lot of the third closed supermarket. It's 11:26, he thought, unaware that the Timex's batteries had died just moments before. I'll run back to die condo and get a bottle of wine.

But it was actually two minutes before midnight.

CHRIS REMEMBERED ONCE WHEN he'd gotten a butterfly to land in his palm. He'd kept absolutely still, certain that if he even thought a weird thought the beautiful creature would flutter away. It was like that, now, with Emily. She hadn't said a thing and neither had he, but for the past forty-two minutes he'd had his arm around her as if it was a perfectly normal thing for him to do. On the television, people in Times Square were going nuts. There were men with purple hair and women dressed like Marie Antoinette, guys his age bouncing tiny babies who should have been asleep. The ball began to slip down, tugged by the crowd's chants, and Chris felt Emily shift the tiniest bit toward him.

And then it was 1994. Emily rubbed her thumb over the mute button on the remote. There was no shouting in the living room of the condo, no fanfare. Chris was certain he could hear his own pulse.

“Happy New Year,” he whispered, and he bent his head toward hers. She turned in the same direction, and they bumped noses hard, but then she laughed and it was all right because this was Em. Her mouth was the softest thing he'd ever felt, and he pulled on her jaw to make it open a little, and his tongue ran over the neat line of her teeth. Immediately she pulled back, and so did Chris. From the corner of his eye, he could see a million people in Times Square, jumping up and down and laughing. “What are you thinking?” he whispered.

Emily turned bright red. “I'm thinking . . . wow,” she said.

Chris smiled against her neck. “Me too,” he said, searching for her again. WHEN JAMES ENTERED THE CONDO, the television was blaring with celebration. Then suddenly, it fell quiet. He stopped in the kitchen, wrapping his hand about the throat of a champagne bottle. Setting it on the kitchen table, he continued toward the living room. The first thing he saw was the television, which mutely and definitively announced that it was already 1994. The second thing he saw was Chris and Emily on the couch, kissing. Stunned at first, James couldn't move, couldn't speak. They were kids, for God's sake. The incident with the Sambuca was still raw in his mind, and he could not believe that his son would be stupid enough to do, in quick succession, two things he shouldn't.

Then he realized Chris and Emily were doing exactly what everyone had always hoped they would. He backed away without disturbing them, leaving the condo and getting into the car. By the time he reached the base lodge he was still smiling. Gus spotted him, her anger riding bright on her cheeks, confetti graying her hair. “You're late,” she said.

Grinning, James told her and the Golds what he'd stumbled across. Me-lanie and Gus laughed, delighted; Michael shook his head. “You're sure,” he said, “they were just kissing?” The four lifted their water glasses, toasting 1994. And none of them noticed that James had forgotten the champagne.

Mid-to Late November 1997

In the days after Emily's death, Melanie found herself riveted by the most ordinary things: the whorl of the wood of the dining room table; the mechanism of a Ziploc baggie; the pamphlet on toxic shock syndrome in the tampon box. For hours at a time she could stare at these things as if she had not seen them a million times before, as if she had never known what she was missing. She felt a call to detail that was obsessive, but necessary. What if, tomorrow morning, one of these things turned up missing? What if her only knowledge of these items came from memory? She knew now that, at any time, she might be tested.

Melanie had spent the morning tearing off the pages of a small notepad and throwing them into the trash can. She watched the white pages pile up, a tiny blizzard. When the trash bag was half full, she yanked it from the can to carry it outside. It had started to snow, the first snow of the season. Mesmerized, she dropped the trash bag, oblivious to the cold or the fact

that she was shivering without her coat, and held out her hand. As a snow-flake landed on her palm, she brought it close to examine, and watched it melt before she'd had the chance. The telephone startled her, its harsh jangle wrangling through the open kitchen door. Melanie turned and ran inside, breathlessly reaching for the receiver on the wall. “Hello?”

“Yes,” a floating voice said. “I'd like to speak with Emily Gold.” Me, too, Melanie thought, and she silently hung up the phone.

Chris stood uncomfortably in the office of Dr. Emanuel Feinstein, pretending to look at the photographs of covered bridges decorating the walls and glancing surreptitiously instead at the secretary who was typing so fast her fingers were a blue blur. Suddenly there was a buzz on the intercom. The secretary smiled at Chris. “You can go in now,” she said. Chris nodded and walked through the adjoining door, wondering why he'd been cooling his heels for the past half hour if there wasn't another patient in there. The psychiatrist stood up, walked around his desk. “Come on in, Chris. I'm Dr. Feinstein. It's nice to meet you.” He nodded to a chair-not a couch, Chris noticed-and Chris sank into it. Dr. Emanuel Feinstein was not the old geezer he'd conjured up in his head based on that name, but a guy who would have looked just as comfortable hauling wood as a lumberjack or manning an oil rig. He had thick blond hair that brushed his shoulders, and he stood a good half foot taller than Chris. His office was decorated much like Chris's dad's study-dark wood and tartan plaids and leather books.

“So,” the psychiatrist said, taking the wing chair across from Chris, “how are you feeling?” Chris shrugged, and the doctor leaned forward to pick up the tape recorder on the coffee table between them. He played back the snippet, hearing his own question, and then shook the device.

“Funny thing about these,” Dr. Feinstein said. “They don't pick up nonverbal clues. There's only one rule in here, Chris. Your answers have to actually emit a sound frequency.” Chris cleared his throat. Any begrudged liking he'd started to have for this shrink vanished again.

“Okay,” he said gruffly.

“Okay what?”

“I'm feeling okay,” Chris muttered.

“Are you sleeping all right? Eating?”

Chris nodded, then stared at the tape recorder. “Yes,” he said pointedly. “I've been eating okay. But sometimes I can't sleep.”

“Was this something you had a problem with before?”

Before, like with a capital B. Chris shook his head, and then his eyes filled with tears. It was an emotion he was getting used to; it happened whenever he thought about Emily.

“How are things at home?”

“Weird,” Chris admitted. “My father acts like nothing ever happened, my mom talks to me like I'm a six-year-old.”

“Why do you think your parents are treating you the way they are?”

“I guess it's because they're scared,” Chris answered. “I would be.” What could it be like to find out, in a matter of minutes, that the kid you believed the sun rose and set on was not the person you'd thought? Suddenly, he frowned at the psychiatrist. “Do you tell my parents what I say here?”

Dr. Feinstein shook his head. “I'm here for you. I'm your advocate. What you say here, stays here.” Chris eyed him warily. Like that was supposed to make him feel better. He didn't know Feinstein from a hole in the wall.

“Do you still think about killing yourself?” the psychiatrist asked. Chris picked at a hole in his jeans. “Sometimes,” he murmured.

“Do you have a plan?”

“No.”

“Do you think Friday night might have changed your mind?”

Chris looked up sharply. “I don't understand you,” he said.

“Well, why don't you tell me what it was like for you. Seeing your friend shoot herself.”

“She wasn't my friend,” Chris corrected. “She was the girl I loved.”

“That must have made it even more difficult,” Dr. Feinstein said.

“Yes,” Chris said, watching it all over again, Emily's head snapping to the left as if an invisible hand had slapped her, the blood that ran through his fingers. He glanced at the psychiatrist, wondering what the man expected him to say.

After prolonged silence, the doctor tried again. “You must be very upset.”

“I pretty much cry at the drop of a hat.”

“Well,” the psychiatrist said, “that's perfectly normal.”

“Oh, right.” Chris snorted. “Perfectly normal. I spent Friday night getting seventy stitches. My girlfriend is dead. I've been locked up in a psycho ward for three days and now I'm here, where I'm supposed to tell someone I don't even know everything that's on my mind. Yeah, I'm a perfectly normal seventeen-year-old.”

“You know,” Dr. Feinstein said evenly, “the mind is a remarkable thing. Just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't hurting. It scars all the time, but it heals.” He leaned forward. “You don't want to be here,” he said. “So where would you like to be?”

“With Emily,” Chris said unhesitatingly.

“Dead.”

“No. Yes.” Chris averted his gaze. He found himself looking at a second door, one he hadn't noticed, one that did not lead back to the waiting room through which he'd entered. It would be, Chris realized, the door through which he'd exit. A way out so that no one would ever have to know he'd been inside.

He looked at Dr. Feinstein and decided that someone who protected your privacy could not be all that bad. “Where I'd like to be,” Chris said softly, “is a few months back.” The moment the elevator doors opened, Gus was fluttering all over her son, slipping her arm about his waist and falling into step and chattering as she whisked him out of the medical building where Dr. Feinstein's office was located. “So,” Gus said, the moment they settled into the car. “How did it go?”

There was no answer. Chris's head was turned away from her. “For starters,” she said, “did you like him?”

“Was this a blind date?” Chris muttered.

Gus pulled the car out of the lot, silently making excuses for him. “Is he a good psychiatrist?” she pressed.

Chris stared out the window. “As opposed to what?” he asked.

“Well... do you feel better?”

He turned to her slowly, pinned her with his eyes. “As opposed,” he repeated, “to what?” JAMES HAD BEEN RAISED by a set of Boston Brahmin parents who had elevated New England stoicism to an art form. In the eighteen years he'd lived in their household, he'd seen them kiss publicly only once, and that was so fleeting that he came to believe he'd surely imagined it. Admitting to pain, to grief, or to ecstasy was frowned upon: The one time James, as a teenager, had cried over the death of a pet dog, his parents acted as if he'd committed hara-kiri on the marble tiles of the foyer. Their strategy for dealing with things unpleasant or emotional was to push past the mortifying situation and get on with their life as if it had never happened. By the time James had met Gus, he'd fully mastered the technique-and had rejected it out of hand. But that night, alone in the basement, he tried desperately to recapture that blessed, intentional blindness once again.

He was standing in front of the gun cabinet. The keys were still in the lock; he'd mistakenly believed his children were old enough to dispense with the excessive caution he'd used years ago. He twisted the keys and let the door swing open, revealing the rifles and shotguns lined up like match-sticks. Conspicuously absent was the Colt pistol, still impounded by the police. James touched the barrel of the .22, the first gun he'd ever given Chris to shoot. Was this his fault?

If James hadn't been a hunter, if the guns were not accessible, would any of this have happened?

Would there have been pills or carbon monoxide poisoning, would the results have been less catastrophic?

He shook off the thought. This sort of obsessing would get him nowhere. He needed to move on, to get going, to look forward.

As if he'd suddenly discovered the secret of the universe, James pounded up the cellar stairs. He found Gus and Chris sitting in the living room together. They both looked up when he burst into the doorway. “I think,” he announced breathlessly, “that Chris should go back to school on Monday.”

“What?” Gus said, coming to her feet. “Are you crazy?”

“No,” James said. “But neither is Chris.”

Chris stared at him. “You think,” he said slowly, “that going back to school, where everyone's going to look at me like I'm some kind of head case, is going to make me feel better?”

“This is ludicrous,” Gus said. “I'll call Dr. Feinstein. It's too soon.”

“What does Feinstein know? He's met Chris once. We've known him forever, Gus.” James crossed the room and stood in front of his son. “You'll see. You'll get back in with your own crowd, and you'll be yourself in no time.”

Chris snorted, and turned away.

“He's not going to school,” Gus insisted.

“You're being selfish.”

“I'm being selfish?” Gus laughed and folded her arms over her chest. “James, he isn't even sleeping at night. And he-”

“I'll go,” Chris interrupted softly.

James beamed, clapped Chris hard on the shoulder. “Excellent,” he said triumphantly. “You'll get swimming again, and excited about college. Once you're busy, things are going to look a hell of a lot better.” He turned to his wife. “He just needs to get out, Gus. You coddle him, and he's got nothing better to do than think.”

James rocked back on his heels, certain that the air in the house was circulating lighter and more freely with this small shift of focus. Disgusted, Gus pivoted and walked out the room. He frowned at her retreating back. “Chris is fine,” he called out, for good measure. “There's nothing wrong with him.”

It was a few moments before he felt the heavy burden of his son's gaze. Chris's head was tipped to the side, as if he was not angry at James, but truly confounded. “Do you really think that?” he whispered, and left his father standing alone.

The TELEPHONE WOKE MELANIE with a start, causing her to sit up disoriented in her own bed. When she'd lay down for a nap, the sun had been shining. Now, she could not even see her hand in front of her.

She fumbled along the nightstand. “Yes,” she said. “Hello.”

“Is Emily there?”

“Stop,” Melanie whispered, and let the receiver drop while she buried herself once again beneath the covers.

MELANIE WENT GROCERY SHOPPING every Sunday morning at eight-thirty, when the rest of the world was still relaxing in bed with the paper and a cup of coffee. Last Sunday, of course, she hadn't. And with the exception of food left over from sitting shiva, there was nothing in the house to eat. As she tugged on her coat and struggled with the zipper, Michael watched her. “You know,” he said awkwardly, “I can do this for you.”

“Do what?” Melanie said, stuffing her hands into mittens.

“Go shopping. Run errands. Whatever.” Seeing Melanie's pinched face made Michael think he was going about grieving all wrong. He was dying on the inside because of Emily, but not on the outside, and somehow it didn't seem as potent a sorrow as his wife's. He cleared his throat, forcing himself to look at her. “I can go if you don't feel up to it yet.” Melanie laughed. Even to her own ears, it sounded wrong, like a melody for a flute being played on a honky-tonk piano. “Of course I'm up to it,” she said. “What else do I have to do today?”

“Well,” Michael said, making a spur-of-the-moment decision, “why don't we go together?” For the slightest moment, Melanie's brows drew together. Then she shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said, already leaving.

Michael grabbed his coat and ran outside, where Melanie was in the car. The engine was running, the exhaust creating a cloud around the vehicle. “So. Where are we going?”

“Market Basket,” Melanie said, turning the car around. “We need milk.”

“We're going all the way there for milk? We could get that at-”

“Are you going to be pleasant company,” Melanie said, her lips twitching, “or are you going to be a backseat driver?”

Michael laughed. For a moment, it had been easy. In the past week he could count on one hand the number of moments like that.

Melanie pulled out of the driveway and turned onto Wood Hollow Road, accelerating. Although he tried to keep his eye from straying there, Michael instinctively glanced toward the Harte's house. A figure was walking along the edge of the driveway, setting out the trash can at the lip of the road. As the car drew closer Michael made out Chris's face.

He was wearing a hat and gloves, but no coat. His eyes lifted at the sound of the approaching car, and-as Michael had experienced-instinct kicked in when he realized it was the Golds. Probably before he even realized what he was doing, Chris had lifted his hand in greeting. Michael felt the car pull toward the right, toward Chris, as if the boy had magnetized not only the direction of their thoughts but also the vehicle's tracks. He shifted in his seat and waited for Melanie to realign the car.

Instead, it swerved so far to the right that she went off the blacktop. Michael felt the car jolt forward as she pressed down on the gas pedal, barreling toward Chris. Chris's mouth rounded into an O; his hands twitched on the handle of the garbage can as his feet remained rooted to the driveway. Melanie's hands shifted, cutting the car even closer; and just as Michael snapped out of his stupefied paralysis to wrench the steering wheel from her grasp, she turned it herself, nicking the trash can. Chris safely bolted several feet back down the driveway as the barrel bounced into the street and spilled garbage across Wood Hollow Road.