Josie And Jack: A Novel Part 11

"Who was that girl?"

"What girl?"

"On the porch."

He stroked my hair. "I'll tell you about it when you're sober."

I felt very warm and faraway. "Jack?"

"Hm?"

"Changed my mind," I said. "You can kill him."

The next day, fighting my hangover in bed, I pulled the wooden box out from behind the headboard, took out my birth certificate, and tucked it underneath my mattress, where I could reach down to touch it. Then I lay back, sweating and sick.

His part is finished, I thought. He no longer matters.

Christmas pa.s.sed the way it always did in the Raeburn household, which is to say without notice. The notion of the three of us sitting together in the same room, exchanging gifts and singing carols, was ludicrous. But late on Christmas night Jack produced a brick of hash and said, "Ho, ho, ho."

"Joy to the world," I said.

We deserved any fun we had. Any time the college wasn't in session was h.e.l.l for us. Summer was the worst-by July our father had usually descended into a depression that approached psychosis, and we made it our business to be somewhere else whenever possible-but winter break was no picnic either. Our long driveway wasn't plowed unless we arranged and paid for it in advance. So once the snow fell, and it was just the three of us there in that isolated old house, Jack and I retreated to the attic.

Raeburn never came up there, and Jack had set apart a corner with an old couch, a hot plate, and a s.p.a.ce heater. There we sat, through those long, dark winter weeks, and played cards or read to each other or smoked joint after joint until neither of us felt like talking. Jack and I never had trouble amusing ourselves. G.o.d knows we'd had enough practice.

This winter wasn't as bad as some. Raeburn didn't talk to either of us for a week after the Christmas party, which was some relief, but whatever ace was up his sleeve was entertaining enough to dull the edge of his cabin fever and too good to keep to himself. On those rare occasions when the three of us met for dinner, our father would chortle and snort to himself with the smugness of a person who wants to make sure you know that you're not being told a secret. He kept the study door locked tight now.

Finally, finally, Raeburn called the snowplow. After it came and went, he threw some clothes in the back of his car, mumbled something incomprehensible, and disappeared down the road. The bar that sold sandwiches also sold pizza and six-packs; Jack and I gave Raeburn a twenty-minute lead and went in search of one of each. When we came home, we moved back into the parlor, which was flooded with bright winter sun. It was as if the very air in the house was celebrating with us. Late that night we went for a long drive on the twisting back roads outside of Janesville; the air was bright with starlight reflected from the snow, and the world seemed beautiful.

For about a week.

Raeburn came home that Thursday because the first week of the semester was registration week and there was nothing for him to do at the college. It was only the second week in January, but the snow was melting and patches of green gra.s.s were showing through the white. Jack and I were in the parlor, playing double solitaire, and we heard the motor long before we saw the motorcycle on our driveway through the bare trees. I remember thinking that anyone who would ride a motorcycle in January, early melt or no early melt, had to be either crazy or desperate; so I wasn't surprised when the rider, who was wearing a leather jacket and jeans and must have been freezing, pulled off his helmet to reveal long hair and wire-rimmed gla.s.ses.

"It's Searles," Jack said, although I could see that for myself. A moment later we heard Ben pounding on the front door and screaming our father's name.

"Should I go get Raeburn?" I asked.

Jack shook his head. "He has to be able to hear that."

But when I finally went to find him, Raeburn was sitting in the study with his legs stretched out, smoking a pipe and gazing complacently into s.p.a.ce. Outside Ben shouted, "Open the door, Raeburn-I know you're home-I can f.u.c.king smell you."

Raeburn was wearing an expression of deep satisfaction. "Josephine," he greeted me.

"There's someone at the door," I said.

"Then perhaps you should let him in."

When I opened the door, Ben was in mid-pound and he nearly clocked me. "Christ!" He jumped back, startled.

"It's me," I said. "Just me."

Sweat stood out in beads on Ben's forehead and his long hair hung loose and wild around his flushed face. His breath formed clouds in the cold air. "You scared me."

"You're the one who's yelling."

"I almost hit you." His voice was thick with barely controlled rage and his hands were shaking. "Go get your father. I know he's here."

I could feel Raeburn standing behind me. When he said, "h.e.l.lo, Searles," he sounded unusually pleasant. I could hear the smile in his voice. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"You know d.a.m.n well why I'm here," Ben said over my shoulder. His jaw was clenched tight.

"Do I?"

"Tell your daughter to go inside," Ben said levelly. His fists were clenched.

"Why?" Raeburn's laugh was unpleasant. "Will it destroy her good image of you to learn that you sleep with your students?"

"No. But it might destroy her good image of you to hear that you bribe yours into lying for you."

I thought of Margaret Revolt and began to understand.

I stepped quickly through the door and onto the porch. The melting snow was half-frozen slush beneath my socks, and the flannel s.h.i.+rt that I was wearing-one of Jack's-wasn't enough to keep out the cold.

"Bribery wasn't necessary," Raeburn said.

"You unbelievable b.a.s.t.a.r.d." Ben's face was white with fury.

Raeburn's eyes flicked to me. He pointed at Searles, a mirthless grin on his lips. "Look, Josephine. Young Benjamin has discovered that life is unfair. Aren't you glad that you already know that?"

"You can't do this." Cords stood out under the skin of Ben's neck and he said it again-"You can't do this!"-only this time he screamed it, the sound harsh and furious and dying without an echo in our little clearing. It was more than rage, more than a protest at the sheer unfairness of it all; it was a denial of the very possibility of what Margaret and my father had done. Raeburn was right. Ben Searles, it was clear, lived in a world where people simply didn't do the kinds of things that my father did.

I felt sorry for him. I remembered fading in and out of consciousness with my head on his tuxedo, and the way he'd smelled like a clean forest and made light of the steaming pool of vomit on the president's rug, and I felt sorry for him.

"It's unfortunate," Raeburn said. "Perhaps in your next position, you'll be more careful with your female students."

He turned around and closed the door.

I stood on the porch in my stocking feet, and Ben looked like he was the one who was going to throw up, right now. I thought, that's only fair, and took a step toward him.

Suddenly he hurled himself at the door, pounding on it with his fists and screaming obscenities at my father through the scarred wood.

"It won't do any good," Jack said. He was standing in the side yard in his boots; he had come around the house from the back door.

But Ben's a.s.sault was already fading into hopelessness. He gave the door one last kick and let his forehead fall onto the wood.

"It doesn't matter," he said to the door. "My career is over." The despair in his voice was palpable. "I'm thirty-two years old and my career has just been ended by a bitter old man and an eighteen-year-old girl who dresses like my grandmother."

I reached out to touch him, and Jack said softly, "You can get back at him."

There was an envelope in Jack's hand and he extended it toward Ben. The young professor stared at it blankly.

I knew that Raeburn was probably standing on the other side of the door, listening. Quickly I pointed at the door, and Jack nodded.

"Please go home, Mr. Searles. Please." I tried to sound frightened and pathetic. It wasn't hard. "Before my father gets angry." At the same time, Jack whispered something to Ben, keeping his words under mine.

Ben's eyes widened.

They spoke quietly, Ben Searles and my brother, for only a few minutes. I didn't hear what they said. The snow, where it still lay on the porch, was up to my ankles. My toes ached with the cold.

After the motorcycle was gone in a cloud of exhaust fumes, I took careful steps through the melting snow to stand next to Jack. "What was that?"

"A letter," Jack said. His eyes gleamed.

"Where did you get it?"

He stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his boot heels. "Stole it from the study."

"What was in it?"

"Margaret Revolt and our father," Jack said. Behind us, the door opened and Raeburn came out onto the porch. He was looking at Jack but the frustration in his stance told me that he hadn't heard anything.

"You," he said. "What were you talking to him about?"

"Giving him directions." Jack's face was innocent, but his eyes were s.h.i.+ning.

Sunday night: burrowed deep beneath Jack's blankets, my icy feet tucked under his legs and his hands wrapped in my hair.

"She was smart," he said. He was talking about Crazy Mary. "She made up games. She'd read to me, novels about clones and Martians and s.p.a.ce battles, and then we'd pretend to be the people in the books. She always wanted to be the alien. Or we played cards-I remember building a big house of cards, with towers as tall as I was. Once on my birthday she came up with a huge box of dominoes and we spent three days setting them up; when the box was empty, she came home with a cake and we knocked them over, and that was my birthday present."

I was silent, waiting for him to continue.

"She was beautiful," he said finally, and he didn't say anything else.

Eventually his breath rose and fell evenly, and I knew he was asleep.

I remember him leaving the room. I woke up enough to pull the blankets closer and go back to sleep.

The phone rang the next morning and woke me up. Raeburn answered it, which meant that it was early-he hadn't left for the college yet. The faint murmur of his voice grew louder and louder until I heard the unmistakable sound of an object hitting the wall, followed by the sound of shattering gla.s.s.

Raeburn screamed, "Josephine! Get down here!" and I was on my feet, trembling and scrabbling for my clothes in the flat morning light.

Jack wouldn't fumble. Jack wouldn't jump. Jack wouldn't even bother going downstairs. He'd make Raeburn come to him.

I think I knew even then that he was gone.

Raeburn stood in the middle of the kitchen. His fists were tightly clenched and his face was red. The table was on its side and there was a litter of broken dishes on the floor next to it.

Through clenched teeth he said, "Pick this garbage up."

I moved toward the table, giving him a wide berth, and crouched down to pick up the pieces of china. My fingers shook. It was a mess. There had been orange juice in one of the broken gla.s.ses; the remnants of a fried egg were congealed on one of the plates.

I could hear him breathing heavily behind me, like an animal.

"You imbeciles," he said. "You stupid little ingrates."

My hand was full of shards. I cupped them next to my body and kept picking them up as behind me, something else shattered in a brilliant burst of noise.

I didn't look around.

"Ungrateful, degenerate s.l.u.t." He was crouched down next to me now, cursing in my ear and grabbing my arm with hard, relentless fingers. I could smell the bitter stench of his breath. "Did you help him?"

I couldn't carry any more of the shards but I was afraid to move. The garbage can was behind him.

"Did you help him? Your rotten, sneaking brother? Did you help him?" I was still crouching. He pushed hard against my shoulder. My handful of shards went flying and I lost my balance. I put a hand down to break my fall. It landed on a sharp piece of gla.s.s and I cried out.

"Idiot," Raeburn said. He picked up a peppershaker from the floor and threw it at me. "You can't do anything right. You're utterly incapable of the simplest-f.u.c.king-thing."

I was crying. There was gla.s.s stuck in my palm, sharp and hot and alien. The blood was starting to drip down my wrist, but I was still trying to pick up the shards, because that was the only way this was ever going to be over.

My father towered over me, huge and powerful, his green eyes snapping like Jack's when he was angry. I flinched and tried to cover my face but Raeburn grabbed my wrists and pulled hard. I couldn't stand up. He dragged me along the floor to the overturned table, where most of the mess was.

"Quit crying!" he screamed and pushed me down into the middle of it. "Your brother just ruined my life! Quit crying!" My arm landed hard on a piece of gla.s.s, something gave in my shoulder, and I cried out again. There were smears of blood on the floor. Some distant, removed part of me wondered how in the world I was supposed to quit crying.

"Clean it up," he said, his voice cold and dead.

I couldn't see clearly through my tears so I had to feel around on the floor for the slimy pieces of gla.s.s-the piece embedded in my hand flaming bright and hot with every pat-and when I had gathered a handful of them I stumbled-ran past him to dump them in the garbage can, feeling myself scuttle along the floor like a bug and hating him, hating him with a hate larger than anything I had ever felt in my life. My nerves were like steel wire with current running through them; I expected him to grab or kick me every time I pa.s.sed him. He didn't. He only stood, shaking and mad with fury, and watched.

"This is my house," he said. "You repulsive little creatures, you think you've taken it over. You think you count for something here. You know what you are?" he said as I crawled to the sink to get a rag to clean up the egg and the orange juice, which was mixing with my blood on the floor. "You're like viruses. Viruses your crazy G.o.dd.a.m.ned mother left behind for me to deal with." He shook his head. "I could have been a great scientist. I could have done miraculous things. But now what do I do? I work at a fourth-tier, regional private college so that I can feed the two of you, and it doesn't matter how much I try to make you something useful, to make you f.u.c.king human-"

And now he did grab me, lifting me off my knees by my hair. A high panicked whine came from my mouth as my feet scratched at the floor. He used his double fistful of my hair to shake me, punctuating each word. "Everything-about you-is a waste-of my time."

The pain was unbearable. I managed to get out, "Stop," in a thin, terrified croak, and he dropped me.

He stood over me for a moment, glaring down.

"Your piece-of-s.h.i.+t brother," he said, suddenly calm. "The one who thinks he can interfere in my business. Where is he?"

I lay collapsed on the floor, gasping with fear and aching in a dozen places. I could only shake my head.

He stared down at me a moment more. He was breathing hard. "He left you here, didn't he?" His voice was soft. "Left you here alone."

I didn't look up.

"You've backed the wrong horse, my dear." His feet, which were all that I could see of him, turned around and walked out of the kitchen.

Trembling, I brought my right hand up in front of my face. There was a shard of gla.s.s the size of a half-dollar buried in the meaty part of my palm. I took hold of it with my other hand. Slowly, slowly, I pulled it out.

When the kitchen was finally clean, I climbed the back staircase wearily. My shoulder was aching and there was an old dishtowel wrapped around my hand. The gash on my arm was less serious and had already stopped bleeding, but there was drying blood all over my hands and arms and clothes, and thick clots of it in my hair. I must have grabbed at my scalp after Raeburn let me drop. Dimly I wondered if the cut in my hand needed st.i.tches. Jack would know, I thought. He'd even st.i.tched up a cut for me once, when I fell through a window. We hadn't had any anesthetic, but I had been drunk enough not to care.