Raveling (33 page)

He actually said these things.

Mark had never said anything when they had sex. Mark had been as silent as stone.

But today Katherine was the silent one. My brother had a hand placed on the small of her back, and his mouth was next to her
ear, and he was whispering, “
Katherine
.”

She came then, biting her lower lip, only a small sound escaping, and it rose from somewhere deep in her throat, from somewhere
else, someone else, it seemed.

When Eric came, he clutched her thighs, pulling her legs up and leaning hard into her, and his chin lifted, back arched.

A few hundred miles away, I stood in front of the kitchen
sink with my hand over my eyes. Hannah was upstairs waiting for me to bring her some tea.

Katherine and Eric hadn’t changed positions once.

He was on top. She was on the bottom.

Missionary.

They were on a mission, I thought at the kitchen sink.

I could see everything.

This is the difference, Katherine was thinking, between men and women. Women come first, and men never see them in their delirium.
Men never get to see this behavior clearly. But the women lie there, accommodating, holding them by the back of the neck,
with their minds clear and their bodies satisfied, when men come.

“That was so nice,” Katherine said softly now. “You are so nice.”

“You are so beautiful,” Eric told her.

They lay like this for a while, locked together, their bodies too warm to be touching, but touching. And she thought of Michele.
And she thought of Mark, whose eyelids would flutter when he came, who was so feminine and soft, like she had been today.

“What do you look for in a chicken?” Katherine asked. In the little grocery store in the tiny beach town they were selecting
poultry. She had hardly done this before.

“Interesting question,” Eric said. “Tenderness, I suppose.”

“Featherlessness,” Katherine said.

“Also a good quality.”

Katherine lifted a small one from the refrigerator case and placed it in their cart. “Does this one look good to you?” It
was covered in clear plastic wrap, its skin the color of a pale human’s—like mine.

“I don’t see any feathers,” Eric said. He started to walk toward the produce aisle. “Carrots? Celery? What else?”

“Thank you,” Katherine said suddenly.

“For the chicken?”

“Thank you, Eric, for taking me here, taking me—”

“You,” he said, pushing the cart over to her. He walked around it and placed his face against her cheek, kissing her jawline.
“You are the one to thank.”

“No.”

“And Pilot,” he said.

“Pilot?”

“Pilot for going crazy.”

“
Praised be the fall,
” she said.

Eric smiled but didn’t seem to hear this. “You know,” my brother said, “when I’m with you, when you’re here with me, I have
no doubt that he’ll get better, that he’ll be all right.”

They were in the vegetable aisle now, surrounded by green beans, broccoli, carrots. There was a stack of large oranges by
the cash register. “Oranges?” Eric asked. “Grapes?”

“Oranges,” Katherine answered. She was smiling stupidly now, uncontrollably. “Grapes.”

I had been sitting on the back steps that led out of the kitchen, watching the woods rustle and groan under the fall wind.
Behind me, I could hear my mother washing the dishes. Porcelain and silver clink-clanked in the sloshing water. I believed
I could even hear the song she was humming, the melody changing every bar, mutating and shifting with consistent irregularity.
“Pilot,” she said eventually, and I heard the tap cut off.

“Yes?”

“Is there anything out there?”

“What do you mean?”

“In the yard, I can’t see properly, you know, is there anything—”

“There’s the same things there always are.”

“Are there…”

“What?”

“… children?”

“Mom, come on.”

“The little girls from next door, I thought. Perhaps—”

“No, they aren’t out there right now.” I got up from the steps and went into the kitchen, closing the door softly behind me.
“It’s just trees, bushes, the pool—the same old stuff.”

She hated it when I called it the pool. It was the garden now. “Is it terribly overgrown?”

“It’s not too bad.” She stood at the counter, her hand holding the edge like Fiona’s hand on the edge of the pool. “Do you
want me to weed it out?”

“Eric already said he would.”

“Okay.”

She brought her hand up to touch her face.

“Are you all right, Mom?”

“I thought I saw something, that’s all.”

“Saw what?”

“Just something.”

In his black Jaguar, she asked, “Whatever happened to the red sneaker?” Eric drove. Katherine sat in the passenger’s seat
with the groceries on her lap. “Eric?” She knew she shouldn’t be bringing it up. She couldn’t stop herself.

He didn’t look at her. “It was turned over as evidence.” His voice was hardening. She could see his jaw muscles tighten.

“Your family never got it back?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Only one of them was found?”

“Only the one.”

“Where did Pilot find it?”

“Pilot found it on the first day that we, that we looked for her.” Eric rounded a corner without slowing, powering through.
Katherine thought she felt the wheels slip, just slightly. “And he couldn’t really remember where, exactly, he was when he
picked it up.” He reached for the radio dial. He touched it, but didn’t turn it on. “We never did find exactly where. At least,
Pilot was never sure.”

“Evidence?” Katherine said. “Evidence of a struggle, maybe, or that she was trying to leave a trail?”

“Possibly. Fiona was very little. I doubt she was thinking about leaving a trail.”

“He didn’t remember where he found it?”

“It was a very confusing day, Katherine. Probably the most traumatic of his life.”

“I can imagine.” She looked at him, saying, “That would have been important to know, wouldn’t it? I mean, if they had known
exactly where, exactly—”

“It didn’t matter. They went over every inch of those woods.”

“I guess they must have.” She thought for a moment, biting her fingernail, tasting the blood. “Was he always so forgetful?”

“Pilot?” Eric stopped at a light and looked at Katherine. “Pilot was always very forgetful,” he said, shaking his head. “Just
like our mother.”

My father kept walking to the window to look at the sky. Patricia, his girlfriend, watched him through the kitchen door. On
television, Florida State was beating Nebraska. He’d sit
on the couch for a few minutes, muttering at the game, then he’d get up again, hand in his pocket jiggling keys, leaning
over one of the wicker chairs in the sunroom, his face to the glass. The sky was clear—clouds scattered like a few leaves
on the lawn in early fall. Patricia leaned back from the sink and watched him at the window. “Jim,” she said finally, “what
are you doing?” She turned off the tap.

He said, “What?” even though he heard her.

“Why do you keep going to the window?”

“You know, on the weather channel they said something about the possibility of a storm. I just thought—”

“It’s Pilot.”

“—I’d look and see for myself.”

“You’re worried about him.” She moved across the beige living room carpet toward my father. There had been a new message from
Hannah.

He look down, ashamed. “Yeah.”

And my mother never called.

Patricia spoke with her whole body, and the way she came closer to him, so openly, made him use his voice.

“I keep thinking something’s really wrong with him,” he said.

“Maybe.”

“Something I should do.”

“Call him.”

“Something I should say to him.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. She said, “Call him.”

He looked at her. “It’s that easy.” It was a question.

They stood together on the beach again, and this time it was night, and the clouds billowing up in the sky made the horizon
turn black, and the last filtered light of the descending
sun misted over the countryside behind them. “I was a terrible brother,” Eric was saying. “I wish I could have—”

“Eric.” Katherine put a hand on his chest. The water was gentle right now, for some reason, the tide low.

“I want to make it up to him.” My brother turned his face away dramatically. “I want to, to find a way to feel better,” he
said, “some redemption. The things I used to say to him.” He closed his eyes.

With his eyes closed, she thought, he looked like a statue. “Eric,” Katherine said. “Magical thinking. You’re smarter than
this. You’re a brain surgeon, for Christ’s—”

“I was really bad,” he said. “Abusive, there’s no other word for it.”

“Do you have any idea how cruel my sister and I were to each other?”

“Really?”

“Terrible. Evil.”

“Is that why you don’t speak with her anymore?”

She looked at her fingers. “I guess it is, probably.”

“But I was—”

“No, Eric. You’re unfortunate, that’s all. Your brother has an illness. But you didn’t give it to him. No amount of sibling
rivalry could have given him what he has. It’s chemical, completely biological.”