The Obsession (7 page)

“But . . .”

“He watched me for signs of ‘Carson blood.’ That’s how he put it. When I was eight he told me if I ever showed any fag tendencies, he’d beat the fag out of me.”

Shocked, she grabbed Mason’s hand. “You never told me.”

“Some shit you don’t tell your sister. At least when you’re eight. He scared the crap out of me—you, too. We just got used to being scared of him, like that was normal.”

“Yes.” She let it out on a shaky breath. “Yes, what kind of mood will he be in? Will he be in a good mood? Everything circled around him. I’ve gotten some of that out of therapy. I just didn’t know you felt that, too.”

“Same house, same father.”

“I thought . . . I thought it was different for you because he wanted a son. It was so clear he wanted a son more than a daughter. More than me.”

“He wanted himself, and I wasn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Naomi murmured.

“For what?”

“I was jealous because I thought he loved you more. And it’s horrible to think that, feel that, because he’s . . .”

“A psychopath, a sexual sadist, a serial killer.”

Each almost-flippant term made Naomi wince.

“He’s all that, Nome. But he’s still our father. That’s just fact. So forget it. I guess I was jealous some, because he let you be more. You were Mama’s deal; I was his. Anyway. Mama talked to the movie people, too. He pushed her into it, just kept asking and making it like it was the best thing for us—you and me.”

They kept their hands linked, leaned toward each other over the table now. “Why would he want it?”

“The attention, the fame. He’s right up there with Bundy, Dahmer, Ramirez. Serial killers, Naomi. Pay attention.”

“I don’t want to pay attention. Why do they want to make a movie about him? Why do people want to see it?”

“It’s as much about you as him. Maybe more.” He turned his hand over, gripped hers harder. “The title’s you, not him. How many eleven-year-old kids stop a serial killer?”

“I don’t want—”

“True or false? He’d have killed Ashley if you hadn’t gotten her out.”

Saying nothing, she reached for the pendant Ashley had given her on top of the world. Nodded.

“And when he’d finished with her, he’d have gotten another. Who knows how many he’d have killed.

“I look like him a little.”

“No, you don’t! Your eyes are the same color. That’s all.”

“I look like him some.”

“You’re not like him.”

“No, I’m not like him.” And the determination, the bright intelligence in those eyes spoke as truly as the words. “I’m never going to be like him. Don’t you be like Mama. Don’t let him twist you up. He tried to do that to us all our lives, just like with her. It’s praise and punish. It’s how they get you to do what they want, how they train you.”

She understood it, or some of it. And yet. “He never hit us.”

“He’d take things away—promise something, then if we didn’t do something just the way he said, he’d say how we couldn’t go or couldn’t have. Then he’d show up with presents, remember? He put up the basketball hoop for me, brought you that American Girl doll. I got that brand-new catcher’s mitt, you got that little heart locket. Stuff like that. Then if we did anything even a little out of line, he’d take what he’d given us away. Or we couldn’t go to a party we’d been counting on, or the movies.”

“He said we were going to Kings Dominion, and we were so excited. I didn’t get my room picked up all the way, so he said we weren’t going because I didn’t respect what I had. You were so mad at me.”

“I was seven. I didn’t get it wasn’t you. He didn’t want me to get it wasn’t you. Maybe we’d give Mama a little sass when he wasn’t around because we knew she wouldn’t tell him, but we never bucked him. Never. We lived by his moods, just like you said, and that’s how he liked it.”

She’d never left so much as a pair of socks out of place in her room after that, she remembered. Yes, he’d trained her.

“What are you reading to come up with all this?”

“A lot of books in the library on psychiatry and psychology. A lot of stuff online, too. I’m going to study and be a psychiatrist.”

From her vast advantage of twenty-three months, she smiled a little. “I thought you were going to be a pro basketball player.”

“It’s what Seth and Harry, and Mama, need to hear now. And I like basketball. I’ll play my ass off if it helps me get into Harvard.”

“Harvard? Are you serious?”

“They don’t have scholarships, but they have like incentive programs. I’m going to get into Harvard, study medicine, get my degree. And maybe I’ll use it to get into the FBI, into behavior analysis.”

“God, Mason, you’re fourteen.”

“You were three years younger when you saved a life.” He leaned forward, those golden brown eyes intense. “I’m never going to be like him. I’m going to be somebody who helps stop people like him, who learns to understand so they can. You stopped him, Naomi. But he’s not the only one.”

“If you do all that, you’ll never put it behind you.”

“You put something behind you, Nome, it’s got its eyes on your back. I’d rather keep it in front of me, so I can see where it’s going.”

—

I
t scared her, what he’d said, and more the coolheaded logic behind it. He was her baby brother, often a pain in her butt, regularly goofy, and a slave to Marvel comics.

And he not only had aspirations, he had lofty ones he spoke of as if he’d already checked them off a list.

He’d spied on their mother. Naomi could admit to watching her mother—and closely. Living with Susan was like carrying around something delicate. You watched every step so you didn’t stumble, drop the delicate so it shattered.

She could admit to herself, and now to Mason, a huge sense of disappointment with their mother. Mixed in with the sincere effort to make some sort of a life had been lies and deception. And over a man who’d taken lives, ruined others.

Was it love that drove her? Naomi wondered.

If it was, she didn’t want any part of it.

She’d try sex, because whatever the books and songs and movies said, she knew one didn’t have to walk arm in arm with the other. She considered the best way to go about it, knew there was no way she’d discuss
birth control with her mother. And as much as she loved Seth and Harry, such a conversation would be mortifying.

So the next time she went to the doctor, she’d ask. Then when she decided to have sex, she’d be prepared.

Maybe Mason was right, and if she put it, or tried to put it, all behind her, it meant the whole ugly business could rush up to nip at her heels anytime it wanted.

Like with the movie.

So as fall came to New York, she set it aside. She didn’t like the idea of keeping it straight in front of her—couldn’t you just trip over it then? But setting aside seemed like a good compromise.

And for right now her mother got out of bed every day, got dressed, went to work. Naomi kept busy with school, her yearbook and school paper assignments, and considering which boy it made the most sense to have sex with when the time came.

But she made it a point to get her uncle alone and speak to him about the movie.

“It’s coming out in just a few weeks now.”

“Honey, I know. Harry and I planned to talk to you and Mason about it.”

“But not Mama?”

“I’ll talk with her. I hate having to. She’s doing so well right now. But the movie doesn’t change anything. Your lives are here now. That part of your lives is over.”

“Not for her. You need to talk with Mason.”

“Why?”

“You need to talk with him. It’s his to tell.”

Naomi didn’t know what her uncle said to her mother, but after a couple of dark days, Susan came out again.

She took Naomi shopping for a new dress for homecoming, insisted on making a day of it. A rare thing.

“Anything looks good on you, honey, you’re so tall and slim, but don’t you want something with some color?”

Naomi turned in the dressing room, checked front and back on the short black dress with its cinched waist and square-necked bodice.

“I’ll be taking pictures more than dancing. The black’s better for that than the pink.”

“You ought to have a date,” Susan insisted. “Why aren’t you going out with that nice boy anymore? Mark.”

“Oh.” Naomi just shrugged. Her mother wasn’t the type you told a boy hadn’t been satisfied just touching your breast. “He’s all right, but I didn’t want a date for homecoming.”

“Well, when I was your age, having a date for homecoming was the most important thing in the world. So maybe you’re smarter than I was. But I just love the pink, and it has that sparkle on the skirt.”

“I don’t know if I’m a sparkle-pink girl.”

“Every girl deserves some sparkle pink. You want the black, that’s fine. Gosh, you’re so grown-up it takes my breath. But we’re getting the pink, too.”

“Mama, you can’t buy both.”

“I can. You can wear the black since you’ll be taking pictures, and save the pink for something special. I haven’t given you and Mason enough special.”

“Sure you have.”

“Not nearly enough, but I’m going to. We’re going to buy those dresses, and have a fancy lunch. Then we’re going to hunt up the perfect accessories.”

Naomi laughed, happy to see some sparkle—not on the pink but in her mother’s eyes. “My camera’s my accessory.”

“Not this time. You’d probably be better off with Seth and Harry there, but we’ll find just the right things. Shoes and a bag, and earrings. I know you wanted to go shopping with your girlfriends today, but—”

“Mama, I love doing this with you.”

“It all went so fast. I see that now. It seemed so slow, and some days—and nights—lasted forever. But I see now, looking at you, so grown-up, how fast it all went. I wasn’t with you.”

No, no, the sparkle was dying out. “You always were.”

“No.” Susan laid her hands on Naomi’s cheeks. “I wasn’t. I’m really going to try to be. I . . . I’m sorry about the movie.”

“It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry.”

“I love you so much.”

“I love you back.”

“I’m going to take the pink dress out to the saleslady, have her get started. You go on and change, then we’ll have lunch.”

They bought the dresses, and shoes, and a pretty bag that sparkled—and made her mother smile again. At Naomi’s urging Susan bought herself a red sweater and suede boots. They came home flushed and exhausted, modeled everything all over again.

When Naomi dropped into bed that night, she thought she’d had the best day of her life.

October turned brisk, and the light Naomi loved best slanted gold over the burnished trees of the parks.

To please her mother she wore the pink instead of the black to homecoming, and though it wasn’t a date, she asked Anson Chaffins, a friend—and the editor of the school paper—to pick her up.

And saw the glimmer of tears in her mother’s eyes from joy instead of sorrow when she and Anson dutifully posed for pictures before she could get out of the house.

On Halloween Susan dressed up as a flapper, coordinating with Seth and Harry in their zoot suits to hand out candy to the ghosts, goblins, princesses, and Jedi knights. As it was the first time Susan had dressed up for the holiday, Naomi browbeat Mason into spending part of the evening at home instead of out with his friends doing God knew what.

“It’s like she’s turned a corner, and she’s really moving forward now.”

Mason, who’d made himself into a vampire hobo, shrugged. “I hope you’re right.”

Naomi gave him an elbow in the ribs. “Try to be happy because I am right.”

But she wasn’t.

—

T
he third week of January, in a quick cold snap that blew in some thin snow, she rushed home at lunch. Anson came with her.

“You didn’t have to come,” she said as she dug out her keys.

“Hey, any excuse to get out of school for a half hour.”

Anson Chaffins was a senior, gawky and on the geeky side, but he was, to Naomi’s mind, a good editor and a really good writer. Plus, he’d done her a favor at homecoming.

He’d put what she thought of as half-assed, clumsy moves on her that night, but hadn’t pushed anything.

As a result, they got along just fine.

She let him in, turned to the alarm pad to key in the code.

“I’ll go up, get my camera bag. Which I’d have had with me if you’d told me you wanted shots of the drama club rehearsing.”

“Maybe I forgot so we could get out for thirty.” He grinned at her, shoved up his dark-framed glasses. He shoved them up constantly, as if his eagle-beak nose served as their sliding board.

Behind them his eyes were pale, quiet blue.

He glanced around. “Maybe you’ve got like a Coke or whatever. No point leaving empty-handed.”

“Sure, we’ve always got Cokes. Do you remember where the kitchen is?”

“Yeah. This house is totally cool. You want a Coke while I’m at it?”

“Grab two.” She yanked off her gloves, stuffed them in the pocket of her coat.

He gave her that half-smirking grin, the one that curled the side of his mouth. “Maybe you got chips?”

She rolled her eyes, plucked off her cap. “Probably. Get whatever. I won’t be long.”

“Take your time—we got twenty-five left on our pass. Hey! This yours?”

He walked up to a black-and-white photo study of an old man dozing on a park bench with a floppy-eared mutt curled beside him.

“Yeah. I gave it to Harry for his birthday a couple weeks ago. And he put it up right in the foyer.”

“
Excelente
work, Carson.”

“Thanks, Chaffins.”

Amused—he called everyone by their last name, insisted everyone use his—she started upstairs.

It surprised her to see Kong sitting outside her mother’s bedroom door. His habit was to wait in Mason’s room, or, in better weather, belly out through the dog door to sun on the patio—or do what he had to do in the corner designated for it.

“Hey, boy.” She gave him a quick rub as she passed, glanced back when he whined. “No time. Just passing through.”

But he whined again, scratched at her mother’s door. And Naomi felt something flutter and drop in her belly.

“Is Mama home?” Had the good stretch come to a dip?