Tom Piccirilli - The Last Kind Words

I kept trying to see my little sister within the young woman before me. I’d missed out on some of the most important years of her life. I wondered how well she remembered me. I thought she must hate me. Not only had one of her brothers totally fucked himself and the family over and then vanished from her life, but almost immediately afterward so had the other. I wondered how I could have done it to her. I wondered how I could have done it to any of them.

A thousand fatuous questions wafted through my head. I tossed the butt and lit another cigarette. A hard breeze made the branches flap and residual rainwater shook across the field. Kids laughed. A bottle broke and hysteria-laced giggles erupted. Car engines rumbled. A drunk kid took a header and almost fell into the lake.

Dale was breaking from one group and heading toward another. I made my way toward her on an intercept course. She sensed me before I’d taken five steps and turned. She made a beeline for me. I saw that her tattoo was of her namesake, an Airedale. She had a ring through her navel, and the dog was posed as if leaping through it. I thought that was kind of cute. She wore no expression but her eyes blazed.

“What are you doing here, Terry?” she asked.

“You called me, remember?”

“Not here in New York. I mean what are you doing here right now.

At the lake.”

“I just-”

“Mom sent you.”

I’d be stupid to deny it. After all this time the first words out of my mouth shouldn’t be lies. “Yeah.”

She sneered. The flickering golden light threw pools of shadow across her face. “Did you really come two thousand miles just to check on me?”

“No,” I said.

“But you’re going to do it anyway.”

“I thought we could talk a little.”

Her lips flattened. They were as red as if she’d just chewed through her wrist. “Now you want to talk?”

“I do, Dale.”

“About what?”

She was like the rest of the Rands. Her anger and hurt had been locked so far down inside that when they sluggishly awoke and crawled out they became a monstrous and frightful thing. I saw them emerging. I turned my face aside.

It was my own fault. I shouldn’t have cut out and run this morning. And I definitely shouldn’t have let her catch me doing it.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Anything.”

“Anything.” The word hung there. “I don’t know that I like you following me. You’ve been watching me, haven’t you? You’ve been here for a while watching me. What gives you the right? You haven’t even said hello. You haven’t even asked me how I am, how I’m doing. You never called, Terry. Not even on my birthday. Never. You could’ve called.” Her voice was a low growl. “Even if you didn’t want to see any of us, you could’ve picked up the phone. You could’ve written. You could’ve let me know you were alive. You could’ve shown some concern, for even one minute. You could’ve done any of a thousand things, Terry, and you didn’t. Now you want to talk?”

I reached out and drew her into an embrace. My timing was off, as usual. I should’ve let her vent longer, bue d01D;t I thought that once she got started it might never stop. I was still avoiding responsibility.

She didn’t resist. She didn’t hug me back either. It was like holding on to a mannequin dressed like a young woman who sort of looked like my little sister. I kept at it, but there was no point. I let her go.

She said, “Is this where I’m supposed to forgive you?”

“No,” I said. “It’s just that I wanted to hug you, all right?”

“You going to give me a lecture?”

“About what?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either.”

“About whatever you think I need lecturing on, Terry. That’s really why you’re here.”

“You’re confusing me, Dale.”

I wanted to ask her what she felt about Collie. I wanted to know how his reputation had affected her in school and elsewhere. If instead of being known as a child of the nefarious Rand clan of thieves she was now marked as the sister of a thrill killer. I stared at that smear of blood-colored wax over her lips. I was as bad as the rest of my family. I didn’t want to ask anything of real consequence for fear of being asked something meaningful in return.

“What did Mom and Dad say?”

“They found condoms in the laundry and they don’t like your boyfriend.”

“Ah, shit. So that’s where that pack went.”

“Always double-check your pockets, Dale. Always.”

“So now you’re reporting back to them.”

“I’m here because I wanted to see you and say I was sorry for running out this morning.”

We locked eyes. I tried to let her read me. I didn’t know what it would mean or how it would go down, but I made the effort. She seemed about as satisfied as she could be under the circumstances, and her lips eased into a small, soft smile. She turned aside for a moment, and when she turned back the smile was gone.

“You really came back for Kimmy, didn’t you? Not us. Not Collie.”

“I don’t know why I’m here, Dale.”

“At least you’re telling the truth now. That’s something. Did you see her yet?”

“I saw her. I didn’t talk to her.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

I shrugged. It was my father’s gesture. It was meant to deflect honesty, intimacy, and insight. I couldn’t make it a habit. “She’s married to Chub now. They have a kid. It’s not my place.”

“But you watched her.”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“So what was the point of that?”

“Good question,” I said.

“Five years out there on a ranch beneath the big blue sky, lots of time to clear your head, and you come home with a brain as full of snakes as when you left.”

I lifted my chin and studied her face. “Fifteen and you know everything there is to know, eh?t? & br”

“Not quite.”

“Right.”

“Okay, so she found condoms. What parent is going to like the guy who’s having sex with their little girl?”

“That’s a mature way to look at it, Dale.”

“I do my best.”

“I’m glad. So how about if you introduce me to the guy and we leave it at that?”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you don’t.”

The wind grew stronger. I could smell more rain in the air, another storm rolling in. Dale’s hair flapped in the breeze and for a second I saw the little girl I remembered, slipping off to sleep with her head on a Princess Lilliput pillowcase while I read about hepcat James Dean-looking blood drinkers who romanced the ladies across deep black fields beneath a hunter’s moon. A twinge of regret banked through me.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go meet the beau.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, “seriously, that’s what you call him? The beau?”

“I do.”

She locked arms with me and drew me along as we threaded through the parked cars and the kids talking and getting wasted. She took me to a ’69 Chevy that looked like a 396-a speed demon, a racer with wide tires to hug the curves. Only the parking lights were on, glowing bright yellow as we approached. The radio groaned with a heavy bass.

The beau was propped up on the hood, laid out across his windshield, holding a beer and taking in the starshine. He was much older than I’d expected, maybe twenty or twenty-one. He shouldn’t have been dating a fifteen-year-old girl. My shoulders hitched.

He had darting eyes, and his nose had been broken at least once and badly set. It lent him a touch of character he hadn’t earned. He went shirtless and wore four black leather wristbands on his right forearm. Jeans cinched his waist, the seams straining as he slid off the hood. He was so skinny he looked half starved. He smelled of oil, acne ointment, and second-rate pot. A tattoo of foreign words was scrawled in black script along his left shoulder. His nose and bottom lip were pierced. He had a pencil beard that rode around the very edge of his jaw, no mustache.