Chapter Eight:
Unclothed
She was a tanned, bouncy, blonde beauty. Like a girl from those hair removal cream commercials: long legs, cutoff shorts, strutting in heels—I was expecting her to break out into a song about her short-shorts any minute. In the few seconds it took her to glide a few steps, the climate around the pool went from warm and cozy to below freezing. I watched Carly’s smile turn tortured. I watched Spider’s eyes circle to Carly, his face turn to ice; he lunged out of the pool and met the blonde. I watched Rocco gawk dreamily at her. He was apparently in charge of keeping the pool water from turning to snow.
I watched her as she watched me; her gaze fell onto Cameron and then back to me. I noticed all of these things, but not before noticing that Cameron’s arm had shot away from me as soon as she had materialized. His jaw had clenched, snapping the beautiful, youthful features of his face shut. When I met his eyes, I was frightened by the blank man who had taken his place once again.
Spider had—somewhat gently—grabbed the girl by the arm, rerouting her back into the house. Cameron chased after them, without a word or glance back. When they had vanished, Carly was stilled. Her head was bent forward, her hair hiding her face. I shrugged out of my soaked towel and wrapped myself in the one that Cameron had left behind. I sat on the edge of my long chair with my back straight up and took a moment to get my voice back.
“Who was that?” I managed. There was panic in my voice, and I didn’t know why.
“That,” Rocco told me, “was Frances.” He said this with admiration. He said this as if it were enough to satiate all the questions that were running through my head.
Rocco squinted while the little boy splashed water at him. “Superman,” his tiny voice commanded, spread-eagle arms out. Rocco picked him up by the torso and flew him over his head with a whoosh. The curly blond kid looked more like a cherub or a clip-winged Gabriel than a Clark Kent. There was something familiar in his triumphant, devilish grin.
“And who’s this?” I tried to sound non-creepy and directed my forced smile in the child’s general direction. But I was always awkward around kids, especially when I had been one of them. The only kid I had ever known was my brother, who was seven when I was born and was already more of a grown-up than anyone else I knew. I tended to ostracize myself from other kids when I was forced to assimilate, positive that they could smell fear. They pounced on carrot-haired oddballs like me all the time.
“This little guy is Danny,” Rocco said to me. He fell backward, letting Superman plunge into the water. Daniel’s head popped back out, and he giggled while Rocco remained submerged.
“How old are you, Daniel?” There was that awkwardness again.
The kid did the other thing that kids tended to do around me: he completely ignored me. He busied himself with dog-paddling around the pool, trying to sink Rocco’s submarine body. I readjusted my towel and peeked at Carly. She hadn’t moved a muscle.
“He’s six,” she conveyed flatly. She then stood and walked into the pool house. A few seconds later, Spider emerged from the patio doors, snuck a quick look around the pool, and kept going into the pool house, banging the door so violently that one of the flower boxes on the windowsill tumbled to the stone ground—petals, earth, and roots spilling over.
Rocco was heavily engaged in a new game of water wrestling, having finally found a partner he could beat.
I waited two long seconds for Cameron to reappear too. He didn’t.
Curiosity edged my impatience, but jealousy made it boil over. Cameron was in the empty house with the blonde mannequin, sans his arachnid chaperone. It was silly to be jealous. I barely knew the girl. I barely knew Cameron. I had no claim or cause to hope. I was being silly. I was being silly and completely ridiculous. So I snuck back into the house when Rocco was sunk, armed with an excuse of needing a fresh towel if I was discovered.
Inside, the house was hushed. I could hear the wheezing of the night guards who were sleeping in one of the basement rooms. Floorboards were slightly creaking upstairs, and voices were moving about. Through the kitchen, down the upstairs hallway, the strained voices became strained words. The door to the library was ajar. I crept toward it, the bottom of my naked feet sticking to the hardwood floor.
“How much is it this time?” I heard Cameron coldly ask. I peeked in and saw him facing the high shelves against the wall. Books were stacked at his feet. He was crouched in front of the emptied third shelf and fiddled with the black wheel of a small metal door.
The unhidden safe opened, revealing a heap of paper bills inside. The woman—Frances—was waiting behind him.
“Um, five thousand should do it.” Frances’s voice was seductive and unaffected. “Rent is due next week.”
Cameron grabbed a stack of cash and very swiftly leafed through the bills. He stopped midway through the stack, split it, and put the uncounted bills back in the safe. He slammed the metal door shut and abruptly turned around with the remaining bills in hand. I threw myself—Indiana Jones style—into Rocco’s room, landing on a pile of dirty clothes. I ducked behind his door and sat on a mass of socks, underwear, shirts, a plate, a Victoria’s Secret magazine.
“Seems like the amounts get bigger every time I see you,” Cameron pointed out to Frances.
“I have a growing child to raise. Or have you forgotten that?”
There was a deep sigh. “Are you going to tell me why you’re really here?”
“What-do-you-mean,” Frances put on. “Money. Like I said. Like always.”
“You could have just called Spider. He would have made arrangements to have it delivered to you. It would have been more convenient.”
“More convenient for who?” she shot back. “I couldn’t wait for Spider to make his arrangements. I need the money now.”
“You don’t look like you need money,” Cameron noted. I wondered if he was referring to the designer purse that had been hanging off her arm.
“How dare you!”
“Keep your voice down,” Cameron hissed.
And Frances’s voice was shushed. “Daniel has and will always be my priority. You, of all people, are in no position to judge me.”
“This isn’t a place for kids. You shouldn’t be bringing him here.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she snickered. “You seem to be surrounding yourself with children these days.”
“You have your money. Take the boy and leave immediately.” Cameron’s voice was calm and businesslike.
“What’s the hurry!” she cackled. “Are Daniel and I getting in the way of your latest sexual exploit?”
“It’s time to go, Frances.”
“I saw the way you were looking at that girl. For God’s sake, Cameron, she looks barely fourteen years old.”
“Frances—”
Frances ignored the warning in his voice. “Then again, pure breeds like her tend to be well-preserved. I guess that’s what happens when you spend your life being kept away from the likes of you. She’s a little out of your league, don’t you think?”
“I’ll have Tiny escort you out.” Cameron was unchanged.
“Don’t you touch me!”
“You have what you came for. The rest is none of your business.”
“This has everything to do with me!” she yelled. “You will damage that poor girl. Good girls like Emily aren’t equipped to deal with guys like you.”
Severe silence swept into the library and the room next to it. A slight whimper escaped my lips. I had just been thrown in a roller coaster, mid-plunge.
“Do you really think that I wouldn’t recognize the red hair?” Frances pushed. “How old is she now? Seventeen, eighteen?”
“You can leave, or I can make you leave. It’s your choice.” Cameron’s voice was tight now.
“You don’t scare me, Cameron—even though I know what you’re capable of. Question is … does she know what you’re capable of? Does little Emily know the monster that you are?”
Cameron had finally been shaken. “Enough, Frances!”
“Yes, it is enough, isn’t it?” she spat. “Bill would’ve had you by the throat if he saw her here, saw you looking at her like that.”
I had already heard enough by this point. My ears had swelled shut, as if my body had turned the autopilot on to stop the crash-landing that would have come if I had kept listening. My knees tucked themselves into my chest. My hand clasped the chain that was around my neck so tightly that the angel pendant was leaving a bloody indent into the palm of my hand. I felt like I had been caught in the tornado that had hit Rocco’s room, had sucked the air out and left a trail of teenage essence behind.
Frances knew Bill. Cameron knew Bill. After years of yearning for answers, searching for any glimpses of that whole other life, the one that my brother had led away from me; after desperately sitting by as traces of my brother slowly disappeared with every moment, day, month, year that passed until it was starting to feel like he had never really existed; someone other than me had known Bill—and knew who I was.
How could I have missed this? I tried to go back through all of the events of the past few days, but all I could remember was my conversation with Cameron that morning. He had listened to me while I had told him about my big brother’s premature death, something that I had never told anyone else because it was too painful. Yet—and yet, he had never said a word.
I wasn’t sure how long I had been parked in Rocco’s room like that. Frances and Danny were long gone.
I peeled off the front cover of the magazine that had stuck to my half-clad behind and let my limbs carry me back toward the front hallway. But Cameron intercepted me as he was running down the steps.
His eyes canvassed my face, and he halted on the second last step. My face was hot and drenched.
“What’s up …” he asked slowly, carefully.
I considered side-stepping him and continuing to make my way up to his room. He was blocking my passage. Something in his expression told me that he wasn’t going to let me through without an explanation. There was a baseball rising up in my throat. I couldn’t tell if it was tears or words. It turned out to be both.
“Bill …” was how I started. Cameron’s face went white. “… you knew me too … I needed a clean towel … how could you?” In my head, these were fully structured sentences with nouns, conjugated verbs, and all that stuff that made sense to other people.
Cameron and I just stared at each other. I looked at him through a veil of gathering tears. Cameron blinked, but his face remained otherwise expressionless. This made me furious.
“You knew Bill,” I started again, my thoughts clearer now. “All this time, you knew exactly who I was. You never said anything.” My voice was shrill, and I was already out of breath. Cameron was breathing perfectly normal.
“Yes,” he admitted, slowly again.
“Yes, you knew Bill, or yes, you lied to me?”
“I didn’t lie to you.”
“You omitted vital information.”
“That’s not the same as lying.”
“Spare me the grammar lesson,” I growled.
He sat on the stairs and clasped his hands. “This isn’t what you think.”
“Oh? Tell me—what am I thinking?” Because I had no idea—jumbled words were all I could manage to think about. “You seem to have all the answers.”
“Em—” he started, but I wasn’t finished.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
“No,” he admitted. There was no pause, and he looked straight at me. “There are some things that you’re better off not knowing.”
“Do not make decisions for me! You might know who I am, but you don’t know me well enough to know what’s good for me.”
He exhaled and rubbed his temples. “Listen, Emmy, I know that you’re mad at me—”
“Mad isn’t the word.” I was furious, enraged, incensed, going on crazy.
“Fine,” he interrupted. “You’re beyond mad, but I swear to you that I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
“No, thank you,” I quickly but politely rebuffed. “I’ve seen what you do with the people you should be keeping safe. Throwing money at me won’t make this any better or keep anyone any safer. Besides, I can’t be bought.”
Cameron opened his mouth like he was going to say something, and then stopped. Then his forehead scrunched. I could see him trying to digest what I was saying. “Wait … what?”
“Throwing money at your children, at your son, won’t make him safer. It’ll just make him resent you more.” I had intimate experience with this.
He stared at me and nodded once. “Ah. I understand what you are saying now. You’re talking about Daniel.” I noticed a barely audible tremble in his voice. I had obviously hit a nerve there and decided to chase it.
“What kind of man would leave a child to be raised without a father? Paying off your son’s mother doesn’t make you less of a deadbeat.”
Cameron flinched faintly. He then got up, sliding his hand down the banister as he stepped down, and calmly, too calmly, walked out the front door.
I had meant for my words to hurt him.
Cameron gently clicked the door behind him, and I heard someone clamoring up the stairs. When I turned around, Carly and Spider were standing at the top of the basement stairs, and Rocco was rushing up behind them. The grim look on Carly and Spider’s faces told me that they had seen enough of the show.
“Did you know all along too?” I accused.
“Know what?” Rocco replied, popping his head between Carly and Spider while dripping pool water everywhere. Carly and Spider simply stared back in response. That was enough for me to understand how deeply the treachery had run. I did what I knew best: I dashed to hide.
“What’s going on?” I heard Rocco ask in a botched whisper as I reached the second floor. This was followed by the sound of a hand hitting wet skin.
“Ow! Carly! That hurt! What was that for?” Rocco complained. I slammed Cameron’s bedroom door, blocked out the rest and immediately fell into a routine—anything habitual—that I desperately needed. I showered, brushed my teeth with force, roughly combed through the knots in my hair—considered chopping it all off, but figured that looking like a fourteen-year-old boy wouldn’t solve anything. I got dressed, sweatpants and sweatshirt—unseasonal for the hot weather, but necessary for the drama. I made the oversized bed and vigorously fluffed the pillows. I yanked the heavy curtains shut and plopped myself on the small couch, hiding in my cave. Then I decided to put a movie on.
During all of this, I wasn’t thinking about how much I missed Bill, missed talking about him with someone outside of myself. I wasn’t thinking about how betrayed I felt or how angry I was. I was especially not thinking about the ache on Cameron’s face when he had walked out on me.
When my thoughts would start veering from the movie’s plotline, I turned the television’s volume up. When I heard Meatball whine at the door, begging to be let in for the night, I turned the volume up higher. When my stomach growled and grumbled in protest of my protest, I turned it up even higher.
By the time I was on the fifth movie—a really bad disaster movie with lots of explosions and earthquakes and people screaming for their lives—it was as dark outside as it was inside the room, and my ears were ringing from the deafening detonations. But during a lull of action scenes, there was a crash next to me and an “ouch!” A lamp was turned on. Cameron was standing on one foot, holding on to the other.
“Sorry,” he yelled over the revitalized explosions, “I knocked, but you didn’t answer.” He hobbled to the couch, grabbed the remote control with the hand that wasn’t rubbing his big toe, and turned down the volume.