Henry's Sisters Read online

  The murderer is a copywriter for a big company on the twenty-ninth floor of a skyscraper in Los Angeles. In the opening paragraphs she graphically describes murdering her supercilious, condescending, snobby boss who makes her feel about the size of a slug and how his body ends up in a trash compactor, his legs spread like a pickled chicken, one shoe off, one red high heel squished on the other foot. That was the murderer’s calling card.

  No one reports his extended absence, including his wife, because people hate him as they would hate a gang of worms in their coffee.

  Janie was fired that day, even though she protested her innocence. That afternoon she sat down and wrote the rest of the story, non-stop, for three months. When she emerged from her apartment, she’d lost twenty pounds, was pale white, and muttering. At four months she had her first book contract. When the book was published, she sent it to her ex-boss. And wrote, ‘Thanks, dickhead! With love, Janie Bommarito,’ on the inside cover.

  It became a bestseller.

  She became a recluse because she is obsessive and compulsive and needs to indulge all her odd habits privately.

  The recluse had received a flowery lemon-smelling pink letter, too. So had Cecilia, whose brain connects with mine.

  The rain splattered down on me, the wind twirly whirled, and I raised the Kahlúa bottle to my lips again. ‘I love Kahlúa,’ I said out loud as I watched the water river down my body, creating a little pool in the area of my crotch where my legs crossed. I flicked the rain away with my hand, watched it pool again, flicked it. This entertained me for a while. Off in the distance I saw a streak of lightning, bright and dangerous.

  It reminded me of the time when my sisters and I ran through a lightning storm to find Henry in a tree.

  I laughed, even though that night had not been funny. It had been hideous. It had started with a pole dance and ended with squishy white walls.

  I laughed again, head thrown back, until I cried, my hot tears running down my face off my chin, onto my boobs, and down my stomach. They landed in the pool between my legs and I flicked the rain and tear mixture away again. The tears kept coming and I could feel the darkness, darkness so familiar to me, edging its way back in like a liquid nightmare.

  I did not want to deal with the pink letter that smelt of her flowery, lemony perfume.

  CHAPTER TWO

  She was wielding a knife.

  It had a black handle and a huge, jagged, twisty edge.

  If evil was in a knife, this was evil incarnate.

  She rotated it in front of my face, wearing a fixed, contemplative, detached expression. I whipped my head back, my breath catching.

  ‘I think she’ll use this,’ Janie said, poking it into the air. ‘This would do the job.’

  I rolled my eyes and pushed past her into her houseboat, being careful to avoid the evil one.

  ‘You need to smile when you come through my door, Isabelle.’

  ‘I smiled.’ I had not smiled. I wiped rain off my face.

  ‘You did not.’ My sister stood by the door, her arms crossed, that shining blade pointed towards her ceiling.

  ‘I smiled in my heart, Janie. Behind the left ventricle.’

  She tapped her foot four times.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this.’ I stalked past her, opened the door, slammed it behind me, knocked four times. More rain dive-bombed down on my head. She opened it. She smiled.

  I smiled with my teeth only, like a tiger in menopause, and sidled by her. She was playing a Vivaldi CD.

  ‘Thank you,’ Janie said. She patted her reddish hair, which was back in a bun.

  Cecilia and I are protective of our younger sister, Janie, and her…quirks. As she said one time, ‘The whole planet does not need to know that I have to touch each one of my closet doors in the same place with the same amount of pressure before I go to bed each night and if I do the wrong amount of pressure on one door I have to do it again. And again. Sometimes a third time.’ She’d let a little scream out and buried her face in her hands when she’d told me that one.

  ‘What do you think of this knife, Isabelle?’ she asked me.

  Janie’s eyes are bright green. I mean bright green. Luminescent. As usual, she was wearing a prim dress with a lace collar and comfortable (read: frumpy) shoes. She wore sensible beige bras that a nun might wear if she was eighty and blind. She was also wearing a white apron.

  ‘I think that knife is sharp and twisty.’

  She sighed. I had disappointed her.

  I headed towards her great room. Janie’s houseboat is located on a quieter part of the Willamette River, although you can see the skyscrapers in Portland from the front decks. The windows are floor to ceiling, and the river rolls right on by, as do storms, ducks, jet skis, canoes, and drunk boaters.

  The rain made the view blurry and grey.

  ‘But do you think it offers up a sufficient amount of blinding fear?’

  I turned around. ‘Yes. I’m blindingly scared to death of it.’

  Janie uses white doilies and has plastic slipcovers over all her pink chairs. She has pink flowered curtains and has tea – tea with scones and cream and honey and sugar – every afternoon, like the British; listens to classical music; and reads the classics, like Jane Eyre. If she’s feeling wild, she listens to Yo-Yo Ma. She takes one bite of food, then four sips of tea. One bite of food, four sips of tea.

  When she’s done with her tea she goes back to wringing people’s guts out of their stomachs with cattle prods.

  ‘You know, the next killer in my book is a grandma. She goes after mothers,’ Janie said. ‘She hated her own mother. Her own mother made her work all the time, locked her in closets, and schlepped her around the country in a dirty white trailer. She worked in a bar. The kid got lice.’

  I stopped at that. ‘Now that’s special, Janie. Special. Think she won’t recognise who that is?’

  ‘I’ve changed her name.’ She said this with not a little defiance. ‘And we were never locked in closets. We chose to go there all on our own. To hide.’

  I put my hands on my hips and stared at the ceiling, imagining how bad things would get once she got her hands on it. Oh, it would be ugly.

  ‘And!’ Janie said, stabbing the knife in the air. ‘The grandma in my book has white hair, she volunteers at the hospital in the gift shop, and at night – whack and stab, whack and stab.’

  I groaned. ‘Must you be so graphic?’

  Janie put the knife back in a case on her kitchen counter, slammed the lid, and tapped it four times. ‘Well, then. Fine. Fine.’

  I ignored the tone.

  Janie patted that bun of hers. ‘This grandma scares me. Last night, after I finished writing at 2:02 A.M., I went in my own closet and hid.’

  ‘The woman that you created scared you?’ Gall. ‘So, even though she’s only in your head, you hid in your own closet from her.’

  She stared off into space. I knew she was waiting four seconds to answer my question. Why the obsession with the number four? I had no idea. Neither did she. She told me one time it was the ‘magic number in her head.’

  ‘She’s so uncontrollable. I can’t even control her when I’m writing about her. She does things and says things and I follow her around and write what I’m seeing and hearing and smelling. She’s a sick person. I don’t like her.’

  ‘Me neither. Maybe you should embroider her out of your life.’ Janie has to embroider flowers each night or she can’t sleep. When she’s done, she sews a pillow up – always white – and gives them to a group that counsels pregnant teenagers.

  She fiddled with her apron. ‘Stop telling me you think my embroidery is stupid.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ I protested.

  ‘You didn’t need to. I can hear it in your tone.’

  ‘My tone? My tone?’

  ‘Yes, that condescending one!’ She turned around and faced the front of her house, then gasped.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I got out of my chair.
r />   ‘Oh, nothing. It’s nothing.’ She turned around, fiddled with her apron.

  I moved towards the front window, so I could see the walkway in front of her houseboat. I saw a man. Brown hair. Tall, a loping stride, bigger nose than normal, but not too big. Not big enough to snarf down a fish. I figured he lived in the houseboat down the way.

  I turned around. Grinned at Janie.

  ‘Don’t even think about it—’ she breathed.

  ‘Is that?’ I raised my eyebrows, laughed, and made a dart for the door.

  ‘Oh, no, you do not, Isabelle Bommarito!’

  I opened the door and the rain came on in.

  ‘Come back here, right this minute!’

  But I had already stepped over the threshold to the wood walkway. She was right behind me and grabbed me around the waist, both arms. ‘Don’t you dare.’

  I whispered, struggling, ‘I can help you to meet him—’

  ‘I don’t need your help!’ she hissed.

  ‘Let go of me, Janie,’ I whispered. ‘I’m helping you!’

  I tried to pursue Big Nose, but she held on to me like a human octopus, one leg twisted around mine, both of us grunting with effort. ‘Get off of me.’

  ‘Never.’ She tightened her arms and lifted.

  I wiggled around and tackled her and we ended up in a heap by her front door. Both of us went, ‘Ugh,’ when the air knocked out of our lungs. I held both her arms down, then whisked myself off her zippity quick and got a few steps. She scrambled up after me, her footsteps thudding, and shoved me to the ground. We rolled twice to the left, twice to the right, huffing and puffing.

  She yanked at my ankle, tried to drag me back in. ‘You’re always trying to butt in—’

  ‘I am not trying to butt in.’ I tried to kick her hand with my other foot as she yanked me halfway into the air. I had no idea how she got so strong. ‘You need to get out of the house and live,’ I panted. ‘I’ve been hearing about that man for months—’

  ‘There you go again! That’s your definition of living!’ She wiped rain off her face. ‘I don’t want to sleep with each stud I meet! I want to find common interests, like a love of literature and the orchestra…and scones and tea! Besides, some of us like preserving ourselves for marriage!’

  ‘What marriage?’ I shrieked. ‘You can’t get married unless you date, and dating takes being able to say hello to a person of the male species from this planet.’

  She flew at me like a little torpedo and landed on top of me, my face smashed down.

  ‘Do you think it’s healthy to stay home all day thinking up ways to kill people?’ I huffed out, rain running down my neck.

  ‘Do you think it’s healthy,’ she huffed back, ‘to put a wall between yourself and everybody else?’

  I whipped her over to her back. ‘Do you think it’s healthy to count how many steps you take to the bathroom and tap toilet paper?’

  She gasped in outrage. ‘Do you think it’s healthy to keep a huge secret from your sisters, Isabelle? We know what happened to you, but you shut us out and you hide behind your camera like it’s…like it’s an eighteenth-century shield!’ (I’ve mentioned her love of the classics?)

  ‘You hide behind your front door, Embroidery Queen!’

  She got me with an elbow to my neck for that one.

  You might think we would be embarrassed by our behaviour: two grown women rolling around fighting on a deck.

  Here’s the truth: we are long past being embarrassed.

  We kicked away from each other – kick, kick, kick – then Janie dove on top of me and we were face-to-face. She yelled, ‘Sometimes I think I hate you, Isabelle!’

  ‘Sometimes I think I hate you, too, Janie!’

  We both grunted.

  ‘Well, I know I hate you both,’ another voice cut through, sharp and low. ‘What’s that got to do with anything? Now get the hell up, your neighbours are all spying out their windows wondering why two grown women are wrestling on a damn deck.’

  With that, our sister, Cecilia, who has swinging long blonde hair, the voice of a logger, and weighs 280 pounds, at least, stepped over us.

  Before she entered the houseboat, she smiled at Janie. As soon as she crossed the threshold she turned and scowled at both of us as if we were slimy algae. ‘Get the hell in here. We got big problems. We gotta get this figured out friggin’ quick. And don’t you two think you can say no. Your answer is yes, let’s start with that, damn it. Yes.’

  She slammed the door.

  ‘We’re together on this, right?’ I panted. Janie was still laying on top of me, rain streaking down our faces. ‘We’re not going.’

  ‘Absolutely, positively not. No way.’

  ‘Our answer is no.’

  ‘No, no, no.’ Janie shook her head. ‘No.’

  We hugged on it.

  Within an hour I was contemplating a quick escape by cannonballing into the river. Janie was curled up, rocking back and forth, chanting, ‘I am worthy of praise, not abuse. I am worthy of praise, not abuse.’

  Cecilia shoved a chocolate doughnut into her mouth. ‘Momma wants you home to help.’

  Janie wrung her hands, four wrings on one side, four on the other. ‘My therapist said going home was an anti-spiritual, regressive idea for me. It could set me back years on my personal development and social-psycho-ecstasy scale.’

  ‘Years from what?’ Cecilia demanded. ‘You sit alone in this pink and white houseboat, indulging all your weird habits and number counting and rituals and you write books about torture and murder. Honey.’ She did not say the word honey nice and polite. ‘There’s nowhere for you to go but up.’

  ‘I can’t go. I’m working.’

  ‘You can kill people in Trillium River, Janie.’

  Cecilia shook her head at Janie, then fixed me with those blue eyes. ‘You’re coming, Isabelle.’

  I snorted. Leave my loft with the view of the river? Live somewhere else when I’m still fighting all the blackness lurking around the edges of my life? Live with her again? ‘I don’t think so. Nope. Can’t come. Won’t come.’

  ‘You can keep the lingerie companies in business in Trillium River.’ Tiny doughnut pieces flew from her mouth in her fury. ‘I need you there.’

  ‘I’m working,’ I lied.

  ‘Give me a break, Isabelle. You’re not working. You’re too screwed up. You two mice are leaving the city and coming to the country. Hey, maybe you’ll learn there’s more to life than yourselves.’

  ‘That is unfair,’ Janie sputtered.

  ‘That’s so like you, isn’t it?’ I stood up and faced her. ‘You attack when you don’t get your way. You use fury to control anyone who pisses you off. You get mean and nasty and believe that your victim deserved your attack and you sit back and hate them, never considering for one second that you might be wrong, never considering that, gee, you might do things that tick people off—’

  ‘I attack?’ Cecilia pointed at her chest. ‘I attack?’ She turned red, and I could tell her Mrs Vesuvius-like temper had triggered.

  ‘Yes, you attack. You hold grudges, you remember each tiny thing people did to offend you, you exaggerate to the point of lying—’

  ‘Listen up, you braided mental case and you wacko, tea-slurping crime writer, I have spent years, years, handling her and Henry and Grandma while you two indulged your weirdness and forced me to handle everything.’

  ‘That is not true.’ I wanted to smash that mouth of hers shut. ‘When the house needed a new roof, I paid for it. Janie paid for a remodelled kitchen. I paid for Momma and Grandma and Henry to stay at a beach house last summer. Janie sent them to the mountains because she knows that Henry loves the snow—’

  ‘You’ve sent money. Big deal. You’re both swimming in it. Janie, you’ve got so much money you could buy France. Neither one of you has hardly been home since you left for college and you live only an hour away. You know Momma reopened the bakery and you’ve done nothing to help!’

  ‘Ce
cilia,’ I snapped. ‘Janie and I paid for a live-in caregiver for Grandma and Henry. In fact, we interviewed a bunch of them, hired one, and sent her over.’

  ‘It didn’t work, did it?’ she shrieked, stomping her feet. ‘I told you it wouldn’t. I told you! Grandma thought she was an ancient tribesman she met on an island during her final trip around the world as Amelia Earhart.’

  ‘Why did Grandma think the caregiver was a tribesman?’ Janie asked. She tapped the tips of her fingers together. ‘There were no feather hats, no tribal war paint…’

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ Cecilia said, doughnut sugar spewing out of her mouth. ‘She’s got dementia. Henry didn’t like the caregiver because he said she resembled a gecko. He ran away and hid in the shed under a trash can and the police had to come. Momma said the woman smelt like mothballs and death.’

  ‘She didn’t smell,’ I protested. ‘She was a nice lady. She was from Maine.’

  ‘Maine Schmaine. They hated her. Momma told her she reminded her of Jack the Ripper, only with boobs. The caregiver asked me if Momma was insane, too.’ Cecilia flung her head back, stared at the ceiling, and threw her arms up as if asking for deliverance.

  Momma wasn’t crazy. She was, however, a nutcase.

  ‘Jack the Ripper?’ Janie moaned. ‘There is no correlation, none. Jack the Ripper was a killer in England who tore out—’

  ‘We know who Jack the Ripper was,’ Cecilia fumed. She picked up another doughnut. ‘Let me lay it on the line, you two. I’m exhausted. I’ve had it. I’m not sleeping at night.’ Tears filled her blueberry eyes, then started soaking her red face. ‘I go from teaching kindergarteners, to the girls – they both have problems I haven’t told you about – I help her out, handle Henry and Grandma…’

  She put her hands over her face and started making these choking, gasping, snorting sounds as great gobs of tears rolled down. It about ripped my heart in two. ‘I can’t take it anymore. The lawyers are fighting, and Parker and that…that…slut…’

  Janie started crying, too. She always cries when one of us cries. Gentle, innocent heart. Killer on the keyboard, but she hates to see anyone in pain. I got up and put an arm around Cecilia.