Strange in Skin (12 page)

She nodded and tapped her stilettos on the wooden floor. “Where’s Helene? Is she upstairs in
bed?”
Before I could respond, she was already moving up the staircase toward my parents’ bedroom. I
didn’t bother to follow. I sat down on the couch and tried to focus on the TV show that Matthew had
on. I could hear the low hum of voices upstairs but couldn’t make anything specific out. A few
minutes later, my father came into the room and took a seat in the tan recliner.

“Your Aunt Carlin is here,” he said.
“I’ve already seen,” I mumbled, my eyes never leaving the screen of the television.
“She’s going to be staying for a while.”
I was about to protest, but then I quickly shut my mouth and decided not to waste my breath.

“I’m not saying you’re not doing a good job,” he continued, either reading my mind or sensing my
growing irritation that her very presence caused. “I just think you could use a helping hand is all. Plus,
I think it would be good to get Carlin back into the family. It would be good for her and Helene to
patch things up and enjoy being sisters again.”

Based upon my recent opinion of my father’s intentions, I guessed this was merely another one of
his schemes to take the attention away from him and give my mother, along with me, someone else to
focus on so he could go off and parade over to his lover’s house once again.

I didn’t say anything back to him. Carlin would just cause problems. She always had. Even though
my mother had never dared to say anything remotely bad about her whenever her name turned up in
conversation, I had always sensed that something had happened between them to tear them apart.

“Why don’t you go put fresh sheets on the spare bed?”

 

Why don’t you do it yourself?
I wanted to scream at him, but again, my inner hostility would do me
no good at a time like this. I left the room to do as I was asked to do.

Another week passed. I was good at avoiding Carlin. I backed off and let her do most of the things
that needed done around the house. It gave me a chance to avoid everyone else in the process. Some
days I’d feel guilty as if I was abandoning my mother and Matthew when they needed me most, but
then I would try to drive the feeling down and out of my mind and not think about it. My mother was
gaining her strength back little by little every day.

“Anna?” her mother called. “Can you come here for a second, please?”

I paused just outside of my parents’ bedroom and peered in. My mother was lying on the king-sized
bed with her legs propped up. The curtains were drawn shut so that the sun couldn’t shine in, and the
only light glowed from a small, crystal lamp on her nightstand.

“Are you feeling okay?” I asked, almost whispering because of the darkness.

 

“I just have a little headache. Come in and chat with me for a while.” She patted a spot on the bed
beside her.

 

I walked in cautiously at first and then settled down Indian style on the puffy checkered comforter. I
looked up, and our eyes met.

 

“I feel like we’re becoming strangers,” she confessed, and I instantly felt guilty knowing that I had
avoided being in this house as much as I possibly could.

 

I lowered my head. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”

She put her hand under my chin and carefully made me look up at her again. She smiled, and it made
me feel a little better. “So tell me how things have been. How is Buck?” Her eyes always did this
little sparkle when she said his name. Maybe she was assuming that all of my time spent away had
been with him, that we had bonded and found a connection and were forming this beautiful, passionate
relationship together.

“I don’t know,” I replied.
“You don’t know?”
“I haven’t talked to him in a while. Since the night he drove me to the hospital to see you.”

“Oh.” The sparkle instantly disappeared and she was the one to look down now. I had disappointed
her. “Then what have you been up to? Carlin says you’re always running off somewhere.”
I hated being cornered like this. Carlin was nosey and needed to stay out of my business. “Well,
just keeping up with the store and going to the library. Nothing much.”
“Anna, please don’t worry about that store. It isn’t going anywhere. Closing it for a while isn’t
going to hurt business. It’s not the most popular place anyway.” She chuckled a little.
“How can you say that?” I asked. “You love that store. I want to keep up with it. You get tons of
customers.”

“Only the older ladies from the church.” She smiled, amused I had guessed by picturing them in
there shopping, chatting away as they always did amongst each other. “Carlin seems to think there’s
something not quite right going on with you, dear. Is there anything going on you need to tell me
about?”

Carlin had really put a bug in her ear this time. This conversation probably wouldn’t even be
happening right now if it hadn’t been for her and her stupid opinions. I felt angry all of a sudden.
“Carlin needs to …” I stopped. I couldn’t explode on my mother like this. It wasn’t her fault.

She raised her eyebrows. “Carlin needs to what?”

She needs to shut her mouth. All she does is push her way into family matters that don’t concern
her. She just shows up after ten years and decides that she can be boss and do whatever she wants and
say whatever she pleases. She’s conniving, and she gets under my skin by simply looking my way, and
I have no idea how the two of you even share the same blood, is what I wanted to tell her, but I
couldn’t.

She took a deep breath and leaned back in the bed. I guessed her headache was bothering her again.
“Do you need me to get you some pills?” I offered, hoping to end the subject abruptly.

But she ignored me. “Carlin is who she is. I don’t think there’s a person in the world who can
change that. But there’s something maybe you should know.”

I leaned in closer to make sure that I could hear her clearly. My mother never really talked about
her side of the family. Her parents had died when she was young, and her and Carlin had lived with
one of their cousin’s for most of their adolescence. That was basically all I knew. I was intrigued that
she was offering more information to me now.

“I know she can be irritating sometimes, well, most of the time. It probably seems to you that her
and I don’t have the best relationship, especially since she has barely been a part of yours and
Matthew’s lives, but there was a time when her and I were actually very close. We were best friends
and sisters at the same time.”

“What happened?” I asked impatient to know.

“Well,” she began slow and cautious. She looked up at me again, perhaps uncertain if she should
continue. “We were in love with the same man.”
I was completely stunned. Was she saying what I thought she was? “What? Carlin was in love with
father?” My eyes widened in disbelief.
“No, no,” she quickly said. “Not him.”

“Then who?”
“Another man. Someone before your father.”

My mother was in love with someone other than my father? I guess I had never thought that possible
before. Until recently, I had always thought of the two of them as having their marriage completely
together, that they had never been with anyone else besides each other.

“His name was Russell, and he was gorgeous.” I watched her eyes gleam in excitement as she said
his name and remembered him in her head. “We were in the same grade. We were seniors, and
Carlin, she was just a freshman. But he always hung around our house, and he seemed to show interest
in both of us. He kind of dated both of us at the same time.”

“Wow,” I mumbled. “That’s a little creepy.”

“I know.” She laughed. “We didn’t care. He was so wonderful, and we could both be around him
and share his attention and still be the best of friends at the same time. Then Russell did something
unexpected. He did something that Carlin could just not forgive.”

I found myself hanging on every word. I was discovering a different side to my mother, one never
revealed to me before.
“He proposed to me.”

“Did you accept?” I blurted out. Then I hesitantly looked behind me at the open door. What if
Carlin was eavesdropping and heard us talking about this?

“Don’t worry,” she quickly told me. “I’ve sent her out on errands. She’ll be gone for a while.”
I nodded, anxious to get back to her story.

“Yes, I did accept. He gave me a ring and everything. It devastated Carlin. She moped around for
weeks and became so bitter toward me and everyone else around her, very much like how she is
today. I never saw my happy, perky, baby sister again after that. She had really been in love with
Russell, or so I assumed, that it had changed her so drastically.”

“So then what happened with you and Russell? Did you marry him?”

She smiled again. “No. I gave the ring back. I couldn’t stand to see Carlin like that. I thought by
breaking things off with Russell that maybe she’d come back around, but she never did. It took a very
long time for her to even talk to me again, and then once that happened, it was just civil, not sister-like
anymore. Everything had changed.”

“Wow,” I repeated. “Why didn’t you ever tell me this before?”

 

She chuckled at my reaction. “I don’t know, honey. I didn’t want to bother you with it, to have you
know that there was someone else before your father. Life is funny sometimes.”

 

“Why are you telling me now then?”

She thought for a moment and then sighed, bringing her forearm up to cover her eyes as if she had
just remembered the pain of the headache again. “I just didn’t want you to think Carlin had always
been so … cranky.”

“I can’t believe she would hold a grudge for so long.”

“I found your dad shortly after that and we got married, and Carlin, well, she’s never found anyone
who could compare to Russell. I suppose in her own mind, he had been the only one for her, and I had
stolen that right from her, the right of true happiness. I guess I’m just as surprised as you by her
staying here with us, and even though I don’t feel like we’re back to where we had been before
Russell had come into our lives, I’m happy she’s here. She’s trying at least, trying as much as Carlin
can try.”

The time spent with Carlin was still torturous to me, even after my mother’s little chat explaining
why she thought she was like that. I, on the other hand, was quite amused that this Russell guy had
been smart enough to choose my mother over her. Carlin was so self-centered it made me sick. Her
presence put a downer on everyone’s mood. She had this negative energy about her. Every small issue
she made into a large one, and she also made it out to be about her because of her conceited, twisted
ways. She was so melodramatic, she belonged in a theater. I couldn’t seem to think of her as my aunt.
Aunts were supposed to be caring and yet sometimes better than parents because they always took
your side and let you get away with murder. Carlin, on the other hand, was like some pathetic high
school wannabe cheerleader who never made the squad and based the rest of her entire life off of that
one negative instance. She spent all of her energy trying to make herself look like some sort of rich
model/movie star, yet she honestly looked horrible. She looked worn down and was trying too hard to
be young for her age. It was like she was never going to be able to accept that she was no longer a
teenager.

“I’m going to go get some air,” I announced one night after dinner was over and the dishes had been
put away. Everyone had settled into the living room together, and I couldn’t take another moment
breathing the same air as Carlin.

My mother frowned. “Where are you going?”
“Probably the library again,” Carlin assumed, rolling her eyes.

I stood up and walked toward the front door. “Actually, the library is closed,” I informed her with
just as much attitude as she had given me. “I guess I’ll go to the store.”

Carlin laughed out loud. I glared at her.
“For what?” my father asked, putting the newspaper below his chin to peer over at me.

I sighed, kind of huffing as I did so. “I don’t know. Didn’t you say we needed coffee?” I asked my
mother quickly.

 

“What?” she said, confused as I had just made that up.

“Bye.” I didn’t stick around to look at all of their reactions. I just turned as fast as I could and
headed straight for my car.
I actually did go to the store. I didn’t specifically look for coffee, though I knew that I would have
to go home with some just to
prove
that I had been there. I walked up and down the aisles. It was late
enough in the evening that not a lot of people were there. I glanced at faces as I walked by, and I
wondered if they thought I was strange because I wasn’t searching the shelves like everyone else.
Maybe they thought I was intoxicated as I made it to the end of the store and decided to walk up and
down each aisle again just one more time.
I was thinking about Emry, how it had been weeks since I had seen him. It felt like years. I was
thinking about what he was doing. Was he sad and depressed again? Was he sitting there in his jail
cell thinking of me too? The idea that he was in jail thinking of me and I was in a grocery store
thinking of him seemed lame yet romantic all at the same time. I was going to have to take a chance
that Buck wouldn’t be working and make it down there to see him sometime soon. Then my thoughts
drifted to Buck. He hadn’t called me, and I couldn’t blame him. My family was seriously messed up,
and in the process of it all, I was getting messed up too. I would make distance between us if I were
in his shoes. Plus, I had punched him in the eye. I wondered what he had told all of his cop friends
when they asked him what happened. Had he told them the truth? They would surely have harassed
him if he had.
Then I thought about Emry’s sorrowful blue eyes again, like tiny puddles of the sea when they
welled up, yet I had never seen him shed a true tear yet. He was good at controlling his emotions. He
probably had had lots of practice. I didn’t even know how long he had been in jail.

I looked up. What aisle was I in now? PAPER PLATES, GARBAGE BAGS, TIN FOIL hovered in
bright white letters above my head. Up ahead I saw a woman round the corner in front of me. Wait a
minute. I knew that person.