I don’t remember getting out of the hospital, or very much about the funeral. Funerals, I mean. Two of them. I remember what the newspaper said, though; all that week, I read every single article about the flood. After all that rain we’d had, the earthen dam holding back Wequonnoc Lake had begun to leak near the base late that afternoon, the paper said, and then, around 10:00 P.M., had collapsed. As the water rushed forward—forty-five million gallons of it, some engineer estimated—the ice on the surface broke into pieces, some of them weighing a ton or more. These were carried along the downward slope, slamming into whatever was in their way with the force of a freight train engine. An old brick mill on Broad Street was in the water’s path, and it collapsed under the force of the surge, burying alive four third-shift workers who were at their machines, making rope and twine. Gravity increased the velocity of the debris-strewn water as it raced south, wrecking a number of downtown businesses before passing over the railroad tracks that ran behind the stores and dumping into the Sachem River. From there, the swollen river rushed downstream toward New London, spilling into Long Island Sound. Three Rivers was declared a disaster area, and flags were flown at half-mast for the victims. In all, seven people died: Aunt Sunny and Gracie, those four workers at the twine factory, and a bum who’d been squatting in a lean-to along the riverbank—some colored guy named Rufus Jones. And this was kind of creepy: the paper said that someone else had died that night, too, in a plane crash somewheres else: Aunt Sunny’s favorite singer, Patsy Cline.
Uncle Chick had to swallow a bitter pill: the fact that his house had remained watertight. If we’d only stayed put instead of trying to outrun the floodwater, Aunt Sunny and Grace would still be alive. Once the funerals were over, my mother took some vacation days and stayed with us at Uncle Chick’s for a week or so. When it was time for her to go back, she called a kitchen table conference with Uncle Chick, Donald, and me. She said it was time for me to come home—that her brother had enough on his plate now without having to worry about me. She volunteered to take Annie, too. Annie would need mothering, she said. Sunny had no sisters and her mother was too sickly to take on the responsibility of a young child. “You helped me out, Chick,” she told her brother. “Let me return the favor.”
“But what about school?” Uncle Chick said. Mom argued that there were kindergartens in New Britain, too.
Chick was on the verge of agreeing with Mom’s plan when Annie, who’d been listening from the next room, burst into the kitchen. “No! I want to stay here with Daddy and Donald and Kent!” she screamed. She threw herself onto the floor and pitched a tantrum. When my mother tried to pick her up and comfort her, she hit her and yelled, “No! Go away! Go home!” Then she crawled on her hands and knees over to me and climbed into my lap.
Uncle Chick said we should probably leave things the way they were for now, and that I didn’t need to move back. “Kent’s no trouble, Elaine,” he told his sister. “In fact, he’s a big help. And he and Annie get along good. She’s going to have to deal with enough loss without him leaving, too.” When I glanced over at Donald, his face was unreadable. Nobody had asked him for his opinion and he hadn’t volunteered it, either.
“I’m staying, Mom,” I told her. “I can cook, help out around the house, babysit Annie in the afternoon.”
“You’re still at school in the afternoon,” Mom pointed out. “And Annie goes to morning kindergarten. Who’s going to take care of her until you get home?” Uncle Chick told her that Annie’s bus brought her back at about twelve thirty, when he was home for lunch. He could bring her to the barbershop when lunch was over, and I could pick her up there.
“Yeah, and all’s I got last period is study hall,” I said. “If Uncle Chick calls the school and explains the situation, they’ll let me get excused early.”
Didn’t I need to study during study hall? my mother asked.
I laughed. “All anyone does in that study hall is yack with each other and play cards. I usually just put my head on the desk and take a nap.”
“What about you, Donny?” she said, turning to my cousin. “Could you take care of her some afternoons?”
Donald shook his head. He either had band practice or National Honor Society. “And once baseball season starts, forget it. Coach Covino’s a stickler about practice. If you skip, you don’t play.”
“Well . . . ,” Mom said. Reluctantly, she packed her things, hugged the four of us, and drove back to New Britain by herself.
In the weeks that followed, Donald got busier than ever. He didn’t even come home for supper half the time. That was his way of coping, I figured. Uncle Chick coped by drinking. His two or three beers a night became a six-pack, a six and a half. When he moved on to the hard stuff, he started going down to the Silver Rail after work instead of coming home. So it was me and Annie at the house a lot of the time—just the two of us. That was when I started touching her in ways I wasn’t supposed to.
I didn’t really know why I was doing it. All I knew was that Aunt Sunny’s death made me angry and sad, and that my little cousin and I shared a secret: that her little sister had died because of her, not me. I had told that lie to protect Annie, but to my surprise, no one really blamed me. It was the circumstances, they all said. I had nothing to feel guilty about. If I hadn’t smashed that window and found a way out of the car, we all would have died. Not even Donald held Gracie’s death against me. “Hey, you tried, man. That’s all you could have done. I’m just glad you were there for Annie.” He was guilty about not having been there himself, I knew. I could have used that against him, but I didn’t. Instead, I used my hands against his little sister. The better part of me knew it was wrong, but the better part of me didn’t seem to be in control when we were by ourselves, which was plenty. It was like my hands had a mind of their own.
It started innocently enough. One morning she came into the kitchen while I was cooking us breakfast. Walked over to the stove, put her hands on her hips, and sighed. “Guess what, Kent? I got zema again.”
“You got what?”
“Zema. It’s real itchy. Want me to go get the cream that Mommy puts on it?” Used to put on it, I thought. The poor kid was still struggling to accept the fact that Aunt Sunny’s absence from her life was permanent.
“Yeah, go get it,” I said, scraping scrambled egg onto her plate. High school started before Annie’s school did; the deal was that Uncle Chick was supposed to get her up, feed her, and see her off on the bus. But Chick was already starting to be pretty unreliable, and no one seemed to object if I skipped school. I’d started staying home as often as I went.
When she came back with the cream, I read the back of the tube. “It’s eczema, not zema,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, then pulled her dress up to the waist, revealing the red rash on her thighs.
“Where’s your underpants at?” I asked her.
She looked down. “Oops,” she said. “I forgot to put them on.”
I shook my head. “Good thing your head’s screwed on or you’d probably forget that, too.”
“That’s what Mommy always tells me,” she said.
I knelt in front of her, squeezed some of the cream onto my fingers, and rubbed it into her rash. I didn’t touch her between her legs, but there it was, and seeing it put me back in Irma’s basement, looking at Nadine’s. “There,” I said. “Feel better?” She nodded. “Okay then. Go put your underwear on, then come back and eat your eggs before they get cold.” I glanced at the clock. “Bus is coming in fifteen minutes. You better step on it.”
“Okay,” she said, and dashed away.
All morning long, I hung around the house and tried not to picture it: Annie’s bare thighs, her little pink button. But my mind kept wandering back to what I’d seen when she pulled up her dress. It was weird. A few days earlier, I’d poked around in Donald’s stuff and found a dirty magazine: women clutching their tits and fingering their snatches. I had flipped through the pages and gotten off, but it took me a whi
le. But now, thinking about little girls’ pussies—Nadine’s, Annie’s—I went from zero to sixty. I jerked off twice before lunch and once after. What was I? A fucking pervert or something?
When I heard Annie’s bus pull up outside, I went to the door and waited for her. I asked her how school was. “Good,” she said, “except for when Richard Plante hit me at recess.”
“Yeah? Did you tell the teacher?”
She shook her head. Whenever kids squealed, she said, Mrs. Kovacs said she was going to have to take the tattletale out of the closet and make them wear it. “Want to play slapjack?” she asked.
“Yeah, okay. Go get the cards.”
She did what she usually did when we played that game: climbed up onto my lap so that she could be the first to slap the jack when I turned over the cards. But she was squirmy that day, and I felt my dick starting to stir. “You’re heavy,” I said. “Go sit in the chair.” I was fighting it.
So I wasn’t sure why, during our second game, I asked her how her eczema was. Did she want me to put more cream on her legs? She shook her head. “Okay then. Good.” I was part disappointed and part relieved. I let her win. Then I told her she should go watch TV or something because I had to start supper. When she came back in the kitchen a few minutes later, I was peeling potatoes. She asked me if she could peel some, too. I told her no, she was too young to use the peeler. She could hurt herself.
I could hurt her, too, I realized. I had to stop thinking of her in that way.
I spent the next couple of days steering clear of her, which wasn’t easy, because she kept shadowing me. “Go play with your Barbies or something, Annie. Scoot. Don’t be a pest,” I’d tell her, and she’d poke out her bottom lip and walk away. Once when I told her to stop bothering me, she stuck her tongue out and said she didn’t even like me anymore, which was bull. “Oh, boo hoo,” I said. “I’m so sad.”
After we ate supper—it was just the two of us, usually—was when the temptation got the strongest. She’d be in the bathroom, taking her bath, and I’d find myself on the other side of the door, listening and feeling myself up as she sloshed around in there, singing, talking to herself. One night while I was doing that, I heard her cry out in pain. “What’s the matter?” I called.
“Stupid tangles!” she said. I opened the door a crack. She was sitting cross-legged in the tub. Her hair was wet and soapy. She had a comb in her hand and was yanking on the snarls. . . . Why not, I thought. The coast was clear. Donald had said he wasn’t going to be back until late, and if Uncle Chick wasn’t home by now, he was probably down at the Silver Rail, getting shit-faced. I opened the door a little more.
Stay away from her, I told myself, but my brain and my mouth were on different wavelengths. “Need some help?”
“Yes, please.”
I swung the door open wide and went in there. “Well, first of all, let’s get the shampoo out of your hair,” I said. “Close your eyes.” I ran some warm water over her head and looked where I wasn’t supposed to. “Now give me the comb.” I worked it gently through her hair. “There,” I said.
I was headed out of the bathroom when I stopped and turned back to face her. I grabbed the bar of soap on the sink and approached her. “How’s that rash of yours?” She said it was all gone. “Yeah? You sure? Because you don’t want it to come back again. Why don’t I give you a little help washing up down there?” I said. She shook her head.
“I’m a big girl, silly,” she said. “I can wash myself.”
Okay, leave, I begged myself. Go do the dishes. Go watch TV. Instead, I told her if she was doing it the right way, she wouldn’t have gotten eczema in the first place. “Let me just show you how to do it right,” I said. I grabbed the washcloth and knelt down next to the tub. But as I was reaching between her legs, she pushed her knees together. “What’s the matter?” I asked her.
She said her mother had told her not to let anyone touch her in her “private place.”
“And she was right,” I said. “You shouldn’t. But she meant people you don’t know, or boys at school, not people you trust. You trust me, right?”
She nodded. The fear in her eyes made my heart pound.
“Okay then. I haven’t got all day. Open up.” When she did, I soaped up the washcloth and passed it back and forth against the insides of her thighs, then against her little bud. “How does it feel to know you’re getting nice and clean down there?” I asked. “Feels good, right?”
She swallowed hard. “I don’t know,” she said. “Kinda.”
“Is the water warm enough? I can make it a little warmer if you like.”
She shook her head, blinking back tears. She was so sweet, so pretty. I cupped her chin with my left hand and let the washcloth fall away to the bottom of the tub. Let my fingers take over. “It’s okay if it feels good,” I said. “It’s not a bad thing to feel good while you’re getting clean.” I was rock hard, pushing myself against the outside of the tub. I leaned toward her and kissed her on the mouth. Closed my eyes and came. When I opened my eyes again, she was staring at me, bewildered. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing. Why? Come on. Let’s get you out of this water before you turn all wrinkly like a raisin.” I tickled her under her chin to make her giggle, but she pulled away. “Want me to towel you off?” I said. She shook her head.
After she’d gotten into her nightgown, brushed her teeth, and said her prayers, I tucked her in and began a new chapter of the book I’d started reading her the night before. “More! Read more, Kent! Please?” she had begged me. But that night, she didn’t even seem to be listening. She interrupted me midsentence to ask where her daddy was.
“He had a meeting to go to,” I said. “By the way, I told him about your eczema, and he asked me if I’d show you the right way to wash yourself down there. He’ll be glad you know how to clean yourself the right way now, but he said to tell you not to talk to him about it. Because he’s kind of shy about stuff like that. But I’m not, so whenever you have questions, you just come to me and I’ll answer them for you. Because that’s what your daddy wants, and I know it would be what your mommy would want, too. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
I rose from the chair next to her bed. “Nighty night then.”
“Nighty night.” I turned off her light and started toward the door.
“Kent?”
When I turned back, the moonlight through her window illuminated her silhouette. “Yeah?”
“Today at school, I started thinking about Mommy and I couldn’t remember her face at first. But then I could.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you take out one of the pictures of her from the photo album and put it in your school bag? Then you can put it in your desk and look at it whenever you need to. Okay?”
She nodded. Gave me a half-smile. “Do you think Mommy watches me up in heaven?” she asked.
I said I was sure she did. “Now if there’s nothing else, you’d better get to sleep. Okay?”
But there was something else. “Before?” she said. “When I was in the tub? How come you kissed me like that?”
I turned on her light. “Because I love you, Annie. I love you this much.” I spread my arms as wide as I could.
“And you love Donald and Daddy, too. Right?”
“Yeah, sure. And I loved Gracie and your mom. But I love you best of all. Now that’s enough stalling. See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow,” she said.
After I left her room, I paced, telling myself I could never touch her that way again. I’d done it once, and that was going to be it. Because I did love her. I did want to keep her safe. And what if Uncle Chick or Donald found out about what I’d done? That time we’d arm-wrestled at the kitchen table, they’d both taken me in like ten seconds. Either one of them could beat me to a bloody pulp. I said it out loud, as if that made the promise more legit. “Never again. Never, ever.”
I was sprawled on the co
uch watching TV when Donald walked in. “Hey,” he said. “Pop home?”
“Not yet. You eat? There’s a can of beef stew on the counter.”
He said he and some of his friends had gone out for pizza. “Well, I’ve got a big chem test tomorrow. Guess I’ll go study and then hit the sack. Annie okay?” I told him she was fine.
When Uncle Chick staggered in, he nodded in my direction and went to the kitchen for a beer. “What are you watching?” he asked when he came back to the living room and squinted at the TV.
“The news,” I said. What the hell else would I be watching at eleven o’clock? He flopped down on the couch next to me, stinking of booze, and the two of us stared at the news footage: the race riots down south, the new pope they’d just picked to replace the one who croaked. “Whassiz name? Cardinal Martini?” Uncle Chick said.
“Montini.”
“Cardinal Martini, dry with a twist.” He laughed like what he’d just said was fucking hilarious.
Annie must have been waiting up for him, because when she heard his voice she came out of her room and made a beeline for him. Uh-oh, I thought.
“Hey, Anna Banana,” he said. “What are you doing up so late?” She said she couldn’t sleep. “No? How come?” She looked right at me when he asked her that, but Uncle Chick was too crocked to notice. I put my finger to my lips.
“I just can’t,” she said.
“Well, I tell you what. Why don’t I tuck you in and sprinkle some magic sleepy dust on you the way Mommy used to. Then you’ll go right to sleep.” When he stood up, he lost his balance, banging into the coffee table and knocking it over. “Whoopsy daisy,” he said. “How’d that get there?”
The last thing I needed was for the two of them to be alone in there, and for her to squeal about bath time. “Magic sleepy dust?” I said. “Gee, that sounds like fun. Can I join you?”
“Sure,” Chick said, unaware that Annie was shaking her head no.
Uncle Chick was home on time for the next couple of nights, and over the weekend, Donald was hanging around the house more than usual. But the following Monday evening, it was just the two of us again. I knocked on the door while she was in there, taking her bath. “Hey, you almost out?” I asked. “I’ve been waiting to take a shower.”