this film without her. And it’s one of those crazy stories, right? We worked on it, on and off, for ten years. Life intervened for both of us in a number of ways, and sometimes, the feeling was bleak, like we would never finish the film. But we had to, you know? After a while, what can you say, other than that obsession takes over?”
“And now,” the interviewer says, “all this acclaim. What does that feel like?”
“Marvelous,” the great filmmaker responds. “But even if the film had never been finished, it would’ve been worth it to spend so much time with somebody I love so—”
Kelly, palm to the door, misjudges her force, and the door squeaks open a bit, hinges crying out. Max goes quiet, rustles the sheets, pretending he’d been asleep the whole time.
“Max?” she says. “Who you talking to?”
He grabs the television remote and hits a button, killing the light. “Nothing,” he says after a hiccup. “I was asleep.”
“Can I come in?” Kelly asks. Max doesn’t answer. She opens the door. He lies on the bed on his back. “Scoot over.”
“Why?”
“Now.”
He presses himself against the wall. The bed opens its arms wide enough for them both, and she lies down next to her brother. He faces the wall and lies there, stiff. She can see his bare shoulder; he’s probably naked under the covers.
“I need to tell you something,” she says, figuring now’s as good a time as any. She feels more or less awake—or at least unlikely to sleep any time soon.
“What?”
“It’s about Dad.”
“What,” he says, though the question mark at the word’s end has vanished.
She takes a deep breath, then tells him—tells him about the surprise call a week ago, tells him about the woman with the sonorous voice of a high school music teacher who had found Kelly’s phone number in her husband’s things, who said, “Stay the fuck away from Miles.” Before Kelly could say anything, the woman hung up. Kelly looked at the caller ID on her cell phone: the number began with 207—the Maine area code. Kelly kept trying it back, wanting to tell the woman that she had no idea what she was talking about, that she wasn’t—what, the mistress to a Mainer? Kelly had never bothered to discard her own 207 number, had not been able to bring herself to do it, in fact; so it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that, simply going by her phone number, she could be confused for someone still living (and cheating) in Maine.
“And so you think it was Dad’s wife, or girlfriend, or whatever? Because the guy’s name happened to be Miles?”
“Come on, It’s got to be him.” But Max remains silent. Staring at his back, she asks: “I mean, does she even know about us, that her new husband has twin adult kids living in the same town?”
“Well,” Max grumbles, “one adult twin living in town.”
“If he’s still here, don’t you want to find him? Don’t you want to meet him?”
“It’s a mistake to do that. It won’t help anyone.”
Eyes still on her brother’s back, she wonders: Was his skin always so scaly, giving off this easy-to-peel vibe? She saw skin like this in the desert, but rarely in Maine. “You can come with me, you know, to see him,” she says. “He owes us.”
“Owes us what? Money? Is that what you want?”
“I want—”
“Why don’t you try working? Mom worked.”
“Oh my God,” she says, “don’t start this Mom-was-a-fucking-saint bullshit with me right now. I really, really can’t handle it.”
“It’s a mistake,” Max says. He clears his throat and stirs, but he still faces away from her. The blanket falls a bit, revealing more of Max’s shoulder. Kelly focuses on it—focuses on one long hair that reaches out from his skin.
“I met him,” Max says.
Kelly notices for the first time a tower fan in the corner, making a low hum, rattling. For a moment this sound confuses her and almost puts her in a trance. But then it hits: “You met him?”
“He knocked on the door here one afternoon,” Max says, “and handed me a business card. He had scribbled his address on the back. Told me to stop by.”
Her face heats up. “You never told me?”
Max shakes his head against the pillow.
Kelly exhales and realizes that her anger toward her brother is already fading—if it existed at all. Frankly, she understands: their line of communication has always—or at least since Mom’s death—been a clogged artery.
“Okay,” she says after a moment. “So where does he live?”
“Now? I don’t know. When I got to his house, I saw boxes everywhere. He told me he was in the middle of moving. I don’t know to where. He asked me if I wanted anything to eat. I said no. So he made me a drink instead. Something red, I remember. We sat across from each other in the living room. It felt like we were waiting for someone else to show up. He started to ask me questions about myself. He asked me if I went to school and where I worked. He kept saying, ‘I want to know about my son,’ like we were talking about someone who wasn’t there. I didn’t ask him anything. I didn’t want to know anything. I answered his questions until it got dark. He kept giving me drinks. I never drink. I don’t know why I drank there. ‘Do you have any of your mother’s things?’ he asked me finally. It was the first time we talked about her. First time he said anything about her. I told him that I had some of Mom’s things in boxes. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m looking for something in particular. Something I gave her.’ So he described it to me: the gold necklace with the locket and the engraving.”
Kelly remembers this necklace, of course—remembers that Mom kept it stowed in a drawer. Sometimes she took it out and fastened it around her neck. One morning, she told Kelly, “This was the first thing Miles ever gave me. This was from his family. See the engraving?” Kelly peered at the locket and saw the initials, K.B. “Those are his grandmother’s initials,” Mom said, “Katherine Bennett.” But they weren’t Mom’s initials—not even close. So why did he give it to her? “Sentimental value,” she said. “He gave it to me so I could give it to you.” “But those aren’t my initials either,” Kelly Enright said. “Sure,” Mom said, “but they were supposed to be. And then after he left, he asked for it back. Can you believe that?” Mom stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray. “I told him I threw it out with all his other bullshit. But I didn’t. No.” Mom looked at herself in the mirror and caressed the gold locket with the blue-polished nail of her index finger. “No, this necklace the Bennett family is never getting back.” Mom clasped it—K.B.—around Kelly’s neck, and she caught sight of herself in the mirror; the gold seemed to make her entire face shimmer. She felt her father hanging around her neck. It was a lovely, glinting piece of work; Kelly missed this necklace once Mom had laid it back in the drawer. Years later, when Mom died, Kelly rummaged through the dresser, hunting for this piece of jewelry: I’ll take this one thing, she thought, just this one thing. But she couldn’t find K.B.
Max continues his story: “He wanted the necklace back, but I told him I didn’t know where it was. Some of Mom’s stuff just vanished, and I don’t know to where. So he told me to spend the night. I was in no condition to go anywhere. So I agreed. In the morning, I went downstairs, and I heard voices in the kitchen. So I peeked around the corner. I saw them, heard them there, Dad and a woman, much younger than him, probably in her twenties. Dad was telling her something about me. He was telling her that I was there, but you know what he called me? He called me his nephew. I watched them for a minute—I watched the way she watched him as he talked, with her eyes big, with her whole face orange like he was a light shining