I shake my head, although I know. Of course I know. It’s always the same. I can’t imagine why you think I’d be interested. Mr. DuChamp always used to say that guests should never talk about themselves. They should make polite conversation on topics of interest to everyone.
“It was at a concert.” You say the name of a band. A band I’ve never heard of.
“They were okay,” said Charles, “but you were amazing.”
Only the fact that it would be a massive breach of etiquette prevents me from making a gagging sound.
You both get into a long, dull conversation weighing the merits of Ladyhawke, Franz Ferdinand, Le Tigre, the Faint, and the Killers. Charles forgets himself so far as to exclaim how happy he is that Devo are making another album. Your blank stare is warning enough for him to clear his throat and suggest that you would like more wine.
You would. In fact, you drink it so fast that he pours yet another glassful. A fine bright color has come into your cheeks. Your eyes shine. I doubt you have ever looked lovelier.
Mr. DuChamp always used to say that appearances weren’t everything. He said that the way a woman carried herself, the way she spoke, and the perfection of her manners were more important than how red her lips and cheeks were, or how shining her eyes. “Looks fade,” he said, “except, of course, in our case.” He would raise a glass to me. “‘Age cannot wither her,’” he would say, “‘nor custom stale her infinite variety.’”
Whatever that meant.
I lift the soup spoon to my mouth, smile, and lower it again. It was Mr. DuChamp who taught me how to pretend that I was eating, how gestures and laughter distracted your guests so that they’d never notice you didn’t take a bite of food.
Mr. DuChamp taught us lots of things. He taught Charles to stand up when a lady entered the room, and how to take a lady’s coat. He told me never to refer to an adult by his or her first name and to sit with my legs uncrossed, always. He didn’t like pants and didn’t approve of girls wearing them. He taught us to be punctual for all social engagements, even though once he moved in with us, the only social engagements we ever had were with him.
When he first came, it was horrible. I woke in the middle of the night because I heard something downstairs. I thought it was my parents fighting — they fought a lot: about the house, which always needed repairs, about her habit of hiding booze and pills, about girls in the office who called him on the weekends. I padded down to the kitchen in my nightgown to see the new Corian countertops splashed with blood.
Mom was on the floor with a strange man hunched over her. All I could see of Dad was his foot sticking out from behind the island.
I must have gasped. Mr. DuChamp looked up. The lower half of his face was red.
“Oh,” he said. “Hello.”
I made it all the way to the stairs before he caught me.
Charles clears our soup bowls and returns carrying the main course. It’s lasagna, which is the only thing I know how to cook. I know Mr. DuChamp would say I ought to learn more elegant cooking: how to make pâté, clear soups, coq au vin, lamb stuffed with raisins and figs, maybe in a sweet plum sauce. But it’s hard to learn when you don’t have much money for ingredients and can’t taste what you’ve made.
The lasagna is a little burned around the edges, but I don’t think you’ll care. You’re too tipsy, and anyway, hardly anyone makes it through the main course.
As you dig into your food, I wonder if you notice that there are heavy curtains across all the windows here and that they are thick with dust. I wonder if you notice the strange scratch marks on the floor. I wonder if you notice that nothing in the house has been updated since 1984.
I wait for Charles to move, but he doesn’t. He just grins at you like an idiot.
“Can I see you in the kitchen?” I ask Charles in a way where it’s not really a question.
He looks over at me like he’s only just remembered I’m here at the table, too.
“Sure,” he mumbles. “Okay.”
We push back our chairs. Mom used to complain about our kitchen because it wasn’t the cool, open-plan kind. She wanted to knock down one of the walls, but Dad said that was too expensive, and anyway, who wanted an old Victorian house with a modern kitchen.
I’m glad it’s the old kind, so I can close the door and you can’t hear.
“We don’t have any dessert,” I tell Charles.
“That’s okay,” he says. “I’ll go down to the corner store for ice cream.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t like her. She doesn’t pass the test.”
He slams his hand down on the counter. “No one passes your stupid test.”
I look at Charles in his skinny tie and shiny, worn shirt. I am so tired of him. He is so tired of me. It’s been so long.
“It’s a big deal,” I say. “Turning someone into one of us. They’ll be with us forever.”
“I want her with me forever,” Charles says, and I wonder if you know that, that he feels that way about you. And I wonder if Charles knows that he said “me” instead of “us.”
“She’s smart,” he says. “She’s funny. She likes the same music as me.”
“She’s boring. She has bad manners, too.”
“Manners,” Charles says, like it’s a swear word. “You and your obsession with manners.”
“Mr. DuChamp says —,” I start, but he cuts me off.
“Mr. DuChamp killed our parents!” he yells, loud enough that maybe you might hear. “And anyway, we haven’t seen him in months. He’s off being vizier or chamberlain or whatever it is he does.”
Charles knows perfectly well what Mr. DuChamp does. He looks after the household of the greatest vampire in our state. He has his ear. It is a very lofty position. He used to tell us over and over the story of how he rose from a lowly nestling to planning the state dinners where he entertained members of the elite from New Orleans to Washington. Charles found the stories boring, but I was always fascinated.
Even though I didn’t like Mr. DuChamp, I liked hearing about how he succeeded in drawing the threads of power around himself. He seized opportunities other people wouldn’t even have recognized as opportunities. I liked to think that in his position, I would have seized my chance, too. I guess that’s what everyone likes to think.
“Mr. DuChamp taught us how to behave,” I say. “Our parents weren’t going to do that. If you don’t know how to behave, then you’re no better than anyone else.”
Charles looks stubborn. “Fine, if you want to do everything that guy said, remember that he said we should make more like ourselves.”
“Only if they’re worthy! He said some people don’t care about bettering themselves.”
So many lessons. At first, how to hold a wine glass, a fork, not to ever eat with your knife, no chewing gum, speaking when you’re spoken to, sitting with your hands in your lap, to say please and excuse me. Later: to kill quickly, to be subtle in finding your prey, not to make others clean up your mess, and the three Bs: to bite cleanly, then to burn and then bury the remains, unless you wanted more like yourself.
“It’s not for everyone,” I say. “He warned us.”
“This isn’t about him,” Charles says. “You’re the one who doesn’t want anyone else around. You’re the one who doesn’t want more of us. How come I always have to be the one who hunts? How come we always have to eat the girls I bring home? What about your friends? Oh, right, you don’t have any.”
I make an involuntary sound, like the hiss of air going out of a balloon. “I can’t —,” I start, then take a deep breath and start again. “When I walk around the mall alone, all the other girls are with their mothers. I used to go into this one arcade, but the boys there wouldn’t even talk to me. They’re not interested in girls, at least not girls my age. You can go out in the world alone. You can pretend to have a young-looking face, but I’m a child to everyone I meet.”