After our huge meal and a number of pints of beer at the Black Pig, Jack and I stumbled up the narrow stairs to our room. It was an adorable garretty place with a dormer window. You could imagine Mr. Shakespeare sitting at the little desk, writing sonnets with a feather. But it was tiny. There was a wardrobe, a little sink, a reading chair…and only one bed, even smaller than the one I’d shared with Alistair.
“This looks like a single room,” I said.
“Yeah. It was the only one they had.” He gave me a questioning look. “I hope, um, that’s going to be OK…? If you don’t want…um, there’s a chair over there. I’m good sleeping sitting up. Lots of practice on trains and stuff. No problem.”
I put my arms around him and nuzzled his neck. “I’ll be happy to share the bed with you, Jack.”
He gave me a deep, lingering kiss and pulled me down onto the silky coverlet.
Part of me wanted to make wild love then and there. But my still-damp pant legs reminded me I hadn’t showered in two days. Alistair would have had a fit. He wouldn’t even kiss me if I hadn’t recently bathed. Besides, a shower would sober me up some. I was feeling a little dizzy.
“I don’t suppose there’s a bathroom?” I said, looking over at the little sink. “Or do we have to go back downstairs to shower?”
“The landlady said the bath is on the floor below us—but why don’t we wait until morning?” He kissed me again.
“No. I really need to wash some of this grit off.” A sponge bath in the little sink wouldn’t do it. Especially in front of Jack. Besides, this whole thing felt like a new beginning. I didn’t want any trace of Alistair on me.
But he didn’t get it. “Oh, come on. Pretend we’re dirty hippies.” He rolled me over and kissed me again.
As my head hit the pillow, I felt something small and hard under my head. I reached around and grabbed a round, foil-wrapped piece of chocolate.
“Mmm,” Jack said. “Is there another one?”
We looked around, but there was only the one.
“Single room,” I said. “Go ahead. You can have it. Eat slow and I’ll be back before you know it.” I jumped up to get my bath things from my pack.
“No way. Let’s take that shower together.” He sat up and put the chocolate on the desk. “I know better than to take candy from you, Nicky Conway.” He untied his boots.
“You’re going to tell another embarrassing story about me when I was a kid, aren’t you?” I dug through my pack, looking for my robe. The dizziness was getting worse. I’d been stupid to drink all that beer.
Jack laughed as he started to unbutton his shirt. “The embarrassment is mine. I’m the one who ate your pig.”
Now I was beginning to think he was making all this stuff up. “Do you expect me to believe I had a pet pig I’ve totally forgotten about?”
“A candy pig.” He laughed again. “It was Christmas time and I was at your house with Wogs. You did your little cowgirl number and Count Santa Claus gave you a marzipan pig, like he always did, and I snatched it out of your little hand and bit off its head.” He laughed again. “I’ve never seen you so mad. You took out your guns and threatened to shoot me, so I took off and you chased me around the house and got so frustrated you threw one of your guns at me. But you missed. Then I had your gun and your pig. You screamed bloody murder, so Wogs and I shut you in her dad’s library.”
“You big meanie.” I finally found all my bath stuff and turned around. He had his shirt off and all those muscles looked awfully nice, but I was almost too dizzy to appreciate them. “I hope you got grounded or something.”
“Wogs did. But I got punished way worse than that. I was banned from Goose Hill forever. At least I think that’s why. That happened right around the time the Count went missing, so things got kind of strange around your place.”
“The Count went missing? At Christmas? After you took my gun?” A horrible memory—more feeling than thought—came rising from someplace inside me. I tried to push it back, but it took over: rage mixed with the taste of marzipan. And wanting. Desperately wanting that little pink pig. I had to get the Count to give me another one. But I couldn’t do my song without two guns. So I…
Pictures scrolled through my head. Clear as a movie. Not all wispy like a remembered dream—solid and real like it happened last week. I stood in Uncle Con’s study staring at that little pearl handled derringer. And pulled open the glass door. It was just the right size. Now I had two guns again so I could do my two-gun cowboy song and get another pig. I ran down to the guest house…
And there they were. My mother and the Count. In his bed. With no clothes on. I hated them for doing something so silly and stupid when I needed to do my song and get my candy.
They yelled at me to leave. My mom’s face was mean. I’d never seen her look at me like that. So I took my guns out of their holsters and said I’d shoot them both if they didn’t give me a pig and then—I did.
I pulled the trigger on the derringer. There was blood. All over the Count. My mom screamed. I ran. And ran, and…I felt dizzy and horrible.
What’s wrong? Jack stood and took my arm. “Are you sick?”
“I killed him,” My voice came out a deathly whisper. “Count Santa Claus. I shot him with my uncle’s derringer. The Count and my mom. There was so much blood…”
“Whoa!” Jack grabbed me by the shoulders and looked into my face “That’s crazy. You couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old when he disappeared. A real gun has a kick. A little child couldn’t have fired it.”
It did have a kick. It made my whole arm feel like I’d slammed into something. I could feel the pain-memory in my shoulder socket. And hear the pop. Not a bang like a cap pistol. A horribly loud pop. Even louder than her screaming.
I tried to get Jack to understand. “They must have been having an affair. But of course I didn’t get it. I thought they were playing and ignoring me.” I covered my eyes with my hands, as if that would stop me seeing what was in my head. Then it came to me—why my dad said all those cruel things later about how I should have died with my Mom—the reason he blamed me for her death.
Jack tried to get me to drink some water from the sink. “Here. You’re just drunk. My fault for buying you all that beer.”
I knew it wasn’t because I was drunk. In fact, my brain had never felt so clear.
“No. It’s not your fault, Jack. It’s mine. My dad was right. It was all my fault. She died the next summer. She jumped off that cliff. Because I killed the man she loved…”
Tears came. Not grown-up tears, but the huge, gulping sobs of a small child. I grabbed Jack and buried my face in his shoulder, trying to stifle the unearthly noise coming out of my own head.
When I was finally able to get my breath, I stood back and tried to regain some dignity. But without Jack holding me up, the dizziness was overwhelming. I made a step toward the bed.
That’s when I threw up. All that sausage and mash and beer and Spotted Dick—all over Jack’s boots on the floor beside the bed, all over me and the darling little room.
Jack found a towel and started wiping my face. I couldn’t look at him. I kept saying, “It’s my fault. It’s my fault” over and over.
“No.” He pulled my icky sweater off over my head. “It’s nobody’s fault but mine. I’m used to drinking with soldiers, not college girls. Geez. I must have poured a couple of quarts of alcohol into you. I don’t know what I was thinking.” He started mopping things up with amazing efficiency.
“Your boots! I ruined your boots.”
“They’ve seen way worse. Besides, if there’s anything you learn in the army, it’s how to clean up after a drunk.”
I had to get him to understand. Drunk or not, I’d let out the dark thing inside me and it wasn’t going back in. “This isn’t because I’m drunk. This is real. I remember. I know what happened. They were in bed together and I shot him.”
Jack sat me down on the side of the bed and handed me the glass of water again. “Nicky, that never happened. It couldn’t have. Later, I’ll explain to you why that is, but right now, we really need that shower—both of us.” He laughed at the muck that had rubbed off on his naked chest.
So we took off the rest of our clothes, put on our robes and tiptoed downstairs. But there was no shower. Only a bathtub—stubby and small, with only room for one. Ever the gentleman, Jack said I should take the first bath. I washed as quickly as I could and ran back upstairs, not wanting to be alone with the stuff in my head. He tucked me into the bed like a little kid and went down for his bath and said he’d be back in a minute. Maybe he was, but I was already out cold. I didn’t hear him come back in.
When I woke in the morning, he was asleep in the chair and the room smelled vaguely of vomit. He was gorgeous, even slack-jawed and snoring.
I felt unbeautiful and childish. I’d blown it and knew I couldn’t undo the damage I’d done—to my friendship with Jack, to my family and to the tragic, mysterious man we called Count Santa Claus.