My Cousin's Keeper (4 page)

“Honey,” Dad asked Mom quietly, “why is Renee back in town? What's she after?”

Mom closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don't quite know. Not yet.”

“She needs something,” Dad said. “Or she wants something.”

Mom sighed. “Yes. And there's nothing I can do about it, except be patient and wait to see what happens.”

“What happens,” Dad mumbled. “What happens is that something
will
happen.”

“I think it's Bon,” Mom said. “I don't think Renee is coping all that well.”

“Ah,” Dad said. “I think I'm getting the picture.”

It took until the weekend for my aunt to visit. Instead of the boyfriend and the big black pickup, there was a small, ratty hatchback parked at our front fence. It had out-of-state license plates, a clue to where Bon and my aunt had traveled from.

She had come alone. “Where's Bon?” Mom asked.

“He's back in the camper drawing pictures,” Aunt Renee replied.

“He's by himself?” Mom asked, concerned.

My aunt did not reply.

I was relieved Bon wasn't in the house, that I wouldn't have to talk to him or be asked to find things to do together — and have to make sure he wasn't touching or stealing my things.

But having my aunt in the house felt a little strange — and uncomfortable as well. It started exactly as I remembered it from before, with my aunt smiling at me and saying hello in a way that had me wondering if she had forgotten my name. She fussed over Gina, cuddling her and talking to my sister as though she were three years old rather than six. Then she ignored us altogether and began to talk to Mom, who freaked out a little when Aunt Renee went to light a cigarette right there in the middle of the kitchen. Instead, Mom steered her out to our back deck, a mug of coffee in one hand and the cigarette nursed in the other. No longer the center of Aunt Renee's attention, Gina wandered down to her playhouse, which sat in a corner of our backyard.

Dad had hung around for a little while before announcing, “I'm off to the shed. I need to get that mower fixed.” He headed for the steps, leaving Mom behind on the deck with her sister.

“Are you sure Bon is OK by himself?” Mom asked again. “I was hoping to see him. The kids were looking forward to him visiting again.”

I wasn't.
My mouth dropped open in surprise, but nobody seemed to notice. Or at least Mom pretended not to.

“He was told to behave and wait,” my aunt replied.

Mom went to say something more, but then changed her mind.

My aunt talked and talked . . . and
talked.
There was something secretive about whatever she was saying, and she kept ashing her cigarette with quick taps against the edge of the ashtray on the table. Mom listened patiently and didn't seem to get much of a chance to say or ask my aunt much in return. My attention hovered between the morning sports show I'd turned the TV on to watch and the conversation on the back deck. From what I had overheard, it seemed that Aunt Renee had been through lots of man dramas, job dramas, and rented-house dramas. I heard my aunt call Nan
our mother
. For the first time, I heard her mention Bon's name.

Are you listening to me?
I replayed that voice from Dad's birthday party and pictured the hand clenching Bon's face. Both bits of memory were tied together, as tight as a knot. I couldn't stop feeling uncomfortable about my aunt being here. I was used to Nan, Mom, Dad, and their friends, who asked us stuff about the things we liked, or who shared jokes with us and sometimes joined in our games. My aunt was a mixture of talkative light and unsettling shadow.

Suddenly, her voice was raised. “How did
you
get here?”

I heard Mom's soothing voice saying something I couldn't make out, before she called, “Kieran! Come here, please!”

Bon was at our back steps, silent and staring.

“I asked you a question,” Aunt Renee said to him.

“I walked,” he replied. “I remembered the house and the way to get here.”

“Bon, it's lovely to see you again,” Mom told him with a smile, before turning to her sister. “Renee, really, it's fine. He's very welcome. He and Kieran can do something together. Kieran?”

“I was going to help Dad,” I said, my heart sinking. Dad's shed was suddenly a quiet, welcome destination, though I wasn't sure what I was going to help Dad with exactly.

Mom shook her head firmly. “Renee and I are talking. You keep Bon company. Show him some computer games,” she suggested in an oddly bright voice.

“Mom,” I muttered a little desperately.

Then she added, “Or go outside and kick a ball around. Go for a bike ride. There're two bikes, after all, and a spare helmet he can wear.”

I hesitated long enough for Mom to frown a silent reply, a do-it-or-else death stare.

If Aunt Renee smelled of cigarettes, I knew from the first morning on the playground that Bon still had the scent of sweat and pee I'd noticed two years before. Which gave me at least one excuse not to get too close to him if it could be managed.

Bon had not even said anything like hello. “I don't have a bike,” he said to no one in particular. “I've never had a bike. Kids get those for Christmas.” He wore a blank, dreamy expression.

“Kids who behave themselves get presents,” Aunt Renee said to him, and though it sounded like an accusation, Bon did not reply.

“
Kieran
,”
Mom said a little more urgently.

“We've got a computer,” I said, telling him the obvious in a flat voice. “And there're games and stuff.” Unwillingly, I led him inside in the direction of the computer.
Why me?
I groaned to myself, thinking that whenever a friend from school visited, there had been easy, funny talk and always something to go and do. At least a computer game could mean no conversation, and that maybe I could escape, which I did after a few minutes of showing Bon a few games and sites. I left him sitting silently at the computer and ducked out the front door and down the side driveway, so that Mom wouldn't see that I had left Bon behind in the house.

“Another refugee,” Dad remarked when I turned up in his shed at the back end of the yard. He called his shed the Guys' Room. It was where he kept his weight-lifting and gym equipment, his workbench, and his beer fridge. There were sports posters on the walls and a calendar with a bikini girl holding a pair of shock absorbers. Sometimes Dad would have friends visiting. Ant and Split Pin were my favorites. Ant worked on his parents' sheep farm ten miles out of town, where he was known as Anthony by his mom and dad. Dad called him a human database of funny stories. Split Pin was so tall he had to duck his head whenever he walked through a doorway, and he had once been a state champion soccer player. I had seen his real name, Sam Pinnock, in gold letters on the sports record board that hung on the wall inside the front doors at school. If Ant and Split Pin were visiting, it gave me a good excuse to hang around, knowing that Dad's buddies would include me in their talk and jokes. I'd sit with them on folding chairs around the doorway of the Guys' Room, laughing along and joining in with their conversations.

Dad had the shed to himself this time, until I wandered in.

“So your aunt's still up there going on and on,” he remarked. He had part of the lawn mower dismantled, and there were carburetor and gasket parts laid out on the workbench. “She was driving me crazy. Please don't tell your mother I said that about her sister.”

“Bon's here,” I said. “He walked.”

“I know, I heard the fuss your aunt just made. Poor kid. So where is he now?”

“Playing on the computer,” I replied.

“Hmm. Not interested in the great outdoors, then?”

“I guess not,” I answered.

But soon after, we heard voices in the backyard. Bon had teamed up with Gina, and they were over at the bikes. Gina's bike was small and bright pink, with beads on the spokes that rattled around when she pedaled. I could see Bon sizing up the other bikes, the nearly new BMX that had been my Christmas present and the older bike that it had replaced. He glanced down to where I stood in the shed doorway watching, then chose the older bike.

Our house might have been old and a bit cramped, but our backyard was large enough to ride bikes around and have a bit of fun. There was a bump and a slight drop where I could get my bike airborne if I pedaled hard enough, and a patch of gravel in the far corner where I could do skids and slides. Gina managed the yard well for a six-year-old who had recently asked Dad to take the training wheels off her bike. She pushed the little pink bike into motion and then pedaled furiously across the grass toward the back fence, looking quickly back two or three times to see where Bon was.

“Come on,” she shrieked at him. “I'm racing you!”

Bon didn't set off quite as fast. One foot slipped from the pedal, and his bike twitched from left to right. Each time he pushed off, the bike wobbled and he stared intently at the handlebars and the ground, not quite able to get himself balanced. I guessed that he didn't know much about cogs and gears, either. If I'd been close enough, I'm sure his knuckles would have shown white from him holding the grips so tightly. It took him a while to catch up with Gina, and it looked as though he had barely ridden a bike in his life. It was painful to watch.

“You OK over there?” Dad called to Bon.

“Nope!” I laughed. “He's going to crash.” There was no reaction from Bon, save for one panicked glance.

“Doesn't look as though he's ever ridden a bike before,” Dad said. Then he looked sideways at me. “I remember you being a bit wobbly on a bike, too, at first. He's giving it his best shot.”

I pretended I hadn't heard. Of course I was wobbly the first time on a bike, but I reassured myself that I had been a little kid who never even needed training wheels. Dad went back to his workbench then and left me to watch the two bike riders — Gina racing and Bon wobbling.

Shortly after came his mom's voice. “Where are you? Time to go!” She hadn't said his name. Bon wheeled the bike back to its resting place under the carport.

Dad waved a relieved good-bye in the direction of Bon and his mom, then disappeared back inside the Guys' Room. I saw him roll his eyes and shake his head.

“Are you coming to play tomorrow, Bon?” Gina asked, trotting along behind him as they walked out to their car. She at least found him interesting.

Mom came to find me.

“Why are you down here?” she demanded.

Dad blinked and looked a little surprised. “Fixing the mower — why? What's happened?”

“Not
you
,” she groaned. “Kieran. He was supposed to be in the house looking after Bon. Weren't you?” She eyed me sharply. “Go and play,” she instructed. Then she stepped into the Guys' Room and pulled the door closed behind her.

I stayed nearby, eavesdropping.

“Well,” came Mom's voice. “You won't believe what Renee's just asked.”

“Try me,” I heard Dad reply.

“It was about Bon. She wants to leave him here.”

“What, for a little vacation?”

“More than that.”

Their voices dropped to a low hum, apart from the one swearword I heard Dad use.

I found my bike and rode aimlessly around the backyard and around my sister. Gina chattered about Bon and how she thought it was nice to have him as a cousin. I tried to make sense of whatever it was my aunt had said, and I hoped that my mom's anxious face and voice did not mean what I started to imagine.

“What did Aunt Renee want? It sounded important,” I asked later.

“It was,” Mom replied patiently. “But for now it's just between us adults. It's not anything you need to be worrying about.”

“But you were talking about Bon,” I persisted. “It's something about him.”

I had pushed just that bit too hard, and I got the lecture from Mom that I didn't want to hear — how Bon was my cousin, that I needed to be a lot nicer to him. And was I helping him settle in at his new school?

I went into my room to peel off my sneakers and socks. And there on the bed sat my missing white horse and armored knight. Gone for two years, they had reappeared to ride across the hills of my blanket and pillow. Something about the knight seemed different. His outstretched arms still carried his flag and sword, but the flag was now wrapped in a small sheet of folded paper. When I picked it off and opened the folds, there was a message in tiny, messy writing, and it took a little while to figure out what it said.

Bon had written,
We were borrowed and have been on many adventures. Now at last we are home
.

Of course I pretended not to be interested.

But whenever I saw her on the playground, I tried to walk near to where she was, or somehow make whatever game my friends and I were playing veer close to Julia and the friends she had made. I hoped there would be a reason or excuse for her to talk to me, and I tried to hear what she was talking about, so that after a while, the sound of her voice was in my head whenever I wanted it. What spoiled this every time was the fact that wherever she was, Bon was there, too. Julia's new friends seemed to have become his friends, all of them girls. Bon kept away from us boys.