Verbina’s pale right hand, grooming it, and he supposed that he was
unfair in his judgment of them. Other men might find them attractive in
a strange way. Though, to him, their limbs seemed too thin, other men
might see them as supple and erotic, like the legs of dancers and the
arms of acrobats. Their skin was clear as milk, and their breasts were
full. Because he was blessedly free of any interest in sex, he was not
qualified to judge their appeal.
They habitually wore as little as possible, as little as he would
tolerate before ordering them to put on more clothes. They kept the
house excessively warm in winter, and more often dressed-as now-in
T-shirts and short shorts or panties barefoot and bare-limbed. Only his
mother’s room, which was now his, was kept cooler, because he had closed
the vents there. Without his presence to demand a degree of modesty
they would have roamed the house in the nude.
Lazily, lazily, Violet filed Verbina’s thumbnail, and they both stared
at it was intently as if the meaning of life was to read in the curve of
the half-moon or the arc of the nail itself. Candy raided the
refrigerator, removing a chunk of canned ham, a package of Swiss cheese,
mustard, pickles, and a quart of milk. He got bread from one of the
cupboards and sat on a rail back chair at the age-yellowed table.
The table, chairs, cabinets, and woodwork had once been glossy white,
but they had not been painted since before his mother died. They were
yellow-white now, gray-white in the seams and corners, crackle-finished
by time. The dais patterned wallpaper was soiled and, in a couple of
places, peeling along the seams, and the chintz curtains hung limp
covered with grease and dust.
Candy made and consumed two thick ham-and-cheese sandwiches. He gulped
the milk straight from the carton.
Suddenly all twenty-six cats, which had been sprawling languidly around
the twins, sprang up simultaneously, proceeded to the pet door in the
bottom of the larger kitchen door, and went outside in orderly fashion.
Time to make their toilet, evidently.
Violet and Verbina didn’t want the house smelling of litter boxes.
Candy closed his eyes and took a long swallow of milk.
He would have preferred it at room temperature or even slightly warm. It
tasted vaguely like blood, though not as pleasant pungent; it would have
been more like blood if it had not been chilled.
Within a couple of minutes the cats returned. Now Verbina was lying on
her back, with her head propped on a pillow, eyes closed, lips moving as
if talking to herself, though no sound issued from her. She extended
her other slender hand so his sister could meticulously file those nails
too. Her long legs were spread, and Candy could see between her smooth
thighs. She was wearing only a T-shirt and flimsy peach-colored panties
that defined rather than concealed the cleft of her womanhood. The
silent cats swarmed to her, draped themselves over her, more concerned
about propriety than she was, and they regarded Candy accusatory, as if
they knew that he’d been staring.
He lowered his eyes and studied the crumbs on the table.
Violet said, “Frankie was here.”
At first he was more surprised by the fact that she had spoken than by
what she had said. Then the meaning of those three words reverberated
through him as if he were a brass gong struck by a mallet. He stood up
so abruptly that he knocked over his chair.
“He was here? In the house?”
Neither the cats nor Verbina twitched at the crash of the chair or the
sharpness of his voice. They lay somnolent, indifferent.
“Outside,” Violet said, still sitting on the floor beside her reclining
sister, working on the other twin’s nails. She had a low, almost
whispery voice.
“Watching the house from the Eugenia hedge.”
Candy glanced at the night beyond the windows.
“When?”
“Around four o’clock.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“He wasn’t here long. He’s never here long. A minute or two, then he
goes. He’s afraid.”
“You saw him?”
“I knew he was there.”
“You didn’t try to stop him from leaving?”