You Let Me In - Camilla Bruce Page 0,2

found “an ounce of happiness,” that I was “settling down”—even with Tommy Tipp.

They were mystified, I think, Olivia and her friends, and Mother too, as to why Tommy Tipp chose me. He was dashingly handsome in a dangerous way with a shock of blond hair and very blue eyes, body lean and skin tanned. He was the man all the women in S— dreamed of at night while lying in their husbands’ arms. He was at the center of that guilty, sweet lust they could not curb, no matter how respectable, how well adjusted and successful, they were. Tommy Tipp could ignite a fire in virgins and widows alike. Married women were his specialty; they cost him very little both in effort and in risk. Before he met me, he made a business of it, sleeping around for gifts and favors. He was a champion of secret daytime trysts, every one of the women thinking herself the only one. We all knew he had been to prison, of course, that his past was littered with battery and theft. S— is a small town. But who doesn’t love a redeemed villain, an angel with the alluring taint of sin? I never was so blind, never wanted him for being dangerous; I already had a dangerous lover—already knew the taste of sin. No wonder the ladies were cross, though, when his gorgeous body was found in the woods.

But I’m moving too fast, we’re not there yet. A lot of things happened before that.

* * *

One thing you must know: I was never a good girl.

Never like your mother, all compliant and soft. She reveled in praise, that one, twinkled like a star when someone told her she did well. I was the awkward older sister, ungainly and thin where she was soft and round. Olivia’s hair shone like polished copper, mine was wavy and brown. Her skin was like milk, mine marred by freckles, but a sprinkle of pigments makes no bad girl, of course, it runs deeper than that, runs in the blood. Some of us are just born wrong.

Your mother would have told you we were never close. How we were never the same, she and I. Especially after the rumors and, of course, after the trial, she was eager to forsake me.

I remember it differently, though. I remember summer vacations spent at the seaside, small golden anchors pinned to our chests. I remember looking through the glass-like water in shallow ponds, teasing crabs, collecting seashells. I remember sand between our toes, sweet ice cream melting on our tongues. I remember cake on the porch, fat pieces of fruit embedded like jewels in the sponge. The setting sun before us bleeding a golden light that turned her hair into a coppery river, turned her milky skin a darker, softer shade.

I remember the dolls we got one Christmas morning; pale skinned and black of hair. The home we made for them under the dining room table; white walls of tablecloth, eggcups as goblets and silken pillows as thrones. Medieval princesses both. We picked roses in the garden and adorned their hair, wrought thorny stems as crowns, and had our brother, Ferdinand, serenade them with his recorder, which he played with zeal if not delight.

I remember laughing together, like sisters.

I remember that, and more.

Olivia would tell you it never happened.

Maybe she’s forgotten that it did.

III

Mother was a stern woman, maybe not too happy. Her hair when she was young was a mass of yellow curls, her lips painted a stark shade of red. Her body was lithe and very thin. She liked to wear pencil skirts in dark blue and bright red. Her boatneck sweaters were striped or dotted. Her everyday jewels were pieces of glass set in cheap frames; pure colors and pearls of polished metal. Her shoes had high but sensible heels; thick stubs, not thin spikes. Her nylons never tore.

Father was a big man with fleshy lips and cheeks like a basset hound. His skin held a shade between scarlet and blue. Stars like fireworks bloomed on his cheeks where vessels had erupted. He used to be a boxer back in the day, but after we arrived, his litter of cubs, he was a salesman honing a taste for vodka.

I sometimes imagine the two of them meeting by the ring, floor stained with sweat and spit, a spatter of crimson blood. His body was fit then; hard muscles and slick skin. She was perky and young, nothing but lips