Blood Sisters_ Vampire Stories by Women - Paula Guran Page 0,150

when she answered calmly. “There are worse things.”

“Kelly, you’re beautiful and brilliant. You could have any man on this campus. Ron is just so ordinary.”

“Ron is good for me, Brenda. I don’t expect you to understand.” But then she assuaged my hurt feelings by trying to explain. “He takes me out of myself.”

That was the last time Kelly and I talked about anything important. It was practically the last time we talked at all. For the rest of freshman year I might have had a single room, except for intimate, hurtful evidence of her—stockings hung like empty skin on the closet doorknob to dry, bottles of perfume and makeup like a string of amulets across her nightstand—all of it carefully on her side of the room. The next year she roomed with a sorority sister, somebody whom I didn’t know and whom I didn’t think Kelly knew very well, either.

I was surprised and a little offended to get a wedding invitation. I told myself I had no obligation to go. I went anyway, and cried, and pressed her hand. To this day I’m not sure she knew who I was when I went through the reception line. I spent most of the reception making conversation with Kelly’s parents, a gaunt pale woman who looked very much like Kelly and a tall fair robust man. They were proud of their daughter; Ron was a fine young man who would go far in this world. Her father was jocular and verbose; he danced with all the young women, several times with me. Her mother barely said a word, seldom got out of her chair; her smile was like the winter sun.

At the time I didn’t know that I’d noticed all that about Kelly’s parents. I hadn’t thought about them in years, probably had never thought about them directly. But the impressions were all there, ready for the taking. If I’d just paid attention, I might have been warned. And then I don’t know what I would have done.

Since college, Kelly and I had barely kept in touch. For a while I had kept approximate track of her through mutual friends and the alumni newsletter. I moved out West because the dry climate might be better for Daddy’s health, got a graduate degree in planning and a job with the Aurora city government. Left Daddy alone too much, then hired a stranger to nurse him so I could live my own life. As if there was such a thing.

From sporadic Christmas cards, I knew that Kelly and her family had lived in various parts of Europe; Ron was an attorney specializing in international law and a high-ranking officer in the military, and his job had something to do with intelligence, maybe the CIA. I knew that they had two sons. In every communication, no matter how brief, Kelly mentioned that she had never worked a day outside the home, that when Ron was away she sometimes went for days without talking to an adult, that her languages were getting rusty except for the language of the country she happened to be living in at the time. It seemed to me that even her English was awkward, childlike, although it was hard to tell from the few sentences she wrote.

Last year I’d received a copy of a form Christmas letter on pale green paper with wreaths along the margin, ostensibly composed by Ron. It was so eloquent and interesting and grammatically sophisticated that at first I was a little shocked. Then I decided—with distaste, but also with a measure of relief that should have been a clue if I’d been paying attention—that Kelly must still be ghostwriting.

For some reason, I’d kept that letter, though as far as I could remember I hadn’t answered it. After Kelly’s call, I’d pulled it out and re-read it. The letter described the family’s travels in the Alps; though it read like a travel brochure, the prose was competent and there were vivid images. It outlined the boys’ many activities and commented, “Without Kelly, of course, none of this would be possible.” It mentioned that Kelly had been ill lately, tired: “The gray wet winters of northern Europe really don’t agree with her. We’re hoping that some of her sparkle will return when we move back home.”

I’d thought there was nothing significant in that slick, chatty, green-edged letter. I’d been wrong.

Kelly’s house was very orderly and close and clean. She led me down a short hallway lined with murky