The Keeper (13 page)

When they came into the house again, they saw the same thing. A naked woman, her back pressed up against the foot of the stairs. Blood. Eyes open, but unseeing.

Liz looked down. Her feet were inside a puddle of blood. She jumped back, and her shoes left wet, circular tracks on the floor. “Oh,” she said. She tried to wipe the blood from her Keds by scraping them against the walls and stairs, but instead she smeared everything she touched with red. “Oh!” She moved quickly, her body jerking, and then covered her face with her hands. “Get it off! Get it off!”

Something grabbed her.

Who grabbed her? It was the thing in the woods! It was her Father! It was Susan!

She screamed. Someone was speaking but she couldn’t make out the words. Bobby. His mouth was moving. He was trying to tell her something. He repeated himself a few times. “I found a pulse on her thigh,” he was saying. “She’s alive.”

She pushed away from him, opened the screen door, leaned outside, and vomited steamed broccoli and eight postdinner Keebler E. L. Fudge cookies onto a melting snowdrift. He held her shoulders. “We have to call for an ambulance,” he said. “Do you know CPR? She’s not breathing.”

Liz didn’t answer.

He shook her. “Do you know CPR?” She didn’t answer. “I’m going to call upstairs,” he said, leaping over the body and up the steps.

Liz looked at her sister. Blood trickled down the side of her face. It was exactly how Susan had looked in her dream. The room was very bright suddenly, and she heard the low buzzing of a fly. Her hand hovered near Susan’s cheek. She wanted to touch her. But then, no, she couldn’t. No, she didn’t want to. Because even though Susan’s eyes were blank and unblinking, even though the floor was red, she could feel Susan right now. She could feel Susan watching her.

She took a deep breath and stepped over the body and up the stairs. “Let’s go,” she said to Bobby, whose wide eyes were focused on the squalor of Susan’s apartment. There was a pizza box and some cans of Budweiser atop a small kitchen table. An unmade bed, sunken at the middle. There were about six mirrors, and Liz could see an infinite number of herself inside them. There was something else in those mirrors. Something she’d see if she looked closely enough. There were faces in those mirrors.

She pulled on his hand, and led him to the door. “Please, let’s get out of here.”

Once out of the apartment, Bobby recovered. He raced down the stairs, calling out to her, “I’ve never done this before, but when I called nine-one-one the guy said I should try.” Then he put his mouth over Susan’s and breathed. Susan’s chest rose and fell. Up and down. Up and down. On the floor, a stain of blood grew larger.

She inched in closer to Bobby, and when she did her shoes squeaked. Blood. Sticky blood. The room skidded to the left, and then to the right. Sparks filled the air, and then there was darkness.

Liz Marley fainted.

T
he car was parked by the side of the road, its hazards flashing. Like a man so unaccustomed to crying that when he does so the result is an awkward fusillade of misdirected emotion, Paul hadn’t communicated with his subconscious for so long that it was angry with him, and his first dream in a decade was horrific.

In the dream he was a different man. A sober man. The very model of a model citizen. A man who wore a shirt and tie to the corner store. A man who tucked his kids into bed at night. The dream went back in time, to the day of the protest, only this time he didn’t go to Montie’s. This time he showed up. He brought a megaphone and gave the speech he’d written instead of setting fire to it the night before. He’d lamented the crimes Clott had committed against the people of Bedford; low wages and polluted water. Busted unions and generations of men with broken backs. Then the people of Bedford had followed him. Together they’d marched to the mill. This time Georgia O’Brian had smiled at him with pride, and he’d known right then that there was more of his life to be lived.

But as he walked the sky became dark. Suddenly he was alone. Even Georgia was gone. The street was empty, and rain began to fall. He looked toward the mill, and there was Susan. She beckoned him. She was dressed like a hooker; leather miniskirt and tank top on a cold winter day. Against his will, his body announced pleasure at the sight of her. There was a buzzing sound, too. Like bees, only intelligent, somehow. Human, somehow.

The worst part came when she grinned at him. Her lips spread across her face. Wide. Wider still. So wide it must have hurt, and he wanted to tell her to stop. And then her lips split open. A deluge of blood ran down her chin like foam from a rabid dog, and still, she smiled. Her split lips made a hole that revealed her small, white teeth. Behind her the mill started to burn. Smoke poured into the sky. She tipped a bottle of scotch in his direction, and he licked his lips. Suddenly he really needed a drink.

She walked toward him. Her head had been shaved bald. Her skin hung loose off her bones, and black blood trickled from the orifices of her body: her nose, her ears, her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, and black slime came oozing out. “I’ll come for you, Paul. When I’m dead,” she gurgled.

The buzzing got louder, and it was the sound of screams.

Out of self-preservation, he woke himself up. When he opened his eyes, he did not remember his dream, nor did he realize that because of the act he’d committed with her, Susan had found a way inside him, just as she’d found a way inside the rest of Bedford.

T
here was a divider in the road that separated north and south. In the middle of it were pine trees whose branches were pushed parallel to the ground by the wind. The car was parked halfway over the right-hand lane and halfway up a curb that led to some woods. He laid his head back.

After he left Susan’s, he had taken a drive. And then he’d decided to go to Canada where it probably wasn’t raining and then, somehow, a truck had almost pushed him off the road and he’d remembered that he couldn’t see anything—the short, white, painted lines—because he didn’t have his windshield wipers turned on. He’d pulled over and now he was here.

She was fine. He had not gone to her apartment and none of this had happened. He’d been too drunk to find his way home and wound up passed out on the interstate. The whole thing was a dream and it seemed real because he was so drunk and dreams are always close to real when you drink. He would go home and fix himself a drink, and later he’d stop by her tidy apartment where right now she was sitting down to a big steak dinner with spinach and mashed potatoes on the side. He’d tell her how sorry he was for not having checked up on her more often and he’d bring her some flowers because she loved lilacs and oh, Jesus, she was dead. The woman whose blood, the other blood, he’d tasted on his tongue was dead.

He should have called the police. Any moron knows that. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Someone dies, you call the police. You don’t leave them alone to collect flies because then they think it wasn’t an accident. They blame you even if you try to explain that you got scared like some half-wit set loose from the asylum in Waterville and oh, buddy, you’re losin’ it.

He took a deep breath and rolled down his window for some air. It was cold on his face and he could feel his skin tighten. He closed his eyes and there she was in his mind, soaking the floor in blood. Funny that people still bleed when they’re dead.

He heard honking. The Buick tipped back and forth over the curb and he remembered where he was. He looked behind him on the road and saw a pair of headlights in the dark. High up, maybe a truck. It shifted left and passed him with a long and thunderous whine of its horn.

He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a map of Maine. Ten o’clock. He imagined what other people were doing tonight. Georgia on a date with some shit kicker who spit-shined his vinyl shoes; his wife scrubbing the grout off the bathroom tiles; Thursday night happy hour, throngs of yuppies in suits and ties in some rich commuter city, bitching about the nine-to-five grind. He located where Canada would be, the blank nothing anywhere north of Maine, with his finger.

He wished, not for the first time, that he was a different man.

He pulled onto the highway, turned around at the next exit, and returned to Bedford.

B
ang! Bang! Paul heard from the window of his car. For a moment, he thought it was Susan, breaking her way inside.

No, please, no.

“I almost couldn’t find your car in this rain,” Danny said as he opened the door and sat down. Paul looked around the empty lot behind Main Street where only one other car, Danny’s Jimmy, was parked, and wondered if Danny said stupid things just to break the silence. He sat facing forward, his white-knuckled hands wrapped around the steering wheel, breathing slowly, one breath at a time.

“So what’s the big secret?” Danny asked. His rubber raincoat squeaked along the leather of the car. “I told April there was a brawl over at Montie’s. I feel like I’m playing cops and robbers here.”

“You are a cop,” Paul said.

“True.” Danny looked closer, examining Paul’s face. “What is it?”

Paul didn’t answer.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Center’s not holding, gyre’s widening.”

“Lord,” Danny muttered. He unsnapped his yellow raincoat. “You didn’t get pulled over for DWI, did you?”

“No, Danny,” Paul moaned, “Do you think I’d call you to out to the Kmart parking lot for a DWI?”

“I’ve heard of stupider things. You get into a fight with Cathy?”

“Danny…” Paul looked down at his hands.

“Out with it,” Danny said. “It can’t be that bad.”

Paul shook his head. “It’s bad. There was an accident and Susan got hurt. She died.”

Danny sucked out his breath. “Oh, no. Susan Marley?”

“Yeah. She fell.”

“Where’d she fall?”

“I checked for a pulse. But she’s dead and I’m drunk.”

“You drove after the bar? I thought you were just walking her home.”

“I’m telling you somebody’s dead and you want to arrest me for a DWI?” Danny lifted his hands in surrender, and Paul continued. “She looked sick. I thought it was the cold. But her place, you should see it. It’s not a place anyone should be living in.”

“What’s the matter with it?”

Paul’s lips contorted into a sneer. “She was alone for too long. She wasn’t acting like a person anymore.”

“Oh, Paul. That poor girl never acted like a person.”

“Would you shut up, Danny? She bit me, for Christ’s sake, like she was rabid.” Paul’s eyes began to tear, and he did not look at Danny until he gained control of himself.

Danny turned on the overhead light and examined Paul’s bite. Punctures shaped like child-sized teeth had broken his skin. The half-moon wound was swollen and red. Danny blew out his breath in a low whistle. “Did you call the hospital?”

“No. She fell down the stairs and I was going to call somebody but she was dead and then, I don’t know…She waved at me when she fell.”

“Like hello? She waved hello at you?”

Paul’s face turned red. “Like good-bye, you ass, like good-bye. She waved good-bye and she jumped.”

He gritted his teeth. “Oh. So then you came here, called me?”

“I took a drive.”

“You fled the scene.”

Paul’s whole body sagged. “Shit,” he said. He banged his head against the steering wheel hard enough to rock the dashboard. Once. Twice. The third time, he remained slumped against the wheel. It occurred to Danny that his wife might have been right all along. There was something wrong with Paul. He was not just a big talker. He was not just a drunk. When pushed, when his life was going badly enough, he would get violent, and that violence would be unleashed on whoever was unlucky enough to be standing in his way. If you had told Danny this a year ago, or even this afternoon, he would never have believed it.

“I really screwed things up, Danny,” Paul said.

Danny sat straight. “I’ve got one question for you: She fell down the stairs, right?”

“Right.”

“And the fall killed her.”

“Right.”

“Did you push her?”

“No,” Paul whispered, still with that violence underneath the curl of his lips.

“You didn’t tap her, maybe knock her off balance? No accident?”

“No. I swear to God,” Paul whispered, and Danny knew it was true. He also knew that he didn’t care. Because there was a line, and maybe it had been crossed tonight, maybe a long time ago, but it had been crossed. After this night Danny would no longer call Paul Martin his friend.

“Then don’t say that again. Don’t ever say that again. You start telling people it was your fault she fell, and even if you don’t go to jail, it could last for years.”

“Shit.”

“Ride with me in my car. You can’t drive. And don’t talk to anybody but me when we get to the department or somebody’ll want to give you a Breathalyzer.”

Paul’s brows knitted. He looked like he might argue, but reconsidered. He pulled his keys from the ignition.

“I’ll call it in and then you and I’ll drive over to the police station. You can make a statement and we’ll put some alcohol or something on that bite.”

“Iodine,” Paul corrected.

“Whatever, Paul. I don’t give a horse’s ass.”

W
hen they arrived at the police station, one of Danny’s deputies informed them that Susan Marley was alive and had been taken to the Mid-Maine Medical Center in Corpus Christi an hour earlier. Danny presided over Paul’s tape-recorded recollection of events in the interrogation room. “If she dies and the autopsy checks out, there won’t be an inquiry so don’t say anything about your little drive,” Danny told him while they sat in a small, dingy room with folding metal chairs that Paul imagined, aside from himself, only drug dealers and wife beaters had ever graced with their weight. “If she lives, you’d better be telling the truth.”

Danny quelled Paul’s fears of being caught fleeing the scene of an accident, and gave rise to new and more subtle ones when he turned off the recorder and said, “You’re not popular around here so it’s tricky, but everybody expected this to happen to her. It’s no surprise. If it had been someone other than Marley, you’d have real trouble on your hands.”

Later, as Danny pulled up in front of Paul’s house, he said, “Don’t go to the hospital, I’ll go down and explain everything, they’re not gonna want to see you. I’ll have a couple of my deputies drop off your car, leave your keys in the mailbox. I’ll tell ’em you were too upset to drive.”

“Thanks, Danny. But I don’t want you to lie. They’ll understand if you tell them what happened,” Paul heard himself say.

Danny nodded toward the door for Paul to get out. “Who’s gonna understand, Paul? I don’t even understand.” Then he peeled away.

Paul walked on tiptoe through the front door. Poured himself a glass of water. Danny’s words kept running through his head. The whole time they were at the station, he’d been looking at Paul like he was the dumbest man on earth. “If I’d known I wouldn’t have left. I thought she was dead,” Paul had said.

“Or maybe you were pickled and you left a little girl,” Danny had answered under his breath on their way out.

In the den he could see his son James watching television. Lights flickered against James’s face. Paul suddenly felt angry that the kid was not in bed while, upstairs, Cathy was probably sleeping the peaceful sleep of the terminally stupid.

He went into his library, the liquor cabinet. Nothing there, absolutely nothing but a bottle of tonic. Cathy had been screwing around with his stash again. He went to the kitchen, looked in the garbage. There they were. Absolut, Bombay, even the red wine. Poor dead soldiers who’d never even gotten to see battle. One had a broken neck. Susan had a broken neck.

“James,” he called a few times until his son walked into the kitchen. Paul put his arm around his son’s bony frame. James bristled. He pointed at Paul’s gauze-covered arm. Brown paint stained its edges.

“What happened?” James asked.

Paul considered what the best explanation might be. There was no best explanation. “You’ll hear about it tomorrow,” he said.

James nodded. His hands were curled into balls underneath the heels of his blue flannel shirt. “What’d you do tonight?” Paul asked.

“Nothing.”

“You should be in bed.”

James shrugged.

“Well, shouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

Paul pointed at the garbage. “Your mother get a little crazy?” he asked with a smile. Maybe he could turn this around, make it a joke, something they could share. Turn that day upside down.

James didn’t answer.

“Yeah, she’s crazy, all right.”

“No, she’s not,” James whispered.

“She awake?”

James pursed his lips like he was protecting her, and it made Paul want to slap him. Something rose in his stomach, a slow-burning bile, and Paul felt himself shake. James stepped back. “James,” Paul said, but there was nothing else to say because the boy had read his thoughts, and while he had never raised a hand to either son in his life, it was out there, the threat, and could not be drawn back.

“Go to bed,” Paul said.

James fled the room. A few seconds later, a door slammed. Hard.

Paul looked in the direction of James’s room for a few seconds and considered following him, but he didn’t. The condition he was in, there wasn’t much chance of making things better, and a hell of a good chance of making them worse. So instead, he felt his way through the dark house. He lay down on the couch in front of the television and thought maybe he’d just sleep here tonight. Not see Cathy, sleep next to her, smell her, on the same night he’d watched a woman bleed inside her head.

He closed his eyes and things swerved, crossed, jiggled. He ran to the bathroom and threw up. Again he thought:
This is your life, a grown man gagging as quietly as you know how so your son doesn’t hear you steer a toilet.

When he got out, Cathy was waiting for him. She was wearing a frayed terry-cloth robe. She crossed her arms around her waist in a hug.

“He can hear you,” she said. She looked like she was going to cry. When she cried, it was a soft crying, and you only knew it if you looked at her closely and saw her tears.

He wanted to tell her everything would be all right and he’d take care of her and sorry, so sorry, little Cathy. But he didn’t do that because you’re well now, right little Cath? You’re fit as a fiddle and now it’s somebody else’s turn. You’re not the one waiting for a phone call from Danny about whether a girl died tonight. But you’re standing there because you want me to say:
I’m glad you tossed out my booze. I love you so much I don’t need it.
“Who can hear me, Cath? That’s only if you believe in a higher being,” he told her, flinching as he said it because this was Cathy, and being cruel to her was about as admirable as kicking a puppy.

He expected her to cry. Fully expected it the same way he knew when she wasn’t taking her lithium and claimed the Prozac worked just fine on its own; she didn’t want any drug giving her hyperthyroidism. That wasn’t hard to notice because she’d cry about her messy hair when she woke up in the morning.

He expected her to cry right now because he always knew what she was going to do before she did it. She didn’t cry. She leaned against the opening of the doorway, saw the toilet that reeked of bile and booze, and then looked back at him.

He crossed his arms.

“One of these days he’s going to hate you and you won’t be able to take it back.” Not at all what he had expected. The sentiment itself was not original, but the delivery, baby, the delivery. He thought about telling her that if it weren’t for him, she’d be in a loony bin chasing down piles of pills with water-filled Dixie Cups, but he could smell his own vomit. He wondered if he was sober right now, whether her words would sting more than they already did. “Which day, Cathy?”

“Andrew’s with you but James won’t be and I don’t know how much longer I’ll be with you, either.”

“You what?” he spit at her. “Who do you think you are?”

Now she started to cry. The tears came down, one at either end of her calm, pale face. “We’ll talk about this later,” she told him, enunciating every syllable like his brain had gone too soft to comprehend English.

“Talk about it now.”

She sighed. “I don’t know what to say.”

He took a deep breath, had a quick retort, but bit it back. She looked so frail. She always looked so frail. He could never say a goddamn thing to her because she always looked like she might break.

“I was worried about you today. I don’t know why. I was afraid something might have happened. Did anything happen?”

This concern took him by surprise, and all he could do was shake his head.

“I had this feeling you might be hurt. Are you hurt? Is there some way I can help?”

Again, he shook his head. She’d never asked such a question, and he was vaguely suspicious, like maybe next she’d announce that for the last three months she’d been serving high tea to little green men. This was the woman, after all, who’d pretended she had pneumonia the night before his protest, just so she could worm out of standing by his side.

“I feel like something’s coming. Maybe it’s just the rain, I don’t know. I had this terrible dream about Susan Marley.”

Paul shook his head. “What are you talking about?” His lip curled into a look of contempt. For a moment he forgot what had happened to Susan, or even that he’d dreamed for the first time in decades, too. He forgot everything except his pride, and he knew that shaming his wife was the only way he had left of holding on to it.

Cathy shrugged. “Forget it. Anyway, James is out of school in a few months.”

“So?” Paul asked.

“After the rain, I thought I’d take him to Saratoga Springs to see his relatives. I can travel now. I can do things.”

“I see. And when will you come back, dear?”

“When things are better.”

“Tough love?”

“Is it love?” she whispered. She waited for him to answer and when he did not, she turned and went back upstairs.