The Key to Everything (2 page)

Whiteness finds Other Boy.

The door opens. Soft Voice is screaming. Two gentle hands slide under and lift Other Boy. 

Fingers slip and tug at the toy. 

Hard Voice shouts out in unrestrained shards of broken glass.

The unsteady hands shake and fumble with the toy, letting it fall to the floor, covered in drool and blood.

A click, and then the brief yearning whine of dial tone, interrupted by three short staccato notes.

One thin, plastic-sounding ring… 

then another…

…and another. 

A harsh click.

“Emergency. How may I assist you?”

* * *

People are in the house. Strange people all wearing dark clothes. Lots of them are crying. They smile at him and rub his head when he passes by. Some try to hug him but he wiggles away. Auntie This and Uncle That drove here from far away. Papaw and Gram won’t come. They never come anymore. Not in a really long time.

Mommy won’t get up from the couch. He brings her some chocolate chip cookies but she probably won’t eat them. A lady he doesn’t know is sitting next to her. She smells funny. Like Gram’s closet used to smell at the old house.

Daddy’s smoking. Smoking is bad for you. Hurts your breathing. Daddy keeps filling his glass from the brown bottle he keeps in the high cabinet above the fridgerator. Daddy shouts at him when he goes out to the backyard to swing. 

He is bored. No one will play with him. That stinky lady on the couch tells him no TV too. He already played with the toys in his room. He looks at the door across the hall. That’s where the good stuff is. 

He moves silent, tiptoe.

He twists at the doorknob. It turns easily in his tiny hand. He tries to stay quiet, remembering Soft Voice say, “This room is a no-no.” He sees the plastic toy on the floor in the center of the empty room. Dark stains look black in the shadows from the curtained windows. The boy picks it up and rubs some of the red smudges off on his shirt. Small fingers wrap around the toy and stuff it into his front pants pocket.

“Come on out of there, Brammy.” Soft Voice calls from the open door. 

The boy turns and smiles for Soft Voice. He runs out of the room and wraps his arms around her leg. The boy skips down the hallway, his hand still in his pants, holding the toy hard.

PART ONE

-1-

Moving In

You finish loading the last box of books and pictures into your new house. Your old USC sweatshirt is covered in dust and sweat and mustard spilled from your sandwich at lunch. You tried to be careful, but eating with one hand at the kitchen counter is never a safe bet for neatness. Emily and the kids are out grabbing some groceries and other essentials that didn’t manage to fit into the moving van. You walk around your new place, taking in the layout and envisioning where the couch will go. Trying to find some innocuous spot to put the hideous lamp your mother-in-law made in her ceramics class at the Jewish Home for the Aging. 

It’s a nice house, with lofty high ceilings, hardwood floors, and cabinet space along the walls of every room. That’s why Emily fell in love with the place. In addition to the kid’s school being so close, there should be less clutter with the cabinets. Finally you’ll be able to shove all the books and toys and video games out from underfoot. 

No beer in the fridge. Fuck. That would taste so good right now to wash down a pain pill. It might just help ease the back pain after all the heavy lifting is finished. After you hurt your knee in that Father’s Day touch-football game two years ago, it’s never been the same. But alas, there is no beer or soda in the fridge just yet. So you fill your hand with water from the sink, throw your head back, and away you go. 

Stretching a bit to get the kinks out, you wish you were ten years younger, moving friends out of the back of your beat-up old pickup for nothing but the promise of beer, pizza and the possibility of getting laid by some hot friend of a friend’s girlfriend who likes to watch you when you sweat. You smile at the memories and wander around the kitchen. The cabinets would look better in yellow. Hate to admit that one, but Emily had a point. You make a mental note to stop by the hardware store again tomorrow to check prices on paint. 

Turning into the hallway  toward the stairs, you notice something that you don’t think was there before. There are fifteen steps leading up to the second floor with no carpet or handrail. But the steps are wider than most, so the kids feel safe as long as they stay close to the wall. Up at the seventh step, you catch a flash as you turn past the window. It’s not on any of the other steps, so you squint and hunch down a little bit to see what it is.

It’s a lock. Strange, why would that be there? There’s no handle, or knob like there would be on a drawer. Since its open space underneath the stairs, there’s not much room to put anything, even if there was one. The only keys the real estate agent gave you were for the front door and the garage out back. Oh well. You’ll figure it out later. Emily and the boys just pulled in the drive, and you start walking  toward the kitchen door to help them unload the groceries. 

“Hey babe.” Emily smiles. “We got some pizza and a movie.” 

Jason runs past his little brother Jeremy, screaming, “Dad. Dad. Dad. We got… we got… we got that movie remember?” He drops the plastic bag, and apples roll everywhere. “We got… we got… we got… the one with swords and dragons… but it’s not too violent. I promise. I won’t get scared. I won’t.” About to correct his pronunciation, Emily shoots you that look that says, “Take it easy. He’s only seven.” So you hold your tongue. This time.

Jeremy slips on an apple and just barely holds his balance. He’s holding a half-gallon bottle of nonfat milk in his right hand and a pack of gum in the other. You can see the pride in his face that he didn’t drop either of them. He and Jason, two years his elder, have that innate sense of competition in everything. You ruffle his blonde hair, pinch his left ear, and walk out to the driveway to help grab some more bags.

“How’d they do at the store?” you ask over your shoulder. “Any meltdowns?”

“Just a small one.” You can tell Emily’s lying because she doesn’t look at you when she answers. 

“And that’s why you bought them another movie huh? Just a small one?” You pull the plastic handles off your fingers and let the four bags you brought in rest on the counter.

She takes a bottle of Rum from a paper bag, smiles and holds up a sixer of Pacific Golden, and wiggles it happily, doing a little dance. “I got Mommy and Daddy juice. Help me get these kids fed and cleaned up, and we might get to initiate the new bedroom tonight, gorgeous.” She slaps your butt as you walk back out to the car.

“Not a bad first night after all,” you say under your breath, and smile.

A few hours later, you leave the hall light on and the doors open just a crack as the kids sleep for the first night in separate rooms. Walking down the stairs, you hear the sound of a bottle being opened and Lyle Lovett’s “Here I Am” coming from the kitchen. 

You turn the corner.

“I see you found the stereo.”

Emily smiles, dancing in circles around the kitchen island  toward you. “Good song.” She hands you a beer and raises the rum and diet coke to her lips. The beer is good. The sex is better. The sleep is hard and deep with dreams of cardboard boxes, stairs and keyholes. 

* * *

Waking up after a week of packing boxes and lifting furniture is bad enough. The sore muscles scream and ache as you try to stretch the kinks out. Having a sixty-five-pound seven-year-old fly through the air and land knee-first into your unprotected testicles is pretty much the only thing that could make it worse. And it does. Your breath speeds from your lungs, and your stomach climbs up into your throat, looking for an escape from the pain. When the white blindness starts to subside, you can hear the sound of your wife…your best friend in the world…the person who is supposed to love you more than anything…laughing. 

“Good morning to you too,” you whimper out. “Thanks for your support…dearest love.” Hoping the sarcasm has hit its target, you pick up Jason and growl like a bear. As you wrestle him around, he laughs and smiles with his entire face. 

“Squish me, Daddy. Squish me!” Jason yells between bouts of laughter.

You throw him down on top of Emily and jump on them both. “Let’s squish MOMMY.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” Jason squeals.

“No. No. No.” Emily barks struggling to get away. “Who wants breakfast?”

“Me me me me me me.” Jason kisses his mother and wiggles out from between the two of you. “I’ll go get Jemy.”

“If your brother is still asleep, let him be,” you say as you roll out of the bed. “Want some coffee? I think I know which box the machine is in.” Emily is heading  toward the bathroom and nods while stretching with a big yawn. 

You watch her put her hair up into a ponytail. She’s still beautiful after eleven years together. More so now that time has transformed her from a girl into a woman. The sunlight coming through the window highlights her figure through the thin pajamas. “Hooray for boobies,” you say as you head out the door to the hallway. She’s still laughing as you get to the kitchen. 

Jason and Jeremy are already in the living room playing video games. No fighting yet, but you can tell it’s coming soon. Always does. 

***

The kids finish their cereal in a flash and are back in the living room screeching in high-pitched whines over which alien was cheating. You sip your coffee and glance over to the boxes in the hall. There’s still so much to unpack. Emily grabs the kids’ bowls and brings them over to the sink to rinse them off. 

“So how do you like your new house, beautiful?” she asks, wiping her hands on a dish-towel. Slowly walking around you, she slides her fingers behind your ears and sits down on your lap. 

“Well…the scenery is good.” Pulling the collar of her nightshirt out, you look down inside. Smacking you on the back of the head, she smiles and stands up. “Did you notice that weird thing on the stairs?” You get up and dump the last of your coffee into the sink. “It looks like an old keyhole or something.”

Opening the fridge and putting the bottle of milk back on the bottom shelf, she reaches for a piece of string cheese. “Nope. Why would there be a keyhole on the stairs?”

“Dunno. And the only keys I have are for the front door and the garage.” 

“It’s an enigma wrapped in a mystery,” she says, smiling. “Ooooh, spooky time.” She rubs her hands together. “Maybe there’s a buried treasure. We could pay off the mortgage.”

You laugh half-heartedly, “The phrase is ‘a mystery wrapped in an enigma’.” Looking out the window into the backyard, you see a squirrel running across the top of the fence with something black in its mouth. “Just odd, that’s all.” 

Emily comes up and wraps her arms around you from behind. “Thanks for all your hard work Auden.” Giving a quick squeeze and a kiss on the neck, she whispers, “Let’s finish unpacking so we can get back to our lives.”

You spin around in her arms and give her a long, soft kiss. “I love you.”

“Love you too.” She smiles back.

“Yucky.” Jeremy stands in the kitchen, looking up at you. “You guys are gross.” 

“Oh really?” Emily turns to him, crouching down and reaching her arms out. “What if I kiss you… right…NOW.” Jeremy runs off screaming, and they go chasing around the living room. You smile and turn back to the sink to rinse out your cup. 

Looking back up through the window, you see the squirrel standing on its hind legs, balancing on the fence. Staring straight at you, the thing isn’t moving at all. The nose is perfectly still, not sniffing the air in quick movements like a normal squirrel. It almost looks like a statue. You cock your head a little to the right, out of curiosity, and the squirrel cocks his head at the same time. 

“Can’t be.” You raise your right hand and wave. The squirrel’s hand goes up. You wiggle your fingers. You see the small black claws moving up and down mimicking you again. “What the fuck?” 

“Daddy, you said the F-word again,” Jason tattles, and opens the fridge to look for some juice. 

“I’ll put a quarter in the swear jar later, pal. Come and look at this.” You raise your left hand, and the squirrel mirrors your movement with both hands up and wiggling the fingers on its right paw. 

“Cool.” Jason cheers, “Can we keep it?” 

Just then, the squirrel drops down to the fence and violently launches itself directly at the window. “Holy shit!” Startled, you instinctively put your arm in front of your son and push him back, knocking him into the island in the center of the kitchen. 

“Ow.” He drops his juice box onto the floor. “That hurt Dad.” He rubs the back of his head and picks up the spilled juice. Starting to cry, he sniffs, “I spilled my juice. And you said the SH word too.”

“Did you see that, Jason?” You stand on your toes to look out the window to see what happened to the strange animal. “That squirrel jumped right at us.” You start moving to the sliding door to head out into the backyard. As you reach to unlatch the handle, Jason really starts to cry.

 “Everything ok in there?” Emily calls from the living room, “What’s all the noise about?”

“Just an accident, it’s nothing to worry about.” You grab some paper towels and get down on the floor to wipe up the puddle of juice. “You okay buddy? That squirrel just freaked me out.” You kiss the top of Jason’s head and pull him in for a hug. “I don’t see any blood. You want some ice?”