The Keeper (12 page)

“H
ey,” Bobby said when Liz Marley climbed inside his car. He was parked in the driveway of her house. He gave her a wet, sloppy, silly kiss, and peach fuzz tickled her upper lip.

She wrinkled her nose. “You smell like smoke.”

“Yup.”

“I thought that was just for after sex. Do you have a blow-up doll in your backseat?” He looked shocked at such a suggestion and she laughed. “Sorry.”

“That’s not funny,” he said. “It’s demented.”

“What about a cadaver? Do you have a cadaver in your trunk?” she asked, still giggling, unable to stop. It occurred to her that perhaps she was not as calm as she’d hoped. She was still a little frayed around the edges. A card short of a full deck. A screw or two loose. Gray matter gone black.

“What’s the matter with you?” Bobby asked, morally indignant, because Bobby was not a person who could juxtapose “corpses” and “sex” in the same sentence. He was not even a person who said “fuck” to describe sex. Never.

Liz kept giggling.

“Hey,” she heard him saying, “hey,” in a soothing voice like he thought she was crying. It made her laugh louder. She brayed. Silly Bobby. Silly Bobby thought he was so tough. Silly Bobby loved Elliott Smith and whenever he heard “Needle in the Hay” he’d get all singer-serious and hum along like he could totally identify with some heroin addict from Oregon who stabbed himself to death. Silly Bobby with his perfect family. Easy for people to be tough when they’ve never had anything to fight.

“Liz!” he said.

She stopped laughing. He put his hand on her back and patted, hard, like he thought she was choking on something and he wanted to get it out. “I’m okay,” she said.

“Whoa,” he muttered, pulling her close. She felt his warmth, right down to the center of him. Bobby was always warm, even the tips of his fingers and toes. Like all the years his mother had given him hot chocolate on cold days had protected him from chills for the rest of his life.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. She didn’t answer. She saw through the gutter window of her house that the light in the basement was still on. She imagined that her mother had not actually gone to work. She was hiding in the basement and would soon emerge, a newspaper draped over her head to preserve her coif, to say hi.
Hi, Bobby,
she would say.
Is Liz telling tales again? Such an imagination. Always inventing. You know, when she was little, she told me she saw a monster in the basement but it was only her father. Always telling fibs, my chubby girl.

“It’s like I don’t even know how to be,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I mean that I’m not sure I can trust myself. I mean that I think I might be crazy. I think those kids you don’t hang out with anymore were right. There is something wrong with me.
“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Oh.” He edged toward her, and she could see that he was thinking about giving her a hug. Instead, he edged back again. Yes, he was cute. But he would never know from looking at her what she was thinking. He would never be able to take her in his arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked.

“Wouldn’t do any good.”

“How was the cemetery? I heard you went there after school. Margaret saw you. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have gone with you.”

“It was fine.”

“It’s the anniversary of your father’s death, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Five years. My mom’ll probably lock herself in her room and throw a party.”

Bobby chortled. “Is that why you want to see Susan?”

She shook her head.

“Are you going to tell me why you dragged me out here tonight?”

“Because she’s my sister and I should visit her. I just want to stop by and see if she needs anything.” In fact, the last time she had visited Susan’s apartment had been over a year before. She’d ridden her three-speed there after school. When Susan came to the door, she’d looked Liz up and down, opened the door farther, and let Liz see that she had company. A weird-looking fat man whose breath had sounded like drowning.

“You were serious when you said you wanted to visit her?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“I thought you might be kidding.”

“Yeah, well, it’s hard to tell.”

“It
is
hard to tell,” he said with his jaw clenched, and she could see that he had decided to be annoyed with her. When people are uncomfortable, they get mad at you. Liz had seen this before. Yes, he would probably break up with her now. She could see it coming.

He pulled out of the driveway and turned right on Chestnut Street. “Susan’s is the other way,” she said.

“Really?” he asked, still driving. He clenched his jaw so tightly she thought he might dislocate it.

“Do you want to turn around?”

He didn’t answer, kept driving.

The snow had melted by about a foot, and every time the Explorer made a turn, she could hear the sound of sloshing water. There were a few workmen clearing out the gutters on Nudd Street. They did that every year though it never seemed to help. The roads always flooded.

“Well?” she asked.

They were at the top of the hill now, near the woods where they sometimes turned off the headlights and made love. She squinted and looked out the window, thinking that perhaps Susan was out there. Susan was waiting for her, in the dark.

He stopped the car and pulled the keys from the ignition.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Bobby leaned back. His jaw unclenched. He did not seem angry, but sad. “Remember the first time we came here? I told you I’d done it before with Andrea Jorgenson but I lied. You knew, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I knew.” No, she thought, he would not leave her. He was Bobby, the guy who had defended her under the bridge. The guy who called every night, and even though she never told him about the fights she had with her mother, he would sometimes ask, when she was feeling very low and talking softly about nothing, “How are you holding up?”

She touched his outstretched arm and he flinched. “Don’t treat me like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like the enemy. Like your mother,” he told her.

“I don’t.”

“You do. Like you hate me.”

“That’s stupid. I don’t. And I don’t hate my mother.”

He winced. “I’m not stupid. I know you’re different, that things are weird. I mean, you tried to tell me that Susan was a photographer for
House and Garden
magazine and that’s why she’s always wandering around, she’s trying to see in people’s houses. She doesn’t talk, Liz! I mean, she doesn’t even talk and you try to pretend she’s normal. Like I don’t know about her. Everybody knows there’s something wrong with her. Even my mom has nightmares about her! You tell me these lies and I guess you’re trying to make a joke but sometimes I think you want me to believe it.” Then he turned to her, yelling now, as if this last part was what really galled him, this last part had sent him over the edge, “And when I asked you what was wrong at school today you told me it was the Mormons. You were talking about the stupid Mormons, Liz! Why were you talking about the Mormons?”

“The Mormons?” she asked. She couldn’t help it. She knew how angry he’d get. She giggled.

He narrowed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, still giggling. “I really am. But you just went totally nuclear. It’s like you were possessed.”

“I’m serious,” he growled. And once again, because his behavior was so out of character, it kept her laughing.

“Come on, Bobby.” She lowered her voice in an attempt at seriousness. “I’m not laughing
at
you, I’m laughing
with
you.”

He did not look happy. Not exactly mad, closer to embarrassed. She stopped laughing. She wasn’t being very nice. Probably she was being a little mean. The kind of mean that other kids had been to him not too long ago. The way you treat a tool.

“Hey,” she said. “You okay? I didn’t mean to make fun of you. Really. I’m just upset.”

He smiled a strained smile like he was trying to prove his feelings weren’t hurt. “That’s all right. You weren’t laughing at me, you were laughing with me.”

“Really, Bobby. I’m sorry.”

“Fine.”

She shimmied across the seat and into the crook of his arm. After a while, he cupped her shoulder. “Something happened last night. And then maybe today, too. I guess I’m upset.”

“Tell me,” he said.

For a moment, but only a moment, she was annoyed. Because there was an implicit agreement here. A give and a take with which she was not sure she wanted to be involved. And then it was gone. This was Bobby, after all. She told him everything: her dream, the blood in the snow, the thing that had chased her in the woods, trying to talk to her mother about it tonight, and then finally, she showed him her throat. She thought this would the hardest part—like he’d see it, and know that something really was wrong with her. But it turned out to be a relief. He was someone who cared, and wanted to believe her. Still, she didn’t tell him about what Susan had said:
You. It should have been you.
That was between her and her dream.

Very gently, he traced the edges of her neck with the tips of his fingers. It made her feel safe in a way she had not expected. When he did stuff like this, it was clear to her that one day he’d be a doctor.

“It’s crazy, right?”

“Which part—does this hurt?”

“No. It faded a lot since this morning, but I think you can still make out the hands. All of it’s crazy. Every part. Or maybe I’m crazy.”

“Could you have done this to yourself in your sleep?” He let go and looked at her.

“I guess. In a way, I hope so.”

“Yeah. But you think she did it. She got inside your dream.” She couldn’t see his expression in the dark, just his shining eyes.

Liz nodded. “I’ve dreamed about her before. But lately the dreams are more vivid. Last night felt so real. And then today—there was definitely something in the woods with me. Maybe it was something left over from the dream, or some kind of wild animal, or maybe it was Susan. I don’t know. But something chased me…”

Bobby sat back, and she wasn’t sure whether he was just considering everything she was saying, or deciding whether he should start fitting her for a straitjacket. She decided, for once, to be optimistic.

“When we were kids we used to play memory, you know, with a deck of cards all turned down? She could go through the whole deck without losing a turn. She’d go from card to card all in a row and find its match…Anyway, she’s getting stronger. Next time I dream about her, I’m afraid my nightmare will follow me into the real world. Or worse, I won’t wake up at all.”

He squinted his eyes. “So why do you want to see her?”

Liz looked out the window. The rain pounded against the roof of the truck like someone wanted to be let in. “I need to know.” Then she sighed. “I wish she didn’t hate me. We used to get along. When we were kids. I loved her, I think…I still do.”

Bobby spoke softly. “She’s sick, Liz. Whatever else is happening, she’s sick. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I guess. Do you ever dream about her?”

“Yeah. They’ve been getting worse for me, too.”

She hadn’t expected him to say this. This was Bobby, after all. The boy whose family played Monopoly together on Sunday nights. “I didn’t know you dreamed about her.”

“I thought it would upset you.”

“It does, actually. I think it makes me mad at her. What do you dream?”

“I can’t really remember,” he said. “All I remember is her, you know?”

She touched her throat with her fingers. “Bobby, something’s gone wrong since the mill closed. Can you feel it?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I can.”

“I’m scared.”

She felt his arm around her. “Me, too.”

“Then you believe me?”

“Yeah, I do. It might not be exactly what you think, but I believe you.”

She closed her eyes and tried to make the lump in her throat go away. They listened to the rain patter against the windshield. “I wish we didn’t live in Bedford.”

He nudged her. “Wait till college. Everything’s better in college. You only have to come home for Christmas and you can eat pizza three times a day.”

The lump in her throat burst and came out as a giggle, quickly followed by a snort.

“Gross,” he said.

“Um. At least I don’t eat the old whoopee pies I find in my glove compartment, Bobby Fullbright.”

He smiled. They both laughed a little, and felt some of the pressure of the day release.

“Do you still like me?” she asked.

“I love you.” This was the first time he had ever told her this, and it made her feel so good that for a moment everything was right with the world.

“I love you, too, Bobby.”

Before heading to Susan’s, they made love in the back of his car, and he had his second Lucky of the night while whispering sweet nothings in a Frenchman’s accent.

T
he south side of town where Susan lived stank of the mill. The wind had carried it there for almost one hundred years, and it had gotten into the dirt, the trees, the water, and the wood of the houses. If you lived there, Liz imagined, you could probably scrape the sulfur out of your pores.

They got out of the car. The house was old and dilapidated. A shutter flapped in the wind, and there was graffiti along the sidewalk that in the dark she could not make out. She rang the front bell. Bobby wrestled in vain with the umbrella, but it turned inside out and they both got wet. “It’s okay,” he told her when he saw that she was so frightened she was shaking.

She nodded and twisted the knob. The door opened. They stepped into a small vestibule at the foot of a narrow, wooden staircase. The place stank like rotten eggs. In the dark she could make out a figure, maybe a person, sitting on the floor. “Suze?” she asked. No answer. Bobby flicked a switch that lit up the stairway. Liz gasped. Bobby pulled her back outside and into the rain.