The Open Curtain (10 page)

He took a paring knife from the counter, scraped the sugar into a pile, and began, carefully, to shape it into a series of concentric circles. As he worked, he imagined himself putting on his tie and button-down oxford and going to church, walking through the crowded pews and straight to the pulpit and from there publicly washing his hands of his religion for good. His mother would be in the audience, shocked, her mouth open. He would renounce Mormonism and then, baring his chest, would invite the devil to take his soul. Not that he believed in the devil, or God either, he told himself.

When he was done shaping the sugar, he had a target. He thrust the knife’s tip down hard in the center, so it stuck.

On Monday it was as if nothing had happened. She woke him happily, served him breakfast, chattered at him as he ate. She fussed and preened as he was about to leave for school and he hoped for a moment she would say something conciliatory, but knew she wouldn’t. If he brought it up she would say,
What fight?
And, if he insisted,
I don’t recall a fight, dear, you must have been fighting with yourself.

He went through the week. At school somebody pried his locker open. He returned from English to find his books scattered down the hall, his notebooks reduced to rumpled scraps of paper. Humiliated, he picked up what was salvageable, other passing students kicking his books farther away.

The next day he feigned illness until noon, staying home until his mother’s attempts to baby him became too derisive. When he arrived at school his locker was fine, untouched. By the end of the week it hadn’t been broken into again, and he began to suspect that he had left it ajar himself.

It wasn’t until the next Saturday that he thought of Lael, and then only to marvel that he didn’t miss seeing him. He didn’t call, instead spent the rest of the weekend moving pieces about on a chessboard, reading, and watching TV.

The Hooper Young murder stuck with him. Even though he was no longer writing his paper on it, it continued to rustle about in his head. At night, he found aspects of the case wound into his dreams. He dreamed that he had a gold tooth that, if he were to escape the police, had to be removed. He tried knocking it out with a hammer. He awoke slightly nauseous, sticky and damp, his heart beating rapidly.

Saturday night he dreamed that it was 1903 and he himself was heading the investigation of the Young case and that they had somehow cornered Young’s accomplice, Charles Elling, in an alley that resembled something from a Universal Studios back lot. Elling had turned and had covered his face with his hands and did not move when Rudd reached out to touch him. Indeed, Rudd had to put his hands on Elling’s shoulder and physically force him to turn. He pried Elling’s hands away from his face, which when uncovered proved not to be Elling’s face at all, but a smooth, blank surface.

Suddenly he was awake, with no memory of having screamed, but someone was shaking him and asking him if he was all right, and he realized it was his mother.

“I’m fine,” he said. He started to reach for the lamp to turn it on, but his hand was shaking so badly that he thought better of it.

“You’re sure?” she said. “Who’s Ellen?”

“There’s no Ellen,” he said. “Just a bad dream.”

“If you’re dating someone named Ellen, I demand to be introduced.”

He moved to the far side of the bed, turning his face to the wall. His mother sat down, the springs of the bed squealing. Her hand brushed his ear, fell to his shoulder, slowly settling. She began to rub his back, rocking her body slightly forward as she did. He wriggled uncomfortably.

“Don’t you like that?”

“I’m not five years old,” he said.

“You’ll always be my baby,” she said.

“God, no.”

She stopped rubbing, drew her hand away. He felt her weight leave the bed, her slippers brushing across the carpet. When she spoke again, it was from the doorway, her voice rampant with bitterness. “It’s because you stopped going to church,” she said shrilly. “God is punishing you.” And then she was gone.

Early Sunday she was in his room, shaking his wadded shirt and tie in his face, telling him to get dressed and visit God, that it was for his own good, the only
way to be free of bad dreams. He didn’t say anything, just put the pillow over his head. She kept talking, her voice getting higher and higher until all she was saying was “Answer me! Answer me!” over and over, then she slammed the door.
I hate my life,
he thought, though he knew it wasn’t as simple as that. And before he knew it, despite his anxiety, he drifted off to sleep.

He was awakened by the doorbell. He lay in bed, considering who it could be. Jehovah’s Witnesses probably, but did they come on Sundays? He was already on his way back to sleep when it rang again. Maybe it was a friend of his mother’s. It was certainly nobody he knew. He pulled the covers over his head.

It rang a third time. A moment later he heard the knob rattle. Maybe a thief, he thought, someone who knew his mother was at church and thought he would be too.

He sat up in bed and peeked out through the window. If he leaned just right, he could see the front porch. Nobody was there. He stood and pulled his shirt off the chair, found a pair of pants among the twist and curl of clothing on the floor. He was pulling them on when he heard the back door open.

Cursing softly he opened the closet as quietly as he could, looking for a weapon. All he could find was a wooden shoe tree, which he took and held in one hand like a prototype blackjack. He made his careful way out of the room and down the stairs. The back door was open slightly. He closed it, locked it.

“Mother?” he called, then regretted having said anything.

Going into the kitchen, he slid a long, thin boning knife out of the block, leaving the shoe tree on the counter. He went into the living room. Empty. He stood at the edge of the den.

“Anybody there?” he asked.

No answer. Probably, he thought, they had come in and gone back out again. Or maybe they had not come in at all, but only opened the door and then gone off, leaving the door ajar. He opened the door to the garage, flicked the light on and off. He searched the laundry room, the downstairs bathroom, then went up the stairs and into his mother’s room, her bathroom, and out again. Last of all his own bedroom, his closet. Nobody, no one at all.

He had finished his report, now on politics and Mormonism. Mrs. Madison was pleased, told him he was making real progress. Yet he couldn’t put
Hooper Young out of his head, and finally went back to the university library to sort through other newspapers, to see if there was more about the case, if it had ever been mentioned in the Utah papers.

He had affixed the reel of the Church-owned
Deseret News
to the machine when he realized someone was standing behind him. Turning, he saw Lael.

He did not know exactly what he felt. Guilt was involved, and anger at feeling guilt, as well as resentment. But mixed in with it was a weird burst of ecstasy, and immediate awareness of the power Lael still seemed to have over him.

“You stopped seeing me,” said Lael.

“I can’t explain,” said Rudd.

“Try.”

“It was all too much for me.”

“What?”

“It,” said Rudd. “Everything.”

“Me, you mean.”

Rudd shrugged. “I mean you didn’t even …” he said, then stopped. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think?” Lael said, and held up a microfilm spool. “Same as you. But don’t try to change the subject.”

“I wasn’t,” said Rudd, and then found he could not, somehow, meet Lael’s eyes.

“So tell me,” said Lael. “Go ahead. Tell me what’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” said Rudd. “It’s just—”

“Do you want to know what your problem is?”

“Not really,” said Rudd.

“No? If you can’t take advice from your brother, then who?”

“Half-brother,” said Rudd. “And I’m not entirely sure you’re that.”

“Of course I am,” said Lael. “You contacted
me,
remember? You’d figured it all out before we ever spoke.”

“I was wrong, and you were a liar.”

Then they were both pushing at each other, buttons popping off Lael’s shirt. The heel of Lael’s hand flashed past Rudd’s head, clipped his ear, distracting him while the other hand struck him in the temple. Rudd fell, still grasping Lael’s shirt.

“So we’re brothers only when it’s convenient?” asked Lael, crouching over him and trying to pry Rudd’s hands loose.

“No, I—”

“Let go,” said Lael. He slapped the back of Rudd’s hand hard. “Let go!” he said, louder.

Rudd let go and scrambled up, stood breathing hard. He waited until Lael was playing with the buttonholes and the remaining buttons on his shirt, then punched him in the face.

Lael stumbled, woozy, steadying himself against the wall with one hand. He shook his head, his nose flicking blood across his cheekbones and onto the wall. Rudd watched him, his fists clumsily up. Lael looked at him and smiled slowly. Spreading his arms, he stepped forward and toward Rudd to embrace him. And this, to Rudd, was somehow more terrifying than if he had leaped forward swinging.

A few evenings later Lael called him at home for the first time. It was a school night, late in the evening, nearly dark. He begged Rudd to drive down. “Let bygones be bygones,” he suggested. “This is important. Bring a light.”

When he arrived, Lael was already waiting, sitting on the front porch, a shovel slung along his shoulder blades, a hand flopped over either end.

“What is it?” asked Rudd. “What are we doing?”

“Did you bring the light?” Lael asked. Rudd showed him the flashlight. Giving Rudd the shovel, Lael climbed on in front of him.

They drove, slowly, out of Springville. This time, instead of turning up the canyon, Lael kept north, toward Provo.

“Where are we going?” shouted Rudd over the hum and whine.

Lael shrugged.

“What are we going to do?”

“If you’re asking if it’s legal, it’s not.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

Lael half-turned, kept driving until they came to the fork that led to Ninth East. As they passed Beesley Stone and Monument, Lael slowed, parked the scooter in front of it.

“Why here?” asked Rudd.

Lael took the shovel from him. “We can hardly park in the cemetery, can we?”

They walked across the street and in through the main gates of the cemetery, following the circular road for about two hundred feet and then cutting away from it, stepping across the damp grass and graves, Lael leading. They
passed a crypt and Lael asked Rudd for the flashlight. He turned it on, began to examine each headstone in turn.

Then there it was, a square and solid pillar of white marble, encrusted with dirt.

Gyle Theurer, beloved husband and father.
No dates, simple.

“Now what?” asked Rudd.

Lael slung down the shovel, chunked it into the dirt. “What else?”

Rudd watched the shovel bite out the first chunk of earth. “No,” he said. “Not such a good idea.”

Lael sighed. He leaned forward, resting his weight on the shovel. “I wouldn’t do this if it weren’t absolutely necessary,” he said.

“It’s wrong,” said Rudd.

“That doesn’t make it less necessary.”

“But—”

“Don’t you want to know if we’re brothers?”

Rudd swallowed, shook his head.

“Sure you do,” said Lael. “You said so yourself. Come on, tell the truth.” He brought his foot down on the shovel head, cut into the grave again. “This is the only way you’ll ever know.”

The shovel gnawed up hunks of grass and roots then began slicing through the loam below. Lael kept digging, speaking to Rudd in a low voice. Though Rudd did not answer back, he didn’t leave, and eventually when Lael, winded, held out the shovel to him, he took it and held it and looked at the blade as if into a human face. Then he himself began to dig. After that they took turns digging or holding the flashlight, stopping and hiding behind the crypt when a carful of whooping teens pulled onto the cemetery drive and spun around the circle before pulling out again. Cheap thrill, Lael suggested, smirking. Across the street a drunk stopped and sat on Rudd’s scooter, turning the wheel back and forth before getting off again.

“I don’t feel good about this,” said Rudd.

“I’m not asking you to feel good about it,” said Lael. “I’m just asking you to do it.”

Sometime well into the night they struck the casket lid. Standing on it, they managed to clear enough dirt to free it but they could not figure a way to heft the casket up and out of the grave.

Standing on the lid, Lael broke the latch open with the shovel blade. He climbed out, slid the shovel down until the blade’s edge rested on the worn rubber between the lid and the box.

“We’ll only have a few seconds to look,” said Lael. “Shine the light directly into his face.”

Rudd nodded, shaking slightly. He steadied the flashlight against the edge of the pit, played it over the reflectant surface.

“Ready?”

Rudd shook his head no.

Lael leaned the shaft of the shovel against the pit’s edge, then stepped up and onto the end of the handle. The coffin lid cracked quickly up and open and Rudd shined his light onto his father’s cut throat and into his face that, as he watched, collapsed, became inhuman. It was a terrible thing to see and he dropped the flashlight. It rattled down the pit and into the coffin to lie, shining, between the remnants of his father’s legs. Lael’s feet slipped off the shovel and the lid swung closed.

“There,” said Lael. “Did you see?”

“See what?”

“His face,” said Lael, triumphantly. “I’m in it. You’re in it and so am I. Did you see us mixed in his face?”

Rudd tried to picture his father’s face as it had been, for an instant, whole, before privately collapsing, but kept seeing only the collapse, the flashlight clattering down. There had not been in that any hint of either himself or his brother.

“Yes,” Rudd lied. “I saw.”

Lael moved forward, a blotted, shambling shape in the dark. “That’s proof,” he said. “We’re brothers. Time to celebrate.”