Keeper of the Keys

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  Jacki looked her in the eye. “I’m telling you, the stars are aligning. I dreamed about us as kids last night, you and Leigh swinging in the backyard on Franklin Street. You pushed her, and she-oh, she laughed in this itty-bitty-little-girl voice, and then she tickled you until you fell. It’s precious, what you had.”

  2

  Esmé Jackson bustled around, wiping down the granite countertops in her kitchen, slipping a serrated knife through tomatoes. Her son, Ray, was due for their usual Sunday meal. She had considered something elaborate for dinner but rejected the idea, settling on strata-baked layers of bread, eggs, cheese, vegetables, cooked sausage, and crumbs. Peasant fare. He liked that sometimes.

  Fifty-nine, tall, still strong except for occasional breathing problems, she swung around her generous kitchen feeling lucky, so lucky to have a son like Ray, who loved her, who still came to dinner once a week. He was as dutiful as she had been to her own mother, sometimes at great personal risk. Her mother’s old flowered apron, stained with curry from last night’s dinner-or was it the night before’s-covered her carefully chosen slacks and blouse.

  She flipped open the cupboard where she kept baking ingredients. She would make chocolate pie, his favorite, she decided, pulling out a box of graham crackers along with a pudding mix. He had eclectic taste in food, liking boxed macaroni and cheese as well as homemade pasta with a creamy béchamel. He loved pudding pie. Big baby, she thought, smiling to herself, stirring whole milk into the pudding mix in her non-reactive aluminum pot.

  Humming a show tune, she turned the fire down to medium, stirring with a wooden spoon so that the pudding would not burn. When she finished, she crushed graham cracker crumbs with butter and sugar into a glass pie plate. She dusted the top with crumbs, too. Make it look fun. Ray needed bucking up. Her job made it hard to do the things she had done for him when he was young-she always tried so hard to make him happy, had devoted her life to it, in fact.

  Ray filled a glass of water at the sink, then opened the cupboard door and peered underneath. “I sent Lamont over to fix that leak. He said you sent him away. It’s running down the back wall, Mom. Probably down behind the bricks in the basement by now. That’s going to be hard to fix.”

  Esmé bristled. “I don’t need your fancy plumber, although of course, I really appreciate how you always want to help me. But as I told you, let me take care of my own home, okay? I’m not entirely useless, you know.”

  A dozen maintenance problems always hung like spiders behind the newly painted exterior of the fifty-year-old house on Close Street, Whittier. In the past year, Ray had designed a garage to replace the sagging carport. He had built a gazebo in the backyard, had established plants in the front yard, and added shutters to the windows, creating what he jokingly called “curb appeal.” The house did look good, better than most old houses. However, the chimney blew smoke. The floors were so uneven you could roll a ball up and down them.

  “I could build you something nicer,” Ray said, looking around.

  “Admit you love this place.”

  “Kind of. This kitchen. The old range. Even though the outside changes, the inside stays the same.”

  He always said that. Although he wished she would move on, he took comfort from what didn’t change, just like she did: the pink and green bathroom tile, the checked curtains above the kitchen sink, the linoleum on the floor of the den. This was the place where they had stopped moving and Ray had finally made some friends.

  For his own home, he had designed a showplace. Architectural Digest had featured it last spring. Of course, Ray’s house had too few lamps, Esmé thought. The couches weren’t comfortable. You couldn’t leave a book lying around without the place looking messy. Too big and too clean, it was no wonder Leigh had problems with it.

  Ah, but here they could relax. Home.

  Leigh never did understand Esmé’s house on Close Street. So many times she had harped on replacing the fixtures in the bathroom, installing a new stove, insulating the attic, removing the old asbestos, rebricking the uneven basement walls. Esmé had refused and Ray had backed her. “Leave it true to its time period,” he said.

  “Why not cherry it up?” Leigh had persisted. “A Nelson sunburst clock. Basket chairs. Let’s turn the back patio into a real lanai, with netting and colored-glass balls.” This was not long after she and Ray had married, and their hands had always touched as their bodies leaned toward each other.

  “No, thanks, Leigh, although you are always so full of helpful suggestions, aren’t you?” Esmé had said as kindly as she could considering how upset these suggestions made her. “I come home after a long day of checking out people’s groceries and water the sweet peas against the back fence. I run the water in the sink, which fills up a lot quicker than your water in your fancy new house. My toilets don’t spare the water, either, and the wall furnace may be rusty, but by God it heats the place in two minutes flat.”

  “In other words, don’t touch,” Ray had told Leigh, smiling, looking into her eyes, squeezing her hand.

  “What a summer we are having,” Esmé said to Ray, as he took his place at the bird’s-eye maple dining room table. She thought to herself, he isn’t sleeping. He looked scruffy, like he had slept in his clothes. Masking her concern, she went on, “My pink roses are in bloom. Have you ever noticed how much scent affects mood? It sure does mine. Surely there’s some research on it. These sweeties smell like…the ocean at dusk.” She stuck her nose into a cluster she had placed in a handblown vase she had bought at a flea market that harbored an invisible crack on the underside. “They smell like a world striving for perfection. Better than incense. Better than Chanel No. 5. More delicate.”

  Ray began to eat.

  Esmé talked for a while about things that interested her that she thought might interest him, but Ray fiddled with his meal in almost total silence.

  “What’s the matter? You’re hardly eating.”

  His fork rattled against the table as he set it down. “What kind of a man was he? My father?” He looked so healthy and young, so-unhappy.

  She put her fork down, concentrating on her answer. Wasn’t it strange that even a grown man like Ray, in his late thirties, married, was still mourning the loss of a father he hadn’t seen since he was two years old? “You haven’t asked about him in years. What’s going on with you, Ray?”

  “I’ve been thinking about my life. I would like the information. You never told me much. All I really know is that he left before I was born and died when I was two. You weren’t married long.”

  She sighed. “Like I’ve told you before, Henry looked like you, but not so tall or good-looking. His hair was dark like yours. Had a job in a bank.”

  “Why didn’t you keep photographs? Wedding photos, at least?”

  “I told you, when he left, I was very upset, Ray. I put them in a box and somewhere along the line the box got left behind.”

  “And he had no family?”

  “An aunt in South Dakota or somewhere. Ray, I have told you all this. He had left home very young to come out to California. He never got along with his parents. I can’t remember what the problem was, anymore. He was…hard to get along with.”

  “Why did you break up? Was it me?”

  Esmé sighed. “What do you mean?”

  “Was he…afraid. Or maybe he didn’t want kids.”

  “Maybe he was afraid, but he never knew you. It wasn’t personal, honey. I’m sorry you grew up without a father, but I’ve tried to make it up to you.” Her breathing wheezed slightly. She got up, opened a sideboard drawer, took out her inhaler, and took in a long breath. She was feeling disturbed by his haranguing, all this ancient history they had been through so many times before. Ray always went back to the past when things went wrong in his life. The medication went into her lungs, relaxing the bronchi, but making her feel a little dizzy.

  She said softly, “You know I don’t like talking about those years. It was hard, raising you, feeling like I had s
o much responsibility and no support. I love my life now. I love thinking about what good things might happen today. Like a visit from my son.”

  “Why did we move so much when I was growing up?”

  She shrugged. “We had good reasons. Can we talk about something else?”

  “Sometimes we left in the dead of night. Were we evicted?”

  “Maybe once or twice. Usually not.”

  “Until we moved to this house, I never had a friend for more than six months.”

  “We had each other.”

  “When you’re a kid, however you live is normal. If you have a parent that screams at you, well, that’s life. If you’re poor, you don’t notice. But I look back and I wonder. You had jobs that barely covered the rent. It wasn’t like your career forced us to move constantly. Eight schools before high school. That isn’t normal.”

  “Nobody in Southern California has what you would call a normal childhood,” Esmé shot back. “It’s a place you come to change your life. Everybody came from somewhere else, Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas. Here you get to be who you want, and you’ve benefited from that, by the way. Thank God for the great public universities. Like the Marines say, suck it in, soldier. Move on. Anyway, we did settle down, staying right here from the time you were twelve.”

  “You know, I used to play a game with myself. At each new place, be a new guy. Be friendly; stay aloof. Be smart; play possum.”

  “Well, that sounds like a strategy. You had to fit in somehow.” Her patience had about given out. She wondered if Ray, always a little obsessive, was developing a real problem.

  “It’s bothering me. I think about this house or that one, and try to remember the day we left. Who was I that day? Why did we have to start all over again? You know, I’ve been building models in the past few months of all the houses we lived in.”

  Esmé frowned. “Why?”

  “Leigh and I…had problems.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” And deeply surprised, since this was the first time she could recall Ray ever mentioning anything so personal about his marriage.

  “Life gets to a certain point-” He stopped. “She wanted-” He stopped again. “I wish I knew some things, that’s what I came here to tell you.”

  “Don’t get bogged down in things that happened a million years ago, that’s what I want to tell you.” She got up from the table to get coffee and cups. “Hey, after supper, I have a treat for you. Remember how you threw some cantaloupe seeds into the gully behind the house one year, and they sprouted and fruited? Well, I did it again. Three baby cantaloupes-”

  His hands were fists. They sat on the table as if he were holding forks in them, and he was staring at the old fruit-design wallpaper, his brow lowering. Alarmed, Esmé stopped talking. She could hear the clock in the living room ticking.

  “Mom, listen. Leigh’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  His eyes moved to the red vase, then he leaned over, reorganizing flowers, stretching out leaves with his long sensitive fingers. “Didn’t you wonder why she didn’t come tonight?”

  “Well, I thought-What happened, Ray?” She sat down heavily in the kitchen chair.

  “Did she say anything to you about us, what was happening with us?”

  “Leigh doesn’t confide in me. Thinks I’d be too much on your side, maybe.”

  “We had a fight.”

  She wiped her wet hands on the dishrag, preparing herself for a sleepless night, hating to see him in such pain.

  “A physical fight?”

  “An argument. Serious.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.”

  “I’m afraid it is my fault. Most of it, anyway.”

  God, she hated seeing her boy like this. Why did women and men, whom nature presumably meant to put together, clash so violently and do each other so much harm? “When did she leave?”

  “Friday night.”

  “Well-where is she? Is she back here in Whittier with her parents?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to try to find her?”

  “No point in that. It’s over.”

  She put her hand on his arm. Only after he gently wrestled out of her grip did she realize she had squeezed so hard it must have hurt.

  Kat’s date that night came from Czechoslovakia, or, as he explained it in his e-mails, Slovakia, since Czechoslovakia had disappeared into history. They met at an outdoor cafe across from the beach in Hermosa. Tired of the brain-numbing hunt for parking, tonight she splurged on a lot, paying six bucks to cover the two hours she thought dinner might take. Gathering up her small bag, hustling down the street on her spike heels, she made it exactly on time, fifteen minutes late.

  The prospect had secured a corner table with a glimpse of the sunset over the sea. He faced it; she faced him. She liked how tall he was when he stood to greet her. She even liked the way his eyes scoured her, her spiky red hair, as shiny as expensive products could make it, and her excellent rack neatly packaged in a Calvin Klein bra. She hoped he hadn’t padded his online profile as much as she had padded her physical one.

  He ordered the cheapest thing on the menu and skipped salad. Nik did not bike. He did not hike. He did not have an interest in exploring small towns for unusual crafts.

  What he liked very much was to smoke, apparently. Since he could not smoke in the restaurant, he instead held on tight to his pack of cigarettes, flicked his lighter, complained about American puritan mores, and reminisced longingly about a past in good old Bratislava or some damn city where you could light up anywhere. He made an effort to amuse Kat with his tales of growing up. He had come over as a young boy before the Cold War ended.

  She found herself looking at the door, wondering if Leigh might eat at this restaurant, what she looked like these days, examining people coming and going, watching for someone familiar to arrive and plunk down next to them, ready for a showdown. Jacki had really got her going.

  When their coffee came, he took her hand in his and gave her a soulful look, saying, “How I loff American girls.” Meanwhile, blonde, athletic, blithe, his American girls jogged along the boardwalk in the Hollywood sunset, movie-star skin glowing, minds free of archives, not like Kat here, thick with feeling and in a twist about an old friend. And thirty-five years of age, twice the number of years on some of the females he couldn’t keep his eyes off.

  However. He seemed interested enough. Except for the lingering tobacco on his clothes, he smelled good. A pushover for a decent aftershave, she had nobody else going and would welcome some peace from the nagging memories. Glad her fingernails had been painted red that very morning, glad her hands still felt soft from all the lotions, Kat rubbed his hand back, thinking, hey, I could settle for a night out of him. He’ll hold me, kiss me, touch me. I won’t feel lonely. I won’t think about Tom or Leigh, or how it all went so wrong.

  Excusing herself, she went to the restroom, where two women years younger than her primped, worrying about their wrinkles. Washing her hands with the cheap pink soap, wiping them with the harsh paper, she decided to go for it. If he wanted, he could have her, backwards, forwards, upside down.

  She returned to the table, offered to split the bill, stood up, and said, “Well, time to go.”

  Surprised, he stood, too, then shrugged and blew kisses on her cheeks, continental-style kisses o’ death. “My treat,” he said. “Nice meeting you.”

  As Kat walked out, she saw the reason for his insouciance. Nik had pulled a smooth switcheroo, turning his attention to the tall, slim waitress-until-she-hit-it-big, who had winked at him when they ordered. He held his credit card teasingly out of reach. She leaned over him with a big smile, pretending to grab for it.

  Kat left him basking in the glow of the waitress’s remarkably white teeth. She wasn’t insulted, exactly-dating had become a practical matter. She could cope with the night without him or any man. Fine.

  On the way home, she picked up wine, several bottles. She drove by a cou
ple of her favorite places, but mentally perseverating on the conversation with her sister, she went home instead of finding a cool barstool on which to get blitzed.

  She had been living at Candor Court in Hermosa Beach for almost eighteen months. She didn’t like all the townhouse association rules, especially the no-pet rule and the no-park-on-the-street rule, but her red geraniums on the second-floor balcony, lit by the Chinese lamp she always left on in the living area, made her feel welcome. She petted a few new leaves, said hello, but the geraniums didn’t talk back. Fine, fine.

  Tossing her keys into the antique plate and her clothes on the floor, she decided not to open up the wine after all, to use this opportunity to work on her spirit. The sun lingered while the moon came up, and the air on the balcony cooled. The year had fallen into its deepest, truest season, ripe summer. Out on the lawns, sprinklers started up, and not a breath of air disturbed the yellow sycamore leaves.

  Kat slipped out of her work clothes and into her robe and went into her walk-in closet, closing the door firmly. She had set aside this space with its tiny window to use as a shrine room. A picture of Rinpoche rested against the small brass Buddha, a tea-candle in a dish in front. She lit the candle and some incense, sat down, crossed her legs, checked her posture, and began counting her breaths, letting her body calm itself.

  She closed her eyes and of course there was Leigh the last time she had seen her, six years before, standing by Tom’s grave, hair uncombed, hand over her eyes. So Leigh still returned to his grave to bring him flowers and mourn. Kat felt a wave of sympathy and longing for her old friend. Leigh had known and loved their beloved Tommy, who was now a fading memory for all but his close family. Kat let the emotions rise and noticed them, and now they were supposed to pass away, but they remained and built on themselves. She remembered Tom, too, what he did for her, and what she had not done for him.