Hiding

by Henry Turner

  I had to move while her back was still turned, while the vacuum cleaner still roared.

  I was so nervous I thought I might puke.

  What if she turned around?

  What if I tripped or knocked something over, like one of those nifty glass stands?

  She’d probably have a heart attack. This poor old lady would drop dead of a heart attack, and it’d be all my fault.

  I couldn’t stand thinking about it.

  So I didn’t think about it, but just stepped into the hall—one big long step. I mean, I almost practically jumped. The kitchen doorway was, like, twenty-five feet back and full of light.

  I spun toward it, and just as I did, the vacuum cleaner went off.

  I froze dead still.

  I was, like, ten feet behind her.

  I didn’t breathe.

  I heard her do something. Maybe pull a piece of carpet out of the vacuum cleaner where it had snagged; there was this little ripping sound.

  At my left was a stairwell. I hadn’t even seen it as I left the kitchen earlier; I passed right by it because it was sunk into the white wall. It led upstairs, on a curve up over my head.

  I still held my breath.

  If the maid turned, I was done.

  But she didn’t turn.

  The vacuum cleaner went on again. She started walking jerkily backwards, toward me, always walking backwards so as not to step on where she’d just vacuumed.

  I couldn’t risk the kitchen anymore. It was too far. I sprang to the left and as quietly as possible ran up the stairs, hoping to god the maid couldn’t hear anything over the noise of the vacuum.

  At the top of the stairs I jumped to safety and stopped. I dropped flat on the floor and peeked down through a railing.

  The hall was straight under me, the front door way up at the end. The maid had come about a third of the way down. She still had her back turned.

  I sat up with my back pressed against a wall. I raised my eyes and looked all around. There was a skylight above me. The whole hall was bright with mellow daylight glowing off the pearly white walls.

  I saw plenty of windows—windows over roofs.

  I could go through any of them, find a tree and climb down. I could pick a place where the roof wasn’t very visible through the tree branches outside, and I doubted any neighbors would even notice me.

  I thought I’d do that, do it in just a few minutes, once I felt less nervous and got my breath back, because to tell you the truth, I still felt pretty nervous and a little out of breath. If the maid came upstairs, I could just hide anywhere, no problem.

  I started to prepare myself for getting out. I even sat forward a little, you know, like I was going to maybe stand up.

  But then I sat back again and didn’t budge.

  Something had sort of occurred to me.

  Maybe it was because I was just sitting there and had some peace for a minute and could catch my breath and everything, I don’t know. Because I started to think a little about the whole time I’d been in the house, and mostly about how all my feelings for Laura had been reactivated, like I said, and I have to admit that they felt more reactivated than ever, now that I was upstairs and had a second to sort of think and catch my breath.

  I mean, up to then I’d really been thinking about how I had to leave, and mentally planning all the necessary steps for getting out of there.

  But I must admit this thing occurred to me while I sat there, just listening to the maid downstairs, and I completely stopped thinking about leaving.

  Because it suddenly occurred to me that I’d come inside the house not really by accident.

  I was thinking maybe I’d had a plan all along, but had kept it hidden, even from myself, because I sort of didn’t want to face it.

  I mean, maybe even coming in the window wasn’t, like, so totally coincidental, because maybe on one of the million times Laura had made me wait for her when she went inside her house, I’d walked into the yard and noticed that the gardener had this bad habit of running a hose out of the basement window, because he used all the outside faucets for sprinklers, and he left the hose attached to the spigot inside the unlocked window after he’d gone home. And earlier I couldn’t really face the fact that maybe I’d sort of planned all this in my mind—I mean, sort of seen that the window was always left open, and kind of concocted a plan to one day maybe go inside.

  But now, sitting there by myself and listening to the maid, I faced it.

  My plan, I mean.

  I mean, I wasn’t really sure I’d done it all on purpose. I mean, I wasn’t positive. Sometimes, you know, you might do something on purpose, but then keep it a secret and sort of hidden in your mind, and you don’t even tell yourself that you actually planned on doing it, because you can’t really decide whether it’s right or wrong.

  I couldn’t really decide about that.

  But I knew one thing.

  I didn’t want to leave.

  I really didn’t want to.

  I mean, this was my one chance to find out something about Laura. My only chance, because I knew I’d never be back inside her house in a million years. I’d come into the house to find Laura—I mean to find out something about her that might explain why she left me, and why she ever wanted to go out with me in the first place.

  But I hadn’t.

  I hadn’t found out a thing.

  All I’d learned was that her life wasn’t what I’d thought it was, but that didn’t actually explain anything. I’d learned that she had seen me, but I still didn’t know why, and I still hadn’t really seen her.

  I sat there for a while and didn’t know what to do, really just sat there looking over at the wall across from me, just sort of staring at the wall.

  Maybe there was something I could find out about her.

  I mean, if I stayed inside her house.

  I don’t mean I wanted to stay forever.

  No.

  For just a little longer, until I—

  I must admit I felt a little scared.

  I don’t mean about getting caught.

  It really didn’t matter if I got caught; that’s not what scared me.

  For some reason that didn’t scare me at all anymore.

  I was scared by what I was thinking.

  You see, I had a crazy feeling.

  I was here—I knew now—to do something.

  I wasn’t just fooling around being heartbroken anymore.

  But what was it I wanted to do? What was my plan?

  I didn’t know.

  All I knew was, this was my one chance to find out something really important about Laura, like I just said, and I didn’t want to blow it.

  The truth is, I didn’t really know what to feel about Laura anymore.

  Because all along, you know, I’ve had these sorts of feelings about her and what she’d done to me—I mean how she’d treated me—and I guess I never really told you, because maybe I was afraid I’d look bad.

  But I think I’ll tell you now.

  I mean, in one way, I guess I felt pretty hurt because she dumped me and really did it just because her mom told her to, at least that’s how she played it, so she didn’t have to take responsibility for hurting me herself, but that wasn’t fair to me, because for one thing I was just a sitting duck. I mean, I never really ever had any leverage with Laura, if you get what I mean, because when you get right down to it, she had lots more friends than me and was, like, accepted by everybody, even idiots like Biff Roberts who invited her to their lousy parties, whereas I didn’t have so many friends and mine were all just, like, fringe friends as my mom always called them. And so of course I wanted to go out with Laura—going out with a girl like Laura was like a dream for me—but I never even had a chance with her. And I knew it because she had so much more than me and just always sort of flaunted it, and not just stuff but experience, too, and I hated it.

  I did. I admit that.

  I hated it.

  I hated that there
was nothing I could say to make her change her mind when she dumped me—even though I could tell from this terrible look in her face that she maybe actually loved me—and nothing I could do to show her I had value, because I didn’t know how to act and I never had a mask and all I could ever be was myself, and that just wasn’t good enough for her.

  I just wasn’t good enough for her.

  I never had been, and I couldn’t stand it.

  But the worst thing is, I could stand it, just like I’d been able to stand living in the neighborhood all my life and just sort of behaving so I would be tolerated. But this was different.

  I mean, the people in my neighborhood never saw me because I was hiding, so I didn’t care what they thought. It was okay if they thought I was nothing.

  But Laura saw me.

  She saw me, and I wasn’t good enough.

  I wanted her to love me, but I was never good enough for her, and I think she knew it all along.

  So why did she want me at all?

  There was no reason and no answer, and I was getting no answer snooping in her stupid house.

  But I wanted an answer.

  I refused to leave without an answer.

  Because maybe if I got an answer for why she just sort of trifled with me and hurt me so bad, I’d be satisfied.

  Because I was actually really mad at her.

  I still loved her—don’t get me wrong.

  I loved every molecule of her.

  But I was really, really, really mad at her.

  Maybe an answer would let me leave her and still love her and maybe forgive her.

  But I didn’t know if I could forgive her. I didn’t know if I should forgive her.

  All my life I’d sort of trained myself not to react to how people treated me and to just let go of how they made me feel, no matter how bad it hurt.

  But maybe it was wrong not to feel things like that and not get angry and react, and instead just be buried in myself because everybody maybe wanted me to, because it just sort of made me less of a problem for them and somebody they didn’t have to see or recognize or care about at all.

  Boy, was I feeling weird.

  I was really scared of myself.

  I sat there thinking I’d totally flipped.

  Downstairs, the maid shut off the vacuum, put it away, and started doing something else; I couldn’t tell just what. She hadn’t let Dobey out of the basement yet, but I was sure I’d have his company in a little while.

  I thought I had a few minutes.

  I got to my feet and quietly stepped through an open door into another room.

  A bedroom.

  The master bedroom.

  Her parents’.

  It was fancy like the rest of the house, sure, but I no longer cared about that. I was sick of seeing all their stuff; they had too much of it. But I was glad there was this big window next to the bed, because lots of daylight came through the filmy curtains and flooded the room, making it easy to see everything.

  There was a stand on one side of the bed, with lots of drawers. On top was a crystal lamp and a few bracelets in a little box—I figured it was her mom’s side of the bed.

  I wondered what was in the drawers. Maybe something secret. Maybe something to explain why she was so mean to Laura.

  I knelt down and opened the top drawer.

  The first thing I saw almost made me laugh.

  For all her interest in organics, Laura’s mom really didn’t have the right to bitch at Laura about eating wrong, because I saw this whole pack of candy bars stuffed in the drawer, huge chocolate caramel nut jobs—you know, the good kind.

  I shuffled around in the drawer and found a pill vial.

  I picked it up and read the label. It was prescribed for Laura’s mom. I dropped it back inside and shut the drawer.

  Across the bed was another cabinet just like the first one—nightstand cabinets, I guess they’re called. This was obviously Laura’s dad’s side of the bed.

  What was in his top drawer? Maybe it would explain why he acted like Laura didn’t exist.

  I went over.

  When I opened the drawer I froze.

  A gun lay there, on a few papers. It was flat and black and had a trigger lock; I’d seen those things in magazines, so I knew just what it was. The whole trigger area was covered in this black plastic blocking device with a weird three-hole key slot.

  It just sat there, like—well, I hardly know how to say it—like it was waiting.

  I wanted to pick it up.

  I wanted to get rid of it.

  It terrified me.

  I didn’t know why, but it seemed like a disaster waiting to happen, and I thought I should just stash it somewhere, hidden.

  But I didn’t.

  I reached down urgently to grab it, but my hand stopped.

  It just stopped.

  I just didn’t want to touch the gun.

  I guess it scared me too much.

  I felt I was crazy.

  You don’t have to think that—I did.

  I was crazy.

  I reached up under the lip of the drawer. Nobody can hide anything from me. I felt around with my fingers. I touched something held by a magnet and pulled it loose.

  A weird key.

  It was a round cylinder of plastic with three prongs of stainless steel: three prongs for the slot of the trigger lock.

  I looked at the key for a long time.

  I put it back, closed the drawer, and stood straight. I looked to one side of the room. There was a master bathroom attached, all marble and silver. I slipped in.

  I opened the medicine cabinet.

  I stood a few seconds, just looking.

  I’d figured it. I used to deliver all this stuff for that pharmacy on my bike.

  Lots of vials. All psychiatric stuff.

  Laura’s mom.

  I felt for her. I was such a creep for snooping, but I really felt for her.

  I’d lost track of the maid. I listened for her.

  There she was, downstairs, going from room to room. She was talking in Spanish on a phone now. She had a pleasant voice. Then she yelled, “Dobey?” With a Spanish accent the name sounded cute, with all the emphasis on the second syllable.

  “Dobey?”

  I heard old Dobes bark from the basement, and the maid’s footsteps headed for the kitchen.

  I couldn’t get that gun out of my head.

  I looked back at the nightstand.

  It was in there.

  It was waiting.

  All right, I was crazy.

  But I wasn’t there to hurt anybody.

  I’d never hurt anybody in my whole life.

  I’d never even thought about hurting anybody.

  But I already said how all summer everything had begun to feel so difficult, and that after Laura left me I had to sort of control myself, and I worried that if I just let myself go I might do anything.

  And you hear stories, you know, about crazy people who just go off half-cocked without even knowing they wanted to, and I thought about that. I thought about how I’d come into Laura’s house and maybe had a sort of plan I didn’t really admit to myself, and how I’d come upstairs and looked around without admitting it was something I’d wanted to do all along. And I’d just poked around in her parents’ private stuff without any, like, compunction or anything.

  I’d hidden so much from myself that I really didn’t know what I’d do next.

  I mean, what if I was some sort of maniac, and just not telling myself what I planned to do until I did it?

  Because that gun totally freaked me out—I mean I really felt threatened by it—but I didn’t know why.

  I had to leave now. I had to get out.

  I ran lightly out of the room into the hall, just as I heard the maid let Dobey out into the kitchen, barking happily and smacking that chain around.

  Along the wall I saw a number of doors.

  I ran silently down the hall through the sunlight coming in f
rom the skylight on the ceiling—very beautiful light.

  I came to the last door.

  I gently opened it and looked inside.

  Laura’s room.

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  I closed the door until it was almost shut.

  I stood there right in front of it.

  I wanted to go in.

  But I didn’t go in.

  I’d been thinking I was going to leave.

  But suddenly, I was at her door.

  I just stood there like an idiot.

  If I went in, it was like I was telling myself I had some sort of crazy right to, unless all I really wanted was to just, like, violate her privacy.

  I really wondered if I had any right to go in.

  I thought I didn’t, but maybe I was wrong.

  I didn’t know what to do, so for a minute I just stood there, kind of peeking through the crack but not seeing much, and sort of thinking about whether I had any real right to go in, and thinking that maybe, if I believed I’d really loved her, I sort of had permission, in a way, to go in—I mean, if I really loved her.

  But how could I be sure I really loved her?

  Maybe I just thought I still loved her, but was hiding from myself what I actually felt.

  Because I will admit I was pretty mad at her.

  So I just stood there and kind of racked my brains, thinking about her, wondering what I really knew about her, so I could determine, you know, whether I had any real right to go in there, and what I, you know, even really felt about her.

  But it was really hard to know.

  Because I never asked her about herself.

  Not really.

  I guess I was afraid.

  And she never told me about herself.

  Not really.

  I guess she was afraid.

  I mean, the truth is, we only had one important conversation the whole time we went out.

  And I don’t mean the time when she said she loved my house, because we didn’t actually talk then—she just got mad at me.

  I mean another time.

  This one other time.