The Secret Life of Souls

by Jack Ketchum

  “Did I contradict you?” she says. “You’re right. We’re done with him. So. Who wants a drink?”

  “Robbie, Robert . . . son . . . c’mere . . .”

  He’s seen his mom high before god knows, but this is something else. This is deeply, seriously, word-slurring, weavingly drunk. And from the way he’s sitting slouched in front of her at the dining room table, his father isn’t much better.

  All he wants to do is sit with his Pepsi in front of the TV for an hour or so before he has to go up to do his dumb homework, sit next to his sad-looking, depressed-looking dog on the couch with nothing on his brain but some cop show or something but his mother’s calling him over.

  “Pull up a chair. Something I want to say to you.”

  The television beckons. He can hear a Pringles commercial in the background. Bright happy voices. But he pulls up a chair and sits.

  “Got something on my chest and you guys need to hear it. About Delia. You guys don’t know the whole story.”

  He sips his Pepsi. Okay, she’s got his attention.

  “I’m a bad mom. I’m a bad mom and I . . .”

  “You’re not a bad mom,” his father says. “I had a bad mom. You’re not a bad mom.”

  “Let me talk. I’m a bad mom. That’s what I’ve been thinking ever since Delia got burned up the way she did. I’m a bad mom for making her work instead of going to school. I’m a bad mom for making her work after the fire. Delia and I . . . that morning . . . I don’t know how much you guys have noticed but I’ve been on edge . . . all that travel . . . taking care of Delia’s burns . . . Pearl . . . goddamn Pearl . . . that bitch is crazy, you know what I’m saying? But it’s not about Pearl, it’s about me. What I’ve been doing. What I’ve done.”

  She drinks down her scotch. His father refills it from the bottle of Dewar’s on the table. They aren’t even bothering with ice.

  “Thank you, Bart. I just got so caught up. Trying to keep us afloat. I mean, we were about to go under. Right, hon?”

  His father doesn’t answer.

  “I didn’t stop to think about . . . the effects of all this . . . until after that first day with Pearl. I could see Delia was getting more agitated. More confused, more defiant, if you know what I mean. Hell. Why wouldn’t she be? I drag her around like a ragdoll, let ’em point cameras at her, hot lights, microphones, all of it. And we collect the checks, right? I say we, but I’m the one who calls the shots, right?”

  His can of Pepsi is sweating in his hand. He takes a drink. As though on cue, so do they. She runs her tongue over her lips.

  “But that morning . . . Delia . . . that morning . . . I just blew my top. I . . . you guys had already left and it was just me and Delia and Caity, just us, eating a quick breakfast. Grapefruit and toast. And the light was coming through the patio window. It was shining on Delia, shining on her face. Her poor, poor face. She was so . . . damaged. And I was feeling guilty I guess and I laid it all on her. Because she’d been so good, we both knew she’d do her job, no matter what, the show must go on, y’know? So I went off big-time, laid it all on her just like I’m doing now only worse. Much worse. I’m a rotten mother. An overbearing stage bitch. All the fucked-up stuff I did . . . I do . . . I am. I got angry. Angry at me. I was yelling, even.”

  She shakes a cigarette out of the pack and tosses the pack on the table. Uses her lighter and tosses that too. Inhales deep.

  “Caity stood up. She was watching me. But Delia just sat there. While I let it all out. She didn’t cry. She wasn’t afraid. She just watched me and listened. And when I was done . . . I was shaking . . . she put her little hand on mine. She put her little hand on mine and she said, ‘It’s okay, mom. I don’t think all those things about you. I know you care about me and dad and Robbie and Caity. We’re family. The TV stuff, the book, all of that’s for us. So we’ll be okay.’ She said she’d been thinking about it all night, how she’d been such a brat lately, her life wasn’t so bad. She thought about other kids, kids who didn’t have anything in their boring lives. She said that we can tell people what makes our lives so good, what makes us a family. Whatever we have to go through.”

  He glances at his father. His father seems riveted. Drink nearly gone and poised in midair in front of him.

  “She was so strong. She squeezed my hand. My little girl. She said that we had to go on just like we were doing. Go on with the book, go on with the charity. That the charity was important. Really important. I hugged her so tight. And then we just . . . started laughing. She got up and ran away, wrestling with Caity, they were having so much fun. And then . . . and then we had to go and . . . the rest . . . well . . . you know the rest. Merciful god . . .”

  He can hear laughter from the TV in the living room. Some sitcom. For a moment nobody moves. She stubs out her cigarette in the ashtray. Wipes her eyes of tears.

  “So what I’m saying is,” she says, “it’s the charity, the book. We need to run the charity. Promote the book. For all those kids out there she touched and all those parents of all those kids. You see? You understand? We need to run the charity. For her. For Delia. What she would have wanted. For our little girl.”

  His father sets down his drink and nods. She nods slowly back.

  But he can only sit there, staring—at her, at the wall and cupboard behind her until they seem to blend together, woman and surroundings, into one flat surface. And it’s as though his sister has spoken to him as clearly as if she were there in the room, listening just as he’s been. Has heard everything he’s heard.

  She’s lying, his sister seems to say.

  Every word of it, she says.

  A lie.

  They haven’t replaced the window screen but have left the window open just a crack. However a crack is enough for a dog to get through.

  She pushes with her snout and then with the top of her head and finally with her front paws against the sill and her shoulders against the sash and then she is outside, where their blanket lies welcoming with softness and scent.

  She lies down and there are stars above and a desolate empty space beside her. The night is warm, the air still. There are crickets in the yard. In better days she has been known to eat a cricket now and then, to snatch them out of the air mid-hop.

  She yawns and stretches and soon she is asleep.

  She awakens to a voice.

  Look! Look!

  She knows this voice, knows this voice so well. Her tail begins to thump. Her mouth opens, tastes the air. Catches the scent. She gazes up.

  Something is moving up there. No, two somethings.

  Two hair-thin trails of light, falling slowly, evenly, gracefully toward the earth and toward one another high above, amid the pinprick patterns which are as familiar to her now as the blanket and the gentle slope of roof on which she lies. Two beams converging and then for a moment, joined together in the moonless night.

  “Look!” says the voice again. “Stars. Shooting stars!”

  She watches as they veer apart, as they resume their isolate trajectories down. But the voice does not disjoin from her as these stars do from one another. The voice remains. The voice a part of her now. It belongs to her. It is her own, second voice.

  It murmurs in her ear. It laughs. She laughs.

  A weight lifts away.

  She stands and barks, full-throated and booming from deep down in her chest and barks again. She’s calling out. Reaching out. She cannot contain her joy. She announces to the stillness, to the crickets, to the stars.

  We are here. We together. We are not alone.

  Robbie has no idea what wakes him, only that he jolts wide awake. He can remember no nightmare. He doesn’t have to pee. He looks at the illuminated hands of the clock. Four-ten in the morning. Less than three more hours and he has to get up for school. He rolls over and closes his eyes but sleep won’t come.

  Maybe if I eat something, he thinks.

  He rolls out of bed and pads barefoot down the hall and down the stairs, quietly so
as not to wake his mom and dad, across the foyer into the kitchen and into a scene of utter devastation, illuminated solely by the light from the wide-open refrigerator and freezer doors.

  In front of him lies a frozen roast, a package of hot dogs and a package of pork chops, also frozen, two trays of ice cubes, their contents scattered across the floor amid a spray of potato chips in an irregular stream depending from a ravaged plastic bag lying empty against a leg of the kitchen table, and a quart of Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream, into the open end of which Caity’s muzzle roots greedily.

  At his approach she looks up and bares her teeth in what he can only think of as a brown-toothed, brown-faced grin.

  “Caity!”

  He laughs and she huffs and goes right on back to work.

  He’s been told never to use the word but he can think it.

  What the fuck?

  He stuffs the roast, chops, and hot dogs back in the freezer, grabs a Pepsi and a bag of pretzels and sits watching until she’s through and then cleans up the kitchen floor with mop and broom and goes back upstairs to bed.

  Sleeping? No problem.

  Pat’s still dead to the world but Bart’s at the sink all showered and getting ready to go. There’s a personal ad in the Times for a 2014 Firebird with only two thousand plus miles on it—the price stunning, absolutely nothing for this area—and he’s always bitterly regretted the sale of the Red Baron back when times were looking desperate, before Manny Choi picked up the tab for all those bills.

  He’s going to check it out. It’s about fifty miles away but who cares. Nice morning for a drive.

  Pat says he likes his toys too much. Well, fuck that. So he likes his toys. So what?

  And he needs to cheer himself up, doesn’t he?

  He’s halfway through his shave, working the upper lip toward the chin.

  When this dog appears in the mirror.

  On her hind legs, front paws on the sink. Tongue lolling and tail going like mad. Caity making direct eye contact with his reflection in the mirror. He has to smile.

  This is a first.

  “Whatchu doin’, girl?”

  She gives him one of those little pleasure-whines. The kind he’ll get when he offers her a treat.

  “You want a shave?”

  Damned if she doesn’t shake her head no. That’s sure what it looks like, anyway.

  He pats her head. She drops to all fours and trots away out the door.

  He finishes his shave.

  Rrrufff!

  Not loud, but loud enough to wake her. Wake her to a splitting headache and limbs that feel like lead.

  “Jesus, Caity.”

  She’s prancing in the doorway.

  “You want to eat? You want to go out? Go ask daddy. Ask Robbie. Go ask . . .”

  She pulls a pillow over her head and drifts back to sleep.

  The screen door’s swinging shut behind him when Caity comes barreling through. Surprises the heck out of him. Runs right up beside him, keeping pace as he hurries toward the bus stop. She never does that. Always knows to stay inside.

  She runs circles around his legs. All excited. Robbie stops and stoops and pets her.

  “What? You want to go to school with me? Huh?”

  He’s running late. If he misses the bus he’s going to have to ask his dad for a ride. He doesn’t want to do that. More ribbing from the guys. But if he doesn’t take her home again how is she supposed to get back inside? He can’t just leave her out here. Too bad dogs didn’t have opposable thumbs.

  “C’mon, girl,” he says and takes off toward the house at a fast jog, the heavy schoolbooks sliding side to side into his shoulder blades inside his backpack. Should have packed them tighter, he thinks. But who knew?

  He opens the screen door and she just stands there looking at him. Tail drooping. He knows what that means.

  “Hey,” he says. “I’ll be back soon, I promise. You’ll hardly even know I was gone. We’ll mess around out back. Okay?”

  Hesitantly she steps inside.

  She punches speed dial. We can hear the phone ringing on the other end.

  “Hi, Caits,” she says and phone in hand, slides open the glass door. The late-morning sun glares through. “Want to go out and play?”

  We sit. We need to pee a little. But we’d rather listen.

  She shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

  Pickup. Roman’s voice. Flat, dull, angry.

  “What.”

  “Hi,” she says.

  “What do you want, Patricia?”

  “Bitterness, Roman?”

  “I’m going to go on ahead and send you your contact list, my copies of the contracts, headshots, etcetera. Hard copy. Courier can have them there by three.”

  “Oh, stop. Bart was just trying to impersonate a man in front of his family. We’ll work it out.”

  A long pause. We can hear him breathing.

  “I didn’t sleep last night.”

  “I could have helped you with that.”

  “I thought. A lot. About you. About us. About your kid. It’s fucked up, Pat. You’re fucked up.”

  “Roman, who wouldn’t be? After what I’ve been through? Come on.”

  A sigh. “Your files and things will be there after lunch. If you need anything else from our office, call my assistant.”

  “Fine. Before you go, though. I need Pearl’s office number.”

  “Why?”

  “Did you think I was finished here, Roman? Pretty short-sighted of you, sweetie. Aren’t you agents supposed to think ahead?”

  “Fuck you, Pat.”

  “That’s your job, cowboy. Number, please.”

  There’s a robin on the patio, pecking away at something. We could chase it. Stretch our legs. We’d rather listen.

  Ringing. Receptionist. Then Pearl. Morning, Patricia and good morning, Pearl and so sorry for your loss dear and thank you, Pearl.

  “The reason I’m calling. We need to finish this.”

  “Finish what, darlin’?”

  “What we started. Look. Different people deal with things differently. If I just sit around this house, I’m gonna end up hurting myself. I’m not gonna to do that. I want to go ahead.”

  “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “This . . . what happened . . . isn’t the ending. It’s bigger than that. There’s a whole third act.”

  Intake of breath. “Third act?”

  “Yes. You already have acts one and two. The dog saves the young girl from a terrible fire, though the dog is burned and the girl is horribly disfigured. Act one. The girl refuses corrective surgery in favor of looking exactly the way she is, staying exactly as she is—a public act of integrity and courage. She starts a charity, Delia’s Mirror, writes a book. Act two. Then . . . the girl dies. An awful, unforeseeable accident. But the charity continues, the charity grows, even after the girl’s tragic death. Her mother goes on the road in her place. Promotes the charity. Promotes the book. Of which you have a significant piece, remember? Act three.”

  A long pause and then a laugh.

  “You really are a piece of work, Patricia Cross. You know that?”

  “What were your ratings on the show we did together? They were through the roof, weren’t they.”

  “Yes, they were. I’ll think on it, darlin’. I promise you that.”

  “Please do.”

  “Can we still get the dog?”

  “Of course we can get the dog. I can do this, Pearl.”

  “I know you can, honey. I’ll get back to you. You be good, now. And you have a nice day.”

  Roman’s pissed.

  Screw the courier service. He isn’t paying for some goddamn courier service. He climbs in his Jaguar XF. He’s driving over.

  Call her first? Nah. Fuck it.

  Nobody on the winding road but him. A bright sunny day. Life is good. A man feels strong on a day like this. Screw the Cross family. He pulls into their driveway.

  He knocks but nobody answers. He tries
the door. It’s open. He lets himself in.

  “Patricia! Bartholomew?”

  No answer. He can hear music coming from upstairs, the heavy thump of a bass line, some synthesizer eighties disco shit. Patricia. He dumps the box of papers and photos on the coffee table.

  What was it she’d said? That’s your job, cowboy. She sees his job as fucking her. Sure she does. Agent, sure. Partner, sure. Up till now, anyway. But also her fuck-toy. Patty likes it hard sometimes. Well fine, she’ll damn well get it hard. One last bareback good-bye fuck from her rodeo cowboy and maybe he’ll slap the shit out of her too while he’s at it, he’d like that, that would be good, damage that pretty little face of hers just enough for Bart to wonder what the hell happened.

  Give makeup something to seriously do for a change.

  He heads for the staircase. And stops.

  As Caity slides around the corner from the dining room and plants her ass right in front of him at the base of the stairs.

  Like she’s been waiting for him. Comes out of the room like a shadow.

  And maybe he’s nuts. But it looks like the goddamn dog is glaring at him. No blink. Just an in-your-face thousand-yard stare.

  He knows the dog doesn’t like him but fuck that and fuck her, if it comes to a confrontation that’s what boots are for and he’s wearin’ them. Try nice first, though, he thinks. Flies with sugar.

  “Hiya, Caity. Hiya, girl.”

  He’s going up. Dog or no dog.

  He moves closer but then stops again when over the pounding bass and whirly synthesizer he hears the low growl that seems to dwarf the music and vibrate the very air around him. Low down and dirty mean. Steps one step back when she bares her teeth. Big fuckin’ teeth.

  Somehow the boots don’t seem like such a great idea.

  Then she throws back her head and howls.

  He’d heard wolves howl nights as a kid at his uncle’s house along the Oklahoma border but that was outside and scary enough as it was to send him to his mother’s bedside crawling into her lap but this is inside the fucking house and proximity makes it a whole lot worse and it scares his country ass down to the bone.

  Above him the music stops dead. And time seems to stop dead too as she lowers her head and growls again and there’s that stare and she’s agitating on her haunches so that he realizes she’s preparing to move, she’s going to move on him, she’s going to strike with those great big teeth so he turns and runs like hell for the front door and hears Pat call his name as the door slams shut behind him.