by Marc Parent
Brian jerked his arm free and stopped. He pointed back down the hallway in the direction they had come from.
“She’s not the one I saw in the house. She isn’t the girl I spoke to.”
Rowan held up his palms in a hands-off manner. He smiled.
“Mr. Holloway, I’ve got a caseload like you wouldn’t believe. This is one of the cases that ends happy, that ends good. Let’s just let this go.”
“And what if I can’t?”
“Then you are on your own, sir. Let’s go.”
He grabbed Brian’s arm again and led him to the door.
THEY WERE QUIET at first on the ride home. Laura drove. Brian thought about what he had seen in the Robinette house. They were almost home before Laura spoke for the first time.
“Brian, what’s going on? What were you talking about back there?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t really feel like talking to you right now.”
“Brian, I’m sorry. They told me you did something to her. They said they had evidence and that you had admitted asking her inappropriate questions. They said it had something to do with our baby. The pressure you are under and how we haven’t had sex. They said they had seen it before.”
Brian shook his head.
“You told them about our sex?”
“They asked a lot of questions. I felt I had to.”
“And you believed everything they said. That I admitted asking inappropriate questions. That I did something to her.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“I was talking to a six-year-old, not a thirteen-year-old. I didn’t ask anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know, baby. I’m sorry. But you were acting strange all week. And then when you went out last night . . . I just thought . . . I don’t know what I thought. All I can say is that I’m sorry.”
Brian looked over at his wife. In the darkness he could see that she was crying, doing nothing about the tears rolling down her cheeks. He didn’t do anything about it either.
IN THE WORKSHOP Brian had a message waiting for him on his computer the next morning. It was from a box man in Montreal named Robert Pepin. Rather than publicly post the message on the website, Pepin answered Brian’s posted inquiry with a direct and private e-mail. Though Pepin was obviously French and had some language difficulties, his message was clear.
Take cautions. I have heard story of the threshold safe. One box man saw his young brother who was killed. I have not seen for myself. Was it in the floor? This is past on stories. The box man he make mistake to open it.
Brian stared at the message a long time, trying to decipher its meanings. He’d felt a coldness begin in his center. He knew it was the beginning of fear and the confirmation of something he had felt deep inside.
The message had Pepin’s business number and address at the bottom. Brian picked up the workshop phone and punched in the long distance number. After three rings it was answered by a machine. The outgoing message was in French and Brian didn’t understand a word of it. But then the speaker switched to English with a heavy French accent. He identified the line as belonging to Fochet Lock and Safe and asked the caller to leave a message. But then he gave another number in case of an emergency. Brian wrote it down, hung up, and then called the emergency number.
The second call was answered after four rings and Brian heard a drill wind down before a man spoke rapidly in French. It was obviously a cell phone and Brian had interrupted a job. He wondered how the phone had even been heard over the sound of the drill.
“I’m sorry,” Brian said. “Do you speak English? Is Robert Pepin there?”
“This is Robert. Who is this, please?”
Brian identified himself and told Pepin he had received his message. He needed to ask him questions. Pepin tried to beg off, saying he was in the middle of drilling a safe and people were waiting for him to complete the job. Brian insisted and promised to be quick. Pepin relented and lowered his voice to a whisper when he spoke further.
“What did you mean by a threshold safe in your message?” Brian asked first.
“It is the safe you showed. Uh, it is Threshold, the name. Le Seuil.”
He pronounced it like Le Soy. Brian tried to say it that way.
“Le Seuil means threshold ?”
“The Threshold, yes. Like the doorway you have.”
“I understand. And the story you heard—who told you?”
“Uh, the man who I bought from him my business. Fochet. He told me. He told me, ‘If I get the job, NO, do not open.’ And so I tell you.”
“He told you he opened one?”
“A very long time ago, yes. He said big mistake opening that one, yes.”
“Why?”
“Well, he is not saying everything. He is just warning against it, you know? He is saying bad things come out. Like a dream. I didn’t ask. He sound, you know, a little crazy.”
“Is he still around? Is he retired?”
Pepin chuckled.
“He is retired to the cemetery. Mr. Fochet was very old when I bought his business.”
Frustration was welling up in Brian. Everything was like the smoke in his dreams. It formed the whispery outlines of a picture, but not enough was there to identify it.
“In your message you said the man who opened the safe saw his brother who was killed. What do you mean?”
“Fochet, he had his brother who was killed in the train. An accident, you see. But before that Fochet open the threshold safe. On a job. He is saying to me that he saw a man. It was his brother but . . . afterward. Like he was an old man now. He tell Fochet to watch out on the train. He give the warning. But Fochet don’t know this. He didn’t tell nobody about this. Then a year later his brother he got killed. On the train. You understand? It was a crazy story. I didn’t pay too much attention because I never heard of these safes and Fochet, he was, you know, a little crazy. His wife make him sell me the business. But then I see you on the website and think, aha, I better give a warning for this. Just in case, you know.”
The language translation made it difficult for Brian to fully grasp the story.
“Do you remember anything else about the story?”
“No, that is what I know. I tell you what I know.”
“Did he say who made these safes? Anything about the manufacturer?”
“I did ask him this and he say he could not find out. He said it was a big mystery, yes. He tried to learn. The safe came on a boat from France—this is long time ago—and there are no records anymore. In the war the Germans came and destroyed these records. He found nothing because he was like you, with questions.”
Pepin made a spitting noise in the phone as if to signal the finality and the fruitlessness of searching for the origin of the Le Seuil safe.
“I have my work now,” he said.
“Yeah, okay,” Brian said. “Thank you for your help.”
“You show a picture of the door of the safe on the website,” Pepin suddenly said.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“You took the door off and leave it off?”
“Yes . . .”
Brian slowly hung up, even as he could hear Pepin’s voice on the line exhorting him to be cautious. He thought about the girl he had seen in the house on the island. He thought he now recognized her eyes. He picked up the phone again and called his wife at work. As soon as she heard his voice she whispered that she was really busy. She wanted to talk to him but the phone was ringing off the wall. Her job was to take reservations for the most popular restaurant in town.
“Real quick then,” he said. “I have to know. It’s a girl, right? We’re having a girl.”
“Why are you asking now?”
“Because I need to know right now.”
“I’m not going to tell you. You told me not to tell you.”
“I need to know, Laura. It’s important. Jus
t tell me. Is it a girl?”
There was a long pause before she answered.
“Yes, it is a girl, Brian. You are the father of a daughter named Lucy.”
“Okay, thanks.”
He knew it was a significant moment and Laura was expecting more from him but it was all he could think to say. He put the phone down. He turned away from the workbench and looked at the old blue blanket that covered the door of the Le Seuil safe.
He knew what he had to do.
ROBINETTE ANSWERED THE DOOR. This time Brian did not go to the service entrance.
“Look,” Robinette said before Brian could speak, “I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you. The police asked me for a list of names. Yours was on it. End of story.”
Brian noticed that there were deep lines under Robinette’s eyes now. He looked weary and defeated, even though he had gotten his daughter back.
“I’m not here about that,” Brian said. “I don’t care about that.”
“Then what do you want? You can’t just show up here and—”
“I want to talk to your daughter.”
“What? No, you’re not going near her. She’s been through enough. We’re moving.”
“I have to talk to her.”
“I’m going to call the police if you do not leave my property.”
“I want to talk to her about the ghost. About the little girl.”
Robinette closed his mouth and just stared. Brian saw recognition in his eyes. It was recognition of something that maybe Robinette wasn’t sure he believed himself. Then he changed when he saw the ploy.
“The police told you,” he said.
“No, the police wouldn’t talk to me. I know because I saw her too. When I was here I saw her.”
“I don’t care what you think you saw, I want you out of here.”
He started to close the door but Brian put his foot into the threshold and stopped it.
“Her name is Lucy. I saw her, too, and I need to talk to your daughter.”
“Why? She’s been through enough. First she lost her mother, now this. What can you possibly say to her?”
“I can tell her who Lucy is.”
Brian pushed on the door and Robinette moved back without resistance. Brian walked by him and headed to the stairs.
“Where is she?”
“In her room. She won’t come out.”
Brian went up the stairs and found all the doors in the upper hallway closed. Robinette called from below.
“The second room on the left.”
Brian went to the door, knocked, and then opened it when he heard someone call, “Come in.” The girl he had seen in the police station was sitting on a bed, her legs folded beneath her, her back against the wall.
“Teresa, right?”
“Who are you? Did my father send for you?”
“No, I just came. I’m the one who opened the safe. I saw the girl that day. She talked to me. She said her name was Lucy.”
Teresa’s eyes widened.
“Then you believe me?”
Brian nodded.
“I believe you. Have you talked to her?”
Teresa nodded.
“What did she tell you?”
“She, um, doesn’t know what is happening. She said she came through the door. That’s all she says about that.”
“What about what happened to her? Does she know?”
“She said there was a pool and she didn’t know how to swim.”
Brian closed his eyes for a moment.
“She’s confused,” Teresa continued. “I said when did it happen and she said it didn’t happen yet. She didn’t make sense.”
Brian nodded. It did make sense to him.
“When does she come?” he asked. “When do you see her?”
“I don’t know, anytime. It’s not like there is a schedule. Sometimes I close my eyes and when I open them she’s there.”
“Do you know where she goes when she isn’t here?”
“I think she must go back through the door she talks about.”
“Would that be where she is now?”
“I don’t know. I guess. I don’t see her.”
“Thank you, Teresa.”
Brian turned back toward the door.
“Who is she?” Teresa asked.
Brian looked back at her.
“She’s my daughter. She’s coming in a few weeks.”
“You mean she’s not born?”
“Not yet. I think she came through the door to warn me. Now I have to go close the door.”
Robinette was standing in the upper hallway when Brian came out. It was like he couldn’t venture into his daughter’s room.
“We have to put the door back on the safe,” Brian said. “This all started with the safe.”
“We can’t. The trash was taken yesterday. You put—”
“I have the door. It’s in my truck.”
Brian headed to the stairs and started down. As he went he looked back up at Robinette.
“Do you want me to bring it in through the service door?”
Robinette looked at him as if not comprehending the question. Then he spoke in a quiet voice.
“No, that won’t be necessary.”
THEY WERE ON the back porch of the house. It was a warm night—summer was coming on strong. And Laura with the extra weight and the extra heart beating inside her had to get out of the unair-conditioned house. They sat side by side in lawn chairs, holding hands. Brian had forgiven her. There were more important things to concentrate on. Besides, he knew the cops could convince anybody of anything. Years back they had done it to him with his old man, practically had him believing that his father had shot the mark in cold blood.
He had not told her the whole story of his return to the house on Shell Island. He didn’t want to upset her, especially now that it was almost time for the baby. He only told her that he had gone back to see Robinette, to set things right.
“So there might be some money in it,” he said now on the porch. “It could really help us with you taking the extra time off and all.”
“What money? For what?”
“He said all of this with his daughter and the safe and stuff made him think about writing again. He said he has an idea for a story and since he’ll want to know about safes and being a box man, he’ll pay me for it. Like to be an expert for his story.”
Laura sat up straight in her folding chair. She was excited by the proposition.
“How much will he pay?”
“We didn’t get to that yet. I’m supposed to go back over there tomorrow. I’ll find out then.”
“Those writers make a lot of money. . . .”
She didn’t say anything else. She was leaving it to him but making it clear she expected him to get a good chunk out of Robinette.
“We’ll see what he says,” Brian said, not wanting to promise anything or push anything.
They were quiet for a moment and then she let go of his hand and leaned forward.
“You know what I want to do?” she asked. “With the money, I mean.”
“I don’t know. To keep paying the bills?”
“No, we should get more than just that. I want air-conditioning, Brian. We deserve that. And then we should put in a pool. I want to go swimming at night to cool off.”
Brian stared straight ahead and off the porch into the distance. He realized that the backyard was just big enough for a pool. Without a word he stood up and went back inside.
Sweet
EARL STRUGG WOKE TO THE WARMTH of a ten o’clock sun on his face. He rolled away from the building that had been his headboard and looked down the concrete mattress to his parking-meter bedpost. He stretched luxuriously and drew his arm across his eyes like a window shade, to dampen the brightness of the morning sun. And he listened.
Mornings were usually the quietest, though he couldn’t always count on it. The voices, like their declarations, were unpredictable. Earl Str
ugg never knew when they’d come or what they’d say, but mornings were usually the best. Mornings were clarity’s prime time—no kill my budga-freekack, or rubber freaker nose bicker-knobfucker —no howling or moaning. No explosions. No thunderclaps. Just cars honking and a wind in the trees— sweet when it came and he took it when he could get it, mornings usually, but he could never tell. So with his arm drawn like a shade, he listened. As the city roared around him, a slow smile spread across his lips. All the way down through the mind of Earl Strugg, for now anyway, it was quiet.
Pedestrians cut a wide path around him. Only the tourists were so bold as to attempt a look at his face. What they saw when they did was a spinning maze. Earl’s face whirled. It spiraled inward—wrinkles like a hundred fine parentheses around halogen blue eyes, a black rim marking the edges of his iris and tiny pinprick pupils and the whole thing turning, somehow, slowly inward. Ripples of skin at his forehead lapped at the banks of a whirlpool of hair that was as fierce and unbound as anything in nature. The left side of his face wore a permanent expression of inquiry—the lasting effect of a mild stroke he suffered several years back. His eyebrow arched high above a stretched open eye and the one side of his mouth screwed impossibly down—like the face you make during an argument when you don’t hear the other person and you want them to say again. The effect of this was that anyone who happened to glance at Earl would almost always do a double take and politely stop to lean in, since it looked like he might’ve just spoken and was urgently waiting for a response. As rag-tattered and difficult to look at as he was, Earl could draw people into his spiral face without even breaking a sweat.
ON HIS BACK with the shade still drawn, he listened to footsteps falling around his head and felt a sudden urge to shout out a list of U.S. presidents and then another, just as sudden, to stand and sit three times. Instead, he pulled the neck of his shirt and grabbed his shoulder. His fingers found the scab almost entirely on their own, and began where they left off yesterday— probing and digging slowly but surely. He turned to watch them for a moment, his face like a child watching ants.
From the corner of his eye he saw a pay phone at the curb with its receiver off the hook. The steel cord was dangling, swaying slightly back and forth and he just couldn’t take that. He could take about anything else and often had to, but he just could not take that. He sprang up and tumbled over to it on morning legs. He took the receiver into his hand, cleared his throat, and put it to his ear. He said hello two times. Then he said no, and that he was very, very sorry. He glanced at the ants digging the scab on his shoulder and thought for a moment about how they looked more like his own hand and fingers. Then he laughed wildly into the receiver and carefully placed it back in its cradle. There was a phone across the street with its receiver resting neatly in its cradle and it was a good thing. The sight of another dangling handset could send him off on a hunt for others that would take him across the city into neighborhoods unknown. It had happened before and it wasn’t good. The only thing Earl Strugg had was his neighborhood. Some nights when the noises were at their worst, harrowing his ears with their filth, sometimes when it got that bad, a familiar turn of the sidewalk or the reassuring beer light in the window of the local bar—blue lettering across white neon rocks and pounding surf—sometimes the bark of an old familiar dog from the second-floor apartment or the friendly hello of a shop owner who’d seen him a thousand times was all he had. Earl Strugg’s home was about seven square blocks and he didn’t often venture outside it. He only went out when he had to and it was never good when he did.