Keepers

by Gary A Braunbeck

  “… ’kay.”

  “Promise?”

  I shook myself awake. Everything was still shiny, but I was more alert now. “Can we get another pop?”

  “Ah, caffeine, yes. Smart idea.”

  We pulled into a gas station where Beth ran into some boy she knew. He came up behind her while she was pulling the bottles out of the freezer-like cooler and put his hand on her back. She whirled around like she might slap whoever it was, but then she recognized him and smiled, pushed her hair back behind her ears, glanced quickly in the direction of the car, and leaned in to kiss him. Even from thirty feet away, I could see their tongues going into each other’s mouths. The boy slid his hand down and grabbed her hip, then her ass. She broke the kiss and saw me staring at them, then quickly yanked his hand away and whispered something. They looked over at me and the boy laughed. For a moment it looked like Beth might laugh, too. I didn’t know who this boy was, but I hated him.

  They talked for a few more moments and then Beth gave him a quick kiss and came back to the car. She smiled at me when she climbed in but didn’t look in my eyes like she usually did. She seemed embarrassed—or maybe annoyed that I’d been watching. I took the bottle of pop and swallowed two big gulps. It made my chest and stomach feel all frosty as it went down, and then an ice-bird spread its wings through my center and I wasn’t as hot, thirsty, or tired anymore.

  We were almost to Beth’s house when she said, “I go out with him sometimes, that guy back at the gas station.”

  “Is that why we stopped there? So you could see him?”

  She blushed. “Yeah. My aunt doesn’t like him. She doesn’t much like any of my friends.” She finally looked at me. “You’re the first friend I’ve had over in a long time.”

  “I won’t say anything to your aunt about him, I promise.”

  Squeezing my hand as she pulled into the driveway, Beth cleared her throat and whispered, “I’ll never ask you to lie for me, I promise.”

  Beth’s aunt Mabel was the most unhappy-looking person I’d ever seen; even though she smiled an awful lot and spoke in a bright, happy voice, the tightness of her features, the worry etched into her skin, and the way she sat as if expecting the other bomb to go off at any moment betrayed her true feelings. This was a sad woman, a cheerless woman, stoopshouldered and shopworn and heartbroken and chain-smoking. Looking at her made me want to cry; she reminded me too much of Mom.

  “How’s the lasagna?” she asked early into dinner.

  “It’s real good, thank you. A lot better than the hospital.”

  Mabel laughed a thick, chortling laugh composed equal parts of phlegm and sandpaper. “I should certainly hope so. Lord! If I can’t beat hospital food, I might as well hang up my apron!”

  I giggled and took another bite of the lasagna; it was quite good, but its rich flavor and aroma were overpowered by the smell of the house, which made me feel sick.

  Beth and her aunt lived in a one-story house that was only slightly bigger than a double-wide trailer; two small bedrooms, an even smaller bathroom, a big living room, and a kitchen that took up a full third of their living space. Deep shag carpeting the color of old rust covered every inch of floor—at least I think it was the color of old rust; it could’ve been light blue for as much as I could tell by looking at it, which I tried not to do because it only made me feel sicker.

  A fly buzzed around the lasagna pan and Mabel swatted it away. “Damn things,” she mumbled. “I got to replace those screens on the doors.”

  I was surprised that only one fly had found the nerve to come over; there were so many of them.

  Something brushed by my leg and I looked down to meet yet another of the Its—one of the seven dogs that Beth and Mabel shared their home with. That’s right, seven dogs of various shapes and sizes—from a Chihuahua to a mid-sized sheep dog and everything in between—none of whom seemed to be very housebroken, if the pee stains and scattered piles of dried and not-so-dried poop were any indication.

  Imagine what the inside of a kennel left unattended over a sweltering three-day weekend would smell like, add an underlying scent of sour milk and rotten eggs, then spray an entire aerosol can of rose-scented air freshener and you might have some idea how this place smelled. I didn’t have to ask Beth why it had been so long since she’d had any friends over; one hour in this house and already I wanted to shower until my skin came off. It wasn’t only the smell, it was the feel of the place; it felt ruined, the air thick with humidity and animal fur. By the time dinner was finished, all three of us were wheezing to one degree or another. Mabel’s constant smoking didn’t help matters, but I never said anything; I never said anything to Mom or Dad when their smoking started bothering me, it seemed rude to complain to this bright-eyed sad woman who was so happy that I liked her cooking.

  I helped Beth clear away the dishes and wipe down the table. Mabel disappeared into her bedroom with two of the dogs and emerged twenty minutes later in a light-blue outfit, smelling of deodorant and Avon perfume.

  “Okay, kids, I gotta head to work.”

  Beth’s face immediately registered alarm. “But, I need the car to take—”

  “I know,” Mabel replied. “Suzy’s giving me a ride both ways tonight, so the car’s all yours. But you be careful. Get him home and then come right back.”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean it, Elizabeth. I’m going to call you when I get my break and you’d better be here to answer.”

  Beth shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I will be! Jeez-us.”

  “Don’t ‘jeez-us’ me, young lady. I’m only looking out for your well-being. God knows my sister couldn’t be bothered to.”

  “Please don’t say things like that about Mom.” Now it was Beth who was stoop-shouldered and shopworn. This hurt, and I wondered if her aunt knew it hurt and that’s why she’d said it.

  Mabel came over, put a hand on Beth’s shoulder, and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “I didn’t mean anything by it, okay? I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”

  A shrug: “Okay.”

  “Okay, then.” Mabel turned toward me and held out a hand. “It was real pleasure having you over for dinner, young man. I hope you’ll visit us again. Often as you’d like.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said, shaking her hand—the first time I’d ever done so with an adult. “You’re a real good cook.”

  “Aren’t you sweet.” Then she bent down and kissed the top of my head. A car horn sounded out front and Mabel waved to us on her way out the door.

  “God!” said Beth with a sudden rush of air. “I swear she must think I’m retarded or something, the way she treats me.”

  “Where does she work?”

  “Huh? Oh—at the nursing home. She’s one of the night nurses. She also cooks breakfast sometimes.”

  I remembered the home from visiting my grandfather there when I was seven, how lonely, exhausted, and used up everyone seemed to be. No wonder Mabel was so sad.

  I wasn’t sure how to ask this next question, so I just let fly: “Where’s your uncle?”

  “I’ve got a couple of them, why?”

  “I mean …your aunt’s husband?”

  A quick shake of her head. “Mabel isn’t married, she never was. I don’t think men interest her much.”

  “Whatta you mean?”

  She mussed my hair. “It’s a little hard to explain, sweetie pie. She has friends who stay over sometimes. I don’t think she gets lonely. She’s got me to talk to and all of the Its for company. Speaking of the Its, want to help me clean up a little? I do this every night after she leaves for work.”

  “Is it safe? Mabel seemed awful worried about—”

  “Mabel worries about everything. We’ve had some trouble in this neighborhood—some break-ins, a couple of shootings a few blocks over, you know—so she thinks every time she leaves me alone that all these monsters are going to knock down the door and attack me. She even has a gun in one of her dresser dr
awers—like she’s Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harriet or something. There’s not going to be any trouble. C’mon, give me a hand.”

  We spent the next hour picking up—and scraping out—all the poop from the carpeting, then Beth let the dogs out in the backyard by twos and threes so they could relieve themselves as nature intended. (During all the years I knew Beth and spent time over there, that house was always filled with dogs; if one died or got sick and had to be put to sleep, it was quickly replaced by another. Beth and I eventually began to refer to her house as “Doggyship Down.”)

  I sprayed the pee stains with this foamy stuff Beth took out of the bathroom; she told me to let it set until it dried, then we sprinkled baking soda all around and Beth ran the vacuum cleaner.

  Once finished, the carpeting looked a little better and the stench wasn’t as strong as it had been.

  “That’s only because you’re getting used to the smell,” Beth said. “Live with it long enough, and it doesn’t seem that bad.”

  I wondered how she kept the smell off her clothes; not once during her visits to me did I ever smell the dogs on her, so I asked her how she managed to do that.

  “Every week I take five outfits from my closet, wash them at the coin laundry or have them drycleaned, then hang ’em up in my locker at school. I get there about a half-hour before school starts and change in the girls’ restroom. In the mornings, after my shower, I can usually get out of here before the smell sinks into me.” Another shrug. “No biggie, really. I like to look and smell clean when I’m at school or going to the movies or something. If I go out, I do it after school on Friday so I don’t have to come back here first. Don’t worry yourself, the system’s worked fine for a while now.”

  I nodded as if I were mature enough to understand. She was a wonderful mystery to me.

  “Why do you have so many dogs, anyway?”

  “Because nobody else wants them. A couple we adopted from the Humane Society, but most of them are strays Mabel or I have found. Just can’t turn away a animal in need, I guess. It doesn’t seem right that nobody wants to keep them, care for them, have ’em there in the middle of the night to snuggle with when you wake up and feel lonely… .”

  I thought she was going to say something else but she didn’t. We had a couple of brownies, talked a little more about nothing terribly important, and then it was time for me to go.

  We were a few blocks from my house when Beth pulled the U-boat over to the curb and put it in park. “Listen, I want to tell you something, okay? Something that’s just between us, right?” She was a long way past serious; she seemed almost scared. “Right?”

  I nodded my head.

  “This is gonna sound weird, okay, but …I never had any friends when I was your age, I never got to do any of those things that kids your age get to do, right? I always felt mad about that, about missing out on things. Hell, I’m not even sure if I know what kids your age like doing ’cause I never did it.”

  “Could you please not …not say that?”

  “Say what?”

  “‘Kids your age.’ ”

  She shook her head and smiled. “But you are still a kid; you’re not even ten yet.”

  “I know, but …” I looked down at my hands, which I couldn’t feel.

  “Okay, I guess you deserve that. If I live to be twice the age I am now I doubt that I’m ever gonna know what it feels like to get shot, so you ought to be entitled to age points for that. Deal—I don’t call or refer to you as ‘kid’ anymore.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I wanna know what it is you like to do, I guess. Will you show me that? Will you teach me how to have fun like a person of your age has fun?”

  “You might think it’s stupid.”

  She put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. “Bet’cha I don’t.”

  And she didn’t.

  Over the next year and a half I taught her (in no particular order): how to build a fort from boxes, blankets, chairs, and umbrellas; how to climb a tree; the fine art of thumb wrestling; how to make a kite from scratch; how to tell if Godzilla was going to be a good monster or bad monster before he even made his first appearance in the movie (not as easy as it sounds); the proper way to build and paint the Aurora monster models; why Steppenwolf kicked Three Dog Night’s ass; how Mr. Terrific was just as cool as Captain Nice but The Green Hornet was by far the coolest of them all; why the Bazooka Joe comics sucked monkeys but the bubble gum could be rechewed at least three times before it lost its flavor; and, probably the most valuable tidbit of wisdom I tossed her way, how, if you sat or stood in the proper position and had the right muscle control, you could make a fart last up to thirty seconds and not dump in your pants (eating popcorn at least twenty minutes before attempting this difficult stratagem is immensely beneficial to a successful outcome).

  Whenever we were together, which was often, Beth had a childhood, and I had the woman against whom all others would be measured and come up lacking.

  But for that night, it was her kiss lingering on my cheek as I walked toward my front door and my father’s putting his hand on my shoulder for the first time in an eternity (“How you holding up there, son? Ever tell you about when I got shot during the war?”) that made me feel that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t such a worthless little kid, after all.

  I spent the next seven years becoming an honorary member of Beth’s and Mabel’s family. By the time Beth turned twenty-four she had grown into her shopworn beauty and grace with all the poise I’d come to expect from her. In the years since the hospital we had shared every secret, every dream, every sadness, pettiness, fear, hope, want, triumph, and failure of both childhood and adolescence; I knew her better than anyone, and she, in turn knew more about me than any person ever had or ever would. There had been so much between us, so many shared moments and experiences: our first trip (the first of many) to King’s Island where she took me on my very first roller coaster ride, then didn’t laugh her head off or make fun of me when I threw up as soon as we climbed out of the car; a terrible afternoon a few weeks after I’d gotten my driver’s license when I drove her over to Columbus to get an abortion because her boyfriend at the time (all her boyfriends were so physically interchangeable to me they became faceless over the years) had dumped her and quickly skipped town after she told him she was pregnant; the day she picked me up at four in the afternoon on my fifteenth birthday and drove all the way to Cincinnati so I could see my first circus; an Emerson, Lake & Palmer concert where we were nearly trampled to death after the crowd—who’d been standing in near-blizzard conditions for over three hours—rushed the doors when they were finally opened; all the times I helped her to take one of the dogs to the vet, times when I stood beside her after the animal had been given the Last Injection and she needed to say good-bye—then, later, her infectious near-giddiness when the dead pet was replaced by a new one; and, most of all, a certain picnic in Moundbuilders Park on my seventeenth birthday when Beth asked me if I had a girlfriend. When I said no, she leaned in and gave me the sweetest, longest, most tender kiss against which all others would forever be compared and come up lacking, then shyly handed me a birthday card inscribed: Just wait until you’re legal!

  I read the inscription twice before clearing my throat and saying, “Um, I, uh …is this a joke?”

  She put her thumb and index finger under my chin, lifting my head so she could look straight into my eyes. Whenever she did this, it meant Something Serious was about to happen or be said. “Can I ask you something?”

  “You mean besides that?”

  “Don’t try to be funny, you’re not all that good at it.”

  “Okay.”

  She kept her thumb and finger under my chin, making small, maddening circles against my skin with the tips of each. “Do you love me?”

  I blanked out for a second—what was happening here?—then shook myself back to the Right-Now and said, “Yes, of course I
do. We’ve known each other for—what is it now?—eight years?”

  “Almost nine now.”

  I reached up and held her wrist. “You are the best friend I have ever had, Beth. Hell—you’re the only real friend I’ve ever had.”

  She cupped my face in both her hands and kissed me again. “And you’re my best friend. You’ve never judged me, or lied to me, you’ve never been cruel or thoughtless to me, you’ve appreciated everything I’ve ever done for you and you’ve done so many sweet things for me, even when I was acting like a real bitch on wheels—”

  “Your words, not mine. Go on, I’ll speak up when I disagree.”

  She smiled, moving closer to me. “You know that in high school I was kind of … oh, what’s the word I’m looking for?”

  “Popular?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “Well, I suppose that’s one word for it.”

  “Friendly?”

  She bit her lower lip and shook her head.

  “Available? ‘Open twenty-four Hours’?” I began to laugh. “ ‘One Mattress, No Waiting’?”

  “You’re dangerously close to losing one of your nuts.”

  “I know, I’m sorry.”

  “You do know what I’m trying to tell you, right?”

  “That you were kind of easy in high school?”

  “Don’t sugar-coat it, kiddo—Oh, shit! I didn’t mean—”

  “Too late.” I held out my hand. “You owe me a buck.”

  “But we were having a moment—”

  “—that will continue once you pony up the dough.” Ever since the day she’d taken me home from the hospital, Beth and I’d had an agreement: any time she slipped up and called me “kid” or “kiddo” or any other variation thereof, it would cost her a dollar. She had promised never to call me anything like that again, and my charging her for her digressions seemed a solid way to remind her of the importance of keeping her word.

  She dug into her pocket and produced a crumpled dollar bill, which she slapped into my hand with a lot more force than was called for, in my opinion.