The Keeper

by Langan, Sarah,

  It should have been you. Why wasn’t it you?

  “I can’t remember.”

  “What is the bad stuff? You keep talking about bad stuff that’s like alive or something because of Susan. What bad stuff?”

  She looked down at her feet. “Just bad things.”

  He took a deep breath. “I heard somebody hit her. I heard that Georgia O’Brian used to babysit for you, and she called the police. That’s what I heard.”

  She balled her hands into fists. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  He leveled his eyes at her, and they both knew she was lying. “I heard how she paid her rent. Owen Read said his brother went to her, but she was too freaky so he left. Maybe she learned that someplace, what she did for a living, if you want to call that living.”

  Liz put her hands over her ears. She was very near to crying. A tickle in the back of her mouth. A lump in her throat. A storm in her stomach. “Shut up, Bobby.”

  “I heard you used to ride your bike by her house. I followed you once, when we first started dating. I got the feeling that even though you never talked about her, you couldn’t let her go. Like maybe you want to think she’s alive because you can’t let her go.”

  “Shut up!” she screamed.

  She heard footsteps overhead, and Bobby’s mother, perhaps in the midst of eavesdropping, dropped a dish.

  Bobby waited a second or two and then asked in a hushed tone, “Why can’t you talk to me?”

  “I’m trying to talk to you,” she whispered, conscious now of her voice, of his family, of her wrongness in this clean basement.

  Bobby took her fists and forcibly uncurled them. She saw that she’d squeezed them so hard that the skin on her palms was spotted with blood. “Oh,” she said, trying to pull her hands away while he held them tight.

  “God,” he said.

  “It’s nothing, really Bobby.”

  He lifted her hands to her face so she could see where her skin was broken in four half-moon patterns on each palm. “Look what you did to yourself.”

  “I didn’t do anything. It was an accident.”

  “You did. You do it to yourself. You do everything to yourself.”

  “It doesn’t hurt, they’re not deep.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that you gave those marks around your neck to yourself?”

  She was so stunned that at first she didn’t answer. “I can’t believe you think that.”

  “What does hurt?” he asked, only his voice was not kind. Only he was so furious that his nostrils flared, and the veins on his neck bulged.

  “What?”

  “What does hurt you, I’d like to know. What can’t you forget?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You said your dad did things to her. You said you can’t forget. You’re afraid the town knows things. You were thirteen years old when she ran away. What do you blame yourself for?”

  She tried to ball her hands into fists again, but he held her still.

  “I’m tired of this,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Everything with you is pretend. It’s like it’s all a test you want me to pass. Like I’m supposed to guess everything because you can’t bring yourself to say it.”

  “Bobby, I’m telling you everything!”

  He was on the verge of tears. “Do you see what you did to your hand? I can’t believe you did that.”

  “It’s skin, Bobby. I’ll grow more.”

  He shuddered. “You treat me like the enemy, but you need me, so once in a while you throw me a bone.”

  “Would you just listen to me?”

  He glared at her. “You fill your head with all this bullshit. You get mad at me for the stupidest things, like that time I forgot to call you when I said I would and I know it’s because something else is bothering you, but the scary thing is, Liz, you don’t know. Your sister’s dead and you’d rather think about her ghost than mourn her. Do you know how psycho you sound? You sound like one of those homeless people that think cell phones are part of the alien conspiracy, do you know that?”

  “You’re not listening to me,” she said, “You’re only hearing what you want to hear.”

  “That makes two of us, Liz. And I’ve got to be honest, I’m sick of it. I know it’s not a great time to talk about this, but I can’t remember the last time we had a normal day. I can’t remember the last time we just went on a drive or something, and had fun. I don’t mean you’re not supposed to be sad. You should be sad. But you’re all closed up, and you won’t open.”

  “But what if I’m right about all this, Bobby?”

  “Even if you are, I feel like I could be anyone to you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “How would you know? You don’t have anyone else.”

  Her stomach dropped, and she had to think for a few seconds before his meaning became clear. “Do you want to break up with me?”

  He shrugged, and she knew the answer was yes. Maybe he’d change his mind, maybe they’d work this out, but for now the answer was yes. For the second time today, she started crying. He did not comfort her. She hid her face until the tears were gone, and they sat without speaking for a long time.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but it felt like an obligatory apology.

  “Me, too.”

  He moved closer to her, so close they shared each other’s heat. She lowered her eyes and tried to decide what to do next. She did the most important thing. The thing that counted. She kissed him. It took him a while, but he kissed her back. They made quiet love.

  When they were done, he did not speak in a Frenchman’s accent or kiss the top of her head. Instead, he pulled on his jeans. “My mom might come down,” he explained. She realized that during the entire act, he’d never once looked her in the eye.

  She hurriedly pulled on her blue T-shirt and her high-waisted Hanes Her Ways. “Are you mad?” she asked.

  “No. I’m not mad. But dinner’ll be ready soon, you know?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I mean, dinner’ll be ready. And your mom probably wants you home.”

  Liz saw where this was going. She felt like she was in a car, skidding over ice. That last instant before the crash, when everything is still. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “It’s just that I have all this homework and stuff.”

  “Oh,” Liz said.

  “It’s not like I don’t like seeing you every day and everything, but sometimes I get tired.”

  “Tired of me?” she asked.

  “No. But I could use a break, you know? We could take a break for a while, and when we’re feeling better, we could see each other again.”

  “You want to break up with me? We just had sex and you want to break up with me?”

  He shrugged. “All this stuff is happening with your sister, and college, and us. It’s not making sense for me anymore. I keep feeling like you want me to be all these things and I can’t.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t want anything from you,” she said.

  “I don’t know. I just can’t…” he said, and she saw he’d made up his mind. Sometime while they had talked, or worse, while they’d made love, he’d made up his mind that it was over.

  Should she have expected less? The dutiful son? Boy wonder? Yes, she thought. She might have reminded herself a thousand times that this wasn’t forever, that she didn’t deserve him, that he’d smarten up one day and meet someone better, but in the end, she had trusted him. She had thought that this boy she loved would never leave her. She had thought, deep down, that it really was forever.

  “Do you mean it, Bobby?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, for now.”

  Nothing scared her anymore. Not Susan, not the thing in the woods, not the people in this town. Nothing mattered, because she wished, quite suddenly, that she was dead.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The Atom Bomb Is Your Fault, Too

  At six o’
clock that Wednesday evening, Bobby pulled his car in front of Liz’s house. Though the trip was only two miles, the slow drive through hard rain took twenty excruciating minutes. The town was quiet, and almost no cars were on the road. The flooding was so severe in the valley where Liz lived that Bobby could not pull into the driveway but instead parked in the middle of the street.

  The earth had shifted with the flooding, and much of the sidewalk and street were broken into chunks of asphalt and cement. Trees had fallen. There was a buzzing in the air, still that buzzing, only louder. She could feel Susan’s presence in this town. In the air, in the rain, inside her own skin. It felt like drowning.

  In the driveway Liz saw her mother’s car, but the house was dark. “She’s probably sleeping, that’s why she didn’t answer the phone,” Bobby said. “I’ll wait. Flash the lights in your bedroom if she’s home.”

  Liz looked at Bobby for a very long time. She didn’t cry. She didn’t plead with him. She just turned and met his eyes. He said nothing, and she felt herself unravel.

  She walked slowly to the back door.

  When she flicked the switch for the overhead light in the kitchen, she saw the mess; a plethora of baked goods. Cookies and brownies sat above grease-stained paper towels or within humid Ziploc bags that were stacked on the counter. None looked edible. A dough-like ginger snap stuck to her hand, and she scraped it into the garbage. The floor crunched like sand under her feet, and when she bent down she realized that she was walking on a layer of sugar.

  She was not truly terrified until she saw the chocolate cake. Susan’s favorite, chocolate cake. She let out something between a giggle and a moan. Poison, she thought. Chocolate death, it’s poisoned. Her mother was hoping she’d come home and eat it.

  “Mom?” she called out, “You home?” She climbed the stairs, two at a time, and reached her mother’s bedroom. The bed was unmade and on the floor was a sweater covered in white dust. The dust dissolved in her wet hands. Flour.

  Back in the kitchen, she checked the answering machine. There were two messages from the school guidance counselor, saying that Liz had had “an episode” and would Mary please call back? Two more from Bobby’s mother, Alexandra Fullbright, saying, “Uh, Mary? Your daughter’s in my basement. I thought you should know.” Liz picked up the phone and dialed information, asking to be connected to the Shaws Supermarket.

  Before the connection went through, she hung up. A light shone through the crack in the closed basement door. It was more yellow than white, like jaundice. She opened it and called her mother’s name. The boiler kicked, and she jumped. Then she started down the stairs.

  There were at least three inches of water on the basement floor. It seeped though her Keds and was cold enough to curl her toes. “Mom?” she asked. She hoped that her mother wasn’t down here. She hoped this place was empty. But she knew better. Something was down here; she could feel it.

  The water swished under her feet, building momentum like a weak current that pulled her deeper into Susan’s old bedroom. Someone (her mother?) had made the bed. White eyelet sheets were folded over a warm down quilt. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something small, perhaps a child, race across the room. It happened so quickly that her mind didn’t fully register its presence.

  She started when she saw movement on Susan’s bed. Something rocked back and forth. A shadow from the car headlights shining through the window? A thin cotton shirt on a hanger?

  It looked up at her, and its hair was matted to its cheeks. Its face was white. Not pale, but white. Even its lips and the lashes of its eyes were scabby and white. She was frozen for a moment. The thing kept rocking. The only part that wasn’t white was its blue eyes.

  The thing, it was mad.

  The thing, it was her mother.

  Flecks of white dust shined as they fell to the wet floor. Liz looked closer at her mother’s pale, lumpy face, and saw that she was wearing a mask of flour.

  “Susan,” Mary murmured. “Let’s eat your cake.”

  “It’s Liz. I’m Liz.”

  The flour had hardened to the wrinkles on Mary’s skin. She looked like an ancient old crone. A clump of the stuff fell like wet snow to her lap. She dumbly inspected it, as if unable to determine what it was, or why it now stuck to her fingers.

  “The other daughter. I’m the other daughter,” Liz whispered.

  Mary cocked her head.

  “Bobby’s outside. He might try to come in.”

  “Is she here?”

  “No. He’s outside.”

  “Susan’s outside?”

  “Mom. She died? She’s dead?”

  Mary smiled drunkenly. “Oh, it’s you, Liz. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s me.”

  Mary looked at her daughter and recognition set in. At first it was a subtle change. Her eyes focused on Liz’s hair and soft cheeks. And then she startled. Her eyes lingered on the closet door where a piece of yarn bobbed in the current, and a child’s raincoat dangled from a hook. “Oh, no,” she said.

  “Mom?”

  Mary’s eyes darted from one corner of the room to the next, searching. Frantic. But there wasn’t anything down here with them, was there? Then Mary closed her eyes. Then she took a few deep breaths. Then she went into another kind of sleep. When she woke, she was changed.

  “Oh.” She laughed nervously. “Oh.” She looked down at her wet clothing, and began wiping the flour from her jeans and face. She continued pawing herself, mortified, until it was mostly gone, and she’d left the features of her face red and swollen. “When did you get here?” she asked. “I was just cleaning down here and I fell asleep.” She smiled guiltily. “I had a little wine.”

  “Did you?”

  Mary shrugged. “Would you like to help me finish cleaning?”

  “Was someone here?”

  “You’re here,” Mary said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  A drop of warm urine slid down the back of Liz’s leg, but she hardly noticed it. “We?”

  “Did I say we?”

  Liz took a deep breath. She felt the air closing in around her, wet. She wondered if she could drown, just breathing it. “I’m scared, Mom,” she said.

  Mary seemed genuinely surprised. “Why are you scared?”

  “It’s a mess.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m cleaning it.” Mary walked over to the dresser and began to pack Susan’s clothes inside it. There were old dresses, hand-me-downs that Liz had once worn, T-shirts that had never made it to Goodwill, baby clothes, and a white sweater that Mary held close and sniffed before placing in the bottom drawer.

  Mary was wearing a bulky, white turtleneck, and on it Liz saw something that made her freeze. She put her hand to her mouth, and then in her mouth. She bit down on her fingers all at once. Through the white cotton, Liz could see the outline of her mother’s nipples. Above that were the faint impressions of small, wet teeth. Like something had bitten her. Something from a dream maybe, that had become real. Something, she realized, that was hiding in this basement, right now. Liz cried out at this sight, and then let it go. She watched it go. It was too horrible to know.

  “I love you, Mom,” Liz said. The words came out before she thought about them, or knew whether they were true.

  Mary’s smile faded. “You what?” she asked, looking around the room now, her eyes skittering from the leaks in the ceiling to the water on the floor, to the clothing, to the open closet door.

  “Nothing. Forget it.”

  Mary crossed her hands around her waist. Uncrossed them. Looked down at the floor, and then, finally, knelt in front of Liz so that the joints in her knees popped. “You should go.”

  Liz pressed her cheek into the crook of her mother’s neck. “Mom?” she said through muffled tears, “He never loved me.”

  “What?” Mary asked, her voice soft and crooning. “Who wouldn’t love you?”

  “Bobby. It’s my fault.”

  “No. No, baby. You didn’t do anything
.”

  “I wish I was dead. I wish it was me instead.”

  Mary lifted Liz’s chin. “Maybe you can stay with Bobby tonight. I’m not feeling myself. I don’t think it’s good for you.”

  “Go?”

  “Until the rain is over.”

  “I can’t leave you.”

  Mary shook her head. “It’s best.”

  “But it’s not right here, Mom. Nothing about it is right.”

  Mary let go. “You can stay at the shelter in the church if you’re not getting along with Bobby.”

  “It’s never been right. We just pretend. Like we pretend we can’t feel her. You sleep in that room where Dad used to sleep. And I sleep where she used to sleep. Like it’s only half of us now. Like they’re still here, only we pretend they’re not. We pretend it was always just the two of us but there were four, Mom. There were four.”

  “That’s enough.” Mary closed the bottom drawer of the dresser. All the clothes were now packed away, just as they had been before Susan left home.

  “I think I’m sick. Maybe I should get Bobby to call his dad and have him come over.”

  “You’re not sick. No one’s sick. I had too much to drink. I made a mess upstairs. I’m going to clean it. Don’t call anyone,” Mary said.

  Liz looked down at the water where a piece of blue yarn floated. It bobbed up and down. She could smell something rotten down here. Something dead. Along the swell of her mother’s left breast, she thought she saw a speck of blood. She hoped, very much, that she was going mad. “I have to tell Bobby.”

  “You don’t have to do anything.”

  “You put her clothes away.”

  “So what?”

  “Mom?” Liz pleaded.

  “I’m tired of this conversation.”

  “But—”

  “It’s not for strangers, Elizabeth. I won’t have you dragging strangers into my house.”

  Liz closed and then opened her eyes. The room seemed to blink. The water got warmer. The tide circles became still. Just her house, after all. Just a house made of wood and cement. Just a woman in front of her, her mother. Just the rain that fell every year. Just some excessive baking, and a dead sister whose rotting corpse she could smell right now. That’s all. Don’t worry. Nothing you can do about it, anyway.