THE TRAP

by Tabitha King

  Pat didn’t answer. He flopped down next to Liv and dropped one arm around her shoulders. “Well?”

  Liv examined her hands. Then she looked at him. “It’s gorgeous. Surely it’s too expensive.”

  “Not anymore,” Pat said. “We’ve got a distribution deal from Warners. And Warners has offered me a separate contract to rewrite two other properties they’re holding.”

  “That’s great,” Liv said, and meant it. “That’s wonderful. I know that’s what you wanted.”

  Pat squeezed her shoulders.

  “Are you sure we have to be on the West Coast?” she asked.

  Pat was sober, earnest. “It’s absolutely time, babe. I need to be there. And I can’t take another year split up like we’ve been. Can you?”

  “No,” she said. “But I don’t want to live in California, Pat. I’ve got a business here. I can’t run it long distance.”

  “You can relocate,” Pat said. “Expand your market.”

  Liv shook her head. “You make it sound easy.”

  “I know it wouldn’t be,” he said, all reason. “But we can’t go on like this, Liv.”

  “No,” she said. “I know.”

  “Well, I want to move to California,” Sarah said. She bounced to her feet. “You’ve got my vote, daddy.”

  “Thanks,” said Pat.

  “This isn’t a voting matter,” Liv said.

  “It ought to be,” Sarah said.

  “We’ll consider your opinion.”

  “I don’t want to move,” said Travis. “I want to stay right here.”

  He had been so quiet, they had all forgotten he was there.

  “You’ll like it there,” Pat said. “Wait and see.”

  “Let me think about it,” Liv said.

  Pat shifted uneasily. “I can’t keep these people hanging forever, babe.”

  “The weekend,” she said. “The world won’t end over the weekend.”

  The phone on the end table rang. Liv stretched over and picked it up. “Hello.”

  “Merry Loot Day,” said Bayard Rohrer. “How are you, good-looking? Guess we’ve got enough to celebrate, huh?”

  “I’m fine,” said Liv, automatically. “We do, don’t we?”

  “Do you like the house?” he asked. “The minute I saw it, I said to Pat, it looks just like Liv. And that studio!”

  “It’s impressive,” Liv agreed.

  “You’ll love it,” Bayard promised. “Don’t sweat the furniture. Vera said she’d take you to the best places.”

  “That’s kind of her,” Liv said. “I’ll have to see it first.”

  “Come back with Pat tomorrow. You could be moved in for New Year’s.”

  “That quick?” Liv said.

  “The place is empty and they’ve got Pat’s money,” said Bayard. “What’s the problem?”

  Her throat closed up.

  She didn’t answer Bayard. “Do you want to speak to Pat?” she asked.

  “Thanks, babe,” Bayard said.

  Liv handed the phone to Pat and left the room. She put the soup back on and threw in the carrots and peas and cream.

  Sarah came in and began to set the small table in the kitchen for supper without being asked.

  “I really like that place, mom,” she said, putting out the soup spoons. “It would be just fantastic to live in California. Do you think I could have the bedroom with the octagonal window?”

  “I don’t know,” Liv answered.

  Pat came in and took the soup bowls out of Sarah’s hands and began to finish laying the places.

  “I was thinking you’d love that room, kid,” he said. “The kids would love that place, Liv.”

  “I know I would,” Sarah said.

  “So you’ve told me,” Liv said. “Several times now.”

  “Well, I should have a say.”

  “You mean,” Liv said, “if you want it, it should happen.”

  Sarah crossed her arms and pouted. Liv bit her lip and reminded herself Sarah was still only thirteen, even if she looked seventeen.

  “Why should we have to stay here just because you don’t want to go?” Sarah demanded.

  “That’s enough, Sarah,” Pat said.

  Sarah slunk into a chair at the table and smoldered.

  “Good question,” Liv said, and stirred the soup.

  Pat came up behind her and put his hands lightly around her waist. He seemed to need to keep touching her. Hoping she’d stick, she thought, like the Goose Girl.

  “I wish you were more open to this, babe.”

  She turned around in his arms to face him. “It doesn’t matter if I am or not, does it?”

  He protested. “No, no, it matters everything.”

  “Bayard told me you’ve bought the house already,” Liv said. “Are you sure it matters whether I want or don’t want.”

  Pat paled. There was panic in his voice. “Listen, babe, I had to put something down, or lose it.”

  She twisted under the circle of his arms and leaned against the refrigerator. “But the weekend’s too much time for me to take to make a decision, and Vera can’t wait to help me buy furniture.”

  “That goddamn big mouth Bayard,” Pat said.

  “Really,” Liv said. “You ought to speak to him about that. While you’re at it, ask him not to call me babe, either.”

  Pat stared at her. His mouth twisted in wordless anger. He clenched his fists.

  Sarah jumped up. Her chair clattered and fell over. She ignored it. “You just want to spoil everything,” she said shrilly. Her face was blotched with red and her fists clenched white-knuckled. “You just want to spoil everything. Well, I don’t care what you want. I want to go live in California with daddy.”

  “Fine,” said Liv. “You can finish out the semester here and go live in California with daddy.”

  There was a stricken instant. Then Sarah gasped as what Liv was saying sank in, and she burst into tears.

  Liv walked mechanically across the room and put her arms around Sarah. One hand smoothed Sarah’s hair just as it had so often since her birth, soothing and comforting and caressing after childhood bumps and bruises and disasters. Then Liv drew a deep breath and let her go. Sobbing, Sarah collapsed into another chair and buried her head in her arms on the table.

  Pat stood stunned at the stove. The smell of the cream of turkey soup suddenly overwhelmed him, and he thought he was going to be sick.

  “Pat,” Liv said from the bottom of the stairs, “I’m going to take Travis and go to Nodd’s Ridge for a while.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “I’m sure Marguerite and Doe will be happy to stay with Sarah,” she went on. And then she stopped.

  She met Travis, sitting at the bottom of the stairs, slumped over his soldiers wrapped in his old blanket. He wore a toy machine gun slung over his shoulder.

  “I’m hungry,” he said. “Is supper ready?”

  Liv stooped over him and kissed the top of his head. “Get daddy to give you some soup. Then come knock on my door and kiss me goodnight, okay?”

  Then she hurried up the stairs, not wanting to give him time to notice she was upset.

  Travis watched her go. He went into the kitchen and climbed into his chair.

  “Liv said for you to give me some soup, Pat,” he said.

  Pat blinked. “Oh,” he said. “Sure.” He turned around and stirred the wooden spoon through the soup. Then he realized the bowls were on the table.

  Travis took little men out of his pockets and circled them around his empty bowl. He looked up at Sarah. She still had her head in her arms on the table. Her back heaved now and then with great sighing sobs.

  Pat reached over Travis’ right hand for the bowl.

  “What’s she sniveling about?” Travis asked.

  Sarah’s head snapped up. “I’m not sniveling,” she hissed at Travis.

  “Yes, you are,” Travis said.

  Sarah’s fists crashed onto the table, rattling the dishes and cut
lery. “Oooo, shut up, you little creep!” she shouted. Slamming her chair to one side, she stamped out of the room.

  “Sarah,” Pat said, after her. “Sarah!”

  All the response he received was her pounding up the stairs to her room. He sighed and carried the bowl to the stove to fill it. Then he made himself a cup of instant coffee and sank into a chair at the table where he blew on the hot coffee and sipped at it while Travis blew and sipped at his soup.

  “Why is everybody mad at each other?” Travis asked, between swallows.

  “I guess we’re all tired,” Pat said.

  “That’s what Liv always says, too,” Travis said. “I wish you didn’t get tired so much. Maybe you should take a nap.”

  Travis knocked on her door, was kissed and tucked in. She knocked at Sarah’s door, and asked her to turn off her music for the night or use the Walkman. Sarah responded by turning up the music. Liv tried the knob; it wouldn’t give.

  “Open the door, Sarah.” She had to shout to be heard over the music.

  Pat, coming up the stairs, heard. He turned on his heel, went to the cellar, and threw the circuit to Sarah’s bedroom. The music died with a squeal. Sarah scrambled to unlock her door. Her face when she opened the door was wild with both anger and panic. She flew at Liv. Liv caught her by her wrists and pushed her back against the wall.

  Then Pat was there again, breathless from pounding up and down two flights of stairs, and Sarah realized who had killed the power to her room.

  “Sarah,” he gasped, “you just lost the use of that stereo for the next month.”

  With that, he walked into her bedroom, and began to unplug and unhook the unit.

  “You can’t!” Sarah said.

  “Yes, I can,” he said. He wound wires around the components. “And if you lock us out again, I’ll take the lock right off the door. From now on, when someone speaks to you, you open that door and answer.”

  Sarah threw herself onto her bed facedown.

  “Goodnight,” he said.

  There was a pause. “Goodnight,” Sarah said sulkily.

  He carried the components to the hall closet. When he passed Sarah’s room again, there was the sound of sobbing. Liv had disappeared into their bedroom. He knocked softly and let himself in to Sarah’s room.

  “Go away,” Sarah said into her pillow. “Just go away.”

  “You don’t get rid of me that easy,” Pat said, and sat down on the edge of her bed.

  She rolled over, holding one arm over her eyes.

  “Baby,” he said. “We need your help right now.”

  She sniffed.

  “If you really want to live in that house in California, you have to help me sell it to your mother. It’s a lot harder for her to leave here than it is for you and me.”

  Sarah lowered her arm enough to peek at him.

  “Catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” he said, “right?”

  She was quiet. “I’ll try,” she said.

  “Good.” He kissed her forehead. “Go to sleep now.”

  He peeked into Travis’ room. Travis was already asleep, had been half asleep when Pat sent him up the stairs. Pat knocked at the door of the bedroom he and Liv shared. Liv opened it. She was in her nightdress, her face scrubbed and her hair down.

  “Did you hear what I told Sarah?” Pat asked.

  “Yes,” said Liv. “Thank you.”

  “May I come in?” Pat asked. “I’d like to talk.”

  Liv shook her head. “I’m too tired, Pat. I think you’d better sleep in the guestroom tonight.”

  Pat reached out for her, but she backed away.

  He gave up. “All right,” he said. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  She closed the bedroom door gently on him.

  Liv crawled into her bed and stared at the sky through the window. There were little sequins of light on it, reflected from the streetlights, where small flakes of snow, blown against the glass, were melting. Condensate fogged corners and edges of the multiple panes of the window. She shivered. The house was very quiet, the children at last in the truce of sleep. She could hear an occasional cough, the squeak of the bedsprings from the guestroom. Pat was still awake. Outside, the snow stilled the restless night of the town. The cloud from which it sifted settled over the town like a roof. The air was filled with snow, so the few people still awake and abroad would hardly be able to breathe without drawing in tiny cold sharp flakes that stung inside the nose and melted at once. She wished there was a magic way to make her bed out of doors, and have the snow falling on her like cold kisses, and still be warm in the cocoon of her quilts. It was not a night on which she expected to sleep, but she did.

  PART TWO

  An empty house is like a stray dog, or a body from which life has departed.

  —Samuel Butler

  Chapter 8

  The house seemed just the same. Nothing had changed. It still looked empty.

  Liv nudged Travis and said, “We’re here.”

  He yawned and looked around blankly. “I want to go home.”

  “We’re here,” she insisted.

  He rubbed his eyes and blinked.

  It was not like coming home at all. It was not the green place they had left behind in September. Snow had worked its transcendental magic. The leafless, skeletal branches of the trees were decently clad in rime. The decayed remains of summer were sheeted by the pure homespun snow. But it was all deathly still and quiet, a lying out in the parlor of the wilderness. The house, despite the plume of woodsmoke drooling from the chimney over the roofbeam, was empty. Its windows, with their drawn shades, were like the glazed eyes of the dead.

  Liv stretched and drew the cold unbreathed air into her lungs. She crunched around the car to open Travis’ door for him. He barreled out with his fists bristling with G.I. Joes, like bizarre brass knuckles, only the knuckles were miniature plastic body parts, some clad in camouflage and some in various uniforms that signaled a particular antiterrorist specialty.

  She opened the hatch and unhooked the pet carrier door. The Poor glided out and bounded to the ground. Like a lady lifting her skirts, the cat picked her way over the surface of the snow into the snow-frosted bushes.

  Liv and Travis crossed the crusted driveway to the back porch, which had been shoveled clear of the accumulation of snow. The plowed snow was piled in a dune at the bottom of the looping driveway. Kindling and logs cut to fit the stove were stacked under a sheet of heavy plastic near the door.

  “Walter’s been here,” Liv said.

  As they stepped over the threshold, The Poor streaked through their feet into the house. Inside it was warm; the perfume of woodsmoke prickled their noses. There was a note pinned to the refrigerator, under a magnet chocolate real enough to provoke saliva: “Welcome Home! Grub all put away. Need anything, call. Walter.”

  Liv opened the fridge. Inside it was a stale cold, a negative of the house, a little bit of the winter outside boxed up and brought indoors. Milk, eggs, butter, a wedge of cheddar, homemade jam with Walter’s own label on it—FROM THE KITCHEN OF WALTER MCKENZIE/WILD STRAWBERRY JAM 1983—did not fill up the shelves but made them seem emptier, just as the snow made a funeral parlor of the out of doors.

  Dear old Walter.

  The Poor twisted around Liv’s ankles, mewling over the cold-faded smells of Walter’s stock of food, evoking déjà vu: last summer, when Sarah was at camp and Pat was on location, the cat and Travis and herself, by their lonesomes. The house breathed a subtle and particular silence that was more than just the weeks of emptiness. It was like a secret passage known only to herself and Travis. Secrecy rendered it shared and special; within its walls they were safe, the two of them, and it was too easy to hide here. It was too easy to pretend the passage led back to a tranquil, quiet summer—summer had been a pain-fogged lie—when really it was a kind of den in which to hole up for the winter.

  She went into the living room and fed the fire, which was nicely banked. Walter m
ust have been in the house very recently. She had called to alert him as soon as it was decent that morning. He must have hurried to clear the driveway and warm the house.

  Travis slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, still clutching his army men, staring at her.

  She blew her nose. “Want to help me bring in the bags, or would you prefer to have a pee first?” she asked.

  “I don’t have to pee, Liv,” Travis answered her, a little sharply. He had begun to resent outside interest in his eliminations.

  “Fine,” she said. After two hours in the Pacer, she was certain he did have to go, but it was up to him if he wanted to punish his bladder. “Leave those guys on the table, and let’s get to it.”

  Once the bags were inside, she made for the bathroom herself and heard behind her the sound of Travis’ snowsuit zipper. When she came out, she went to the door of the children’s bathroom and found it firmly closed. The snowsuit was a heap on the hall floor. A strong, healthy stream could be heard splashing into the bowl. She smiled and went on to Travis’ bedroom, and heaved his suitcase onto his bed. The water sounds trickled off as she unpacked, and there was more sound track: Travis pulling up his pants, which always seemed to slip to his ankles while he peed because he had not yet figured out how to work his penis through the Y-front of his underpants and then the zipper of his jeans, then the ripping sound of the zipper, water in the basin and his hands sloshing and slapping, and the bathroom door unlocking as he turned the knob.

  “Liv!” he called.

  She stuck her head out his door.

  “Right here, chief.”

  His face untwisted in relief. “Oh,” he said.

  He wandered into his bedroom. At first he watched her unpacking, then he climbed onto his bed next to the open suitcase and rolled onto his belly. His head hung over one side of the bed, his legs, from the knees, over the opposite edge.

  “I’m hungry,” he said.

  “I’ll make supper when I’m finished unpacking,” Liv said.

  That held him for a few seconds. Then he turned onto his back, crossed his hands on his chest, and stared at the ceiling.

  “Are we all alone here, Liv?” he asked.