CREDIBLE THREAT
At this moment, she
cannot remember how she came to be in this helicopter.
At this moment, if
anyone asks her what her relationship is to the boy whose body is strapped into
the gurney between the two uniformed paramedics she will not be able to answer,
except with a scream.
There was a moment when she knew his white blood cell count, his systolic and
diastolic pressure, his exact body temperature. At this moment, she has
forgotten everything but the beat of the blades above the curved ceiling of
this sealed chamber and the utterly wrong color and feel of the skin on the
boy's face and hands.
There was a moment
when she knew that her name was Kelly, that the boy in the gurney was her son
Michael, that the date was November 1, 2016. At this moment, all she knows is
that his terror is hers. The deep sickness destroying him is consuming her own
flesh. They are two limbs of the same terrified animal.
Soon, the helicopter
will land on the roof of the hospital, and they will rush Michael out of this
helicopter and through doors and down elevators and hallways until they find
the room where the answers are. But Kelly cannot be pried loose from this
moment. Memory scuttles backward, time spools forward, but Kelly is forever
trapped within the membranes of this moment and of this suffering conjoined
body.
SEPTEMBER
The test results are in.
Michael is dying, Hibbard High is failing again, and the moles are back.
So far, Kelly has only
used the line in her head. Once she has perfected it, she will put it in the
rotation. And then whatever neighbor or teacher or parent who hears it will laugh,
and say at least you've kept your sense of humor.
Kelly doesn't feel as
if she still has a sense of humor, though she is still laughing.
Staring at the boughs
and leaves of the oak tree outside her bedroom window, Kelly realizes what's
wrong with the line. She can't say dying.
The point is to
release them. Kelly hates watching people struggle with their impotent concern,
shifting it from hand to hand like an awkwardly-shaped package. It wasn't so
bad after Sean's accident, when she could rant about the seatbelt he'd never
buckled, how at nineteen they think they're immortal. They could handle talking
to her when there was one tragedy in her family. Two made it different.
So, not dying.
Tell them what Michael has: non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. A rare thing to find in a
healthy seventeen-year-old boy; but still. They can say, oh, I had a friend who had that,
she's in remission now. That gives everyone a way out.
Kelly is taking too
long to get dressed. Dan has been up for an hour. He gets out early on
weekends, looking for things to do to the lawn. Dan has not kept his sense of
humor. People think he has, because he was always deadpan. On their second
date, he offered her a cigarette with a terrible pun and a straight face, and
after that they understood each other. They don't talk as much now, but they
still understand each other. She can test one of his silences the way animals
test the wind, walking to the edge of the current and learning everything
necessary in one deep breath.
Dan's voice comes
through the window screen. All week he has been talking moles with the lesbians
next door. He's been obsessed with the moles since before Sean was born. Every
year he tries something new and goes through the same cycle. He thinks it's
working; he's sure it's working; he starts evangelizing the neighbors. Then the
moles come back. Or rather, it becomes apparent that the moles never left.
Kelly looks through
the screen. Carrie, the chubby lesbian with the red hair, squats on the lawn holding
the shaft of a small metal torch. Dan stands across from her. Through the
drifts of his brown hair Kelly can see stripes of shiny scalp. He is swinging a
mallet. His hands are like the rest of his body, plump but solid. He brings the
mallet down on top of the hollow cup at the end of the torch. The shaft sinks.
In an arc surrounding
their back deck there are a dozen of these things, hammered until the cups are
flush with the ground. When the torches have made a ring around the house, Dan
will fill the cups every night with an anti-mole herbal compound and burn it.
The smoke or smell or something travels down the hollow tubes into the tunnels
and keeps the moles away. Dan has never heard of this method, but the lesbians
swear by it, and Dan said why not try it, their lawn looks pretty good.
This is pure delusion;
the lesbians' lawn is a disaster. They commute to
Dan offered them the
spreader and the herbicide. They put him off, not wanting to offend him. But
Kelly knows they disapprove of chemicals, just as she knows that Carrie is out
there now because Dan told her he read that you could get rid of moles by
hooking a hose up to your car's tailpipe and pumping exhaust into the tunnels.
This thing with the herbs is the environmentally friendly way, the way you'd
expect lesbians to get rid of moles. It surprises Kelly that Dan is taking it
seriously; but Dan has always said he'll try anything on the moles, up to and
including witchcraft.
The one thing Dan has
never tried on the moles is prayer. They can't afford to waste prayer on
anything but Sean, who is still neither brain dead nor conscious--and now
Michael, who travels to Sean's hospital today for his first chemo treatment.
Kelly pulls on jeans
and one of her fall sweaters. She will eventually have to wake Michael. But
first she'll step outside to try out the new line on Carrie.
It's a beautiful day;
bright sky, just enough breeze to send a few leaves drifting. This early in
September, nothing has turned, but the oaks are beginning to shed a little.
Kelly can still appreciate the oaks, their deeply lined limbs and the sunlight
cut into spangles by their notched and pointed leaves. People buy houses in
this old subdivision just for the trees. The new developers bulldoze
everything.
As usual, Carrie has
dressed without thinking about it. Her jeans are muddy at the knees. She stands
as Kelly approaches, pushing strands of red hair out of her eyes with the back
of one dirty hand. The sweat holds it in place.
Kelly says,
"Ahoy, Captain Ahab."
Dan gives her a
half-smile. Carrie laughs.
"We've got most
of the stakes in," Carrie says. "I'll bring over the Mole-B-Gon
tonight and fire them up for you. It'll take me that long to find it in that
damn garage."
Dan does laugh at
that. He's seen their garage.
Carrie says, "How
are you doing? How are the boys?"
Because she hasn't got
the new line right yet, Kelly re-uses an old one. "Well, Sean's about
where we last left him, but there's a new development with Michael."
"Oh no. Newer
than the cancer?"
Carrie can't have
heard it from Dan. Dan has stopped talking about Sean and Michael. Maybe she
heard from Tina and Doug, the lesbians' other next door neighbors. Tina's home
all day and her children are grown and when she's not crocheting seasonal
outfits for the concrete eagle that guards her front garden, Tina has nothing
to do but watch and listen. She feeds the lesbians' cats for them when they're
away. Kelly should have warned them before they gave Tina a key to their house.
"No," Kelly
says, hitting her stride. "We were hoping he would do something exciting
for an encore, like anthrax or Ebola, but so far it's just the cancer."
Carrie says, "You
know, a friend of mine was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma a few years
ago. She's fine now."
Kelly nods, and her
mind wanders while she watches Carrie go through the script. She hits every
note, from I hope the chemo will help him to please let us know if there's
anything we can do.
It's the last line
Kelly hates the most. There's never anything anyone can do.
OCTOBER
Kelly's attention
wanders from the papers on her desk. It occurs to her that she will probably
never use the new line at this rate. Sean is out of the coma. Michael is
responding well to the chemo. Dan says he hasn't seen a single new molehill
since they started what he calls the smoke treatment. Their luck has changed.
The prayers are working.
Hibbard High, of
course, is still failing. God himself couldn't save Hibbard High.
Kelly is looking at
the test results from last quarter. The results from this quarter will offer no
relief. Hibbard's school system lost half its revenue when the last steel mill
shut down in 2009. Nothing has filled the gap; nothing will. The only question
is whether, under Kelly's term as principal, Hibbard High will limp toward its
demise or run to embrace it.
Kelly was promoted
from assistant principal in April. It's more money, but it brings new
aggravations. And unfortunately, the old aggravation Kelly was most hoping to
leave behind has followed Kelly to her new office. Here she comes, ushered in
by the secretary for her one o'clock appointment.
Lisa Nalino's hair is
magenta this week. Last week's rusty black went better with her strong, dark
eyebrows. What Lisa should change is her makeup-—the melodramatic kohl
eyeliner, the swirls of fawn, cream, and red covering the skin between her
lashes and brows, the wet-look red lips and powdered cheeks. It probably looks
good onstage, on the face of whatever angst idol Lisa's copied it from, but
under fluorescent light and from this distance nothing could be less
flattering.
Though the days are
getting cold, Lisa is bare-armed and bare-stomached, wearing a yellow vinyl
bustier and a matching skirt so tight she has a hard time crossing her legs.
The bustier is in violation of Hibbard's dress code, which has stringent
restrictions on cleavage either mammarian or buttockial. So are Lisa's many
piercings. But enforcing the dress code is no longer Kelly's job. Lisa is in
here for something much worse. From the familiar hostility of her posture and
the fuck-you look in her eyes, it's clear that Lisa doesn't know that yet.
"I'm disappointed
in you, Lisa," Kelly says. "I thought you were smarter than
this."
Kelly reaches into the
desk drawer and pulls out the black-bound sketchbook.
Lisa's nostrils flare.
She takes one breath and freezes.
Kelly knows why; she
spent the morning reading the book. About the only thing still written on paper
these days is the secret journal of a kid like Lisa. They believe paper is
safer than cyberspace. It normally is; but one of the Bible-study blondes
somehow found the thing and turned it in to the crackpot who teaches
Abstinence.
Most of the pages are
filled with doodles or gibberish or venting about the characters in the
melodrama Lisa makes out of her own life. This large cast includes Kelly, from
whom Lisa assumes the anti-Halloween directive came. Lisa's wrong; that was the
parents' fault. Kelly might have fought it, but the decision came down during
the last week of August, when school was starting up and there was no time. A
week later was Sean's accident, and after that nothing mattered.
"I thought,"
Kelly says, "that you were smart enough to know that even if you do
fantasize about killing your classmates, you shouldn't write it down."
Lisa's arms cross
defensively over her vinyl demi-cups.
"Or that if you
do, you shouldn't bring the book onto school property."
Kelly doesn't feel the
battle-zest that usually inspires her during these confrontations. She is
genuinely disappointed. Lisa is smarter than this. Lisa's grades are in
the toilet because she suffers from something that Kelly's profession calls
Generalized Oppositional/Defiance Disorder. But her aptitude scores indicate
that Lisa's real disorder is that she's too smart for Hibbard High.
"The book was
turned in to Mr. Peterson," Kelly says. "Since it contains what he
considers a credible threat, he was obliged to turn it over to me. If I
determine that the threat is credible, I am obliged to inform the school board
and schedule a disciplinary hearing, after which you will almost certainly be
expelled."
The fact that Lisa's
'threat' is couched not in terms of guns, bombs, or knives but in terms of
demons and dark angels who will appear to do her bidding renders it entirely
incredible to Kelly. But the school board would be a different story. To those
people, there is no such thing as a metaphor.
Lisa's breathing is
loud, but she won't look up or speak.
"So," Kelly
says, "I would like you to explain why I should not consider your
entry for September 11, 2016 to be a credible threat of terrorism."
Kelly can't make it
any clearer than that. There are security cameras in all the administrative
offices and the superintendent has the right to review them at any time. She
can't just say, look, Lisa, I can make this go away but I need your help. If
Kelly can keep the board from actually seeing the journal, she may be able to
get Lisa off with a suspension. To do that, Kelly has to state in a sworn
affidavit that she has examined the evidence and she is satisfied that the
threat is not credible and that Lisa is not a danger to herself, to others, or
to school property. To make that affidavit convincing, Kelly at least has to be
able to state that Lisa has disavowed the threat.
Lisa is smart enough
to work this out. Why is she just sitting there?
Kelly takes the risk
of prompting her.
"Is this maybe a
short story you were working on?"
Lisa's face explodes.
Tears spring from nowhere, melting dirty tracks through the kohl. Under the
powder her face is red.
Her mouth is gaping,
ugly, uncontrolled.
"It's not a
story! I hate them! I hate you! I hope they die and I hope you die and I hope everyone
in your family dies and I hope this place burns to the ground!"
Lisa falls back
against the chair and sobs open-mouthed.
"Well,"
Kelly says. "Thanks for clearing that up."
There will be a
hearing. Lisa will be expelled. Under the Freedom of Education Act, no other
school has to take her. Lisa will become the sole victim of her own credible
threat.
* * * * * *
"Oh look,"
Dan observes. "The girls are off to give aid and comfort to the enemy
again."
Through the side
windows in the living room Kelly can see the lesbians' driveway. The rear door
of the ancient Prius is open, and they are out there throwing things into the
back seat. Carrie holds a sign attached to a stick, which she dangles over her
shoulder. From this distance Kelly can pick out the word WAR but that's about
all. Anne looks over her shoulder as she opens the driver side door and slides
in.
Kelly is almost sure
Dan doesn't mean it. He has told "the girls" that he doesn't think
there's anything wrong with peaceful protest as long as it doesn't pre-empt
football. They laugh, though Kelly thinks it makes Anne uncomfortable. But Anne
is just hard to talk to. They know Anne mainly through Carrie, who can't stop
talking about her. Anne works for a nonprofit that represents women in family
court. No-fault divorces, restraining orders, custody battles. Carrie tells Dan
about Anne's triumphs, the scumbag men whose scumbag lawyers Anne has defeated.
Dan tells Carrie he is president of his own nonprofit, the Perfectly Decent
Husbands of America Association. He invites them to PDHAA dances and pancake
suppers. Carrie seems to enjoy the joke.
Kelly kisses Dan on
their way out the door. Michael is already in the car. They are headed into
This is Dan's week to
sit with Michael, so Kelly leaves them with the nurses and the chemo drip and
takes the two elevators and three corridors that link the oncology unit to the
Traumatic Brain Injury unit.
Sean is out of bed,
wrapped in his blue bathrobe and sitting in one of the armchairs. His walker is
out of reach; Sean has a habit of kicking it aside as soon as he sits. His head
was shaved for surgery and now new, short hair bristles dark all over his
scalp. He has a boxer's good looks, with his sturdy neck and square jaw and the
scarring from the broken glass.
Sean begins to
complain as soon as he sees her. He hates the food, he hates the nurses, he
hates physical therapy. He doesn't grasp the big picture. He has no memory of
the accident or the coma, no idea that he is lucky to be alive. They warned
Kelly that patients recovering from TBI often regress and then re-develop.
Kelly hopes this petulance is a stage, like his inability to walk without
support.
"Michael's in
getting his chemo," Kelly says, changing the subject.
Sean points at the
bedside table. "Mom, can you get me my magazines?"
Kelly goes to pick
them up. It bothers her terribly that Sean has not shown more concern about
Michael. Sean always loved playing the bad older brother, lending Michael his
ID and trying to hook him up with older girls. But now, it's as if he can't
remember that Michael is sick too.
"How's the
RB?" Sean says, as she hands him the magazines.
The Rubber-Burner, or
as the Blue Book would call it the '10 Pontiac Roadshaker, was totaled. This is
another piece of information that Sean cannot seem to retain.
Kelly tells him. His
face falls as if he is hearing it for the first time. He does remember how he
loved that car.
By the time Dan and
Michael come in, Sean is deep into his magazines. To Kelly, Michael looks
thinner and weaker after a treatment, though she knows this has to be an
illusion. She gets up to help him, but Michael swats away Kelly's extended arm
and heads to Sean's chair.
"Hey,
8-Ball."
Sean does brighten a
little at the sound of Michael's voice.
"Hi,
Cue-Ball."
Michael shaved his
head before his first treatment; he said he couldn't stand the suspense. His
scalp stubble is blond, and comes in only in patches.
"You look like I
feel," Michael says, tossing himself into a chair.
"Nah. I feel
better than you look."
Michael feeds him the
setup. "Really?"
Sean smiles.
"Yeah, I feel like shit."
Their double act used
to be more sophisticated, but it still makes Dan laugh.
Michael scoots over to
look at Sean's magazine. Michael and Sean have read the 2015 awards issue of Car
and Driver several times, but Sean never gets tired of it. Michael wills
himself to forget too, making the occasional little "hunh" of
surprise. Light plays in Sean's eyes as the boys get into an argument,
resurrecting their childhood insults.
Kelly realizes all at
once that Michael has accepted the new Sean. Michael isn't thinking about
developmental milestones, about whether Sean will go back to college. Michael
is just trying to be with his brother.
Kelly excuses herself.
She makes the women's
bathroom. She gets into a stall, shoots the bolt, and sits fully clothed on the
toilet seat, bracing her elbows on her knees as she thrusts her head into her hands
to muffle the crying.
She is lucky. She can
hardly stand to think about how lucky she is and that has made her greedy. It
is a blessing that her sons are getting better, and she must remember that,
even if it means shattering into sobs behind these flimsy partitions as she
thinks about what has not happened.
"Kelly?"
Dan has actually come
into the women's bathroom to look for her.
She opens the door.
Dan stands at the
midpoint between the sinks and the stalls, touching nothing. He is shocked by his
own audacity. She feels weak with relief herself at the sight of his blushing
face, with its broad nose and apple-firm cheeks.
They rescue each
other, standing entwined briefly on the tiled floor.
"It's all right,
baby."
"I know."
"They're doing so
well."
"I know."
She laughs, holding on
to him. He lets her go.
"I better sneak
out before the Department of Bathroom Security finds me."
On the ride home,
Michael is quiet in the back seat. Dan, at the wheel, says nothing. Kelly is afraid
that Michael is getting sick.
She looks back, and is
about to ask him if he feels all right.
"I just want it
to be over with, Mom," Michael blurts. "I just want it to stop."
Kelly doesn't ask him
what it is. She knows. It is not just his cancer, the chemo,
Sean's slow recovery, Dan's silence, the cheerfulness that masks her own
detachment. It is bigger than that. It is whatever they entered
the night Sean's car hit that pylon, and with all the miracles Kelly still
doesn't see how she'll get herself and Dan and the boys through it.
* * * * *
Dan has never had
trouble sleeping, though his days are worse than hers. Kelly has yet to sleep
through a night. She's thought about medication, but years of anti-drug
assemblies have left their mark. Instead, she gets up, puts on her bathrobe,
and wanders into the kitchen.
Kelly can now make
decaf in the dark. She believes that not turning the lights on makes it easier
to go back to sleep. She sits with her mug at the table, looking through the
French doors that lead to the dark expanse of the deck.
White flashes against
the panes. The deck and the lawn beyond it swim in floodlight. Something has
tripped the motion detectors.
Kelly expects to see a
deer silhouetted theatrically against the woods. Instead, she sees a hulking,
opaque black mass squatting on the grass.
The mass begins to
move.
Adrenaline sings along
Kelly's nerves. The thing on the lawn is monstrous, inhuman. It will break into
the house and she won't know how to kill it--
The dark mass grows
legs, arms, a head. It moves into a shaft of light as it bends over one of the
stakes. Kelly can see a pair of sneakers, the seamed cuffs of jeans, hands
whose curves reflect white light as they fill the metal cup with something. The
thing crouches, shaking a thick mane back, and a flame flares over the cup.
The yellow light
outlines Carrie's face.
Carrie moves on to the
next cup, and the next, and finally out of sight.
Kelly glances at the
kitchen clock. It is 12:06 a.m.
Kelly knows what
Carrie's doing. She's filling the cups with Mole-B-Gon and lighting them. Dan
stopped doing that last Monday, when he almost tripped over a molehill that
sprouted by the mailbox. Carrie's just continuing the treatment. In the dark,
in secret, at the witching hour.
Kelly could walk out
and demand to know what Carrie is doing on her lawn. She could call their house
and ask Anne if she knows what Carrie is up to. She could wake Dan and ask him
to deal with it.
Kelly doesn't know why
she doesn't do any of these things, and instead sits drinking her decaf until
the floodlights click off and darkness returns, now threaded with a string of
bright yellow beads.
* * * * * *
Kelly shouldn't be
making this call outdoors. But it's a beautiful afternoon, and soon it will be
too cold to sit on the deck. Nobody's out except for Carrie, who won't hear
anything above the roar of her leafblower.
While Kelly listens to
Lisa's mother's self-justification, she watches Carrie stalk from the house
toward the woods. Carrie handles the leaf-blower like an electric guitar,
bracing one end against her pelvis and pointing the black nozzle toward the
ground, stroking in slow arcs. The leaves scurry as if repelled by a negative
charge, shivering in the artificial wind.
"You had no right
to read Lisa's journal. It's an invasion of her privacy."
Privacy. How old is
Lisa's mother?
"Ms.
Nalino..."
"My daughter is
not a psychopath."
"Lisa's journal
explicitly threatens the lives of her classmates. Under the Public School
Administration Accountability Act, we enforce a zero tolerance policy…"
As Kelly runs through
the speech, her eyes travel to Carrie, whose back arches against the leafblower
as she whisks two piles together. Kelly is looking for the source of a sound
she hears under the drone of the blower, a crunching of wheels on
gravel.
A dark gray sedan has
pulled into the lesbians' driveway.
The car in the
driveway is sleek and new, without a mark on it. Carrie can't hear its doors
open and shut. Maybe that's why the man and woman who get out of the car seem
sinister. They are clearly not burglars. The man's suit is a generic navy that
Kelly would never let Dan buy, and the woman's is dark gray. They walk through
the open garage door as if they own the place. They will be able to get into
the house through the side door, if Carrie's left it open, which she probably
does.
Ms. Nalino has started
screaming.
"…always had it
in for her. She's told me all about that. If it's not her jewelry or her
clothes it's her language or the way she sits. You're not going to ruin my
child's life, I don't care how much you hate her--"
"Ms.
Nalino!" Kelly snaps back on task. Now all she can see is the pebbled
surface of the patio table and the pad on which she is supposed to be taking
notes. "Your daughter Lisa is the one concocting gothic fantasies about
demons and bloody hail and rains of fire. Do not make this about
me!"
Kelly is suddenly
aware that the engine drone has stopped.
In the lesbians'
backyard, Carrie lays the leafblower on the grass. She walks through the door
in the rear of the garage.
All three of them must
be in the house.
Ms. Nalino is
screaming again.
Burning with undefined
anxiety, Kelly roots through her arsenal, calling on every skill she has
learned over fifteen years of parent-wrangling. It still takes ten minutes and
her complete concentration to shut Ms. Nalino up and extract her promise to
appear with Lisa at the hearing. She hangs up, barely waiting for the tone before
punching in the lesbians' number.
There is no answer.
She looks over at the
lesbians' driveway, but the sedan is gone. The leafblower sits where Carrie
left it. The breeze begins to undo the pile, leaf by leaf.
* * * * *
Dan's fingers have
been drumming on the kitchen table for a good five minutes.
Kelly has told him
what she knows: that she didn't see Carrie again after the sedan left, that the
leafblower is still out on the lawn even though it is getting dark, and that when
she calls the lesbians' number she gets voicemail.
"Well," Dan
says. "You're sure it was them?"
"Pretty
sure."
Dan says, "She's
probably all right."
That doesn't tell
Kelly whether he thinks they have really picked Carrie up.
Kelly has read about
this. The Department of Homeland Security website posted the guidelines about
how to cooperate during a home visit back in February. Dan has read the
guidelines too, apparently, because what he says comes straight out of their
FAQ.
"As long as she's
not a terrorist, they'll just question her and release her."
They are both aware
that Dan said "as long as," and not "since." Neither likes
the smell of the uncertainty that hovers between them.
The doorbell chimes.
Kelly moves to answer
it. Dan disappears, so he won't have to talk.
Anne is still wearing
her lawyer clothes. The dark suit reminds Kelly of the woman from the DHS. The
confusion worsens when Kelly looks at Anne's face. It's like looking up at a
mountain and discovering that it is a river.
"I'm sorry to
bother you, Kelly, I just…have you seen Carrie? Her car's here, but she's not
in the house. I tried calling, but she has her cell turned off."
Kelly steps back,
motioning Anne forward so she can shut the door. Anne stands looking down at
the cream-colored wall-to-wall carpet, wiping the corners of her eyes with a
forefinger and thumb. The strain of not crying shakes her.
"Come on in. Can
I get you anything?"
Anne follows Kelly
silently into the kitchen.
Dan has vacated the
kitchen. Kelly gets Anne a glass of water and pulls out two chairs, motioning
her to sit. Anne does, looking into the water but not drinking it.
The guidelines on the
DHS website say that it is a prosecutable offense to discuss DHS operations
with a suspected terrorist. If Carrie is a suspected terrorist, then so is
Anne. Kelly wonders how many other people saw that sedan pull into the
driveway. She imagines Anne going around the neighborhood, being told nothing.
"I saw Carrie out
blowing leaves, around four this afternoon," Kelly says. "I saw a car
pull up…"
Anne's eyes have lost
that horrible distracted look.
"And…?"
Kelly watches her
silence develop in Anne's face. Anne knows that Kelly has seen something. Anne
knows that if it were an ordinary criminal, Kelly would have called the police.
Anne remembers the other day, when she and Carrie were loading the protest
signs into the car. Anne is thinking--and Kelly realizes that they are thinking
together, as if they are floating down the same stream tied at the wrist--about
Tina.
Anne says, "The
only thing missing from the house is Carrie's laptop."
Kelly hears herself
saying the words.
"I'm so sorry. Is
there anything we can do?"
Anne says, "Would
you mind feeding the cats until we get back?"
Kelly blinks.
"Back from
where?"
"From wherever
they're holding Carrie."
"But…"
"I'm not going to
sit at home while they waterboard her." Anne's voice has risen. "They
won't admit they have her. Well fuck them. I'll find out where they take the
people they pick up on their fucking witch hunts…"
Anne leans over the
table, so that her long hair hides her face, and her shoulders and back shudder
as she begins laughing. Kelly recognizes the note of hysteria.
When the laughter
dies, Kelly says, "Sure, I'll take care of the cats."
Anne takes a single
metal key from one pocket and lays it on the table.
"This opens the
back garage door and the side door. Tina's got the spare front door key. If you
see her, I'd appreciate if you could get it back."
Kelly says, "I
will."
"I mean maybe it
wasn't her," Anne says, fighting tears. "I just would like the key
back."
Kelly nods. Anne grabs
a paper towel and blows her nose in it.
"I'll leave you a
note about where everything is."
"All right,"
Kelly says.
Anne stands and looks
through the French doors, exhaling slowly.
"You must be
about out of the stuff for the moles," Anne says. "I'll leave a bag
for you on the kitchen table. You have to keep treating them, or they'll come
back."
Anne sees the
disbelief on Kelly's face, and misreads it.
"Please,"
Anne says. "I know you think it's bullshit, but it's important to Carrie.
She'll be very unhappy if she comes back and finds out you've quit doing
it."
"Well we will
then," Kelly says.
Anne nods.
"Thanks, Kelly. I really appreciate all your help."
Kelly trails Anne out
to the living room.
"You have our
number?" Kelly says. "So you can call, if you need anything."
Anne nods. The door
closes.
Kelly goes back to the
kitchen, but Dan has not resurfaced.
Kelly hears the garage
door opening.
The motion sensors
don't go on. Dan has turned them off, so Anne won't know he's out behind the
deck. But there's enough twilight left for Kelly to see him jam the forked end
of his crowbar underneath the hollow cup of one of the mole stakes and pull it
up. He lays it flat on the grass, then goes after the next one. And the next.
* * * * *
Since she's been
feeding Carrie and Anne's cats, Kelly has started checking on Michael at night.
She knows it's neurotic, but she can't stop. Going into that house unsettles
her. Kelly never gets beyond the kitchen, which is a little messy but otherwise
normal. But watching the cats eat makes her nauseous. It's knowing they're in
there roaming around, scratching things, crapping in the litterbox, while the
house sits silent and empty. It makes her think of worms eating their way
through a dead body.
Michael is asleep on
his side, hugging the covers to his chest. His arm jerks. He murmurs, hunching
his shoulders.
Kelly feels his
forehead. His eyelashes flutter as she takes her hand away.
"Mom."
"Sorry I woke
you. Go back to sleep."
Michael's eyes open
fully. In the dark his irises look black.
"'S all
right," he says, turning on his back and unclenching his hands so the
covers stop constricting him. "Everything OK?"
"Yeah,"
Kelly says. "Good night."
"Mom?"
Kelly stops.
"Yes, honey?"
"Would you get me
a glass of water?"
"Sure."
Last week she'd have
made him get it himself. He can, and she doesn't want him to re-learn
dependence. But tonight she's glad to do it. It will give her a chance to check
him again.
This time, walking
into the kitchen, she flips the lights on right away.
The glare shoots at
her from every polished surface. But Kelly doesn't see the light. She sees the
darkness outside the windows. Coiled, muscular, furred and breathing. Thickness
without form, flesh without body. Its hot flanks steam against the cellophane
windows, which bulge toward her as the darkness draws its breath, which will
not show her the shapeless thing about to crush the house, which will only
throw back the pallid terror of her own face.
Kelly gropes for the
switch. Her fingers slip once before she shuts the lights off.
She keeps her eyes
away from the windows as she finds the sink. She fills the first glass her hand
gropes in the cupboard. She carries it up the stairs, slowly because her hand
is shaking and she doesn't want it to spill. She's not going back for another
one.
NOVEMBER
They have found a room
for Michael, but no answers.
The doctors haven't
told Kelly that Michael is dying. They also haven't told her exactly what's
wrong. Michael's immune system has been compromised by the chemo; he's
vulnerable to opportunistic infections. That's what this is. Apart from that,
they don't seem to know more than what she's told them. Michael woke up feeling
peaked. By lunchtime he had a raging fever and was too sick to walk. The
ambulance took him to the county hospital; they airlifted him to
Michael's temperature
is a hundred and five. The antibiotics are not bringing it down. The doctors
are conferencing somewhere. In the room it's just Kelly, Michael, and a
resident monitoring his vital signs. She has asked them not to tell Sean yet.
Dan is driving in from
A paper-masked,
latex-gloved nurse comes through the door. He bends to murmur into Kelly's ear.
"Your sister's
here with your niece. They're waiting for you in the hall."
Maybe this is a dream.
Kelly spoke to Barb in
Kelly takes off her
own mask and gloves and goes out to the hallway.
The woman in the
hallway is too young to be Barb, and the girl with her is too old to be Stacia.
After a moment, Kelly realizes the woman is Anne. The magenta hair and dark
brows finally tell her that the girl is Lisa Nalino. Everything else has
changed. Lisa's face is bare, and there is nothing in her piercings. Her body
is almost entirely covered by her black turtleneck and jeans.
Kelly looks again at
Anne's hand around the girl's wrist. The fingers are locked in a restraint, not
an embrace.
"I'm sorry about
this, Kelly," Anne says. "I had to tell them we were family just to
get up here. Will you get us permission to see Michael?"
Kelly is so startled
by the request that she doesn't know how to refuse it.
"I just want Lisa
to see him for a minute," Anne says.
Kelly finds her voice.
"Why?"
Lisa yanks at Anne's
wrist, trying to get away. Anne doesn't let go.
"Listen,"
Anne says. "If I explain why we're here, you'll say I'm crazy and call
security. I may be crazy but I'm not dangerous. Neither is Lisa, at this
moment. If you let us see him, the worst that can happen is that your luck
doesn't change."
Kelly looks at Anne's
face. Instead of Anne, she sees Carrie's shadow lurching across the lawn,
skipping ahead of the floodlights as she makes another midnight circuit of the
mole stakes.
Kelly pushes the door open. She hears herself
explaining to the resident that her sister and niece have driven out from
Lisa's behavior is the
most surreal part of this dream. She allows herself to be garbed in gloves,
mask, cap, and apron. When Anne nods at her, Lisa obeys, and goes through the
door. Anne follows. Kelly finds herself picking up the rear.
As soon as Lisa sees
Michael she petrifies.
For Kelly, fear has
long yielded to pain. But to Lisa, Michael is pure terror. It's not just the
unnatural tinge around the eyes and mouth, the plastic tubes snaking from him,
the unholy smell, the sweat that soaks the towels as fast as they can reapply
them. It's the instinct he awakens in Lisa, the buried knowledge of what it is
like to die.
Lisa's mask puckers
and billows, convex concave, in time with her rapid breathing. Her white eyes
are fixed on the figure in the bed.
"Well,
Lisa." Anne's voice is muffled by her own mask. "Do you want this
coming back to you?"
The mask rustles as
Lisa shakes her head no.
Anne's eyes blink and
moisten.
"Thanks,
Kelly," Anne says. "Will you walk us out?"
In the corridor, Lisa
tears at the mask so hard one of the ear loops breaks. The gloves come off; the
paper cap ends up crumpled in one blue-nailed hand. One sob gets out. The rest
are swallowed.
"What did you
mean, do you want this coming back to you?" Kelly begins, as Anne takes
off her own mask.
Anne considers whether
to answer. A cry from Lisa prevents her.
"What do I
do?"
Lisa is fixed on Anne.
Kelly might as well not be there.
Anne pulls her cap
off, shaking her hair out. She says, "Take her hand and break it. You know
the words."
Lisa's eyes drop to
the floor, but her hand stretches toward Kelly, stiff and formal.
"Look at
her," Anne says.
Lisa raises her eyes.
Kelly takes Lisa's
hand. Automatically, she says, "Hello, Lisa."
The muscles around
Lisa's mouth quiver, then tremble. Words fly through Lisa's mouth like logs
from a bursting dam. Kelly cannot understand a single one. She wonders if Lisa
is so upset that she has temporarily lost the ability to speak.
Anne says, "Now
wish her well."
Lisa swallows, and
tries speaking again.
It seems as if Kelly ought
to be able to understand what she's saying. It's almost like English. But it's
not close enough.
What surprises Kelly
most is the way Lisa is holding her hand. Her fingers are not limp with
antipathy, or stiff with resistance. Her hand is warm, and it reminds her of
Sean's hand, back when he was the only boy, hanging onto hers as they trotted
toward the swing set.
Lisa drops Kelly's
hand. To get them all out of the painful silence, Kelly says, "Is Carrie
all right?"
"She's
home," Anne says.
Kelly had hoped as
much when the Prius pulled into the driveway the other night. But Anne hadn't
called, so Kelly didn't think she should.
"I'm glad to hear
it," Kelly says.
"Thank you for
all your help."
Anne says it
unwillingly, watched by Lisa's curious eyes. Kelly becomes acutely aware of how
badly each one of them needs to be somewhere else.
"I've got to get
back to Michael," Kelly says.
"I know,"
Anne says. "Say goodbye to Ms. Dougherty, Lisa."
"Goodbye,"
Lisa says.
"Goodbye,
Lisa," Kelly says. "Thank you for coming to see Michael."
On his name, her voice
breaks.
No one is holding on
to Lisa now, but she doesn't run away. She's riveted. Lisa has never seen Kelly
cry. No one at Hibbard has.
Anne grabs Lisa's
wrist and drags her down the hall. She calls her goodbye over her shoulder.
Through the blur, Kelly sees Lisa jerk free of Anne's grasp. Anne keeps
walking, disappearing into the stairwell. Lisa takes a frightened look around
the empty white hallway, and then trots after her.
* * * * * *
The wind has dropped,
finally. Carrie has ventured outdoors, trying to tackle the accumulated leaves.
It's the first opportunity Kelly has had to catch her alone.
As she approaches,
Kelly calls Carrie's name as loud as she can. Carrie glances over her shoulder
to find Kelly almost on top of her. For a second, Carrie's eyes are terrible to
look at, and her body is rigid.
Then she sighs, and
turns off the blower.
"Sorry,"
Kelly says. "I just came to say thank you."
Carrie says, "For
what?"
"For
Michael."
The blower wavers a
little as Carrie sets it down.
"Come sit,"
she says.
The lesbians have a
patio, but no patio furniture, apart from two plastic stackable chairs. Carrie
drops into one. Kelly pulls up the other.
"So it was never
about the moles," Kelly says.
"No."
"How long do you
think…" Kelly's nerve fails.
"You'd know
better than we would," Carrie says. "It's probably in Lisa's
book."
"There's an entry
with my name in it, which I can't read, for August 30," Kelly says.
"Right after the board canceled Halloween and right before Sean's
accident."
Carrie sighs.
"I'm sorry it went on so long. We weren't sure who was behind it, and then
there was the visit…"
Carrie trails off,
begins again.
"Anne couldn't go
looking for Lisa till she found me. I mean she could have, but…"
Kelly says, "Of
course. I--of course. Don't…"
Carrie jumps in again,
so Kelly won't have to stumble out of that sentence.
"And it could be
Lisa had nothing to do with Sean or Michael. She absolutely did curse the crap
out of you, but there's no way to prove it caused anything. No way to prove the
cleansing circle helped either. But they're all right, so that's what
matters."
Michael still has
cancer. But the infection has been eradicated, and Sean is beginning to walk
again. Kelly knows she is crazy for thinking this has anything to do with what
Lisa said to her in the corridor outside the ICU. But she is also startled to
see Carrie suggest that maybe it didn't.
"Normally you
don't suspect craft until you see the third bad thing," Carrie says.
"But seeing how bad the first two things were, we figured we wouldn't
wait. A cleansing circle wouldn't do you any harm, and it might stave off thing
number three."
Which would have been
Dan.
"How did you know
it was Lisa?"
Carrie laughs.
"It's
embarrassing," she says. "I had kind of a Tina moment. I turned the
blower off when I saw you chewing out Lisa's mother on the phone. I heard you
say her name. Anne knows Lisa; we know she practices. I was going in to call
Anne when the visitors found me."
Kelly doesn't ask
about the visit. She is ashamed of how much she wants to know.
"How does Anne
know Lisa?"
Carrie looks away.
"Anne does some work for Safe Haven."
Safe Haven is the
local battered women's shelter. Kelly doesn't have to ask. That story is
written between the lines of the black book.
Speaking of which.
Kelly pulls the black
book out of one of the pockets in her barn jacket, and sits there with it
between her hands, covers closed.
"If you were
asked to sign an affidavit swearing that you don't believe Lisa is a danger to
herself or others," Kelly says, "would you do it?"
"I probably
would," Carrie answers. "I wouldn't necessarily be right,
though."
Kelly nods.
"I don't think
Lisa really knew what her curse would do," Carrie says. "Kids Lisa's
age don't get it about consequences. Anne's working with her now. We hope this
has taught her something. Her agreeing to break it is a good sign."
The black book turns
over in Kelly's hands as she waits for the guarantee nobody can give her.
"I thought you
all were supposed to be benevolent now," Kelly finally says.
Carrie lets out an
exasperated breath.
"What you can
never say to the reporters, when they call you up for the Halloween
story," she says, "is that nobody has ever found a way of keeping
power true."
Kelly has more to say,
but she cannot get it into the air.
"Will you do me a
favor?" Carrie finally says.
"Anything,"
Kelly answers.
"Don't tell Dan
about any of this," Carrie says. "I don't want him thinking it was
his fault for pulling up the stakes. Which it kind of might be, but still. He
didn't know what they were for."
Dan already feels bad
about that. He has put them all back in and lights the Mole-B-Gon
ostentatiously every evening, though the moles are worse than ever.
Kelly says, "Have
you got…anything…that would work on the moles?"
"Kelly."
Carrie gestures toward their erupting lawn. "Does it look like we do?"
The look on Kelly's
face makes Carrie laugh. Kelly joins her. The book slips out of her hands and
slaps against the flagstones. Kelly waves goodbye and walks away.
Carrie calls after
her. "You dropped--"
Kelly picks up the
leafblower and turns it up full throttle. Leaves scatter madly. The end of the
sentence disappears under the roar.
She puts the blower
down and looks back at Carrie. She gestures to her ears, shrugging, sorry,
can't hear you. She heads toward her own deck.
Kelly isn't sure how
she'll explain the disappearance of Exhibit A. She'll talk to Dan; he'll come
up with something. She'll tell him that even if there were such a thing as
witchcraft, expelling Lisa wouldn't save anyone from it. She'll tell him that
if Hibbard fires her, they'll only be saving her a lot of misery. She'll tell
him there's always more evil waiting to come down from the sky, but this curse
is broken. All they can do is offer something up for that, and hope it comes
back to them.
THE END