Breaking and Entering (30 page)

“You’ll like this story,” she assured Liberty. “I know you will, it’s a love story. Now, Howard,” she said coyly, “you just let me tell it now.”

It seemed to be a story about love. There were a lot of details involved. Disappointments. Misunderstandings. Matters of no importance. Lust. Monotony. The landscape this was all played against was a little blurry. Squalid places sometimes that produced a sense of freedom. Other places. The weather … There didn’t seem to be a sense of weather. Not much sickness. Trials. Days. Days of it.

“It got so I could have killed the bitch,” Howard said good-naturedly. “My little Chrissie.”

“We were just like almost everybody, but I took it upon myself to change.”

“She abducted herself,” Howard said.

“It took a while, but inside and out I changed completely.”

“Down to the color and curl of her snuffy,” Howard said.

“Howard, don’t make it ugly. I’m telling.”

Howard pouted.

“So inwardly was I transformed, I became unrecognizable,” Chrissie crooned.

“The weight loss helped,” Howard said. “And the face lift. To say nothing of the tucks both tummy and eye.”

“Howard, Howard,” Chrissie said. She paused, thoughtful.

“You assumed a new identity and became dead to your old world,” Willie said. His tone was optimistic.

“Yeah, help her along. She needs help,” Howard said.

“My return was met with neither joy nor sorrow. It wasn’t even met with surprise.”

“That’s because you were so successful,” Willie said.

“Sometimes I think I’ve done it,” Chrissie said. “Sometimes I’m not so sure.”

“She wants to be all the other bitches there have been for me. Well I’ll tell you, sweetheart, you can’t.” Howard tipped toward her, caught himself, worked his way back into the chair.

“He makes it all sound like sex,” Chrissie protested.

“You got mushy edges, Chrissie, you know that?” Howard said.

“I’m not talking sex!” Chrissie wailed.

“We all want our lost nature restored,” Willie said.

Liberty wished that he would not participate in Howard and Chrissie’s evening quite so keenly.

“If we could just take a sleep cure, like,” Chrissie pondered. “I really need a little more sleep than I get. I’m kind of afraid of sleep.”

“Afraid I’m going to get her,” Howard said without much interest.

“Shapes,” Chrissie said earnestly, “it’s all shapes.”

Willie agreed.

Liberty thought that this was becoming dangerous.

“Chrissie,” Howard said, “we got guests tonight. Liven it up, will ya.”

“Don’t push me Howard.”

“Some simple pleasures are just a bit too simple, Chrissie, you know,” Howard said.

“You were telling the story of the avenger’s return,” Willie said in the same kindly, oddly optimistic tone. “But you’ve got to go beyond that. You have a new power.”

Chrissie looked at him gratefully. But she was troubled. “I want to start over,” she said.

“Our Chrissie can really ball up a story,” Howard said.

“Howard is older than Chrissie, you might have noticed,” Chrissie began. “When she was a child, just a child, she was molested by this man Howard. She was where she was, he took her away, he put her back. It was a matter of moments.”

“Seduced,” Harold said. “Not
molest, seduce
, Miss Malaprop. Jesus, our Chrissie gets younger every year. What’s your driver’s license say, huh? What’s your driver’s license say?”

Sentimental music swirled and swelled around them.

“She was just a child, he stole her innocence,” Chrissie said doggedly.

“I would suggest just gliding over this part if I were you,” Howard said, “this part never having worked for you particularly well in the past.”

“He can’t touch you,” Willie said. “He’s a voice in your head.”

Chrissie smoothed her apron. “He can’t touch me,” she said. “He thinks he knows me but he doesn’t know me.” She seemed to be speaking to the apron.

“She’s playing with her own head tonight,” Howard said.

Chrissie raised her eyes and nodded at Willie happily. “I’m falsely known but that’s my power. I’m the other one he thinks I’m not. I’m both myself and the other person.”

“The other person was better built actually,” Howard said. “She wasn’t so stupid.”

“Words,” Willie said. “Shapes. You want to leave them
behind. You want to climb clear of your wrong beginnings. You want another life.”

“I want to win,” Chrissie said.

“You won,” Willie said. “Everything is valid tonight.”

“I’m victorious,” Chrissie said. “I won. I didn’t lose.”

“We are all contestants,” Howard said, “but we are not all winning contestants. Our Chrissie will never be a winning contestant.”

Chrissie looked vexed. Then she put her hand in her apron pocket, took out a gun, leveled it at Howard and fired. A fan of blood struck the aquarium glass. Howard fell from his chair onto his back. Liberty’s ears were ringing. She was standing, she thought. Willie was standing. They were all standing except Howard, who lay unmoving on the floor. His eyes and mouth were open.

“I don’t like temptations,” Chrissie said. “I don’t respond well to temptations.”

“You can deal with them in several ways,” Willie said. “This, perhaps, wasn’t one of the better ones.”

“They come at you … they don’t quit …” Chrissie tossed her head. “If they’d just quit sometimes.”

Willie had his arms around Liberty’s shoulders and was moving them backward toward the door.

“You’ve got to be strong,” Willie said.

Chrissie looked discouraged.

Howard lay on the floor in what seemed a parody of death, but he was dead.

“You two have done this before,” Willie said reasonably.

“Yes, yes,” Chrissie said. “But this isn’t good, you know.”

Willie was sympathetic.

“We’ve lost a lot of ground here,” Chrissie said. She was speaking carefully again, covering her bad teeth.

“Well …” Willie said.

“Yeah, well … see you.” Chrissie scratched her head. She looked at her fingernails, then at Howard.

Willie and Liberty were in the truck, traveling fast on a raised, graveled road winding through marsh. Drowned trees fled from the twisting headlight beams.

Liberty was crying. “You weren’t in control of that. Something happened there. You were encouraging them, directing them, but you weren’t in control.”

“But you were the one who got us out of there. You were wonderful. It was you.”

She couldn’t remember.

“The two of us together,” he said, “but mostly you. It was an accident and you calmly dealt with the accident. You were extraordinary.”

“I couldn’t have,” she said. “I did nothing. We should have done something.”

“Sometimes there’s nothing you can do.”

“You made that happen. You could tell that girl was sick. She was disturbed, both of them, why did we stay there?”

“They do something like that weekly. There was the feeling of cozy ritual.”

“But that man’s dead. She shot him.”

“Maybe,” Willie said.

“He’s dead.” She wanted this to be something that Willie realized, that was the truth.

“She’ll get a good night’s sleep for a change. When she wakes up in the morning, she’ll feel she did the right thing.”

Fog hung in gauzy patches along the road. The truck whipped through it. Willie had bewitched those people, Liberty thought absently. She couldn’t quite picture Howard anymore, or the house, the woman alone in it.

“You kill things,” she said quietly.

For an instant he looked stricken. “I’ll make up for it,” he said. “Never the other, but this. I’ll make up for this.”

“How can you?”

“I will.”

Liberty pushed her knuckles against her mouth. “Stop,” she said.

He pulled the truck off the road and she stumbled out, Clem leaping after her. The darkness rustled. She knelt on the gravel, clutching weeds, opening her mouth, wanting to throw up, but nothing happened. She crouched there until it came to seem a little artificial to her, this posture, this waiting. It couldn’t have happened, she thought. It was a game the other couple had played, with music and mirrors and words. If they went back there now, those frightful people would open the door, they would be standing there. But she knew that this was not what would happen. Howard would not be standing there. Howard would be dead. Willie had attained something there, somehow.

She was losing her mind, she thought. Going back to the truck she saw with dismay the loaf of bread lying on the floor and she began talking to Willie about the bread and how they must not leave it for the birds to find for that was the important thing now, that the waters should be crossed, that they should not become too frightful to be crossed. She was losing her mind, her mind that didn’t want to be tied down to her confusions, her terrors and mistakes. But Willie understood. He knew her, he assured her, he understood. But she couldn’t remember what they had done with the bread. The bread, after all, hadn’t been the point. He put his arm around her. The night had passed for Willie. He was looking down the road, his arm around her, his Liberty.

This had not been so long ago, after almost everything else but before the saving. Saving people had been relatively recent. Opportunities that were parts of a promise Willie couldn’t keep. Neither of them were very good about keeping promises. She had promised the baby that it would not be alone. Beneath the bird’s wing, she was cold. She ran her fingers across the feathers, the thready insubstantial body. The bewitcher Willie had been bewitched. He had never had a penchant for the saving. It was the details of final things to which he’d always been drawn. And in the end it was all the same to Willie—a matter of details. He was impersonal about it. He had put their new beginnings behind him now.

She pressed the heron’s wing back against its body, gathered its ungainly parts together and carried it to the trees where she dug a hole with her hands and buried it. There comes that time for everything, she said to it, when you have to put the beginning behind you.

There was a ragged line of brown foam on the harder sand of the beach just before the cut that wound between the two Keys. The water of the Pass rocked swiftly past. Liberty stepped into the water, and it was deep at once. She swam a dozen strokes, then counted in tens but stopped counting and just flailed ahead. The water was warm and heavy, trembling with phosphorescence, which struck her in jellylike clots. The current was sweeping her away from land. She saw it gliding by. Then they were in slack water, further from shore, but it was calm. She stopped to rest and Clem’s leg bumped hard against her own. He circled her. She heard him breathing through shut jaws. She pushed off again, her eyes and throat burning. After a while she dove downward and felt the bottom, a person’s
height beneath her, then drifted up and swam hard toward the shore. Minutes later, her hands hit the sloping sand shelf. On the beach, Clem shook himself, the water flying from his coat like little lights, quickly extinguished.

Inside the house, the phone was ringing.

“Liberty!” her mother said. “Liberty, I have the most amazing news. Your sister called and came over. Yes! She got in touch with me! She tracked me down, can you imagine!”

Liberty didn’t know what to say. “Is she there, Mother?” she finally asked.

“I was wondering, Liberty, do you still have that lazy Susan I sent one year on your birthday, the one with the little dishes?”

“I can’t remember receiving that.”

“Well, I’d like it back, dear.”

“Have you seen Brouilly? Did she really call?”

“Brouilly?” her mother said. “Oh, I’m afraid I have a little confession to make, dear. I named you both Liberty. I suppose that’s not done much, but I did it. Yes, she was over here. She just left, but she’ll be back. Goodness, she turned out well. A beautiful girl, she makes me very proud. Liberty, I’ve been going through some of your things. Gracious, dear, what a lot of junk! I’ve thrown away big bags of it.
Big
bags. All those tests you used to take in school. The questions you answered, Liberty, honestly. Listen to this. ‘Mr. Jones and Mrs. Jones both have the ability to roll their tongues. They have a daughter, Marie, who can’t roll her tongue. Mr. Smith has the ability to roll his tongue. Mrs. Smith does not. They have a son, John, who does have the ability to roll his tongue. Mr. Jones and Mrs. Smith die.’ ” She paused. “Really, Liberty, I find this type of thing quite shocking, I find this hard to believe.
‘Mrs. Jones and Mr. Smith get married and have a son who does not have the ability to roll his tongue …’ ”