“You look like hell,” he said. “There are black-and-blues where I didn’t expect.”
He put the blanket back and rose, coughing. He hacked like someone with poisoned lungs. Maybe he was getting sick. Maybe he had lung cancer. Maybe he would die with me down here, and then what? If he died and I was still chained to the wall, what could I do? Ironically, I had to wish that he remained healthy. I saw him go into the bathroom and heard him peeing.
When he came out again, he stood for a while looking around and then at me. Suddenly, he opened the door and went out and up the stairs. I stood up and, although it was painful, dragging that horrible chain along with me, I walked to the bathroom. When I came out, he had returned and was standing with a faded blue robe in his hands.
“Put this on,” he said. “It was my father’s. That’s all you’ll wear for a while. I’m not giving you any more of my mother’s nice dresses and other things until I think you’ll have respect for them and for me.”
He tossed the robe at me. It smelled sour and was stained with old food and drink, but I put it on quickly and stood looking away.
“I’ll make you some breakfast,” he said. “I shouldn’t. I should keep you on bread and water for a while to teach you a lesson, but the faster you get better, the faster we can think about having our baby. I know how mothers are. They never ever think of leaving their babies. You’ll be able to think of someone besides yourself and me. Go on. Get off your feet,” he ordered.
Nearly tiptoeing to keep my weight off some of the scrapes and cuts on my feet, I returned to the bed. He started to make some coffee and eggs. Either it didn’t bother him that he was stark naked, or he was doing that to intimidate me. It didn’t matter. I was intimidated and kept my gaze on the floor.
“You stay in that bed for now,” he said. “For a while, I want you to keep off your feet except to go to the bathroom. Those bandages got to be changed every other day, even if I forget. We don’t want no infections and fevers and all the other crap that goes along with it. But even if that happens, don’t worry. I have pills. I have lots of pills.”
Obediently, I got back under the blanket.
“Put my pillow behind yours, too, and sit up,” he ordered. He continued to prepare a tray. “I’ll be your servant for now, but once you’re better, you’ll be doing everything for us. You’re too spoiled. All you rich girls are too spoiled. Rich bitches turn to witches if you don’t use some switches,” he recited, and laughed.
“I’m not a rich girl,” I said. I was amazed myself that I cared enough to say anything. How could I care what he thought or what anyone thought about me now? I didn’t feel human.
“Sure you are. You ever work? Well? Did you?”
“No.”
“Then you’re a rich girl. Ma warned me about rich girls, but you can be cured.”
“Cured? What’s that mean?” Did his ugly little rhyme mean something . . . if you don’t use some switches? What else did he have planned for me?
I could see he was thinking. Then he turned when the right word had come to him. “Trained is what I mean. People can be trained just like animals. If my mother was here and saw you, she would say you ain’t been housebroken yet. That’s why you went and did this damn dumb thing. She was always saying that about my father. ’Course, he never was, and never could be, housebroken. When he was really drunk, he might pee in the kitchen sink and set her into some tirade. I seen her hit him with a frying pan once.”
To my surprise, those memories seemed to cheer him up. He started to whistle as he finished making breakfast. He was happy again, mumbling about our future, the things he was planning to do for our family, behaving as though nothing had happened. He simply refused to accept my rejection, even now, even after I had made such a dramatic and desperate attempt to escape. I watched him and thought how crazy he was, and yet he obviously could get by in the world without anyone realizing it or caring. Without friends and, apparently, without contact with relatives, who would know how he lived and what he did in his own home? How many weird people lived alone like he did and went about their daily lives unnoticed until they hurt someone or themselves? Yes, I thought, it was very possible that there had been another young girl kept down here, very possible that there had even been more than one.
Because he didn’t work at a company and with the same people every day, his insanity was surely even less noticeable. If he was telling the truth about the quality of his work, he was possibly able to present himself as being normal enough to work for people. There were probably people who might have praised the work he had done and, as he had suggested to me, recommended him to others. Someday, if what he was doing to me and with me was ever revealed, these same people would shake their heads and say something like “Anthony Cabot? Who would have ever imagined that a nice, efficient working man like that would do such things? He was always talking about his mother. He must have loved her very much, a devoted son.”
The thought reminded me of what I had seen.
“Whose coffin is in that room upstairs?” I asked.
He paused as he began to pour coffee into a cup. “That’s my mother,” he said. “You went in there,” he added, as if someone had just whispered in his ear.
“Why is her coffin on a bed in that room?”
“It’s her room.” He finished pouring the coffee and put the eggs and some toast on the dish. Then he placed it all on a tray and brought it to me. Carefully, he put the tray on my lap. “Eat,” he ordered.
I began. It wasn’t until I had started to chew that I realized my jaw was sore, too. When I had fallen into that ditch, I had really smashed my face into the hard soil.
“But why put her coffin in her room? Why isn’t it in a cemetery?” I asked as I ate.
“I wasn’t going to bury her beside my father. She didn’t want that. The day she knew she was going to die, she made me promise.”
“But you could put her in a grave that wasn’t near his, couldn’t you?”
“No. Stop asking questions about her. You ain’t earned the right yet.”
The right? He talked about his mother as if she was some sort of divine being. I was so tired, defeated, and bruised that I didn’t care.
However, a new thought came to me, one that was perhaps even more frightening.
“When did she die?”
He didn’t answer. He continued to stare at me like he might, however.
“Recently? No one else knows she died? Is that it? You built that coffin, didn’t you?” I said. “You’ve kept her death a secret.”
“I told you to stop talking about my mother.”
“You can’t leave it like this. Didn’t she have any friends? Don’t people ask after her? Doesn’t she have any relatives, a sister or a brother?”
“I told you, my mother didn’t have any brothers or sisters. She was like your mother. Her mother died a while back, and her father left them when she was only ten. We ain’t heard from him ever.” He smiled. “That’s why we’re so alike, Kaylee. We don’t spend time with relatives, remember? You don’t like your grandparents, and you don’t see your uncles or cousins much.”
“That was my sister who told you that,” I said. “You were talking to my sister, never to me.”
His face hardened again, and he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll play it like that if you want. It’ll be like the very first day you came here.”
“I didn’t come here. You brought me here against my will.”
“We’ll start all over,” he said, not listening. “It will just take a little longer than I hoped. It’s your fault. I’m sure you’re sorry, or you will be.”
He took away the tray even though I wasn’t finished and brought it to the sink. I watched him dump the food into a garbage bag and put the dishes and silverware in the sink. Then he turned, walked halfway to the bed, and paused.
“What you need is a little solitary,” he said. “What you got to understand is what it’s like to live alone wit
h no one to love you and care for you. Maybe then you’ll appreciate me. You won’t starve. There’s food, nothing special, nothing like what we would have together or what you’re used to having, and you got water. You take care of your own scrapes and bruises, too. The fixin’s are in the bathroom. Change those bandages every other day yourself. There’s no tender loving care now. I’m starting a new job. I wasn’t going to take it, but now I will. It’s not close by, so I won’t be home till late. You’ll get so you can’t wait for the sound of my footsteps upstairs. I know how that feels. You won’t hear nothing else but the house creaking. After a while, you won’t even like the sound of your own voice. You won’t even want to think.
“You want to know how I know about all this? My father kept me down here like that for almost two weeks when I was just ten. I didn’t have as much to eat as you do, and I didn’t have anything much to do. My mother was in the hospital. She had a heart thing and had to have an operation. He never told her about what he did to me and never brought me to see her. I didn’t cry while I was down here, at least not loud enough for him to hear. He didn’t let me out until a day before my mother came home, and he warned me not to tell her, or else. He said it would make her sick and she’d die, so I never told.”
He looked at the cat, who was sitting quietly and looking up at him as if he could understand every word. Then he reached down and picked him up.
“Mr. Moccasin won’t even be here for you to talk to. He goes upstairs until I say you’re ready and fit for family.”
He turned and walked out of the basement apartment. I heard the lock click into place.
If someone was mistakenly thought to be dead and woke up just as the coffin was closed over her, the sound would have been exactly the same.
13
Haylee
I fell asleep for quite a while. It was dark outside when I awoke, but the days were shorter now, so I knew it wasn’t that late. My bedroom door had been left partially open, the narrow slice of light from the chandelier in the hallway reaching my vanity-table mirror and reflecting eerie shadows on the wall, shapes that resembled fingers pressed against a glass pane. Kaylee might be looking out from some prison window and dreaming of rescue, I thought. A surge of regret washed over me, but I shook it off quickly.
Then I sat up and listened to see if anything new was happening. My stomach grumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten much today and now I was very hungry, so I got up, turned on the light to wipe the shadows off the wall, washed my face, and ran a brush through my hair. I could see the light blinking on my phone and checked it. There were seven messages. I imagined that the longer this went on, the more courageous our classmates would become. Most were probably afraid to hear bad news or had heard how upset I was and were afraid to talk to me.
Maybe their parents were telling them that they should be calling and offering to do whatever they could for me. That was fine. Later I would have a group of them trailing behind me and doing my bidding so they could think they were helping me cope with the terrible grief.
However, I wasn’t going to return to school for as long as I could avoid it, and I really didn’t expect too many visitors. I was afraid that, at least in the beginning when I did return, I would be treated like someone with a disease, the disease of sorrow. No one would want to invite me to parties or be funny in front of me. Over the next few days, teachers would send work home for me, but I really didn’t care. I was sure I would get away with procrastinating, and if I did do an assignment and did it poorly, they would still give me a passing grade. It would be cruel to do otherwise.
Milk the cow of compassion, I told myself. Enjoy it while you can.
When I started down the stairs, I could smell the aroma of reheated Chinese food. It was only a little past five. When the days were shorter, we ate earlier. The aromas heightened my hunger even more. I didn’t even bother to look in on Mother. To my surprise, she was already sitting at the dining-room table with Mrs. Lofter beside her, hovering over her. She was wearing one of her more colorful blouse-and-skirt outfits, and her hair was neatly pinned back. She wore her favorite ruby earrings and matching necklace, too. She had taken the time to do her makeup. No one who saw her sitting there would think anything even vaguely resembling sadness had entered this house. It was enough to make me pause for a moment and think that maybe it had all been a dream.
“Hey,” I heard.
Daddy appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was wearing an apron and looked quite ridiculous. Was this, too, part of some therapy, his doing domestic work? I could count on the fingers of one hand how many times he had done anything in our kitchen before he had left us. He was never home in time to help and had claimed he was so bad in the kitchen that he would burn water when making tea.
“Hungry?” he asked. “Everyone else was starving, so I got things under way early.” He spoke loudly so his voice would carry into the dining room.
Everyone? I thought. Who’s everyone?
“Yes,” I said, and looked again at Mother.
Despite how nice she looked, she was staring ahead with a vacant expression, her eyes avoiding me. Mrs. Lofter was encouraging her to have some wonton soup.
“I fell asleep,” I said, sliding into my usual seat.
Mother finally looked at me and smiled. “So did Kaylee,” she said.
“What?”
I grimaced when I saw a place setting at Kaylee’s seat. If they put food on her dish, I’ll go absolutely bonkers myself, I thought. Maybe Mrs. Lofter could hear my thoughts. She focused those eyes of warning on me.
Mother turned to her, a broad smile settling on her face. It looked like tiny flashlights had been turned on behind her eyes, too. “Ever since they were born, they took naps at exactly the same time,” she told Mrs. Lofter, “and woke up at the same time, even when they were in different rooms.”
“Remarkable,” Mrs. Lofter said.
“Yes, it is. They are,” Mother said. She ate some soup.
Couldn’t she see that Kaylee wasn’t here?
Daddy began to bring in the food. “It’s a feast,” he said. “I got that sweet-and-sour shrimp dish you like and egg rolls and steamed rice. There’s chicken with snow peas, beef with broccoli, and some egg foo young, pot stickers, lettuce wraps . . .”
“So much?”
“Tomorrow we’ll eat for lunch whatever we don’t eat tonight.” He put a cup of Coke on the table beside me and whispered, “Coca-Cola.” Mother never wanted us to drink soda because of the sugar, but he knew that I, more than Kaylee, loved it, especially Classic Coke. “Well, now,” he declared, slapping his hands together. “Let’s get down to some serious eating.”
This was so weird to me. It was as if nothing had happened to Kaylee, and Mother and Daddy hadn’t ever divorced. Daddy sat where he always had sat.
Mrs. Lofter began to serve herself. “It all looks so delicious,” she said, and smiled at me.
I looked from Mother to Daddy, shook my head slightly, and began to eat.
The phone rang, and we all paused—all except Mother, who didn’t appear to have heard it. Perhaps she was hearing conversations from years ago, I thought. She wore a familiar soft smile, like the smile she would have whenever Kaylee and I had done or said something that pleased her, especially if we had done or said it in front of other people at a dinner here or in a restaurant.
Daddy went to the phone. Mrs. Lofter and I paused to listen, but Mother went on eating, looking as relaxed and casual as I had ever seen her.
“Thank you,” Daddy said after a good minute or so. “We appreciate your keeping us informed.”
He looked at Mother and Mrs. Lofter and then returned to the table and began to eat as if there had never been a phone call.
“Tell you later,” he whispered, gazing at Mother, who had finished her soup and reached for an egg roll.
“My girls have perfect table manners. That was part of their homeschooling, you know,” she told Mrs. Lofter, who smiled and
nodded.
“Very unusual these days,” Mrs. Lofter said. “Most parents don’t have good table manners.”
“Oh, I know. I remember the first time we took them for Chinese food,” Mother said. “You ordered four different dishes, remember, Mason? There was so much food then, too.”
“Yes, Keri.”
She turned back to Mrs. Lofter. Who did she think Mrs. Lofter was, and why did she think she was here? I wondered.
“It was their first time at a Chinese restaurant. We wanted to see what they liked or didn’t like. Neither of them liked fried rice, and both hated peanut sauce. Remember, Mason?”
“I do,” he said. “We took a lot home for the next day, most of which you and I ate.”
I remembered that dinner. I loved peanut sauce, but I had to pretend that I hated it because Kaylee did. However, the next time we went to a Chinese restaurant, I made her eat the corn soup. I wasn’t terribly fond of it, but I knew she didn’t like it at all.
Tit for tat. It was always tit for tat.
I looked at Kaylee’s empty seat and then at Mother. She was gazing at it, too, but her expression hadn’t changed. Did she really see her there? Did she hear her? Would she see her everywhere? How long would this go on? I was actually losing my appetite, which was probably something anyone, especially Mrs. Lofter, might anticipate. After all, how could I have an appetite with all this tragedy happening? It made me angry. I had come downstairs with a ravishing appetite, hoping to get a little relief from the gloom and doom. I expected to find only Daddy here, with Mother and Mrs. Lofter up in her room, where Mother would be crying herself inside out.
However, to my surprise, Mother was eating as well as ever, obviously enjoying every bite. I looked at Mrs. Lofter, who now wore a look of satisfaction. What was there to be satisfied about? Keeping Mother in denial? Maybe she was just as crazy, I thought. Maybe a patient from the mental clinic was impersonating a nurse. I looked at Daddy. He seemed perfectly satisfied, too.