Lisey's Story

  "Scott . . . I--"

  She had no idea where to go from there, and it seemed there was no need. Scott raised the forefinger of his left hand like a teacher who means to make a particularly important point, and the smile actually resurfaced on his lips. Some sort of smile, anyway.

  "Wait," he said.

  "Wait?"

  He looked pleased, as if she had grasped a difficult concept. "Wait."

  And before she could say anything else he simply walked off into the dark, back straight, walk straight (no drunk in him now), slim hips slinging in his jeans. She said his name once--"Scott?"--but he only raised that forefinger again: wait. Then the shadows swallowed him.

  17

  Now she stands looking anxiously down the lawn. She has turned off the kitchen light, thinking that may make it easier to see him, but even with the help of the pole-light in the yard next door, the shadows take over halfway down the hill. In the next yard, a dog barks hoarsely. That dog's name is Pluto, she knows because she has heard the people over there yelling at it from time to time, fat lot of good it does. She thinks of the breaking-glass sound she heard a minute ago: like the barking, the breaking sounded close. Closer than the other sounds that populate this busy, unhappy night.

  Why oh why did she have to tee off on him like that? She didn't even want to see the stupid Swedish movie in the first place! And why had she felt such joy in it? Such mean and filthy joy?

  To that she has no answer. The late-spring night breathes around her, and exactly how long has he been down there in the dark? Only two minutes? Five, maybe? It seems longer. And that sound of breaking glass, did that have anything to do with Scott?

  The greenhouse is down there. Parks.

  There's no reason that should make her heart beat faster, but it does. And just as she feels that increased rhythm she sees motion beyond the place where her eyes lose their ability to see much of anything. A second later the moving thing resolves itself into a man. She feels relief, but it doesn't dissipate her fear. She keeps thinking about the sound of breaking glass. And there's something wrong with the way he's moving. His limber, straight walk is gone.

  Now she does call his name, but what comes out is little more than a whisper: "Scott?" At the same time her hand is scrabbling around on the wall, feeling for the switch that turns on the light over the stoop.

  Her call is low, but the shadowy figure plodding up the lawn--yes, that's a plod, all right, not a walk but a plod--raises its head just as Lisey's curiously numb fingers find the light-switch and flick it. "It's a bool, Lisey!" he shouts as the light springs on, and could he have planned it better if he had stage-managed it? She thinks not. In his voice she hears mad jubilant relief, as if he has fixed everything. "And not just any bool, it's a blood-bool!"

  She has never heard the word before, but she doesn't mistake it for anything else, for boo or book or anything else. It's bool, another Scott-word, and not just any bool but a blood-bool. The kitchen light leaps down the lawn to meet him and he's holding out his left hand to her like a gift, she's sure he means it as a gift, just as she's pretty sure there's still a hand under there someplace, oh pray to Jesus Mary and JoJo the everloving Carpenter there's still a hand under there someplace or he's going to be finishing the book he's working on plus any that might come later typing one-handed. Because where his left hand was there's now just a red and dripping mass. Blood goes slipping between spread starfish things that she supposes are his fingers, and even as she flies to meet him, her feet stuttering down the back porch steps, she's counting those spread red shapes, one two three four and oh thank God, that fifth one's the thumb. Everything's still there, but his jeans are splattered red and still he holds his bloody lacerated hand out to her, the one he plunged through a pane of thick greenhouse glass, shouldering his way through the hedge at the foot of the lawn in order to get to it. Now he's holding out his gift to her, his act of atonement for being late, his blood-bool.

  "It's for you," he says as she yanks off her blouse and drapes it around the red and dripping mass, feeling it soak through the cloth at once, feeling the crazy heat of it and knowing--of course!--why that small voice was in such terror of the things she was saying to him, what it knew all along: not only is this man in love with her, he's half in love with death and more than ready to agree with every mean and hurtful thing anyone says about him.

  Anyone?

  No, not quite. He's not quite that vulnerable. Just anyone he loves. And Lisey suddenly realizes she's not the only one who has said almost nothing about her past.

  "It's for you. To say I'm sorry I forgot and it won't happen again. It's a bool. We--"

  "Scott, hush. It's all right. I'm not--"

  "We call it a blood-bool. It's special. Daddy told me and Paul--"

  "I'm not mad at you. I was never mad at you."

  He stops at the foot of the splintery back steps, gawking at her. The expression makes him look about ten years old. Her blouse is wrapped clumsily around his hand like a knight's dress gauntlet; once yellow, it's now all bloom and blood. She stands there on the lawn in her Maiden-form bra, feeling the grass tickling her bare ankles. The dusky yellow light which rains on them from the kitchen puts a deep curved shadow between her breasts. "Will you take it?"

  He's looking at her with such childish pleading. All the man in him is gone for now. She sees pain in his long and longing glance and knows it's not from his lacerated hand, but she doesn't know what to say. This is beyond her. She's done well to get some sort of compress on the horrible mess he's made south of his wrist, but now she's frozen. Is there a right thing to say? More important, is there a wrong one? One that will set him off again?

  He helps her. "If you take a bool--especially a blood-bool--then sorry's okay. Daddy said so. Daddy tole Paul n me over n over." Not told but tole. He has regressed to the diction of his childhood. Oh jeez. Jeez Louise.

  Lisey says, "I guess I take it, then, because I never wanted to go see any Swedish-meatball movie with subtitles in the first place. My feet hurt. I just wanted to go to bed with you. And now look, we have to go to the smucking Emergency Room, instead."

  He shakes his head, slowly but firmly.

  "Scott--"

  "If you weren't mad, why did you shout and call me all the badgunky?"

  All the badgunky. Surely another postcard from his childhood. She notes it, puts it away for later examination.

  "Because I couldn't shout at my sister anymore," she says. This hits her funny and she begins to laugh. She laughs hard, and the sound so shocks her that she begins to cry. Then she feels light-headed. She sits down on the porch steps, thinking she may faint.

  Scott sits beside her. He's twenty-four, his hair falls almost to his shoulders, his face is scruffy with two days' growth, and he's as slim as a rule. On his left hand he wears her blouse, one sleeve now unwrapped and hanging down. He kisses the throbbing hollow of her temple, then looks at her with perfect fond understanding. When he speaks, he sounds almost like himself again.

  "I understand," he says. "Families suck."

  "Yeah they do," she whispers.

  He puts his arm around her--the left one, which she is already thinking of as the blood-bool arm, his gift to her, his crazy smucked-up Friday-night gift.

  "They don't have to matter," he says. His voice is weirdly serene. It's as if he hasn't just turned his left hand into so much raw and bleeding meat. "Listen, Lisey: people can forget anything."

  She looked at him doubtfully. "Can they?"

  "Yes. This is our time now. You and me. That's what matters."

  You and me. But does she want that? Now that she sees how narrowly he's balanced? Now that she has a picture of what life with him may be like? Then she thinks of how his lips felt in the hollow of her temple, touching that special secret place, and she thinks, Maybe I do. Doesn't every hurricane have an eye?

  "Is it?" she asks.

  For several seconds he says nothing. Only holds her. From Cleaves's paltry downtown
come the sounds of engines and yells and wild, whooping laughter. It's Friday night and the Lost Boys are at play. But that is not here. Here is all the smell of her long, sloping backyard sleeping toward summer, the sound of Pluto barking under the pole-light next door, and the feel of his arm around her. Even the warm damp press of his wounded hand is comforting, marking the bare skin of her midriff like a brand.

  "Baby," he says at last.

  Pauses.

  Then: "Babyluv."

  For Lisey Debusher, twenty-two, weary of her family and equally tired of being on her own, it is enough. Finally enough. He has hollered her home, and in the dark she gives in to the Scott of him. From then until the end she will never look back.

  18

  When they're in the kitchen again, she unwinds her blouse and sees the damage. Looking at it, she feels another wave of faintness first lift her up toward the bright overhead light and then drop her toward darkness; she has to struggle to stay conscious, and manages to do it by telling herself He needs me. He needs me to drive him to the ER at Derry Home.

  He has somehow missed slicing into the veins which lie so close under the wrist--a blue-eyed miracle--but the palm is cut in at least four different places, some of the skin is hanging like wallpaper, and three of what her Dad called "the fat fingers" are also cut. The piece de resistance is a horrible gash on his forearm with a triangle of thick green glass sticking up from it like a sharkfin. She hears herself make a helpless ouck! sound as he pulls it out--almost casually--and tosses it into the trash. He holds her blood-soaked blouse under his hand and arm as he does this, considerately trying to keep blood off her kitchen floor. He does get a few drops on the lino, but there's surprisingly little to clean up later. There's a high counter-stool that she sometimes sits on when she's peeling veggies, or even when she's washing dishes (when you're on your feet eight hours a day, you take your sitdowns where you can get em), and Scott hooks it over with one foot so he can sit with his hand dripping into the sink. He says he's going to tell her what to do.

  "You have to go to the ER," she tells him. "Scott, be sensible! Hands are full of tendons and things! Do you want to lose the use of it? Because you could! You really could! If you're worried about what they'll say, you can cook up some story, cooking up stories is what you do, and I'll back y--"

  "If you still want me to go tomorrow, we'll go," he tells her. Now he's entirely his normal self, rational and charming and almost hypnotically persuasive. "I'm not going to die of this tonight, the bleeding's almost stopped already, and besides--do you know what ERs are like on Friday night? Drunks On Parade! First thing Saturday morning would be lots better." He's grinning at her now, that delighted honey, I'm hip grin that almost demands you grin back, and she tries not to, but this is a battle she's losing. "Besides, all the Landons are fast healers. We had to be. I'm going to show you just what to do."

  "You act like you've put your hand through a dozen greenhouse windows."

  "No," he says, the grin faltering a little. "Never poked a greenhouse until tonight. But I learned some stuff about being hurt. Paul and I both did."

  "He was your brother?"

  "Yeah. He's dead. Draw a basin of warm water, Lisey, okay? Warm but not quite hot."

  She wants to ask him all kinds of questions about this brother

  (Daddy tole Paul n me over n over)

  she never knew he had, but this isn't the time. Nor will she hector him anymore about going to the Emergency Room, not just now. For one thing if he agreed to go she'd just have to drive him there, and she isn't sure she could do it, she's come over all shaky inside. And he's right about the bleeding, it's slowed way down. Thank God for small favors.

  Lisey gets her white plastic basin (Mammoth Mart, seventy-nine cents) from under the sink and fills it with warm water. He plops his lacerated hand into it. At first she's okay--the tendrils of blood lazing their way to the surface don't bother her too much--but when he reaches in and begins to gently rub, the water goes pink and Lisey turns away, asking him why in God's name he's making the cuts bleed all over again like that.

  "I want to make sure they're clean," he says. "They should be clean when I go--" He pauses, then finishes: "--to bed. I can stay here, can't I? Please?"

  "Yes," she says, "of course you can." And thinks: That isn't what you were going to say.

  When he's finished soaking his hand, he pours out the bloody water himself so she won't have to do it, then shows her his hand. Wet and gleaming, the cuts look less dangerous and yet somehow more awful, like crisscrossing fishgills, with pink deepening to red inside them.

  "Can I use your box of tea, Lisey? I'll buy you another one, I promise. I've got a royalty check coming. Over five grand. My agent promises on his mother's honor. I told him it was news to me he had one. That's a joke, by the way."

  "I know it's a joke, I'm not that dumb--"

  "You're not dumb at all."

  "Scott, why do you want a whole box of teabags?"

  "Get it and find out."

  She gets the tea. Still sitting on her stool and working with one-handed care, Scott fills the basin with more not-quite-hot water. Then he opens the box of Lipton teabags. "Paul thought this up," he says excitedly. It's a kid's excitement, she thinks. Look at the neat model airplane I made all by myself, look at the invisible ink I made with the stuff from my chemistry set. He dumps the teabags in, all eighteen or so. They immediately begin staining the water a dull amber as they sink to the bottom of the basin. "It stings a little but it works really really good. Watch!"

  Really really good, Lisey notes.

  He puts his hand in the weak tea he has made, and for just a moment his lips skin back, revealing his teeth, which are crooked and a bit discolored. "Hurts a little," he says, "but it works. It really really works, Lisey."

  "Yes," she says. It's bizarre, but she supposes it might actually do something about preventing infection, or promoting healing, or both. Chuckie Gendron, the short-order cook at the restaurant, is a big fan of the Insider, and she sometimes sneaks a look. Just a couple of weeks ago she read an article on one of the back pages about how tea is supposed to be good for all sorts of things. Of course it was on the same page as an article about Bigfoot bones being found in Minnesota. "Yes, I suppose you're right."

  "Not me, Paul." He's excited, and all his color has come back. It's almost as if he never hurt himself at all, she thinks.

  Scott jerks his chin at his breast pocket. "Cigarette me, babyluv."

  "Should you be smoking with your hand all--"

  "Sure, sure."

  So she takes his cigarettes out of his breast pocket and puts one in his mouth and lights it for him. Fragrant smoke (she will always love that smell) rises in a blue stack toward the kitchen's sagging, water-stained ceiling. She wants to ask him more about bools, blood-bools in particular. She is starting to get a picture.

  "Scott, did your Dad and Mom raise you and your brother?"

  "Nope." He's got the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and one eye's squinted shut against the smoke. "Mumma died havin me. Daddy always said I killed her by bein a sleepyhead and gettin too big." He laughs at this as though it's the funniest joke in the world, but it's also a nervous laugh, a kid's laugh at a dirty joke he doesn't quite understand.

  She says nothing. She's afraid to.

  He's looking down at the place where his hand disappears into the basin, which is now filled with bloodstained tea. He puffs rapidly on his Herbert Tareyton and the ash grows long. His eye is still squinted shut and it makes him look different, somehow. Not like a stranger, exactly, but different. Like . . .

  Oh, say like an older brother. One who died.

  "But Daddy said it wasn't my fault I stayed asleep when it was time to come out. He said she should have slap me awake and she didn't so I growed too big and she got kilt for it, bool the end." He laughs. The ash falls off his cigarette onto the counter. He doesn't seem to notice. He looks at his hand in the murky tea but says no more.

>   Which leaves Lisey in a delicate dilemma. Should she ask another question or not? She's afraid he won't answer, that he'll snap at her (he can snap, this she knows; she has audited his Moderns seminar on occasion). She's also afraid he will answer. She thinks he will.

  "Scott?" She says this very softly.

  "Mmmm?" The cigarette is already three quarters of the way down to what looks like a filter but is, on a Herbert Tareyton, only a kind of mouthpiece.

  "Did your Daddy make bools?"

  "Blood-bools, sure. For when we didn't dare or to let out the badgunky. Paul made good bools. Fun bools. Like treasure hunts. Follow the clues. 'Bool! The End!' and get a prize. Like candy or an RC." The ash falls off his cigarette again. Scott's eyes are on the bloody tea in the basin. "But Daddy gives a kiss." He looks at her and she suddenly understands he knows everything she has been too timid to ask and is answering as well as he can. As well as he dares. "That's Daddy's prize. A kiss when the hurting stops."

  19

  She has no bandage in her medicine cabinet that will satisfy her, so Lisey ends up tearing long strips from a sheet. The sheet is old, but she mourns its passing just the same--on a waitress's salary (supplemented by niggardly tips from the Lost Boys and only slightly better ones from the faculty members who lunch at Pat's) she can ill afford to raid her linen closet. But when she thinks of the crisscrossing cuts on his hand--and the deeper, longer gill on his forearm--she doesn't hesitate.