Keeper of the Keys

“You’ve been drinking. I can smell it.”

“I’m not that drunk. Not so drunk I don’t see you break into my house just like she did.”

“We have to figure out how to help you, Mom.” The dark made it hard to do anything. “Why won’t the light go on?”

“On your own you would never have gone after her. You would have let her go, because I taught you that, Ray, how to let go of things and people. How to move on, adapt to new circumstances. It took a lot of guts, living the way we did.”

“She’s my wife. It’s different. I never wanted to let her go.”

“Every single time we moved I reminded you that I was your rock. The two of us made a good family. We never needed anybody else.”

Ray’s flashlight landed on something. “The bricks are loose.”

He fingered it, and the crude mortar peeled up like an onion. “I told you, it’s crap. Not a professional job.”

“Don’t mess with the wall, Ray,” his mother said. “This is my house. My life.”

“This is a real problem here, the bricks. This has to be repaired right away,” he said. He knew it was an incongruous thing to say, but he couldn’t help it. He felt so comfortable in the role of a man who knew how to solve construction problems.

His mother laughed again. He shined the flashlight on her face and heard her laughter, saw her terrible smile. He saw a glint in her hand. “What’s that you’ve got?”

“Oh well,” she said. “The time has come, I suppose.”

“What am I missing?”

“You have all the keys you need,” Esmé said.

“Where’s the friggin’ light?” Ray shouted. “What is this?” He had been fiddling with the wall. A brick came loose, then another. “Some kind of opening.” He reached inside.

“You do not have the right to come here and invade my past.”

Ray moved the light down. He saw a big knife glinting. One of her sharp ones.

That night, Ray, twelve years old, had slept in the small room at the back of the house. Esmé had decorated it in blues and greens with an athletic theme because at that age he followed a number of national teams. He would watch games on Saturdays and Sundays, just like Henry had done years ago, genetically programmed to enjoy watching men bat balls, run around, and get knocked down.

Esmé had stayed up a little late watching her favorite sitcoms, savoring her time alone.

Curled up on the sofa, hot tea in hand, she had watched television, following the shenanigans of a group of unbelievable characters, reveling in the rewarding ending. She turned the tube off then, stretched, and carried her drink into the kitchen. She didn’t like facing litter in the morning. She liked it all put away.

Right when she was opening the dishwasher, she heard it, a car door closing, not slamming, but closing carefully.

Alerted, she crept toward the front door and peered through the window beside it.

Him.

She felt the familiar terrified rush of blood through her veins. Her hand flew to her heart and landed there, feeling the thudding below the skin. They had lived here in this house on Close Street for almost an entire year without being bothered by him. She liked Whittier, she thought, pressing against the wall. She didn’t want to move again. She didn’t want to leave this town. She was sick to death of his interference in their lives! Sick of it!

She felt rather than saw him approaching the house from the street.

Knocking.

He always knocked. Some vestige of civility remained, in spite of how much he must hate her by now.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she opened the drawer in the kitchen where she kept her knives.

A finger of feeling reached up and tried to grab her but she pushed it away. No. She had made her decision months ago. She would not succumb to sentimentality anymore.

No more ru

Ray deserved a normal life. He seemed happy this year and she wanted him to stay in this house, on this street where he was happy. He had friends at Ceves. She envisioned him at Hillview, then Cal High in a few years with the friends he had made.

She peeked through the window. Nobody at the door. Henry would be seeking a way in.

She kept all the windows of the house locked all the time, and had schooled Ray into doing the same long ago. He could not enter easily. Broken glass, she would hear.

She listened, hearing nothing.

But she would only hear it if something broke, something like the basement window.

The place got dank in winter, wet, moist. Maybe years ago, a window made some kind of sense in a basement. Maybe the owners had long-term plans to turn it into a poolroom or playhouse. Whatever they had pla

She had not closed the window. Bad mistake.

Walking silently toward the basement stairway, which was at the far side of her kitchen, she tried to remember exactly how big he was. Could he squeeze himself through the window?

Mice, she had heard, needed only one-half inch to squeeze into the pantry and eat everything in sight.

Rats, maybe an inch.

An angry man? How much space? How fit was he these days? Henry worked out. She remembered that, how he stayed fit.

Without turning on the light, she stepped down the thirteen stairs into the basement. Down here, she did laundry.

She let her eyes adjust.

Saw one foot, then the other foot push through.

Yes, he was fit enough to squeeze himself through.

She waited like an assassin, gearing herself up, so eager, dying to have it all over. For so many years Henry had ruled her life. She couldn’t take another minute. She could not.

His entire body shimmied through the window. He landed on a long, rustic table that someone had built beside the washer-dryer and turned to face her.

“Oh, Esmé,” he said.

“Yes.” She realized the light from the hallway was leaking down the stairs behind her. She must look like a silhouette to him.

A certain, small piece of her heart yearned for him, but the feeling concreted into confidence that she had made the correct decision when he said, “Where is he?”

“Sleeping upstairs.”

“I’m taking him. Get out of my way, Esmé.”

That’s when she stabbed him with the sharp, sharp kitchen knife. Then she stabbed him again.

“What’s this?” Ray had pulled something out of the hole behind the brick. The flashlight revealed tatters, dirt. “Cloth.” He had answered his own question.

“His shirt, I guess.”

Ray jumped back, knocking into the washing machine, and yelled, “What’s in there?”

“You mean who’s in there.”

“It’s-it’s a body!” he yelled.

“Henry Jackson. Your father, Ray.”

“Why? Why?”

His mother sighed deeply. “Oh, I wish you could just let go but you’re like me, stubborn and loyal. If only I hadn’t needed to stay near my mother for all those years when she was so sick we could have moved to Australia or somewhere. None of this would have happened.”

“You killed him! Oh, God, you did!”

“No, Ray, I stopped him. He broke in, just like you.”

“Wait. Wait.” They stood in the semidarkness, both breathing hard.

“He tried to hurt you, Mom? He attacked you?” Ray said at last, his voice breaking.

“He didn’t get the chance.”

“It was self-defense,” Ray mumbled. “He stalked you. We’ll deal with this.” He felt the tattered cloth again.

“It won’t look that way to a judge, Son.”

“But he broke in-”

“Ray. Ray, precious child, your father didn’t come here for me. He came for you.”

“He came to hurt me? Why?” A hundred possibilities flashed through his mind. “Did he think I wasn’t his?”