Keeper of the Keys

The egomaniac poured himself a glass of Obester Sangiovese from the Half Moon Bay tasting room. He tasted it, but might as well have sipped water. The rich depth of this particular vintage was wasted on him in his present mood. Taking his glass along, grabbing a hunk of cheese and a few crackers, he headed toward his workshop.

Stepping carefully down the treacherous staircase that he had designed without railings, that paid no heed to the fact that people got drunk and fell off, including himself one notable night, he entered his lair, a room nearly fifty feet long. He flipped on the overheads, concentrated halogen beams that kept the room warm without overheating.

Right now, he had four models going of the earliest houses he could remember, the ones he had lived in from the time he was four until he turned eight years old. He sipped his drink, then he set his cut-crystal glass down. He ate cheese on a cracker, then picked the glue gun off a shelf at the end of the room. He wanted to tackle the railroad tracks behind the house on Dittmar, in Whittier. The house alone didn’t tell the whole story. Precisely, carefully, consulting the blueprints he had obtained a few months before, he laid a long line of hot glue behind the tiny lattice backyard fence. Every morning and many nights the train had roared by, sometimes more than a hundred cargo cars long.

He had counted them endlessly. He should know.

He stroked his chin. The bedroom window was too high for a little boy inside to see anything outside. Adjustments needed to be made to the elevation. The blueprints were wrong; he remembered his bedroom window, the white curtains Esmé put up every time, the old thrift-store bed that made his back hurt.

He ate another cracker and set to work. However, the painful truth was, he couldn’t remember the details so well anymore. About midnight, he tried to sleep on the daybed, but couldn’t. Halogens burning down on him like pink-tinged eyes, he went to the bookshelf and knelt on the industrial carpet, pulling out a heavy plastic container that contained his deep past, pre-Leigh.

His mother took few photos of him as a child. Each time they moved, he was allowed exactly two boxes for papers, toys, and books. He found his youthful drawings along with color photos of many faded houses that looked so similar now, so shabby to his educated eye, snapshots of him doing flips in various backyards, his mom hysterical while he nearly cracked his skull open. The tire swing at some house. Where? Maybe on Ceres Street?

No pictures of his father. His mother must have retained feelings for him; she had never gone out with anyone else again. She wasn’t bad-looking even now for a woman in her late fifties, but she had that air: I’ve put that behind me.

He imagined his father with a flat-toothed grin just like his, flanked by sharp canines. Leigh had called him vulpine once. He had been vaguely flattered. Another girl had once told him he looked like a young Jack Nicholson. Unearthing several pictures of himself in his teens, he wondered what he had really been thinking all those years when most of his energy went into fitting in. At Hillview he had been a doper. At Cal High he had made himself into a preppie. When they moved, he would start the new school circumspectly, laying low until he could figure out a harmless persona that would permit a smooth year.

He regretted not knowing his father, if only to see the color of his eyes in memory, and whether the man had a mind for physics or physical labor. He moved on, to his small collection of plastic toys-colorful cars and trains.

Also, he found a list on the endpaper of a book that he read over and over every summer of his life, wishing he could live it, an E. Nesbit story called The Phoenix and the Carpet. He didn’t know why his mother saved this particular favorite, but he felt grateful. She had read it to him several times. He thought maybe she loved it, too.

Then, jumbled at the bottom of a box, he found the keys.

He picked them up for inspection. Every house they stayed in, whenever they moved, he had kept the key. His mother, who held many day jobs, insisted he have a key to any house they lived in, so he did. She was always careful with keys. The houses were kept locked. Keys were precious. “Protectors,” she called them.

His younger self had assembled the collection onto a large silver key ring, which jingled promisingly. Some of the keys still bore traces of labels in Magic Marker or squiggles on masking tape.

He shook the key ring, enjoying its jingle. Then, opening the book to its blank front page, he read the addresses he had painstakingly printed, one after another and another:

Norwalk, Whittier, Downey, Redondo Beach, Yorba Linda, Placentia, Fullerton.

The list went on, scattering his past through all the bleak suburbs of Los Angeles and Orange County. Sometimes they only moved a few miles, from tract to tract. So his mother could keep her job?

Eight schools by the time he started high school, he told himself again.

Why?

As he sat there, his chest filled with a nameless emotion, he heard the doorbell ring upstairs. He checked his watch: one-thirty. From a bin in the closet he grabbed a baseball bat, then jumped up the spiral stairs. He didn’t want to answer the door, but if he didn’t answer, they might think he wasn’t home and decide to break in. Imperiously, the bell rang again.

Without turning on any lights on the main floor, he crept toward the front door. He peered outside, then unlatched the lock.

In burst James Hubbel, Leigh’s father. He must have come straight from work, because he wore his dark blue cop uniform and appeared tired. “Put the bat down,” Hubbel commanded.

Ray put the bat down. “It’s late.”

“I see you can’t sleep, either,” Hubbel said. “You think her mother and I are sleeping? You think that?”

“What’s the problem, Jim?”

“Where’s my daughter?”

“Not home.”

“This is no time to play games, Ray.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m not here because I insist on pancakes instead of eggs for breakfast!” Hubbel yelled. “I’m not here wondering why no grandkids yet!”

Ray was happy he was still dressed. He would hate to be wearing his skivvies, facing this six foot three ex-Marine-turned-policeman with eyebrows as thick as overgrown grass. Leigh loved her father, describing him as a tough guy with a good heart.

Hubbel pushed his way past Ray, more bully than heart at the moment, looking around. The living room, serene, bare, full of textured beiges, remained empty and did not speak. He went to the white granite fireplace, and pulled the LCD screen aside.

“No sign of her in there,” Ray said. He knew this was not the right thing to say to Leigh’s father, and yet he could not help himself. He felt terribly defensive.

“I’m going upstairs,” Hubbel said. He climbed the main stairway, the cantilevered concrete stairs that seemed to float upward, to the second floor. Ray heard him above, opening doors and drawers, slamming them shut. He sat down on the couch and stared dully at the fireplace. The uncurtained windows felt like black holes sucking out his insides. I’m having a breakdown, he thought, but found it hard to care.

Moments later, Hubbel marched down the stairs again, long arms swinging. “This is goddamn dangerous, this stairway. You have a problem with rails?”

“They’re ugly.”

“Aw, I hate this aesthetics over function crap.” He landed in the entryway, and stood close to Ray, who had gotten up and opened the front door.

“You satisfied?” Ray said.

“You kidding? Where is my daughter?”

“She hasn’t called you?”

“Not since Friday. Her mother’s upset. She was supposed to go shopping with her Saturday. Aren’t you listening to your phone messages? You two have a fight?”

The unwelcome memory of Leigh’s last night at home assaulted Ray. “An argument, yes. Look, I don’t know where she is, okay? She’s gone.”