On the night he told her about Heather, he was propelled by romantic impulse to greater heights. He poisoned the cat that lived across the street, the one she watched over when its owner left town, and brought it to her on a pillow; he’d curled it into a semblance of sleep, and laid it at the foot of her mattress. She fixed her flat, pale eyes on it, not acknowledging his presence at all. Slowly she scooped it into her arms, and she held it close to her body. Satisfied, he sat beside her on the bed. He smiled as she got to work.
The floor was packed dirt. It seemed as hard as concrete, but ultimately it was just earth. It could be opened. She bent herself to this task. She found a corner behind some boxes of old china, where her work would not be obvious to the man when he came down to visit, and picked at the ground with a garden spade. It took a long time, but finally she began to make serious progress, upturning the packed ground until she got to the dark soil beneath it, bringing pale earthworms and slick, black insects to their first, shocked exposure to the upside world. When she got deep enough, she abandoned the small spade and used her hands. Her fingernails snapped off like little plastic tabs, and she examined her fingers with a mild curiosity.
Staring at the ruined flesh reminded her of how the man’s face would sometimes leak fluid when he came down here and of his occasional wet cough.
It was all so disgusting.
She took one of the cat’s bones from its place on the wall and snapped it in half. The end was sharp and she scraped the flesh from her fingers until hard bone gleamed. Then she went to work again, and was pleased with the difference.
“Hey, Dad.” Heather stood in the doorway, her overnight bag slung over her shoulder. Considering how little she wanted to be here, Sean thought she was doing a good job of putting up a positive front.
“Hey, kiddo.” He looked over her shoulder and saw that she had parked directly behind his car again, like she always used to do, and like he had asked her not to do a million times. He actually felt a happy nostalgia at the sight of it. He kissed her cheek and took the bag from her shoulder. “Come on in.”
She followed him in, rubbing her arms and shuddering. “Jeez, Dad, crank up the AC why don’t you.”
“Heh, sorry. Your mother likes it cold.”
“Mom? Since when?”
“Since recently I guess. Listen, why don’t you go on up to your room and get changed or whatever. I’ll get dinner started.”
“Sentimental as always, Dad. I’ve been in the car all day and I really need a shower. Just call me when you’re ready.” She brushed past him on her way to the stairs.
“Hey,” he said.
She stopped.
He held an arm out. “I’m sorry. Come here.” She did, and he folded his arm around her, drawing her close. He kissed her forehead. “It means a lot that you came.”
“I know.”
“I’m serious. It matters. Thank you.”
“Okay. You’re welcome.” She returned his hug and he soaked it in. “So where is she?”
“Downstairs. She’ll be up.”
She pulled back. “In the cellar? Okay, weird.”
“She’ll be up. Go on now. Get yourself ready.”
She shook her head with the muted exasperation of a child long-accustomed to her parents’ eccentricities and mounted the stairs. Sean turned his attention to the kitchen. He’d made some pot roast in the crock pot, and he tilted the lid to give it a look. The warm, heavy smell of it washed over his face and he took it into his lungs with gratitude. He hadn’t prepared anything real to eat in a month, it seemed, living instead off of frozen pizzas and tv dinners. The thought of real food made him lightheaded.
He walked over to the basement door and slid open the lock. He paused briefly, resting his head against the doorjamb. He breathed deeply. Then he cracked it open and poked his head in. A thick, loamy odor rode over him on cool air. There was no light downstairs at all.
“Katie?”
Silence.
“Katie, Heather’s here. You remember, we talked about Heather.”
His voice did not seem to carry at all on the heavy air. It was like speaking into a cloth.
“She’s our daughter.” His voice grew small. “You love her, remember?”
He thought he heard something shift down there, a sliding of something. Good, he thought. She remembers.
Heather came downstairs a little later. He waited for her, ladling the pot roast into two bowls. The little breakfast nook was set up for them both. Seeing her, he was struck, as he was so often, by how much she looked like a younger version of Katie. The same roundness in her face, the same way she tended to angle her shoulders when she stood still, even the same bob to her hair. It was as though a young Katie had slipped sideways through a hole in the world and come here to see him again, to see what kind of man he had become. What manner of man she had married.
He lowered his eyes.
I’m a good man, he thought.
“Dad?”
He looked up, blinking his eyes rapidly. “Hey you.”
“Why isn’t there a mattress on your bed? And why is there a sleeping bag on the floor?”
He shook his head. “What were you doing in our bedroom?”
“The door was wide open. It’s kind of hard to miss.”
He wasn’t expecting this. “It’s … I’ve been sleeping on the floor.”
She just stared at him. He could see the pain in her face, the old familiar fear. “What’s been going on here, Dad? What’s she done this time?”
“She uh … she’s not doing very well, Heather.”
He watched tears gather in her eyelids. Then her face darkened and she rubbed them roughly away. “You told me she was fine,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t want to upset you. I wanted you to come home.”
“You didn’t want to upset me?” Her voice rose into a shout. Her hand clenched at her side and he watched her wrestle down the anger. It took her a minute.
“I’m sorry, Heather.”
She shook her head. She wouldn’t look at him. “Whatever. Did she try to kill herself again? She’s not even here at all, is she. Is she in the psych ward?”
“No, she’s here. And yes, she did.”
She turned her back to him and walked into the living room, where she dropped onto the couch and slouched back, her arms crossed over her chest like a child. Sean followed her, pried loose one of her hands and held onto it as he sat beside her.
“She needs us, kiddo.”
“I would never have come back!” she said, her rage cresting like a sun. “God damn it!”
“Hey! Now listen to me. She needs us.”
“She needs to be committed!”
“Stop it. Stop that. I know this is hard.”
“Oh do you?” She glared at him, her face red. He had never seen her like this; anger made her face into something ugly and unrecognizable. “How do you know, Dad? When did you ever have to deal with it? It was always me! I was the one at home with her. I was the one who had to call the hospital that one time I found her in her own blood and then call you so you could come! I was the one who—” She gave in then, abruptly and catastrophically, like a battlement falling; sobs broke up whatever else she was going to say. She pulled in a shuddering breath and said, “I can’t believe you tricked me!”
“Every night!”Sean hissed, his own large hands wrapped into fists, cudgels on his lap. He saw them there and caught himself. He felt something slide down over his mind. The emotions pulled away, the guilt and the horror and the shame, until he was only looking at someone having a fit. People, it seemed, were always having some kind of breakdown or another. Somebody had to keep it together. Somebody always had to keep it together.