I find candles and flashlights in the dining room sideboard along with the first-aid kit. I check the kit for Narcan. I picked up the nasal spray when I did a drug awareness course in Kingston last fall. What have I gotten myself into? I sit down on the one chair without books on it. Seeing Oren with that stupid Yoda really rattled me. I was sure it was the same one Caleb buried thirty-four years ago. It had seemed like a sign—
Christ, I sound like one of the new age interns! A sign of what? That Oren is somehow in communication with Caleb? Have I brought Oren back here so he can contact Caleb? And what purpose would that serve? What would I say to Caleb after all these years?
And what would he say to me?
Of all the stupid reasons for bringing this woman and boy into my home—misguided charity, anger at Frank, making amends, liberal guilt, my problems with authority—this supernatural hoo-ha is the craziest. And the most pathetic.
It’s time you began thinking clearly and taking responsibility for your actions.
My father’s voice this time, so clear that I look toward his study door, expecting to find it open and him standing in the doorway. But of course the door is locked. As I told Alice, wood swells, metal rusts, things break. I’ve gleefully let this house rot around me, but I’ve carefully oiled and preserved the lock on my father’s study door. I keep it locked from the outside. To keep people out, I tell myself, but sometimes I wonder if it’s to keep something locked in.
I listen to the house. The furnace roars, the pipes tick, the joints groan . . . and two voices murmur in the kitchen. I get up, fish the key out of its crystal bowl, and open the study door. I shut it behind me and use the key to lock the door from the inside, then cross to my father’s desk and sit down in his chair. In front of me is the seal of New York pen set with its figures of Justice and Liberty. I reach into one of Justice’s scales and retrieve a small key that I use to open the bottom drawer. Inside, resting on a stack of file folders stamped with the same figures of Justice and Liberty that stand on my father’s desk, is my father’s Winchester revolver, which he inherited from his father.
I hesitate. Doreen would be appalled to know I even have a gun in the house, let alone that I’m thinking of taking it out of the only locked room. With a child spending the night. But then, if I need it . . .
I pick up the gun, startling at the coldness of it, and check that the safety’s on and put it in my cardigan pocket. I close the drawer and lock it.
Before I stand I notice the pattern in the dust on the top of the desk. This morning the mouse tracks looked like a random spattering of stars, but now they’ve become a constellation. A constellation I recognize.
Chapter Fifteen
Alice
OREN IS WORKING away at the potatoes like he’s spent his whole childhood doing hard labor. “Hey,” I say, “this is like that old movie we watched where those guys in the army had to peel sacks of potatoes when they did something wrong.”
“KP duty,” Oren says without looking up. “But Mattie isn’t punishing me; I’m just pitching in, like you said about shoveling the path this morning.”
“Sure,” I say, annoyed that he’s come to her defense. Why does he like her so much? “I was just worried about your arm. Does it feel okay? I’m sorry about before . . . I was just trying to keep you from running up the drive where that cop could see you.”
“It’s okay,” he says, shrugging. “It feels fine now. Look, Mattie gave me an ice pack.”
“And you’re okay about staying here tonight?” I ask, as if we had any choice.
“Yeah, I like it here. It feels like a family lives here.”
Like ours didn’t. Like this crazy-ass spinster living in a falling-down old house is more like a family than Davis and me. “Yeah, the Addams family,” I say. I start to hum the theme song to the show, which we watched on Nick at Nite, but Oren glares at me.
“Don’t do that. Mattie might hear you and she’ll think we’re making fun of her house.”
I roll my eyes. “Come on. How much can she really care about this house when she keeps it like this? The place is a mess.” I lean forward and lower my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I found mouse poop.”
Oren wrinkles his nose.
“Yeah,” I go on, “and stacks of newspapers from, like, the eighties. You know what? I think Mattie might be a hoarder.” This was another show we sometimes watched, but only because Davis liked it. He liked to make fun of the people on the show because he thought they were such sad sacks compared to him.
Oren shakes his head. “She collects all this stuff to give to people,” he says.
So that’s why he thinks Mattie is so great. Because she’s a do-gooder. “Yeah? Then why does she keep her dead brother’s room just the way he left it, huh?”
Oren looks up. I’ve finally gotten his attention, but maybe this wasn’t the best way to get it. I was telling the truth when I told Mattie that Oren has a really active imagination. After watching that scary movie about the crazy dad in the big hotel, Oren was spooked about bathtubs because of one of the scenes. He refused to take a bath for a month, until he smelled so bad Davis started calling him Stinky. I’d convinced him to get in the tub only by agreeing to sit in the bathroom with him, which Davis teased him about mercilessly.
And then there was the “poltergeist” that started taking things, after we watched that movie. First it was little stuff like some change Davis left on the counter or Davis’s socks or the can opener or the TV remote. They’re here! Oren would say in a creepy, singsongy voice whenever something went missing. At first it made Davis laugh, but then bigger stuff went missing, like bills from Davis’s wallet and a bottle of Jim Beam. That’s when Davis started blaming Oren and threatening to give him a whupping if he didn’t put the stuff back.
Oren kept up the story even after Davis took a belt to him. It’s the poltergeist, Dad! he cried over and over.
Then why does it only take my shit? Davis demanded with every swing of his belt.
The next day the belt was gone. Davis tore the house apart looking for it. I locked Oren and myself in the bathroom. When I asked Oren if he knew where the belt was he looked at me like Han Solo looks at Lando when Lando turns him over to Jabba the Hutt. I told you, it’s the poltergeist. He takes stuff from people he’s mad at.
I told Oren there was never going to be any peace until he just admitted to Davis that he’d taken the stuff.
That would make the poltergeist really mad, Oren said, unless . . .
Unless what, buddy?
Unless it knows we’re doing it for a good reason, like it’s part of a plan.
What kind of a plan? I’d asked, feeling the cold from the bathroom tiles travel up my spine.
A plan to get out of here. To go away. The poltergeist told me that Davis is just going to keep hitting us. It’s just going to get worse.
We could tell a social worker, I’d said. Scott could help.