Stay (ARC)

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  * * *

  She was pushing scrambled eggs around in a too-big

  cast-iron skillet when the phone rang. She turned the

  gas flame to low and jumped to answer it.

  “No, he’s at work,” I heard her say into the phone.

  Then she fixed me with a strange and disturbing look.

  I can only call it withering. “Oh, Lucas,” she said. “Yes, Lucas is here.” She covered the mouthpiece of the phone receiver with her palm. “Why is the sheriff’s office calling for you, Lucas? What have you done?”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Then why is some deputy sheriff calling? Your fath-

  er will have a fit if you’ve brought some kind of trouble

  down on this house.”

  Right, I thought. Heaven forbid this house should see any trouble. We’re all really content as it is, with you guys fighting your own personal war and Roy overseas with bullets whizzing by his head in a real one. Be a shame if anybody spoiled all that happiness.

  “I just reported something is all,” I said. I kept the

  rest of those thoughts to myself.

  “Like somebody else committing a crime?”

  “No. No crimes. I just reported somebody who needed

  help.”

  I was starting to worry about the poor deputy sher-

  iff waiting on the line, so I reached for the phone. She

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  frowned at me, but she handed it over and hurried back

  to the stove. I wondered how badly my eggs had been

  burned. I knew I’d be expected to eat them regardless.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Morning, son,” Deputy Warren said. “Hope I didn’t

  get you out of bed.”

  “No, sir. I’ve been up a couple hours. Already been

  for my morning run.”

  My stomach had begun to churn uncomfortably be-

  cause it was occurring to me—for the first time, oddly—

  that he was calling to tell me the lady died.

  “Well, I just wanted to let you know she pulled

  through,” he said, and I breathed out a long exhale I

  hadn’t known I was holding. “I mean, not that we know

  absolutely, but that first twenty-four hours is critical. The fact that she got through it bodes well for her chances.

  Nurse at the hospital told me somebody called looking

  into her welfare yesterday, but they couldn’t give out any

  info because he wasn’t her family. I figured that was you.”

  “But you’re not her family,” I said, and then immediately felt stupid.

  “But I’m law enforcement.”

  “Right. Duh. So … does she have any family?”

  I heard a big sigh on the line. “Yeah. More or less.

  She has an ex-husband, but I can’t decide if that counts

  or not. Probably not. And she has two grown daughters,

  but they both got married before they moved away from

  here, and I don’t know their married names off the top

  of my head. But I’m doing some research on it.”

  “I’m thinking they’d want to hear about this,” I said,

  and then felt stupid again.

  “I’m thinking the same, son. I’ll do what I can.”

  “Thanks for letting me know.”

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  Then we said our goodbyes and he hurried off the

  phone.

  I sat back down at the table, and my mom set a plate

  of scrambled eggs and toast in front of me. I poked the

  eggs with my fork. They weren’t exactly burned, but they

  were awfully dry.

  “We got any ketchup?”

  She sighed theatrically and flounced over to the re-

  frigerator. I was waiting for her to ask me about my con-

  versation with the deputy. You know, take some interest

  in my life. But she seemed lost in her own head.

  “I saved a lady’s life,” I said.

  She set the bottle of ketchup down in front of my plate.

  “That’s nice, dear.” She said it the way a person says

  “That’s nice” when you’re talking to them while they’re

  trying to read the newspaper. “I’m very proud of you.”

  I got in touch, suddenly, with how nice it would feel

  if she actually was. Proud of me, that is. And maybe she

  was. Looking back, it’s hard to say what somebody else

  is feeling. But the moment felt unconvincing.

  * * *

  I don’t think it was the next day when I ran out to the

  cabin and ran into some of the lady’s family, almost liter-

  ally. I think it was the day after that.

  I had taken the water bucket off the hook on the dog-

  house, and I was carrying it near the front of the cabin,

  headed toward the pump. All of a sudden someone came

  around the corner and we nearly slammed into each other.

  We both let out a yelp of surprise.

  “Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

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  Then we just stood a moment, neither one of us seem-

  ing to know what to say.

  She was a woman in her early to midtwenties, with

  short, curly hair. Small and compact. She wore a frown

  that seemed to have permanently creased itself into her

  face. She was holding a narrow strip of wood, which I

  recognized as part of the framing of the door—the part

  that had been broken when the deputies crashed through

  it. Apparently she had pried it off somehow.

  “I was just getting some water for the dogs,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  I kept expecting her to ask me who I was. But she

  didn’t seem particularly curious.

  “I’m Lucas Painter,” I said. “I’m—”

  But she cut me off in midsentence. “I know who

  you are.”

  “You do?”

  I wanted to ask how, but I was getting lost in

  awkwardness.

  “You’re that kid who’s been coming to see the dogs.

  Taking them running with you.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “My mom told me.”

  “How did she know that? I didn’t even think she

  saw me.”

  “Oh, she saw you.”

  Then the conversation stalled again. I could feel myself

  sink into the embarrassment of what she had just told me.

  I looked down at the strip of wood trim in her hand.

  “Fixing the door?” I asked.

  The bucket was getting heavy. The dogs hadn’t drunk

  much.

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  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “Trying. She’ll be home in a day or two, and she has

  to have a door that closes. So I took off the lock. Figured

  I could take it to the hardware store and get a new one.

  But I also have to replace this.” She held up the strip of

  wood. “But I have nothing to measure with. And also,

  I have no idea what I’m doing. I know nothing about

  home repair.”

  I shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.

  “Maybe I could help,” I said.

  “You know anything about home repair?”

  “Not really. But I know where the hardware store is.

  And the lumberyard.”

  She looked into my face as though I might be stupid,

  but she was still trying to decide. “So do I. I grew up

  around here.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  I wasn’t sure why I needed to be sor
ry. But it was

  something of a default position for me at that age.

  “But none of it does any good if I can’t find a tape

  measure,” she said. “And I can’t.”

  “What about some string or twine?”

  “I don’t know about that. But she’s a knitter. So I

  have yarn.”

  “That’ll do,” I said. “Go get some of that.”

  She turned to walk back into the house, and I set

  down the bucket and followed her. It was a relief to be

  behind her, out of that intense, frowning gaze. I hadn’t

  realized how uncomfortable I’d been, squirming under

  her stare, until it was over.

  I waited on the porch.

  The dogs wove themselves around me, softly wagging

  their tails. It seemed to have improved their moods to

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  see their owner’s daughter. It struck me that I didn’t even

  know this woman’s name. She hadn’t bothered to tell me.

  I reached down and patted their heads as they

  brushed by.

  I looked up to see her bring out a skein of yarn, which

  I took from her. I tied a knot in the free end and reached

  up and held the knot at the very top corner of the door

  frame.

  “Here, hold this,” I said, tossing my head upward. In

  the direction of the knot.

  She made no move to do as I had asked. Just snorted

  a bitter laugh. I realized that she couldn’t reach nearly so high. She was a small woman. I placed the knot in the

  lower corner instead.

  She set the broken strip of wood on the floor and then

  knelt down and held the knotted end of the yard, and I

  ran yarn up to the top of the frame and marked my place

  with the tip of my thumb.

  She brought me a scissors and I cut it there.

  I picked up the broken trim.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take this to the lumberyard, and

  you take the lock to the hardware store, and I’ll meet you

  back here and we’ll get this done.”

  She only nodded. She didn’t thank me. I wasn’t sure

  if that felt okay or not. But it was clearly all I was going to get.

  * * *

  I stood inside the little cabin with her, holding the strip

  of molding in place while she hammered in the nails.

  I knew it would probably look like hell when we were

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  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  done, and I was too cowardly to take responsibility for

  messing up her place with our bad workmanship.

  We stepped back and viewed our work. I frowned.

  She frowned. But then, she was always frowning, so it

  was hard to tell.

  “I guess it won’t look right till it’s painted,” I said.

  The other sides of the doorframe were painted an

  off-white color.

  “I don’t know that it’ll ever look quite right,” she said.

  “But it’ll keep the door closed.”

  “We don’t know that. We haven’t tried it.”

  I walked up to the door cautiously. As if it might be

  a spider or a snake.

  I saw the dogs on the porch through the partly open

  doorway. They tapped their tails at me.

  I pulled the door closed and tried the new lock. It was

  a deadbolt that locked with a simple turn from the inside,

  a key from the outside. I gave it a turn, but it hung up

  quickly. We hadn’t positioned the new lock quite right.

  The deadbolt pin wouldn’t go all the way in. But it wedged

  in enough to keep the door closed.

  I turned to find her right beside me, looking over

  my shoulder. Well, around my shoulder. She wasn’t tall

  enough to look over it.

  “It’ll do,” she said. “When she’s feeling better, she’ll

  tinker with it. That’s a given. She’ll get it perfect. Story of her life—everything has to be perfect. No matter what

  we do with it today, she’ll tinker. Meanwhile it holds the

  door closed, so it’s good enough for now.”

  She gathered up the tools she’d used and carried them

  out to the shed.

  I walked out onto the porch and sat on the low edge

  with the dogs. The male dog put his head on my thigh.

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  I was thinking I should go home. But there was so

  much more I wanted to know. Still, even if I stayed, I

  wasn’t sure I could bring myself to ask her all my questions.

  She brushed by me again on her way into the cabin.

  I looked down into the boy dog’s face. “I should go

  now,” I said.

  He seemed to know what that meant. He laid his

  ears back along his neck and his eyes took on a sor-

  rowful expression. Or … even more sorrowful, I guess I should say.

  A second or two later the woman—the daughter,

  whose name I still hadn’t asked—came out and sat next

  to me on the edge of the porch, her jeaned legs stretching

  out next to mine.

  “Fortunately I know where my mom keeps the te-

  quila,” she said, and plunked down a bottle and two

  short glasses.

  I said nothing. I stumbled over what I even had up

  my sleeve to say. Not much, so I was hoping she’d figure

  it out on her own.

  A second later, she got there. “Oh. What am I say-

  ing? You’re just a kid. What’re you, like, fifteen, sixteen

  years old?”

  “Fourteen,” I said.

  She poured herself what looked to me like a very large

  serving of tequila. Then she poured just a splash into the

  other glass. My glass, I supposed. A couple of tablespoons.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “That little bit won’t kill you.”

  I just stared at it. I was still petting the boy dog’s head.

  “Ever had a drink?” she asked me.

  “I had half a beer once at a party.”

  “This is nothing like that. This stuff’ll blow the back

  of your head off.”

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  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  I watched her down the whole drink as if it were a

  shot, then slam the empty glass onto the boards of the

  porch.

  I was thinking I liked the fact that my head had a

  back to it. You know. Intact and all. But she looked over

  at me expectantly, so I sipped at it. It felt like drinking

  liquid fire.

  “That’s not how you do it,” she said. “You toss it

  down all at once.”

  I did as she said—I think because I generally did what

  grown-ups said. I hadn’t yet learned that I had a right to

  refuse. Or not fully, anyway. I guess I knew I could, but

  it was so desperately uncomfortable that I usually didn’t.

  It made me cough violently, and my eyes watered. I

  couldn’t stop blinking and coughing.

  She poured herself another glass. I thought it was

  strange how we weren’t talking about her mother.

  I sat quietly for a minute while she downed her sec-

  ond tequila—just stared off into the woods and watched

  the breeze move the dappled sunlight around. For that

  minute, everything felt nearly normal again.

  Next thing I knew she was grabbing me by two big

  handfuls of my shirt. Suddenly. Almost violently. I
was

  seized by panic, but I didn’t try to get away, except in my

  head. My fight-or-flight reflex got stuck in the middle

  on “freeze.”

  “You have to do something for me,” she said, her

  voice intense and full of distress. “Promise me. Promise

  me you’ll do it!”

  The alcohol had obviously gone quickly to her head.

  Mine had kicked in a little bit, too. My arm and leg

  muscles felt tingly, my belly hot. Then again, it was hard

  to know how much of that was fear.

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  “I don’t even know what it is yet,” I said.

  Which was brave under the circumstances. Even faced

  with that kind of pressure, I was not about to promise to

  do something until I knew what I was promising. I took

  promises seriously, even then. All these years later, even

  more so. That seemed to override my tendency to do as

  adults commanded.

  “Tell her you won’t take the dogs.”

  “Take the dogs? I was never going to take the dogs. Did she think I was trying to steal her dogs?”

  “No,” she said. “No, no, no.” Her words had begun

  to slur. “You’re not getting what I’m saying. You’re not

  getting it right at all. Tell her that if anything happens to her, you won’t take them. Or take care of them.”

  “Um…,” I said. And then, because I was extremely

  uncomfortable, “Could you please let go of my shirt?”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  She unclenched her fists and let go. Smoothed out the

  places she had wrinkled. Or tried to, anyway.

  I breathed for what felt like the first time in ages.

  “I couldn’t take the dogs if I wanted to. My parents

  wouldn’t let me have them.”

  “Good! Tell her that. Promise me you’ll tell her that.”

  “Why?”

  “If you use your head, you’ll know.”

  I stared off into the woods for a minute, but nothing

  came to me. Maybe because I was still shaken.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I have no idea.”

  “The dogs need her. They would have no one else to

  take care of them. If you wouldn’t, I mean. So that’s her reason to stay. Get it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I get it.”

  “You sound like you don’t.”

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  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  She was probably right about that. I probably sounded

  like I didn’t get it. Because my head was still so full of the parts of the thing I didn’t understand. I was wondering if

  the lady, her mom, had almost left the planet accidentally