“No,” she said. “I’m looking for Lael.”
“Lyle?” he said. “That’s me.”
“But you go by Lael.”
“No,” he said. “I go by Mark. That’s my middle name.”
“You’ve never gone by Lael?”
“What’s this about?” he asked. “It wasn’t you who called, was it? I mean, it was a man who called, but is that what this is about too?”
“Kind of,” she said. “It has to do with my boyfriend.”
She was surprised to hear herself use the word, boyfriend. True, he kissed her sometimes but it was distracted, passionless, infrequent, indifferent.
“—Lael,” he was saying. “That’s crazy.”
She nodded. “Do you know Rudd Theurer?” she asked.
“Rod who? I already told the man no,” he said. “Look, maybe if you have a picture, I’ve seen him or something.”
“Never mind,” she said, and walked back to her car.
The boy stayed on the porch while she got in, arms folded over his chest. There was something wrong, she thought as she drove back toward town. A screw loose, her father used to say of himself, joking, tapping one side of his own head, but with Rudd it seemed larger than that, not just a screw but a whole mechanism starting to grind itself up. Who was he? She hardly knew. But worse than that was that he himself did not seem to know either. I should send him back to his mother, she thought. But he hated his mother; it couldn’t be any good for him to go back; she had to think of what was best for him as well as for her. No, she could not make him go back there, but he would have to leave her house. Surely there was a relative he could stay with, everyone has a relative. And then she thought, No, I don’t have one, not a sane one anyway, why should he? But still, she was confused, she needed some distance. Mother or not, Rudd would have to go.
But when she got home she found him lying on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, only his face showing. He was asleep, face untroubled as cream. No, she told herself, it can wait until tomorrow.
She sat on the floor with her back against the couch. Whatever was wrong with him it was still good to have someone else in the house. She didn’t mind taking care of him. Sending him back to his mother might kill him.
She had the TV on and the sound muted. She kept on slouching a little farther until finally she turned off the TV and undid the top button of her jeans, lay down completely, fell asleep there at his feet.
A day later or perhaps two, a Saturday, he had left for somewhere, hadn’t said where, still hardly speaking to her, and she was going out the door herself, her coat on. Instead, she thought twice and went back inside, went to Rudd’s door. She knocked once just to make sure, her gloves rendering damp sounds against the wood, and then opened the door and looked in.
It seemed an ordinary enough room, not far from the room it had been when her sister was still alive—same unmade bed, same walls, her sister’s knickknacks piled on the three shelves to the right of the door. Rudd’s own things, his clothing, stood in neat piles beneath the shelves.
Next to his clothes was a pile of never-returned school books, and then a box with crusted and brittle tape stuck along the open flaps. She opened it.
Inside were more old books, religious volumes: Mormon Doctrine, worm-eaten copies of the seven-volume A History of the Church, a Doctrines of Salvation, an old and tattered spiralbound typescript of something called The Confessions of John D. Lee. At the very bottom, freshly Scotch-taped to the floor of the box, was a Western States road map.
She put the books back, covering the map up. She picked up the books lying next to the box, each of them wrapped in brown paper so that she had to open the covers to tell what they were. Rudd had written his name in cursive, Rudd Theurer, on the title page of each, the names of the previous students there as well but crossed out, except on the title page of his English anthology where was written instead Lael Korth in a different hand.
She was dreaming and knew she was dreaming, but in the dream she was awake. She was lying in bed in her parents’ room, the lights off, when she heard the door open and someone enter.
It was a figure that she could hardly make out for darkness. It hesitated in the doorway a moment and then glided silently in.
“Father?” she asked.
The figure didn’t answer. She could hardly see it at all, a sort of ripple in the darkness as it slowly came forward.
“Mother?” she said. Then, “Rudd?”
And then the figure stepped forward and she knew, without knowing how she knew, that this was Elling.
She woke up on the couch, the TV nothing but static. There was above her a shape, crouched and not quite human.
“It’s just me,” said Rudd. “Nothing to be afraid of.”
She sat up, wondering if this was still the dream, and brushed her hair out of her face.
“You startled me,” she said. “Where have you been?”
“Out,” he said.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Late,” he said.
“I want to know,” she asked. “Who is Elling?”
“Elling,” he said carefully. In the darkness, with the light of the TV behind him, he had a dark hole in lieu of a face.
“Or do you have a middle name after all?” she asked.
“I don’t have one,” he said quickly. “We’ve been through that.”
“Elling? Lael? What’s it all about, Rudd? Be honest with me for once.”
“They have nothing to do with each other,” he said.
“What are you hiding?” she asked.
“Stop it,” he said. “Don’t get like that with me.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe this isn’t working out between us,” she said. “Maybe you should leave.”
“We’ll talk in the morning,” he said. He turned the TV off, started down the hall.
“I mean for good,” she called after him. “I mean get out!”
“Good night,” he said, and going into her sister’s room, closed the door.
The next morning she felt guilty. No, it was the dream, I was reacting to the dream, not to him. He’s just a kid, even younger than me, and boys are less mature than girls anyway. I’m pushing him too hard, he’s doing the best he can. She had gone through a lot, true, this year, but he had gone through more, she had to remember that. She had to cut him a little slack. First his throat and chest cut open and then weeks in the hospital unconscious. He was still recovering, she told herself and then winced, thinking it precisely the sort of thing her aunt might say.
They had breakfast together and she was cordial, and neither he nor she said a thing about the previous night. At the end of the meal he came around to her side of the table and leaned down.
“You’ve been good to me,” he said, and smiled.
For an instant it seemed like Christmas again. Maybe this was enough, she thought. Maybe it would be all right. Maybe it would all work out after all.
6
And then it was summer. She was in shorts most of the time now and things seemed largely better for him, his moods striking him less often. He was more affectionate, but still chaste, hardly going further than a few kisses or letting her lay her head in his lap. That was enough, Lyndi told herself, she could be happy with that.
But then he installed a lock on her sister’s bedroom door, a simple latch that screwed into door and frame. He kept the room locked with a padlock when he was out. Perhaps he had figured out that she had come into the room, had been through his books. It didn’t bother her, she told herself. It was her house and he wasn’t paying any rent, but so what—he wanted some privacy, needed some. She could understand that. He would need that, wouldn’t he, if he were to open up to her in other ways?
The detective called, inviting Rudd to go up the canyon, back to the murder site, hoping that being there again might spark something in Rudd’s memory. No, Rudd said, he was forgetting that part of his life, moving on. The detect
ive asked to speak to Lyndi. She got on the line and he asked her to please talk to Rudd, to try to convince him. The investigation was dead in the water, he said, no way around it, a killer was loose, months had gone by, they had a moral obligation, it needed to be jump-started. How strange, the detective said, to think of the two of them living together, and she said, living together but not sleeping together, just a question of loneliness and neither of them having anyone else to speak of. The detective was silent on the line for a long while, then said, “Not even sleeping together, if you’ll excuse my saying so, it’s even stranger than I thought.”
She moved the phone to her other ear. “We’re Mormon,” she said.
“Of course you are,” he said, but that was not what he had called about, was it? Only would she, please, see what she could do?
When she got off the telephone, she knocked on his door. He didn’t answer.
“Rudd?” she said.
She put her hand on the knob and opened the door a crack. Inside, the room was dark. “Rudd?” she said again.
“Don’t come in,” he said. “This is my room. Never come in.”
“But I just—”
“Shut the door,” he said.
She pulled the door shut, stood outside, examining the grain of the wood. Finally she knocked.
“Rudd,” she said. “We need to talk.”
She pressed her ear to the door. She could hear him get up off his bed and move across the floor, the door creaking as he leaned against it.
“Talk,” he said.
She moved her head back from the door. “Will you please come out?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Look, I was talking to the detective on the telephone—”
“No,” he said.
“But,” she said. “The investigation. It’s the only way—”
“No,” he said.
“Rudd,” she said. “Be reasonable.”
“I don’t want to go. It’s a mistake.”
Why, she asked, why a mistake? She could understand why he would be afraid of going back, but a mistake? Why? Perhaps in the long run it was something he needed, she suggested through the door, the victim returning to the scene of the crime.
“Why?” he said. “W-H-Y.”
“Why are you spelling it?” she asked. “It’s only three letters. That’s so condescending.” There was something wrong with his voice, a strain to it, nothing she could quite put her finger on. Perhaps it was just the muffling of the door between them, but it seemed more than that.
“It’s the killer that returns to the scene of the crime,” he said. “Not the victim. The victim keeps as far away from the crime scene as possible, otherwise it seeps up to stain the present.”
“That doesn’t even sound like you,” she said. “That’s something you read somewhere.”
“You want me to go?” he said, yelling. “You want that?” He threw open the door, and she saw his face red and contorted, mouth quivering. “I’ll go,” he yelled, “but it’s a mistake, beginning to end.” And then he slammed the door and she was left, alone and hurt, in the hall.
They took the detective’s car up to the campsite parking, walked the rest of the way. Rudd was pale, and looked helpless. She would protect him. She wouldn’t let anything happen to him. She took his hand, found it clammy. He pulled it slowly away.
“Here it is,” the detective said and then stood there, with his hands on his hips, watching Rudd. Rudd kept reaching out and scratching his throat, again and again until it began to bead with blood. The detective took out his handkerchief, polished his eyeglasses with it, then handed it to Rudd. Rudd took it, stared at it as if he didn’t know what to do with it.
“Wipe your throat,” said Lyndi.
He did, then drew the handkerchief away to look at it.
“I bet you were right here,” said the detective, and pointed. “That’s the hill you must have been talking about,” he said, moving his finger slightly. He turned around. “Then the bodies, there, there, there, there.”
“No,” said Rudd. “Nothing is coming to me. I’d like to go home.”
“You don’t remember anything? Any little thing?”
“No.”
“Which body was my father’s?” asked Lyndi.
“There,” said the detective, swiveling and pointing.
“And my mother?”
“There,” he said again, then turned back to Rudd. “This Lael, you still insist he was here?”
“No,” he said.
“No?”
“I don’t know where that came from,” he said. “Some sort of dream.”
“Strange,” said the detective.
“Surely there’s something,” said Lyndi. “How can you not remember anything?”
“I don’t know,” Rudd said, and looked at her pleadingly.
“Anything could be useful,” said the detective. “Anything at all.”
He stood. Pretending to think, she thought. He wiped his neck again. He wasn’t even trying. It made her furious. “No,” he said. “Nothing.”
“All right,” the detective said. “Worth a try. Let’s go home.”
In the car, he tied the detective’s handkerchief around his neck, like a bandanna. So fucking cavalier, she thought, though she was not precisely sure if cavalier was the right word. He was smiling too—at least she thought so at first, but when she leaned forward found it to be more a look of terror than a smile. She hated him and felt sorry for him all at once.
“You’ve remembered something,” she said, low enough that the detective in the front seat wouldn’t overhear.
He looked at her—startled, she thought. “No,” he claimed.
“I can tell,” she said. “The way you were looking, your face.”
“Stop it,” he said.
“You’re hiding something,” she said.
“It’s not me,” he said.
“What?” she said, her voice growing louder. “Are you accusing me? Because there are only two of us back here, and if it’s not you, who does that leave?”
The detective said, “Everything all right back there?” She turned to see his eyes in the rearview mirror. She slumped over against the door, away from Rudd, resting her forehead on the car window.
At home, he went straight to his room. She tried to follow him in but he held the knob from the inside and she couldn’t turn it.
“What’s wrong with you?” she cried. “Why won’t you tell me?”
She kept trying to turn the knob but he was too strong for her. Finally, frustrated, she let go, latched the door, put the padlock on.
“There,” she said. “Now you’ll have to listen. You aren’t going anywhere until you’ve heard me out.”
She kept at his door through the day and into the evening, talking, accusing him of protecting her parents’ killer, his own near-killer. What was he hiding? she asked. Why wouldn’t he tell? Was it because it sounded crazy? Even if it sounded crazy, it could help, she said. Anything could help. She’d try to believe him, she said, she’d try to understand, certainly she wouldn’t call him crazy. Hadn’t she gone looking for Lael when the detective himself couldn’t be bothered? And besides, he had to talk to someone—if not her, to whom? Certainly not his mother, who was nothing but trouble: he had said so himself. Lael? But that was a dream, or some twisted and inaccurate memory, Lael doesn’t exist. She was quoting him, needless to say. And who is there for you, Rudd? Sometimes he made her so mad she just wanted to call the police and have him forcibly removed from her house, the locks changed, and that would be that. They would never see each other again. How would he like that? Sad, but maybe that was what needed to be done, she was running out of ideas. She cared for him, she admitted, but some days she did not know what to do with him. What was expected of her anyway? Were they dating? Were they a couple? Was he even physically attracted to her? Did he like girls at all? Frankly she wondered sometimes if it was just her he fou
nd unattractive or girls in general—
“I don’t find you unattractive,” he said through the door.
—good, she said, good, there was at least that, God give her strength, maybe he better start showing it a little more. I was with you, she said, even before I knew anything about you. I was sitting next to you and waiting for you to wake up, hours at a time, God knows your mother never did that, God knows that she herself, Lyndi, hadn’t had to, but she had, and God knew how things had managed to get to this impasse from that innocent-enough debut, God only knew that it wasn’t her fault, not her doing, if anyone was to blame it was him—him Rudd, not him God—but she had tried to understand, he had been through a lot, both when he had been almost killed and then even before that. She was trying to understand that, to cut him some proverbial slack, but she had been through a lot too, in one sense not as much and in another sense perhaps even more, several strokes of a knife and she had been cut loose from all her connections with the world. All she wanted was for him to be honest with her, tell her what he knew no matter how crazy it must sound, open up to her a little instead of brooding and letting it eat away his organs one by one. She sounded like a self-help book, she knew, but that was the simplest way to put it—at least the simplest way to put it when you were forced to talk through a door. Really she did care for him, and she was pretty sure he cared for her, but he was going to go mad if he kept on like he was, holding it all in—cliché, she knew, but it meant something too—you have to let someone, at least one person in the world, know who you are—
“I’ve failed you,” he said through the door.
No, she said. Well yes, but don’t think of it like that, life’s not over yet, and hadn’t they had good times too? Christmas, for instance, he had been charming then, and times since then too? No, not a failure, he shouldn’t think of it that way, but yes they could do better, yes they had some things to work out, but he should stop thinking I, it was not I but we, and those things could be worked out, she was sure, she wasn’t innocent either though certainly not as guilty as he was. This was all new to her, she was still figuring out how to make a relationship work. They could work together, but that was it, they had to work together, they had to work things out, you have to tell me what you think and know, and let’s figure it out, who was involved, who was responsible, you can’t have secrets from me, tell me what you know Rudd, tell me what you—
The Open Curtain Page 14
