The Secret Life of Souls

by Jack Ketchum

  “You guys okay in there?”

  “We’re good, dad.”

  His dad slams the door shut and he can hear him thank the attendant. He gets in and starts the car.

  As they pull out of the driveway he looks down at Caity and at the same moment she looks up at him. Their eyes meet. He can see no blame there.

  She’s glad to see me, he thinks.

  As though to affirm that, she licks his face good and proper.

  She’s glad I’m here.

  He waits for the garage doors to open and carefully pulls in. He turns off the ignition and glances in the rearview mirror and that’s when he sees her. Some woman standing outside there, curbside, mid-thirties he guesses, a good-looking blonde and tall, probably taller than him, in print blouse and jeans, smiling.

  He gets out and walks around to Robbie’s side and opens the door. He doesn’t know whether to ignore the woman or what. He’s never laid eyes on her before. But he can’t very well ignore her because there she is, taking a few tentative steps forward.

  “Hi,” she says. “Hi there.”

  Robbie has his arms around their dog but now he notices her too as he shifts Cait’s weight off his lap and gently onto the seat and slides out of the car.

  “Can you handle her?” he says.

  “I can do it, dad.”

  Robbie leans in to gather up the dog, trying to figure out the best place to put his hands. Bart looks down the drive. She’s taken a few steps closer, stands about ten feet in front of the garage.

  “Mr. Cross? I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “Now’s not a good time,” he says. “Not buying anything.”

  He’s instantly aware of how rude that sounds. And then he thinks, yeah? So what? Who the hell are you?

  He’s in a mood.

  “No, you misunderstand. I live up the street in that turquoise monstrosity right there. Number seven.” She points.

  “Oh?”

  He guesses she takes his reply as an invitation. She walks up to the rear of the car.

  “I heard about the fire. I wasn’t home, but my husband saw the emergency response vehicles and I . . .”

  “What can I do for you, Miss . . . ?”

  He asks, even though now he gets it. He knows what she wants.

  “Leda. Leda Botolf.”

  “You’re a reporter.”

  She smiles. “Anchor. Channel Three.”

  “Dad? Can you get the door for me?”

  Robbie has her in his arms, her head drooping over his shoulder.

  “Sure. Sure, son. Give her my chair in the living room. It’s the most comfortable.”

  He moves to open the door to go inside the house. Then holds it while Robbie steps through, turning to the side to avoid the frame.

  “Oh my god,” the woman says. “The poor thing. Oh, I really had no idea it was so . . .”

  ”There’s no news here, Mrs. Botolf.”

  She smiles again. “Jack . . . my producer . . . would definitely disagree with you, Mr. Cross, which is sort of why I’m here. I’m really not asking for a story from you, honest. We’re neighbors. And no family should be bothered at a time like this.”

  “Thank you,” he says and thinks, then why are you bothering me?

  “But I felt I ought to warn you that other stations, the papers, might not . . . see things the same way. Because of the work your daughter did. And I thought that you should probably prepare yourself for . . . well . . .”

  “I get it.”

  “I just wanted to come over and say that if there’s anything I can do for you folks, please, by all means, just ask.”

  She turns to go and then stops herself.

  “This is going to sound . . . I don’t know . . . strange. But I lost a kitten in a fire once. When I was a little girl. In our basement. And I never quite . . .”

  She smiles and waves her hand in front of her face as though to say, silly me.

  He gives her a long look. Decides he almost trusts her. Almost.

  “That’s very nice of you, Mrs. Botolf.”

  “Anything at all,” she says.

  “Thanks, we appreciate it.”

  She turns to go.

  “Isn’t Carrie Donnel the anchor on Channel Three?”

  Channel Three was local. He rarely watched it.

  “She was indeed. I replaced her last winter. They haven’t gotten around to changing the billboards yet.”

  He laughs. “Once they put ’em up, they seem to stay up forever. There’s one of Delia at three years old still up over on Rangeline . . .”

  Reality comes crashing in.

  What the hell am I going on about? Delia at three years old? Jesus!

  She seems to sense his sudden discomfort. She nods, bows her head slightly. “Take care, Mr. Cross. Sorry I troubled you.”

  “No problem,” he says. “No problem.”

  Her sister calls. She doesn’t know why but she takes the call. Her big sister’s calls mostly serve to annoy her. But when she sees her number on the cell phone she sets the cardboard coffee cup down on the cafeteria table, notes the pale smear of lipstick along the rim, and for some reason decides to answer.

  Hospital reception’s surprisingly good. Evvie’s voice comes through loud and clear.

  How is she? What’s going on? How can I help?

  I’m so sorry, Patty.

  The concern is there. Her sister’s good at concern. She’s evidently gotten the details of the accident from their mother so at least she’s spared all of that. But what is she supposed to do here? Reassure her? What the fuck does she want?

  “I can be on a plane in a minute,” she says.

  “We’re fine, honestly. We don’t need any help, Ev, really.”

  “You sure? In a minute, I swear.”

  More like twelve hours, she thinks. Her sister lives in a small semirural town in northern New Jersey, most of it still farm country. After her divorce, her single suitor was the local postman. Her husband had run off with a supposed friend of hers, a neighbor a mile and a half away.

  They’re all losers up there. Her sister’s no exception.

  Alone. All of them. Miles apart. Days go by and her sister won’t see a living soul. Evvie says she prefers it that way. She’s got the television and she’s got her books.

  Books. It was always books. Even when she was a kid she always had her nose in some damn novel or other. Evvie was four-and-a-half years her senior so when their mom and dad went out Ev was babysitter and that meant tiptoeing around the house so as not to disturb her reading because it was too dangerous to go outside alone until she was at least six or seven or so. Pat had to be quiet. And she hated the goddamn quiet, hated it.

  She’d turned the postman down. But he still stops by for coffee every now and then. She’s happy to see him, she says. He’s the only one, she says, who ever calls her Evelyn.

  “We’re fine,” she tells her.

  Though of course they aren’t fine. They’re light-years from fine. And there’s a split second where she almost tells her that instead, where she almost says yes, get on that plane, come on, come babysit for me, what the hell. Their mother always said that Evvie had a big heart and she knows this to be true. Kids, friends, her cats and dogs—she has two of each, she recalls—all adore her. For a moment she almost feels—my god—lonely.

  But an hour in her sister’s care, an hour under the eye of her sincere regard will drive her nuts.

  She’ll get through this herself. She always has.

  In the days that follow Pat watches it all, first from outside the room and then, in surgical mask and gown, from inside, and finally, from the plate-glass windows of the operating theatre, looking down at them from above.

  She sees Delia’s eyes flutter from within her bandages, hears her murmur in pain despite the drugs, sees nurses changing the dressings on her face, on her neck, her hands, on her unbroken arm, the arm swollen terribly and charred black, fluid leaking from its pores. Sees her r
each up with the broken arm to her face as though the arm were whole and unharmed and watches the nurse, yet another nurse, restrain her and set it back in place.

  On the evening of the second day Delia opens her eyes and searches around the room and her eyes find her mothers’ eyes, her mother standing at a distance all in white, and she thinks how strange that must seem to her if she is truly aware of her at all.

  She watches nurses change bedpans. Consult charts. Adjust the drips and replace the clear plastic bags above her head.

  Through her own reflection in the window of the operating theatre she watches the process of debridement—such a funny word for such a procedure, the unmaking of a bride—watches them remove dead tissue from her head, neck, and arms. They can do such wonderful things with lasers these days.

  And she is cognizant of a strange sense of detachment from all this, as though it were happening to some other daughter and some other mother and she were merely an observer from this privileged vantage point of their various machinations, both everyday and complex, a detachment which at first surprises her and then doesn’t. Because it’s to be expected. Courage is a trouper’s middle name. Courage is what it takes, always. Courage and tough determination.

  The text from Roman reads, Producers want to speak with you personally. Told them, not possible. Send condolences but bottom line, say they have to move on. “Every day delayed money lost.” Pricks.

  Pricks indeed. But that’s to be expected too.

  Early on the morning of the third day she steps out for a smoke and stands near an ash bin at the entrance to the building when she sees a van pull up beside her, and even before they hustle out the sliding doors—the photographer brandishing his video camera, the reporter her voice recorder—she can smell it on them.

  Vultures.

  Bart has warned her.

  She tosses them the lit cigarette, showering sparks at the surprised photographer’s feet before he can get off a single blessed frame and pushes through the revolving doors to the safety and frigid air inside.

  “At least you don’t hate me, do you girl?”

  He slides open the glass door and watches her sidle meekly out onto the lawn, giving him a sidelong glance past the rim of her Cone of Shame—that’s what Wiki calls it anyway, dumb name—and a slow wave of the tail. He can tell that despite his lubing her belly, chest, and legs down every morning and every night after dinner, she’s still hurting.

  He resists the urge to apologize to her yet again. He’s apologizing to everybody these days. His mom. His dad. His sister—drugged, dead to the world. The cops.

  His mom is stony.

  He’s told her twice how sorry he is. Or tried to. The first time was right after it happened. The second time in the hospital, standing at the observation window, watching Delia sleep. She said, I know. She might have said uh-huh or yeah, right—that was the way she said it. Like who cared if he was sorry. Like she was barely following him, barely even hearing him.

  His dad’s a little better. His dad just seems distracted. There’s so much on his mind, he guesses. And he’s not just distracted around him. When the two detectives arrived—routine follow-up, they said—he poured them coffee they didn’t ask for. Asked them what they had under the hood of the squad car. When he led them upstairs to his room, to show them the rig that had caused the accident, and then to hers, to the burned bed, the destroyed, shattered dollhouse, when he explained to them what happened, it was as though he were some kind of museum tour guide and not the guy whose family this had all happened to and then when he, Robbie, had to confirm it all, go over every bit of it again, and when doing that brought him to tears, he couldn’t help it, the tears just came, it was one of the cops who patted him on the shoulder and said, it’s okay kid. It’s okay.

  Not his dad.

  He didn’t then. And he hasn’t since either.

  He watches his dog sniff around in the grass.

  At least he isn’t going to jail. The cops explained that much. That much is a relief at least.

  The Cone of Shame.

  Wrong dog, he thinks, wearing it.

  Rain. Not yet, but soon. She can smell it in the air, hear it in the stillness, feel the cooling thickness in the air as it drifts across her shaven belly.

  She is aware of a bite, an itch, constant, which proceeds from beneath her hind legs across her belly and chest down all four legs, prickly as she moves zigzag from swing set to slide and back again, her nose fully awake and drinking in the morning.

  The small plastic protrusion from her neck is gone now and its former location bandaged but there is still that circular barrier, annoying in its flexive inflexibility, its being there, surrounding her head, preventing her from licking her wounds as she knows she ought to, magnifying sounds in front of her and dimming those behind. She can see no usefulness to this except to restrict and annoy her and wonders what she has done to be punished so.

  She crouches to pee. Listens with satisfaction to her body’s perfect function.

  And there’s that familiar scent. Over by the fence.

  She can hear them now too.

  She finishes her business and ambles over and there they are, the two gray kits, sniffing at the old fallen tree on the far side of the fence. At her approach their tiny ears point and tilt in her direction. She can smell their mother too now, heavy with scent, and locates her watching silent from the clump of brambles not twelve feet away. With her so near she approaches very slowly so as not to offend.

  The kits sniff at her through a knot in the fence, small black noses poking at the hole as though in competition with each other.

  We see this and smile. We want to play. But we’re frustrated by the fence, by the cone, by the presence of the mother nearby. By the weakness in a body which only days ago could have run and climbed the slide, vaulted the fence, and joined them.

  Still, this is a pretty sight.

  Our fingers tighten on the sheets on the hospital bed and then release.

  We watch the kits poke noses and then tiny paws through the knothole, trying to get to us, listen to their happy purring chirp.

  The air grows heavy. Soon it will rain.

  NINE

  On the third to last day of Delia’s major surgery, her doctors applying swaths of skin to her left arm—having previously grafted it to their satisfaction to her face, neck, and head—Robbie removes the cone.

  He’s that morning applied ointment to her burns as usual and marveled at her patience with him. Coming home from school he’s thought about her moving listless through the house, feet twitching as she sleeps, grunting as she raises herself up to a sitting position like a dog twice her age, and decides she’s had enough of the damn cone. He might catch hell from his mom and dad.

  He doesn’t care.

  They haven’t said he couldn’t.

  She meets him at the door and looking up at him so sadly she reinforces his resolve so he leads her to the kitchen and puts his books down on the table and bends to her and pushes the tabs from the cone through the punch-holes in her collar and pulls it away off her neck and releases her.

  For a moment she just stands there blinking and then the tail starts to go and she begins walking round and round in circles, her head turning ahead of the rest of her as though she’s looking for the thing which isn’t there anymore thanks to him and he smiles.

  It feels like the first real smile in a long time.

  He lets her out to do her business and gathers up his books and turns toward the stairs and smells fresh paint and hears the voices as he climbs, hearty male voices—the painters Jeff and Barry who in private he’s dubbed Ben and Jerry—and his father’s. His mother is still at the hospital. As he enters the room his father is handing them cash and he can see they’re preparing to leave, drop-clothes folded, paint cans stacked.

  They say hi and he says hi and his father doesn’t smile.

  He goes to his room and closes the door. Tosses his books down on the bed. In h
is mind he replays that afternoon in the cafeteria, aware again of his classmates’ eyes on him, their whispering.

  It’d gone on like that off and on for days now.

  He and his sister are talked about.

  It’s been on the evening news. The whole story, evidently. Only local but local was bad enough. Neither he nor his mom or dad have caught it but Roman has. He’s recorded the thing and is sending it to them on disc. Some of the papers are carrying it too.

  Plus Margot Dorsey has supposedly put it up on her Facebook page. He hasn’t gone there. He isn’t going to. Margot’s always been a pain. Chased him all the way through the seventh grade. He’d like to shove those braces down her whiny throat.

  Everybody’s named names, of course. So that his own part in this is clear.

  He’s the kid who’d burned his sister.

  He eats his lunch alone.

  The dog’s watching her as she slips on her shoes. The dog is minus her lampshade. She wonders when that has happened. The dog is still watching her when she changes her dress, which makes her uneasy somehow. Why the hell that should be she doesn’t know. A pair of shoes. A dress. She’s going out. She can’t sit. She can’t rest. So what?

  The drive to Roman’s takes a matter of minutes. He meets her at the doorstep and lets her inside and then kisses her more gently than she’d like, to be honest, when what she really wants is to be jolted out of her day, to be white-hot beneath him for the next hour or so while Bart does his banking and the shopping and Robbie is supposedly at his homework in his room and her daughter breathes in and out in her hospital bed oblivious to everything, to the disaster of her life, to the months ahead, so that she tears off his clothes there in the hallway and leads him naked by his cock into the bedroom and pushes him down on the bed and that’s better, finally.

  She’s disappeared. She’s gone.

  Caity lies on Bart’s easy chair, on which she has lately had permission to be. She’ll take advantage while she can. The leather is cool and soothing on her belly. Robbie’s on the couch, his fingers flying across his pad. Pat walks in through the front door, sighs, and removes her shoes. She doesn’t say a word to either of them, passes them by to the kitchen. Caity hears a cupboard open, a glass set down, and bottle set down, the refrigerator door open, ice in the glass, and pouring. Pat sighs again.