Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) (26 page)

By the time she reached college, people-reading had become even more difficult.
What do you think of my new boyfriend, Lauren?
(She didn’t want to say,
He’s sleeping with you to piss off your sister
.)
Is my roommate telling me the truth about not taking the money I had in my closet?
(Lauren, as tactfully as she could, suggested getting a bank account.)
Lauren
,
do you think I should be worried that your father is . . . being unfaithful?
(She didn’t know how to answer without telling a lie.)

Over time, she’d done her best to turn off her people-reading as much as she possibly could; she read only when she was in a courtroom or when she needed to know something. Between not reading Edward right and not seeing Arlen’s obvious innocence all those years ago, she was beginning to wonder if she was in the wrong business.

She looked up at Will, and she understood he’d given her time to work through all the things she was thinking. He hadn’t pushed her to reply until she was ready.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I was just curious if you see them like I do.”

“How do you see them?”

“The same way I see a broken-down car that’s been patched up with elbow grease and Hail Marys—and made to run again.”

“Oddly specific,” she said. “But I think I understand.”

They came around a bend, and Will stopped walking, put a hand on her shoulder. “This is what I wanted you to see.”

They’d stopped before a small pond—water so still and black it seemed to be less like water than sky. Stars were quiet overhead. Reeds and cattails gathered in, and a willow trailed its leaves on
the surface of the pool. Fireflies in the rushes made the whole scene sparkle green. It wasn’t a vista of a sweeping skyline or dazzling canyon, but it was beautiful—and Lauren loved that Will loved it, and wanted to share it with her.

“Wow,” she said softly.

“Yeah.” He stood at her side, looking ahead.

A firefly flew before them. Lauren wondered where it was going—what firefly errand it had to run—and Will reached up and caught it gently. He cupped it in his two hands.

“Look,” he said. “That guy you were seeing, he was an idiot.”

“You don’t know him.”

“Am I wrong?”

She thought about it. “No, I guess not.”

“He’d have to be. To let things get . . . 
complicated
 . . . with
you.”

She smiled at him, something warming in her heart. His cupped hands were between them. The yellow-green flash of phosphorescence leaked between his fingers.

“Let me see,” she said.

He stepped closer, bending his head over his hands as if in prayer, and she did the same. She reached to steady him for a better look, holding the orb of his cupped hands in hers, and when he opened his fingers a little, Lauren saw the lightning bug crawling around inside. She leaned close, peering into the hollow, and then the firefly opened its wings like a star unfurling and shot haphazardly back into the night. She straightened quickly to get out of its path, a little breathless with surprise and a kind of excitement she hadn’t felt since she was a kid. She knew her eyes were wide when she looked up at Will and said, “Oh!”

She wasn’t at all ready when he kissed her.

There was no gradual opening into desire. No slow-forming knot of arousal, no sense of the air going incrementally thinner, no
bloom of heat like embers fanned to a brighter burn. Instead, she felt as if the black road had turned into a river beneath her feet, washing out from under her. Want and the feeling of something cracking apart came all at once, with a kiss that seemed to be over as soon as her sluggish brain caught up with her body.

Will pulled away, but not too far. He looked into her eyes and waited.

“I probably should have seen that coming,” she said.

She hesitated, and she knew he did too—that he was second-guessing and wondering and thinking of doing it again.

“Will . . . ”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, tugged him down to kiss him again. It was painful when she finally tore herself away. She straightened herself out—her shirt, her hair. Will watched her. She had no idea what to say. With Edward, it had always been so easy to know what came next—there was an understood direction. But she’d been so taken aback by Will, by the force of an attraction that had no predictable endpoint, that she was stymied.

He stood looking at her, his breathing hard. Frogs in the little pond chattered and splashed. There was no wind. Will had just made up his mind to say something—she saw the moment the decision flashed across his face—when blinding white headlights slid around the corner of the road, bright beams reaching into all the nooks and hideaways of the woods, and Will drew back.

They stepped farther to the side of the road, out of the way, and a red SUV pulled up beside them. Will ran his hands through his hair.

“Hey, y’all,” Annabelle said in a loud whisper as the passenger-side window automatically rolled down. “I didn’t want to go without saying good-bye.”

Will walked up to the car, then leaned his arms against the bottom edge of the window frame. “Heading out?”

“Yep. Louis was hollering for sleep. Course, now that he’s in
his car seat, he’s passed out cold.” She glanced past Will toward Lauren. “Glad you could make it. It was nice talking to you.”

“Thanks,” Lauren said. She wondered if her lips were red, if her hair was okay.

Annabelle had a gleam in her eye. “I know you’re going back up north, but I hope to see you again real soon.”

“Great meeting you.”

She refocused her gaze on Will. “You get her home safe, now, hear?”

“Yes. I’ll defend her against the bears and wolverines. Did you drive all the way out here just to harass me?”

“It’s a sign of love,” she said.

Will backed away from the car.

“So long,” she said, waving. Then she disappeared down the road, taking the noise and light with her. And when Lauren looked at Will again, she knew the spell was broken, that logic had set in, and that he would not kiss her again.

“Ready to head back?” he asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” she said. She rubbed her arms and, for the first time in days, she felt a little cooler, awash in night air. They walked the road they’d just come down, heading silently back.

At certain times during his long incarceration, Arlen found himself conversing with Eula, telling her things in his head. He observed for her the way the light changed with the seasons—the texture, and color, and temperature shifting, a thing he’d never noticed before. He pointed out to her the guys to watch out for and the ones who were okay, and he described their stories. Sometimes, he imagined he was giving her instructions:
Here’s how to get a jump on the lunch line. Here’s how to plug your ears so you don’t hear the guy sobbing at the end of the row.

Now, sitting once again on the city bus, he wanted to tell her another thing: an observation that a bus was like a prison, with crowds of confined strangers, canned air, and people shuffling their feet down the aisle as if in chains. He told her:
I miss you worse now
.

After a short walk, he stood in front of her house. The neighborhood was imprecisely different. He could have taken before and after photos, then made a game of circling what had changed. Tree trunks had thickened. Driveways had been repaired or cracked apart. One house had been painted red. But the street itself, the black road baking in the hot sun, was still a gentle slope, a slight curve. And his house—
Eula’s house
—was also unchanged.

He moved beneath the shade of a small tree, gathering strength. The house was large and white, with black shutters and striped awnings that put Arlen in mind of a domino. There was a brown package left on the front stoop—someone had ordered something; he wondered what—and a new pink shrub flowered next to the
garage. The windows were all shut tight, opaque with blinds or curtains, as if they had been sealed specifically against him.

He could picture himself moving down the black asphalt driveway, to the front door with its half circle of window at the top. He could picture himself digging for a key, letting himself in—a nonevent. He saw himself coming home after work to this house, a bag of groceries on his hip, a little treat—chocolate ice cream or fresh strawberries—for Eula tucked inside. In his flannel bathrobe, he picked up the paper from the walk, tucked it under his arm—in his mind he could do those things so effortlessly, things that didn’t matter at all.

All right,
he thought. He coached himself. He bounced a little on the tips of his toes, like he’d once done in high school before a big game. He thought, as if there were more than one person in his head,
Let’s go
.

But no sooner had he stepped off the curb toward Eula’s house than the front door opened. A woman appeared.

She was small with wide shoulders, light brown hair that scrolled inward at her chin like curls of parchment. She was wearing a charcoal skirt that ended sharply at the knee. She was locking the door. She was picking up the cardboard box at her feet. She was talking on her cell phone. She was
Eula
, going about her day.

Arlen’s throat locked. He felt weak with hesitation. In his mind, he called out to her, willing her to turn her head and see him.
Eula
,
please.

She must have heard.

With the box under her arm, her keys in one hand, her phone in the other, she straightened up and looked in his direction. She glanced away, talking on her phone, then looked back at him again. He waited. Prayed. She raised her hand with the keys in them to wave at him, only a few fingers extending, before she nearly dropped the box. Then she was getting in her car. The
engine turned over. Arlen made like he was walking somewhere. She backed out of the driveway, then disappeared down the road. The neighborhood grew quiet except for the sound of the interstate, roaring somewhere nearby.

Eula . . . 
She hadn’t recognized him.

Arlen shoved his hands into his pockets. The sun made his neck sweat. The house stood straight-faced but pitying, watching Arlen go. He thought things through: there was only one conclusion to come to that he could see. If Eula didn’t recognize him—and she obviously hadn’t—it was because he wasn’t himself anymore.

He wanted to know her again. And he wanted her to know him. But he needed to find the part of himself that was still worth knowing—the man he was before, the man she’d fallen in love with who held a job, who went to church, who cared.