Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) (21 page)

Now Arlen stood in the kitchen, drinking a glass of water and half listening to the woman complain about her neighbors, folks Arlen didn’t know. This house was alive, vital. A family lived here. A family who knew nothing about him. He wished with all his heart that he could still be meaningful in some way to this house—that there was just one small thing he could claim from it as his own. But all traces of himself in this place were gone. And the boy who’d lived here, dreaming that one day he’d get so rich he’d buy his momma a new car—he was unrecoverable.

“Hey, now. Doing okay?” the woman asked.

He was embarrassed when he realized he’d begun to cry, tears that slipped so silently down his cheeks they could almost go without notice. He’d been so weepy lately, so completely consumed by his feelings. The only other creatures he’d ever seen that had emotions as raw and uncontrollable as his were infants. He finished his glass of water and set it down in the sink, as easy as if it had been his sink from all those ages ago. “Yes. Thanks.”

“You come a long way on foot to see this house,” the woman said, her voice gentle. “How long you lived here?”

“Until I got married. When I was twenty.”

“Pretty young to get married.”

“Sometimes a man just knows what he wants,” he said.

The woman smiled. “Me and my Shawn been married going on fifteen years now.”

“And you like this house.”

“That’s right,” the woman said. Arlen watched a cloud pass over her face. “They said the lady who lived here died.”

“My mother,” Arlen said.

“I’m so sorry.” She reached out and squeezed Arlen’s hand. He held it for a moment, glad for the touch, then pulled away to wipe his eyes.

“Oh, hold on, now. I got something you might want,” the woman said. “Wait here.”

She disappeared, and when she came back a few minutes later, she was holding an old watering can, galvanized metal worn to dullness by dirt and age. She handed it to him.

“We found it on the property,” she said. “Was it yours?”

Arlen turned it over. There were a hundred little dents on the bottom from when he and Will had decided to use the watering can as a snare drum. He’d caught a lot of flack for that.

“Yes, it was my mother’s.” He turned it upright. “You don’t mind if I keep it?”

“It’s had a good life while you were gone, but it’s yours. Fair and square.”

“Thank you,” Arlen said.

In his hands, the watering can felt just heavy enough to remind him that he was holding it. He walked back out to the porch, to the flat front yard that was covered with patches of crabgrass and clover. The sun was gone, but there was still an hour’s worth of light in the sky.

“You don’t have to walk back,” the woman said. “I’ll get my husband to give you a ride over to Heyger’s. Won’t take but a minute.”

“Thank you,” Arlen said. “But I’d like to walk, if it’s all the same.”

The woman shrugged and looked at him a long while. She was about fifteen years older than him, and her eyes were full of wisdom. She held his gaze strongly, with resolve and quiet intelligence—as if she had something very important she wanted to say.

“You take care of yourself, hear me?” she said. “I know your
momma’s gone, but that’s what she wants you to do. You’re her child, and you’ve got to take care of yourself. Body, mind, and heart.”

Arlen nodded, cradling the watering can in his arms. Then he set off down the road, with the crickets chirping in the underbrush and the frogs singing in the treetops, and the watering can swinging at his side.

On Friday evening, Lauren and Maisie took a drive to Hollywood Cemetery so Lauren could tour the old, old stones of people famous and not. The sunset cast a strawberry glow over the granite and marble headstones. Maisie linked her arm through Lauren’s, and they strolled past tall obelisks and statues of angels and dogs.

“Here we go,” Maisie said. She stopped before a little mausoleum that had been carved like a cave into a grassy hill. Marble columns stood on either side of a gated doorway. “This is the one where the Richmond vampire lives.”

“Oh.” Lauren peered through the bars but saw nothing in the fading light. Maisie had told her the story of the railroad tunnel accident that had birthed the legend of the Richmond vampire. One survivor, who had emerged from the rubble of the collapse with scorched skin and broken teeth, had given way to decades of vampire stories. “Well, we had Italian for dinner,” Lauren said.

“Yeah. All that garlic bread. So we’re fine.”

They walked on in companionable silence. The evening was thoroughly still, so still that Lauren could feel the stillness in her bones. And as they walked, it struck Lauren that the headstones were antiques in their way—that a monument was a token that people kept to remember, not different from a locket or a photograph. She’d never been especially sentimental, but spending time with Will had been slowly and steadily altering her perspective.
She was beginning to see what she hadn’t before: how fiercely people needed proof of the past.

Richmond itself was a city that seemed conflicted with its history. The capital of the Confederacy had not shaken off its antebellum roots—and it did not necessarily want to. As one of the major ports of the triangle trade before the end of slavery, monuments of the past took on many forms: here, a proud statue of a Confederate general on horseback; there, a replicated crate in which a man had hidden for days to escape life as a slave. In the middle of a striving and modern city of many races, some residents still referred to Jefferson Davis’s mansion as “the White House” without needing to distinguish it from that other White House near Capitol Hill. Maisie, who had not been born in Richmond but who had moved there after college, explained it like this: When there were no answers, a person learned to live with the questions.

“I don’t know if I like it,” Lauren said. “But I guess I see what you mean.”

They walked on. When her friend spoke again, her voice was soft, as if she didn’t want to disturb the peace of the evening. “Did you give Arlen your note?”

“Will did.”

“Are you sure he did?”

Lauren glanced at her friend, whose eyes were narrowed in suspicion. “He’ll deliver it.”

“It just seems odd to me. That he’s making you work for him. If he’s such a great person, why is he making you help?”

“He’s not
making
me. Maybe at first I thought he was. But not anymore.”

“So you’re hanging out with him voluntarily?”

“Looks like.”

“Hmm,” Maisie said. “Interesting.”

Lauren laughed. “It’s not like that.”

“Oh no?”

“What else will I do all day while you’re at the office?”

“Knowing you, I’d say work compulsively and worry about your newest case.”

“Exactly. So you should be happy for me that I’m hanging out with him.”

“I am happy. I just think there might be a little love-connection thing happening.”

Lauren turned away as images of the morning’s surprising dream flashed through her mind. She could remember more now—the way the mattress bent under Will’s elbows, his body like a shadow moving over her. The way he’d gripped her hair, held her face in two hands.

Will was not her type; she’d never dated a man like him. Instead, she dated only the men she regularly met: men with MBAs or JDs, good haircuts, and understated ties. She’d thought she preferred men who did gentlemanly things like buy her dinner or hold open the car door. But now she second-guessed herself. Given the fact that she was still single, perhaps she didn’t know her type at all.

Although most of her colleagues were married and busy juggling a life of kids and careers, she’d never felt a desperate need to be romantically attached. She’d always figured that when the right guy came along, she would
know
it, fundamentally and perfectly, in the way that she knew things about people. But years passed, and this man—the one who was meant for her—hadn’t made an appearance. Or, if he had, Lauren had been too focused on her career to see him. Most men were intimidated by her—she knew that. And while sometimes she enjoyed her own power, she also felt that it was a force field keeping people from getting close to her. She supposed she couldn’t have it both ways.

Until she met Edward. Because he broke the mold.

For six months she’d cared for him. On their first lunch date,
she was so overwhelmed by him—his intelligence, his movie-star good looks, his impeccable fashion, his taste for all things expensive, and his love of whatever was “the best.” She started going to Phoenix as often as she could, and he would come to her hotel room late at night. Or he came to Albany. The conversation was light; the sex, heavy. They made love with the passion that they brought to their work, as if the conversation of naked bodies was a kind of debate or argument. She’d been so, so sure. She would have sworn on her life that he loved her. And maybe he did.

She dragged the sole of her sandal along the ground. “Even if Will is attracted to me—and, I admit it, even if I like him—nothing’s going to happen.”

“Well, why not?” Maisie asked.

“Because I’m leaving soon. I’ve put everything on the line to come down here. My whole life. I’ve got to get back.”

Maisie steered them down the newly paved paths of the centuries-old cemetery. They walked slowly. Lauren thought back over her day. Over Will. There was a mystery about him that she hadn’t yet solved—and it intrigued her, energized her. Certain things didn’t add up or fit what should have been a relatively straightforward profile. She knew his core values—that he was a good person who not only looked after the people he cared about, but who went out of his way for them. Generosity like his was rare, a treasure few people could find no matter how many old sofa cushions they looked beneath in a falling-down barn.

But aside from that, there were blanks. He was closed off about his background. She’d tried to ask about his family, his childhood, his life outside of picking, but he was even more guarded than she was—and that was unusual. She guessed he wasn’t always so standoffish—that he was only like that with her—and the thought was disappointing. She wanted them to open up to each other, if only for a few days.

The old cemetery was beginning to darken, shadows growing and reaching among the stones.

“We’ve got to get back,” Lauren said.

“Right now?”

“It’s getting dark.”

“We’re fine. Nobody’s gonna bother us.”

“I know,” Lauren said. “But I’d just feel better.”

“Okay,” Maisie said.

They started back over the undulating hills toward the car. Around them, the headstones glowed against the dusk, brighter than everything around them, each one a marker of the past. And though she didn’t consider herself overly romantic, she wondered if she, too, held on to things, perhaps when she didn’t realize. She wondered about her own symbols, the things she got attached to. She felt her phone bumping against her pocket. And then she knew.

While Maisie walked around to the driver’s side of the car, Lauren flipped open her cell phone and scrolled. She supposed she’d been hoping Edward would call her. As if words could make it right.

She glanced up at the cemetery one last time. The fading sky had turned the white headstones a soft yellow pink. The grass was scorched brown in places where the sun and drought had taken their toll. Without letting herself think, she deleted Edward from her phone. She should have done it weeks ago.

“Everything okay?” Maisie asked through the open window.

“Great,” Lauren said. “How do you feel about catching a movie?” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone to see a movie in an actual movie theater. She found that she desperately wanted to.

“Now you’re talking,” Maisie said.

On Saturday morning, Will and his brother Scoot, who was
Scott
when he was born, stood out in Will’s backyard looking hard at
the sky. The land was flat—about one acre with a wide oak tree that dropped fat acorns in the fall, and a little shrub that flowered hot pink in July. A small barn stood at the back of the lot, serviceable enough but needing a coat of fresh paint. Will and Scoot pondered the dome of sky above them, paint cans close at their sides. The clouds were uniform and middling high, a yellowish gray that could have meant rain, or not.

“What do you think?” Scoot asked.

“I think we better hold off. No sense in risking it.”

“Suits me.”

They put down their cans on the concrete patio Will had poured last year; then they walked to the old barn. Will pulled a strip of white paint from it. It was brittle in his fingers. “I guess we can get to rearranging the inside. If you’re up for it.”

“Yeah, I’m game.”

Will hauled open the door; it scraped the dirt. Behind him, his brother gave a soft whistle.

“Hoo, man. That is a serious lot of crap.”

Will laughed and stepped into the dark of the small barn. It smelled of dust, and dry rotting wood, and a thousand mildewing things. His heart hurt a little to think of the way the years had worn down his favorite picks. Wood that wasn’t regularly polished would split and bend. Iron that wasn’t given a fresh coat of paint would rust. Rubber left to its own devices would sag and crack. But he loved this barn, and everything in it. All the forgotten, broken things.

“So what are we getting rid of?” Scoot asked. He was older than Will, and bigger around the middle. His head was large and bald, and while thinning hair might have made another man look aged and weak, the whole family agreed that Scoot hadn’t started looking like his real, tough-as-nails self until
after
his hair had fallen out—as if it was baldness that was his natural state and his years of having had hair were the anomaly.

“I don’t have a definite plan,” Will said.

“But we’re getting rid of
something
.”

Will looked around the barn, piled high with his finds—the ones he couldn’t bear to put in the store to sell. “I suppose we are.”

They got to it. Scoot began digging through the first-floor’s worth of stuff, asking, “What’s this?” and “What does this do?” and, “How about this goes to the shop?” Where the floor had been obscured, they climbed over piles—Will knew another person would think it was all garbage. Things snapped under their feet, wobbled when they reached out to steady themselves.