Jonathan Kellerman - Self-Defence

When she put a hand to her mouth, I thought she'd lost her nerve and I felt relieved, yet sad.

Then she walked quickly to the house, stomping up the wide porch stairs.

I was next to her as she knocked hard on the front door.

No one answered. She tapped her foot and knocked harder. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon."

I looked through the dusty windows. The big front room was unlit and uninhabited.

Lucy began pounding the door with both hands. When there was still no response, she dashed off the porch and stood in front of the house, taking in its bulk.

Walking toward the right side of the building, her steps were fast and deliberate, scuffing the dust. Another brief pause; then she continued. Toward the back. Toward the high thicket that rose behind the house like some great green tide.

I found her staring at the overgrowth.

"Back there," she whispered.

A voice above us said, "What's going on?"

Nova, framed by a second-story window, her face grayed by a screen.

"Hi," I said, taking Lucy's icy hand. "We knocked but no one answered."

A finger poked the screen. The expression above it was hard to gauge. "So you decided to come."

Lucy's fingers dug into my hand. "Sure," she said. "We were in the neighborhood and decided to pop in. Is there a problem with that?"

Nova tented the screen with her fingertips. "No. Not unless Daddy's got one." She gave a strange laugh. "Come around the front."

She was waiting for us, holding a glass of lemonade. The copper in her hair shone like electric wire.

"He wasn't in any great mood when he went to bed, but I'll tell him you're here."

"I'll tell him myself," said Lucy, walking past her into the front room. Taking in the stuffed heads, the shabby furniture, the emptiness.

Staring at the log walls.

Nova seemed amused. Nothing nurturant about her. Why had she chosen to care for a feeble, cruel man?

Kindred souls, just like Trafficant and Mellors?

What was her particular brand of cruelty?

Lucy made her way toward the staircase, moving slowly and cautiously, like a trapper on ice, passing under the steps, then continuing toward the back room.

Nova put her hands on her hips and watched, rubbing one foot against the other.

She wet her lips with her tongue and glanced at me.

Her eyes returned to Lucy and satisfaction filled them.

Lucy's discomfiture turned her on.

Lucy looked up at the ceiling, then the floor.

Then back to the walls.

Stopping short. Arms straight at her sides, her face frozen.

She stared at the left-hand door.

Nova said, "That's right, Daddy's back there, dear."

Despite her smile, tension in her voice.

Competition- mock sibling rivalry?

Wanting Lucy to come here, certain it would destroy her?

I took Lucy's elbow. She shook her head and moved her arm out of my grasp.

Twenty feet from the room.

I covered the distance with her.

The door was pine, once heavily varnished, the finish cracked, flaking like dandruff.

She sucked in breath and opened it. As we stepped into a big, dark, book-lined room, a sulfurous smell hit us, not unlike the stench of the ER at Woodbridge. A hospital bed was in the center, cranked to a semi-upright position. Lowell's wheelchair was folded in a corner.

Lowell reclined under the covers, his hair greasy and limp, his long arms resting on the blanket, white and blue-veined below frayed gray undershirt sleeves. His chin was coated with white stubble, his eyes unfocused. It was 2 P.M. but he hadn't awakened fully. He turned toward us with obvious effort, then turned away and closed his eyes.

Lucy's hand found its way back into mine, so sweaty it slithered in my grasp. Her shoulders twitched, then began shaking.

I followed her eyes as they reconnoitered, landing on the pine bookshelves that sheathed three of the walls.

A door in the right-hand corner was open, exposing a small bathroom. The other, centered between the windows, led outside. Bolted. Lucy's gaze lingered on it, then moved on.

Books and piles of magazines and newspapers littered the floor. Atop a stack of New Yorker s was an aluminum tray laden with dirty dishes: curling bread crusts, congealed eggs, cornflakes swimming in milk that looked bluish in the mean, grainy light. An empty bedpan sat on a stack of old Paris Review s. Packages of adult-size disposable diapers were piled high on a tottering mountain of assorted periodicals. A cardboard box next to the diapers was filled with empty whiskey bottles. A tower of Dixie cups and an old black rotary telephone, the phone's cord snaking into the jumble and vanishing.

The shakes had moved down to Lucy's fingers, and I felt her knuckles slap against mine. Nova was nowhere in sight, but I felt her presence- an icy current.

Lowell moaned and moved his head from side to side. His eyes had closed.

Lucy didn't move. Then she began scanning the room again.

The filthy windows.

The door to the back.

Back to the log walls.

Repeating the circuit. Staying, this time, on the door. Wide-eyed.

This was where she'd slept the night of the party. The room she'd left, sleepwalking.

Her hand was shaking so badly I could barely hold on to it.

Lowell's eyes opened and he flipped his face at us.

Seeing us for the first time.

He let out a deep, pitiful, angry noise and began the long, excruciating process of sitting up. No hoists above the bed. He hadn't availed himself of conveniences- not even an electric wheelchair- and I wondered why.

Cursing, he slid and heaved and finally propped his upper body high enough to rest his back against the pillows. His chest was caved in, his shoulders knobby and narrow. The flair of the white suit and the panama hat seemed a distant joke. The last couple of days had knocked him low.

Grief?

Lucy watched him the way you watch a repulsive but fascinating insect make its way up a wall.

He laughed. She turned away and hugged herself.

"So," he said hoarsely. Several moments of throat clearing. He gave a look of distaste, rotated his lips, and spat a wad of phlegm at the log wall. It missed and landed on the floor. Coughing and grinning, he expelled another wad.

Lucy looked ill, but she didn't move.

Lowell watched her intently.

His fingers scratched the sheets as he continued to pull himself up. Trying to move his head in an upward arc. Pain stopped him.

"So," he said again. His voice had cleared a bit.

"Cute," he said. "Very cute."

"What is?" said Lucy, straining for a light tone.

"You." He chortled, as if she'd set him up for a punch line. He looked her up and down. None of the lasciviousness he'd shown with Nova. Cold, precise, as if taking the measure of a piece of furniture.

"Play tennis?" he said.

She shook her head.

"Those are tennis player's legs. Even through those dungarees I can see them. Play anything ?"

Another headshake.

"Of course not," he said. "No appetite for games."

He rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms, laughing some more.

"So what can I offer you, Mary-Little Lamb?" he said. "Alcohol? Percodan? Demerol? Morphine? Endorphins? Or is alleged truth the dope you're shooting? What kind of stories should I tell you to help you lubricate your mental deadbolt? Is this a monumental moment for you?"

Lucy remained silent.

"No stories? What then?"

Lucy looked at the rear door.

Lowell shouted wordlessly and slapped the bedsheet. "Ah, the spectacle! Here to goggle at my groanery, my little serpent's tooth? Barge in with your brain mechanic in tow, so you can listen to the thrum-thrum and imagine my torment?"

Grinning. Laughing.