Six Going on Seven, Chapter 7 ~ Promises

On Friday night Liseli remembered something, and went into the closet to look for it.  She dug around in the mess on the floor, then, cursing her shortness, stacked a couple of cardboard boxes full of Elly’s old clothes on top of each other and climbed up to search the top shelves.  Her closet was technically a walk in — the tiniest box of space possible for a closet to still be called a walk in, but she had managed to pack an amazing amount of stuff inside.  Things fell down past her shoulders and the boxes shifted ominously under her feet, but Liseli stayed up there, digging till she found what she was looking for.

She hadn’t wanted to find it.

The tough, forest green material of the backpack she’d bought for Russ nearly ten years ago appeared underneath a matching cream set of knit scarf and mittens she didn’t know why she had bothered to bring to California.  Liseli held onto the winter clothes and spent a moment thinking, very hard, I should have given these things to Goodwill before we moved, poor people back in Wisconsin need this sort of stuff a lot more than we do.

Why hadn’t he taken his backpack?  Of course he had always been terrible at preparing to go places.  Russ was the kind to disappear into a Gateway with nothing more than the clothes he happened to be wearing, not stopping to think that he might end up in an arctic climate.  Back then he’d take trips lasting for weeks, or sometimes months, but he hadn’t thought to pack changes of clothes, or food, or water, or bedding.  She’d gone out and bought him the backpack, sleeping bag, and other camping supplies she’d thought looked handy as she walked around the outdoor recreation store.

She’d been the one to pack extra clothes into it — the right kinds for any weather — and present it to him the next time money was getting low and he started talking about going out again.  He’d looked at her like she was on drugs and complained that all the stuff would just hamper his travel through Gates, but she’d maintained that he didn’t have any trouble getting through Gates with his loot, and not backed down till he’d agreed to carry the backpack with him.

After that he’d packed it himself, always with less things than she thought was wise, but he had always taken it with him.  The last time was seven years ago, but surely he wouldn’t have forgotten . . . .

Liseli pulled the backpack off the shelf and climbed down, sinking onto the boxes to sit and stare.  Either he’d pulled his old, old “leave with nothing” stunt, or . . . no.  She wouldn’t think about that.  She unzipped the pack and fished around, as if the thing that had traveled the worlds with her husband would carry clues to where he was now — and why.  Her hand alighted on something small and hard, and she pulled it out.  It was an old plastic cat statue she’d used to have on her bureau in her bedroom as a child . . . it had disappeared back when she was living in the apartment near the college campus in Wisconsin.  It hadn’t occurred to her that Russ had taken it, because it was worth only a few cents.  But of course, he’d given her that strange blue ivory cat figurine, which Elly now had on the nightstand in her bedroom.  He’d switched the two — priceless exotic ivory for chintzy plastic toy.  That was so like Russ, she thought, and couldn’t stop herself from crying.

She didn’t allow herself showy tears, just a few quiet leaks that she brushed away quickly.  She cried a lot when pregnant, it was a fact that Russ had pointed out while Eric was in the oven, and she couldn’t deny it.  Hormones, it happens to every woman, she’d told him, with a snap, daring him to point out any more little womanly quirks she developed while carrying his children.

Stuffing the cat back into the darkness, she threw the backpack onto the floor and got up.  All it meant was that he was being his usual, unprepared self, or maybe he just didn’t want to pack for his little trip because he remembered how at first it had been her idea.  But what if he never meant to leave? the tiny voice of doubt said as she pulled the covers aside from her lonely bed.  Don’t be absurd, she replied, and left it at that, climbing under the sheets for another fruitless attempt at sleeping.

Last night, Thursday night, had been better though, she had to admit.  She hadn’t been disturbed by the presence of the child . . . the phantom imagining, she thought stubbornly.  Her dreams had been only mildly bad, and the hours she lay awake were spent in a catatonic state, staring at the shadowy outlines in her room and not allowing herself to think.  It would have been a good night to sleep soundly if Russ had been there.

On Thursday evening she had told Noah not to come over anymore.  Don’t come over, don’t call.  Not until Russ calls you.  And trust me, if you call the police Russ will not be happy.  She could only hope that he would listen.  She could only hope she was right.  What if you’re not?  What if he’s in trouble, in this world?  What if he was taken away against his will?  What then?

What then? she echoed.  Lot of good the police can do anyway.  All they’ll do is pry, and if they discover our secret, what then?

Liseli lay in bed staring upward in the dark, imagining what would happen if Noah or Dori decided to report Russ missing.  How on earth would she answer their questions?  Would they, like Noah, start suspecting she had done something to Russ?  How absurd.

And what about when Russ got back — because he would get back, he had to get back — what then?  They would want him to say where he’d been, and what would he tell them?  The truth?  The truth would either land them in a psych ward, or worse, Russ would end up showing people what he could do and then he’d become a curiosity, a circus attraction to the world at large.

They would want to use him.  Everyone who realized Russ’s abilities wanted to use him.  The government . . . she could see them blackmailing Russ into their service.  All they had to do was run an audit and find out about the unaccounted funds — the money Russ had made from selling things from otherworlds, stuff he’d never paid taxes on.  They would arrest him and threaten him unless he agreed to work for them.  This world would be no different from all the others Russ had had to escape from with his life barely in hand.  Everyone wanted to use a Key.

Tonight, Friday night, was the night Russ and the band were supposed to play at their first club.  After much agonizing and hanging around her house making themselves annoying, the band had finally gone on without him.  Noah would try to cover for Russ; something he was not happy about.  Liseli knew that he’d worked hard to get Russ to agree to join the band because he was better than any of them at guitar.  They needed Russ to get anywhere.  There would be people at the club, people with connections; Noah was looking for a manager and he knew they had to sound good to get anyone to take them on.  Tonight was supposed to be Noah Conner’s first big break, but he couldn’t carry the act alone.  Liseli shook her head, rocking it back and forth on the pillow.  Russ was letting the band down, big time; he was letting everyone down.

She didn’t need Noah hanging around the house anymore, stressing and cursing and looking at her as if trying to imagine just how a petite little weakling could have murdered her husband and cut him up and buried him in the garden.  Liseli closed her eyes, letting herself dwell on how much Noah annoyed her.  The others weren’t happy about Russ disappearing either, but Noah was the one who had to run around like a chicken with his head cut off, thinking that the whole world revolved around whether or not his band did well.  Everyone wanted to use Russ.

Liseli turned over onto her side with a sigh, and absently ran a hand over her abdomen, wondering if she would feel a bulge yet.  Nothing.  Not yet.  But when she closed her eyes she could see her; a girl with black hair, even curlier and wilder than her father’s but unmistakably passed down from that head, the same inheritance her brothers had.  She would have green eyes.  She would be pretty, maybe enough to make her older sister jealous.  Liseli knew a thing or two about that; her own younger sisters outclassed her.  Leona always had, and the picture her mother had sent to her of Lara in her Easter dress showed that even at 13 the girl was impossibly pretty.

Liseli wondered how Elly would handle no longer being the only Princess in the house, and decided only time would tell.  It was a good thing they still had those boxes of Elly’s old clothes.  Many times she’d thought about giving them away, when Marc and Eric had turned up boys and she’d thought that three children was a good, manageable number.

Hollace, she thought, studying the face she held in her mind.  When Elly was born she had wanted to name her Hollace MacKenzie; it had been the name of a girl in an old, out of print picture book she had read to Leona many times when they were children.  The book had fallen apart and been discarded by their mother, who called it a germy old thing, but the name stuck in Liseli’s mind and developed a nostalgic glow.

Reading to Leona had given her a love of stories which had led to writing, which she always thought gave her an identity of her own to claim apart from Wife to Russ and Mother to Elly, Marc, and Eric.  Even her position at work wasn’t an identity she much liked to claim, nothing special there among the droves of other working women sucking down coffee and trying to balance love lives or family lives.  Even when she was a young English major fresh from college and Elly was her firstborn (firstborn . . . ) the name Hollace MacKenzie had presented itself, reminding her of little Leona’s rapt attention, and the happy girl in the happy story, who loved hollyberries and lace.

She couldn’t even remember much about the story except the pictures and the line, “Hollace MacKenzie loved hollyberries and lace and a smile on the face.”  Insipid stuff.  But she’d liked it.

Russ had wanted to name their girl after Eliasha Erykumyn . . . that poor dead girl.  Liseli didn’t want to have to think about her or anything else connected to that world, that place, she didn’t want to have to write or say the name Eliasha.  But how could she say no?  The girl had died in her arms, died because of her, she knew that.  Russ so blithely suggested they do it “in honor” of her memory, and she knew it was just because he’d had a crush on Eliasha Erykumyn and probably liked to think about what it’d be like to have taken up with her instead of Liseli.  He didn’t realize that memories of Eliasha could be quite different from the smiling, laughing, saucy girl who’d flirted with him in Arlic’s garden.  But still, Liseli couldn’t say no to honoring the girl who’d died because of her, so she had shelved the idea of the meaningless name from a children’s book.

She drifted off to sleep with Hollace’s face in her eyes and the name on her lips, not even realizing it until she awoke hours later to the early morning barking of Muttface.  Liseli say bolt upright in bed and stared at the clock: how could it be past six in the morning already?  She’d slept through the night?

As she shook the sleep from her head, and Muttface continued barking, she realized of a sudden that it was his deliriously happy bark, not the yap at the paperboy or mailman or frenzied growling at squirrels and strange cats outside.  Muttface was only ever deliriously happy over one person.

Liseli ripped her blankets aside and landed on the floor with a thud.  She was across the room in an instant without thinking coherently.  She wore her nightshirt that came down mid-thigh, nothing else, yet she would have walked out the front door without giving it a second thought, if he’d been outside.

But he was in the kitchen, patting Muttface’s head as the dog danced idiotically around his legs.  Liseli stopped short when Russ looked up at her through the kitchen doorway, she became quickly aware of her half-nakedness; the flattened old living room carpeting on her bare feet at the draft of cool air creating goosebumps up and down her legs and arms.  His eyes traveled up and down her disheveled form, but he said nothing.

Thoughts of what to say to him hadn’t even formed in her mind when a red-headed missile shot down the hallway, slicing through the air between her parents, breaking whatever spell had held them speechless as she flung herself at her father with all Muttface’s enthusiasm plus more.

“Daddy!  You’re home!” Elly declared, making it official as she tried to squeeze the life out of him with her skinny almost-seven-year-old arms.  Russ laughed and hugged her back, all his focus on her now.  Marcus and Eric came barreling at him not far behind their sister — apparently everyone knew what and whom Muttface’s catalogue of barks were for.

Russ laughed and ruffled Marc’s and Eric’s heads, trying to respond to their loud and happy greetings, with Elly still clinging to him and Muttface circling, whining at being pushed aside by the human interlopers.  Liseli didn’t move from her spot for a moment or two, then turned on her heel and went back to the bedroom.  She let the door swing shut with plenty of momentum behind it, but instead of getting dressed she found herself sitting on the edge of the bed, staring straight ahead.

I’m happy, she thought.  Happy that the big lout was home, safe, and healthy.  Think of all the terrible things that might have been happening but weren’t.  Be glad.  She crossed her arms and repeated the thought.  All the time she’d been worrying about him, he’d been just fine.  He even had some ugly burlappy looking knapsack with him; no need for his old backpack she’d bought him, apparently.

He is fine, I am fine, everything is fine.