Lisey's Story(39)

17

Now she stands looking anxiously down the lawn. She has turned off the kitchen light, thinking that may make it easier to see him, but even with the help of the pole-light in the yard next door, the shadows take over halfway down the hill. In the next yard, a dog barks hoarsely. That dog's name is Pluto, she knows because she has heard the people over there yelling at it from time to time, fat lot of good it does. She thinks of the breaking-glass sound she heard a minute ago: like the barking, the breaking sounded close. Closer than the other sounds that populate this busy, unhappy night. Why oh why did she have to tee off on him like that? She didn't even want to see the stupid Swedish movie in the first place! And why had she felt such joy in it? Such mean and filthy joy?

To that she has no answer. The late-spring night breathes around her, and exactly how long has he been down there in the dark? Only two minutes? Five, maybe? It seems longer. And that sound of breaking glass, did that have anything to do with Scott?

The greenhouse is down there. Parks.

There's no reason that should make her heart beat faster, but it does. And just as she feels that increased rhythm she sees motion beyond the place where her eyes lose their ability to see much of anything. A second later the moving thing resolves itself into a man. She feels relief, but it doesn't dissipate her fear. She keeps thinking about the sound of breaking glass. And there's something wrong with the way he's moving. His limber, straight walk is gone.

Now she does call his name, but what comes out is little more than a whisper: "Scott?"

At the same time her hand is scrabbling around on the wall, feeling for the switch that turns on the light over the stoop.

Her call is low, but the shadowy figure plodding up the lawn - yes, that's a plod, all right, not a walk but a plod - raises its head just as Lisey's curiously numb fingers find the light-switch and flick it. "It's a bool, Lisey! " he shouts as the light springs on, and could he have planned it better if he had stage-managed it? She thinks not. In his voice she hears mad jubilant relief, as if he has fixed everything. "And not just any bool, it's a blood-bool!"

She has never heard the word before, but she doesn't mistake it for anything else, for boo or book or anything else. It's bool, another Scott-word, and not just any bool but a blood-bool. The kitchen light leaps down the lawn to meet him and he's holding out his left hand to her like a gift, she's sure he means it as a gift, just as she's pretty sure there's still a hand under there someplace, oh pray to Jesus Mary and JoJo the everloving Carpenter there's still a hand under there someplace or he's going to be finishing the book he's working on plus any that might come later typing one-handed. Because where his left hand was there's now just a red and dripping mass. Blood goes slipping between spread starfish things that she supposes are his fingers, and even as she flies to meet him, her feet stuttering down the back porch steps, she's counting those spread red shapes, one two three four and oh thank God, that fifth one's the thumb. Everything's still there, but his jeans are splattered red and still he holds his bloody lacerated hand out to her, the one he plunged through a pane of thick greenhouse glass, shouldering his way through the hedge at the foot of the lawn in order to get to it. Now he's holding out his gift to her, his act of atonement for being late, his blood-bool.

"It's for you," he says as she yanks off her blouse and drapes it around the red and dripping mass, feeling it soak through the cloth at once, feeling the crazy heat of it and knowing - of course! - why that small voice was in such terror of the things she was saying to him, what it knew all along: not only is this man in love with her, he's half in love with death and more than ready to agree with every mean and hurtful thing anyone says about him.

Anyone?

No, not quite. He's not quite that vulnerable. Just anyone he loves. And Lisey suddenly realizes she's not the only one who has said almost nothing about her past.

"It's for you. To say I'm sorry I forgot and it won't happen again. It's a bool. We - "

"Scott, hush. It's all right. I'm not - "

"We call it a blood-bool. It's special. Daddy told me and Paul - "

"I'm not mad at you. I was never mad at you."

He stops at the foot of the splintery back steps, gawking at her. The expression makes him look about ten years old. Her blouse is wrapped clumsily around his hand like a knight's dress gauntlet; once yellow, it's now all bloom and blood. She stands there on the lawn in her Maiden-form bra, feeling the grass tickling her bare ankles. The dusky yellow light which rains on them from the kitchen puts a deep curved shadow between her br**sts. "Will you take it?"

He's looking at her with such childish pleading. All the man in him is gone for now. She sees pain in his long and longing glance and knows it's not from his lacerated hand, but she doesn't know what to say. This is beyond her. She's done well to get some sort of compress on the horrible mess he's made south of his wrist, but now she's frozen. Is there a right thing to say? More important, is there a wrong one? One that will set him off again?

He helps her. "If you take a bool - especially a blood-bool - then sorry's okay. Daddy said so. Daddy tole Paul n me over n over." Not told but tole. He has regressed to the diction of his childhood. Oh jeez. Jeez Louise.

Lisey says, "I guess I take it, then, because I never wanted to go see any Swedishmeatball movie with subtitles in the first place. My feet hurt. I just wanted to go to bed with you. And now look, we have to go to the smucking Emergency Room, instead."