When She Was Bad

2

Why was Lily so angry at him all the time? Lyssy had asked himself repeatedly, during the course of the long drive. Only angry wasn’t exactly the right word-it seemed more like she was disgusted or disappointed with him.

But if that was the case, why had she suddenly changed her mind and insisted he leave with her? “Are we escaping?” he’d asked her.

“Well, duh! Unless maybe you’re looking forward to being locked up for the rest of your life.”

Freedom, Lily: it was everything Lyssy had wished for, stretching out in front of him like the rainbow highway in the bonus round of the “Super Mario Kart” video game. He couldn’t help thinking that deep down, even though he’d never be able to admit it to anybody, Dr. Al would secretly be happy for him.

So Lyssy had done as he was told (not exactly a novel experience for someone who’d been virtually raised in an institution): changed into the clothes Lily had found for him-baggy white T-shirt and button-fly Levi’s with the cuffs turned up-then made himself small on the floor in the back of the big black Land Rover in the Corders’s garage, covered himself with a scratchy, olive-green blanket, and kept his mouth shut unless he was spoken to.

Which hadn’t been often. Around midnight Lily had asked him if he knew how to drive. He said he didn’t think so; she said she hadn’t thought so, either. And a few hours later she told him to stay out of sight and keep perfectly still under the blanket-they were stopping for gas. When he told her he had to pee she told him to hold it-it was another agonizing hour or so before she pulled over to the side of a deserted stretch of road so he could relieve himself.

But never mind, Lyssy had promised himself-sooner or later he’d win her over, just like he’d won over all the nurses and psych techs at the Institute. And who knows, maybe there’d even be a fire or a flood or a rabid dog he could save her from.

Eventually, despite the jouncing he was taking, Lyssy had fallen asleep. When he awoke again the Rover had stopped-which was probably what had awakened him-and for once Lily hadn’t barked at him to stay down. Instead she ordered him to wait for her in the car. “They don’t take real well to strangers showing up uninvited,” she’d told him. “Lemme just give ’em a little advance notice-and Lyssy?”

“Yes?”

“When you do meet them, don’t say anything stupid.”

When Lyssy said that wasn’t very likely because, as Dr. Al had once told him, his IQ was so high it was practically off the charts, Lily rolled her eyes. “On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t say anything at all.”

“Very funny,” he called after her-it had taken a few seconds to think up the retort. The sky was beginning to lighten; he could hear the birds starting to whistle and chirp, just like they did in the arboretum at dawn. Only this wasn’t the arboretum, Lyssy reminded himself, closing his eyes to hear them better-it was the real thing. Awesome! as the ODDs and CODs used to say back on 2-East. Su-weeeeeet!

“Hey!”

Startled, Lyssy opened his eyes-a grotesque-looking creature with matted hair and beard, a flattened nose, and wide-set, off-kilter eyes was tapping on the car window. “Oh-hi.”

The hairy stranger opened the driver’s door and climbed in. “They said for you to go on up-I’ll take care of the vee-hicle.”

“Up there?” Lyssy pointed toward the pink house on the hillside.

“Good guess, Einstein.” It was the only building within sight.

Openness, the astonishing absence of walls, the unsettling weight of the borderless sky-Lyssy’s shoulders were hunched as he started up the asphalt mountain, as though he were expecting a giant roc to swoop down on him from that enormous, unprecedented firmament.

The climb, he estimated, was the equivalent of mounting the Japanese footbridge in the arboretum around twenty times. He was limping badly by the time he reached the front doorstep; several seconds went by before he realized the door was not going to slide open automatically. “Raised in captivity, released into the wild,” he intoned, in the voice of a Discovery Channel announcer. “Can this magnificent creature adapt? Will he survive?”

It was Lily who answered the door, once he’d solved the dilemma of the doorbell. She led him back to the kitchen and introduced him to Mama Rose, the big redhead at the stove, who told him her casa was his casa, complimented Lily on having plucked a ripe one from the cutie-pie tree, then asked Lyssy if he was hungry.

“Starving,” he said, taking a seat at the beat-up, burn-scarred kitchen table.

Mama Rose slid a chipped dinner plate heaped with scrambled eggs and bacon in front of him, filled a mug with steaming coffee. “Thanks.” He lightened the coffee with half-and-half from a cow-shaped creamer and dumped in a few heaping teaspoons of sugar.

From the back of the house, they heard a toilet flushing loud enough to wake the dead. “One of these days we gotta get that fixed,” said Mama Rose apologetically.

“The prodigal daughter returns,” drawled a male voice from the doorway a few seconds later. A lanky man, handsome in a narrow-eyed Clint Eastwood sort of way, wearing flip-flops, a ratty bathrobe, and a khaki bush hat with the brim pinned up on one side, entered the kitchen, saw Lyssy for the first time, and turned back to Lilith. “Who the fuck’s that? You know better than to-”

“Hi Carson.” Lilith hurried over and threw her arms around him. He hugged her reluctantly, still glaring over her shoulder at the intruder. “That’s my friend Lyssy. We were in kind of a jam, we thought maybe we could hole up here for a couple days.”

Carson pushed Lilith away-but gently-and turned his glare from Lyssy to Mama Rose. In the way of old married couples everywhere, they exchanged a good deal of information in glance and gesture, the gist being: M.R.: Be cool for now, we’ll talk about this later. C: Goddamn right we will.

Lilith intercepted enough of the message to understand she and Lyssy were out of danger for the time being. She hurried back to Lyssy, stood behind him with her hand on his shoulder. “Lyssy, this is Carson-he and Mama Rose saved my ass up in Sturgis.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Lyssy.

“That goddamn well better not be the last of the bacon,” was Carson’s greeting. Lyssy quickly transferred the surviving bacon strips from his plate onto a paper napkin, which he handed to Carson.

“Sir, you are a scholar and a fucking gentleman,” Carson said grandly, rolling the bacon up in the napkin, then gnawing sideways at the protruding strips as he pulled a chair out with his free hand, twirled it around, and straddled it backward, facing the table. “Any friend of Lilith’s…had better watch his ass.”

Sounded like humor; Lyssy forced a chuckle. He was more interested in why Carson had called her Lilith. It might have been a slip of the tongue, Lyssy told himself, or maybe a memory glitch-or perhaps Lilith was her real name, and Lily her add-a-Y nickname, like Wally for Walter, or Lyssy for Ulysses.

But deep down, he knew better. Because there was yet another explanation, one that accounted for all the discrepancies he’d been pretending not to notice and trying not to think about for the last twelve hours or so. Such as how the timid fawn he’d shown around the arboretum only a few days ago had been transformed into a bossy, fearless, outgoing, self-assured young woman with the vocabulary of a longshoreman.

“Lilith,” he echoed, from around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Lilith, Lilith, Lilith.”

“That’s my name,” she said, glaring daggers at him across the table. “Don’t fucking wear it out.”