You know the rules. If you act like a dog, you’ll be treated like one. Outside.”
The air between them was silent. Mrs. Collins did not relish punishing her child. She was the opposite of her father in that way. She would never give Brady the hose. She would never let him stand in the elements all night. And she made sure he had a doghouse to keep warm in. But the rules were the rules for a reason. She needed to teach him to be better than her. She needed to give him his own aluminum siding on which to paint his own dreams. It was for his own good.
“One hour, Brady. Or do you want two?”
He was silent. Staring at her. Coiled like a snake.
“One,” he said.
“Good. Then, sit out there for an hour while Mom takes her bath.”
“Okay, Mother,” he said.
She expected some rebellion. She felt guilty when she got none. Maybe he didn’t deserve it this time. But she didn’t want her son to learn the wrong lesson and end up on a gurney in a cafeteria, did she? Of course not. So she took him out to the doghouse in the backyard while the deer watched them. She let him keep his coat.
“I love you, Brady,” she said before she went back into her warm kitchen to get her glass of cold Chardonnay.
*
Brady said nothing in return. He just sat in the doghouse and watched her like he was supposed to. His grandmother had told him this would happen. She had told him everything she wanted him to do right before she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep for his mother’s benefit. She didn’t want his mother to get distracted by something as trivial as a lucid mother.
“Brady, when you’re in the backyard, can you do your grandma a big favor?”
“Sure, Grandma.”
“The next time she throws you in that doghouse, make sure it’s the last. This family needs to heal. Okay?”
“Okay, Grandma.”
The old woman smiled her toothless grin.
“Thank you, Brady. You’re a wonderful little boy. I know it’s been hard. Old people and kids are invisible to the rest of the world. But do you want to know a secret?”
“What?”
“It makes us unbeatable at hide-and-seek.”
After Mrs. Collins went upstairs for her bubble bath, her son crept back into the house and snuck into the kitchen. He pulled the long knife out of the block with his little, freezing fingers. Then, he quietly moved up the stairs just like his grandmother told him to do.
Chapter 79
Mrs. Collins threw on her slippers and robe and walked to the master bathroom. She opened the door and looked at the beautiful room made of marble and glass. Her husband’s construction crews were still working on the new cabinets and had left a few cans of paint and stain. But soon, this room would be all hers again.
She drew herself a nice, warm bath. She threw in the lavender soap chips and watched them bubble. While the bath filled, Mrs. Collins wiped the steam that gathered on the mirror like clouds on a windshield. She looked at the diamond necklace around her neck and felt a measure of pride that little Kathy Keizer had made it out of that cold backyard. Through sheer will, she had turned the aluminum siding into this beautiful bathroom and this beautiful bathtub with the beautiful marble floor.
See the house, Kathy. You’re going to live in a bigger house someday.
The biggest house in town. See the good husband. See the beautiful son.
Mrs. Collins slipped her naked body into the tub. She didn’t know what felt better: the hot water or the cold wine. She looked down at the cuts on her palms. The pools of apple-red blood that the tub carried through the water like soft red clouds. Mrs. Collins closed her eyes and let the hot water dig the cold out of her bones. The cold from that backyard that she could never get rid of. Not even on family trips to Hawaii when she tried to forget that she had ugly cigarette burns and scars on her palms underneath concealer. It was always there.
God, you’re ugly, Kathy Keizer.
She wouldn’t listen to the voice. Not tonight. She was not Kathy Keizer anymore. She remembered the moment when the priest told the flock, “I now present you Mr. and Mrs. Bradford Collins.” She used the name Kathleen from that moment on. Mrs. Kathleen Collins.
Kathy Keizer was as dead to her as her father was.