The Open Curtain Read online

  Rudd didn’t know what to wear to the viewing, settled on a red tie and a white shirt, his church pants. He stood in line to get to the body, hands in pockets, wondering what he would feel when he saw her corpse. Her face was pale under the rouge. He got his head down close enough to see the pores of her skin. Her eyelid, he could see, was just slightly open, two or three strands of cotton visible between the lashes. If there hadn’t been people behind him, he would have touched her skin. Just thinking about it made him feel lightheaded.

  It suddenly became too much of a bother to get in trouble in Sunday school. Instead, he sat still in his chair, blanking it out, his arms crossed, answering only when he had no other choice. The answers were the same as they had been when he was six—each year they were taught the same things over and over again in a slightly different format. Even the objections that some of the students raised, he realized, were objections they had been preconditioned to raise for years, easy objections with pat solutions. He could rattle them out as easily as anyone:

  TEACHER: Does God answer prayers?

  CLASS [in unison]: Yes, of course.

  TEACHER: So, if I pray for a red corvette, I’ll get it, right?

  CLASS: It’s not a worthy prayer.

  OBJECTOR: What if you need the red corvette to convert someone?

  TEACHER [solicitous]: That would be a worthy purpose. But I can’t possibly imagine a car is going to bring anyone closer to God.

  OBJECTOR: What if you pray for something that God knows will be bad for you?

  TEACHER: Like a red corvette? [Laughs.] Then if you’re worthy, God gives you what you really need.

  OBJECTOR: So, if you’re not worthy, you end up with the car?

  TEACHER: If you’re not worthy, you end up with nothing. It’s best to ask God to give you what you need to fulfill his will. There’s no need to be too specific.

  Perfect, thought Rudd, same technique fortune-tellers use.

  One Sunday, their teacher passed out a slip of mimeographed paper, a genealogical tree on it in blue, slightly blurred ink.

  “Today,” he said, “we’re going to learn about family history.”

  Rudd was instructed to write his parents’ names in the first two slots. If you knew your parents’ birthdays or—he suggested, looking at Rudd—death day, you should write that information in the half-slots below marked “b” and “d.” The full slots on the next column were for your name and the names of your brothers and sisters.

  Rudd looked at the form. He wrote his father’s name in the first slot. Gyle Theurer. He wrote his mother’s name in the second slot.

  He crossed to the next column, wrote his name in the first slot. There were five other slots, all of them blank. He looked at the form. It seemed imbalanced, his name crowded at the top as it was.

  He began to write his name again in the second slot, then stopped. Crossing out the “R” and the “u,” he wrote instead, Lael Korth. Next to “b” he wrote a “?” and then, in parentheses, bastard. Beside his father’s name, he drew in another line and wrote, Anne Korth. It had been four or five years since he had read the letters. He was surprised he still remembered the names.

  He stayed staring at the tree, trying to figure out what it meant. Then suddenly the teacher was behind him, staring down at the paper.

  “What’s this?” the teacher asked.

  Rudd smiled weakly, turned the paper over.

  “You have a brother? Really?”

  “A half-brother.”

  “Your mother’s never said anything about it.”

  Rudd shrugged. “It’s a little complicated,” he said.

  Later, when the teacher wasn’t looking, he folded the paper once, then again, and slipped it into his pocket.

  That evening, at supper, his mother brought it up. He denied everything.

  “Brother Meyers told me all about it,” she said. “He said you even wrote the word bastard. What kind of hellion writes the word bastard in church? Don’t lie to me.”

  He just looked at her, then looked at his fork.

  “You don’t have a half-brother,” she said. “I’ve never been with any man but your father.”

  “I’m not saying—”

  “To be vulgar, I’ve never had intercourse with anyone but your father.”

  “But—”

  “Are you accusing me of being a whore?”

  He shut up. He looked at his hand, saw he was holding the fork tightly, fingers whitening around it. He let go, watched it clatter onto the plate.

  “Mind the china,” she said.

  “It’s Dad I’m—”

  “There are certain rules in this house—”

  “Goddam!” he shouted. “I read the letters. I know.”

  “What letters?” she said. “I don’t see any letters.” She snorted. “You and your ‘goddam,’” she said. “The only bastard around here is you, and you weren’t born that way. You had to grow into it.”

  “I know—”

  “There are rules in this house,” she said. “One of them is to treat the china with care. You know that. You know what the other rules are as well. I don’t have to state them. If you don’t care for them, there’s the door.”

  He was shaking but he stayed seated. Later that night, his mother in bed with a headache, he took the telephone book out. He looked through the Provo listings, went on to Mapleton, Orem, Spanish Fork. In Springville he found an A. Korth.

  He dialed the number, listened to it ring.

  It clicked on, a woman’s voice at the other end.

  “Mrs. Korth? Anne Korth?”

  There was a long static moment.

  “Hello?” he said. “Please,” he said. “Can you help me?”

  “You must have the wrong number,” the voice said, and hung up.

  3

  He asked around at school, trying to figure out which school bus would get him to South Provo and closest to Springville. He stumbled up onto it after the last bell. The driver looked at him suspiciously.

  “I don’t recognize you,” he said.

  “I don’t recognize you, either,” said Rudd, and blushed.

  “You’re sure it’s my bus you want?”

  Rudd nodded and passed into the back. There was a group of boys in the last seats playing five card stud for nickels across the aisle, one of them keeping a running tally on the inside cover of a geometry textbook. Howard somebody, Rudd heard announced, was “kicking our asses.” He squeezed into a seat between two students he half-knew. “Dickwipe,” said one, punching him in the shoulder. He tried to hold his face neutral, looking straight ahead at the neck of the girl in front of him.

  He stayed on the bus as it went south, then east, students filing off. The bench in front of him opened and he struggled out from between his half-acquaintances to take it. “Motherfucker,” the boy on the outer edge suggested as he struggled to force his legs past.

  The bus turned north. He stood up and moved toward the front, swaying against the rhythm. When it stopped, he got off, looked around for a city bus marker. The kid who had called him motherfucker was out and near him and prancing about, asking Rudd if he wanted to fight.

  “I don’t want to fight,” Rudd told him without looking at him, which the boy took as his cue to shove him in the back. Rudd tumbled down, scraping his palms, dropping his books.

  Rudd stood up, straightened his glasses, licked his palms, rubbed them against his jeans. He slowly gathered his books.

  “Do you want to fight now?” the boy asked.

  Rudd shook his head.

  “What’s wrong with you?” the boy asked.

  “Nothing,” said Rudd. “I just don’t want to fight.”

  He started walking south. There was no city bus marker that he could see. The other boy pushed Rudd from behind again and he felt his head jerk and snap. It made a muscle in his neck ache. He kept walking. A few steps later the boy pushed him again.

  He stopped and put his books down.

&
nbsp; “I want to fight now,” he said, and held his fists awkwardly out.

  The other boy skittered a few steps back, smiled broadly. “Fuck all,” he said. “You’re not worth my time.”

  He was walking backwards on the side of the state route, his thumb out, books awkward under the other arm, slowly passing the cement works, when he saw the police car. He pulled his hand in, swiveled around. Putting his head down, he concentrated on walking forward.

  He heard the police car pull up beside him.

  “Hey,” the officer said.

  He stopped, looked up.

  “Come over here,” the officer said.

  He hitched his books higher under his arm. Walking over, he stood beside the car’s open window.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Rudd,” he said, his voice wavering, breaking.

  “What’s your first name?”

  “That is my first name.”

  When the officer implied that he was a liar, Rudd showed him the name written inside the cover of a schoolbook.

  “I’ll be damned,” the officer said. “What the Hell kind of name is that?” He pushed his hat back a little on his head to reveal a damp clump of hair.

  “You hitchhiking?” he asked.

  Rudd hesitated, nodded.

  “Don’t you know that’s illegal?”

  Rudd nodded again.

  The police officer looked up at him. “Didn’t nobody ever teach you to lie?”

  Rudd shook his head.

  “Not yet anyway. Get in,” the officer said, and when Rudd tried to climb into the front, “the back.”

  Rudd got in, pushing himself over onto the seat, staring at the grille between himself and the officer. He reached out and touched it. Putting his books down on the seat, he carefully wrapped his fingers around the door handle. As the officer began to drive, Rudd pulled the handle, pushed on the door slightly. It didn’t open.

  “Suppose you tell me where you were heading?”

  “Springville.”

  “I can see that. Where in Springville?”

  Rudd watched him through the grille.

  “I’m meeting my brother.”

  “You live in Springville?”

  “No.”

  “And your brother doesn’t either, is my guess. You’re going to Springville to raise Hell.”

  “No, he lives there. Half-brother. It’s kind of complicated.”

  “It’s always kind of complicated,” said the officer, smiling. “That’s what they all tell me right before I take them down to the station and book them.”

  Rudd looked out the window. They would give him some change for a phone call. He would have to call his mother. If she was in a good mood, she would come down to the police station, drag him home, yell at him a few hours. If not, anything could happen. He watched the trees flick by, then the county country-western bar, the turnoff to reach the freeway. Welcome to Springville.

  “Aren’t you taking me the wrong way?”

  “You said Springville, right?”

  “But I—,” said Rudd. “I mean I thought—”

  “I figure a boy roped with a first name like Rudd already has about as much punishment as he can take.”

  They came to the middle of the town and the officer asked him where to go. He stuttered, started leafing through his books looking for the scrap of paper with the address on it.

  “Unless you were lying to me after all,” said the officer when after a moment Rudd still hadn’t answered. “I don’t cut slack to liars.”

  Rudd kept looking through the books.

  “You could have just written the name in those books without it being your name. How do I know they’re your books?”

  “Here it is,” he said, and read the address.

  They drove to Third, turned, drove east a few blocks. It was a corner house in the middle of a square plot, the house itself squarish and small, thrown together with red brick, gray shingles.

  “That’s it?” asked the officer.

  “I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  He thanked the officer, tried again to get out of the car. The door wouldn’t open. The officer, he saw, was out of the car, walking back. Rudd rearranged his books, moved them to his other hand. When the door was opened for him, he stepped out.

  He was halfway to the front door before he realized the officer was following him. He turned slightly.

  “Thanks for the ride,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You don’t have to stay.”

  The officer smiled wryly. “I’d just like to see how the complications unravel.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It means I want to see if you were telling the truth.”

  Rudd turned slowly back. The door was a textured yellow, the paint puckering and flaking to reveal a gray-green undercoat. He looked at it, then at the doorbell beside. He reached out, pressed it.

  He could hear from within the house the chime strike the first eight notes of some tune that seemed familiar. He couldn’t place what it was before the door itself was flung open and standing before him was a boy much his own age, slightly blonder, slightly bigger.

  “This is my brother,” Rudd told the policeman, looking all the while steadily at the boy. “Lael.”

  “Lyle,” the boy said.

  “Lael,” said Rudd to the policeman, “his name is Lael.”

  The boy looked at him, opened and closed his mouth.

  The officer took off his hat and held it by the visor, knocked the brim against his thigh.

  “This is your brother?” the officer asked the boy.

  “You can see the resemblance,” said Rudd.

  “I want to hear it from his own lips.”

  The boy licked his lips, shrugged. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “He’s my brother.”

  The officer picked his way down the path, through the dandelion-ridden lawn and back to the cruiser. Rudd lifted his hand, smiled, waved as the cruiser pulled away.

  Before he could lower his arm, he was spun about, the boy’s knuckles backhanding his face. He stumbled off the porch and into the hedge, his books scattering. He was still struggling to catch himself when Lael’s foot struck him hard in the stomach and sent him lurching onto the damp grass. Somehow before he hit the ground Lael was already atop him, straddling his hips, knees pinning down his arms.

  “Now tell me who you really are,” Lael said.

  “I’m sorry,” Rudd said.

  “The world is full of sorry people,” said Lael. “What’s your game?”

  “Game?”

  Lael drew his arm back, slapped him. Rudd’s cheek began to throb.

  “Nobody uses me,” said Lael. “Never. Start talking.”

  4

  It wasn’t until the next year, when Rudd had his driver’s license and had saved enough money to buy a used scooter, that he began to see more of his half-brother, always at Rudd’s initiative. It was a Vespa, white, very stylish as it turned out, though Rudd hadn’t realized this when he bought it. He, in any case, was incapable of remodeling himself to fit the scooter, and thus always felt slightly humiliated riding it. Lael fit no better, he knew. He looked at least as out of place, maybe more, but he didn’t seem to care.

  On a Friday or Saturday Rudd would ride the scooter down Ninth East, toward Springville. He kept the scooter close to the side of the road, cars passing him or sometimes pressing close behind. He would stop halfway, at the cement plant, to use the pay phone. If Lael was home, he kept going; if not, he sometimes kept going, sometimes went home.

  He thought of calling earlier—from his house if he could get his mother off the telephone long enough, or from the gas station a few blocks away from home. Yet there was satisfaction in the half trip, in turning around at the cement plant with his brother unseen, as well as in the full trip. He had come to think of both as something he needed.

  Besides, mostly Lael was there.

 
It was better when Lael was out in front waiting for him when he arrived. Once he called, Lael always said he would be sitting on the curb, waiting, but he rarely was. Rudd would wait, balanced on his scooter, finally blowing his horn. Lael, when he came out, came slowly, maddeningly, as if disinterested.

  “I’m driving,” he always said, and Rudd let him, not knowing where he would take them.

  They hardly talked, just drove. The rare moments when Rudd broke the silence, Lael answered succinctly, no wasted words. He gave away nothing. Weeks passed with Rudd learning very little of Lael.

  “Who are your friends?” he asked one day, holding on to the back of the seat as Lael labored the scooter up Spanish Fork Canyon.

  Lael flicked his head back slightly. “You wouldn’t know them,” he said.

  “Just give me some names.”

  Taking the scooter off the highway, Lael slipped carefully down a gravel access road and parked near the railroad line. They walked onto the tracks, skipping rocks down the ties, then walked over the trestle and down to the riverbank.

  “Come on,” said Rudd. “Tell me something.”

  Lael shrugged. “I don’t think so,” he said. When Rudd kept pushing, Lael took the scooter keys out of this pocket, threatened to throw them into the river.

  Rudd told his mother nothing anymore, certainly nothing about Lael. When she asked where he went each week, he made things up, mentioned the names of people at school he wanted to be friends with but wasn’t. Blair Manning, for instance, who he pretended to her was a boy. He asked himself if it felt different having a half-brother, was certain it did but couldn’t quite say how.

  Each weekend passed quickly. During the week he woke up at seven each morning to go to school. His mother, perhaps feeling she was losing him, finally bought him contact lenses. She began to hover uneasily around him in the evening. He started to resent her, succeeded in doing so until the weekend came and he drove off to see Lael again, then came back and lied to her. He would feel guilty and tender for a day, then start hating her again. They gradually adjusted to become tired of one another at approximately the same instant: by the weekend he was ready to go and she seemed glad—though she would never admit to it aloud—to have him gone. He rolled the scooter out of the garage and out into the street and started off.