When She Was Bad

CHAPTER SIX 1

The undersides of the fluffy clouds to the east were dawn-pink, the tops in bruised shadow as Lilith, stiff and sore after driving all night, trudged up an asphalt driveway so steep she felt like she should have been roped to something.

Her destination was a pink ranch house with a shingled roof and dormer windows, which appeared to have been airlifted from some 1950s-era suburb complete with hissing lawn sprinklers and little kids riding fat-tired bikes with bells and streamers on the handlebars, then plunked down precariously on the western slope of this scrubby hillside in the boondocks north of Redding.

Lilith paused on the front doorstep, trying to decide whether it was too early to ring the doorbell. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the living-room curtains rustling. She rapped lightly on the green door. “It’s me,” she called. “It’s Lilith-open up.”

The man-or was it a troll? — who opened the door was short, dark, and stocky, shirtless under Ben Davis overalls, with matted hair and beard, and a nose so flat and eyes set so far apart that his broad face seemed vaguely unfinished, like an underdone gingerbread man.

“Hey, L’il T.,” said Lilith.

“Whaddaya want?” He kept one hand out of sight, behind the door.

Before she could reply, a woman’s voice behind him cried out, “Well I’ll be dipped in shit.”

“Mama Rose?”

“No, honey, it’s fucking Cher. I couldn’t stand them dickless Hollywood phonies no more, so I come up here for a break.”

Next thing Lilith knew, a six-foot-tall, orange-haired, two-hundred-pound white woman had shoved the troll out of the way, yanked her inside, and hugged her to an enormous bosom that smelled of cigarettes and cold pizza. “Hope you ain’t still pissed off about…Weed,” she whispered. “I’ll tell you later how it went down-for right now, as far as anybody else is concerned the story is that you run into some folks you recognized, and split with ’em. Okay?”

“But-”

“Later.” Mama Rose held Lilith at arm’s length, looked urgently into her eyes. “Please?”

Lilith shrugged. “Yeah, sure, what the fuck.”

Mama Rose pressed her palms against the girl’s temples, drew her close again, planted a wet kiss on her forehead. “Mmm-wwa! Now let’s get some breakfast into you, we’ll catch up on old times, how’s that sound?”

“We should probably get my car off the road first. The sooner we get it to the shop, the better.” Referring to Carson’s chop shop, where a surprisingly large percentage of Northern California’s stolen vehicles were either parted out or given new identities.

Mama Rose licked her forefinger, touched it to an imaginary stove and made a sizzling sound, then raised her eyebrows inquisitively. When Lilith nodded, Mama Rose caught L’il T.’s eye and nodded toward the driveway. He asked Lilith for the keys.

“They’re in the ignition,” she said, adding hastily: “The thing is, though, I’m not exactly, you know… alone.”

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