Passover

by Aphrodite Anagnost

  She went inside to the bathroom, found a box of tampons. It felt as if layers of an icy membrane were melting, draining her defenses, whatever was left of her coolness. As if a dam inside her had broken, and the blood would pour and pour until it ended in coagulated blackness. Would her bleeding attract the killer—assuming there was just one? Could he smell it like copper, like ozone in air already tainted by an ignited burn pile? Surely, it wasn’t fire the murderer was after. It was blood. And that didn’t make her feel one bit better.

  She pressed a hand to her abdomen as a cramp doubled her over.

  Most mornings, by the time Zack had his toothbrush loaded, Wolfie was sitting just inside the bathroom, sweeping the stone floor with his hyperactive tail. But today, there was something inhospitable in the air. Zack felt it too.

  He whistled and headed down the stairs. “Wolfie! Here boy!”

  The Dachshund lay on his blue velveteen dog bed in the pantry, nose tucked under a paw, eyebrows twitching. Normally, he would listen to Zack and Leo play their instruments then leave his bed early to shadow them for hours. But this morning, his rise to Zack’s call seemed lame and halting.

  Rachel was talking and clattering dishes in the dining room. Something about her voice kept the dog cowering in the pantry.

  “He’s freaked out by all this noise, Mom,” Zack said with a laugh. “Chillax.”

  “Good morning to you, too, Zack.”

  Zack smelled Oreos on her breath when she kissed his cheek, wiping her hands on a towel. She tossed the rag onto the kitchen counter and headed outside to join a muffled conversation between Dave and Sheriff Wise.

  Zack went to sit in the pantry on the dog’s bed, cup of tea in hand. He scooped Wolfie into his lap, humming, rubbing the dog’s soft underbelly. The droopy wiener dog lay limp as Zack got up and carried him from the pantry and up the long stairway to where Leo’s drums pounded out a three-beat rhythm, a waltz, only louder and faster.

  Zack paused at the door on the landing, but it was closed. So he went up another flight to his room. One wall had been painted with wild cats—lions, tigers, and panthers—with the help of his stepdad, against a forest-green background. Zack sat on the bed and picked up his guitar to accompany Leo’s performance. He joined the three-beat rhythm melded into a heavy metal version of a Michael Jackson song about lost children.

  Today was the big day. No one had told Leo about the murders; he was only nine years old. But Zack had seen the story in the local newspaper. Heard it from his friends. He’d read of the murders avidly, inhaling every breathy whisper—all the grisly details, the odd but delicious fact they’d occurred only on nights with a full moon. The funerals hadn’t fazed him. The spirits of the dead were already gone, Isabel had told him. Into the light.

  He searched within for traces of anxiety. Only he wasn’t afraid. After all, there were three deputies, one of them goddess-pretty; another, a Haitian; a long-legged one named Crockett; one sheriff; Lev; a stepfather; and his mother to protect him. As well as Isabel, and a lot of guns. Also, one ferocious dachshund. He smiled at that. A pint-sized milk-chocolate cupcake that never barked.

  But where were his nun-chucks?

  He’d left them on the bureau, but they weren’t there. Only sheet music and a pile of guitar picks. The big green pick with a frog printed on it he’d caught as it flew through the air at a Bucket Head concert. His lucky pick. He strung it back on its chain which he clasped behind his neck. He looked in the bureau drawers, pawed through the pile of jeans and T-shirts in the corner. No nun-chucks. Maybe Leo had them, but doubtful. They were both martial arts students, but his brother’s interest didn’t extend to hand weapons—except for swords.

  “Shit!” Zack stood in the middle of his room, arms crossed, wondering how it had become so orderly overnight, and was now so messy. His mother might’ve cleaned it while he slept. She was a compulsive tidier when nervous. But who’d messed it up? Leo, of course. But so fast?

  Zack flung off his pajamas and tossed them onto a pile. He pulled on jeans and a black shirt, catching the motion in the mirror above the bureau. He looked a little like his mother—black hair, dark green eyes, olive skin. His face was beginning to look sort of like a man’s, except for baby-fat cheeks, and no scars. He badly wanted a scar.

  “Damn it.” Where were those nun-chucks? He’d been hungry, but now the need for steaming waffles disappeared, leaving only the hunger to hold the nun-chucks in his hands. To feel their weight. He wasn’t afraid. Nothing bad would ever happen to him. But he’d feel more prepared if the nun-chucks had been in their usual place on the bureau, waiting to be stuffed into the right-hand pocket of his jeans.

  He stomped down the long stairway toward the foyer, stopping on the landing again, Wolfie trailing behind him. Always coolness there, even in summer. Dave had replaced the old, loose, landing window, but the coolness remained. Dave—he couldn’t bring himself to call his stepfather Dad—always said the damp of the basement climbed the timbers of a shaft beneath the stairs and chilled the worn oak floorboards. He was wrong.

  Zack smiled at the thought.

  Ghosts. But not a big deal. Zack knew one of them—a girl. A beautiful slip of a girl with long blond hair and porcelain skin. She was always dressed in diaphanous white. Zack was mesmerized by her budding breasts and the way she crossed her legs. She’d been coming for months to sit on the sofa on the landing or the tiny loveseat in its closet he’d set up as a study. Sometimes, she came to his bed, floating an inch above the floor. They’d discovered many things together—sex being one of them. Isabel had giggled when he’d zipped open a condom wrapper. Could a ghost have a baby? Neither Zack nor Isabel knew.

  He sat down on the smoke-blue velvet sofa his mother called “the vapors couch.” The voices of Dave and Rachel, and some other guy drifted up from the porch. Who would join him here? Would old Mr. Nelson, a famous Zebulon ghost, finally show up? Or would it be the girl? He hoped for Isabel. He could complain to her without receiving stern advice or smothering worry.

  Isabel had been fifteen when she’d died during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, but had never left the house. There was something she had to do, but didn’t know what. She was waiting.

  When he complained about Dave, who always favored his natural son, Leo, Isabel would hold his hand, listening, sending a chill to his marrow. And a fever to kiss her cool, soft lips. It was as if he had a time machine. Sometimes he thought he could touch the Stone Age, if he wanted to. She was the proof of eternity and this notion had removed all fear of death from his heart.

  Isabel stroked his arm when he talked about his biological father, whom he’d never met. A flight surgeon who’d lost his life trying to remove bullets from the abdomen of a wounded army colonel in Iraq. So if Zack could see and feel Isabel, why didn’t his father come to him?

  She always leaned her head on his shoulder and said, “Perhaps he’s passed.”

  The velvet upholstery grew colder, but no one came. Not Mr. Nelson, not Isabel. He looked up at the ceiling. The swirls of paint were like white snakes slithering to the rhythm of cicadas humming on the roof. He knelt on the sofa and pressed his ear to the wall. The buzz of wings grew louder. Wolfie shook with pleasure. A light the blue of Isabel’s eyes spread beneath the crack below the door until she rose from the glow, her face beautiful and clear in front of him.

  Wolfie licked her hands when she touched him. In all the ghost stories Zack had read, dogs had barked like maniacs at a ghost’s approach. Not Wolfie. Not for Isabel.

  “I heard you calling.” She sank onto the seat next to him, wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. “You summoned me.”

  For the first time, instead of just sitting and waiting for her, he had summoned her. His heart demanded her to come. And she had.

  Her cold lips pressed against his in a Velcro kiss, throwing a few green sparks. “Something’s coming,” she said.

  “Who?” By now he was used to shivering while he held her. He’d learned
to enjoy it. Like when the hair stands up on the back of your neck at a scary movie. “Old Mr. Nelson?”

  “No. You still don’t understand. He’s not really here. Once you’ve gone into the light, you can’t come back.”

  “Then, why does everyone still talk about him?”

  She shrugged. “Because of the way he died.”

  Zack had heard the story from his schoolmates. A gray-bearded soldier, Mr. Nelson had been shot in the leg during the Indian Wars and had gone crazy with laudanum and PTSD He had lain trapped for a whole day under a mound of dead soldiers before he’d been found and brought to the old Zebulon tavern. Hours later, the tavern had caught fire as Mr. Nelson bled after the amputation of his leg. So he was carried outside into an ice storm, where he died, raving.

  Zack believed the story, no matter what his mother had told him. He knew his house sat on the site of the old tavern. It was like one of those Indian burial ground movies. “What about the hauntings? Everyone’s heard of Nelson’s ghost.”

  “He’s gone,” she insisted. “Aren’t you listening?”

  “There really is no Mr. Nelson here at all?”

  “I watched him pass,” she said. “He went into the light.”

  Instead of waiting for her to make the first move, he lightly stroked her leg, sliding her dress to just above her knees. He tasted wine as he kissed her, like at communion. She kissed him again and again, their lips like magnets, Wolfie watching. The electricity slammed his head back into the mahogany scrollwork of the sofa.

  “Ow!” He rubbed his neck. Her hair rose like silken ribbons in a breeze. He put his fingers into the misty corona that encircled her head. “How long will you stay?”

  “I don’t know.” Her eyes narrowed. She turned her head as if listening to some far away voice. “You must leave this house.” Her voice was raspy and tired.

  “Wait. Why?”

  She gazed into his eyes. The years that separated them, her death, her ghostliness—none of that mattered. He trusted her. Felt her love.

  “No,” he said. “Leave? This house? I love you. You’re the reason I stay.”

  She struggled out of their embrace. “You must leave Zebulon now. You and your family.”

  “Isabel.” The bite of wine on his tongue had gone sour. His hands passed through her dissolving shadow as she melted into a puddle of light and slipped back under the door. “Isabel. No, wait.” He sat a moment, longing for her fingertips, her tongue, a brush of teeth, her breath, the velvet touch of her cascading curls. “Please, please come back,” he whispered. “Isabel.”

  His head hurt. He slumped and pressed his eyes with both palms. Only the bar of light through the window behind the door showed in the space beneath it. He got up and twisted the knob. Sunlight shown through the wavy glass window onto rows of saddles on racks. Spare bridles hanging from hooks. The air was thick with the soapy smell of leather and glycerin. Tears pooled at the bottom of his closed throat. He shut the door and plopped back down on the sofa. The landing was warm now. Isabel wouldn’t come back for a while.

  He went downstairs, Wolfie stumbling at his heels.

  Dave and his mother were usually out at the barn by the time Zack got up to fix his breakfast. But she was still sitting on the porch with Dave and Sheriff Wise. Why was the dining room wood stove lit and pumping out so much heat? His parents usually insisted they all keep warm by wearing layers of clothing, to save energy. The entire family could be hospitalized for nerdiness. But now—

  When he went to the door to the side porch, his mother and Dave were sitting in the swing, rocking, looking toward the north pasture. Sheriff Wise was lumbering across the backyard toward Deputy Ruiz, famous among his friends for her tamales and the way she filled that uniform, particularly her trousers. She’d coached Zack’s golf team last fall. She had Bette Davis eyes, except they were brown.

  Whenever the deputy had bent over to scoop a golf ball from a cup, boys would put their hands over their hearts and stagger, pretending to faint.

  “Good morning,” said Rachel.

  “The sheriff’s going to ask Deputy Ruiz for a date,” said Zack, stepping out onto the porch. “Cougar.”

  Dave turned away and toward Rachel. “Wise will give her hell for sitting on a log facing the house and not watching the woods,” he said. “She’s addicted to donut holes. I watched her scarf an entire bag in about five minutes, after a bagel sandwich. Wonder how she stays so thin.”

  “Exercise,” said Zack.

  “She smokes,” said Dave.

  “So?” said Zack. “It’s an electronic cigarette.”

  “She’s got a kid’s metabolism,” said Rachel. “Wait till she has some children.”

  “I can’t find my nun-chucks.” The door to the house opened behind him. Wolfie pushed his way out onto the porch and stood by Zack, staring at Rachel, head cocked.

  “Stay here, boy.” She pointed to the welcome mat made of woven coconut fibers. He wagged his tail and settled down on the mat.

  “Zack, I don’t know where your nun-chucks are,” said Dave. “I want you to go back inside the house and bring me the rifle on the dining room table.”

  Zack hated that patronizing tone, the blaming tone, the one Dave always used when sending him off to do a chore that he could damn well do himself. He let his face go blank—the mask he used with any adult who tried to drill him for information or bend him to his will. If he didn’t obey at once, Dave would explode with accusations. The calmness was fake—a bad acting job. Dave was only a stepfather—he treated Leo better.

  “But I need to tell Mom something.” Zack dropped his head. His curls fell forward draping over one eye. “Mr. Volcano,” he mumbled.

  “What did you say to me?” said Dave.

  “Nothing.” Zack whipped his hair back out of his face. Dave was always ready to spew lava.

  Rachel reached down and put a hand on Wolfie’s head. “Go get the rifle, Zack.”

  “I have to talk to you.”

  “Later.”

  “Now. It’s important.”

  “No, Zack.”

  He didn’t move. “I’m hungry.”

  “Do it,” Rachel said. “Now, please.”

  “Fuck it.” He turned and walked back inside, slamming the screen door. He opened it again. “By the way, Mom. We’d better leave Zebulon. Today. Before dark.”

  • • • •

  At the edge of the north pasture, the sheriff waved and pointed toward the woods. Ruiz looked disgusted, got up, turned toward the trees, and sat back down on the stump again. She stuffed a wrinkled Krispy Kreme bag into her jacket. It was almost nine. The sun shone from the east over a broad meadow. The day was growing warmer, the morning breeze dying. Wise took out his handkerchief, wiped his neck and glared back toward the house. He spotted Lev and lifted a hand.

  Lev was turning horses out onto a pale green field of fescue. He chewed on a long stalk of grass, leaned back against the barn, and tossed a greeting back across the field.

  “I don’t want to see no more horse pucky, Ruiz,” said the sheriff. “Stay sharp. Eyes open, mouth shut.”

  He looked back at Lev, who was rocking on his heels, arms crossed, still sucking on the stalk.

  Ruiz stood and turned, facing away from the house. She patted her pockets and pulled out a real pack of cigarettes.

  Wise cupped his hands around his mouth. “And no smoking!” He shook his head and turned again, heading back in large, determined strides that ate up the field. “What kinda deputy smokes around horses?” he mumbled.

  Dave leaned forward in the rocker, mouth open, staring at his stepson.

  “I can’t find the rifle,” Zack said, his face settling into that glacial blandness again—the expression that meant he was pissed off. Well, tough shit.

  “What do you mean, you can’t find it?” Dave turned his palms up. “One’s on the dining room table. The other’s leaning in the corner next to the china hutch.”

  Zack shrugged.
“They’re not there now.” Leo’s drumming bled away into silence.

  Dave clenched his fists. The boy always opposed him. He usually let it slide, but not today. He wanted to shake him by the shoulders, force him to admit they were in the dining room, but that would do no good. A lecture wouldn’t help, either.

  “Follow me.” He yanked open the porch door and stalked into the dining room. His gaze immediately fixed on the table.

  No rifle there. Nor was Rachel’s propped in the corner.

  “Jesus Christ!” said Dave. He heard her clomp into the dining room behind him. Her footsteps stopped, and she gasped.

  “I told you,” Zack said, stepping inside, Wolfgang behind him. “Where are they?” she said. Wolfie whined and ran for the pantry.

  “Don’t panic,” Dave said, holding up a hand. “There’s a reason for this.” He lowered his voice. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Work as a family and find both of the guns. No one’s going to get excited. Leo might’ve come down and moved them. Something else might’ve happened. Something reasonable.”

  “Well, I didn’t hide them,” said Zack. “They just were gone.”

  “I didn’t say you did.” He gave Zack a long look.

  The boy stared back, cast a glance downward, then looked up from under his eyelashes.

  Dave put a hand on Rachel’s waist. He wanted to pull her to him and kiss her. Bad timing. The rigid set of her shoulders told him she was ready to blow.

  Rachel fumed and ate another candy bar, this time fast. Leo couldn’t have moved the rifles. He’d been upstairs drumming while everyone else was on the porch. Zack had said he hadn’t moved them, so he probably hadn’t. Maybe she or Dave had done it, unthinking. So afraid they’d become unaware, then forgotten about it. At the hospital, she’d observed fugue states, in which patients didn’t know what they were doing from one minute to the next. Gone, ego-less, not at home.

  Her hands were trembling. Did she remember the dead cat? Yes. The talk with the sheriff? Yes. But what had she forgotten? No test for that except to talk to her husband, go over every detail they could both pull up from memory. Maybe she was suffering from a persecutory delusion.