by Ronald Malfi
“Unless sometimes they are,” I’d told you.
After you left the house that morning, I dug out some wrapping paper from the hall closet and swaddled the plaque in chintzy Santa Claus and reindeer foil. I stuck a festive red bow on one corner. Voilà!
It was no secret to either one of us where we hid each other’s gifts. Hell, it was very nearly a game of temptation, wasn’t it? Ours was a modest-sized townhome but that walk-in closet off the master bedroom was enormous. All my clothes and personal belongings neatly filed away on my side of the closet, all your stuff strewn and cluttered and heaped on your side of the closet. Christ, Allison, we were the original Odd Couple, weren’t we? Our stuff appeared caught in some perpetual standoff, like cowboys facing each other at opposite ends of a dusty dirt road.
I always kept your gifts in my (faux) alligator-hide footlocker, which I’d humped around with me since my days at the University of Maryland. You always hid mine away inside your hope chest, which you kept shoved beneath a rack of what you called your “office clothes” and looked for all the world like a child’s coffin.
I knelt down before my footlocker, lifted the latch, and prised it open amidst a chorus of squealing hinges. As always, the smell of old books and gym socks slapped me in the face. This was the case no matter how many pine-scented air fresheners I dumped in there. Among my old high-school yearbooks, some academic texts, and a few boxed-up novel manuscripts I’d written in longhand on yellow legal pads while still in college (all of them terrible), there were a few wrapped Christmas gifts for you already in there. I moved them aside and made room for the newly wrapped plaque.
I shut the footlocker’s lid, grunted as I rose to my feet, and was about to head out of the closet when I noticed something peculiar. At some point, Allison, you had put a lock on the lid of your hope chest. A metal clasp and eyelet with a padlock running through it. It was possible you had done this some time ago, but I was only noticing it now. Something about it struck me not only as odd, but caused a flicker of disquiet to come alive in the pit of my stomach. People put locks on things when they want to keep them safe. People put locks on things when they don’t want other people to see what they’re hiding inside.
I tugged on the lock. It was sturdy. I couldn’t tell how new it was just from looking at it.
Probably got me one hell of a Christmas gift this year, I told myself, though this didn’t help settle the disquiet that had risen in me at the sight of that lock.
Ignorant to the fact that, by this time, the trajectory of my life had already been wholly and irrevocably altered, I went downstairs, clicked on the television, then poured myself a large mug of coffee in the kitchen. It had cooled in the pot, so I popped it in the microwave then stepped out onto the back deck for a cigarette while it reheated. Although the day was abnormally warm, the overcast sky looked ready to dump some snow. While I smoked—I did this whenever you were out of the house; you abhorred me smoking—I searched the sky for the hawk I’d spotted twice earlier, but the fellow was nowhere in sight. Somewhere in the distance, probably out by the highway, I could hear police sirens. Closer, a dog barked incessantly into the gray late morning.
When I went back inside, I realized that at least some of the sirens I had been hearing were coming from the TV. I retrieved my coffee from the microwave then stood looking over the counter at the image on the television screen. And, for a moment, I wasn’t able to reconcile what I was looking at. In a way, it was like hearing my own voice coming out of a tape recorder—familiar yet momentarily unidentifiable. But then I realized what I was looking at: Harbor Plaza, the outdoor strip mall out by the highway, with its tidy row of shops now partially concealed behind the flashing rack-lights of several police cruisers. Superimposed at the bottom of the screen were the words ACTIVE SHOOTER.
I set my coffee on the counter before I could drop it to the floor. The TV remote was on the counter, so I grabbed it and thumbed the volume louder.
“…where police have shut down the road until they are able to gain control of the situation, where, as we’ve been reporting, a man opened fire less than twenty minutes ago in the Ease of Whimsy boutique here at Harbor Plaza…”
The image on the screen changed. A different angle of the Harbor Plaza shopping center, I could see police cars blocking the entrance to the parking lot. There was an ambulance in the background. A snarl of traffic was being redirected by police waving flares. Switching to a third angle, I could see people being speedily escorted by police from the Fat Rooster Café with their hands on their heads. I recognized none of them.
It was always a scavenger hunt to locate my cell phone, but somehow I managed to find it right there beside the coffeemaker. I dialed your number, Allison. It rang six times before it went to voicemail. In the time it took, my body had exuded a staggering amount of sweat and my scalp had gone prickly. I felt like a piece of uranium radiating poison into the atmosphere. I disconnected the call and immediately called you back. Again: six rings, then straight to voicemail.
There’s probably too much going on for you to stop and answer your phone, I told myself. Maybe you even lost it in all the commotion. It was a mantra I repeated over and over to myself as I got in my Civic and sped down Arlette Street toward the highway. There was a ridiculous amount of traffic, which I attributed to the police blocking off the roads surrounding Harbor Plaza. I sat, unmoving, behind a Chevy Equinox with its blinker flashing and a bumper sticker that said KEEP EARTH CLEAN, IT’S NOT URANUS for what felt like a decade. I was no longer a glowing rod of uranium, but rather had transmogrified into some amphibious thing, clammy with perspiration, fingers joined together by a translucent connectivity of webbing as I clutched the steering wheel.
“Fuck it.”
I spun the wheel and tore across the rumble strip at the shoulder of the road, thump-thump-thump-thump-thump, loose change in the cup holder rattling, a half-empty bottle of spring water jouncing in the passenger-side foot well. Car horns blared at me. I hit redial on my cell phone and the Bluetooth automatically engaged the car’s stereo. The ringing of your cell phone caused the speakers to crackle. Six rings then straight to voicemail. Your perfunctory prompt to leave a message. For the first time in five years of marriage and thousands of times calling your cell phone, I noticed you don’t say your name—just a cursory order to leave a message.
None of those people hurrying out of the Fat Rooster with their hands on their heads were answering cell phones. Maybe the police won’t let them.
I bypassed the highway exit and instead took the winding back road through a small subdivision. At the end of the road, just as I approached the plaza’s intersection, another knot of traffic brought me to a sudden halt.
“Come on, Allison,” I said, redialing your number. Ringing and voicemail. Ringing and voicemail. “Answer the damn phone.”
It’s not like you always answered your phone when I called. I often got your voicemail when I tried to reach you. This was no different.
Up ahead, I could see the lights of the police cars reflected in the shop windows on the far side of the street. Two uniformed officers were rerouting traffic, cars trundling over the grassy shoulders and redirecting themselves. Cars passed by me, heading in the direction from which they’d just come, moving with the cautious, halting crawl of someone who was lost. There was a 7-Eleven gas station to my left, a small collection of people standing out by the pumps observing the situation. I spun my wheel and hopped the curb, scraping the undercarriage, until I was in the gas station’s parking area. I jumped out of my car and jogged toward the mob of people, calling, “What’s going on? What’s going on?”
“Some guy shot up the strip mall,” said a woman. She looked stricken, like someone forcefully roused from a nightmare.
“He’s dead, he’s dead,” said a tall man wearing a blue turban. He had a great white moustache that curled to points on either side. He had his cell phone to one ear, a finger screwed into the other.
“Who
?” someone else said.
“The shooter, I think,” said the man in the turban. “Wait, wait…” He uncorked his finger from his ear and pistoned it above his head. He began speaking into the phone in a language I did not understand.
My cell phone still clutched in one hand, I proceeded to run toward the two police officers directing traffic at the intersection. One of them saw me and shouted something at me but I didn’t understand. It felt like bees were swarming around inside my head. Only when the officer came out of the intersection and approached me at a quick clip, one hand held up at me in a stop-running-you-idiot gesture, did I pause halfway across the road.
“Get back!” he yelled.
I uttered something about my wife.
“You’re going to get hit,” he yelled, motioning toward the confusion of traffic that was trying to reroute in my direction.
I jumped backward onto the curb. From here, I could see the parking lot of the plaza. People were clustered together by the First National Bank. I headed in that direction, vaguely aware that someone—probably that cop in the middle of the street—was once again shouting at me. A truck screeched to a stop as I hurried across the road toward the plaza, the shiny chrome of its bumper mere inches from me. The driver laid on his horn and shouted something while I was simultaneously startled by the sudden whirring of helicopter rotors directly overhead. The thing appeared out of nowhere and cut low as it circled around the plaza, over the street, the nearby trees, the baseball field and firehouse on the opposite side of the road, then back again.
People sat on metal benches outside the bank and stood like herded cattle at the farthest point of the parking lot. Most of them were on cell phones, including a teenage girl who sobbed uncontrollably as she held her iPhone to one ear. I passed through them like a ghost, gripping dark-haired women by their shoulders to turn them around so I could see if one of them was you, Allison. None were. I shoved my way through the mob until I could see a shimmer of broken glass collected on the sidewalk outside the boutique. There were cops and paramedics everywhere. I saw some news trucks and cameras out there, too. Overhead, the helicopter made another pass. I tried to advance up the sidewalk toward the boutique, but another police officer—a woman with striking green eyes and a no-bullshit expression—shoved me back with a hand on my sternum.
“I’m looking for my wife,” I said, and held up my cell phone as if it was some verification required for admission. “Her name’s Allison Decker.”
“Sir, you’ll have to stand over there with the others.”
“She’s wearing a red beret,” I said.
The cop’s stern expression did not change when she grabbed me around the forearm and led me back toward the crowd. My whole body felt weightless; this police officer could have lifted me over her head with one hand, had she wanted to.
“Listen to me,” she said, once we’d reached the outskirts of the parking lot. “See the fire station?”
I’d seen it a million times, of course, but I followed her gaze across the street to where the Harbor Volunteer Fire Department’s two-bay brick building stood among a corral of fir trees. Like a dummy, I nodded my head.
“Go there,” said the cop.
“But my wife—”
“You need to go there. It’s a rally point. Do you understand?”
I didn’t—it was as if she were speaking gibberish—but I felt myself nodding my head.
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Aaron,” I managed. “Aaron Decker. My wife is Allison. She’s wearing a red beret.” Because how many goddamn red berets were out here bobbing around in some suburban Maryland parking lot?
“Go across the street and wait, Mr. Decker.”
Still nodding like an imbecile, I backed away from her until my shoulders struck a van parked alongside the curb. I turned and saw a face in the van’s window—a young girl, maybe eight or nine, staring right at me. The fear in her eyes was unmistakable. I glanced around again at the crowd of people, their faces filled with equal parts terror, grief, shock, confusion. One woman was clutching a small boy to her hip, tears streaking down her face. A man in a puffy green jacket kept touching a small cut on his forehead then looking at his bloodied fingertips with incomprehension, a robot programmed to execute some repetitive motion.
When there was a break in the traffic, I hustled across the street toward the fire station. Both bay doors were open. Folding chairs had been set out, many of them occupied by people who had presumably been instructed to do just as I had by the police—come here and… what? Wait?
It occurred to me that you might be here now, Allison. Like me, some no-nonsense police officer may have directed you to come here and wait for the proverbial smoke to clear. That was possible, wasn’t it? I dialed your cell phone again as I maneuvered through the crowd inside the fire station looking for you. I saw that other people were doing the same—nearly everyone had a phone to their ear. The difference was, these people were all talking to someone on the other end of the line. Me? Six rings and then voicemail.
A woman with a clipboard came over to me and asked my name. I gave it to her, then told her I was looking for my wife. I gave her your name. She consulted her clipboard then looked up at me with a solemn expression. My wife was not on her list.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means she isn’t here.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re just gathering information, Mr. Decker. We’re trying to make sure people find who they’re looking for as quickly as possible.”
“My wife. I’m looking for my wife. She won’t answer her phone.”
“There’s a lot going on at the moment,” she said, as if by way of explanation.
“Could you tell me what exactly happened?”
“I don’t exactly know,” said the woman. She was middle-aged, overweight, a frizz of dyed red hair like a helmet encapsulating her head. But her eyes were sympathetic. “A man started shooting at people in one of those stores.”
“Someone said he’s dead.”
“I believe so.”
“Who else? Was anyone else hurt?”
She touched my arm. My whole body was shaking, and I thought maybe she could feel it. “We’re just trying to piece everything together right now, Mr. Decker. In the meantime, you could have a seat. It’s best if you sit down. I can bring you some water or maybe a coffee.”
“I don’t want anything.”
“You should sit down.”
I found an empty folding chair beside a large metal trashcan. I sat down and stared at the assortment of Styrofoam garbage in the can. In my lap, my cell phone’s screen went dark. I didn’t dial your number again, not just then, but instead I focused all my attention on it, willing it to come alive, to vibrate and chime with your specific ringtone (birds chirping), for your name to fill the screen, for you to reach out to me and let me know that you were safe somewhere close by, that you had decided to go to the Annapolis mall instead of the plaza, and you were only now hearing about what happened, and shit, so sorry for all the missed calls, but you’d left your cell phone in the car.
An ambulance peeled down the road, sirens blaring. People stopped and watched it go. I bolted out of my chair and wandered toward the street. The fire station was too claustrophobic; I needed fresh air. The mild December afternoon had grown cold beneath the cloud cover, but I didn’t care. I shivered, hugging myself, then looked at the sky. Goddamn if the hawk wasn’t back, spinning those lazy circles against the low-slung clouds. Only now, from this proximity, I could see it wasn’t a hawk at all, but some large carrion bird waiting to feast on something dead or dying on the ground below.
5
By two-thirty, most of the people who had gathered at the fire station had gone. Those who remained looked like zombies, like the last kids picked for dodge ball; there was a contagious scurviness about them that prompted me to keep my distance and refuse eye contact. The crowds across the street had
dispersed as well, with the exception of the police and the news crews. The road was still closed.
Still at the fire station, I sat in my chair holding a paper cup of lukewarm coffee. Police officers would periodically come in and converse in hushed voices with the woman holding the clipboard. I recognized one of the officers as the green-eyed, stern-faced woman who had instructed me to come here and wait. The rally point, she’d called it. No one here was rallying. Two minutes earlier, a woman in jeans and a fur-collared jacket had been led away howling. Before that, a guy in a turtleneck had passed out.
I lost count of how many times I called your cell phone. A part of me wanted to just get up, go to the 7-Eleven for my car, and drive home. Chances were good you’d be there waiting for me. I would have bet money on it. Yet something kept me rooted to this uncomfortable metal folding chair.
The green-eyed, stern-faced officer spoke to the woman with the clipboard. The woman with the clipboard regarded her list of names, tracing down the list with a blunt white finger. Then they both looked up and surveyed the remaining population in the firehouse. I was staring straight at them when they both directed their stares at me.