Corridor Nine

by Sophie Stocking

  “What? What on Earth?” She slides her hands over papery smoothness to left and right, over her head. A new wall stretches where once had been open space. Angus bounces around in the dark snuffling. “What are you doing Angus? This is so weird, I don’t remember . . . ” Bernie returns to the foot of the stairs and finds the light switch, the dog scratches frantically at the bottom corner of the wall where the bumpy foundation left a gap for a mouse. She sits down on the fourth step and stares. He must have erected this rough two-by-four partition. Drywall panels extend floor to ceiling and wall-to-wall, jaggedly cut and screwed to the wood. Scrawled in thick black Sharpie. Two words. Her father’s messy capitals: FRAMING WHITEY.

  “Framing whitey?” Bernie walks to the wall and kneels down and examines the gobs of dried Bulldog Adhesive that squished out when he set the bottom plate onto the concrete. Above she sees more grey goop between the top plate and the floor joists. He glued it; he glued the whole frame together instead of using nails or screws. Classic.

  In the dim light she opens the camera app on her cell phone and takes a picture of the wall. She attaches the picture to a text and sends it to her brother:

  “David, I cleared the main floor but look what I found in the basement. Now to puncture the chamber of the tomb. I feel like Howard Carter discovering King Tut, but not so hopeful.”

  Fabian lies curled in a ball on the turf and won’t unroll. Squatting on his heels, Bune watches and waits. He rises, walks to Fabian and gently pushes him, his calloused toe tentative against Fabian’s satin skin.

  “Leave me. Just leave me alone.”

  “It will help if we talk. Come on, sit up. Time keeps speeding by. Look at the Membrane, the sunsets.” He nudges him more firmly with his foot, rolling him over on his side. Fabian sits but turns his back on the fiery sky.

  “What bothers you the most about this um, your greatest um, achievement . . . ?”

  “I never thought an angel would employ sarcasm. What sort of angel are you anyway? What sort of fucking afterlife experience is this? I want a union, I want . . . ” Fabian drops his head between his knees and his shoulders heave their dry sobs. “I want real tears!”

  “I did not mean to employ sarcasm. Seeing the truth hurts I know, when you thought . . . ”

  Fabian stares into the black and Bune waits. Finally, he rotates and looks up at the demon, his baby face bitter.

  “It’s easy for you I suppose, you don’t have to deal with the real world, the frustrations, the demands of a degenerating body, scarred psyches, out of whack neurotransmitters, abandonment issues and attachment disorders. Easy for you to judge, to say I should have been stronger.”

  Bune squats beside Fabian, and then sits cross-legged. He reaches out his arm to put it around Fabian, but lets it drop.

  “I was mortal too, you know, long ago. Mortal for eons, and the mistakes and crimes I committed could fill many books. I do not judge you. Your last assignment was daunting, you were sent in ill-equipped. But now you fully understand suffering through addiction, so in that light you actually succeeded.”

  “What are you telling me? The whole thing was a set-up, my free will an illusion?”

  “Through free will you might have learned the lesson an easier way, pulled out sooner, sought help. But you confused yourself. The addiction was not the door you sought, but the cage that held you.”

  Fabian rotates glumly, faces the cloud-infested screen saver.

  “I thought I was steering the ship, I thought I was so damn smart!”

  Bune stands, then bends and takes the small face in his hands. He smooths the towhead eyebrows with his craggy thumbs.

  “Very good. That’s not easy to admit.”

  Fabian twists out of his grasp, jumps to his feet.

  “I’m not a complete idiot though. I admit the last phase of my life was largely a mistake, but in my twenties and thirties I saw.. I really looked into the very eye of truth, the core of the universe. I wrote a hell of a good book about those discoveries, and it received overwhelming critical acclaim. If anything, I peaked too soon. Yes, that’s it; I was ruined by premature success. Many great artists struggle with that. Destroy themselves.”

  Bune clutches his head.

  “God help me. Here slow down, come back a minute. You raced through the first lesson too quickly. You admitted that your life was out of control . . . that you weren’t ‘steering the ship’, that ego blinded you . . . ”

  “I know what you are doing. This is a ‘life review’. I’m supposed to take stock of all my mistakes and say I’m sorry. Well I don’t see the point. It’s not like I could go back, could I? I think you’re a sadist, I think the ‘Big Picture’ in fact is a sadistic punishing plan. What I did wrong I did for understandable reasons, battered by my childhood and a fucked up societal agenda, you’re not going to make me grovel step by step through every . . . ”

  “Let me know when you’ve spent yourself.” Bune extends his right hand into the air and materializes a fuming cigarette. He puffs away busily until he notices Fabian staring, jaw dropped. “You make me remember smoking. Are you done now?” He spits the butt into the air where it disperses. “You don’t have to say you are sorry, but merely understand. I believe we covered your ‘greatest achievement.’ Now I need to know your greatest shame.”

  “Like I said, there is no shame, considering, under the circumstances . . . ”

  “Please, just tell me. Think. I’ll give you something in exchange. What would you like? I can return anything to you. Ah, I know, I’ll give you back your tears.”

  Fabian stands up and walks away into the dark, his little ass disdainful.

  “I won’t be coerced or bought out or duped! Fuck, I’ve got nowhere to go, I’ve got all the time in the world!”

  “Neaah! Gammrrrrr. Shaa!” Fabian jumps a bit but keeps on walking. Two extra heads shoot out of Bune’s shoulders, rotate wildly and growl and clack. Fabian glances back and stares, then carries on.

  “All the time, all the time in the world. Your pyrotechnics don’t scare me.”

  Bune tips his angel face to the ceiling, lets out a shriek, and becomes lion and eagle. All rippling muscle and scaly leg, he curls in his talons and springs, pins Fabian’s neck to the turf with black spurs, his thrashing legs silenced with leaden paws.

  “Tell me,” he hisses into Fabian’s ear, “tell me your greatest shame, or I’ll shake you until your brains curdle. Tell me!” He bears down but the boy’s face disappears into the turf with the weight. With his beak he pulls back on the silky hair, and Fabian comes up, grass in teeth. “Speak!”

  “D-D-D-D-David!”

  “Ahhh, yes.” Behind them a distinct “boing” resounds. The griffon looks over and sees a pearlescent football lying on the ground. “And?”

  “B-B-B-Bernie. Bernadette.”

  “Right again.” A “ping” rings out and another package arrives, both nest in hollows on the ground. Perhaps they are seeds, hypocotyl, epicotyl, cotyledon, ready to sprout. Or eggs, tucked in flippers, or vestigial limbs, all tightly wrapped in a transparent uterine skin.

  The children are sleeping, the last pages of Harriet the Spy concluded, and Angus let out for a final pee. Now he twitches in the corner on his dog bed, trotting through some canine dream. Bernadette lies under the insufficient summer duvet. Time to switch to the warmer quilt, but she doesn’t get up. The bizarre basement churns in her head. Then at the front of the house the opening and closing of the door, Peter! He rustles around in the fridge, then goes upstairs and opens Eben’s door for a moment. Downstairs he checks on the other three, and then his tired step down the hallway. Quietly he walks into the bedroom.

  “You’re back!”

  “I thought you’d be sleeping.”

  “I’m cold. I can’t stop thinking.” She sits up and turns on the lamp by the bed and looks at the haggard remains of her husband. “Tell me Terminal D is out for tender. You look exhausted.”

  Peter runs his hands through h
is hair making it stand on end, he flares his eyes at her then leans across the bed for a kiss.

  “Done, thank God. If AutoCAD hadn’t crashed this morning, I would have been home by six, but we finally got it out.” He goes into the bathroom and she listens to the drumming of the shower, then he returns in a cloud of steam, hairy and towelling down, turns off the light, and crawls into bed.

  “Come here,” and he pulls her backwards into the curve of his chest.

  “How was your day? Did you go back?” He tucks the frizzy mass of her hair around and under her head, so it won’t go up his nose and presses his face into her neck.

  “It just keeps getting weirder.”

  “Those guys from A.D.D. weren’t there again, were they? Have you moved the key? They know how to get in now. I don’t like you being there on your own.”

  “No, no, nothing to do with them. Some cleaning people came yesterday. I let them in and the key is on my key chain now. I didn’t leave it in the rock.”

  “So what’s weird about it?”

  “Well you won’t believe this, I went downstairs, and my dad must have built a wall blocking off the whole basement. He wrote “Framing Whitey” in felt pen, big letters. I have no idea what that means, and he didn’t put in a door. He sealed the basement as if it was a sarcophagus or something.” Now lapped in the heat radiating from Peter, the dysfunctional labyrinth recedes from her and she starts to feel drowsy.

  “Weirder and weirder. What do you plan to do?”

  “Hmm, do? I just need a sledgehammer, we have one, don’t we?”

  “Oh no, uh uh. You’re not going in there alone, not until I know what’s behind that wall. Remember the German Shepherd he shot, when did he do that?”

  “When I was five. His name was Gus and he’d bitten the postman. My dad took him out to the country and shot him. He told my mother he could purge his own aggressions somehow by doing that, that the dog was a vessel for my father’s baser instincts.”

  “His gun collection always worried me. There was no reason for having them, not like he was a hunter.”

  “No, just more of his paranoid self-defense.”

  “Then the “secret Santa” packages for the kids, a continuation of the gun theme, and who knows where his mind went after you cut him off.”

  “By the end, I think he was too addicted to be dangerous. He never took any action. He just liked to picture himself as some sort of subversive hero. He was a coward maybe or . . . no there was a politeness . . . he would have been embarrassed somehow to actually go postal.”

  “That’s not so reassuring. Tomorrow is Saturday and we can go together. I don’t want you alone in there until I know what’s behind that wall. Eben can watch the little kids.” He pulls her in more snugly. “I’m so tired I could drop.”

  “So much for forging a relationship of trust.” Fabian tentatively pats the welts on his neck. Bune is examining the two packages. He straightens up and glowers. “You could have offered more options, rather than resorting to violence . . . ”

  “Believe me, it’s for your own good, because actually you don’t have all the time in the world. Actually, your time on Corridor Nine is very, very finite. You will find something has been restored to you though, not that you deserve it. I need a time out. I’m going for a walk. You stay here, and don’t touch these packages.” He runs his hands through his greying tufts. “You seriously exhaust me. Oh, and while you wait you might as well have dinner.” Bune strides off until he disappears around the distant curve of the Membrane. When he is quite gone Fabian crawls forward on hands and knees, approaching the eggs. The flattened features of his two children, rounded, indistinct suggestions of their future selves, press into folded arms and legs, the curve of small backs. He closes his eyes.

  “Go away, go away.” He gets to his feet and runs into the dark and bounces for a long time. When he stops, his legs feel like trembling rubber and his breath comes in rhythmic gasps. His body thrums with the familiar release of lactic acid, so nostalgic an ache that if only he could, he would weep. Contrite, he sits cross-legged and thinks, and in a little while he remembers. Breathe in the ether of the turf. What does it offer tonight? And obediently he rolls onto his side and inhales.

  An Asian broth infused with lemongrass, ginger, and scallions. There is nothing else on the menu, so he breathes for awhile longer until full. When Bune returns from his lap around Corridor Nine, he finds Fabian sleeping, curled up in the dark.

  In the nook off the kitchen, Moira and Louis sit wedged together.

  “It’s not fair, I am not watching any more Minecraft. You said after the last one we could play Animal Jam.” Mo lunges for the mouse, swivelling the rolling chair. Louis, his eyes still trained on the screen but rotated so he has to look over his shoulder, paws blindly for the mouse and finally grabs it. Moira opens her mouth wide, leans forward and anchors her teeth tentatively around his bicep.

  “Ish my turn. You promished,”

  “In a sec, just let me finish this one. We played yours the whole time yesterday . . . ”

  Moira thinks of the documentaries she has watched, the wolves tearing at carcasses, and tightens her jaw muscles a little more, gives her head the sideways death shake as if breaking the neck of a rabbit. Louis lets out a roar, and the discordant sound penetrates Eben’s earbuds, as he lies on the couch listening to The Offspring. He rolls onto his back and contemplates investigating, when another muffled off-beat squeal breaks through, and finally he pulls the earbuds out and sits up. Screaming. How serious a screaming? The twins bang about around the corner, the swivel chair slides.

  “Mommy! Mommy! Oiw, oiw, oiwwwww!” The scream hits a certain octave. Eben catapults off the couch. He runs to the nook and swings around the corner.

  “Stop! Stop! Moira. What are you doing?” Mo returns from the arctic tundra, tastes soggy flannel in her mouth, and releases her grip. Lou howls and scrabbles at his arm.

  “Jesus Mo, you can’t bite! You’re not a baby. What the hell!” Eben leans over the back of the chair, pulls his little brother to safety, and sits him on the floor.

  “I want Mommy, I want Mommy.” Lou is really sobbing. Eben looks at the arm, no blood through the shirt at least. He tries to pull the shirt off over his head, but the buttoned cuffs foil him and he has to pull the shirt down, unbutton, and start over. Mo hunkers down and peers over the arm of the swivel chair.

  “Look at this Mo. It’s all red and there’s going to be a huge bruise. What the fuck? Go get an icepack.” Lou topples sideways on the floor, still crying.

  “I want Momma . . . ” Eben looks down at him, bends over and gives him a rough pat on the back. “Mommaaaa!” Eben pats again, rolls his eyes and kneels, getting his cheek against the floor so he’s peering into Louis’ sobbing face.

  “Lou, stop! Lou you want some Ichiban?” Louder, “Ichiban Lou?” Moira arrives with a gel pack from the freezer.

  “Ichiban?” Louis sits up. “Momma said she wasn’t buying any more,” a snivel, an inhalation of snot. “She said it was junk.”

  “I found a whole case.” He takes the gel pack from Mo. “Bring me some masking tape.” He pulls the shirt back over Lou’s head and once he’s got the sleeves on, he folds the gel pack around his little brother’s bicep. Mo hands him tape and Eben straps everything in place. She hovers somewhere behind, and Eben reaches back and grabs her sweatshirt, pulls her around to face him, partially lifting her off the floor, her hair cockeyed around the skinny little face.

  “Say you’re sorry.”

  “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to. I was doing the lupus neck crack . . . ” she trails off. “Are you telling Mom?”

  “I’m telling Mom!” snivels Lou.

  “No, no one’s telling Mom. Remember what Dad said? We have to help her out for awhile, ‘go easy on her’? She’s got enough to think about with her crazy dad dying.”

  Lola comes into the kitchen.

  “What’s all the screaming?”

  “M
o bit Lou, but don’t tell Mom. It’s no big deal.” Eben goes down to the basement and finds the crate of Ichiban beside the packs of paper towels and toilet paper. He looks briefly at the sticky note that reads Don’t Eat. For Foodbank, cracks open the cardboard lid and takes out two of the cups, then thinks better of it, returns them and picks up the whole box. It should fit under his bed. He walks back upstairs and boils the kettle. Lola digs around in the fridge. She pulls the plastic container of mealworms and sawdust out of the cheese drawer and shakes it.

  “If they aren’t wiggling very much do you think they’re still edible? Hey, can I have an Ichiban?”

  Peter and Bernie sit in the driveway. The car makes ticking noises as the engine cools. The leaves are all down now but most of them blew into the coulee.

  “Does the old lady still live next door?”

  “Mrs. Gotslieg? I told you, she has his cat.”

  “We should go say hello.”

  “I’ve not been able to face that.” They get out of the car and walk across the crunching gravel. He looks around at the poplars.

  “So many memories here, eh?”

  Bernie curls her hand inside his palm.

  ‘Oh, we need the sledgehammer.”

  Peter goes back to get it, and Bernie walks up the steps and unlocks the door. Her watch says noon; at home the kids probably sit glued to the computer. Before her father had detonated there had been “media days” and “non-media days” and time limits. She feels guilty; she has to start being more present. She steps into her father’s kitchen, where the sun streams in but the air still stinks. She walks from room to room opening every window.