The Caller

by Dan Krzyzkowski

  ***

  On the day Patrick took his first step, Richard had an accident driving home from work. He dozed off on the interstate and drifted into the guardrail that separated the shoulder from a twenty-foot embankment. His Mercedes struck a post and caromed 180 degrees in a storm of sparks and crying metal. In midspin, a Volvo slammed into his rear just behind the back tire, which propelled the Mercedes the rest of the way through the one-eighty, and into the metal guardrail a second time.

  Save for several bruises on his hands and arms and a mild laceration on the back of his neck from a shard of glass (the rear window had shattered), Richard was relatively unhurt. That little harm came to him is analogous, I think, to his not becoming an alcoholic. Just as booze could have handed him a ticket into detox and perhaps a recovery program, the accident could have landed him in a hospital bed.

  And there he’d lay, my husband dressed in hospital whites instead of his three-piece suit. A fractured leg, internal bleeding, mild concussion, you name it. He’d be bedridden and immobile. There’d be no guarantees, of course, but one thing would be for certain: Richard would be forced to think. He would have more time on his hands than the previous two years put together and little choice but to use his brain for some introspection. Perhaps he’d try to sleep it off or watch some television … but the ulcer of free thought would come back to bite him. He’d stare out the window at the birds and trees and sky and would realize he’d forgotten what those things were, what they meant, and how they could be enjoyed. Eventually, he’d stumble upon the truth that he had done little thinking at all in the past years. He had simply done. And he’d discover that doing something for the sake of getting it done, without thought or enjoyment, was mindless, timeless, and unrewarding.

  And he’d rediscover me. Me and Patrick. Us. He would refind us and remember that we were a family to which he had once belonged. One he had abandoned. This process would be painful, but it would be for the better.

  But none of that ever happened with Richard. He didn’t land in a hospital bed. He never faced himself in the mirror.

  When I think back on it, I believe fate was taunting him, dangling a carrot in front of him, daring him to lunge. But Richard never lunged. Neither the alcohol nor the accident claimed him, and my husband never came to terms with himself.

  What most infuriated me was his outright denial that anything was wrong. He came home that night with a tired, white pall on his face. He told me everything was fine. The accident was a minor setback, he admitted, but our insurance would cover the damages minus our deductible, and at least he’d come through unscathed. The truth is that he was hurt by being unscathed, as were Patrick and me.

  “Rich, we need to talk,” I told him that night during dinner.

  “I told you, everything’s been taken care of. The—”

  “No, Richard. I mean us.”

  That silenced him for a moment. He stared at me across the table. “What’s wrong? You think this isn’t working anymore?” The irritation in his voice was palpable.

  “Richard, you have to stop doing this.”

  “Doing what? Earning a living for us?”

  “Is it worth it when you start falling asleep at the wheel?”

  He threw a hard, granite look at me. He pointed and said, “Maybe you should mind your own business. You, who sits home all day while I bust my balls making—”

  “Oh, Richard, that’s bullshit, and you know it!” I cried, slamming my fist down on the table. “I have a child to take care of, so for God’s sake, stop acting like one!”

  That blew the fuse. Richard had been a clump of dynamite waiting to detonate. The accident had brought him precariously close but hadn’t presented him a suitable target for venting his anger.

  Without warning, he grabbed his plate of spaghetti and hurled it across the kitchen in a blind rage.

  “You goddamn whore!” he screamed, jumping to his feet. “You fucking hightail bitch!” He grabbed his chair by the backrest and slammed it against the far wall. It made a tremendous thwack!—and something cracked in the works somewhere. I shrank back in my seat, horrified.

  “I work my tired ass to the wall every fucking goddamn day, and what do you care? What do you do? You give me a fucking trip-ass attitude—like I’m not worth shit in a fucking baby’s fuckridden Easter fucking bonnet! You fucking bitch!”

  He leaned across the table, leering at me, firing his reckless exclamations at my face, spittle flying off his lips, landing on the food, the wood finish, on me, my shirt, my cheeks, like hot burning acid. The blood surged into his face, and he was suddenly as bright as a beet and darkening yet, turning purple.

  “Bitch of a fucking whore is what you are, to say things like that!” Had I been closer, he may have grabbed me by the throat and begun choking me. Instead, he started grabbing anything he could lay his hands on, snatching them up and pitching them across the kitchen—into the walls, the cabinets, the microwave, the sink, the clock. He grabbed the condiments and threw them. The crystal salt and pepper shakers exploded against the window frame above the sink, sending a cloud of seasoning into the air and across the floor and counter. He found the bowl full of spaghetti and slammed it into the ceramic tile floor with disturbing force. The bowl shattered, and Ragu and linguine splashed wetly across the floor. He grabbed his placemat and threw that, grabbed the decorative flowers between us and threw those. The vase was Lenox. It bounced off the range and broke into thirty-three pieces when it hit the floor, scattering everywhere.

  I watched with numb shock as my husband threw his tantrum, and his face grew darker, ready to blow up, and the drool dripped down his chin and neck, onto his shirt—already damp with the day’s perspiration. He screamed and screamed with little Patrick, just under two years old, sitting beside me with two fingers in his mouth, eyes wide and confused. My husband grabbed the kitchen table, and Patrick started crying, really bawling. The wood table separated at the adjoining centerline with a pair of metallic clacks. My half collapsed, which sent my plate and glass of milk sliding to the floor. He yanked his half away and slammed it into the wall behind him, turned and kicked it, screaming and hollering, words I never understood, as loud as I’d ever heard him.

  “I’m fucking sick of this! Do you hear me now? Now do you hear me? I am fucking fed up with this half-ass shit of yours!”

  He kicked his half of the table again, again, again, until it cracked, splintered, and fell mercifully in half. He screamed once more at me, expelling another dollop of spittle onto the floor, then stormed out of the kitchen—food and broken glass strewn everywhere—up the stairs to his study where he no doubt poured himself a powerful number.

  I sat in silence for a moment, hopelessly numb, Patrick crying beside me. Just numb. It was like I was nothing—just an amorphous, big black blob of nothing. I felt as though someone had reached inside me and turned me inside-out. Pins and needles were swarming through me.

  Seconds later, my emotions surfaced. My eyes welled, and the tears burst forth with flood-like abandon. I remember dropping out of my chair because I no longer had the strength to hold myself in a sitting position. I crumpled onto the floor, in the spreading puddle of milk, and sobbed. I could hear Patrick crying above me, and for the one and only time in my life, I hadn’t the strength to go to him. I lay in a weakly formed fetal position and cried until my eyes got sore. The puddle of milk expanded and rolled wetly beneath my cheek, and I didn’t care. I hadn’t the will to care.

  When I found the strength to stand, I got Patrick and took him onto the back deck for a while. I rocked him until he fell asleep and then laid him down on the living room sofa. Then I returned to the kitchen.

  I cleaned up the carnage in silence. Music from the kitchen radio would only mask the seriousness of the matter. I wept most of the way through and ruminated on how far below ground level my life had pin-wheeled. How much further could it go? The p
roblem was nearly imponderable, and the dark future appeared to have no end, no solace in sight.

  I was slow and weak. I felt gutted. It took me three hours to clean up the mess.

  ***

  Three weeks later, a pair of Connecticut state troopers knocked on my door at one o’clock in the afternoon … and I knew in my heart that Richard was dead. The day was hot and bright, and I opened the door for the troopers to walk through.

  What unsettles me the most, I suppose, is the irony of the whole thing. Life is a crapshoot sometimes. Richard could have easily drunk himself into oblivion. He could have died at the wheel or from massive heart failure at the age of fifty.

  But his death had little to do with his condition. He’d been out retrieving the mail, something he rarely did. Picture my husband, out in the dazzling sunlight in his thousand-dollar suit, granting himself a five-minute reprieve from the desk, the telephone, and the fountain pen. You’d think a higher power struck him down for breaking the pattern.

  He’d been out at the mailbox when it happened. A delivery truck had swung wide making a turn, its rear wheels riding over the curb and onto the grass. To this day, it’s a mystery to me how either the driver failed to notice my husband or my husband failed to get out of the way. It’s one of those scenarios you run through your mind a thousand times, and it seems inconceivable with each run-through. But these things happen, I guess. Richard was clipped by one of the dual rear wheels and kind of sucked in. The driver never noticed and kept going. Richard’s body was dragged five hundred yards along Industrial Avenue until a woman walking her poodle noticed the horrific sight coming toward her and motioned the driver to stop.

  This may sound callous, but my many reflections on Richard’s death conclude it to be a blessing in disguise. He may have died innocently, but his life was already spinning out of control. He was working ninety-some hours a week, drinking, not sleeping, not socializing, and eating himself away from the inside. His days on this earth were numbered. He’d have gotten shit drunk one afternoon and collided head-on with someone, killing others along with himself. Or he would have done himself in—I’m certain of that. One or two more years, and he’d have put a bullet through his skull, right in his own study, which would have sent me screaming for the sunset. And Patrick and I would have never received the insurance settlement that we did, which would have left us economically unstable.

  I remember sitting in my living room that day, minutes after receiving the news. I wasn’t heartbroken or dreadfully sad or really even shocked. Somehow, a part of me had been expecting it. Just not like this. More than anything, I was numbed by the implications: that my husband was gone; that Patrick and I were alone now; that Patrick would never know his father, however good or bad that was.

  But the image that stuck most in my mind was that strip of Industrial Avenue, what it must have looked like, although I never did see it myself. It seemed impossible, even unworthy, that someone could die like that, much less my own husband. It seemed a paradox that all that blood could be trailed along the side of the road on a day bathed in glorious sunshine.

  That was three days before Patrick’s second birthday.

  CHAPTER 9

  “I HAVE TO MOVE.” Justin’s voice sounded cramped. “I’m moving now.”

  “What? Now? Why?”

  Four to six minutes had passed since Justin had informed me of the lights having gone out in his house. I’d gone great lengths explaining to him that the power had not, in fact, been lost. Had this been the case, his phone would have shut off. A cordless phone did not behave like its noncordless predecessor. A cordless phone had a base unit that relied on electricity. Unplug the base—or cut off power to it—and you lost the signal existing between the base and the phone itself.

  I’d taken the time to explain that one or both of the intruders had very likely heard approaching sirens. They’d quickly gone through the house flicking lights off, hoping to thwart suspicion. It was possible they were fleeing the house entirely. For all intents and purposes, our cat and mouse game was nearly over. One final kneel-down as the clock reached zero.

  “Justin, wait … just a few more minutes is all—”

  But already I could hear him moving, using his arms and legs to climb out of the dryer. “I can’t stay here anymore. My neck hurts too much. It really hurts.”

  “Oh, Jesus. This is a bad idea. Justin, I wish you wouldn’t do this. Can you even see where you’re going?”

  “I don’t need to see.”

  “Oh God, Justin, please be careful. And keep your voice down.”

  “I will.”

  “Are you sure it’s safe?” I asked. “Is one of those guys still downstairs?”

  “In the den, I think,” he whispered. I visualized him with that Cyclopean eye in my mind, saw his head cocked to one side in the darkness, listening intently for any sounds or footfalls emanating from his den.

  And he was hearing something. I grew nervous by the mere fact that I couldn’t hear it with him, that I was excluded. I suddenly feared that Justin’s sense of caution had waned. An hour ago, he’d needed convincing to move at all. Now he was moving at will against my counsel. He was trading hiding spots with little or no fear, bouncing through the house as though a harmless game of tag was all this amounted to. I felt more helpless now than ever before.

  “What’s going on, kid?” I asked.

  “Oh, Leslie, he just moved the couch,” Justin whispered. A shiver shuddered my bones. “The one I was hiding behind bef—”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” I told him forcefully. “Stop talking and go to tap, and move to wherever you planned on going.”

  The police had to be getting nearer. The sirens had to be spiraling closer. Any minute now, they’d be knocking the door down. So why weren’t the perps leaving? Did they not know what was best for them? Did they honestly think that dousing the lights would inure them from discovery?

  I recalled my mental image of Justin’s house and remembered that the den was somehow linked to the laundry room. And that the laundry room was somehow connected to the kitchen. And the kitchen was the center point, from which one could travel to any door …

  “Are you moving now, Justin?”

  Tap-tap.

  He’s tiptoeing, is what he’s doing. Walking slowly, softly.

  “Just keep yourself quiet,” I told him. “Are you going toward the kitchen?”

  Tap-tap.

  “Where are you? Are you there yet?”

  Tap.

  I figured there was a hallway of some sort, perhaps even a room, that adjoined the laundry chamber to the kitchen area. Maybe a simple corridor with a bathroom along the way.

  Justin was traversing this passage right now. I employed my Cyclopean vision and saw him arriving at the junction to the kitchen. All was dark and motionless.

  He was listening for movement: alien sounds in distant regions of the house; the guy upstairs; the guy in the den. I envisioned Justin standing gingerly, ears pricked to the height of alertness.

  Come on, Justin, sit down already. That guy in the den scared me the most. He could react to any sound Justin made and run into the kitchen via the front foyer or come through the laundry room to grab the boy from behind.

  “Are you in the kitchen yet?” He had to be. He had to be.

  There came a lengthy pause that reeked of loud thought before he replied, tap-tap … and through an unspoken mental connection we now shared, I was suddenly seeing through his eyes, experiencing his darkened world for myself. I knew his mouth was open wide because mine was as well. I knew his heart was pounding because so was mine. Together we had arrived at a threshold.

  The basement door. We were staring straight at it, the two of us. We couldn’t see it in the darkness, but we both knew it was there. We both understood in a fundamental manner that it perhaps represented the best escape ro
ute out of this place.

  But we first had to get there. And we had to do so without tripping over our own feet. And don’t forget about the island counter. A mad dash to the door won’t cut it. We’ve got to work our way around the island counter in the dark and then feel our way to the door. And then, sweet Jesus, we have to get that door open. Turn the knob and pull it open … and what kind of noise will that make? I’ll bet the hinges squeal like rusty hell.

  How did I know Justin’s kitchen had an island counter in it? Or that the basement door was closed? I don’t know how I knew. Somehow, I just knew. The self-assurance of my thoughts neither alarmed nor surprised me.

  “Is it the basement door, Justin? Is that what you’re staring at?”

  Tap-tap.

  “The door is closed, though, isn’t it?”

  In a fierce whisper: “The lights are coming on again, Leslie.”

  What?

  “Don’t stand there, Justin. Get behind something. Go underneath something. Hide.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere. For God’s sake, get out of sight.”

  He began moving—which way I don’t know. I hoped he wasn’t going backward, into the laundry room again. Was he advancing into the living room, perhaps? There were two known escape routes leading out of the living room. I considered coaching him in that direction, but before I could do so, I heard him huffing and panting, and I knew he was crawling into a new spot, the cordless phone tucked between his ear and shoulder.

  “What’s happening, Justin? Are you in a new hiding place now? Tap back to me if you are.”

  Moments later, tap-tap.

  I hesitated, trying to devise a way of asking where he was with a yes or no question.

  “Are you still in the kitchen?”

  Tap-tap.

  He hadn’t crossed the room, then. He had not entered the living room.

  “Are you out of sight?”

  “I’m under the sink,” he whispered. “In the cabinets by the floor.”