“Really,” Jason says. He runs the Exacto blade under a thumbnail.
“Truly,” Ditmar says. “The stuff brewed and bubbled while they ate.” The tar in the stem of his pipe gurgles as he puffs. “The fumes killed them, every one.” He lets the smoke curl from his lips to wash over his face. “When the rescue team found them, it was like a still life, only dead. Sitting at a laboratory bench, sandwiches in hand. And the beaker of solution baked into the famous non-stick coating.”
“Really,” Jason says.
“Urban myth,” Andy says, both a response to Ditmar, and an answer to a clue.
“One of them, they say, was slumped over a crossword puzzle.” Ditmar places his pipe in the ashtray chained to the table.
Bruce rouses himself from his slumber. I will paint my boat blue, he thinks.
Noises
She had just finished throwing up when she heard the doorbell. Beverly reached for a hand towel from the built-in linen closet in her mother-in-law’s bathroom. The thick textured fabric rubbed roughly against her lips as she wiped her mouth. She ran water in the sink to wash down the bits of regurgitated grapefruit pith, toast and mucous, then rinsed the cloth and held it to her forehead. Her post-puke fog left her enervated yet relieved. The tension in her neck and shoulders had eased, the sour wedge in her gut had disappeared. Morning sickness — morning, noon and night. She felt best those few minutes right after vomiting.
The doorbell rang.
Beverly caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the sink, and was surprised at the reflection. Despite nausea, she looked good. Everyone said, you absolutely glow. Her short brown hair, although dishevelled, shone with a hint of a wave and body it hadn’t had before. Her complexion was clear and silky. Colour flashed on her cheeks. She looked terrific, but felt like shit. Six-and-a-half more months of this?
The doorbell rang.
She brushed her teeth. She was careful not to probe too deeply with the brush—that provoked a gag reaction. The roof of her mouth and the back of her throat felt like they were coated with a thick paste, and she suddenly retched—just once, bringing nothing up—thinking of wet papier-mâché.
The doorbell rang.
“Hold your horses or go away,” she muttered as she went downstairs.
The visitor stood close to the townhouse, inside the drip line of the eave. He was reaching to ring the bell again when Beverly opened the door. She said nothing, just looked at him through the screen. The rain had plastered his thinning white hair to his scalp. A few drops hung in his bushy brows. His skin was very pale. He looked fifty, maybe sixty years old. Beverly thought of a potato, and with his blue eyes swimming in his face, decided he should be Irish.
“Mary and Frank aren’t in,” the man said, nodding his head towards the front door of the neighbouring condominium, ten feet away. A pair of hedge clippers, red wooden handles opened like an X, and a long-handled spade were on the patch of grass that passed for lawn beside the shared sidewalk. The morning’s downpour had slackened to a drizzle, and the tools seemed varnished by wet. Beverly remembered the poem she had read in college about a wheelbarrow. So much depends.
She didn’t speak.
“Mary and Frank aren’t home,” he started again. “I sometimes go there for lunch when the weather’s bad.” He reached a hand inside his windbreaker—an old-fashioned one, Beverly noticed, probably rayon, collarless with frayed corduroy trim and a dulled brass zipper—and he pulled out a wrinkled brown paper sack. The shoulders of his jacket were dark with rain, even his lunch bag looked damp. “They let me use their microwave. For my lunch.”
Somewhere in the neighbourhood, a beep-beep-beep signalled that a truck was backing up, then it stopped. Beverly stared through the mesh of the screen, looking at a point over the man’s left shoulder, as if she were doing sums in her head. Finally, she said, “I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”
The man sidled over to invade her gaze, and looked at her with a real in-the-eye look. He smiled. “I thought I’d see if Gladys was in. She sometimes comes over when I eat with Mary and Frank.” There was a quaver in his voice, as if he were trying to prevent his teeth from chattering. He shrugged. “But I guess she’s not home either.”
“Gladys,” Beverly said. For a second she didn’t know who he was talking about, then it clicked. Nobody called her Gladys. She was Gaddie. Her mother-in-law, Colm’s mother. They were house-sitting for Gaddie while she spent six months in Africa with Christian Helpmates International.
The man’s khaki pants were faded to a gloss, his work boots scuffed and cracking. One steel toecap poked through a hole in the leather. She glanced at the spade and clippers. Had Gaddie said anything about the gardener? Beverly couldn’t remember—really, she had stopped paying attention to the woman. She and Colm had settled in only a week ago. It was Gaddie’s idea, cooked up when she found out Beverly was expecting. After all, she had said, Beverly and Colm were starting their family late, starting everything late (“Most of my friends had four or five babies by the time they were your age!”). They had all those student loans, had spent all that time in school and travelling everywhere, living in apartments. If they stayed until the baby came, paid off their debts, maybe they could save the down payment for a house of their own. Besides, someone had to look after the condo.
So they sold or gave away most of the things that they had acquired over the years as cast-offs or in garage sales, and moved in. The few good pieces of furniture were packed into Gaddie’s garage. Colm insisted on keeping his boxes of engineering textbooks. Beverly wouldn’t part with her bolts of fabric and rolling racks of clothes she had made. They kept a steamer trunk full of vinyl records because they didn’t have the time to sort through and separate Peter Frampton from Bob Dylan, then argue over what to keep and what to trash. Colm’s 1969 BSA Lightning motorcycle was scattered in several pieces. Gaddie had tut-tutted: “Where will you park my car?”
“There’s room outside on the apron,” Colm replied.
Before she boarded her plane to Washington, D.C., where the Christians were assembling for the assault on the dark continent, the three of them had spent two days in the townhouse. Gaddie had fussed non-stop.
By the phone in the kitchen she assembled a thick three-ring binder with a green cover, sectioned with stiff-tabbed dividers. She compiled phone lists of neighbours, missionary contacts, emergency numbers for fire, flood, pestilence and war. An itinerary of her African trip, complete with brochures about the places she would visit. Operations and maintenance instructions for the washer and dryer, fridge and stove, convection oven, microwave, freezer, televisions, stereos, the furnace. Insurance policies. Lots of insurance policies—the widow of the owner of an insurance agency believed in good coverage.
Gaddie talked her way through those two days. “That’s Mr. Gilford,” she would say as a car pulled into the little lane that wound through the units in her part of the complex. “He’s chair of the Risk Management Committee. You’ll need to call him if the roof leaks or a tree falls against the house.” “There’s Betty Peel, Snow Removal Task Force,” she said, pointing out an elderly woman power-walking in the early morning. “Don’t hesitate to call her in a blizzard.” (To offer assistance or demand service? Gaddie didn’t say.) About a silver-haired man who walked his poodle through the green commons twice a day: “Wife left two years ago.” Three women in saris, pushing a shopping cart from the supermarket down the road: “Never so much as a hello to us, just nattering away to themselves in their own gibberish.” Two clean-cut men riding matching bicycles, one with a white helmet, the other yellow: “Those two are gay! I know because they told me themselves, they tell everybody.” A young mother limping after her two boys as they kick a soccer ball through the parking lot: “Recovering from hip replacement.” A man who drove a panel van with the logo of a painting and decorating company: “Jewish.” A woman with her hair in curlers: “Alcoholic.” Beverly remembered Mary and Frank: “Daughter joined a cult
.”
Beverly looked at the man again. His shoulders seemed hunched a little more, his shivering intensified, the look in his eyes now plainly miserable. She noticed a clump of wet clay on the blade of the spade. In her own little patio at the back, Gaddie had taken up all the annuals before she left, deadheaded the perennials, pruned and mulched the planters, and generally made the little garden fallow. She said she wouldn’t dream of foisting her chores on them, especially with Beverly in her condition. The meaning was clear—she didn’t trust them to do it to her standards. Beverly couldn’t remember if Gaddie had mentioned the gardener for the common areas of the complex.
It seemed Gaddie had exhausted in detail all the routines of the complex: trash collection on Tuesdays now, but the schedule slips a day after every statutory holiday, so by the time she gets back, it’ll be back to Tuesdays. Put the cans by the lane, not in the lane. Separate the paper and metal and glass. No visitor parking except in the designated lot, absolutely no stopping in fire lanes, use of the picnic pagoda by appointment only, 10:30 outside noise curfew.
A drop of water clung to the tip of the man’s nose. Beverly suddenly thought, This man is cold and wet and hungry. “What the hell,” she said, “Come on in.”
In the tiny vestibule, the man struggled with the laces on his boots. A toe showed through one sock. He slipped off his jacket, and held it in one hand slightly away from himself, reached for a hanger in the open front closet, and swept his eyes over the contents—Colm’s leather bomber, Beverly’s raw silk quilted jacket, Gaddie’s lambswool overcoat zipped in a plastic garment bag. Colm’s ancient golf clubs that had belonged to his father. He turned and hung the jacket on the doorknob, where it dripped onto the ceramic tiles.
Beverly led the man through the hall and up the half-flight of stairs to the kitchen. The townhouse was tall and narrow, the third unit in a building of four; that building in turn one of twenty-five or so arrayed on the condominium property. Each unit was a five-level split, the levels staggered front to back to maximize the use of space. The single-car garage occupied most of the main level, with the front entrance and matchbook lawn. On the second level, the kitchen and family room opened through a sliding glass door onto the compact patio.
Beverly had set up a long folding table in the middle of the family room, and piled it high with fabric, half-finished garments, and her sewing machine. She kept the long vertical blinds closed over the glass door, to shut out the patio and its orderliness. Interlocking colour-coordinated paving stones, scrubbed and swept. The rigid planters terraced in every nook and cranny. The barbecue with its insulated cover, covered again by a plastic sheet. Une place pour chaque chose et chaque chose à sa place. She had detested high school French.
The man plunked his sodden paper sack on the counter between the two rooms. “Nice place,” he said. He walked over and looked out between the slats of the blinds. “Neat yard,” he said. “Very nice indeed.”
Beverly stood by the stairs, watching as he moved through the space. His shivering seemed to have subsided. He ran a hand through the strands of his hair, then looked at his palm slick with the rain. “I’ll get a towel,” Beverly said. When she returned, the man was standing by the sound system console next to the fireplace. She watched as he ran a finger over the stacks of CDs. He pushed the Eject button and checked the disc that was cued.
“Here’s a towel,” Beverly said.
“Hmm,” the man said. He stayed by the stereo, pushed the CD platter closed, then punched Play. The first couple of bars played, then the voice. Tom Jones. “It’s not unusual to be …” The man cocked his head like the RCA Victor dog, and adjusted the volume up a couple of notches.
“Please,” Beverly said. She moved across the room to pick up the remote control from the worktable and turned off the music. The man shrugged and turned towards her. She flicked her wrist and tossed him the towel. Carefully, he dried his hands, the palms, the backs, between the fingers, wiped his face and brow, then drew it over his hair. He examined the items on the table. “Making clothes?” he said.
“Yes,” Beverly replied. “No, not exactly. Costumes.” It was an important distinction to her. Gaddie was always calling her a seamstress. “For a children’s theatre.” She moved so the table was between them. “That’s what I do. I sew costumes for theatre. Actually, I design and sew costumes. I’m making a mermaid costume.”
“Very admirable,” he replied. The man looked at her sewing machine. “Pfaff. Beautiful,” he said. He kept his eyes on the machine as he handed the used towel to Beverly. She snatched it.
“What about your lunch,” she said. She folded the towel in her hands. “The micro wave’s by the sink.”
He smiled, showing teeth brilliantly white and even. “Right,” he said. “To lunch.” He went to the kitchen, rummaged in his paper sack and pulled out an old margarine container.
Beverly sat at the worktable. She realized she was still kneading the towel, and let it drop to the carpet. She picked up the piece of cloth she had been working with. The play’s director had asked for flesh-coloured spandex. Whose flesh, she wondered. Not this man’s chalky flesh. Not the coffee-brown of the clerk at the fabric store where she had purchased it. She had tried to describe what she was looking for, tried not to describe it in terms of skin; finally the clerk had exclaimed, Oh by all means, we have lots of flesh-tone. Like flesh-coloured crayons, or the colour of dolls, not really the true colour of anyone’s flesh, but a colour that suggested a certain kind of flesh. She wished she hadn’t told him what she was doing. Very admirable, what was that supposed to mean?
Beverly made a few practice seams, working with scraps of fabric before she started to cut the pattern. A bodysuit for a mermaid’s costume. She had finally settled for a blend of cotton-poly reinforced with Lycra. She needed it ready for a fitting tomorrow. She fingered the shiny remnant, stretched it between her hands, and watched the man.
He put the food in the microwave, then stood, examining the panel. “How does this —” he said. She cut in on his question: “Hit Reheat, then enter a time, then hit Start.”
The appliance beeped, then whirred to life as he operated the controls. “These things are all a little different,” he said. He kept his back turned to her, staring through the little window as his food rotated on the platter. The aroma of canned beef stew filled the room. Beverly thought she could smell the salt, the fat, imagined the congealed gravy turning soft and corn-starch slippery. Her gorge rose. She bolted from her chair and ran up the three flights of stairs to the master bathroom. She dry-heaved. When she thought it was over, a vision of the worn plastic tub of stew popped into her head, and she had another round of spasms. Her throat was raw and constricted, as if she had swallowed hot stones.
Beverly sponged her face, then almost lost it again as she scooped a handful of water from the faucet to rinse her mouth. Her stomach muscles and diaphragm were cramping from the days upon days of morning sickness. In the mirror, she saw not exactly a stranger, but a different self. She spoke out loud and watched her mouth as it moved, as if she were reading her own lips: “What the hell is that man doing in my kitchen?” She grabbed the cordless phone from the bedroom and started down. Stopping on the stairs a couple of steps above the kitchen level, she crossed her arms to keep her hands from shaking. “You have to leave,” she said.
The man stood at the counter, shoveling stew into his mouth with one hand; with the other he poked around in her cupboard. He looked at Beverly, the phone. “Can I take the spoon? I found it in a drawer,” he said.
“Take the spoon, I don’t care. You have to go. Now.” The man licked the spoon, stuck it in his shirt pocket. He popped the lid onto the container, opened his mouth like he was going to speak, then closed it. She didn’t follow him to the door, only listened to the rustle as he donned his boots and jacket.
“I’ll leave it in the mailbox,” he called up to her.
“Just go,” she said. “Get out.” She wasn’t sure her vo
ice was loud enough to be heard.
“The spoon,” he said. She heard the door open and close, waited for the sound of the screen door latching. She peeked around the corner, then hurried to the door and shot the bolt. She put her eye to the peephole. He was just a few steps from her, exactly where he had been standing when he rang the doorbell. He held the container under his chin, and spooned food into his mouth. He was looking at the door, at her. Beverly’s hand trembled as she slid the burglar chain into place, careful not to make a noise.
A rush of blood throbbed in her temples. She panted in short breaths, too fast and too shallow, until she started to feel faint. Hyperventilating. She knew the remedy: breathe into a bag. She tiptoed back to the kitchen, ignored the crumpled paper sack the man had left on the counter, and found another in a drawer. She cupped it around her face and concentrated on each inhalation and exhalation. She twitched when the phone began to howl with an off-the-hook alarm. She found it on the couch in the family room and pressed the Talk button to disconnect. She slid to the floor and buried herself in the bag. The crinkle of kraft paper marked the rhythm of her breathing.
When she looked through the peephole again, the man was gone. The spade and clippers still lay on the grass. She didn’t open the door to check the mailbox.
That evening, Colm made a sandwich for his supper. Ham and cheese, a bagel from the freezer. He zapped it in the microwave to thaw, halved it, then toasted and buttered it, careful to spread the butter evenly to the edges. He peeled the outer layers from a head of iceberg lettuce, tossing out those that were the least bit spotted with brown. “You’re sure you don’t want one?” he asked. “You have to eat something.”
Knucklehead & Other Stories Page 4