Sandman

by Sean Costello

  Jack was out on the deck, dressed in a black gi and performing kata, with each strike shouting the savage keeaii! that had awakened her.

  Jenny watched him from the shadows of the living room, his grace, as always, amazing her. She still found it difficult to connect the dreamy, almost hypnotic movements he performed with their swift and lethal potential.

  What a grand adventure meeting Jack Fallon had been, Jenny reflected as she watched him, unseen. On their first date he’d taken her to an obscure Japanese restaurant in Ottawa’s Asian district. The proprietor, an ancient little guy with thick bifocals and a soiled bib-apron, had greeted Jack warmly, and Jack had returned the greeting in Japanese.

  “That’s neat,” Jenny said, assuming Jack knew only the few sing-song syllables he’d spoken. She pointed furtively at the owner. “Did he teach you that?”

  “Oh,” Jack said with a coy smile, “I know a few tricks.”

  Someone showed them to their seats then and a waiter brought menus. Jenny opened hers and was amused to find it was in Japanese.

  “Jack,” she said, “he brought us the wrong menus.”

  Jack made a show of examining his menu. Then, to Jenny’s pleased astonishment, he ordered their entire meal in Japanese. Not only that, he laughed and chatted with the waiter, had a regular old chinwag, explaining later that he’d merely been inquiring about the man’s well-being, and that of his family. Over dinner, he told her his life-long interest in the marital arts had taken him to Japan at the age of sixteen.

  “My God, Jack, your parents allowed that?”

  That was when he told her he was adopted, and that he’d left his adoptive parents’ home at the age of fifteen. There were no hard feelings, he explained, but learning he was an orphan had kindled a deep wanderlust in him.

  “I hitch-hiked into Ottawa. Knowing I had no roots, that the people I’d called Mom and Dad for so long were imposters, I couldn’t stay on the farm any longer. It didn’t feel right. It never really had. I changed my name that very day from Poole to Fallon. I’d heard it someplace and remembered it. I liked the faintly sinister sound of it.” He smiled, but Jenny remembered thinking he was serious. “I was big for my age, already over six feet, and I got a job the first week, off-loading trucks at a frozen food warehouse just a couple of blocks from here. It’s gone now—arson—but it was owned by Mr. Sato over there.” He indicated the grinning proprietor, who acknowledged Jack’s attention with a series of vigorous nods.

  “I took a beating one night while guarding the place,” Jack said. “Sato let me bunk in a back room in exchange for my services as a night watchman. Some of his competitors took umbrage at being outdone by a five-foot Asian, and that night they took it out on me.”

  Jack lifted his shirt and showed Jenny a knotted scar beneath his ribcage. Jenny shrank at the sight of it.

  “They stabbed me and left me for dead. Sato found me the next morning and took me to the old General Hospital on Bruyere Street.” Jack smiled as he tucked in his shirt. “I was a patient there for three weeks, long enough to cultivate a career interest in medicine. Anyway, when I came back to work for Sato, he taught me self defense. I had an aptitude and Sato recognized it. It was his idea that I go to Japan. I spent ten years there, first in Okinawa, then in mainland Japan.”

  “That’s amazing,” Jenny said. Some of the appetizers had arrived and as they talked Jenny sampled them cautiously. This was definitely not Americanized fare. “What about school?”

  “I did my high schooling there. In Japanese. As it turned out, I had an aptitude for languages, too. I speak four of them.”

  Jenny was nineteen at the time, Jack twenty-seven, and Jenny felt he was the most incredible person she’d ever met. He was intelligent, worldly, streetwise and tough, yet he seemed so attentive and gentle. He spoke of the martial arts and their philosophies with a reverence that genuinely moved Jenny. That he could love something so deeply left a lasting impression on her.

  But then she’d seen him compete, and realized that what Jack was into was no game. It was ruthless, lethal and fast, and it frightened her. Alone with Jack, walking the city streets, she’d felt secure in the knowledge that he could protect her. But during the five or so years he continued to compete, Jenny stayed pretty much out of it. No matter how hard she tried, she was unable to reconcile such precise and brutal punishment with sport.

  She watched him a while longer, working out on the deck. Then she went into the kitchen to start breakfast.

  * * *

  They left for the city that afternoon at four, Jenny drowsing through most of the trip. It amazed her how drained she felt. Pregnancy had always been hard on her—morning sickness, mood swings, sudden crying jags, fatigue—and this one was no exception.

  She was verging on deep sleep when Jack’s voice brought her sharply awake. “I hope the ugly duckling spoiled the magistrate’s weekend,” he said and touched her tummy. Jenny flinched; she couldn’t help herself. They had just reached the city limits.

  “I wish you wouldn’t call her that,” she said, and Jack withdrew his hand. “She’s your daughter, for God’s sake, and she loves you, Jack. She practically lives for your approval. If she ever heard you say something like that it would break her heart.”

  Jack faced her then and for a moment Jenny’s throat tightened. She had another flashback in that brief hiatus, to the first time she’d seen him compete. He’d looked at his opponent in exactly this manner before dropping him to the mat with a single blow. “You kill his spirit with your eyes,” he’d explained to her later. And that was how Jenny felt, as if her spirit had suddenly withered. It was a ghastly feeling, full of tired defeat and years-old frustration. She’s not my child, that look said. It was your idea to adopt, not mine. You’re the one who pushed for it. And that was just the lid on a whole can of worms. Though Jack had signed the adoption agreement too, he’d never gotten close to Kim, a situation that only worsened as Kim got older. Quite reasonably, since Jack was adopted, Jenny had assumed he’d have no trouble loving an adopted child. But she couldn’t have been more wrong. Jack’s disapproval of Kim, though subtle, was constant, despite Kim’s tireless and often heart-breaking efforts to win his affection, and he spent almost no time alone with her. It was painful to watch. And it was the main reason Jenny had put off telling Kim about her adoption, though she feared she’d let it go far too long already.

  Jack’s expression softened then, and he returned his gaze to the road. “You’re right, sweetheart,” he said, “I am too hard on her. I don’t mean anything by it. Really. I’ll try to be more aware of it.”

  Although Jenny had more she wanted to say on the subject, she decided to leave it at that. As simple as his response had been, it represented progress.

  They made the balance of the trip in silence.

  * * *

  Kim was sitting on the curb in front of the Goodmans’ imposing Tudor home. Seeing her there, alone in the twilight with her hair hanging in her eyes, Jenny experienced a familiar mix of love and pity. Even in the expensive designer togs Jenny bought for her Kim still looked awkward somehow, like a Saint Bernard with a poodle cut.

  She climbed into the back seat and mumbled a quiet hello. Instead of grunting at her as he usually did, Jack turned in his seat and gave her a warm smile. Kim blushed furiously.

  “Hey, kid,” he said, “how was your weekend?”

  Kim’s weekend had been terrible. On Saturday night Tracy had dumped her with her parents and gone out with a bunch of kids, saying she’d be back in an hour. But she hadn’t come back until one in the morning, two hours past curfew, and Kim was caught in the middle of a huge shouting match. She’d barely slept a wink.

  But she said, “Great, Dad, thanks.”

  Jack reached into the back seat and touched her chin. “Listen,” he said, smiling, “your mom pointed out to me that you and I haven’t really hung out together in a while. What say tomorrow night we figure something out. Your choice, my treat.”
<
br />   “Jeez, Dad, that’d be great.”

  “Deal, then,” Jack said. He turned back to the wheel and pulled away from the curb, winking at Jenny as he did.

  Jenny glanced back at Kim and saw a mighty chrome grin on her face and a wet sheen of tears in her eyes. Hope rose in her heart like an enormous pastel balloon.

  * * *

  Peach met them at the front door. Jenny scooped the big tabby up and Peach pressed her wet nose into Jenny’s neck. Her motor was on full idle.

  “Come on, you fat thing,” Jenny said. “Let’s go check your dishes.”

  She opened a pouch of tuna-flavored Iams and dumped it into Peach’s bowl, saying. “Here you go, my little treasure.” She put the bowl on the floor and patted the tabby’s head. Peach hunkered down and got busy on the tuna.

  Rinsing her fingers, Jenny felt the subtle pull of duty. The house triggered it in the same way a dentist’s office triggers unease. Her eyes ticked around the room, searching for disorder. Jack hated disorder and for that reason Jenny had come to despise it, too. Her mind began flipping through options for supper, counting off loads of wash that needed doing, listing groceries that had to be purchased the following day.

  Jack came in while she was peeling potatoes and stood behind her, cupping her belly. “What’s for supper?” he said.

  “I thought I’d make that Mexican chicken thing you like.”

  “Sounds great. Have I got time to run in and do rounds?”

  “Sure.” She could delay supper and throw in a load of wash. “How long do you think you’ll be?”

  “No more than an hour,” Jack said. “Just want to see my pre-ops and one or two patients in ICU.”

  “Okay, hon.”

  Jenny peeled potatoes until she heard the Mercedes pull out of the garage. Then she called Kim down from her room for a game of Scrabble.

  * * *

  Nina Armstrong stood at the living room window, watching her husband back the Suburban into the street. He’d been drinking since they got home from the Fallons’ cottage on Saturday morning, spending most of his time in the garage, coming in only to use the bathroom or to grab some food from the fridge. Sometime during the night he’d passed out on the couch in front of the TV, the thing blaring static when Nina came down at five this morning to shut it off. Now he was on his way to the hospital to do his pre-op visits, reeking of hard liquor.

  Nina let the drapes fall closed, hugging herself against a shudder. Life seemed suddenly precarious and uncertain. It had been coming to this for months, years perhaps, but she felt it whole and unalloyed only now. She touched her swollen eye.

  The twins barreled into the room and Nina turned to greet them, doing her best to hide her growing apprehension.

  3

  “ALL RIGHT, MOTHERFUCKER—FREEZE.”

  Ben Crabtree’s voice sounded strange to him. He knew he’d spoken the words, but they seemed dreamlike, disembodied. He guessed it was the adrenaline. He’d always been an adrenaline junkie and this was the ultimate high. The Daisy pellet gun, a replica of a 9mm Beretta, looked real enough, though; it even felt real. He brandished it in his outthrust fist, watching as the Quik-Mart manager froze. That was exactly how it looked, as if the fat hog had been flash-dipped in liquid nitrogen.

  Ben grinned.

  “That’s right, tubby. Now grab one of those bags and empty the register into it. Do it now.”

  The manager’s body jerked and Ben felt like he was starring in his own hit thriller. In another thirty seconds he’d walk out of here with a bagful of cash and this pussy’d probably just stand there and make lemonade in his pants. Maybe on his way out he’d pop the fucker one in the beergut, give him a pellet hole to show his bowling buddies. What a rush that would—

  Ben felt his insides turn to mud. He blinked when the store manager reached for the open register—just a simple blink of the eyes—and now he was staring down the bore of a 12 gauge shotgun.

  Ben showed the man his palms, turning the muzzle of his pellet gun toward the ceiling. “Okay,” he said, “you got me, man. Don’t shoot, okay? It’s just a pellet gun. See? Just a toy.”

  The manager came around the counter, bald head gleaming. “You dopers think you can come in here and throw your weight around. Three times this month. Three fucking times.” He advanced on Ben like a pit bull. “I told the cops last time, no more fucking around.” He jacked a shell into the chamber. “So make your move, asshole.”

  Ben dropped the pellet gun to the floor. It landed with a plastic clatter. “No moves, man. I ain’t gonna make no mo—”

  Then the shotgun went off and a stallion kicked Ben in the chest. The last thing he heard was the manager’s voice—“You got that right, fuck face”—and even that sounded strange.

  Like a dream...

  Then his head was full of beeps and boops, a wild chorus, and Ben knew he was dreaming. What else could it be?

  He opened his eyes. The lids were gummy. His eyeballs smarted in the light.

  Am I dead?

  Then he realized someone was standing over him. A tall man in a white lab coat. Ben thought: I’m in the hospital. He’d tried to rob a convenience store and the son of a whore really had shot him. So that part was real.

  The pain registered next, an enveloping wave, and Ben felt himself fading—it was either pass out or go mad from the pain—but he fought it. There was a doctor here with him now and Ben wanted to ask him how much damage had been done.

  Please, he tried to say, and that was when he felt the tube in his mouth and realized a machine had been breathing for him all along.

  Ben blinked.

  “So you’re awake,” the doctor said.

  Ben searched that voice for a note of compassion, groped for it, the way a starving man will grope for a scrap of bread. He found none.

  “You fucked up,” the doctor said, and even through his pain Ben felt a prudish kind of shock. He wouldn’t have been more surprised had his mother, a staunch Baptist, suggested Jesus take a flying fuck at the moon.

  The doctor leaned over him, filling Ben’s world with his face.

  “I can’t stand fuck-ups. Want to know why?”

  Ben tried to shout, Ben tried to scream, but he was mute, weaker than he’d ever imagined possible.

  “Because they’re fuck-ups,” the doctor said.

  Ben relaxed a little and thought, Right, I’m a fuck-up, you’re a fuck-up and this is a fucked-up dream. I’m in the hospital, they’re shooting me full of junk and I’m higher than the CN Tower.

  But if this was a dream, the hand on his arm sure felt real; it lifted his arm and it’s owner said, “See this, Ben?” Ben did. It was taped to his wrist, some sort of clear plastic nozzle. “It’s what we call an arterial line. There’s a tiny catheter in your radial artery. All you fuck-ups get one of these when you come to the ICU. See what happens when I turn this little stopcock?”

  The doctor turned the stopcock and a jet of arterial blood shot out, spattering Ben’s face. Ben flinched at the vital heat of it and the tube in his throat made him hack. An alarm went off on the ventilator next to his bed. The doctor silenced it. Then he turned off the stopcock.

  Ben thought, Where is everybody?

  The doctor whispered in Ben’s ear. “Know what would happen if that little sucker got opened somehow and nobody noticed? Why, you’d bleed to death. Wouldn’t that be a bitch?”

  With his eyes Ben agreed that it would.

  The doctor opened the stopcock again. Ben was aware of his heart now, and he saw that with each triphammering beat a fresh spurt of blood shot out of the tiny porthole in his wrist.

  The doctor replaced Ben’s arm by his side. “This is what happens to fuck-ups,” he said with a cool matter-of-factness that made Ben’s skin break out in gooseflesh. “Think you can remember that, Ben?”

  Ben tried to lift his head. He wanted to see if that stopcock was still open. He was a fuck-up, God, yes, he was the worst kind of fuck-up, he was ready to admit that
before God and all the saints. But he had to see if that stopcock was still open.

  Ben’s head wouldn’t budge. His muscles had come unstrung.

  And his heart was pounding...

  He rolled his eyes all the way down, squinting past the blurry knob of his nose, and saw the jetting blood, just the top of its arc, its diminishing crimson arc.

  I’m sorry. Please. Turn the fucking thing off.

  Ben tried to lift his arm. It came up about an inch, then plopped back to the mattress.

  Please...

  The doctor closed Ben’s eyes and Ben flung them open. He tried to roll off the bed, scream, do anything.

  But the life was squirting out of him. He could feel his heart pumping away in his chest, propelling his life’s blood toward that tiny manhole in his wrist.

  Ben looked up at the doctor and the doctor closed Ben’s eyes again and this time Ben didn’t have the strength left to open them.

  4

  LYING IN BED THAT NIGHT, Kim listened to the rhythmic squeak of her parents’ bed in their room down the hall. She listened to the sharp little cries her mother sometimes made and to the utter silence of her father. Normally these sounds infuriated her in some inexpressible way, and she ended up grinding her teeth so hard her jaws ached.

  But not tonight. Tonight her father had touched her in a loving way. She could still feel his fingers on her chin, warm and strong. And tomorrow they were going out together, just the two of them. Her mind raced at the possibilities, imagining what they might do. It didn’t matter, really. What they did. It was just the thought of having his full attention for hours.

  The bitter voice of past disappointments spoke up in Kim’s mind, bracing her, but she choked it off. He meant it this time, she could tell—

  Her mother let out another shrill cry. To Kim it sounded like a cry of pain.

  She knew what they were doing in there. Tracy had shown her some films. Her father kept them locked in a safe in his den, but Tracy found the combination inked onto a piece of masking tape stuck to the underside of his desk. At first the films made Kim feel sick, puking sick, and she looked away. But then Tracy said she’d done some of the things in the films, not with one boy but with several, and that it was totally delicious. It didn’t look delicious. It looked rude and painful and...well, disgusting.