Hush

by Anne Frasier

  Her parents had very little put away toward retirement. Claudia had no recourse but to sell their house, which was ten years away from being paid off. With the equity, she paid for funeral expenses and outstanding bills, then moved back to Chicago to continue her education. If she was careful, the remaining money would last a year, maybe more. And once the baby was born, she would get a full-time job.

  She was seven months pregnant when she rented the efficiency apartment on the second floor of a five- story building that stood between a crumbling art-deco theater and the Saint Cristobel Mission where the poor were fed two hot meals a day.

  Claudia worked at the mission three days a week. She may have been pregnant, but she was still strong, still able, so she helped out where she could. In return, she received support from strangers.

  Later the police would want to know about everyone she'd come in contact with at the mission, everyone she'd ever spoken to, which of course was an impossible request. She saw a lot of the same faces, but there were new ones every day. There were people she saw once and never again. And unfortunately, some people simply didn't stand out. They were poor, they were dirty, they were hungry lost souls. That's what she remembered most about them.

  She tried not to dwell on it because the world was made of questions that had no answers, but she would sometimes catch herself wondering how and why her luck had gone from good to bad. Her good fortune, while not exactly making her shallow, had given her an insulated view from a window she didn't care to move past. She had known about poor people, she had even participated in food drives, but she'd never understood the depths of poverty. She'd never looked at it from the inside.

  She was afraid of pain so she went to Lamaze classes, clutching a pillow to her growing stomach. She was the only one without a coach in a class of forty women. Jacob, a mission volunteer, offered to be her coach, but she declined. He'd done enough for her already.

  Jacob had helped her find the apartment. His mother was a social worker, and he knew the ins and outs of everything available to an unemployed, single expectant mother. He told her about free meals at the mission. He took her to a clinic where she could get prenatal care.

  Childbirth was hell.

  How could this be natural? There had to be something wrong. She was being ripped in two. And then she had another thought: If she died, nobody would miss her. Nobody would even know she'd ever lived.

  No, the midwife told her everything was going along fine. Everything was okay.

  At 11:24 P.M., five months after her mother's death, Claudia Reynolds gave birth to a twenty-inch, seven- and-a-half-pound baby boy. Right then and there, when she looked into his sweet little face, into those sweet, unfocused eyes, she was lost, feeling a love so powerful it scared her. And she thought she could endure all the curses in the world for him.

  "His eyes," she said in amazement as the nurse settled the wrapped infant into Claudia's waiting arms, "they're so blue."

  "Most newborns' eyes are blue. They usually change in a few weeks."

  For some inexplicable reason, Claudia felt her baby's eyes wouldn't change. They would stay a deep ocean blue the rest of his life.

  The pain she'd felt for the last nine hours was forgotten, replaced by a new kind of pain, the pain of a love so bright it hurt. She could feel it in her throat, in her head, behind her eyes.

  With amazement, she touched his tiny, red, wrinkled hands with their miniature fingernails. And later, when he cried and cried, she cried too. And because the love she felt was so monumental, so huge, so empowering, she knew she was going to be the best damn mother in the world.

  To say she was unprepared for motherhood would have been an understatement. She'd never been around any babies in her life, and didn't have an older, experienced woman to help her. Those things combined to create a recipe for disaster, because everybody knew that good intentions alone couldn't raise a child.

  A woman needed a plan.

  A woman needed support.

  A woman needed sleep. God, how she needed sleep.

  The nurses at the hospital taught her how to bathe her son, being careful to keep the umbilical cord dry. They taught her how to get him to latch onto her nipple, and how to change his diaper. They taught her how to keep him warm, and how to keep him cool.

  Still, unsure of herself and her new role, she begged to stay at the hospital one more day, just one more day.

  No.

  Thirty-five hours after her baby was born, Claudia took a cab home. With her cherished bundle, she climbed the stairs to her apartment.

  She never wondered what she had done. She never regretted her decision to keep him. He was a plus, only a plus. Because now her life had purpose, now she had a reason that extended beyond her own aura of wants and needs to incorporate another human being, an innocent, helpless child. Her child. Once again a male was the center of her world—and she allowed herself to be consumed by him.

  She would name him Adrian.

  Claudia wasn't superstitious, and yet for a brief moment she wondered if she should name him something biblical, just to keep God happy. But she'd had enough of men with biblical names.

  The problems started on the second day home. He cried all the time, but when she checked his diaper, it wasn't wet. Her breasts, which by this time were like rocks, only frustrated him when she tried to get him to nurse.

  In the middle of the night she slipped into a pair of jogging pants because she still couldn't fit into her jeans. With eyes burning from lack of sleep, she wrapped up her baby, little Adrian, and carried him down the steps to the street below, toward a corner grocery store that was open all night.

  At the store, she bought a baby bottle that was shaped like an oblong letter O, two cans of baby formula, and returned home.

  When she reached her apartment she found the door ajar. Her negligence frightened her. In her exhaustion and worry, she'd forgotten to close the door.

  She closed it now, locking it behind them. She put Adrian in his bassinet, washed and sterilized the baby bottle as quickly as possible, then poured in the rich- smelling formula.

  When she dragged the nipple across the infant's mouth, he didn't respond. He just kept crying his openmouthed, toothless, red-faced wail that hurt her like a knife blade. Then, as soon as some of the formula dribbled into his mouth, his breath caught. And caught again.

  And then he quit crying and began tugging madly at the nipple, making little animal noises as he sucked.

  Claudia let out her breath. The tension in her shoulders relaxed, and she sent up a silent prayer. Thank You.

  A few moments later, milk from her heavy breasts came down, saturating her shirt and the infant she held in her arms; she'd simply been too tense to nurse.

  Baby Adrian drank all four ounces of the formula Claudia had put in the bottle. He still acted hungry but she was afraid to give him any more, afraid he would spit it up or get a stomachache.

  She changed his wet, milk-soaked clothes, put a blanket over her own saturated top, and cuddled and hummed to him until he fell asleep. Then, very carefully so she wouldn't wake him, she put him down in the bassinet.

  She was changing her top when she heard a sound, like something falling. Like something getting knocked over and falling, hitting the floor.

  Her sleep-deprived mind immediately tried to make sense of the sound. She at first dismissed it, then decided that perhaps some of the boxes she'd stacked in the closet had tipped over. Maybe her own footfall, or maybe someone in the apartment upstairs, had caused the floor to tremble just enough. As soon as she thought of the apartment above her head, she immediately dismissed the noise, at last finding a logical place to put it. The sound hadn't come from her apartment at all. It had come from upstairs.

  So convinced was she that she didn't even open the closet door to look inside. So convinced was she that she crawled into bed, knowing she had to grab what little sleep she could, glad she'd been able to handle the milk crisis in a calm, non-hysterical ma
nner. She could do this. She could be a mother. She could give her baby what he needed.

  Even though sleep deprivation had made all of the muscles in Claudia's body ache, made her eyes bloodshot, she had a feeling of semi consciousness even after her breathing became rhythmic, even after the bed seemed to swallow her, welcome her. That deep, deep sleep was forever elusive. She was a mother now.

  Somehow, a corner of her mind had to remain ever watchful, ever listening for a cry, a whimper that would indicate her baby needed her.

  As Claudia slept, the sentinel heard a sound that didn't fit the sounds that a baby would make. The sentinel listened again, wondering if Claudia needed to be alerted.

  There it was again.

  Something sliding across a wooden floor. A dragging footstep?

  The sentinel ran through possibilities. Someone in the hallway, going to another apartment. Someone upstairs. Someone downstairs.

  There.

  Again.

  In the apartment. In the apartment

  Claudia came awake with a start. A sound played back in her mind. A scraping. Like a hard-soled shoe sliding across a gritty wooden floor.

  Had she dreamed the sound?

  But it had seemed so real, as if she'd really heard it.

  She lay in the darkness, eyes wide, breathing shallow, not daring to move, ears keen, waiting, waiting, waiting, for a sound that was real, a sound that wasn't part of a dream.

  As she lay there, she thought about the Madonna Murderer.

  And remembered that her door had been open when she came home from getting the baby formula.

  And suddenly she knew there were three people in her apartment, not two.

  She reached out and turned on the light next to her bed, hoping it would silence her fears, hoping she would laugh when she realized how foolish she'd been—hoping that the sound had been nothing but a vivid dream after all.

  But there in the dim light of a twenty-five-watt bulb was the form of a dark-hooded man leaning over her baby's white wicker bassinet, a form as terrifying as Death.

  She screamed loudly, shrilly, her lungs and throat burning with the effort. While she screamed, she lunged at the figure standing above her baby.

  He dropped something and it hit the floor, shattering.

  Later police would find that it was the snow globe that was his signature, a gift left for the infants.

  Unmindful of the glass shards cutting into the soles of her bare feet, Claudia threw the weight of her 120 pounds at the dark figure, continuing to scream as loudly as she could. Footsteps sounded from above.

  The man shoved her backward on the bed, one of his arms sweeping the white lamp with its ceramic teddy bear to the floor, shattering the bulb, drenching the room in darkness.

  He put a hand to her throat, to stop her screaming, to stop her breathing.

  She struggled for air and he spoke to her, his voice high and excited.

  "You mustn't raise your hand to me. Have you no respect? You whore. Whore, whore, whore. Pretending a virgin birth. But I know you. I know you're a whore."

  Through the lightshow behind her eyes, she was aware that someone was pounding on her apartment door.

  "What's going on in there?"

  Chicago, she thought fleetingly. Who would have thought someone would come to the aid of a stranger in Chicago?

  She fought to pull the fingers from her neck, but the man was strong, his hands locked to her like talons, all muscles and trembling tendons.

  The light in her head flashed one more time, then came darkness, a deep, black darkness that swallowed her, that was beyond dreaming, beyond the deepest sleep. Before she lost consciousness completely, she felt something hot and wet and sticky on her chest, and she smelled the metallic scent of blood.

  Ivy shut the Madonna Murders case file. She put a hand to her face and realized she was shaking. Her skin was cold and clammy even though it had to be above eighty degrees in the apartment.

  What was she doing here?

  Pretending that she had come back to catch the murdering bastard? People spent entire lives fooling themselves. Talking about the things they were going to do, discussing their Big Plans. When all they were really doing was trying to get by day to day. Because the truth was, people had to have something to dream about, to hold as sacred, even if it was something they would never accomplish.

  Chapter 7

  It was 2:00 A.M. in Shady Oaks. Fake antique street- lamps followed the curve of the sidewalk in perfect symmetry. The sprinkler systems were going, and if Ethan Irving stood in the right spot, lining things up just so, he could see a small rainbow that would never reach the sky. Beneath the rolled-out lawns that had come from a sod farm a hundred miles away lay cornfields that had once been timberland where Indians had roamed and hunted.

  People talked bad about the suburbs, but Ethan liked the comforting murmur of life just beyond his bedroom window, liked where he'd grown up, mostly because it was the only thing he'd ever known, at least the only thing he could really remember. But every once in a while he hated it for its lack of personality. Genericville. He sometimes felt that if he had the guts to get out of there, he'd never come back. Not once he saw the rest of the world. But Genericville was safe. He'd hung around with the same bunch of kids most of his life. Problem was you always had to be the person they expected you to be. And the older you all got, the more you fell into old roles when you were together. Ethan had long suspected that when friends were with other people they were different. They showed growth—an expanded, wiser version of their former selves.

  With his headphones on and Walkman turned up, filling his head with the sound of the Smiths, Ethan moved down the middle of the street, the soles of his sneakers slapping against asphalt that still held the heat of the sun. He slowed when he got to the Carter house. John and Lily Carter. A couple in their mid- twenties. They'd moved in two years ago, and Ethan had had a little crush on Lily ever since. He talked to her sometimes. She must have been lonely, because she always seemed glad to see him. She was supporting her husband while he went to school and brought women home when Lily was at work.

  Lily wanted to have a baby someday. She'd even planted an apple tree in the front yard for the kid.

  "Everybody needs an apple tree to climb," she'd explained.

  Ethan had helped her plant it. She'd dug deep so the roots wouldn't have to work as hard to take hold, and as she dug, she found a perfect arrowhead. She'd tried to give it to Ethan, but he wouldn't let her. She should save it for the kid—if she had one.

  Here she was, planning for the future, while her husband went behind her back, ruining all her plans. She just didn't know it yet. Was that the kind of crap that happened to everybody? Lily was nice. Beautiful. Why wasn't her husband happy? Was anybody ever happy? Really?

  Ethan thought too much. That was his problem. Words, ideas, eating away at him. He didn't like it, this thinking. He envied his friends who didn't seem to think at all. Or were they faking it too, just like him?

  As he approached his house, Ethan turned off his Walkman and removed it. Earlier that day, he'd left his bedroom window unlocked. Now he slid it open, then, after dropping the Walkman inside, he pulled himself up, his belly pressed against the window frame, his head inside the pitch-black room. Headfirst, he wormed his way in, finally rolling to the carpeted floor. He lay there a minute, catching his breath, listening, hoping Max, who had hearing like a wild animal's, didn't wake up. He was thinking he'd gotten away with it when a voice came out of the darkness.

  "Four hours past curfew," Max said.

  There was no anger there, just a low, smooth tone that sent Ethan's heart racing, that made his stomach tighten.

  "But then I guess I should be honored that you came home at all."

  Never try to fool a cop. Ethan should have learned that by now.

  He didn't know where the idea came from, but Ethan said, "I'm not staying."

  He stood up and jerked open the curtain. Light fro
m the street poured into his room. He began grabbing clothes, anything, stuffing them into his backpack, not really thinking, just wanting out of there, away from Max. He'd figure the rest out later. He stuck his Walkman between some clothes, then zipped the pack.

  There was enough light for Ethan to see Max sitting in the corner on the floor. He unfolded himself and got to his feet. "You can't leave. You're on probation."

  Ethan's heart continued to hammer. He could feel it in his throat, in his head. To hell with Max, Ethan tried to tell himself. Ethan didn't give a shit what he thought. The guy was nothing to him. Nothing.

  So why did he have this awful gnawing feeling in his gut?

  To hell with Max.

  The window was still open. Ethan briefly thought of diving out, but he was afraid Max might grab his legs before he could get away. And if he dove out the window, Max would know what a panic he was in. No, it would be better to walk past him and out the front door, as if he didn't give a shit. There was nothing cool about diving out a window.

  He grabbed his backpack and walked.

  Past Max.

  Down the hallway.

  Unlocked the front door.

  Out the door.

  Down the sidewalk.

  He heard a sound behind him.

  Ethan dropped his backpack and cut to the right, through the yard, through the sprinklers. He wasn't fast enough. Hands, arms wrapped around his waist as Max tackled him, bringing him to the ground. For a second, Ethan saw black dots. He blinked them away. Water sprayed in his face. His head was shoved against the wet grass.

  That pissed him off. That really pissed him off. He let himself go limp. Max released him and was moving away when Ethan rolled over. With a roar of rage, he jumped to his feet and attacked, the top of his head meeting Max's stomach, propelling the man to the ground.

  Victory!

  Oh, shit. He'd knocked down his old man. And now they were rolling through the grass, water from the sprinklers blasting Ethan in the face. Ethan let go of Max and was ready to haul ass out of there.