The Night Before

by David Fulmer

  Her fears for his safety rose to her throat with a sour taste. To escape from the dark and crazy thoughts that were crossing her mind, she spent some time recalling certain moments: the first time she had seen him as a student in a writing class he was teaching; their first kiss and the first time they had lain together; when the children were born, Christian in the bright of late morning and Hannah at midnight, as their natures dictated. She wondered what time of day Joe had been born. Had she ever asked him? She couldn’t remember, but she guessed it was in the kind shadows of a quiet dawn just like this one.

  She rested her head on the pillow, thinking that there were other sweet shreds that she should have grabbed onto, a word or a look that told her that the moment was special. But too many times, she had just let it slip by, instead fuming because he couldn’t be more sensible. This was her failing.

  She didn’t realize that she had drifted back to sleep until the odd noises woke her, the clanking chassis and stuttering engine of a lone vehicle rolling up the street and coming to a creaking stop at the end of their drive. She pushed herself out of bed in the gray light and peeked through the curtain.

  A battered van with a scroll of letters painted on the side sat at the curb. As she watched, the engine quieted, the side door slid wide, and a thin black woman climbed down, followed by a little girl bundled in a coat that was too big for her. A burly bearded man, also black, appeared from behind the wheel and made his way to the sidewalk, moving with a pronounced dignity. She noticed that his left hand was bandaged.

  She choked out a sob, sensing before she saw him that Joe was in the van. Who else could it be? When the passenger door opened and he climbed down from the seat, she saw the sling that held his arm and let out a sharp sigh. Hadn’t she known something was wrong? Now she watched as he stopped to stare in a flat way in the direction of the garage next door and noticed for the first time the sound of shoveling or sweeping. Don was out working on his driveway. On Christmas morning.

  She waited to see if Joe was going to say or do anything, ready for whatever happened. But he and his companions started up the walk at what seemed a weary pace. He did not raise his eyes.

  The house was quiet and everything in the main room was familiar to Joe’s eye: the sturdy, earthy furniture, the paintings and photographs on the walls, the tree lit up and dazzling in the corner. And yet it felt like a place he had left some time ago. He knew that this was common among people who had endured a profound shock. Their worlds were jogged so far sideways that much of what they knew seemed for a short while brand new.

  Though thrilled at the sight of the tree, Malikah was still sleepy and Nicole asked if she could put her down for a little while. Joe helped get her situated under a blanket on the couch, then invited Nicole and the reverend into the kitchen. Reverend Callum settled at the table with a sigh of comfort. When Joe tried making coffee with his one good hand, Nicole nudged him aside and took over.

  He joined the reverend at the table. His thoughts turned to the kids and he realized that he hadn’t heard any sounds from the house. He wondered if Mariel had taken them to her parent’s house in Nazareth or to her sister’s in Jersey. As if in reply, footsteps thumped in the upstairs hall, followed by the bathroom door closing and water running in the pipes.

  “Nice table you got here.” The reverend laid his good hand on the surface. “You build it yourself?”

  “Years ago.” Joe smiled curiously. “How did you know?”

  “It has that look.”

  “That bad?”

  Reverend Callum shook his head. “No, no, you did good. It just don’t look manufactured, that’s all.” He told Joe that he did some woodwork himself. Yes, he had cobbled the rough cross that hung in the chapel. He was describing how he had gone about hewing the cedar by hand when he stopped to stare at something. In the same instant, Joe sensed that Nicole had gone still.

  He turned in his chair to see Mariel standing in the doorway. Their eyes met and he felt a hollow pang in the pit of his stomach. She blinked and bit her lip, then shifted her gaze to the strangers: the black man at the table with his bandaged hand and the woman leaning against the sideboard, her arms crossed and ebony eyes narrowed, which meant she knew.

  She started to speak, then lost her way, and Joe said, “Mariel, this is Reverend Callum and Nicole. That’s her daughter Malikah on the couch. They’re joining us for Christmas morning.”

  Mariel gazed between the reverend and Nicole and managed a weak smile.

  Joe said, “They still asleep?”

  “Yes.” She appeared befuddled, her face drained of color and her eyes cloudy and Joe tried to imagine what was going through her head. Then he thought about how many times a sad little drama like theirs played out in kitchens and living rooms and bedrooms, everywhere and forever.

  She fixed her gaze on the sling. “Your arm,” she said. “What happened to your arm?”

  Joe said, “Oh. There was a… an incident.”

  Mariel stared, her mouth slightly open, baffled. “A what?”

  “This guy had a gun and he -”

  “A gun?” Her eyes widened. “You were shot?”

  “The reverend was hit, too,” Joe said. “In the hand.”

  She gasped and blinked at her tears. She said, “Oh, my God, Joe…”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “We were lucky.”

  “Shot by who?”

  Nicole spoke up. “Man I’ve been seeing. He has a drug problem. Joe was helping me and he came with a gun.”

  Mariel said, “How did…” She couldn’t find the words and said, “Shot?” again and stared at her husband as if he was some ragged soul who had wandered all bloodied into her house with a stray trio of street people, maybe characters he had created for one of his books and had somehow brought to life.

  “Excuse me,” Nicole said. “How do y’all take your coffee?”

  When Mariel edged out of the kitchen, Joe got up and followed her. The lack of sleep, the jumble of the night’s events, and the pain that was invading his arm and shoulder had him punchy, and he had to measure his steps. But when he stepped into his office in the back of the house, he relaxed, slipping into a cocoon of his own making. The room was his private little universe and Mariel had always been kind about leaving it alone. Now he stood by his desk and surveyed at the happy mess while she clung to the wall next to the door.

  He gazed out his window at a distant ridge that dusted white with snow, and thought about the years he had spent there, working away mostly in solitude, tapping out dreams as his wife and children moved through their lives. And now they had arrived… where? He had gone through a dark adventure and returned with a magical amulet and a piece of paper that proved his work was by someone’s lights worthy. Yet he couldn’t say what it any of it meant.

  Mariel broke into these meandering thoughts. “My God.” She was back to staring at the sling.

  “I was lucky,” Joe repeated. “We were. We are.”

  She rubbed her arms and shuddered. “What happened to the man?”

  “The police took him away. I’ll have to go testify.”

  “How did you meet the… your friends?”

  Joe said, “Another time, Mariel. It’s been a long night.”

  She said, “You can’t tell me what happened? How you almost got yourself killed?”

  “No, I can’t. Not now.”

  When he turned away his eyes came to rest to the shelf that held the copies of his three books. They appeared to him as orphans who had been lost and now were found. He realized that he had yet to tell Mariel about the option. Maybe it was childish, but he had earned the privilege of his secret, had bled for it, in fact, and decided to hold it as a bit of armor over his wounds. He indulged an inward smile as he stopped to ponder where he would be without drama.

  He sighed as the unspoken pushed these notions aside. “So,” he said. “Was it worth it?”

  Mariel shook her head. “No.”

  He could tell b
y the broken look on her face that she was prepared to stand there and let him take his shots. Because other than a decade of failure, she had nothing on him, no defense for her actions. Her guns were empty.

  “So why’d you do it? And why with him?”

  She considered, looking miserable. “Because I… I thought I wanted… I was feeling…” She trailed off and ran a shaky hand over her face, wiping away a tear. “Feeling what?” Joe said.

  Mariel said, “Like I was carrying you and the kids.” She gestured to the air. “The house. Our lives. And that it was going to be like that forever.”

  Joe dropped his voice. “And the way you dealt with it was to screw the next-door neighbor?”

  Mariel’s chin took a set. “That’s what I did, yes.”

  “The guy is a fucking weasel.”

  “Yeah, you would think that. You and Billy.”

  Joe cocked an eyebrow, surprised. “What does he have to do with this?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.” After an agonized pause, she said, “You’re right. He is a weasel. I know.” So they agreed on that. “So now what?” she said.

  Joe didn’t know what to say and wondered if it mattered. It was done. There was no erasing it, no going back for a rewrite. The woman he had courted and married and with whom he had made two fine children had vacated the premises, leaving an enfeebled stranger stretched against the wall, with no idea of what the coming days would bring and hoping for but not expecting mercy. He understood that no small something had been taken out of her, too. He wished that she had considered that before she leaped into Don Banks’ embrace.

  He heard the reverend’s gentle laugh from the kitchen and perked an ear, longing to be in the light and warmth of the room with those two good people. Meanwhile, his marriage seemed to be passing like a slow-moving train on its way to nowhere. He was mulling this notion when a new twinge of pain shot up his arm. The medication was wearing off and the pain went deeper.

  “So what do I tell the kids?” he said.

  Mariel treated him to a fretful look. “Can’t it wait?”

  “I mean about this,” he said, raising his slung arm.

  “Oh. The truth, I guess.” She smiled faintly. “Hannah will think it’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done.”

  “And what about…”

  She stared at the floor. “You decide what happens next. It’s only fair. But not now. Not today.”

  Joe said. “I wouldn’t do that.” He took a final look out the window at the white fields and the hills beyond. “It’s Christmas morning.”

  He crossed to the door. As he passed, Mariel reached out a hand, then caught herself and let it drop, a falling leaf of regret.

  He found his guests at the table, relaxed over their steaming cups. The reverend regarded him with interest as he took a chair. Nicole got up to warm his coffee and hiked a questioning eyebrow when she placed it before him.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s fine.” He sipped the brew and found it delicious. How could he have forgotten how good coffee could taste? Or the way the morning sunlight the color of clover honey could drench a room? Or that sometimes something sweet was submerged even in bitter waters?

  They chatted about nothing. At one point, Joe heard a flurried slamming of car doors and got up to peer out the front window in time to see Don’s SUV wheel into the street and race away. That the man had rousted his family and bolted to grandmother’s house or wherever gave him a moment’s satisfaction. Though he felt bad for the kid.

  No, he didn’t. He wondered if in the next days he could expect to see a For Sale sign popping out of the snow that covered the Banks’ front yard.

  He finished his coffee and trekked through the snow to reclaim the Saab while Nicole fetched her stash of gifts from the van. Once they got back and started spreading the boxes under the tree, he realized that he had indeed bought too much, and so he assigned some of the overage to Malikah and left the rest in the car.

  He didn’t know what to do about Mariel. He didn’t want to look at or talk to her. She lingered on the periphery of his vision in a way that made him feel that she had stepped out of his world.

  They were applying the last touches when he glanced at Nicole and saw her staring into the kitchen with a strange light in her eyes. He moved to her side and peered through the doorway to see Mariel and the reverend at the kitchen table. Mariel’s palms covered her eyes and her cheeks were streaked with tears. The reverend’s hands were joined before him and his eyes were dark pools as he murmured in a voice so low that Joe couldn’t hear.

  Nicole watched them for another moment, then patted Joe’s shoulder in a kind way and went back to work.

  He heard footsteps along the second floor hallway. He had just reached the bottom of the stairwell when he heard Hannah’s voice. When her pretty freckled face poked around the corner at the top of the stairs, he felt his heart rise into his throat and his legs go weak.

  “Daddy?” She padded down the steps in her sleepwear as he climbed to meet her. She stopped, her eyes going wide at the sight of the sling. “What happened to you?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Joe said and drew her into the circle of his good arm. In the next moment, her brother appeared and he had to bite down to keep from weeping.

  Christian looked over his shoulder at the figure on the couch. “Who’s that?”

  Joe found his voice. “It’s Christmas,” he said. “And we have company.”

  —

  The kids attacked the boxes while the adults watched them, sipped coffee, and pondered their private Christmas morning thoughts.

  As Joe watched them and saw their faces full of such joy, he imagined that it had been a dream: he had not caught his wife in that vulgar embrace with a creep of a neighbor; he had not stumbled upon a face from the past; he had not been mugged on a snowy street and rescued by a kind preacher; and had not tried to help a mother and child, only to take a bullet through the arm for his trouble.

  And now, as he sat safely enclosed in his armchair, he wondered if he would be able to tell the story of what had transpired over the night and morning. An urge to get up and hurry to his office and begin tapping out the words assailed him. Then he looked around the room and decided that it could wait. There would be time. There would be time for that, for his children, for his friends. Whatever was going to come of him and Mariel would wait, too. There would be time for everything that mattered.

  The packages were unwrapped and each child put one aside to be donated to someone in need. It was something they did every holiday. The crumpled bright paper was stashed into a leaf bag that leaned in the corner. Mariel still hadn’t met his eyes. She wore the face of a penitent, pale and suffering. The kids pretended not to notice.

  She stood up, looking out of place in her own home. “I should start breakfast,” she said and moved toward the kitchen.

  Joe caught Nicole’s pointed stare. “Wait,” he said.

  Mariel stopped to watch with the others as he reached into his pocket for the zebrawood box. When he drew out the pendant by the thin chain and held it up to the light, he barely caught the soft sob that trebled her throat.

  Hannah said, “What is it, dad?”

  “It’s called an Epiphany Star,” the reverend said. “Ain’t that right, Mister Joe?” Christian said, “Who’s it for?”

  Joe thought for a few seconds, then said, “It’s for all of us.”

  He found a place on the mantle to drape it. The jewels caught the tree lights and the morning sun and cast out different colored rays as it twisted slowly on its chain. Joe turned around to find Mariel staring at the pendant with an expression he couldn’t read.

  He nudged her with a gentle voice. “Breakfast?” Her gaze found him and she started to say something, but couldn’t find the words.

  The children were back to chattering over their gifts as the adults made their way to the kitchen. Nicole leaned close to Joe and whispered, “Aren’t you forgetting someth
ing?”

  It was then that he remembered that he still had a folded sheet of paper and the bank slip in his pocket. “Tomorrow,” he said.

  THE END

  Acknowledgement

  A special word of thanks to Sansanee for making this - and so much else - possible.

  About the Author

  David Fulmer has been a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel. Among his long list of plaudits was a nomination for the 2009 Shamus Award for Best Novel for The Blue Door. Visit davidfulmer.com.

  Also by David Fulmer

  The Fall

  Lost River

  The Blue Door

  The Dying Crapshooter’s Blues

  Rampart Street

  Jass

  Chasing the Devil’s Tail

  Copyright © 2010 by David Fulmer

  Cover Photo:

  “Central Moravian Steeple at Sunset”

  by Dana Grubb

  Used by Permission

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