Knock Knock

by S. P. Miskowski

  Greg

  Greg had driven off around noon, back seat loaded with four chairs and a disassembled table Lydia couldn't stand to look at. It had been a lovely day, warm and bright. He was now returning, victorious, with an empty car.

  This drive through a landscape he had never seen felt illicit. Zipping along in the car, venturing down dirt roads and dodging potholes, flying past the woods, the meadows, it was crazy. It made Greg want to sing one of the pop songs his mother used to like. Something about a green tambourine, or a girl with flowers in her hair, in the rain.

  What was so bad about this place, anyway? The whole situation was temporary. Why couldn't they relax and enjoy the adventure? They had worked as hard as anyone they knew, saved as much as they could, put off indulgences, and it all came to nothing. It was all shit, finally. Their reward for being good was unemployment.

  Out of the blue, with no effort on their part, they had an inheritance. It was insane. Neither of them had family money. No trust funds or estates, no investments. Greg had worked his way through a state college waiting tables. Now they had this lucky break, this windfall that nobody ever gets, and Lydia acted like it was a curse.

  Granted, it wasn't a very cool house. But it was theirs, free and clear, to sell. Pure profit. No sentimental attachment. Lydia didn't show the slightest interest in finding out about this Dempsey woman, who might be her mom. She was pissed off when he suggested they ask around and see what people remembered about Mrs. Dempsey.

  What could be better than inheriting something valuable you never expected in the first place, no strings attached? Considering how bad their prospects were at the moment, with so many companies going bust and the ones that managed to stay in business announcing hiring freezes, they were lucky. They had squeaked by on his severance pay until they got the news about the house. Now they had just enough to live on until he found another job. And they had their health.

  Greg had never owned property. He expected to work his ass off just to make the down payment on a condo in the city. Now he had a place of his own, they had a place, and wasn't that better than where they were a few weeks ago?

  No, he just didn't get Lydia's point of view about the house. He made allowances for her condition, the new responsibility and the hormones, the challenge of this trip, the feelings she must have about her relation to Beverly Dempsey, and he still couldn't see what the big problem was. Something doubting and negative had started to surface during her pregnancy. Maybe it would go away once the baby was born. Until then, he was trying to ignore it, because he wasn't sure he liked it.

  On certain bad days when Lydia stormed around saying things he couldn't understand Greg wondered if he, too, would someday become an unbearable sight to her, a thing to be hauled away and dumped. In the car, he laughed at the idea. It was silly. Of course they belonged together. They were made for each other. All of their friends assured them it was true.

  Both Greg and Lydia had been gun-shy from failed relationships. Both had waited until they were over thirty to marry. Both were surprised by the pregnancy, several years into their life together, but they adapted quickly enough. If Lydia seemed unhinged at times, that was only natural given her condition. He was trying to understand. He loved his wife more than ever, and he wanted all of this to work out.

  Yet more and more, time away from her felt like this, like escaping in the car down an unknown country road. It felt like a guilty pleasure.

  He first noticed the sensation entirely by chance. This was before they had received the letter about the house and decided to drive down to Skillute. Greg had been sweating through a second round of interviews for another job he knew he wouldn't get.

  They were broke, but Lydia was in one of her moods and suddenly they had to buy a crib, the perfect crib. Nothing else would satisfy her. They had to jump in the car and take the freeway to a shopping center and bring home the world's best crib.

  They went to a mall about fifteen miles from their apartment, in an industrial area south of the city. Greg expected the place to be deserted. He had automatically come to assume that most people were in the same boat, struggling. They found the place teeming with families, full of the buzz of people, hungry and over-excited, entertaining themselves by eating junk food and buying stuff they probably didn't need.

  After the ordeal of the freeway and the parking lot, it felt good to walk. Greg loved the release of being able to stride along indoors.

  "Would you slow down?" Lydia asked, loud enough to attract the attention of several people nearby.

  He did slow down, and he let her catch up to him. He took smaller and smaller steps, until it seemed he wasn't walking at all but hovering. No matter how he tried to drag his feet, he would edge ahead of her again after a minute. He thought: she must be dragging her feet too, pacing herself so that she could not keep up, so that she could gripe at him again.

  "Would you please just slow down?"

  Soon he was exhausted, worn out by the effort it took to move at an abnormally lazy pace. He refused to admit the other cause of his weariness. He was stifling an impulse to shout at her, to stride away and leave her there.

  No. He could cope. He told himself he had lived alone with his mother for fourteen years after his father died. If he could cope with his mother's mood swings, he could handle anything Lydia had to throw at him. It was while he was thinking of this, and recalling his mother's habit of scattering her hair products and toiletries all over the bathroom, that an odd thing occurred. Greg lost track of Lydia.

  Unable to find a satisfactory crib for their child-to-be, Lydia had wandered into a boutique. Never mind that she couldn't fit into any of the snaky little dresses they sold. The mannequins were hipless, breast-less creatures with down-turned lips. They reminded him of Lydia before the pregnancy.

  Daunted by the vacant stares of four of these emaciated plastic models, Greg had stood outside the shop waiting. He knew his wife would soon come stomping back to him complaining about her new hips, her new breasts, all that he considered benefits of her pregnancy, the way her body seemed to be unfolding without permission. It was too bad. She seemed sick of it, ashamed of the newfound curves he found sexy.

  He wandered along in the wake of a group of teenage girls, chatty and skinny, their jeans barely clinging to their butts; tiny curlicue of a tattoo peeking over a silver-studded belt; body oil wafting back to him, not patchouli, less spicy, maybe citrus and something else, mixed with the aroma of cigarettes. One of them, the tattooed one, the leader, her skin taut, slightly tan, fragrant, she turned suddenly, let go of her friends, whirled around in the opposite direction, still talking away and wham!

  "Jesus! Sorry!" She shouted.

  Wicked sweet smile on her as she sidled around Greg, her hands patting against his chest, gliding past him, not so much pushing as pinching gently. The other girls turned and followed her, the alpha, the fragrant beauty, surrounding her with their knowing smiles and a cascade of giggles. They all linked arms again and laughed out loud as they retreated and disappeared into the crowd.

  All he could do was smile stupidly. He wasn't even embarrassed, not really.

  Greg found himself at the door of a music shop and went in. The guy at the counter mumbled a standard dude greeting and went back to listening to the current store selection: Menomena, the CD cover propped next to the cash register. The track was "Ghost Ships."

  There was something Greg had been thinking of buying recently. It was on the tip of his memory, awakened by the waves of eerie music spilling out of the speakers. What was it he had been thinking of buying? Not Deerhoof, something equally hard to find, though, and almost as good. He strolled down the middle aisle of the shop, loosening, smiling, setting his mind free to tinker and find its way to something. What was it?

  Lydia.

  Greg glanced up from the stacks of CDs just in time to see his wife walk right past the shop window. She was looking for him in the crowd, probably getting angrier by the second. When he
caught up to her she would yell at him, as if he had no right to wander off and shop without her, as if he were her son and not her husband. The tongue-lashing he anticipated made the muscles in his neck tighten. At the same time, he had a new, tiny discovery he didn't want to share: He had forgotten about her.

  He had traveled alone, if only for a few hundred feet. For the first time since they were married Greg had completely and absolutely forgotten that Lydia existed. He had slipped into his own world by himself, where he used to be all those years when he was single, between living with his mother and living with his first real girlfriend. He had wandered into his old life. And it felt good there. It felt wonderful.

  Today was good, as well: Sun breaks between frothy clouds, with a loamy scent beneath the cedar. Here the clouds gathered and parted and changed color all day, and then they might suddenly burst into rain in the afternoon. Everything could change in only a few minutes. The landscape might break open and let another world right in, at any moment. He liked this, too.

  Ridiculous. He felt ridiculous, and also pleased with himself. A simple trip to the transfer station and back, alone, had left him giddy.

  Lydia

  Lydia sat on the back steps of her new home, puffing on a Lucky Strike. She raked the fingers of her left hand through her shaggy brown hair, and ruffled her bangs. She let the forbidden smoke roll out in a languid breath. It spread over the grass and hung there like fog.

  Ahead of her a large catalpa spread its spindly branches. To the right, closer to the woods, there was another Japanese maple. She wondered what it might be like to watch these two companions change colors through the seasons. She caught herself daydreaming about the bright yellow catalpa and the scarlet fall leaves of the maple. It was idiotic wanting, even for a second, to linger in Hooterville just to watch the leaves turn.

  Greg hadn't come back from the transfer station, the dump, whatever they called it in Skillute, USA. He would make it back before dark; the days were long now and there was plenty of light left.

  That wasn't the point. Lydia was sick of telling him what time to come home. He had promised to come right back, but he hadn't, and there was nothing she could do about it. If she got sick, she would be on her own. Better yet, once the baby came, there would never be anything she could do about it. She would be busy every minute from now on, and Greg would be doing whatever the hell he was doing at that very moment.

  She tried to free her thoughts. She wanted to avoid dwelling on a comparison between her state of mind and Greg's. It might enrage her and make her open a bottle of chardonnay to go with the Lucky Strike.

  She placed her cell phone on the step beside her. She hadn't been able to get a signal for an hour. Greg had neglected to have their landline hooked up. He said something silly about the initial fees and how they were only signing up for a month or a month and a half. As if that mattered while she was producing their fucking child. As if he had to tell the phone company his life story. As if they cared. As if that were the point. Cut off like this, she might as well be living in the backwoods, in the 1940s. That was the point. Her state of mind was the point.

  She could log on to Facebook and let people know she was alone, but that was lame. She wasn't in danger. She was fine. She wasn't battling a real threat. She was battling fear, the kind that had never entered her conscious mind until she got pregnant.

  Before that she had savored her privacy, especially those afternoons when she didn't have to go online or talk on the phone at all. She couldn't recall ever being afraid when she was on her own. Now, for the first time, her life consisted of backup plans, breadcrumbs home, and emergency exit signs. It was tiring. It was maddening. She had circles under her eyes from waking up several times each night to make new lists of things that might go wrong.

  She added negligence and tardiness to the ever-expanding list of reasons why Greg wasn't cut out to be a father. The words themselves made her feel like a matron or a schoolteacher, and this set off a new wave of irritation.

  She decided to contact the telephone company tomorrow and schedule the hookup herself, even if it meant making a trip to the dreaded Misty Mart to place the call. Surely she would get a cell signal again soon. But right now she had less practical matters on her mind. The strange woman at the yard sale had given her plenty to think about, although she wondered how much of it she should take seriously and how much to attribute to premature dementia.

  Lydia couldn't identify her discomfort. It gathered and then stretched. She put out the cigarette by crushing its tip against the ground. She left the butt on the step, to be flushed down the toilet later.

  Marietta Colquitt had accepted Lydia's coffee invitation, and the two women sat down for what Marietta called "a neighborly chat." Lydia had made the offer in part because she expected to be interrupted soon by Greg, who never showed up.

  Two hours later Lydia was trying to make sense of the visit. Now, sitting on the back step, she believed that Marietta had come to talk with her on purpose. If her assumption was correct, she wondered why Marietta pretended to be interested in the yard sale, instead of simply stopping by and introducing herself. What a strange, old bird.

  Up close Lydia marveled at the woman's skin, translucent yet weathered, with the fine grain of onionskin paper. Her black hair appeared natural without a hint of silver. Her eyes didn't remain violet but changed color from one light source to another: Now dove-gray, now shot through with a purplish light. Looking into her eyes was like watching a harbor on a rainy day.

  "I see you got rid of that dinette set," Marietta said on first glance at the kitchen, which was now furnished with two folding chairs and a couple of crates.

  Lydia wasn't comfortable with people watching while she cooked or made coffee. She never asked strangers into her home, certainly never invited people to visit without a purpose. Something about Marietta's manner had put her at ease in person, and then troubled her after the woman was gone.

  "Greg took it apart and carried the whole set to the dump, with a couple of rugs that were too worn out to sell," she explained.

  "Beverly kept meaning to replace that table," said Marietta. "She would've been embarrassed to know you had to haul it off. Oh well."

  Lydia ran tap water into the teapot and put it on one of the stove's front burners.

  "So you were friends with Mrs. Dempsey?"

  She poured the last coffee beans into the grinder.

  "You might have to switch to a coffeemaker," Marietta said.

  "Sorry?"

  "I've got a French press, too," she said with a nod toward the glass pitcher on the counter. "My daughter-in-law ordered it from a catalog. I like it, but there's no place that sells whole bean coffee in Skillute. You'll have to drive into town, I mean Kelso."

  Lydia laughed and let the grinder whir for a couple of seconds.

  "I never thought about that," she said.

  "I've experimented with Maxwell House in the French press," Marietta told her.

  "How was that?"

  "Not too good."

  Lydia laughed again, and realized it had been days since she had even smiled without effort.

  "So, is Misty Mart the only store in Skillute?"

  "Oh, no," said Marietta. She grinned. "But it's the best one."

  They settled on the sofa in the living room with iced coffee and a plate of macaroons. Then Lydia asked again:

  "Did you know Mrs. Dempsey?"

  Her guest said: "We knew each other in school. We got to be good friends. Later on, after she married, we were friends and neighbors. Her husband built this place on some land that used to belong to his family."

  Marietta stopped and seemed to study her for a moment.

  "You plan to sell the house?"

  "We have some work to do, but, yeah, as soon as we can. If you know anybody who's looking to buy, send them our way."

  Marietta gazed out the window, across the front yard. She had a quizzical expression.

  "Am I cutting
the yard sale short?" She asked.

  "No," Lydia said. "You and Kristy were two of exactly six people who stopped by all day. A few trucks slowed down, but I think they just wanted to get a look at the freak from the city."

  She asked where Marietta lived.

  "You can't see it from here, although technically speaking we're on the same road. At least by name."

  "I was wondering about all those handmade signs," said Lydia. "Was that the name of somebody who used to live around here?"

  Marietta added another macaroon to her plate. Then she went on without acknowledging the question.

  "We're about two miles east. Take the left turn at the junction, go about five hundred feet, and we're on the right side of the road," she said. "You might have seen my son's church. It's a double-wide trailer with a marquee out front on the grass."

  "Oh!" Lydia recalled the church from one of Pastor Colquitt's brochures. She'd made fun of it to Greg only the day before.

  "Well," she told Marietta. "You have a good-sized piece of real estate, there. Sorry if I'm being presumptuous."

  "That's all right," her guest said. "I live with my son Henry and his wife. My daughter-in-law's a good gal. I like her. She comes from a family that's pretty well off. The land we live on didn't cost too much, though. It used to be a farm. Alicia got a good price at the auction. She knows about that kind of thing."

  Marietta smiled. Her eyes caught the light in the room and faded again. She asked:

  "Have you had many other visitors, before today?"

  Lydia turned her attention from the window and faced Marietta. Her hands and face grew warm.

  "A few," she replied. "Not if you mean neighbors. Is that what you mean?"

  Marietta put her plate on the coffee table and folded her hands in her lap. She took a breath before speaking.

  "Anybody unusual. Maybe someone's come up to your front door," she said. "Maybe you've seen somebody you didn't recognize, but felt like you should. That kind of thing."

  In Lydia's peripheral view the sunlight shifted outside, rippling swiftly across the lawn. The wooden windmills puttered in the breeze. She had no idea how much time had passed.