The Waiting

by Joe Hart

  “Hey! Are you okay?”

  The figure in the water didn’t stir. It bobbed, turning counterclockwise, its feet spinning slowly toward the town.

  “Shit,” Evan said.

  He tore his T-shirt over his head. His feet hit the dock, the planking banging beneath his soles as he ran. Three more strides and he jumped, hung in the air, and dove into the water.

  The lake hit him like something alive, its cold unlike anything he’d experienced before. Frozen needles pierced every inch of his skin, and he barely resisted the urge to gasp at the shock. He stroked toward the surface and broke through, heaving a lungful of air in. He tried to shake the water from his eyes, then swam forward, hoping for and dreading the moment his fingers found the body. The moisture filtered from his vision, and he stopped, treading water and spun in a circle.

  Nothing was there.

  The beating of his heart throbbed in his ears as he searched the calm, flat plane of water all around him. He dove, keeping his eyes open against the blinding cold this time, and swam down, panning the surrounding few feet for the man’s body he knew must be there. Straggling weeds grew up from the lake’s bottom, but otherwise the water was too dark to see through.

  He rose, sucked a breath in, and plunged down again. Over and over he dove, a sickening feeling growing in his stomach the whole time.

  There was nothing there in the first place.

  At last he gave up and swam toward the dock, glancing over his shoulder every other stroke, half expecting the body to be there again. Whenever a weed touched his foot, his heart gave a nasty jump. When his hand found the decking, the relief was almost overwhelming. Pulling himself onto the dock, he stood there shivering, cold water running out of his pants legs in streams, the dripping of the moisture returning to the lake and the chattering of his teeth the only sounds.

  Evan hurried back to the house, picking up his dropped T-shirt on the way. When he stepped into the entry and saw Shaun still propped on the couch where he’d left him, his first instinct was to call 911. Picking up his cell phone, he started dialing the numbers, but then turned to face the lake again. Darkness cloaked the water now, hiding everything but the barest of movement of small waves licking the shore.

  He’d imagined the body, or it had been a trick of the light. A floating body couldn’t just disappear in a matter of seconds.

  He shivered again, not sure if his soaking pants were to blame.

  “Da?”

  Shaun’s eyes were wide and unblinking in the low light.

  “I’m okay,” Evan said, and shook again. “I’m okay.”

  He crossed the room and turned on the TV with a trembling hand, finding a cartoon on the next station he turned to.

  “You watch for a minute, and Dad’s going to take a quick shower.”

  He left the bathroom door wide open and, after firing up the shower, stripped out of his sopping clothes. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he saw that his lips were light blue.

  The shocking change in temperature brought a rasping breath from him as he stepped into the hot water. Evan let it flow over him, envelope his body in its warmth. Gradually he stopped shaking and the tension in his muscles eased. As the physical strain washed away, his mind began to whir with questions, none he wanted try to answer. Mostly because the solution to almost all of them ended with another question—one concerning his own sanity.

  He leaned forward, resting his head against the shower surround. “What the hell’s happening to me?”

  Shaun’s scream rang through the house, and Evan jerked, nearly slipping on the shower floor. He ripped the curtain away and slapped the shower handle off, then jumped from the tub. Shaun’s scream came again, louder this time, and Evan ran, launching himself through the doorway and into the living room.

  Shaun lay on his side on the couch, his arms flailing at the air, his legs kicking against a stack of pillows. Evan skidded to a stop and knelt, setting him back up into a sitting position.

  “What’s wrong, honey? What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”

  Shaun responded with another wail and craned his neck around toward the kitchen. Tears ran in steady streams down his reddened face, and he coughed, choking on his own panic. Evan scanned his small body and saw no bleeding or bruises, although he didn’t know how he would’ve gotten hurt sitting on the couch.

  “What’s the matter?” Evan asked again.

  “D-d-d-da,” Shaun stuttered, between hitching cries.

  “I’m right here, honey, I’m right here.”

  Shaun shook his head. “Da!”

  Evan wiped away some of the tears and frowned, glancing at the kitchen as Shaun pointed again.

  “Da!”

  “Okay, okay, I don’t know what you’re saying, honey.”

  Shaun glanced around the room through tear-muddled eyes and pointed toward the entertainment center.

  “You want the TV off? Was there something scary on the TV?”

  He stood, suddenly aware of his nudity, and grabbed a small blanket from a nearby chair. After wrapping it around his waist, he went toward the TV, sure now that something on the program must have disturbed Shaun.

  “Dere,” Shaun yelled through another sob, pointing again at the TV.

  “Okay, I’ll shut it off,” Evan said, flicking the power switch.

  “Dere!”

  This time he looked at where Shaun pointed, following his outstretched arm to the iPad lying beside the TV.

  “You want the iPad?”

  “Na.” Shaun screwed up his face in concentration. “Yesh!”

  “Okay,” Evan said, carrying the device to the couch.

  Shaun grabbed it from his hand, flipped it on, and found the flash-card application. The app loaded, and he continued to whimper as he scrolled down the rows and rows of pictures with names beneath them. While he searched, Evan glanced over the couch at the kitchen. There weren’t any lights on, and shadows hung beneath the long table and shaded the two doors at its far end.

  “Dolldolldolldolldolldoll.”

  The thick electronic voice spoke from the iPad as Shaun punched the picture of a doll with brown hair, over and over.

  “Dolldolldolldolldolldoll.”

  A shudder ran through his body as Shaun quit hitting the screen and pointed, not toward the kitchen, Evan realized, but toward the basement door.

  “Da,” Shaun said, his crying tapering off.

  Evan tried to form the word but couldn’t. The water beads clinging to his skin were drops of ice.

  “It’s okay, buddy,” he whispered, and knelt, hugging Shaun’s quaking body close to him. “It’s okay.”

  ~

  Evan pulled the basement door open and shone the flashlight down the stairs. Panning back and forth, he took the first step, listening.

  He’d rocked Shaun to sleep while sitting in his room, humming a tune with words forgotten. Elle had used to sing the song when Shaun was a baby, before the crash, before the cancer, before everything. It was the one thing he could recall from their prior life without feeling the crush of depression. He just wished he could remember the words.

  The stairs creaked beneath him as he took another step, the darkness fleeing before his light, only to rush in when he swept it in another direction. He tried not to think about Shaun’s outburst, but in his head the voice from the iPad repeated over and over.

  The blue shine of the doll’s eyes met him when he turned on the landing. The doll stood in the exact same place as before. The basement had a vacuum-like silence to it, a held breath, waiting. Evan strode down the last few steps, faking a bravado without anything to back it up. He flipped on the lights and bent forward, examining the doll’s placement on the floor. Were its feet in the same spot as before? He moved around it, trying to recall exactly where he’d left it.

  Yes, it hadn’t moved.

  Evan rubbed his face with one hand, feeling the urge to cry. What the hell was happening to him? He was in a basement, frightened
almost to his wit’s end, wondering if a doll had walked up the stairs and scared his son.

  Anger poured over him. Saturated him.

  He wound up a kick and booted the doll as hard as he could. It flew a few feet and rebounded off the wall, coming to rest on its face. Its hair fell in a broad fan around its head. Facedown, it reminded him of the body in the lake.

  He reached down, meaning to carry the thing out of the house, to throw it away in the trash bin outside, but stopped. Would that be admitting to some kind of insanity on his part? He straightened, pointing his flashlight at the monstrosity of a clock at the other end of the room, its face taciturn in the beam.

  “We gotta get some better lights down here.”

  Without looking at the doll again, he climbed the steps and shut the door. In the kitchen he grabbed his phone and dialed Jason’s number, glancing at the clock to make sure it wasn’t too late.

  “What’s up, man?” Jason answered a moment later. The sounds of a video game in the background filtered through to Evan’s end.

  “Hey, not much, am I bothering you?”

  “Nah, Lily and I are just playing a game.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Silence spooled out between them until Jason laughed.

  “Ev, you okay?”

  Evan sighed and walked into the living room, his blurry reflection in the dark windows looked back at him.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t think we can stay here anymore, Jase.”

  “What? Why?”

  The video game’s sound diminished and then was gone with the snap of a door shutting.

  “It’s not working out well with bringing Shaun across the lake.”

  “I thought you said he loved the boat rides.”

  “Yeah, you know, we feel strange here. The guy before us goes missing, and I don’t know. I don’t think it’s safe here for Shaun.”

  “Safe?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ev, did something happen?”

  All at once he wanted to tell Jason everything: the doll, the body in the lake, his dreams. But what would Jason ask next? Or maybe he wouldn’t ask. They were such good of friends that he couldn’t ask out loud, but he would wonder, Is Shaun safe with you? Stanching the urge to tell Jason all of it, he made his way to Shaun’s room, pausing in the doorway to watch him sleep.

  “No. I can’t explain it.”

  “Listen, man, sit down for a minute, okay? Do you want to know what I think?”

  “No, but I’m guessing you’re going to tell me.”

  “I think maybe you’re finally alone with your thoughts, and they’re getting to you.”

  “I’m always alone with my thoughts, they never leave me.”

  “I know, but that place is different. You’re separated from any distractions. You have your writing to focus on now, and you’re getting to spend more time with Shaun, and I think it’s an overload.”

  “I like writing, I love being with Shaun.”

  “I know you do, but this is the first time since Elle that you’ve had a chance to slow down and realize where you’re at. For fuck’s sake, man, you’re a single father of a child with special needs who lost his wife—you’re allowed to feel overwhelmed sometimes.”

  “But it’s more than that,” Evan said, turning away from Shaun’s room. “I feel like I’m losing it sometimes.” It was as close as he could get to the truth.

  “And that’s perfectly natural. I don’t know if you’ve allowed yourself the time to actually grieve.”

  “I grieve every day,” Evan said. “There’s not a moment that goes by that I don’t miss her and regret the day of our accident. If I could go back and stop myself from suggesting we go see that movie, we would’ve never been there at that intersection and Shaun would be fine.”

  “You can’t do that to yourself, there’s no way you could’ve known about the accident or Elle’s cancer.”

  Feeling deflated, Evan sank into the sofa, unconsciously checking the basement door’s reflection in the blank TV screen. “I know, it’s ...”

  “It isn’t fucking fair, that’s what it is,” Jason finished for him. “I’m sorry, man, about everything, but I think a few months to decompress would be good for you, give your mind a chance to recoup some lost ground.”

  Evan smiled wanly. “Is that a jab?”

  “Of course.”

  “God, I don’t know. I wonder sometimes. I wonder if there’s someone else that’s living our life, the life we should’ve had, and somehow we got theirs by mistake, like a big cosmic joke.”

  “I don’t know about that, man, but I do know my best friend, and he’s the most dedicated, loyal, loving father any kid could want. There’s no better hands Shaun could be in. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, but at times I don’t feel like it.”

  “Well, I’m telling you there isn’t. Sometimes people are too close to their own lives to see what’s wrong or right, but I’m looking in from the outside. You’re doing excellent.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “By the way, how’s Lily and Lisa?”

  “They’re good. Lily’s doing soccer this summer. She’s all jazzed up about it, broke one of Lisa’s plates the other day kicking a ball around inside the kitchen.”

  Evan laughed. “How’s work?”

  “It blows, but it pays too well for me to tell the board to get fucked.”

  Evan smiled and nodded, feeling drained and somewhat foolish.

  “Seriously though, man, think about what I said. I’m no psychologist, but you do have one on hand—if you’re not using her for something else.”

  “God. I’m hanging up now.”

  “Kidding. But if you need to talk about anything, don’t hesitate.”

  “I never do.”

  Jason laughed. “All right, I got a game to get back to here.”

  “Yeah, I’ll let you go.” The image of the doll lying facedown in the basement returned, and he quickly devised a way to fix the issue. “Hey, one more thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That doll that’s down in the basement, the one with the blue eyes?”

  “Doll ... doll ... oh yeah, that’s Lily’s old doll. My grandma gave it to her for her second birthday.”

  Evan’s heart sank. Thoughts of throwing the thing away evaporated. “Oh, gotcha.”

  “Why? Does Shaun want to play with it or something?”

  “No, no,” Evan said, too quickly. The idea of Shaun playing with the thing made his guts squirm. “No, I saw it down there, and it looked strange with the duct tape over its mouth.”

  Jason’s end became quiet, and then he laughed once, dry.

  “Yeah, I forgot about that. Lily put the duct tape over its mouth when we were up there staying for a long weekend quite a few years back. She was only six at the time, going through a phase, I think.”

  “What kind of phase?” Evan asked, the hairs on his arms beginning to rise.

  “Oh, you know, kid stuff.” Jason laughed again, louder this time. “She said the doll would talk to her at night, that’s why she put the tape over its mouth.”

  Gooseflesh rolled over Evan’s entire body, and he swallowed, his throat constricting to a pinhead.

  “Anyway, just one of those kid things, imaginary friends and whatnot. She grew out of it.”

  “Yeah,” Evan answered, his voice like sandpaper.

  “Okay, buddy, I’ll let you go. Call me soon.”

  “Will do.”

  “Bye, man.”

  “Bye.”

  Evan shut the phone off and sat staring into space for a long time. Shaun rolled over in his bed, and the sound brought him out of the trance. Moving like a ninety-year-old, he crossed the room and flipped the kitchen lights off. He made it only two steps into the living room before going back to the kitchen and propping a chair beneath the basement door’s knob.<
br />
  With the house as quiet as a grave, Evan got ready for bed and turned out the last light, letting darkness cover everything with its heavy embrace.

  ~

  “I don’t want any more chemo,” she says, gazing at him through the haze of drugs. “They said it won’t do any good anyhow.”

  “But you never know, something could happen on the next round.”

  She smiles at him. “Evan, look at me, I’m wasted away.”

  “No, you’re not,” he says, unwilling to look at how thin she’s become. “You’re going to be okay, you’re going to make it.”

  She squeezes his hand.

  “I brought something from home, it’s in my bag. Before you leave, I want you to hand it to me.”

  “What is it?” he asks, glancing at the bag that sits near the door.

  “You’ll see. It’s what I want.”

  He moves from her, floating, ethereal, not really there, but everything he sees and hears is sharp, like the world is made of shattered glass. Unzipping the bag, he puts his hand inside and rummages around until his fingers touch it.

  Evan came awake, clutching his pillow in two tight fists. His teeth ground together, and tears lay on his cheeks. His breath came out in ragged heaves as he stared up at the ceiling.

  “Damn you.”

  He sat up, steadying himself with a hand on the bed so that he wouldn’t tip over, the vertigo of sleep still with him. Shaun’s monitor sat quiet, his light snores audible across the hall. Evan stood, rubbing his eyes, and threw on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. The floor beneath his bare feet felt cold, like he was walking on a frozen pond instead of hardwood. Looking into Shaun’s room, he gazed at the S shape the boy made below his quilts.

  Hints of moonlight illuminated his way through the house. He glanced at the TV and considered turning it on until sleep came again, but the thought of what would be on at this ungodly hour steered him toward the kitchen. He brewed a cup of tea and looked longingly at the last bottle of wine chilling in the fridge, then sat with the steaming cup between his palms. It would be hours before first light, not long enough to drink wine and too long to stare at the wall.