by Brett Lott
Turning away from Theresa, Miriam wondered how she would get through the rest of the day. Perhaps, she thought, it would be enough to simply put on the sweater as soon as she got back to the car. Parade or no.
MARSENA KONKLE is the author of the novel A Dark Oval Stone, from which the story "Resolved" is taken. She was a finalist in the 2004 Paraclete Fiction Contest and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College. She lives in the Chicago area with her husband and great aunt.
AN EVENING
ON THE CUSP
OF THE
APOCALYPSE
BRET LOTT
"AN EVENING ON THE CUSP OF THE APOCALYPSE" IS A COMIC parable of our end times, when it seems so many of us live perched on the edge of a knife, but believe ourselves to be standing on solid ground. The prophet Amos wrote, '"The days are coming,' declares the Sovereign Lord, 'when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord,'" and it is the hope of the author that this story of the folly of believing we're all okay will illuminate the need for the bedrock wisdom God's Word has to offer.
—BRET LOTT
The mail hadn't come.
Larry'd put the bills—the electric, water, Citibank, the mortgage—in the mailbox when he left this morning, then pushed up the red flag, and headed for downtown, confident in the way things worked: he would offer up these sacrifices, these slabs off his paycheck, in order to live as he and his family did, content in the good knowledge the lights were sure to come on when he flipped the switch, the water to flow when he turned on the faucet. Soon, he'd thought as he placed the bills in the box, a representative from the United States Postal Service would arrive, take up these obligations, and send them on their way, route them as they ought to be routed, deliver them as they ought to be delivered. The way things worked.
But the flag was still up, he saw in his headlights, this day over, the sun already down, dusk making way for dark, and he only shook his head at the sad truth of how seldom, in fact, things actually worked as they were meant to work. He pulled up the driveway.
Take, for example, the library bid. He'd had this one in the bag, he'd believed, had done his homework, followed the paper trail first to the federal building, then to county, then to city, all in an effort to find exactly who it was could authorize the wiring bid. Routine, certainly: be pleasant to Laqueesha, the black woman who worked the archives at federal, offer to buy her a cup of coffee and a jelly-filled, let her turn him down twice before trying one more time, when she always took him up on it; offer Dorinda at county a Snapple Raspberry Iced Tea, who would take it on the first go-round; make certain not to make eye contact with Benny O'Hearn, the jerk, down at city hall.
It'd paid off too. The bid on the new library, he'd finally figured out, had to go through county, but not before approval by federal and by city.
Routine.
But then he'd gotten the flat tire, then the ticket for speeding, then, once he'd finally made it back to the office a little after five, he'd watched from his desk while a uniformed officer served papers to the boss, who turned, papers in hand, and went into his own office, closed the door gently behind him. A few moments later he emerged, briefcase in one hand, Softball trophy in the other, and headed for the door.
Of course this would be about the death of that janitor at Whitesides Elementary last week, the one who'd touched wires he should have been able to touch.
They watched their boss go, no one saying anything, all nine of them at the offices of Hemley Electric, Inc., only staring as the door closed behind Mr. Hemley.
Then, one by one, they left, no words between them.
So much for the library bid.
Now he was home, the red flag still up, the bills not mailed. What next? he thought, and reached to the visor, pushed the button on the garage door opener.
Nothing happened.
He saw, too, there were no lights on in any of the windows, and his home, here in the failing twilight of a day gone bad, seemed somehow not his home at all, but a hulking shadow, big and anonymous, nothing he knew as his own. It was a house, he saw, dark and vaguely empty for the lack of lights and a garage door shut tight, no matter how many times he mashed the button on the visor.
Is this my house? he wondered. Had he mistaken this one for his own, where each evening warm light through windows spilled softly onto the sidewalk and lawn and driveway? Maybe, he thought, he'd simply skipped a street, too preoccupied with the ramifications of that janitor's death and the ensuing fire that'd razed the entire elementary school the day before classes started, all of it simply cutting too close. It had been his schematic, after all, that'd been used for the layout and hookup, though his boss had given him the final verbal okay. He'd approached Mr. Hemley with the layout, sketched out on a Burger King napkin, between the top and bottom of the ninth inning of the last game of the season. Mr. Hemley'd just finished off his sixth beer and was headed for the on-deck circle when Larry'd made the presentation; Mr. Hemley'd smiled, nodded, then gone to bat, knocked a solid line drive down the first base line, drove in the winning two runs. Game over, schematic okayed. The world a wonderful place, Larry recalled. The way things worked.
But then had come that janitor, that fire. Maybe, Larry figured, he'd just made a left turn one street too early, or one street too late, in this tract of homes. Maybe this house was just somebody else's, a simple mistake.
Then the garage door opened, not from the button—he'd finally given up, had in fact placed the car in reverse, so convinced he was of his error—to reveal to him his son, Lawrence, there in his headlights.
He was pushing up the garage door from the inside, his thirteen-year-old grimacing with the effort, the red emergency release handle from the opening device dangling above him once he'd gotten the door all the way up.
"Hey Dad!" he said, and waved, then stood to one side, made a sweeping gesture to usher him into the garage.
Larry smiled, pulled in, parked.
"How goes it?" Larry said, and climbed out. "What's with the garage door opener?" he said. "And the lights?"
The boy was a black shadow now that his headlights were off, weak evening light in from the open garage door useless. He believed Lawrence shrugged at the question. "I don't know," Lawrence said, then, "Promise you won't be mad."
"Mad about what?" Larry said. "About the lights?" He came around the car, stood before his son. "Mad about what?"
"Just promise," the shadow said, then, "It's no big deal, really. But you have to promise."
"All right," he said, and wondered what this might all be about. "I promise."
Lawrence said, "I got a tattoo."
"You what?" He tried to focus on the figure before him. "You got a what?"
"A tattoo," he said, and now he saw his son moving, turning toward him, pushing up, he believed, his T-shirt sleeve. "A couple days ago. I saved up for it." He paused, as though Larry might be able to see his arm in the dark.
"You what?" Larry said again. "You're thirteen years old!"
"Dad," his son said, "you promised. You promised me you wouldn't get mad."
"Where is your mother?" he said, and brushed past his son, took the three steps up to the kitchen door, pushed it open, his son silent behind him, his moves, he knew, too quick and hard even to allow an answer. He would find her, see what she had to say about this.
The kitchen was dark, the only light the pale purple in from the windows, so that it seemed he might be walking in a dream, the things around him—the refrigerator, the breakfast nook table, the sofa and chairs in the family room, the hall table, even the individual rungs of the banister as he mounted the stairs—as pale and meaningless as the empty sky out there.
What was with these lights?
He found Debbie in their bedroom, and in the instant he pushed open the door he saw her throw something from where she stood at her dresser to something big and dark lying on their bed.
It was a suitcase, he made out, open.
"This is it," she said, "this is it, this is it."
"What are you doing?" Larry said, and came to the bed, saw sail from the dresser to the suitcase before him a wad of something. Clothing, he believed. Hers.
"This is it," she said, and slammed shut a drawer. He saw her figure bend at the waist, heard a drawer scrape open, saw more wads of clothing fly.
"Honey," he said. "Debbie," he said, "what's going on?"
She stood then, and he heard her breathing, sharp and hard in the growing dark of their bedroom.
"I'm having an affair," she said, and then it seemed she burst, those sharp and hard breaths gone in an instant, replaced with sobs as open and clear as the day had seemed when he'd backed out of the driveway this morning, as open and clear as when he'd put that red flag up to signal the mailman.
Have I known this was coming? he wondered. Were there signs? What had he missed?
He turned, sat on the edge of the bed, his back to his sobbing wife. She sobbed, still at the dresser, and he wondered what words there were for this, for something he hadn't foreseen.
What might he say, now that everything had been lost? And did that job even matter now, that death of a janitor and all those schoolchildren forced to hold class in camp tents that families in town had donated nothing more than an odd item in the newspaper, a funny photograph he and Mr. Hemley had laughed over just yesterday morning, when the world lay before them, untainted and pure?
What about his son's tattoo?
And what was with these lights?
He looked up, saw the switchplate by the door, the one that controlled the ceiling fan in here, and the lights.
He'd laid out the wiring schematic on this house himself. He'd done that work, and had for the last seven years rested each night with the good knowledge he'd done his work well, all the lights working, and that ceiling fan, even the garage door opener.
But what would happen were he now to flip on the lights in here at that switchplate? Would he, too, fry as had the janitor? Would his wife sob even louder were he to die here, his own house razed by his own inept schematics?
Was this how his life would end? he wondered, and believed, perhaps, it already had: His wife was having an affair, his thirteen-year-old had a tattoo, his boss had left with the softball trophy.
Why not try? he wondered.
He stood, went to the switchplate. Still Debbie sobbed, there at the dresser, and it seemed the few feet to that switch-plate had suddenly become a maze a mile long, as much an ordeal as a day courting Laqueesha and Dorinda and avoiding the eyes of Benny O'Hearn, the jerk.
He reached the wall, put his hand to the switchplate. He swallowed, closed his eyes, and here came a picture of that janitor in the moment before he touched those wires, beside him a galvanized bucket of clouded and antiseptic water, a mop in the other hand, his feet planted square in the patch of wet linoleum he'd just finished with.
He opened his eyes then, blinked away that image. He'd done a good job on the wiring here. Yet he'd believed he'd done a good job on that Burger King napkin as well. Still, that school had burned down.
And it came to him: Things happened, he only now knew, took strange twists away from you, and in a single second headed straight for hell in a handbasket with no input from you whatsoever.
That, he finally realized, was the way things worked.
He flipped up the switch.
Nothing happened.
"That's nothing," Debbie managed to say then, her voice winded, empty, relieved of itself for how openly and clearly she had sobbed. "That's nothing," she said again, and turned from the dresser, headed for the master bath. "Listen to this," she said, and he followed her, saw her in the near-black of the bathroom twist at the faucets of their double sinks. Immediately the room filled with sound, rapid-fire thuds from air-filled pipes.
"No water" she said. "No water, and no electricity." She paused, and here were the sharp and hard breaths again. "I'm having an affair," she said, and the sobbing started.
He'd had nothing to do with the plumbing in here, and for a moment felt relief, felt himself almost smile. He had nothing to do with the plumbing.
But then his life came back to him, and he lost the smile.
He turned, left her there in the bathroom, left the rapid-fire thuds and her sobbing, and went to the window across the dark room to see what this day's last moments of light might bring.
He saw out there a blue sky so dark and heavy he knew it would be only a moment or two before the black would take over completely, and stars would emerge like celestial master electricians come to jeer at him, his life out of his hands.
"Citibank called today," his wife sobbed from the bathroom. "They canceled the cards. They said they called TRW, too, and told them to put our name on their list," she sobbed, and took in several quick breaths.
And he noticed then that no other lights were on in any of the houses he could see. Not in the Tolman's across the street, or the Neezak's to their right, the Doherty's to their left. He saw no street lamps, either, saw only darkened streets and a deep blue sky empty of stars, as though perhaps this were the end of the world, and civilization as he knew it—a garage door opener that worked, a faithful wife, the United States Postal Service picking up his mail—was finished. Done and done.
"They put a lien on the house too," she sobbed. "The bank." She took in more quick breaths, then sobbed. "And Ed Hemley," she sobbed, "is great in bed."
His life, done and done.
Then, out there in this evening he believed to be on the cusp of the Apocalypse, he saw the headlights of a car down on the street, moving slowly, stopping, moving slowly again, stopping before each house a moment, as though in search of an address, and he imagined it might very well be the same officer as had served papers on Mr. Hemley—Ed, now—come to get him, and he crossed his arms, held himself, waited for whatever might come next.
It stopped at his next door neighbor's house a moment, then pulled to his own.
A white jeep, there at his mailbox.
The mailman.
He saw the mailman lean out, flip open the door on his mailbox, saw him extract small slips of paper, saw him insert some of his own. He saw this all beneath a sky as close to black as a sky might ever be and still hold no stars, and thought it a miracle somehow, so dark out there, and yet light enough for him to see the quick flick of the mailman's wrist, a practiced move as professional and smooth and confident in itself as anything he had ever seen. Then he saw the mailman look up to him, here in this darkened window, and saw, he believed, the mailman smile, saw him wink, then wave, a brief gesture filled with possibility and courage.
Larry felt his own hand move of its own accord, and he, too, waved, the same gesture a passing on of something: courage, he thought. Courage, and possibility.
And one by one, throughout his neighborhood, he saw lights come on. Here, there, the next blocks over, then the Tolmans, and the Neezaks, and the Dohertys, until his hometown seemed a spray of celestial gifts, myriad constellations, a map of the galaxy, untainted and pure. Who needs stars? he thought.
Then his own lights came on, first downstairs, and he saw that light he knew from every other night spill softly onto the sidewalk and lawn and driveway; next came upstairs, this room in which he stood with his wife, and all view of the night outside was suddenly gone, replaced by his own reflection in the glass, the lights on behind him, so that what he saw was a man, himself, with his arm up in a kind of snappy salute, confident in himself.
Debbie had stopped sobbing, and he turned, saw her where he'd been on the edge of the bed. She was weeping now, carefully, gently, and he went to her, put his arm around her, held her.
He heard water flowing now, saw from where they sat on the bed into the bathroom clear water stream from the faucets, the water back on.
"I was lying," she wept. "I'm not having an affair," she wept. "I would never do that to you. I just want you to ch
erish me," she wept. "That's all."
He held her, held her closer, watched the water flow, smelled his wife, her hair, that same shampoo she always used, and the phone rang.
He would not answer it, he decided, chose instead to cherish her in this moment. But it rang only once anyway, and he held Debbie close, smelled her hair.
Then it rang again, and though this time he thought perhaps he ought to answer—maybe this was Mr. Hemley calling, begging Larry to come bail him out—the phone again rang only that once, and no more.
"There," he whispered to Debbie. "I cherish you," he whispered, "you know I cherish you," and thought of the mailman's wave, his own perfect copy in the glass reflection, and thought, too, of how he might get the library bid on his own. Hemley Electric, Inc., was ripe for a takeover, he thought. And the wiring wasn't, finally, his own fault; Mr. Hemley had in fact given him the okay; no way was he liable for it. No way.
He heard a small and tentative knock on the doorjamb, and turned, saw standing in the doorway Lawrence, who smiled, gave a small, tentative wave. "Can I come in?" he said.
Debbie sniffed, sat up straight, dabbed at her eyes. She gave Larry a nod, a broken smile.
"Come on in," Larry said.
He took a step into the room, and another. He said, "I answered the phone." He shrugged. "The first one was somebody from Citibank." He shrugged again, smiled. "The guy said they made a mistake, and they had you down as paid up. The guy said he was sorry, and that he'd called TRW, whoever that is." He shrugged yet again, still smiled. "He said this TRW was wiping clean your life. That was what he said, 'TRW is wiping clean your life.' And that they upped your credit limit too."
Larry looked at Debbie, whose smile was no longer broken, but strong and healthy.
"Who's TRW?" Lawrence said, then, "And what's a lien? Because that was what the second one was about. Some lady from NationsBank said the lien was off, and it was a big mistake, the mortgage was in."
"When you're older," Larry said, and felt himself smile, "you'll understand about all this." He patted the bed next to him, said, "Come sit down. It's been a long day."