“Well?”
“Well, she had grown as thin as a homeless cat, and I turned the skeleton out of doors, but she watches for me in the streets, hides herself, so that she may see me pass, stops me in the evening when I go out, in order to kiss my hand, and, in fact, worries me enough to drive me mad; and that is why I never keep Christmas eve now.”
Kealan Patrick Burke
THEY KNOW
THE PHONE RINGS just as the weeping stops. He stares at the glass and the amber panacea within, shutting out the trilling with minimal effort. There is nothing to hear. Just as there was nothing to hear the last time he answered the phone. Nothing but damnable winter breathing on the line and the faintest whisper, whispering the impossible: “They know.”
Just the wind.
And the ticking from the walls of the deathwatch winding down.
* * *
Snow.
Jake Dodds was so very tired of it.
It seemed winter had crept in while he was sleeping, draping drop cloths over the town of Miriam’s Cove and hushing itself with guilty whispers while it awaited his reaction to the desertion of color.
It was everywhere, layered on the ground, hunched over the hedgerows in the garden, bowing the branches of the trees in the yard, shotgun blasts of it on the sides of cars and windows, fired by children driven by manic excitement. It was on the roofs, the sills, the shoulders of people ducking to avoid the sharp wind that sent it flurrying into their grimacing faces.
Everywhere.
And it didn’t seem as if it would ever stop. It didn’t seem as if the underlying vibrant green luster of life would ever return. Even the sun had been reduced to a foggy white cyst beneath the pale skin of the sky.
He was starting to feel as if the whole goddamn season with its twinkling lights and carols, dazzling storefronts and endless slew of commercials advertising mind-numbing electric toys, was to blame for the snow. People expected snow for Christmas and maybe the collective power of that expectation was enough to make it so. Whatever the reason, he didn’t like it one bit. Christmas was a time for sitting around the fire eating marshmallows and fruit cake, for decorating the tree with loved ones and maybe indulging in a snifter of brandy before bed, for gifts that meant something and for the excited chatter of children when they discovered the bounty beneath the tree.
But now, six days before Christmas, sitting by his window and staring out at an almost monochrome world, Jake realized that all that was gone, not only in the minds of the masses, but from his own life too.
A distinct awareness of family values and a fondness for the ritualistic aspect of the season had not been enough to keep his wife alive or his children from growing up and scattering themselves around the world. Leaving him alone with the white and an empty house to watch it from.
Clearing the condensation away with a swipe of his hand, he scowled at the silent fall of snow as children giggled and flung handfuls of the stuff at each other.
In his garden stood a long-suffering walnut tree, a beard of white nestled in its crotch almost like mimicry of the season’s patron saint.
Jake thought he knew what it felt like to be that tree – immobile, rooted to the ground, trapped and powerless to do anything but stand by and watch the passage of time, unable to run away from the grief, the sorrow and all the dark things that sharpened the edges of life.
He shook his head, sliding the cover over the well from which such melodrama sprung and allowed himself the faintest hint of a smile as a tall, wiry figure in a brown suit and overcoat appeared, ducked his head against the snow and turned the corner into Jake’s driveway.
A visitor was just what he needed now and visitors were seldom welcomer than Lenny Quick.
Jake groaned at the ache in his bones as he rose from the seat by the window, and he took a moment to steady himself before making his way to the front door.
“God’s dandruff,” Lenny said, snapping his hat against the palm of his hand. He inspected the hallway as if he’d never seen it before (though he had been here at least once every week for the last thirty years – with the exception of that time in early ’90 when pneumonia had kept him in a hospital bed) before he turned to watch Jake shutting the soft white world outside.
“No end to it, is there?” Jake said, smiling now. Ever since Julia’s death, he had felt as if the walls were closing in around him, that somewhere beyond the rose-patterned wallpaper, a clock was ticking. He heard it at night, faint but most definitely there. Tick-tick-tick, the winding down of his own deathwatch. Company helped silence that sound and made the ghosts nothing but tricks of light and shadow.
Lenny shivered and brushed the snow from his shoulders. “It’s suppose to get a lot worse too if the weatherman is to be believed.” He hung his hat atop his coat on the mahogany tree in the hall. “Saw on the news Maine’s gettin’ hammered, New York, same. Gonna be a bad one no matter what way you look at it. Surprised we haven’t gotten more than this already, to tell the truth.” He led the way into the living room, as if drawn by the heat. “People have been saying since the summer we’re heading for the worst winter in years. Hasn’t happened yet though so I reckon the bad stuff must be getting close.”
Jake followed him into the living room.
A cheerful fire blazed in the fireplace, occasionally spitting sparks the fireguard caught. With Lenny here, the fire and indeed the room, looked almost cozy. Alone, the flames drew the spirit from a man and made the room seem hollow and dark.
Lenny took a seat without waiting to be asked. They had known each other too long to stand on formality. Jake moved to the sideboard beneath the window, upon which gleaming bottles stood like soldiers with immaculate uniforms, most of them empty. He tried to avoid looking at the bleached white world outside. “Usual?”
Lenny nodded and leaned forward to show his hands to the fire. “That’d be just fine. I think I’m freezing from the inside out today.”
Jake poured him a brandy, a whiskey for himself.
“Thanks,” Lenny said, accepting his drink. He watched Jake grimace as he lowered himself into the seat opposite. “Knees still bothering you?”
Jake nodded. “Morning, noon and night. Mornings worst of all.”
“You should let a doctor take a look before you end up crawling.”
“I’d rather crawl than see a doctor.”
“Well it isn’t going to get any better if you don’t go see someone.”
“Like who?”
“Like…I don’t know, a bone man or something. Doctor Palmer would be a start.”
“Nah. It’ll ease up once the cold is gone.”
“You sure about that?”
Jake sighed. “No. I’m not, but unless you went deaf thirty or so years ago, you should know damn well how I feel about doctors.”
“Sure I do,” Lenny said with a shrug, “but is a family tradition of hating doctors for no reason going to make your life any easier if this cold spell turns out to be here for the long haul?”
“We don’t hate them for no reason.”
Lenny smiled. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“I was hoping it would convince you not to pursue it.”
“Have it your way, but I have a twinge of arthritis in my fingers and I have to tell you, if it hit my knees so bad I could hardly walk, I’d be spread out before Palmer like a virgin on prom night.”
Jake winced. “I could have died happy without ever picturing that. Thanks.”
Lenny laughed, a deep rumbling baritone and slapped his thigh. Jake grinned, but it was short-lived. Lenny wiped his eyes and when he looked up, his expression was grave.
“What is it?” Jake asked, unnerved by the intensity of his friend’s stare.
Lenny waited a beat, then sipped from his glass, swishing the brandy around his mouth before he spoke. “You mentioned dying,” he said, looking down into his drink. “I was wondering if you remembered the last time we talked about it. What you told me, I mean.”
“Vaguely,” Jake replied, too quickly, averting his eyes from Lenny’s probing glare, a move he knew belied his words.
He remembered most of it and it shamed him. The snow had thickened, draining what little light had been caught dancing in the evening sky and for the gloom, he was suddenly thankful. In the firelight, the flush of color the lie had summoned to his face would go unnoticed.
It had happened two nights ago.
He staggers into the bedroom with a wail of grief and almost chokes on the breath he sucks in to power another. The shadows quickly move away from him, sliding along the walls and slipping beneath the carpet. The room ripples and sways in his tear-blurred vision, his gut full of whiskey, heart full of grief and dread. Sobbing, he drops to his knees beside the bed, repeating her name like a sacred mantra, as if it could ever be enough to raise her.
Beneath the bed -- so cold, so terribly cold without her -- lies a shoebox and his fingers find it fast, first feeling the sides, the lid, then clutching and dragging it out into the dull light spilling in from the hallway. Urgently, he rips the lid from the box, wipes away tears and grabs the Colt .45 in his fumbling, trembling hands.
“I hate the damn thing. Get rid of it,” his wife had said the day he’d brought it home.
“It’s for protection, honey. Just for protection.”
“I don’t like it. Bring it back. What if it goes off by mistake?”
“It won’t. These things don’t go off unless you mean them to.”
Like I mean it to now, he thinks, and clicks back the safety. Clll-ick! He can feel the shadows around him, pressing down on him, watches held to their ears, listening. Counting off the seconds to oblivion.
In lieu of the gunshot comes a scream, a horrible guttural scream and the gun falls heavily to the floor, still wearing a bead of perspiration from his temple. He runs, runs to the phone and misdials four times before he finally hears the voice he so desperately needs to hear.
“You were pretty upset,” Lenny said, looking strangely embarrassed himself, a look Jake did not see very often. “You scared the life out of me I don’t mind telling you.”
“Yeah,” was all Jake could think to say.
“You were going to do it too, weren’t you?”
“I guess I was.”
Silence then, and in it Jake half-expected to hear a ticking. What came instead was a rattling, as the wind drove snow against the window.
“We’ve been friends for a long time,” Lenny said, casting a half-hearted glance at the window. “Been through a lot together. I wish I was the type of guy who could advise you on things like this but I’m not qualified. Maybe if I’d watched more Oprah or that moronic Doctor Phil guy I’d be able to sort out all of that confusion and fear you’ve got gnawing away at you, but I can’t.” He jiggled his glass and watched the brandy lap against the sides. “I know you’re lonely and hurt and scared and I keep trying to think up ways to fix that but the truth is…you’ve always been stronger than me, y’know? You were the one who helped me sort out my problems over the years. You were the one I turned to when my head threatened to explode with all the pressure. You were my surrogate big brother, the one I called on to slay the dragons, even if I’d never have admitted it. Too proud, you see. Now that you need help, I’m not so sure I’m any good to you.”
Jake offered him a tired smile. “You’ve already been good to me. I can’t remember everything about that call the other night, but I do know by the time I hung up I was more terrified of that gun than anything else. If I hadn’t called you…”
He left the sentence die in the air between them and nodded. “You’re a good man, Lenny,” he said softly and drained his glass.
Lenny leaned back from the fire, the right side of his face fading in the deepening gloom. “Nah,” he said, waving away the compliment. “I was just worried my local brandy pimp’d go outta business. Where’d I be then?”
Gratitude hovered at the back of Jake’s tongue but he knew vocalizing it would embarrass Lenny so instead he raised his empty glass in the air and grinned. “To madmen, pimps and alcoholics,” he said.
Lenny chuckled and touched his glass to Jake’s. “I’ll drink to that.”
They both laughed until the wind thundered against the side of the house hard enough to make them both jump.
“So how are you feeling now?” Lenny asked.
“I have good and bad days. If the snow would let up or better still, vanish entirely then I wouldn’t be able to count this as one of the bad ones. Goddamn snow drives me crazy.”
Lenny frowned. “Why? It never bothered you before.”
“I don’t know. This year is different. I know it’s ridiculous, but I’m a little afraid of it. Even back when the weatherman first said it was heading our way I felt apprehensive, as if he’d said a plague was coming.”
“I think I’d rather have the snow,” said Lenny.
“I wish I could explain it. It just feels wrong, you know? I mean, I look out that window there just like I do every other year and I see the same damn thing I always see in winter – snow and lots of it. But for some reason this year it looks less like a bunch of ice crystals and more like some kind of mold, as if the world is going stale.”
Lenny stared impassively, but Jake was suddenly aware how crazy he sounded and rose from his chair before Lenny could call him on it.
“Another?” he asked and Lenny handed him his glass.
As he refilled their drinks, he glanced out the window. The sky was darkening, slashes of silver glowing above the horizon. And still the snow fell, whipped by the wind into transparent white horses that galloped beneath the streetlights. Jake shivered.
It’s growing, he thought. That’s what I was trying to tell Lenny. It looks as if it’s growing, like a scab. And the street is the wound.
He returned with the drinks and set his whiskey on the mantel while he fed the flames wood from a cast iron basket.
“Can I tell you what I think?” Lenny said.
“Sure.”
“I think you need to start getting out of the house more. I’ll bet you can count on one hand the amount of times you’ve been outside since Julia passed on.”
Jake said nothing. Lenny gave a satisfied grunt.
“See? That’s worse than solitary confinement. A man with the kind of worries you’ve got could drive himself stir crazy looking at these same four walls day in day out, especially with all the memories around here. And the snow thing? Sorry to have to tell you but I think it isn’t so much the snow as the whole outside world that’s got you spooked. You’ve become so wrapped up in your own little shell of suffering and anger – and I’m not belittling or begrudging you that; God knows Julia was one of the sweetest damn women I’ve ever known – that you can’t bear to look beyond that window just in case it might offer you a view of a place outside the pain.”
Jake raised his eyebrows. Lenny grinned.
“Well I’ll be damned,” he said, “Maybe I was wrong. Oprah watch out!”
“You could be right,” Jake said, but he didn’t think so. “But how does knowing what the problem is help any?” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I miss her, y’know?” he said quietly. “All the goddamn time. Sometimes so much I can’t breathe. And at night…at night is the worst of all, when I’m asleep and I run my hand over the memory of her skin and wake to an empty bed and cold sheets. Sometimes the pain feels too real to be grief, Lenny. One night I woke up convinced I was having a heart attack. I almost called you then, too.”
The fire hissed and the flames caught, restoring the warm amber glow to the room.
“You should have called me,” Lenny told him. “That’s what I’m there for, just like you’re here to fill me with cheap brandy.” He smiled but it quickly faded. “I didn’t mean it to sound like I have all the answers either. I don’t. I can’t even imagine what this has been like for you. But I hate seeing you like this, stuck in a house alone with nothing to do but remember.” He
straightened in his chair and let loose an exasperated sigh. “I guess I have some titanium balls telling you how to handle things, huh?”
Jake shook his head. “No. I appreciate it. Really. I’m just tired of being afraid, you know? Tired of waking up from a nightmare only to have the real nightmare crash down around me. I feel empty, Lenny. And alone. And pretty goddamn pathetic.”
“Pathetic? Why? You think two months after you lose your wife you should be all smiles and organizing house parties? If I saw you doing something like that I’d have to take off my belt and whip the shit out of you. The way I see it is you’re handling it as good as you know how. Another man would be lying in the ground beside his wife by now after taking the chickenshit way out.”
“I came close though, didn’t I?”
“Yes. You did.” Lenny said. “But close is still a million miles away from done and you’re still here talking about it. That’s good enough for me.”
Jake set his glass down and rubbed his hands together. “So what do I do?”
Lenny’s face grew somber and he pointed a long gnarled index finger at Jake’s glass. “Being a bit lighter on the devil juice might help you some. I’m your friend, Jake, but if calls like that one two nights ago start getting regular I’m buying an answering machine for Christmas.”
Although Lenny chuckled to show he meant it as a joke, the point was clear. It scared Jake however to think what his nights might be like without the cushioning effect of alcohol. Then again, he realized, if drinking led him to that old shoebox beneath the bed again, the next cushion might be the one in his coffin.
“You need to start finding distractions,” Lenny continued. “I’m not saying you jump into a whole routine but you could start setting aside days to go for walks. Go catch a movie every now and then. Come with me to Bingo some Friday night; see if we can’t beat the pants off those Harperville hags. Hell, even stopping by to see me and the wife would be a start.”
Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology Page 113