Bystanders

by Tara Laskowski

  Hannah could pull the couch away from the wall right now and find one of those shards, even though she’d vacuumed behind there a dozen times since then. She imagines them beneath her as she sits, counting stitches. It gives her a sick feeling, so she tries to stop, tries to concentrate instead on what she’s making. They’d gotten a real tree instead. Derek said he always liked real trees better.

  The first set of booties are mismatched—one much bigger than the other. Her second attempt isn’t much better, and by the third she is ready to start stabbing people. She holds up the bootie, a lopsided whale with a pointed snout. Carries it into the kitchen, where Derek is making dinner.

  “How’s this?” she asks him, standing in the doorway.

  He barely looks up. He is rummaging through the utensil drawer. Things clatter. “Did you put the grater in here?”

  “Yes, yesterday when I unloaded the dishes.”

  “It’s not in here.”

  “It should be.”

  He turns. “Well, it’s not. Are you sure you put it back in the right place?”

  She feels herself getting hot. “Um, yeah.”

  “Because sometimes you put stuff in weird places.”

  “I put it back.” She pushes past him. She moves the slotted spoons aside and slams it on the counter. “Right here. Just like I said.”

  “Well, you don’t have to get all angry about it. I was just asking.”

  She stares at him. “Is this how it’s always going to be?”

  He starts grating cheese into a neat pile on the plate like shedding skin. “What do you mean?”

  “I feel like you would be happier if I just left.”

  He looks up at that. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Maybe you would. I could just get out of here, leave you to be happy on your own.”

  “Hannah, I couldn’t find the grater. No need to go nuclear.”

  She shakes her head. “I mean, just do it. Get even. Do something. Stab me in the neck. Anything. Just stop this.” She feels her tears well up, and that makes her even angrier. Derek steps toward her, but she backs away, shaking her head.

  “I don’t hate you,” he says.

  “Then what? What is it? And when does it stop?” Hannah feels like a bird is trapped in her chest, fluttering to find a way out. “I—how long do I have to pay for it?”

  The phone rings. She and Derek stand on either side of the kitchen as if someone has taken a snapshot of them, forever frozen in this moment. Then Hannah breaks it, moves.

  “Mrs. Tenner, it’s Mathilda Bee. I have a nice place to show you.”

  “Oh?” Hannah says, her heart still racing. She looks over at Derek, who is staring at her, mouthing something.

  “It’s a townhouse, but it’s in a brand new development. End of the year deals.” Honey’s voice is so upbeat, so excited. She is expecting the same excitement in return, Hannah knows.

  “That’s great,” Hannah says.

  “What?” Derek is asking. His eyes are wide. He comes closer, and Hannah wants to push him back, make him fall into the open drawer. To hear the clatter.

  “We’ll definitely take a look,” Hannah says.

  “Who is it?” Derek asks. “What?”

  But Hannah just stares at him.

  ***

  His therapist is chewing on the edge of her pen and all Derek can think about is the way his penis looked floating in that hotel bathtub, all wrinkled and defeated and bobbing.

  His therapist chuckles, bringing Derek out of the moment. “What?” he asks, suddenly self-conscious.

  She shakes her head. “Nothing, nothing. I’m sorry. I was just—well, my dad always joked that even Joseph and Mary would pass up the Days Inn on Main Street. You know, when they were looking for a place to stay? Never mind. Anyway, carry on.”

  He is telling her again about the separation last year. He’s been over this story several times, but she likes to go back. He’s stopped trying to figure out why.

  “Well, yeah, so it’s not the nicest place,” he says, still annoyed. He can remember the smell of Room 404, gym locker and bleach. And he never liked the looks of the door lock, which he was pretty sure he could take out with one swipe of a crowbar. The bathtub was too small for him to stretch out his legs, but that didn’t stop him from filling it to the top and sitting in his own filth until the water went cold and his fingertips looked like pale raisins.

  One night after a particularly hard binge of drinking and feeling sorry for himself, he remembered something his Aunt Bernice had told him about the windows in hotel rooms never opening. They don’t want crazy people committing suicide on their property, she said. The lawsuits! Can you imagine?

  The window suicide story nagged at him, and so finally Derek got out of bed and went to check for himself. Pulled back the blackout curtains. To his surprise, and as if to prove Aunt Bernie wrong, there was a little latch on the window that clearly, if lifted, would allow the window to swing open.

  It could hardly be called a balcony, but there was just enough room to step out into the ledge and look down onto festive Main Street. “Why hello Santa,” Derek said, saluting the plastic figure that posed eternally leaning to the side, one arm above his head in a wave, the other stretched out behind him, nearly scraping Derek’s balcony as if trying to hold on. The air rushed in and kicked on the groaning heating unit just below the window. The cold seeped into Derek’s socks like water. Below, the rush of holiday traffic and other folks busy with gift-buying for people that didn’t betray them. He was wearing gym shorts and a white t-shirt and the December air was hurting the skin around his nipples. But it felt good, too, like a punch in the face slicing through the drunken fog. Fuck Aunt Bernie. What the hell did she know?

  And yet, the balcony was not nearly high enough for any man considering ending his life. If anything, you’d get maybe a broken leg or two. Maybe snag an arm on one of the other balconies going down, but chances are you’d just land on the sidewalk below and ruin someone’s eggnog and cookies at the café across the street.

  “And how did you feel standing there thinking about jumping?”

  The therapist’s voice comes through like a splash of cold water. Derek blinks, looks over at her. How do you think I felt, dimwit? he wants to say, but he doesn’t. He is trying to be better.

  “I wasn’t ever really going to jump,” he says, possibly trying to convince both of them. He is pretty sure this is true.

  “Mmm,” she says, jotting something down in her notebook.

  “I just wanted to do something…bad.”

  The plastic Santa had a fake fucking jolly smile painted on his fat face. He was tied up there by some heavy-duty wire. Derek leaned out far and smacked Santa in the face. Its plastic body swung around a bit, but Santa didn’t stop smiling. He punched it this time. It made him laugh, beating up Santa. Then he grabbed hold of the arm that was reaching back and pulled.

  It didn’t take much. The Santa was old. The arm was only connected by some wires, old wires that no longer worked. There were probably people in the town who still remembered when the big Santa on Main Street waved to them as they walked by with their parents. The Santa hadn’t waved in a long time, though. And now he never would again, since his left arm was now propped up against the open window of Room 404.

  “Screw you, Santa.” He was drunk, he knew, and he also knew this was not his finest moment.

  He dragged Santa’s arm back into the room. The thing looked kind of trippy under the flickering light of Inside Edition flashing, muted, on the TV. Now what? He had to hide the arm. He couldn’t very well leave it there for the cleaning crew to find.

  He lifted the mattress on the bed. He put the arm there and dropped the mattress, and no, it was clear there was something under there. “Fuck.”

  Then he saw the long dresser drawers at the bo
ttom of the chest on the other side of the bed. Perfect length for an arm, and who ever looked in those? He slid one open and dropped the arm in there. The arm coffin. Derek stepped back and smiled at his work. He felt strangely satisfied.

  “I never use those drawers,” his therapist says.

  “Exactly,” Derek says.

  ***

  Hannah waits outside her office for Honey to pick her up. The snow from the morning has already melted, and piles of black mush clog the curbs. Across the street in front of the grocery store stands the Salvation Army man, ringing his bell. Hannah watches, but no one tosses any money in his bucket.

  They are meeting Derek at the townhouse. It is close to his office—a perk Hannah tries to slide into conversations with him—but she knows he will still find something wrong. She knows that forever and ever, no matter how perfect or upbeat or kind she is, he will always find something wrong. It is his right, his privilege, now that she messed up.

  The blind lady is coming, that white stick sloshing through the slush piles. She walks slowly. People move around her. She is wearing thick sturdy boots, but Hannah worries. What if there’s a patch of ice?

  Is the blind lady lonely? Does she live by herself? Hannah imagines all the mundane life chores that would be so difficult—grocery shopping, getting dressed, ordering a drink at a bar. Hannah closes her eyes, searches through the blackness, but all that appears is a faint silhouette of Paul hovering over her, leaning down to kiss her, and she shakes her head, opens her eyes again, grateful for the distractions.

  The blind woman approaches the curb, no signs of stopping. Then Honey’s car appears, her turn signal blinking. Honey doesn’t see the blind lady, or doesn’t want to wait, and makes a quick turn to the right, pulling up to the curb beside Hannah. Just as Hannah starts walking toward the car, a man in a gray business suit comes up behind the blind lady.

  Honey is waving through the windshield, a beaming smile on her face.

  Hannah hears the man say, “Sandy! So nice to see you again. Would you like to walk with me?” Hannah opens Honey’s door, sinks into the seat just as she sees the man link his arm in the blind lady’s arm, just as she hears her say, “Yes, that would be lovely, Tom.”

  ***

  The townhouse is bigger than Hannah imagined. It is in a neighborhood of brand-new units, never lived in before. She runs her hand across the shiny granite kitchen counters. It is spacious, modern. There’s a sparkling tiled floor. She is secretly happy it’s not a dump. Even so, Derek can’t help but find something. “Don’t be fooled by all the sparkle,” he mutters. “These walls are thin. The carpet is cheap.”

  She ignores him. Hannah starts to see herself there. She likes the little alcove off the living room and the gas fireplace in the den. Built-in bookcases above where the TV could hang. A huge master bedroom with walk-in closet and a gigantic sunken tub (“Imagine having to clean that thing,” Derek says). Two smaller bedrooms, one with great light for a nursery. A finished basement with a patio out back. They could have a grill!

  “It’s a really great price for this area,” Honey says. “Good floor plan, good living space. And the parking is pretty generous for a townhouse community.”

  “Are they having trouble selling these units?” Derek asks as he stares out the patio doors off the kitchen, hands in his pockets. “I see there are a few cars parked in driveways over there, but most of these homes are still on the market, right?”

  Shut up, Hannah thinks, and imagines pushing him off the balcony, smiling at his surprised “O” face as he falls.

  “They are brand-new,” Honey says. “Just on the market a few months ago, really, and already ten units have been sold.”

  “Well, I love the space,” Hannah says. “And we wouldn’t have a yard to maintain, Derek. You don’t love cutting grass, do you?”

  ***

  His first reaction is to hate it. His second reaction is to hate it more when it’s actually a good place. He recognizes it’s a good deal. A good neighborhood. Close to his work. He recognizes all of this, and yet.

  When did he turn into a person who is spiteful for the sake of being spiteful? It scares him. He watches Mathilda and Hannah wander around the place, oohing and ahhing, and it makes him want to puke. He imagines himself and Hannah sitting in Mathilda’s office back in Salmonville, signing the papers, writing away their savings for this place. He feels trapped, like a wild animal caged in a prison of drywall.

  But this is what you wanted, a voice says in his ear.

  Derek closes his eyes, tries to shut out the panic. It is as though he has several demon monsters swirling inside his stomach, dropping heavy things. He counts to ten, slowly, another trick his therapist taught him. On ten, he opens his eyes again, tries to think of something nice about Hannah. She’s taken up crafting, he thinks. She sings lullabies to her stomach when she thinks he isn’t listening.

  Hannah turns and looks at him. He watches her smile fade. “What do you think?” she asks, and already he sees her preparing for the disappointment.

  “It could work,” he says, shrugging.

  “Really?” The word is a gush, like a blocked faucet suddenly freed. “Oh wow!” She hugs him, almost knocking him over. He finds himself laughing then, and stops, pulls away.

  “I mean, we’ll have to think about it,” he says to Mathilda, but already he knows what’s going to happen. Already he can see Mathilda’s sly wink at Hannah, her unspoken, See? We’ve got him hooked. He squeezes Hannah’s shoulders, pulls her close. “We’ll see what happens,” he says, but already the dark monsters are rushing upwards again, loading their bricks one by one back into his stomach.

  ***

  “My pervie Uncle Ryan used to own a townhouse, Derek. That’s what I think of when I think of townhouses.”

  Mindy has made herself at home in Derek’s office, legs crossed, leaning back in his guest chair and cracking her gum. Derek tries to imagine the apartment Mindy lives in. He pictures it small with cheap furniture, posters of obscure bands tacked on the wall. He has no idea if she lives alone. He has no idea what she does besides watch scary movies.

  “It’s brand new. And cheaper than a single family.” He’s annoyed to be defending this to Mindy.

  “Brand new? Single family?” Mindy laughs. “Look at you, all family man again. Next you’ll be lecturing me on 401(k)s.”

  “I can’t really talk about this anymore,” he says, getting up. “I’ve got a meeting.” His knees crack. He’s pissed off. Feels old, stupid. Out of touch. Mindy has that way about her—either making him feel young and stupid or old and stupid. He kind of hates her for it.

  Mindy laughs again, but it’s shorter this time. “Don’t get mad, Derek. I’m just joking with you.”

  But he’s already out the door, flicking the switch as he walks, leaving her in the dark.

  ***

  “You did it. Congratulations. You two are proud homeowners!”

  Honey’s voice is loud enough over the phone that Hannah can hear her even from across the room. Derek is holding the phone a few inches from his ear and nodding, pacing back and forth while Honey gives him the details. Hannah’s heart is pounding in her chest. She immediately feels a sharp pang of regret, fear.

  When he hangs up, Derek runs his hands through his hair. “Well, there you go,” he says. “We got it.”

  “I can’t believe they accepted it so fast,” Hannah says.

  “Are you not happy about it?”

  She shrugs. “I mean, yeah. But it’s scary, right? Now that it happened. It’s scary. What if we made the wrong decision?”

  “Well, it’s too late now,” he says, and Hannah immediately feels herself getting angry.

  “I’m not saying we made the wrong decision. I’m just saying—I’m just saying you never know.”

  Derek sits in the chair across from her. He stare
s out the window. They watch a man and his dog pass by. “Yeah. You never know.”

  They will live there, year after year. A baby—their baby—will run up and down the stairs. She can see a little patch of thinning hair at the top of Derek’s head—the part he always rubs—and she imagines him older, bald. Both of them old, always sniping at each other. Their legs long, growing roots through the floor of the new townhouse, tangling around each other deep in the ground, impossible to remove.

  This is what she wonders: what if she’d never been caught? Would she have stopped the affair or left Derek? It is a question Derek has never asked her, and she doesn’t know how she would answer.

  “Well,” Derek says, tapping his fingers on the table. “I guess we should celebrate.”

  He pours some sparkling grape juice into the flutes they got as a wedding present.

  “To us,” she says, and blushes.

  Derek clinks her glass. “To a new start,” he says. Hannah feels the bubbles dancing their way down her throat and tries not to cough. She’s thinking about the blind lady again, how this morning on her way to work Hannah saw her walking off-path, wandering toward one of the pillars under the entrance to the bank, trying to feel her way around it with the stick. Hannah wonders how often that happens—how many times she’s strayed off her route, and how she ends up finding her way back.

  ***

  As they get closer and closer to Christmas, Derek’s therapist get fixated on questions about Derek’s childhood holidays. “Did your parents celebrate Christmas? Did you believe in Santa? How did you feel when you found out he wasn’t real?”

  “I was pissed off for awhile, I guess, but like everyone else I kind of started to suspect. My father wouldn’t even bother to change his own handwriting on the gift tags. And we never had a chimney.”

  The therapist is also interested in the baby. She wants to know how Derek feels about that. “Will you tell your own child about Santa Claus?”