by Deb Caletti
Mom had the event catered, thank God. She can get flustered when the phone rings and she’s making a grilled cheese sandwich. This year it seemed like there were more people than ever in our kitchen, more trays of food, more waiters carrying hors d’oeuvres and canapés. The house looked beautiful and different than our regular house with the cereal box left out on the counter. You wouldn’t believe how good it looked. We’re not talking decorations of turkeys with accordion-paper stomachs like we used to have when Mom and Dad were married and had Nannie and Aunt Nancy and Uncle Greg over. No, we’re talking cinnamon-smelling candles in hurricane glass on every surface, and evergreen boughs, and cranberry-colored vases of white roses. Linen napkins, and china with boughs of fruit around the edges. We’re talking a turkey the size of a brown bear, and the dining room draped with gauzy curtains and burgundy ribbons. There was enough food to feed a small town, all of it steaming and glossy and colorful. Mom wore velvet and I wore my beaded vintage dress, and Dino’s dark suit and restrained curls made him look like the man on the Paris Diaries cover, whose sex life was the talk of the town when he was younger.
I was glad my dad couldn’t see us now. This was the good news, the everything-is-working-out-beautifully that you want to hide from the other parent. Their worst nightmare of their former spouse having a better life after all, as they passed the yams back at home. We all smelled soapy and perfumed, and the doorbell kept ringing and ringing, and the house got so stuffed, people went outside to cool off. You wondered if all of these people didn’t have family to be with, or if the chance to be with a world-famous composer and violinist was enough to make them ditch their own grannies.
Andrew Wilkowski, Dino’s new agent, had apparently solved this conflict by bringing the whole gang along. He had brought his quiet wife, thin as a file folder, and his twin seven-year-old boys, who wore ties and ran around like crazed, midget businessmen, popping olives and caviar. I don’t know why they liked the stuff—fish eggs as a delicacy was always a hard one to understand—but I swear they ate half of the mountain of it, in spite of the fact that their mother told them repeatedly to stop. I caught her grasping each of their arms fiercely and hissing in their ears, showing her less passive side. Andrew Wilkowski also brought his aging parents, who looked at the thin wife and caviar-sucking children as if they were characters in a horror flick. Meanwhile, Andrew himself was glued to Dino, filling his plate and wineglass and doing the most shameless ass kissing I’d seen since Katie Simpson brought our sixth-grade teacher a dozen roses and a box of chocolates on her birthday.
I played good daughter at the party, and tried not to miss the old days of Dad’s overcooked turkey and Mom’s pies and watching the Macy’s parade on television. I talked to lots of old people with white hair who probably each had a gazillion dollars, ate way too many little chocolate tarts, and tried to figure out if there was something going on in the romance department between these two waiters. I saw that Dino had broken free from Andrew, and for a moment I was sincerely happy for him that he managed to cut loose from the weasely brownnoser.
But then I noticed that Dino was striding with a sense of purpose to the dining room windows. He peeled back the curtains, cupped his hand to the glass, and looked out. There was something about the way he walked—too much purpose, obsession, fury—that I recognized from that night I saw him on the lawn when he cut the cable. Oh, God. Not now. No.
I immediately scanned the room and looked for Mom. Instead of chatting amiably with the orchestra creative director or with one of the donors, I saw that Andrew Wilkowski had taken her elbow and was heading out of the room, as if to talk to her in private. Great. Terrific. Something was definitely wrong.
Dino apparently had not found what he was looking for. He moved toward the hallway and the front door. I thought I’d better follow him, though what the hell I’d do if he freaked out while I was with him I hadn’t quite figured out yet. Dino opened the door and I stepped out after him. I did not want to step out after him. I wanted to go someplace else, where I was completely alone and where no one could find me. I wanted to tuck my quilt around my head, disappear. I did not want right here and right now.
Outside, the night was amazingly quiet, with the noise of the party behind us, inside the house. It was November cold, and the air was dewy and full of rain not yet fallen. Thick, wet clouds filled the sky. A couple of people were standing and talking by the long line of parked cars. I heard a trunk slam, and a man and a woman with instrument cases walked back up the street to our house. Dino looked up and down the street, and headed toward the box hedge at the perimeter of the yard.
“Dino?” I said.
“William,” he called. “Wil-yum.”
A bit of hope. “Did we lose the dog?” I asked.
“No, not the dog. William Tiero, the leach. I know you’re here.”
Shit, I thought. Oh, shit! I wanted to call for Mom, to find her, but I didn’t think I should leave him. I didn’t know what to do. I just had no idea.
Dino crouched over, looked under the hedge. I was glad that the people with the instrument cases had gone inside. I decided to be calm. If I used a really calm voice, then he’d be calm, and I could go and find Mom.
“You’re getting your pants all wet,” I said. “Let’s go in.”
“I knew he couldn’t stay away.”
“William Tiero is not here, Dino,” I said. My voice sounded high, like it might break. I was fighting a weird sense of unreality. I didn’t even feel like me, talking calmly to this man I lived with, who was looking in the hedge for someone who wasn’t there. I felt like I had gone into someplace past fear. Someplace way farther than that, where you cut off from what’s happening in order to function. I was watching this poor girl with this crouched-over man who was losing it. I looked down and saw my own hands, and they seemed familiar but not.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. That prick will never let me out of his life.”
“No one’s in the hedge, Dino,” I said.
“You’re right.”
Dino came out of the hedge, hair messed, bits of leaves on the arms of his jacket. I don’t know how to describe his eyes except to say that they were not unfocused or bleary like someone who’s been drinking. In fact, they were the opposite—hyper focused. He stood still, listening. It was as if his senses were broken open—his hearing more acute, his gaze taking in things no one else could see.
“Why don’t we go inside now,” I said.
“He’s not in the hedge. I’ll check the back. You check the cars,” he said.
“Please, Dino.” I wasn’t doing well with calm. My voice was pleading and anxious. I was climbing the slope of panic right alongside of him. Where was my mother? Where was someone who knew what to do?
“Check the cars before he drives off. He called and hung up just now. He can’t stand it, that this is happening without him.”
“William Tiero isn’t here, Dino.” Okay, the calm was gone completely. I don’t want to do this! I can’t! I felt like crying.
“Of course he’s here. I know he’s here.” He pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket, showed me the display. It was true that someone had called. The ID read UNIDENTIFIED CALLER. The letters glowed in the gathering darkness. The two people who were talking by the car were carrying large instruments into the house now, also. A bass and a cello, by the looks of it.
“Is everything all right?” one man asked.
I wanted to cry out. Help me, I wanted to say, but I didn’t. “Fine,” I said. “The dog is missing.”
“Pets,” the man said. He hauled his instrument through the door, a loud gust of party sounds escaping as he went through.
“Dino,” I said. “Unidentified caller. That could be anyone. William Tiero is not out here in the bushes. Or anywhere.” Please, I begged him with my voice. But you can’t reason with insanity, or plead with it. It’s the frightening tyrant, the boss, the kidnapper.
“He did this las
t year. I smelled his cologne. I saw him looking in the window. I’m going to catch the dirty little bastard. I’m going to check the back.”
I changed my tactics. “Let me check the back. I’ll make sure I find the dirty little bastard,” I said. “You go inside.”
“He couldn’t let me free. Obsessed.”
“Come on.”
“He’d rather have me dead than free of him.”
I took Dino’s arm. His unreason made him seem capable of anything, and I didn’t even want to touch him. But I did—I pointed him toward the house. I tried to keep from letting the tears come, from letting out my own desperation. I looked around for Mom. Inside, people were gathering in the living room. The quartet of musicians had set up an impromptu concert, began to tune for the crowd. I wondered if they were expecting Dino to join them. Some woman was ushering everyone out of the dining room for the concert—they were squeezing out of the doorway and packing into the living room. Dino stalked into the dining room, empty of people now. He looked back out through the drapes again.
“I see movement,” he said. “Turn off the lights so that I can see.”
“Dino, no. He’s not there.” I felt the tears working away at my throat. Where the hell was Mom?
“Turn out the lights!”
His voice was loud, and I flinched. I knew that my job right then was to hide the mess, make sure none of these people noticed anything. To keep the secret. So I went to the switch and turned off the lights to keep him quiet. Thankfully, everyone was either jammed in the other room or overflowing out into the hall, happy to be in an important house of an important man, spilling drinks and talking and eating tiny, fancy desserts on glass plates.
Only the candles flickered in the room. I could see their flames reflected in the glass that Dino was peering through. “Shh,” he said, even though I wasn’t saying anything. “Come here.”
I went. I hated standing beside him. His breath was fogging up the glass. His coat was hanging dangerously over the candles on the table under the window.
“Be careful, Dino,” I said. I watched his sleeve dangle by the flame. “Jesus.”
“Holy shit, look!” Dino said.
I looked outside, where he was pointing. “Oh, God,” I breathed.
He was right.
He was right, there was a figure outside, a dark figure in a big coat.
I jumped my ship of sanity, got into Dino’s boat, because he was right. And if Dino was right about this, maybe William Tiero really did have evil plans for us. Maybe Dino really was in danger. The quartet began playing in the other room. All four instruments, a sudden, thunderous sound of frantic motion.
“Get the gun,” Dino hissed.
“Don’t be crazy,” I said, which is a rather stupid thing to say to a crazy person, but my own thoughts were out of control. My heart was thumping like mad, my hands shaking. A man in the bushes … “We don’t have a gun.”
“I said, get the gun!”
Right then, the figure came close to the glass, toward us. I let out a little scream at the same moment that I realized it was my mother standing before us, Andrew Wilkowski’s navy wool coat draped over her shoulders. It was also at that same moment that Dino’s elbow knocked over the glass hurricane candle and the flame began to lick up the fabric of the curtain.
Here is what I saw in my mind. The flame, gathering speed up the curtain, bursting into a ball of fire. Catching onto the other draperies, moving with the fury of some mythological god to the adjoining room full of people. I heard screams in my mind, the panic of sequined and silked guests, someone tripping on a velvety hem. Smoke suddenly everywhere, one doorway, glass breaking. Flames spinning up the stairwell, surprising a couple who were upstairs, looking for their coats. Fire trucks with twirling, dizzying lights on the dark street, and charred remnants of furniture and bodies, people crying on the front lawn, the house consumed and then disappearing under gusts of water from the hoses.
I watched as already the flame was beginning to lick its way up the curtain. I could see my mother through the glass, her mouth frozen in an O.
I grabbed the curtain with my hands. My bare hands, I just grabbed it and crumpled it up. It was the only thing I could think to do. No, let me say that again. I did not think at all, I just acted. I gathered up the fabric in a ball and extinguished the flame. The quartet kept playing in the other room.
Before I knew it, my mother was beside me. She was holding my hands in hers. There was ice in a towel. I didn’t know what happened to Dino, but I guess Andrew Wilkowski had brought him to his room and calmed him down, telling guests he wasn’t feeling well, implying he had had too much to drink, which was a sin forgiven with an amused smile. I couldn’t stop shaking. My body just shook and trembled until I threw up. There was a call to a doctor, but my hands were okay. I was okay finally, and I stopped shaking after I was wrapped tightly in my blanket. The only thing that remained of the night was a small scar, which I still have. It sits in the curve between my thumb and forefinger, the place that looks like a small boat if you hold your hand up in the air.
I will never forget that night. The mark reminds me what fear can do to you, how fear can distort what is real to the point that the damage is permanent.
It was the same shape, come to think of it, as the scar on Dino’s neck.
Zebe called the next morning, asking if I wanted to hang out with her and Sophie, but I told her I was going shopping with Mom. I didn’t think I could stand acting normal and pretending that things were fine, and my other option, letting myself fall apart with them, sounded like it would take more energy than I could stand. I wanted to be away. It didn’t matter where away was. The air was low on my own bike tires and I didn’t want to stop and pump them up, so I grabbed Dino’s bike, the one with the basket on the handlebars, and started to ride out to the ferry docks. The burned curtain lay in a heap on the floor after Mom took it down, and the whole house looked hung-over from the party. On top of everything else, the caterers had done a crappy job of cleaning up and there were cups set in odd places—the potted plant, behind the toilet —and bits of food on napkins. Two people had forgotten their coats. Dino had still been sleeping when I got up, but Mom looked haunted and stressed and she snapped first at me when I dropped my toast on the floor and then at Dog William when he lunged at it with greedy opportunism. God knows what she’d be like when Dino woke up, or what would happen then.
My hands were freezing on the handlebars and my legs were cold even through my jeans, but I didn’t care. The fresh air felt good. The atmosphere inside that house felt doomed. It felt fatal.
It’s mostly downhill to the water, and the ferry dock is the end point of the bay. I had Brief Fantasy Number Four Thousand Twelve, of sailing straight down that hill and flying off the end of the dock, destructo-movie style. I like those kinds of movies. Things blowing up and strong, definite action. Zebe and I go together because we can’t stand the frilly-ass movies of girls fighting their way to the big cheerleading final, or some such dance-movie-drama crap. We both like the certainty of action movies.
I sped past the bakery, warm smells catching up to me a block later, and the haircutting place and the bookstore. I passed the new Thai restaurant, with the surprising name of Phuket. We couldn’t believe it when they put the sign up. Even Dino laughed. Brian Malo told us he called the place a few times, just to hear them answer the phone. I have no idea if this was bold humor on the restaurant owners’ part, or if these poor people had no idea they’re telling the nice folks of Seabeck to Fuck It.
I set the bike down on its side. I was so cold my nose felt like it could break off, making me one of those Roman statues you see in the museum. I sat on one of the benches on the dock, shoved my hands into my pockets. There were a few fishing boats tied up, though what you’d fish for that time of year, I have no idea. My fish knowledge is on the slim side. It smelled like green out there, murky. The smell of fish/seaweed/cold depths. Seagulls were walking around with
the aimless air of those with nothing better to do, or were perched on pilings, wearing the cool, unaffected looks of those secretly sure they are being admired. Kind of like the jocks in the cafeteria at lunch.
I watched a ferryboat come in, knocking into the dock, reminding me of my stint during driver’s ed when I backed into the side of the garage. The boat unloaded and reloaded, glided away again. There was something about watching the ferryboats come and go that was calming—the rhythm of the departure and arrival. I was wondering how many people on that boat led simple lives where they ate meatloaf and worried about their lawn having weeds and their bathrooms being shiny. That’s how it was supposed to be, wasn’t it? But maybe supposed to be was what was wrong. Maybe supposed to be was like a child’s drawing of a night sky—stars all alike, a yellow moon—simple and pretty and nothing to do with reality. It seemed cruel to feel all this shame because we had more than weeds to worry about.
I was deep in my own profound (ha) line of thought when I saw Rocket trotting down the dock. I was surprised and so glad to see her. I was just so happy to see a creature who was so nice and simple and cheerful. I patted my leg, and she came to me. She set her chin on my knee, and I gave her a good scruffing under her ears, all the while looking around for Ian. My stomach was lurching around like crazy with sudden nerves-slash-excitement. I couldn’t see him anywhere, though, and wondered if Rocket just regularly went off on these small, independent adventures.
I was already planning my return of Rocket to her home—I thought she might be lost—when I saw Ian walking up the dock. I almost didn’t recognize him—he wasn’t wearing his long black coat, but instead had some puffy ski jacket on. It was good to see him. God, it was so good. Happiness was spilling over.
“I saw you ride down here,” Ian said.