Curtains

by Scott Nicholson

  “A good blanket takes care and patience,” Faith said. “Hope takes patience. All we can do is our part, and let the Lord take care of the rest.”

  “Just like with the sick children,” Lillian said.

  “Yes. They’re sick, but never needy. As long as one person has hope enough for them all, they are never in need.”

  Morris tried to communicate with his eyes, to lie and tell Faith that he now understood, that sick children were never needy no matter what the Kelvinator said, but his eyes were too cold and lost to the world of light and understanding. He was a cynic and had nothing inside but desperation. He gazed at the stained-glass Jesus, but no hope could be found in that amber face as the sunlight died outside.

  The gauze of morphine slipped a little, and now he could feel the sharp stings as the needles entered his arms, legs, and torso. Reba was stitching up his inseam, her face a quivering mask of concentration as she worked toward his groin. Daisy’s tongue pressed against her uppers as she pushed and tugged in tiny little motions. Silver needles flashed in the glow of the lone gas lamp by which the sewing circle now toiled. From outside, the plate-glass image must have flickered in all the colors of salvation.

  But from the inside, the image had gone dark with the night. Summoning his remaining strength, Morris ripped the flesh of his lips free of their stitches and screamed toward the high white cross above.

  “Look, his eyelids twitched,” came a voice.

  “There, there,” Lillian said, as if on the other side of a thick curtain. “You just rest easy now.”

  “Where-” Morris was in the sewing room downstairs, flat on his back on the table, surrounded by piles of rags. They must have carried him here after they He brought a wobbly hand to his mouth and felt his lips. They were chapped but otherwise whole.

  “I think he’s thirsty,” said Faith, who knelt over him, patting his forehead with a soft swatch of linen. She turned to the janitor, who stood in the doorway. “Bruce, would you get him a cup of water, please?”

  As the janitor shuffled off, Faith again settled her kind, healing eyes on him. “You fainted. A big, strong fellow like you.”

  “Must be-” The words were thick on his tongue. He flexed his fingers, remembering the sharp tingle of needles sliding through his skin, the taut tug of thread in his flesh. A dream. Nothing but a crazy, drug-stoked nightmare. “Must be the heat,” he managed.

  “It’s okay,” Faith said. Gone was her severe and chiding tone. She now spoke in her gentle nurse’s voice. “We’ll take care of you. You just have a chill. Rest easy and wait for the ambulance.”

  “Ambulance? No, I’m fine, really, I just need-” He tried to sit up, but his head felt like a wet sack of towels.

  “Your pulse is weak,” Faith said. “I’m concerned you might go into shock.”

  “That means we need to cover him up,” the other Alma said.

  Faith smiled, the expression of all saints and martyrs. “I guess we should use the special blanket,” she said.

  “Blanket?” Morris blinked lint from his eyes.

  “We made it just for you. We were going to give it to you in appreciation for writing the story and let you enjoy it in the comfort of your own bed. But perhaps this is more fitting.”

  “Fitting,” Daisy said with a hen’s cackle. “That’s as funny as Santa in a manger scene.”

  Lillian approached the table, a blanket folded across her chest. Unlike the other quilts, this one was white, though the pieces were ragged, the stitches loose, the cloth stained and spotted. “We done our best work on this one,” she said. “We know a sick soul when we see one.”

  “Threads of Hope sometimes come unraveled,” Faith said. Her sweet tone, and her soft touch as she felt his wrist for a pulse, was far more unnerving than her previous bullying.

  “That’s right,” Reba said. “Sometimes hope is not enough.”

  “And kids die and go on to heaven,” Lillian said. “The Lord accepts them whole and pure, but their pain and suffering has to go somewhere. Nothing’s worse than laying there knowing you’re going to die any day, when by rights you ought to have your whole life in front of you.”

  Lillian helped Reba unfold the patchwork blanket. Morris saw the white scraps of sheet were actually varying shades of gray, cut at crazy angles and knotted together as if built in the dark by mad, clumsy hands.

  “There’s another side to our work,” Faith said. “One we don’t publicize. If it had a name, it might be called ‘Threads of Despair.’”

  “I like ‘Threads of the Dead,’” Reba said, in her high, lilting voice. Her remark drew a couple of snickers from the old women gathered around the table. Morris didn’t like the way Reba’s eyes glittered.

  “I’ll write the story however you want it, and let you proof it before I turn it in to the editor,” he said, his throat parched.

  “Cover him up,” Faith commanded. “I’d hate to see him go into shock.”

  Morris once again tried to lift himself, but he was too woozy. Maybe he really did need an ambulance. And a thorough check-up. He was having a nervous breakdown. And these fine women, whom he’d insulted and belittled, were compassionate enough to help him in his time of need. Faith was right, he was the needy one, not those sick children.

  As they stretched the mottled blanket over him, preparing to settle it across his body, Morris saw the words “Mercy Hospital Morgue” stamped in black on one corner.

  Sheets from the hospital?

  The cloth settled over him with a whisper, wrinkled hands smoothing and spreading it on each side. His limbs were weak, his mouth slack, as if the blanket had sapped the last of his strength. Though his skin was clammy, sweat oozed from his pores like newly hatched maggots crawling from the soft meat of a corpse. He was being wrapped in fabric even colder than his soul.

  Threads from the dead, from those who had lost hope.

  Sheets that would give back all that had gone into them.

  A handmade blanket stitched not in the attic of the heart but in the dark basement of the disappointed.

  “The ambulance will be here in twenty minutes,” Faith said. “Until then, cherish the despair you deserve.”

  She tugged the blanket up to his chin, and then, with a final, benevolent look into his frightened eyes, she drew it over his face.

  Nothing Personal, But You Gotta Die

  So you changed your name.

  Not too smart. A name’s a personal thing, and you had to go messing with what your Momma gave you. What kind of thing is that? How do you expect anybody to respect you, after you go and do something like that?

  Joey Scattione, he’s big time, don’t got nothing against you, not nothing personal. If it was up to him, just a slap on the cheek, you cry and say you’re sorry, we all go down to Luigi’s and eat pasta together, like in some Mafia movie. Whaddahell.

  But this is business. And business means keeping your word. And standing up, playing it straight. But you hadda talk to Feds and the Feds can’t touch Joey, we all know that, Joey’s golden, but they get a little something on you, you lose your spine, your tongue starts running before your head turns the key, and all of a sudden we got a bad situation.

  No, a person who would change his name would probably tell any kind of lie to save his own skin. It’s all about constitution. Some got it, some ain’t. Don’t feel bad about it. Better guys than you wilted when the heat came down. Changed your name and tried to skip town, all part of your constitution.

  All perfectly understandable. But that don’t mean it’s forgivable.

  We’ve known each other what-seven years? Why you got to go and not be Vincent any more? I liked Vincent, for the most part.

  Aw, c’mon. Don’t start with this “Mikey, Mikey” stuff. Don’t make it worse by begging. You wilted once, but you got one last chance to go down standing. Don’t look at me that way, I got no choice, nothing personal, but you gotta die.

  See, it’s all about choices. You change your name, try
to become somebody different, but under the skin you’re still the same.

  I mean, the feds and girls and guns, that’s all business stuff. Taking you out, that’s business. Listening to you beg, that’s business, too, sort of sad but, hey, you can’t change what’s under the skin.

  It bugs me, you changing your name like that. Shows a lack of constitution.

  Me, I stick with “Mikey.” There’s a billion Mikeys in Brooklyn, and I’m one of them. No better, no worse. That’s just part of my constitution.

  The least you can do is take your name back. I’ll make it clean, one through the heart, the head, whatever you want. But you ought to do things right and go out under the name you was born with. What about it?

  I mean, you don’t want to meet old St. Pete and tell him your name and he runs his finger down the list and no Vincent there, all them good deeds for nothing, just ‘cause you ain’t really Vincent no more. So he shakes his head and you got to slink away from the Pearly Gates and all because you got no spine.

  So that’s the only thing personal about what I gotta do. This name business. It’s a lie, and I hate lies.

  Whaddaya say?

  Vincent. Don’t go with the crying. It ain’t in character. Not like you at all.

  Sorry, Vincent.

  Open your eyes.

  See, I lied.

  This is personal.

  And my name’s not really Mikey.

  It’s Vincent now. Yeah, your name. I may as well take it, since you won’t be needin’ it no more, and Joey got a thing for me, too.

  You kind of look a little like me, too, and by the time your bones float up in the harbor, you’ll be wax and cottage cheese. With my I.D. in your wallet.

  So you don’t like Vincent, you can be Mikey, and Mikey’s dead, and I skip out as Vincent, and Joey’s none the wiser.

  Everybody lives happy ever after.

  Oh.

  Except you.

  Like I said, it’s nothing personal.

  Tell St. Pete Vincent says hello.

  WATERMELON

  Ricky bought the watermelon on a warm Saturday afternoon in September.

  The early crop had arrived at the local grocer’s in late June, fresh from California, but the available specimens were hard and heartless. Ricky had decided to wait for a Deep South watermelon, and those traditionally arrived many weeks after the annual Fourth of July slaughter. Besides, that was early summer. He had yet to read about the murder and his home life with Maybelle was in a state of uneasy truce.

  But now it was the last day of summer, a definite end of something and the beginning of something else. The watermelon was beautiful. It was perfectly symmetrical, robust, its green stripes running in tigerlike rhythms along the curving sides. A little bit of vine curled from one end like the cute tail of a pig. He tapped it and elicited a meaty, liquid thump.

  It was heavy, maybe ten pounds, and Ricky brought it from the bin as carefully as if it were an infant. His wife had given him a neatly penned list of thirteen items, most of them for her personal use. But his arms were full, and he didn’t care to trudge through the health-and-beauty section, and he had no appetite for Hostess cupcakes and frozen waffles. Sheryl Crowe was singing a bright ditty of sun and optimism over the loudspeakers, music designed to lobotomize potential consumers. Ricky made a straight path to the checkout counter and placed the watermelon gently on the conveyor belt.

  Now that his hands were free, he could pick up one of the regional dailies. The front page confined the woman’s picture to a small square on the left. Her killer, the man who had sworn to love and honor until death did them part, merited a feature photograph three columns wide, obviously the star of the show and the most interesting part of the story.

  “That’s sickening, isn’t it?” came a voice behind him.

  Ricky laid the newspaper on the belt so the cashier could ring it up. He turned to the person who had spoken, a short man with sad eyes and a sparse mustache, a man who had never considered violence of any kind toward his own wife.

  “They say he was perfectly normal,” Ricky said. He wasn’t the kind for small talk with strangers, but the topic interested him. “The kind of man who coached Little League and attended church regularly. The kind the neighbors said they never would have suspected.”

  “A creep is what he is. I hope they fry him and send him to hell to fry some more.”

  “North Carolina uses lethal injection.”

  “Fry him anyway.”

  “I wonder what she was like.” Since the murder last week, Ricky had been studying the woman’s photograph, trying to divine the character traits that had driven a man to murder. Had she been unfailingly kind and considerate, and had thus driven her husband into a blinding red madness?

  “A saint,” the short man said. “She volunteered at the animal shelter.”

  “That’s what I heard,” Ricky said. The cashier told him the total and he thumbed a credit card from his wallet. People always took kindness toward animals as a sign of divine benevolence. Let children starve in Africa but don’t kick a dog in the ribs. For all this man knew, she volunteered because she liked to help with the euthanizing.

  “At least they caught the bastard,” the man said.

  “He turned himself in.” Obviously the man had been settling for the six-o’clock-news sound bites instead of digging into the real story. Murder was rare here, and a sordid case drew a lot of attention. But most of the people Ricky talked with about the murder had only a passing knowledge of the facts and seemed quite content in their ignorance and casual condemnation.

  Ricky took the watermelon to the car, rolled it into the passenger seat, and sat behind the wheel reading the paper. The first days of coverage had focused on quotes from neighbors and relatives and terse statements by the detectives, but now the shock had worn off. In true small-town fashion, the police had not allowed any crime scene photos, and the early art had consisted of somber police officers standing around strips of yellow tape. A mug shot of the husband had been taken from public record files, showing mussed hair, stubble, and the eyes of a trapped animal. The District Attorney had no doubt kept him up all night for a long round of questioning, to ensure that the arrest photo would show the perpetrator in the worst possible light. No matter how carefully the jurors were selected, that first impression often lingered in the minds of those who would pass judgment.

  A week later, the coverage had made the easy shift into back story, digging into the couple’s history, finding cracks in the marriage. The only way to keep the story on the front page was for reporters to turn up personal tidbits, make suggestions about affairs and insurance, and build a psychological profile for a man who was so perfectly average that only hindsight revealed the slightest flaw.

  Ricky drove home with the images playing in his mind, a reel of fantasy film he’d painted from the police reports. The husband comes home, finds dinner on the table as always, green peas and potatoes, thinly sliced roast beef with gravy, a cheesecake that the wife must have spent hours making. They eat, watch an episode of “Law amp; Order,” then she takes a shower and goes to bed. Somewhere between the hours on either side of midnight, the husband makes his nightly trek to share the warmth and comfort of the marital bed. Only, this time, he carries with him a seven-inch companion of sharp, stainless steel.

  Seventeen times, according to the medical examiner. One of the rookie reporters had tried to develop a numerology angle and assign a mystical significance to the number of stab wounds, but police suspected the man had simply lost count during the frenzy of blood lust. The first blow must have done the trick, and if the man had only meant to solve a problem, that surely would have sufficed. But he was in search of something, an experience that could only be found amid the silver thrusts, the squeaking of bedsprings, the soft moans, and the wet dripping of a final passion.

  By the time Ricky pulled into his driveway, he was moist with sweat. He found himself comparing his and Maybelle’s house with
that of the murderer’s, as shown in the Day Two coverage. The murderer’s house was in the next county, but it would have been right at home in Ricky’s neighborhood. Two stories, white Colonial style, a stable line of shrubbery surrounding the porch. Shutters framing windows framing curtains that hid the lives inside. Both houses were ordinary, upper middle class, with no discernible differences except that one had harbored an extraordinary secret that festered and then exploded.

  Ricky fanned his face dry with the newspaper, then slipped it under the seat. He wrestled the watermelon out and carried it up the front steps. He could have driven into the garage, but his car had leaked a few drops of oil and Maybelle had complained. He nearly dropped the watermelon as he reached to open the door. He pictured it lying burst open on the porch, its shattered skin and pink meat glistening in the afternoon sun.

  But he managed to prop it against his knee and turn the handle, then push his way inside.

  Her voice came from the living room. “Ricky?”

  “Who else?” he said in a whisper. As if a random attacker would walk through the door, as if her ordered life was capable of attracting an invader. As if she deserved any type of victimhood.

  “What’s that, honey?”

  He raised his voice. “Yes, dear. It’s me.”

  “Did you get everything? You know how forgetful you are.”

  Which is why she gave him the lists. But even with a list, he had a habit of always forgetting at least one item. She said it was a deliberate act of passive aggression, that nobody could be that forgetful. But he was convinced it was an unconscious lapse, because he did it even when he wrote out the list himself.

  “I had to-” He didn’t know what to tell her. A lie came to mind, some elaborate story of helping someone change a flat tire beside the road, and how the person had given him a watermelon in gratitude, and Ricky wanted to put the watermelon in the refrigerator before shopping. But Maybelle would see through the story. He wondered if the murdering husband had told such white lies.