“Son of a bitch. God-damn bastard cocksucker son of a bitch”—Ryan slammed the bathroom door shut.
Julia had never heard her husband speak in such a way, his voice furious but high-pitched, near-hysterical. She had never seen him so angry, and so helpless.
Ryan had had his wallet with him of course, and Julia, her handbag. These crucial items hadn’t been taken by the thieves. They hadn’t a cache of bills hidden anywhere in the house, fortunately—Julia was sure of this—and so no money had been taken. The frantic way in which the rooms had been searched seemed to mean that the thieves were looking for hidden cash.
“Call 911! Hurry.”
“I am.”
Ryan made the call downstairs on the kitchen phone. Numbly the wife heard the husband reporting a break-in, a burglary. Please send police officers! The wife heard the husband stammer providing the address, as if he weren’t certain of it.
They’d been living in this house for less than two years. Just inside the limits of a large Midwestern city.
The city was “racially troubled.” Their neighborhood was “newly integrated.”
Waiting for the police to arrive. A very long wait, it seemed.
“It’s lucky we don’t need an ambulance. Lucky the house isn’t on fire.”
“That’s a different kind of emergency. They’d send an ambulance or a fire truck if—”
“Yes. You’d like to think so.”
It was a political issue in the city. Emergency calls from inner-city neighborhoods weren’t answered with the alacrity with which emergency calls from other, residential parts of the city were answered. The Vanns wanted to think that they lived in a “good” residential neighborhood and that the color of their skin—“white”—could be deduced by their address.
Waiting for the police they were too nervous to remain still. Was this a crime scene, which they shouldn’t disturb? Julia had to restrain herself from gathering up fallen books and reshelving them. Ryan foolishly lifted the fallen mirror whose cracked glass now broke, and fell onto his shoes. Julia cried, “Ryan, don’t! You’ll cut yourself.”
Blindly they made their way through the house another time like sleepwalkers. The alien smells were more evident now—sweat-smells, man-smells, smells of strangers. A prevailing odor of urine suggested that maybe after all the thief or thieves hadn’t confined themselves to the upstairs toilet.
So disgusting! Julia’s nostrils contracted, she was feeling faint and nauseated.
“He—they—were black. You can tell.”
“You can? But—”
In his furious state, the husband wasn’t to be reasoned with. And the wife was having difficulty thinking coherently as she was having difficulty walking as if she were very tired, or had been struck a blow to the head.
The way Ryan had uttered the word black. Julia knew, he would never remember after the fury-flame had passed.
Here was a surprise: the violation of the household was more obvious than it had seemed initially, when they’d just stepped inside the door. For in each room something was out of place, or had been altered. Furniture, small rugs. A lamp overturned. On a wall, a framed print, Rodin’s Gates of Hell, was crooked, as if someone had brushed his shoulder carelessly against it.
Ryan was discovering that more items had been taken from his study than he’d thought. His face was flushed and indignant, with a look of fear beneath. Was his briefcase gone?—his old, frayed-leather briefcase he’d had for years? On his hands and knees Ryan searched for the briefcase beneath his desk, beneath a sofa . . . He’d examined desk-drawers, whose contents had been heaped out onto the carpet, several times. He was becoming irrational, muttering and cursing loudly.
Julia asked if anything important had been in the briefcase? Printouts, lab-data? Panting and cursing, Ryan ignored her.
His electric typewriter was missing, that had been set on a table, beneath a black plastic cover. Out of a closet, a portable radio had been taken.
Ryan was looking sick, confused. Julia could not bear to see her young husband so helpless.
She forced herself to return upstairs to the bedroom, dreading to discover—yes, much of her jewelry was missing. Squatting on her heels she pawed desperately through clothing on the floor—where were the pale pink pearls that had belonged to her grandmother?—where, the girl’s wristwatch that had been a birthday present from her grandmother? And where was the jade necklace Ryan had given her, brought back from a trip to China? She couldn’t find her favorite silver bracelet, and the beautiful necklace made of blue Venetian glass, also a gift from her husband . . .
Trying to tell herself—Nothing you own is expensive.
Trying not to think—Everything that is gone is irreplaceable.
Downstairs, Julia discovered more damage. More thefts! Silver candlestick holders missing from the dining room table—a wedding gift from Ryan’s parents, that had been conspicuously tarnished. Out of the sideboard other silver items had been taken—a large ladle, spoons—all tarnished, of dubious value. Julia thought, with a sudden wild elation—Good! No more God-damned silver polish.
Ryan’s new Nikon camera was missing from a closet shelf. Julia’s old Polaroid was missing.
Out of the front hall closet, a pair of Ryan’s boots was missing—boots! Julia saw to her dismay that her good, black cashmere coat was missing. Her coat!
Numbly they would say—Our house was burglarized. A curiously passive expression, this was—Burglarized.
Though we locked the doors and windows and were not gone long, our house was burglarized. As if the intrusion were a kind of weather, an act of God, and not the act of an individual or individuals.
After forty minutes, police officers arrived. They were two stocky swarthy-white men in their mid-thirties, uniformed, with heavy-looking holsters, prominent billy clubs and pistols on their hips. So outfitted, they seemed virtually to creak as they moved, and they did not move swiftly. They did not seem very concerned about the break-in and they betrayed no excess of sympathy for the agitated (white) couple residing at 294 Wildemere Drive, rather a kind of mock courtesy masking a scarcely concealed contempt. They asked Ryan—(pointedly, they ignored Julia)—if he’d searched the entire house including the basement, if he was sure no one was hiding in the house, and Ryan said, stammering, that he and Julia had looked through the house upstairs and down but not the basement; and so the police officers descended into the basement, cautiously, yet heavy-footedly, pistols drawn.
(The abashed couple exchanged a glance: not for a moment had they thought of the basement! Someone might well have been hiding there, and they were too distracted to have given it a thought.)
The police officers returned to the kitchen, pistols back on their hips. Nobody in the basement, and no signs that they could see of anything out of place.
“We don’t really have much that anyone would want,” Julia said nervously. She hoped she wasn’t sounding apologetic. “Especially in the basement, where . . .” But no one was listening to Julia.
The officers asked Ryan routine questions—when they’d left the house, if they’d locked the doors and windows, when they’d returned home. If they’d had a break-in before. The officers determined that the house had been entered at the rear by the forcing of a lock—“Not very secure these cheap kind of locks, see?”—on a sliding glass patio door. The officers discovered what neither Ryan nor Julia had discovered, a smear of blood on the patio door—“Where he wiped his hand, see?” (But why would the intruder be bleeding? Ryan and Julia had no idea, nor was this ever explained. There was no broken glass in sight.) Somehow, the officers determined that there were two perpetrators—“Probably kids looking for drugs, or money for drugs.” With stubs of pencils the officers took notes, or pretended to take notes. The elder of the two addressed Ryan with a barely concealed sneer, still ignoring Julia as if she didn’t exist: “Mr. Vann, why’d you come inside this house? Your mistake was pushing open that door, see. If you’d known the door
was locked when you left, and it was unlocked when you returned, you would know that someone had broken in, OK? You would know that that person or persons might still be inside, and that they might be dangerous. You would know that.”
You would know. It was a curious bullying way to speak. Julia could not believe that the police officer was reprimanding her husband, who stood stiff and abashed, mortified. A man reprimanding another man, in the presence of his wife. And Julia too stood silent, frightened. Was this break-in somehow their fault?
“See, if they had a gun, and you and your wife walked in—they might’ve shot you. Happens all the time.”
The officer spoke with a grim sort of satisfaction. The husband was forced to agree, shamefaced.
“Did you have money on the premises, Mr. Vann? Did they take money?”
Ryan shook his head no.
“No money? You’re sure?”
Ryan shook his head yes. He was sure.
“Could you make an inventory of what they took?”
Ryan and Julia said yes. They would try.
“Do you have a gun, Mr. Vann?”
Quickly Julia interceded—no. No gun!
But Ryan paused, not answering. Julia looked at him, astonished.
“Do you have a gun, Mr. Vann? Did they take your gun?”
“I—yes—I have—I had—a gun. Yes, the gun is—missing.”
Ryan spoke miserably, not looking at Julia. Julia stared at him openmouthed.
Both police officers were frowning. The elder of the two persisted: “Do you have a homeowner’s permit for the gun, Mr. Vann?”
Yes. Ryan had a permit.
“Could you identify the handgun, Mr. Vann?”
Ryan stammered trying to recall—trying to identify—the gun. He had not examined it much, he said. He thought it was—it would be called—a “revolver.” He had not ever fired it.
“‘Not ever fired it’?”
No. Ryan had to confess, he had not.
“And was this ‘revolver’ loaded?”
No. Ryan did not think the gun was loaded.
“You had this gun in your household for protection, Mr. Vann, and it was not loaded?”
The officers exchanged a glance. Inscrutable, it seemed.
Julia thought—They think we are such fools!
“And this gun is now missing, Mr. Vann? You are sure.”
Yes. Miserably, Mr. Vann was sure.
“Any other weapon, Mr. Vann?”
No. No other weapon.
“You’re sure? No other weapon on the premises?”
Ryan asked if “weapon” included knives? Kitchen knives?
“No, Mr. Vann. Not a kitchen knife. Like, another gun, or a switchblade. An illegal-length blade.”
Miserably Ryan shook his head no. No other gun and no switchblade in the household.
Ryan was obliged to show the officers his homeowner’s permit for the missing gun, which turned out to have been a .22 Ruger pistol; the document had been filed amid Ryan’s financial records. As if to humiliate Ryan further, as Julia stared from a doorway, they asked him to show them exactly where he’d hidden it—in the lowermost desk-drawer. (No wonder he’d been so anxious about his study, Julia thought.) Ryan explained—he’d purchased the gun in a gun store in Austin, Texas, preparing to drive north one summer by himself. This had been years ago, before he’d met Julia.
“And you never test-fired the gun?”—again, the officers regarded the husband with neutral expressions.
“I—I don’t think so . . .”
“Did, or did not, Mr. Vann?”
“N-No.”
The weak answer seemed to hover in the air, as if no one wished to claim it.
The officers continued to take notes with their stub-pencils that seemed too small for their large fingers. They had not appeared surprised that the homeowner at 294 Wildemere had owned a gun, still less that the gun had been stolen from him; their disdain seemed to be that the gun had been hidden in an obscure place, hadn’t been loaded or ever “fired.”
The Vanns were to file an inventory of stolen items with the local police precinct, and with their insurer. When Ryan asked if it was likely their things would be returned to them, the police officers murmured what sounded like Might be. When they left the house Julia looked after them in dismay—Wasn’t anyone going to take fingerprints? Didn’t the police care?
Alone with her husband in the violated house, Julia felt shaky, uncertain. She knew that he would try to embrace her—he was repentant, ashamed—and when he came to her, and touched her, she pushed from him with a little cry.
She could not bear for him to touch her, at that moment. The heat that lifted from his body, as of an obscure but defiant humiliation.
“A gun! You had a gun in the house, and I didn’t know.”
They were both breathing quickly. Julia’s heart was pounding quickly and shallowly and she seemed to be having difficulty shaping her words: her tongue felt too large for her mouth, and numb.
It was hurtful to her: her husband had been intimidated by the police officers. He had seemed oblivious of their rudeness to her.
“Julia, the gun was for our protection.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Didn’t want to worry me! A gun in the house . . .”
“It wasn’t loaded. I rarely glimpsed it. It was just—there.”
“All this time, years we’ve been together—we moved into this house—you brought the gun with you, and you didn’t tell me.” Julia’s voice lifted in wonderment. She did not say—How can I ever trust you again?
And so in the weeks and months to come the wife would inquire of the husband, with an air of subtle reproach—“Is there a gun in the house now, Ryan?”—and Ryan would say, pained, “No. There is no gun in the house.”
And again, a few months later—“Is there a gun in the house now, Ryan? You would let me know, wouldn’t you, if there was a gun in the house?”—and Ryan would say, “No, Julia. There is no gun in the house.”
“But you would tell me, if there was a gun?”
“Yes. I would tell you, darling.”
No police officer ever called them, after that day. No one came to the house on Wildemere Drive.
Their first house, this had been. So long ago, it seemed that others had lived there—the young husband, the young wife.
After the break-in, the house felt subtly poisoned to them. The foul odor of urine did not fade for some time. By the time they moved away they’d come to dislike the house that had once seemed so wonderful to them, the place of their eager, young love.
Their stolen things were never returned to them—of course. The inventory of items the Vanns had so carefully assembled went unacknowledged by anyone at the local police precinct; eventually, they were informed that it had been “misplaced”—“lost.”
Months were required for the insurance company to reimburse the Vanns, and then only partly, after numerous telephone calls.
They never spoke of the burglary. Very few of their relatives knew they’d been burglarized, and no one knew about the stolen gun.
Until finally they moved from the large Midwestern city at the southernmost point of the Great Lake, to a suburban community in central New Jersey where most inhabitants were “white” and there was very little crime. And the wife had no need to ask about a gun.
HIS TELEPHONE VOICE WHICH WAS JOVIAL, GREGARIOUS. THE voice of a happy man, you would say.
Fascinated she listened. From another room, she listened.
Who is he talking to, with such emotion? Who can make my husband so happy?
DRIVING TO TOWN she saw posters newly affixed to trees, telephone poles: MISSING DOG.
In town, MISSING DOG on fences, walls, in the grocery store and in the library. Photo of a dog with damp hopeful eyes, upright ears.
MISSING DOG –“GEMINI”—“GEM”
3 YRS OLD BEAGLE/BOXER MIX
>
COAT BROWN COLORS
FRIENDLY THOUGH MIGHT BARK
LAST SEEN CREEKSIDE PARK 5/13
******REWARD******
At the bottom of the posters was a local telephone number replicated on little strips of paper to be torn off. At the library, only one of these strips had been torn off. Julia tore off a strip.
The little dog in the photo looked so forlorn! Julia could not bear the thought of “Gem” wandering lost, frightened. Slowly she drove along country roads and Creekside Park feeling strangely optimistic. In a circuitous route that would bring her back home, but not immediately. Still optimistic, though beginning to tire, seeing a number of dogs but no dog not accompanied by a person, and on a leash.
I’VE BECOME A frightened person, I think.
But why? Frightened of what?
It has not happened yet. It is beginning.
SHE WAS ASKING HIM something, or she was remarking upon something, casually, not accusingly, and her voice was certainly not sharp, her voice was certainly not reproachful or harsh, though she might’ve expressed curiosity, and an undercurrent of irony, or mild indignation, asking where he’d been, where he’d been when he’d returned late that afternoon or possibly she’d asked him with whom he’d been speaking on the phone in his study, not once but more than once, she had not eavesdropped but she was wondering, and he wasn’t listening, or he was walking away—or, he was listening, as she spoke to his back, even as she spoke and he was walking away distractedly, or rudely, and now she did raise her voice, and now she did follow after him and pull at his arm, not hard, not (as he would afterward claim) squeezing his arm in a way to cause pain, only wanting attention from him, so rarely did he give her his fullest attention, even facing her his eyelids were hooded, his gaze drifted from her, and now he was walking away from her and she pulled at his arm, and he turned suddenly, pushing at her with a curse, and his fisted arm shot out—it was involuntary he would claim, it was “reflexive”—and struck her a palpable blow on the chest; and she saw in his flushed face a look of anger, and inexpressible loathing. And she recoiled from him, giving a little cry, the blow had hurt but it was more the surprise of the blow that had hurt, and the look in the husband’s face; and she ran from him and slammed a door crying I hate you too. I can hate, too—I hate you.
Lovely, Dark, Deep Page 16