The Voices in Our Heads

by Michael Aronovitz

That one was the strangest of all. Jordan had an excellent memory, honed from being in the construction trades so long and having to repeatedly retain the details of stocking and delivery orders on the fly, so his arrangement of the floor-pills was dead-balls accurate.

  Aldo was a genius. The arrangement and its effect reminded Jordan of the Mission Impossible movies, where laser rays were set all over a room, guaranteeing failure of mobility. The capsules and tablets were set in some kind of diabolical mathematical perfection, and when the beast snaked out of the toilet, feet first, body curved and shooting, like liquid being pushed through a curved see-through science tube, his thin-toed boots couldn’t find purchase as he took fuller form. He made six attempts, each time doing his little flamenco, trying different angles, always slipping, hitching, and pitching, then retreating through the pipes backward, upside down, and head first.

  Ann Marie came home an hour and a half later without announcement. I mean, enough was enough already, and Jordan was still in the living room, watching the recordings, pausing, rewinding, over and again. He looked at his wife in the doorway, his eyes red and dull.

  “What?” she said.

  He cleared his throat.

  “Jenna, go play a video game.”

  “OK, Daddy,” she said, prancing over to the “entertainment corner.” He took Ann Marie’s hand.

  “Upstairs,” he said.

  He closed the bedroom door and showed her the tapes. Her hand remained up at her mouth, and after the viewing she wordlessly followed her husband out to the garage where he piggybacked the small black tape canisters to a small yet weighty decorator brick he had in a pile left over from when they had the walkway done. He wrapped the bunch with duct tape, drove out to the reservoir, and dropped it off the pedestrian walking bridge into what fishermen and occasional swimmers called “The Deep Run.”

  They stayed at Joey’s for awhile, and Jordan put the house up for sale at tens of thousands below the neighborhood asking price. Soon, they moved back to South Philly, 10th and Morris, two streets down from where Jordan grew up, and they got Jenna placed in a magnet school. She had started waking up with a smile the minute they left Wynnewood.

  Jordan Colella kept on at the tool house, often driving home in mute frustration, as when they closed the service end of the shop on account of the economy and stuck him with farming out repairs, or that time the ladders didn’t get over to Liberty II on time, or when shipping sent out old cartridges with hardened epoxy crammed in the ports and Jordan had to hear about it from everyone and their mother because he was the “inside man” in charge of the funhouse. Ann Marie continued answering phones at the hospital, and last year when they didn’t give her a raise they gave her a title. Frankie failed English 102, dropped out without telling anyone, and took a job at the Navy Yard. Life went on.

  They discussed the possibility of putting Jenna in therapy, but Jordan insisted she’d get over it. And besides, what was there to uncover? A monster in the pipes? A fiend up the flue? Who would believe it? Any idiot could foresee the blame ending up right back on Aldo somehow. Ann Marie hinted that maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, like erasing the unexplained and putting it in a place Jenna could process or some such shit, and they fought about it.

  In the end, there was no therapy. Jenna did get over it, but Ann Marie developed her own backward strategy of streamlining the unexplained by giving signals here and there that Aldo was indeed wrapped up in the dark time her family went through, somehow, some way. She’d seen things change the minute he crossed their doorstep, there was no denying it. Jordan argued a bit at first, then deflected it, and allowed the frequency to die out over time. He moved on.

  But deep inside, he never let his father’s true legacy dwindle to fumes that could simply blow off on the wind. He always remembered that Aldo had pleaded with them at the last moment with his “Ape . . . ape . . . ape,” which was really, “Tape . . . tape . . . tape,” mispronounced because his teeth were out, and the cold hard fact that his father, his hero, utterly gave himself up in that freaked-out “Dong” get-up, standing guard over his granddaughter, ready to go painted face to painted face and toe to toe with the monster, the one only he could see in glorious Technicolor continuity somehow, because of a little plaque on the brain.

  In Ann Marie’s eyes, Aldo Colella would forever be known as the family monster no matter what she had seen on those tapes in the bedroom.

  Jordan still goes to the gravesite once a week to apologize for this, and to whisper to his dear father a more deserving and proper goodbye.

  PHANTOMS

  The Puddles

  July

  Doris Watawitz didn’t like touching trash, and she didn’t appreciate the idea that the Reading boys let rainwater sit in two uncovered Rubbermaids across the back alley for a week last month after carelessly tossing in their Heftys crammed to the gills with fat-marbled meat scraps, jumbo snow crab shells, black beans, and corn cobs. When the township garbage men left the stinking bags right there in their bins, ripped open by chipmunks no less, the older one had come out in shorts, an Iron Maiden retro T-shirt, and black flip-flops to dump the filthy moisture all over the uneven asphalt. He sprayed it off with a garden hose, but it did nothing but spread the brown, stinking water farther down the alley connecting the back yard fences and small garages of everyone who lived on Ellswood and Federal Streets. There were chicken bones, rotted cherry tomatoes, and rank pieces of spotted lettuce littered into the crevice made by Jenny Walshberg’s back garden bordering stones, and hair-clotted cue-tips and cotton balls floating in a trench that ran behind Hugh McMenomay’s grill area framed off by railroad ties with those pretty little planters on the top edge.

  The Reading boy had tossed the tattered bags back into the plastic trash cans and hauled them up the alley one at a time. He probably dumped them in the blue container they had at the park up the street, right next to the water fountain and the jungle gym. The alley smelled like disease for days, and though the stench had finally blown off, Doris still considered the asphalt of the back alley to be contaminated. As a result, her own trash and recycling ritual had become rather involved, and every few days she’d added a feature even though she knew it was all rather obsessive. First were the plastic disposable gloves that brought up images of embarrassing physical exams, serial killers, and New York City perverts no matter what generation you hailed from. Next was the sacrifice of her pink Laverne and Shirley sneakers, banished outside now under the short overhang so she wouldn’t track Reading germs into the house, and then just for good measure she’d started rolling her jeans to the knee so the cuffs wouldn’t drag out there.

  Tonight she added a hairnet. She looked ridiculous, but who would be looking? She was just the nutty old broad across the way, and her son Michael hadn’t been a regular visitor since his father died five years back.

  Doris tied up the Glad bag, pulled it out with that particularly disgusting little wheeze of suction, rested it against the wall by the door, and then grabbed the mono bin with the plastic and bottles from under the sink. She strode across, flipped down the lock on the back door, and gave it a hip. Thunderheads had broken the four-day heat wave, but the air was an assault of humidity, all ghosted by a dark mist. It tasted like wet hay, and Doris broke a sweat. She shuffled out to the stoop, slipped her feet in her sneakers, and padded down the steps, arms spread like Jesus.

  She’d have to wash off the door lock in there now, because she’d touched the Glad bag before flipping the catch. She’d also have to take a shower if the trash bag or recycling container happened to brush her clothing out here because of the same twisted logic that made her wash her hands after throwing out the plastic gloves. Part of her knew this made no sense whatsoever, but she’d long surrendered to the fact that her will and intuition were both better served blindly than with what she offhandedly considered “masculine reasoning.”

  Doris made her way down the walk. She angled right to avoid the butterfly bush spillin
g onto the ancient, turn-buckled pavers, nudged open the wooden gate, slipped through to the back alley, and then she stepped in a puddle.

  For a bare moment it did not compute. There was no divot back here deep enough to hold this landmine of rainwater, for God’s sake, she had walked through here thousands of times before and never had an incident. The water was tepid, going about an inch past her ankle, and Doris bit back the scream that had been building inside her. Back here the lighting was especially poor, and she couldn’t really make out the booby-trap her foot had landed in, only that the surface had moving blotches, floaters. She pulled out and could feel something sticking to her bare Achilles heel. She dropped the bag, forced herself to set down the small recycling can as gently as possible, reached down, and picked off the leaf.

  Her glove touched her heel and she gave a short shriek.

  She approached the shadowed line of trash cans and fumbled through the rest in a blur. She pulled up the trash can lid, groped back for the bag, threw it in, and reset the top. She snapped off the outdoor recycling container’s wide cap, groped desperately for the little bin, now lost down in the shadows, finally found it, and dumped the contents, hating at least somewhere at the rear edge of her present horror and repulsion that loud glassy clunking that made her seem like the neighborhood lush.

  She returned the top to the container and stepped back. She was breathing heavily, and her whole body swarmed with what felt like thousands of microscopic vermin dancing in and out of her pores. All around her were vague shapes, rough chalk-like outlines colored black and deep gray, houses rising up in the background, Billy Franklin’s basketball net looming to the side like a dark praying mantis. She lurched for the gate, and her right foot made squelching noises. Oh, these sneakers were as good as thrown away already, and she would put these clothes right in the washing machine. Then she would shower with the water turned as hot as was endurable. Suddenly, it came to the forefront that Doris never directly washed her feet. Nor her calves—she usually went down to the knee. Well, tonight she’d sit her frail, bony ass down flat in the tub and even soap between the toes. She’d use steel wool if she had to.

  On the way back through the yard, Doris began thinking of all the things she would have to clean now, all the traces she’d need to eliminate. Even if she left the sneakers outside, there was no way she could get into the kitchen without tracking in a bit of that puddle, so she would have to mop the floor before going to bed. On her way to the downstairs washer, she had to cross the corner of the den, so it would be necessary to get a fresh trash bag and tie it around her foot so she wouldn’t have to wet-vac the carpet. She would bring a second bag in hand, dump the first one in the basement can she emptied the lint trap into, strip down to her bra and underwear, throw the clothes in the wash standing on one foot, tie up the second bag, get upstairs, set the second foot bag in the bathroom trash, and hop into the shower with the pristine left foot. After washing off three times, she would walk the tall, thin bathroom can down to the kitchen can, dump the foot bag, wash her hands, march back upstairs, and clean the tub out with Soft-Scrub. Then, one more shower for good measure and bed. Finally.

  By the time Doris finished this dog and pony show, it was 1:17 in the morning.

  At 2:19, she stepped in another puddle.

  She had woken in the darkness with a start, not quite recalling the dream, but still feeling its potency. Something had been wrong, the world tilted. There was guilt involved, and some impending doom at the edges, wild animals pacing and growling, her father, horn-rimmed glasses buried somewhere in his fat, greasy face, cursing in Yiddish and storming around their small Brooklyn apartment adorned with the bright stained-glass lampshades, lots of marble and ritzy glassware, clowns with frowns juggling dead puppies, something.

  She threw off the covers, swung out her feet, and rubbed her cheek. Her toes curled in toward each other, and she sighed. She’d never brought up her iced tea for the nightstand. She ran her palms once over the skirt of the nightgown covering her skinny thighs, stood, put her hand to her back briefly, and walked toward the front corner of the bed. Right by the window by the bureau, she stepped in it. Water. Luke warm. And it reeked like trash.

  This time Doris screamed long and loud. She gave a half-turn, stumbled backward in the general direction of the bedroom doorway, and covered her mouth as her wet foot, the left one this time, made splatting sounds against the hardwood floor. By the time she got to the light switch, she was breathing heavily, trying to think rationally.

  The room flooded with brightness, and Doris blinked. Everything looked harsh, sharp-edged, menacing. Limping a bit, as if it would make her soiled foot infect the floor less, she made her way back around the bed, hand still frozen up at her mouth. When she came around the corner that led to the scene of the crime, where the bed and the wall made a short alleyway to the nightstand, she saw it picking up a dull gleam. It was an oblong puddle of dark wetness about a foot long, and it had a squiggle of dirty sediment floating across the top like a snake. She gasped. There was also a leaf-stem in there, bobbing slightly, the end of the stalk turned up and off from what looked like a rainbow streak of oil or grease refracting the submerged end in a cloudy slant.

  And the smell was absolutely putrid. The closer Doris got, the sharper the odor came off the dank spill. This was trash water, Reading water. Doris darted her glance all around the room, her sharp face jerking into different positions like some terrified little bird. She felt she should call somebody. She looked up at the ceiling for a water stain, but it appeared to be bone dry. Her hands were clasped up by her throat now in the prayer shape, and she crept a bit closer to the puddle. She gave a big sniff just to be sure, and Lord have a mercy, it was bad! In what seemed like centuries ago she’d worked in the Overbrook Delicatessen as a cashier, and had been sent to the walk-in box to get a few onions for Andy, the short-order chef who worked the main meat slicer. She had reached into the pickle barrel on the shelf behind the steel whipped-cream canisters and come up with brown mush between her fingers. At first she thought it was one of those jokes they all liked to play on the new girls, you know, like “Go get me a bucket of steam,” but this was no prank. It was a rotten onion, and that pungent, rank odor was somewhere in this puddle, amidst what registered as rotten eggs and what seemed akin to old, spoiled lo mein in one of those white takeout containers with the dried, petrified sauce stains shadowed up under the top interlocking covers.

  Doris immediately began working off the initial fright in robotic, numbing exchanges. The cause, origin, and “possibility in the first damned place” of the puddle surrendered to a series of dumb, long-learned, and deeply ingrained motor functions involving the set of yellow Johnson & Johnson dishwashing gloves she left by the basement utility basin for emergencies, the bathroom can, two rolls of paper towels, some old contour sheets with paint-stains that she hoarded in the basement cabinet with the light bulbs and extension cords, her mop, the bucket that always seemed to collect hair in the bottom of it no matter how many times she scrubbed it and left it to dry upside down at an angle, a double portion of industrial-strength floor cleaner, and some good old-fashioned bleach. When she was finally finished, her room smelled like a hospital. Her fingers were red and her eyes glazed. She showered for twenty minutes, skin tingling as she toweled off afterwards. At 4:46 a.m. she crawled back under the covers, body aching, head like a stone.

  At 7:56, she awoke to the smell of rancid trash mixed with sewage and a somewhat invasive sound, something odd, something that had interrupted the nearly imperceptible hum of the central air she’d spent a good chunk of Frank’s life insurance to have installed. The noise was coming from the bathroom, a slurping, slopping sound edged with that particular, echoed plinking that made one think of pipes and porcelain and dirty toilet bowls. She was lying rigid on her back. She rubbed her face with both open hands, and the noise stopped. She sniffed.

  Something still stank.

  Doris pushed out of bed and loo
ked down sharply when crossing the area where the puddle had been by the window. The slats of the blinds made bars across the place where the bleach had lightened the wood. She stepped over it and padded across the front of the bed. By the time she got to the doorway, she was holding her nose. When she turned the short corner to the bathroom, she was gasping for breath.

  She could taste the smell—it was thick on her tongue, a molestation of her lungs. Suddenly, she realized what an absolute disaster area the bathroom was even leading up to the toilet. The floor tile was designed to “cover,” as some salesman might say, or more particularly hide dirt in the same manner that a youngster might move peas into the patterns on a dinner plate. There was a light layer of dust on the board behind the light fixtures on the medicine cabinet, and the soap dish built into the sink by the faucet had traces of filmy residue topped off by a bobby pin with a few strands of hair twisted in it. The toothbrush holders were coated with the remnants of old paste on the inner sides of those little ovals, and the three-way pullout mirror was spotted. And what about the bowl brush and plunger casually left to the rear of the tank on the floor? How many times had they been submerged in water riddled with waste, and then simply stuck back there to fester? This whole room was getting a once-over, and a good one!

  She edged up to the toilet, raised her eyebrows, went up on her toes, and looked over the rim.

  The water was filthy gray, bubbles coating the surface, slightly darker scum crusted and settled at the edges. There were dark spottings under the bowl rim that had begun to drip back down like dirty tears, and floating in the surface skin was a gob of what looked like a half-pound or so of regurgitated mashed potatoes. In the center of it, just to the left like a cherry on top, was an object of firmer substance. It was a half-buried pine cone.

  Doris almost vomited.