Ugly Behavior

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  Suddenly the cough racked him again. His head jerked as if he’d been slapped. His wife had slapped him a couple of times, because of some dumb thing he’d said to her. He’d never hit her. He had no use for men who hit their wives.

  But she should never have hit him.

  Something was coming from a long distance away, something had come from a long distance, and now it was filling his throat. He thought that he would choke. He ran to the toilet bowl and coughed something up from his throat. It felt large and soft as if it were one of his internal organs as it passed his lips and plopped into the water.

  He looked down. It was longish and pale, like an arm, and then it dissolved into the water.

  Where was she, anyway? He couldn’t remember. If it had been her making these noises of distress she would have expected him to come help her. But when he was the one who was sick, she hid herself. Marriage ought to be a two-way street.

  At least she could have fed him something. He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything all day, and he’d had way too much to drink last night in order to ease the pain in his throat and in other places he didn’t like to talk about. He was hungry. Men had hungers. Where was she?

  The next cough practically split him in two. It felt as if it had originated miles away. Something rushed through him, then past him as if on its way to an important destination. Where was she? He looked down at what he had brought forth from such a long distance away, and saw a soft, liquid, barely recognizable version of his wife’s face floating in the bowl, a soft tinge of blood in the lips and cheeks. The image started to break up even as he impulsively jerked the lever to flush it all away.

  And then he remembered.

  You Dreamed It

  Cheryl woke up abruptly and rubbed her eyes as hard as she could. Her father had held her head over the toilet bowl; he was going to drown her. She was sure of it.

  But then he had stopped all of a sudden, and she’d looked up into his faraway face. The face had been dark, and although she knew it was her father’s face she really couldn’t see it very well. Daddy? she’d said, but very softly. She wasn’t even sure he could hear her. She wasn’t even sure she wanted him to hear her.

  He hadn’t said anything. He picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her from the small bathroom to her bedroom at the end of the dark hallway. There was a bend in the hallway where the stairs came up. He was careful walking there; it would be easy to slip and drop her down the stairs.

  Maybe he wanted to slip, she thought. But he didn’t, this time. He’d hit her head real hard against the door frame when he walked into the hall; she’d sobbed once and held onto her cries, afraid he would get mad. Looking at the big staircase falling off into the dark helped her stop crying — it was so scary.

  When they got to the end of the hallway he’d thrown her onto the bed. She made herself really stiff trying not to cry, but that made her back hurt when she hit the bed. She gasped once, then gasped again when he started pouring water on her. Glasses full of water, hitting her face harder and harder. Soaking into the bed. Soaking into her pajamas. Making everything wet, everything dripping with it. She finally began to cry; she couldn’t help it. They would think she’d wet the bed again—Mommy and Daddy; she’d be in trouble.

  He didn’t say a thing. After he finished wetting her bed he turned and left.

  Cheryl looked at her bed and reached out carefully with one hand. It was damp. So were her pajamas. She stared at the one window in the room, full of bright light, like water. She couldn’t decide if she had dreamed or not.

  Her father walked in. “Wet your bed again?” he said quietly.

  Cheryl nodded her head and looked away.

  “Well, that’s all right. You know what you need to do now.”

  Cheryl got up and began stripping the bed. It was hard for her; the covers were tucked in real tight and all the blankets and the quilt were heavy, especially once they were wet, but she had to do it herself. That’s what her daddy called “the deal.”

  He stepped out of her way as she waddled over to the hamper. She almost tripped at the last second, but then he grabbed her and set her upright. “Thank you,” she said softly. He started to leave. “Daddy?” He turned around. “Did you take me to the bathroom last night?”

  He crouched down then, and she saw his face: all pink and newly-shaven. He smiled with large thin lips and kissed her on the cheek. “No, sure didn’t, Angel. You must have dreamed it.”

  She watched his face go away as he stood up. She nodded and he smiled again.

  She got in trouble that day at school for staring out the window too much and not doing her work. She couldn’t help it. Everything looked so blurry outside, like the sun had come down and made all the plants, cars, and buildings glow with a funny light. Or like she was seeing everything outside through water, but it wasn’t raining. It was funny.

  Later she looked into her lunch box and brought her marbles out. They were red, blue, green, lots of different colors. Some you could even see through. A bunch of them had belonged to her first daddy, her real daddy, her mommy had told her. She liked looking at those the best. They looked so old. And they made her feel better. She brought them to school every day but she didn’t play with them. She just liked to look. Somebody might steal them if she played.

  Before dinner her daddy came home and stepped on her foot. Twice. He pretended he didn’t notice and she pretended it didn’t happen, even though it hurt a lot. But she pulled her feet up into the chair and sat on them, just to make sure he didn’t do it again.

  After dinner he passed by her in the upstairs hallway and nudged her into the wall. She hit her cheek and it cut a little.

  A few minutes later he came out of his bedroom. She was sitting in the middle of the hall crying and holding her cheek. The blood felt hot and sticky on her fingers.

  “Why, Cheryl! What happened?” he said and crouched down next to her, his wide face filling her vision.

  “You… you pushed me!” she cried, sobbing, and for a moment was very afraid, afraid of what he would do to her now that she had said that. She shouldn’t have said it, but she’d been hurt, and it made her forget.

  “Why… how can you say that!” he said, looking really puzzled. Cheryl knew he was play-acting; his eyes were too wide and his mouth so large and open he looked like the giant chicken she liked so much on the cartoons. But she didn’t like her daddy like this. She didn’t like him at all.

  “I’m… I’m sorry. I guess I fell.” She looked down.

  Then he was holding her, speaking softly to her, telling her that everything was going to be okay, and that he loved her very much. He talked to her just like she was his own real daughter. She hugged him back real hard, hoping maybe it was all true, though she really didn’t think it was. Her old daddy had died so long ago she couldn’t remember him, and when this new one came along last year and married her mother she used to dream sometimes that he was actually her real daddy come back to her, and that her mommy just didn’t recognize him.

  But that couldn’t be true. Her real daddy wasn’t like this one at all.

  That night in bed she was thinking about her real daddy when the tall man with the dark face came in. She knew he was really her new daddy but now she was trying to think of him as a stranger, a bad dark stranger who pretended to help her by taking her to the bathroom so she wouldn’t wet the bed but who was really an evil, bad man out to get her. It made her feel better that way. It made her feel safer when she had to be with her new daddy during the daytime.

  The man with the dark face, the man with no face it was so dark, reached down and lifted her up out of the bed. “Time to use the bathroom,” he said softly.

  He took her down the hall into the bathroom and tried to crash her head against the doorframe. But she was too smart for him this time and put her hands over her head. She hurt her fingers when he bumped her into the doorframe but at least they didn’t hurt as badly as her head had. Sometime
s her head hurt so badly she couldn’t sleep after that. And besides, her mommy asked funny questions about the bruises.

  So she wasn’t expecting it when he ran her face into the front of the sink. Her nose mashed and she couldn’t breathe and it felt all funny. When she opened her mouth to cry he put his hand over her mouth and held it there so long she started feeling sleepy. Then he took it away. Then she was too sleepy to cry.

  The next morning her mommy was all upset about her nose, wanting to know what happened.

  “I can’t remember,” Cheryl said.

  “But your nose is all bloody! Surely you know what happened?”

  “Maybe Cheryl was playing where she shouldn’t be playing and that’s why she’s afraid to tell us,” her new daddy said, looking funny at her mommy.

  Cheryl didn’t say anything at first, then looked up at her mother. “I have bad dreams sometimes and they make things happen.”

  “Well, you didn’t dream a bloody nose!” her mommy said.

  “I... I think I must have tripped when Daddy was in my room last night.”

  Her new daddy looked at her mommy, then turned to Cheryl. “I wasn’t in your room, Cheryl. You must have dreamed it.”

  Her mommy nodded her head slowly, and it looked to Cheryl like her mommy was very nervous. Cheryl nodded her head back. “I guess I did,” she said.

  “I know… you must have had a bad dream and fallen out of bed,” her new daddy said.

  Cheryl nodded silently, and the more she thought about it, the more she tried to think her new daddy was right. She wanted it to be true.

  She sat for a long time on the stairs before bedtime listening to her mommy putting away the dishes, her new daddy talking to her in low sounds like a dog barking. For awhile it made her giggle, thinking that he sounded like a puppy, but then she got scared, and the staircase seemed darker than before.

  “... getting to be a problem… her imagination…”

  The words were suddenly easier to hear, and at first she couldn’t understand why. But then she understood.

  “She’s delusional, Betty. All these dreams. And I think she’s lying to you… to us, half the time…”

  Her new daddy knew she was out on the stair listening. And he wanted to make sure she heard what he was telling her mommy.

  “. . . something wrong with her, Betty. We love her. I love her. But we may have to send her away…”

  Cheryl crawled up the steps carefully. She was afraid to stand up and walk, afraid she would make too much noise. And she didn’t cry this time. It surprised her, but she didn’t even feel like crying.

  That night Cheryl woke up a little early. She looked at the doorway, but there was no one there. The dark man with no face hadn’t come yet.

  She lay there thinking about what her daddy would do if he were in her place — her real daddy. Her good daddy.

  She got up and went to her closet. She took out her bag of marbles. They were really old; she’d had them a long time. She took them and walked out the door.

  She was really careful placing the marbles around the bend of the hallway, at the top of the stairs. She put them down one at a time, so that they made a nice pattern. The pattern looked a little like the moon. She put her real father’s old marbles on the outside, and the newer marbles on the inside.

  Then she got up to leave. There wasn’t much light in the hallway. You couldn’t even see the marbles on the dark carpet now.

  She didn’t have to wait long after she got back into bed. She heard her mommy and daddy’s bedroom door opening, and the creakings and groanings of the hallway floor as the dark man with no face walked toward her bedroom.

  Then there was the big crash, followed by a loud scream, and a lot of thumps and bangs as the dark man fell down the staircase.

  “You must have dreamed it, Daddy,” Cheryl said softly beneath the covers, giggling and snuggling closer to her pillows. “You dreamed it.”

  Rat Catcher

  Jimmy hadn’t caught four hours sleep all week. Normally he was a dead man about five seconds after he hit the sheets. In fact he liked telling people “I work like a bastard for my sleepeye.” Not that he didn’t lie there staring at the ceiling a few hours now and then, but not like this, not for days, not for a week. Sometimes he might lie awake counting the tiles because he was trying to remember something, even though he might not know he was trying to remember something. Some special butt-saving part of his brain would nag at him until he’d think of that anniversary, birthday, or special favor for his boss that he’d completely forgotten. “Ah, Jimmy, thank you,” he’d say when he remembered these things, flat on his back in bed. Sometimes Tess would nudge him with her elbow a little when this happened, pretending to be asleep but still letting him know he’d saved his butt by just a hair this time (she figured he’d forgotten something having to do with her and most of the time she was right).

  But not this time. He didn’t think his lack of sleep had anything to do with her. Not this time. What he forgot this time, he knew, came from somewhere deeper than that, from somewhere further back, off where the dog bled in the dark and the rats gathered round to lick the blood.

  “Ah, Jimmy, thank you.…” he said, but quietly, not wanting Tess to hear. Off where the dog bled in the dark.…

  Maybe he felt the scratching before he actually heard it. Later he’d wonder about that. He felt it up in his scalp, long and hard like fingernails scratching through a wooden door, the fingers bleeding from the effort and the mind spinning dizzy from the pain. Jimmy raised his head and looked toward the bedroom door—they always kept it open halfway and the hall light on because Miranda was just down the hall and at five years old she still hated the dark, almost as bad as Jimmy used to hate the dark. Almost as bad as he hated it now. They kept the door open because Jimmy wanted to be sure and hear her when she screamed, which she still did about once every two weeks. He didn’t want to lose any time getting into his little girl’s room.

  Tess was always telling him that he coddled the kids. That was a funny word—he didn’t think he’d ever heard anyone else use it besides his grandma, back when he was a kid. And maybe Tess was right. He’d never been able to talk much about what it is you do with kids—being a dad to them, disciplining them, that kind of thing—not the way Tess could. Sometimes she gave him these books to read, books on parenting by experts. He never got much out of them.

  All Jimmy knew was to pay attention to them, love and protect them. And tell them when they did wrong, though after a while you couldn’t stop them from doing wrong, just slow them down a little. Just doing that much wasn’t easy, not like it sounded. The kids would find out soon enough that the world was worse than they’d ever imagined, and maybe they’d hate him a little at first because of that. But all he could do was try to keep them alive and teach them a few things that would help them keep themselves alive. And maybe someday they’d figure out he’d loved them and that he’d meant the best for them, even with all the mistakes he’d made. He figured love was mostly mistakes that turned out okay. And maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe he wouldn’t be dead when that someday came around.

  A small black dog, maybe a cat, came racing by the open door, in and out of the little bit of light like a shadow pulled by a rubber band. On its way to Miranda’s room, looked like. But they didn’t own a dog, not since they put old Wooly to sleep. And their cat was white as a clean pillowcase.

  Kids scream for all kinds of reasons. But even for the silly ones Jimmy had never been able to stand it. When Miranda’s scream tore so raggedly out of the dark, he was up and heading out the door without even pulling down the covers. Tess made a little gasp of surprise behind him as the headboard rocked back and banged the wall. The whole house was shaking with his legs pounding down the hallway and Miranda screaming.

  As soon as he reached his little girl’s door he caught the sharp smell of pee, and when he slammed the light switch on he fully expected to find the rat up on the bed with her, marking
her with his teeth and claws and marking the bed with his pee just to let Jimmy know whose was whose. But there was just Miranda huddled by herself, her face red as a beet (how do little kids make their faces go that color?), and the damp a gray flower opening up all around her tiny behind.

  “Daddy! A big mousy! Big mousy!” she screamed, words he would have expected from her two years ago but not now (Dad! I’m a big girl now!), pointing a whole pudgy and shaking fist toward her open closet door. Jimmy ran back into the hallway and Miranda started screaming again; he could hear the baby squalling in the back room and Tess and Robert were out in the hall, Tess shouting What’s wrong!, but Jimmy could hardly hear her over Miranda’s Daddy!. He waved a hand at Tess trying to get her to stay back, jerked open the hall closet door and grabbed the heavy broom, and ran back into his daughter’s room.

  Where he slammed her closet door as far back as it would go and held the broom up, waiting.

  Miranda’s screams had choked off into hard, snotty breathing. He could feel Tess and Robert behind him at the door, Tess no doubt holding Robert’s jaw in that way she had when she wanted him to know he shouldn’t talk just now. Daddy’s real busy.

  Suddenly there was movement at the bottom of the closet: Miss Raggedy Ella fell over and Jimmy could see that half her face had been torn away into clouds of cotton and he just started waling away with the broom on Miss Ella and Barbie and Tiny Tears and Homer Hippo and the whole happy-go-lucky bunch until they were all dancing up and down and laughing with those big wide permanent grins painted on their faces (except for Miss Ella, who now had no mouth to speak of) and screaming just like Miranda did. “Daddy, stop! You’re hurting them!”

  “It’s a rat! A rat, goddamit it!” He didn’t know who he was yelling at; he just didn’t know how they could be bothering him when there were rats in the house.