Impossible, he thought. Someone switched the photos. But who would do that?
Unless...
Unless what?
Unless she had always been like that. Unless he’d misremembered her. The dog that followed him to bed last night, like all the nights prior, was not that dog. No, there’s got to be another explanation, he thought, ignoring the voice that said the only other explanation was madness.
A sound startled him out of his trance, loud and clear. Running and laughter echoed out behind him, nearby, and he spun his head around. They were the same sounds of giggling and running he’d heard in the basement an hour before.
“Hello?” he called out. “Tommy? Jessica?”
He could sense someone there, the way a person knows when someone is staring at them, even from the shadows. A vague energy, a feeling that something had been displaced. A chill passed through him.
“Jessica?”
A low giggle seemed to come from the refrigerator. Then, as it faded, he realized it had come from behind the refrigerator. No, not behind it, beyond it. It was as if the sound had penetrated the walls, then the plastic and metal of the Samsung fridge, and arrived focused on him like an x-ray. He felt his hair stand on end as one thought rang clearer than all others.
Someone was in the hallway.
“Jessica? Honey are you playing games?” Dan asked as he followed the sound, and he could feel his voice tremble. He knew Jessica had walked all the way home from school on the second day, Linda had told him about that incident. He didn’t think she would do it again, but he also didn’t think she would bite her own finger until it bled, or pluck the eyes from her favorite doll. Of the two children, she had become the less predictable one.
But the laughter, it didn’t sound like her voice. In fact, it didn’t sound like anyone’s. Instead, it sounded recorded, old, as if funneled through a telephone from decades ago and finally transmitted.
His fingers curled in as another thought settled into his mind. What if there was no one there? What if his mind had slipped sideways and the laughter had not come from without, but from within? Was it, like the glass and migraines and auras and perhaps even that diseased dog’s photos, simply inside his mind? Was he slipping towards some unknown precipice, or perhaps, had he already?
No, he realized what it was, and when he did he put those dark thoughts out of his mind and stood up.
“Karina? Is that you?”
He followed the giggle into the downstairs hallway. There, framed photos of the family stared back, suffused with a dim glow from the flickering lights above. He wrote off the flicker as a symptom of his migraine, nothing more than the glass simmering behind his eyes. It wasn’t those soft, weak colors that bothered him, but the thought that she may be in his house.
“Karina?”
A squeal, rubber soles on the hardwood floor beyond the door. It moved fast, followed by a giggling echo in phasing bursts, in and out. He was almost certain it was Karina. God, what was she doing here? First she had called and now...
The footsteps came again, now from the dining room. He put his thoughts aside and moved quickly past the family portraits and the bathroom and the door leading to the basement. As he entered the dining room he saw across the way the other door leading into the kitchen rattle and swing shut and he swore he saw a shadow move beneath it.
She was here, that resentful girl, she had come to his house. For what? To play more of her games? He was tired of them, tired of her games, tired of it all. Tired of the control he had over him, the threats of suicide or worse, the discovery of the affair and how she dangled that threat, spoken so casually--“I just think we should come clear”--as if she would have to pick up the pieces of his marriage. That anger pushed him to move, to sprint in a burst across the dining and towards the kitchen where he would grab that bitch and scream: “Don’t ever come back!”
But he didn’t. Instead, he threw the kitchen door open, shouting: “Found you!”
The figure by the sink screamed and leapt back. A brown bag crashed to the floor, contents shattering and spraying across the wood.
Linda covered her mouth in fright, an expression that gave way to rage, and she threw a dishtowel across the room at him but it fell several feet short. For a split second, he thought her reaction almost comical and childish.
“What the hell is the matter with you?!” she screamed, body seeming to cave in on itself as she caught her breath. “Why would you do that?!”
“I’m... I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I thought...”
“What are you, ten years old?! Jesus hon, you scared the hell out of me.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
“Great. There goes the orange juice,” she said, bending down and scooping the leaking grocery bag then placing it in the sink. “I hope you’re happy.”
“Honey, I’m really sorry, I thought--”
“What, it’d be fun to give your wife a heart attack?”
She reached into the junk drawer, pulled out that pack of cigarettes and her father’s silver lighter. She struck the lighter twice and on the third click it lit. She took a lungful of smoke then turned to her husband with raised eyebrows.
“I get this one today for that crap you just pulled.”
“Fine,” he said and repeated it a second time. “Fine.”
“And you get to clean up this mess.”
“Fair enough, but first you need to see something.”
“What now?”
He hurried over to the table where the photos of Ginger lay in a scattered pile. He brought them to Linda, dropping them on the counter like a detective presenting evidence to a suspect.
“Look at these,” he said, tapping them. “Look.”
She did, lifting them up and thumbing through them while taking a long drag off that cigarette. She blew a jet of smoke from the corner of her mouth and he waved it away. He hated that habit of hers, thinking of all the times she’d promised to quit, but he let it slide today.
“I think we should use the one from the hike.”
“You’re kidding right?”
“Well, which one do you want to use?”
“No, honey look at them! Look at Ginger,” Dan said, taking the photos back, pointing the photo by the Christmas tree but his eyes stopped on it a second time. The kids, their new toys, and Ginger, just as she’d always been.
“How about the other one, by the fountain last spring?” she asked. “It’s a close up.”
He studied at the pictures, uncomprehending. Each photo showed Ginger as he’d known her, that smooth hair, clean teeth, not a speck of matting or rot. Even those eyes, as vacant and clueless as always, stared back.
“Hello?” she asked. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah,” he said under his breath. “I just thought you should choose the photo.”
“Are you okay?” she asked, blowing another jet of smoke toward the window.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he said with a smile.
The Twelfth Student
HE TAUGHT HIS second and only lecture of the week in Room 17-B, a spare studio on loan while The Archive was under investigation. Eleven students had shown up with eleven somber faces, and Dan did his best to reassure them that their work this semester would continue, despite the setback. Only Karina’s table sat empty. It was a sight that had relieved him at first. But, as his lecture wound into the second hour on the variety of solvents and their use in restoring frescoes, he began to worry about her absence and what it implied.
In over a year Karina had only missed one class, on a Wednesday in March after a short stay at the hospital. She had returned on a Friday, wearing a long sleeve hoodie that hid the bandages on her wrists. On that day she had carried on her usual studies with no mention of the injuries or the events that had led up to them. Instead, she had smiled at Dan with her usual knowing grin as the rest of the students listened to his lecture and took notes.
Seventy-two hours earlier they
had a fight, a monster of a blow out. He had tried to break off their budding affair, she had turned abusive, and cruel words had been said by both of them. She threw things; an iPod, a vase, books, all had crashed off the walls of her crummy apartment as her voice reached such hysterics that he thought she might be possessed. Even the neighbors had banged on the door to see if she was still alive. He had a long talk with them, during which he listened to a litany of complaints they had with his ‘girlfriend.’ He just nodded, happy to be out of the apartment where the spring air calmed his mind. In hindsight he should have known her silence inside harbored no respite, only more horrors.
When he returned inside he found her in the kitchen, a blank look on her face as she pressed a paring knife into her left wrist. Her right wrist already leaked crimson down her arm, where it cascaded off her elbow in a thin ribbon and pooled on the yellow countertop. Her face was blank and, to him, that was the most haunting image of all. It was a numb mask as she sawed back and forth across her left wrist no different than cutting a vegetable. When he pulled her hand free he saw tendons and veins, raw and pink inside the open seam.
She fought him, roaring and shrieking at the interruption, clawing and gnashing her teeth like a feral animal. By the time he wrestled her to the cold tile her face had grown pale from blood loss. He used his favorite tie, one the kids bought him for Father’s Day, to make a tourniquet for her gushing right wrist. As he finished wrapping her left wrist in a dishtowel she could only put up a weak struggle. Her skin had taken on a blue hue that reminded him of ice and he thought there was no way she could survive.
The hospital was only a few miles away and she spent most of the drive lapsing in and out of weak sobs, apologizing for ruining his tie, and asking him to close some imaginary door. Traffic was sparse so he blew through several red lights, one of which snapped a photo of him that he later intercepted in the mail before Linda saw it. He signed the form as they wheeled her into the ER, numb as the nurse asked if she was his daughter.
On Friday Karina resumed class, smiling, wearing that hoodie that hid the bandages beneath long sleeves. Never so much as a thank you for saving her life, never so much as an acknowledgment that her hands would have cut to bone had he not stopped them. It was on that day that he realized she needed to removed from his life, and to do so would require a surgeon’s touch.
The plan was simple and came together over the course of a few days. He called a former classmate after reading an email circulating among universities calling for applicants to join a handpicked team to spend a year in Italy. He later told Karina that he and Nathaniel were friends but the truth was they hadn’t spoken in years. Nathaniel felt Dan had stolen Linda away from him in grad school, where she had been his date to one of his pretentious fundraisers.
Nathaniel came from money, and art for him was a means to spend that money and rub elbows with the rich and powerful, a pursuit that Dan believed to be Nathaniel's true and only passion. Yet Nathaniel had made the mistake of bringing a date who came from money herself, as Linda wasn’t impressed with it nor did she enjoy being the trophy to a man who did. They had talked at length, laughing like old friends, ignoring everyone else, including Nathaniel's glare over the guests and champagne glasses, and Dan felt a small sense of victory as he finally had something Nathaniel couldn’t buy. To Dan, the contrast between the man she arrived with and the man she left with couldn’t have been wider, like some backwards Cinderella story.
A year later to the day Nathaniel wore that same spurious smile as Dan and Linda exchanged vows at a small beachside ceremony.
He had hardly spoken to Nathaniel in the years since, only in a professional capacity, but Dan needed him for the plan. Nathaniel was, even if he didn’t know it, a keystone piece, and Dan knew he had to humble himself for it all to come together. It would be worth it, he told himself, as he dialed the Caracci Institute.
The apology took thirty minutes as it wove from pleasantries to accusations and tenuous reconciliation. It was further complicated when he learned Nathaniel had filled the final spot the week before. Yet despite the bad blood between them, Nathaniel admitted that he harbored a tremendous respect, professionally at least, for Dan’s talents and reputation, even if he freely admitted to thinking he was a rather duplicitous asshole. Despite that he agreed to create an eleventh spot for Karina, sight unseen, on condition of Dan returning a future favor, a term Dan was more than happy to agree to.
All that now required his attention was to persuade Karina to make the move, a task he felt certain that he could accomplish given the right mood and setting. He knew the place before he hung up. And so he booked a weekend at their getaway in Napa where the idea was presented and had, as planned, taken hold like a virus. By the end of the weekend, as his car drove south across the Golden Gate bridge, she turned to him and said: “I think I’m going to go to Italy. Like you said: chance of a lifetime, right?”
“Right,” he answered.
The lecture finished a few minutes before six and the students filed out of room 17-B, some pausing to schedule appointments over the next week to discuss new projects. When they left Dan closed his computer and checked his cell phone. The lack of messages from Karina after three hours and her empty workstation left a confusing void, a hole, and he wondered whether to fill that emptiness with worry or relief.
Father & Son
“STRAIGHTEN IT OUT a little. The right side,” he said and Tommy followed, holding the flyer at shoulder height to the trunk of the magnolia tree. The setting sun cast a dappled glow down through the canopy of the trees, painting the quiet, affluent neighborhood in an almost mystical light, not unlike some romantic era landscape.
“There you go,” Dan said. He lined the staple gun against the flyer and pressed down. It fired twice, small dabs of wetness spotting the corners of the flyer from the sap beneath.
“Think she’ll come home tonight?” Tommy asked as they walked to the next tree.
“She’s a smart dog,” he answered, ignoring the cackle of the glass. “I’m sure she’ll find her way back. She’s probably out on some doggy adventure right now, you know?”
“Jessica thinks she’s dead.”
“Well, Jessica also talks to dolls.”
Tommy laughed, and it made Dan smile to hear it. They’d spent the better part of an hour walking down the quiet side streets of Alder Glen, flyering every oak, elm, and magnolia in the neighborhood between Wildwood Lane and the community gardens at Pardee Park before looping back home, yet not once had Tommy smiled. It was something he did less the older he got, as his laughter gave way to sighs and sarcasm. Dan missed the old days when they kicked the soccer ball around, back before he went from being his son’s hero to being ‘lame,’ as Tommy put it.
“Here?” Tommy asked, nodding to a tree.
“Sure, hold it up for me?”
“How’s this?”
“Perfect.”
Clack clack. He stapled the flyer in, the rustle of leaves in the wind filled the silence after the stapler fired, and beyond it, something else, a faint electric hum in the evening air. For a moment he caught a glimpse of a young girl with strawberry hair running past the gate of the Salazar’s awful McMansion across the street. He thought he saw a firefly hovering in the distance, but when he blinked it was gone. There were no fireflies, not here, he thought.
“You’re not allowed to do that,” a voice said, and Dan knew who it belonged to before turning.
Marty stood at the corner of his yard, leaning on his fence, a pair of garden shears in hand and a loose piece of ivy hanging from his overalls. “Those ads,” he nodded. “You’re not allowed to post ‘em.”
“They’re not ads Marty, they’re flyers. Ginger got out this morning.”
“Doesn’t matter what it’s for. Can’t have people putting signs up willy-nilly. Homeowners Association doesn’t allow flyers, Daniel, you know that.”
Tommy shifted, eyes jumping from Marty to Dan. He could tell by the tone
in that old man’s voice, and by his father’s stiffened posture, that there was a problem. He just didn’t understand why.
“Marty I don’t care what the homeowners association allows, it’s our dog.”
Marty put his hands on the fence and leaned over. It reminded Dan of how his teachers stood over his desk while his mind was far away from the classroom. That old son-of-a-bitch, ruining the one good afternoon he’s had with Tommy in weeks.
“We’ll just take ‘em down Daniel,” Marty said with a shrug and a smirk. “That clear enough for ya?”
“And I’ll just put more up. And if a single one’s missing by Monday, you’ll be the next thing that’s nailed to the fucking tree.”
Dan raised the staple gun and fired it at Marty in a quick one-two-three burst. At first Marty lurched back and blocked his face with his gloves and the garden shear, a sight that made Tommy’s mouth fall open. As the second volley of staples bounced harmlessly off him, Marty realized not only how foolish he looked, but that he wasn’t going to win this round.
“That clear enough for you, Marty?”
The old man waved his hand as if swatting a mosquito and mumbled: “Asshole,” as he turned and walked off.
Tommy had heard his dad swear before, always on accident, and always followed by a scolding from his mom for Dan to watch his language around the kids. But he had never, ever, heard his dad say a bad word deliberately, let alone the F word. His dad had used it just like those action stars in movies he wasn’t supposed to watch. Instead of a real gun, it had been a staple gun but the effect had been the same. Adios fucker. Problem solved.
“I’m sorry Tommy, you shouldn’t have heard that,” Dan said as they resumed walking.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it wasn’t. I lost my cool.”
“He deserved it.”
Dan laughed, and Tommy studied him, curious why those three words had elicited such a chuckle from his dad.
“Yeah,” Dan said. “He’s deserved it for long time.”
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