When it ended, Tiny William left his searched room with a bruise and open cuts he had been talked into believing he deserved.
Tiny William stopped asking for Christmas gifts. He just waited and accepted anything as the way it was supposed to be.
Mrs. Rose hits the dashboard again. The static drops for a moment but returns even harder. “Damn,” she says. “You ever been taught something? Been told lies?”
William mumbles a word like ‘yes’ but it comes out as only breath.
“Every day, I’m sure,” she says.
The night of the bedroom search F. Lowson calls Tiny William out into the backyard. He tells him to bring a lighter from the dining room table. Tiny William brings cigarettes too, hoping the gesture might count for something. From the porch, his father is only a silhouette pressed against a falling sun, setting but blazing still, struggling to make itself known for those final moments. When Tiny William gets close enough to his father to touch his hand, he notices the pile, a small mound, meaning nothing until stepping close enough to see blue and white mayonnaise wrappers. He sees hair, plastic bottles, paper wrappers, everything that was him.
“You couldn’t trust your father,” F. Lowson says, grabbing the lighter from Tiny William’s hand. He offers the cigarettes, but this father denies them. “Might want to back up a little.”
He gives the lighter its small flame and within two blinks the entire pile glows.
“Tomorrow,” he says, his face flashing to the sharp flames peaking in front of him, “tomorrow I’ll show you where all of this,” he points to the melting pile, “will take you.”
“Teaching,” Mrs. Rose says. “Lies. These are just forms of control. What we do—you, I, the other was-parents—we guide. We show people exactly what you now know…” and a long honk from a large van curtained behind the rain cuts her speech and pushes her back into her lane. She seems to forget her thought.
The next morning Tiny William wakes up with handcuffs dangling against his neck and a gun trigger dusting his left eyelash. The rest of F. Lowson’s uniform wraps his angry body tight, the whole package being darker than Tiny William remembers it ever being before, all the way to a scuffed and dulled name badge.
“Get in the car,” he says. They ride to the prison in silence. No radio. No talking. Only the steady whistle of his father ’s breath filling the space between them. They arrive. “Get out,” he says and steps down himself, dripping saline into his naked eye as he leads Tiny William to a set of enormous metal doors.
Everything smells like salt and metal inside the prison. They sink deep, past the free-roaming personnel, past guards with guns and uniforms, through to the men trapped inside cells. These men are still. They move only their eyes, matching the sway of F. Lowson’s keys dangling from his belt alongside the gun and handcuffs. Time kept by ticking eyes.
They sink deeper, past the airborne voices of dying inmates; unfamiliar words against which F. Lowson guards his son’s ears. The prisoners thin in size and number as they descend deeper. They pass rooms fronted by steel doors instead of bars. His father pushes on until even the echoes succumb to silence. They are as alone as F. Lowson wants them to be.
The father stops at the end of a long hallway. He points to the last of the steel doors. “Behind that door is the first man to keep things from his father.”
Tiny William sinks.
“Do you want to see him?”
Without allowing a response, F. Lowson lifts his son and pushes his eyes to the small sliding window at the top of the door.
The man lays dead. He lies curled as tight as a human skeleton would allow, pressed to the back wall. Tiny. Non- intrusive. He is a spider, dead with the reflex to reduce itself to as little a burden as possible.
Then, F. Lowson takes his gun from its holster. He slams the butt hard against the door. The sound brings the man inside alive. Tiny William always knew his father to have a magic trigger.
“He doesn’t move much anymore,” the father says. “Probably close to dead, this guy. The last thing he’ll see is one of those walls.”
The prison is a home of blind reality. And this truth only gains strength as they drip further down the hallway. F. Lowson pours into his son a little more fear with every doorway.
“Behind that door is the guy who invented lotion.” They descend further. “The man in there, they call him Shampoo.”
Item by item F. Lowson disposes of what Tiny William had for so long cherished as a tribute to his father.
“That guy in there doesn’t like toothpicks. Says they get dirty and starting wrapping them up like you like,” he says. “Bad idea. Made the germs grow faster, actually. Like a greenhouse.”
“Sorry,” Mrs. Rose says. “Fucking drivers out here. They don’t know how it’s done,” and she sits a moment, appearing to regain the lost thought. “What does every parent want, William?”
He shrugs.
“A better life for its offspring. And what does that take?” He shrugs.
“Control. Maybe a bit of luck, but mostly control. We show people what you now know, that control is an ineffective concept, because there is no pinnacle. But,” she says and William looks up. “Everyone needs a point of reference. Would you have believed any of this with a child? Would you even be listening if that second chance was still alive?”
William breathes. He thinks of what he would have taught his child should she still be breathing. What would he have said when she came home from school with failing grades? What would he have suggested she do when, with tears in her eyes, she complained that a friend at school was mean to her and how would he define ‘mean’? When his daughter came home with an empty purse, face full of blood, and a claim of rape would he blame someone or would he use the event as a way to show that the world keeps going.
William remembers words from Mrs. Rose, spoken months ago when they first met at the clearing: Fatherhood means believing in a world greater than possibility. At the time, he only wanted to escape the legal repercussions of shooting her birds. Now the words mean everything. “No,” he says to Mrs. Rose. “No because if she were alive right now I would only be worrying about what I should do next.”
“Should,” Mrs. Rose says. “Good word.”
The rain slows.
“You are going to make a great addition,” she says to William. “You are going to give a lot of children their reference points.”
William nods.
“All those feelings right now, the twisting and churning— that’s just simple remorse,” Mrs. Rose says. “You’ll get over that, I promise.”
She hits the dashboard a final time, cracking it, ending the static and the music both. She yells out and brings her hand close to her face. When she turns it out William sees a small cut and blood dripping down her palm. She glances down to William’s bandaged hand, a wound he had nearly forgotten himself, smiles and says, “Twins.”
William offers a smile in return.
Chapter Twelve
A man stands facing William’s front door, swatting mud from a gray suit, the fabric as dismal and wet as the unfolding sky. His badge glints in the stillborn sun as he turns to Mrs. Rose’s car, the lumbering auto cracking gravel beneath balding tires.
The man’s cheeks drape around a forfeited smile. William freezes, a reaction Mrs. Rose dismisses with a confident grin. “These guys will hang around for a while,” she says. “As long as you don’t say something stupid, he has nothing on you.”
She says that all he needs to know is that he never had a child. The man keeps a stern face and waves his arm in a giant arch over his head. He says something inaudible. When Mrs. Rose steps from the car William follows, obedient and cautious.
The man gives his name and nods toward his badge. “I’ve got some questions.”
William sweats, hard breaths and acid rising in his throat. He brings his chewed hangnail to his mouth and says, “Come in,” as best he can with his tongue wrapped about the muddy finger.
/> The cold house swells to the group’s sudden heat. They sit across from each other, William in a small chair and the officer on the couch. Mrs. Rose busies herself around the house, pacing open doorways in the hall, turning a casual eye to the two men for the few feet she has between rooms. She walks each distance with various simulated burdens: a stack of bath towels, an armload of blankets, the same towels, three, four times, and peeking over each pile she studies the living room conversation. “You didn’t ask,” the officer says, “but it might calm your anxiety to know that your wife isn’t dead. Close, but not yet.” Mrs. Rose cuts through the hallway with her fists balled under her eyes and her faced stretched to sad. “Cry,” she mouths silently from behind the officer.
William tries. He thinks of Julie, disfigured and filled with tubes. He tries to imagine a life without her, or at best, a life with her rearranged form. He thinks of her reduced to routine maintenance—sponge baths, pills every two hours after a refilled feeding tube, hourly rotations to ward off bed sores, whatever will force tears, but all he can do is bite the inside of his cheek until his eyes water and say, “fiancée, actually.”
The officer nods and scribbles into a yellow-papered notepad. “I’ll bet the last few months have been exciting for you,” he says. “What do you mean?” William looks past the officer ’s shoulder for guidance. “Your baby.”
Mrs. Rose mimes pregnancy. She makes Xs with her fingers and shakes her head.
William stands. “You want something to drink? I need a drink.”
“No. I’m good. About your child—”
“I could use something. I’m going to get something,” and he leaves the room, rubbing his neck, still grinding his cheek between his teeth. When he gets to the kitchen Mrs. Rose pulls him to her mouth and whispers dissatisfaction. She pushes him back into the living room.
“Your drink?” the officer says.
William tongues the cut in his cheek. “Faucet’s broken.”
The officer surveys the living room. William watches him pause at framed cross-stitchings, the needles stabbed into the recliner arm laced still with thread, and photos of Julie and him smiling the way he suddenly realizes they never do without the motivation of a camera. Finally, the officer comes back to William. “The child.” No subtlety.
Sinking, William thinks. Dead, buried, and sinking. But “what child?” is all he says, as sincere as acting can be.
“The hospital said they found,” the officer looks to his notepad, “trace amounts of human Chorionic Gonadotropin.”
William awaits elaboration.
“It means she was pregnant, William. Your wife was pregnant. Very recently.”
Cue tears. “I absolutely don’t believe this,” he says. “Why would Julie not tell me this,” he says.
Mrs. Rose comes running with a tissue and open arms. She pulls his head to her shoulder and speaks sympathy: “it will be okay,” breathing heavy shushes into his ear. She squeezes tight, rips a fingernail down his back, and says softly with her back to the officer, masked by William’s giant sobs, “we’ve got him.” She digs again into his back before turning away. “Cry harder.”
William wipes a paste of snot and tears from his face and claims that he had no idea. “She is a big woman,” he says. Mrs. Rose has moved behind the officer, nodding, mouthing “more tears.”
“She was complaining of stomach pains,” he continues, “so I rushed her to the hospital. I panicked. I wasn’t careful with my driving. I was keeping two eyes on Julie, none on the road, I guess,” he pauses for effect. “I was a father.”
The officer shifts on the couch. He slips his notepad into a hidden pocket. Seconds of silence pass before he opens his mouth, but the telephone cuts his words short. William clenches. He has developed an association with the ring, a feeling that means cleaning stains, and considering the current circumstances contact with the dead is not something he wants.
William stands to answer the phone, but Mrs. Rose, behind the officer, pulls a finger across her throat and mouths “sit.” The answering machine clicks to tape and the first sound through its dusty speaker is Philip’s voice, almost to tears, saying, “I’m so sorry.”
The officer retrieves his notepad.
“I’m so sorry,” Philip says again. “When I called earlier I didn’t know.”
The officer scribbles. William stands for the phone in an attempt to keep his façade strong, but the officer blocks his path.
“What I said, I didn’t mean it.” The officer continues.
“Julie’s not that big.”
William grinds his mouth’s cut with his back teeth. “Well, she is appropriately big. Considering…”
William opens his mouth, ready to sneeze, or cough, or yell when the time comes. But Philip’s voice quiets. “Sorry,” he repeats and the phone clicks.
“Who was that?” the officer asks without waiting a breath. He strangles his pen, white-knuckled. He repeats the question, but all William can do is watch Mrs. Rose as she goes back to pacing the hallway, humming fake contention. “I’m asking you a question,” the officer says.
“I don’t know him that well. Just a work friend.” “A friend,” the officer says.
“Not a friend,” William says. “I mean he’s…” and he looks to Mrs. Rose.
“Coworker,” she whispers.
The officer turns to Mrs. Rose, says, “You’re not helping,” and stares like he’s waiting for her to leave the room. But she doesn’t leave. She walks the walls of the front room, taking in the décor; photographs, unopened mail on an end table, walls spotted with discounted artwork. William suddenly realizes that this is the first time she has even explored the home with any depth and turns back to the officer before his concern escapes.
“So that man is a friend?” the officer says again.
Splitting his attention William watches Mrs. Rose examine each framed cross-stitching, thread-by-thread. “More of a coworker. We’ve hung out a few times.”
“Does he know your wife?”
She leans close into fake flowers and the craft wreathes Julie makes out of Styrofoam and squares of patterned fabric.
“Yes. No, actually. He didn’t know Julie that well. Fiancée.”
“But he has met her?”
Mrs. Rose slides toward the west wall. She nears the messages, hung like innocent reminders at first glance, but William quickly forgets that teasing naiveté. She will see her own knowledge. Her own acquaintances. Her own handwriting. She drifts close enough to rattle the farthest pinned neighborhood with her breath.
So William screams. He bites down on the cut inside his cheek until his teeth are glossed in red. He cries and pretends to vomit blood because the situation is “so emotionally disturbing,” he says to the officer. Mrs. Rose turns from the wall, rushes to him.
The officer reaches into his pocket and retrieves a white napkin. William wipes his hands clean until the napkin is just a ball of spit and blood.
The officer denies the napkin’s return and instead stands from the couch as if to dismiss the entire room. He rips a sheet free from his notebook and gives it to William before turning to the door. He vanishes; his car beyond the horizon and his voice beginning its fade from memory before William lets a single breath free.
“Good,” Mrs. Rose says and pulls a fresh towel from her pocket, “but you’ve got to work on the tears.” She hands him the towel. “He’s a good guy. Marty. You’ll like him.” And she returns to the wall of messages.
William looks down to the officer ’s notebook paper. It reads: Work on the tears Less melodrama
Put up a few more pictures of your fiancée. No one will believe you with bare walls.
“You knew him?” he asks, but Mrs. Rose’s interest in the wall dulls his question.
She stares, both confusion and pride on her face. She traces the threads from message to message, reading the headings: Fury Man, Babysitter, PTA, Karma Debates, and all the rest with slow, invested paces. The strings vibrate
as she runs her fingers along them; she plucks a slow beat from taut strings.
“Mrs. Rose,” William begins, but she quiets him with a single hand.
“I knew you were taking them,” she says. “But I had no idea you were so devoted.”
“It’s a hobby.”
She traces the thread from a message under Backyard Barbeque down to a slip of paper with distinguished handwriting reading ‘we’ll talk about your situation after we eat.’
“This one is mine,” she says and pulls the distinguished handwriting from the wall. “The lady never showed. I guess I know why now.”
She pulls more from the wall, messages about medical procedures and family histories, pets people treat like children and the increasing number of non-returning pigeons. She pulls these words from the wall and asks William for tape. He hands her a fresh roll.
She pulls short strips and sticks the messages back to the wall, rearranging them, “fixing them” she says after a length of silence. “Now you are on the right track.”
“I wanted to tell you,” William says. “First, I wanted to stop shooting them altogether. Then, I wanted to confess to still shooting them, but the way you are so happy when they come back. The messages they bring to you—I didn’t want to compromise that. Or us.” He grabs a pillow from the couch and wipes blood from his teeth.
“You didn’t,” she says, “but they make you happy as well. We all need something to control. We all want to feel empowered. It’s why people have collections in the first place.”
“You?” William asks. He begins to unwind the dirty gauze from his wrist.
“I’ve learned, William. I know better than to believe that I could ever truly control anything.”
William examines the rearranged wall. Connections he once felt so strongly about have been ripped down and moved, and he can do nothing but admit his own ignorance. It hurts, but he enjoys the direction. He enjoys knowing that on some level he follows a correct path.
Stranger Will Page 9