Hollow

by Owen Egerton

  I look at the door—off-white paint with greasy marks where a hundred hands have pressed. I step in. She’s still in bed, bare white shoulders.

  “I have to dress. They always want to start with me dressed.” She stands, her nakedness as surprising as floating milk. But she’s not displaying herself for me. She’s moving to her clothes and leaning over for underwear. There is no sex in her nakedness. I notice her thick bush and glance away.

  When was a woman nude before me without sex? An unguarded nudity—a fact rather than a demonstration or invitation. My wife, I suppose. College lovers and I never reached such intimacy.

  “You are Martin’s friend, yes? You are not here only because of the church.”

  “I was a hospice volunteer,” I say. “That’s how we met.”

  “Hospice.” She pulls on a loose dress and faces me. “I don’t know hospice.”

  “Helping people die.”

  She frowns. “People need help?”

  “So they don’t die alone,” I say. It doesn’t sound right. “Hospice helps people die well.”

  “People can die well.” She hums and I’m not sure if she’s asked a question or stated an opinion. “I’ve seen someone not die well.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “I have someone coming soon and there is something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Was it one of your parents?”

  She sits on the bed and sighs through her nose. “My grandmother did not die well,” she says, nodding. “She died slow and very angry. She was difficult.”

  “That happens.”

  “I was young. Nine, I think.” She pulls on her shoes. They strap around her ankle. “I was alone with her when she died. I had to stay with the body. She turned yellow like spoiled cream.” She looks up at me. “You’ve seen many dead people, I presume.”

  “Two,” I say.

  “That is not many.”

  “A lot of hospice clients just want a ride to the grocery store or someone to watch TV with.”

  “My clients, too.”

  I lean against the wall. “I was ready for long philosophical conversations about faith and mortality. With all my studies I thought I’d be perfect, you know. And I’m not a horrible listener. But my first assigned case was a nearly nonverbal mentally retarded man.”

  “Nonverbal?”

  “He could hardly speak,” I say. “He loved milk shakes. So that’s all we did. We’d go to the mall or McDonald’s and have a milk shake. And he kept getting smaller, thinner. His mother called me one day and said he couldn’t leave the house anymore. I went over and his mother met me at the door. She was a small Mexican woman. Didn’t speak much English.”

  “Like me,” she says.

  “Your English is very good.”

  She smiles.

  “He was in bed, just barely there, taking these shallow, rattling breaths. And I knew I had to be calm. In training they had warned us against panicking and calling 911. I called the hospice on-call doctor and he casually told me I was right, the man was about to die.”

  “Did you tell the mother?”

  “She knew. She kept cleaning his face. Kept saying she had cared for him for thirty-two years. She was kind of manic. She tried to get him to drink some juice and spilled a little on his shirt. And when she ran to get a new one he looked at me with these questions and I didn’t know what to say, so I said he was doing exactly what he should be doing, he was doing everything right.”

  “He was dying well?”

  “He was dying. His body going through the textbook stages.” I hide my hands in my pockets. “She wanted to change his shirt. I said he was fine, better not to move him, but she had to. He was too weak to sit up, so I held him. He was light, just empty. It was like holding a bird. She took his shirt off and sponged his chest like he was a baby. I’m sure just like she did when he was baby. Then she pat-dried him with a towel and hushed him. She pulled a new shirt over his body and we lowered him back. His face cringed, I remember, like he’d pulled a muscle. Then he died. He died as we lay him down.”

  “She was a good mother.”

  “I guess that bath only sped things up, though.”

  “There’s better things than time,” she says.

  I look at her. She studies her chipped fingernails.

  “Why did you leave Russia?” I ask.

  “I have a daughter,” she says, picking at a hangnail. “And a husband.” She looks up, studying my face for a reaction. I don’t give her one. For an instant her closed mouth stretches out—not a smile, not a frown, just a line. “I came here with a work visa and had a job with computers. The plan was for me to make lots of money and for them to someday come here as well.” She returns to the hangnail. “But the job stopped and the visa stopped and I was still here.” The hangnail comes free. She rubs it between her thumb and forefinger. “I send money back to Russia and I don’t tell them what I do.”

  “How old is she?” I ask. “Your daughter.”

  She lifts her head and frowns. “Listen.” She stands. “I should tell you while I can. Sam. He steals from Martin. Rent. Bills. Little things.”

  “Does Martin know?”

  “Yes. Some. Martin asked Sam about money and Sam hit him in his chest. Martin coughed until blood came up.”

  “I don’t know what I can do.”

  She watches me again, her thin-line mouth waiting.

  The front door creaks in the next room. I stand quickly.

  “You’ve got company.”

  She smooths down her dead-grass hair. “Yes,” she says. “Good-bye, today.”

  I turn to the door.

  “Hey now, what’s this?” Sam rounds the corner. He’s smiling. The opossum tail around his neck pulses. “Never seen you in this part of the house, Prof. I’m not dying. She’s not dying.”

  “We were talking,” Laika says.

  He stares at her, his eyes making horrible promises.

  “I was just leaving.”

  He stands blocking the door for a moment, then swings sideways. I step past. He slams his palms against my back and I fly into the opposite wall of the hallway. Laika releases a cry. I turn around and try to steady myself.

  “Everything okay out there?” Martin calls from his room.

  “It’s all good,” Sam calls back, stepping toward me, his eyes bouncing in his skull. “Just taking care of business.”

  Sam leans into me hard, his skin smelling of cologne.

  “You better not be trying to fuck for free. You’re not trying to do that, are you?” His breath is in my ear. He lifts a gun and pushes the barrel against my cheek, the inside of my mouth pressing against my teeth. His cologne. It’s familiar. Something in a Christmas stocking or magazine sample. “Are you? Are you trying to fuck for free?”

  “Is that Drakkar or Polo?”

  The handle of the gun hammers my face. Laika cries out again. A hot line of blood drips past my eye. Again, the gun hits. My body starts to fall, but Sam holds me up, turns me, and pushes my face against the wall.

  “Did you touch her?”

  “He did not touch me.”

  He swings the gun at Laika. “Shut the fuck up!” Then he shoves the barrel under my chin. His other hand reaches around me and thrusts it into my pants. He grabs me in his fist. “Did you have a little touch, Doc? A sample?” He squeezes and my loins cramp. His breath on my neck, the gun pushing my chin up, he’s pressed against my back and I can feel him harden. “Because that would be stealing. That would be shoplifting.” He pulls his hand out and puts his palm to his nose. He sniffs. “If I ever smell her cunt on you, I will cut your dick off.”

  “Jesus, Sam,” Martin says as he opens his door. “Leave him alone.”

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Sam says.

  “Like hell, it doe
sn’t. He’s my guest.”

  “He was in my room.”

  “That’s no reason to put a gun in his face.”

  “It’s my room.”

  “Sam, he’s leaving. He’s leaving right now.”

  Sam looks at me. Martin nods at me. I nod.

  “I’m leaving,” I say. “Right now.”

  Sam pulls back in one fluid movement and I almost fall. He lifts his hands. “I don’t want trouble with anyone.” He shakes his head at me as I back to the door. “Never have.”

  Miles was only four months for his first Christmas, too young to sense the season. But by his second he was a waddling, wide-eyed toddler. He marveled at our midsized tree glowing red and green, the lights strewn across our front-yard oaks, the three stockings pinned to the frame of the front window. We bundled him up against the mild Texas cold and took him to Zilker Park so he could trot beneath the three-story tree of lights. I picked him up and spun around till he screamed with laughs.

  A coffee shop on South First had a barista dress as Santa and pose with kids. He was hardly twenty, too thin and too young to play St. Nick, but he was in full costume and as enthusiastic as an improv comic. Instead of the traditional red cap, this Santa bore a felt cowboy hat. He tipped it at the small gathering of children and parents. Miles found him petrifying, his body tensing and his hands squeezing the hair on the back of my head as we entered.

  “It’s Santa, Miles,” I tried to calm him.

  “Who’s ready for Santa’s knee?” the barista barked.

  Miles’s eyes, brilliantly wide and unblinking, stared in growing fear as we approached. The barista attempted one hearty “Ho! Ho! Ho!” and Miles yelled with such terror that I jogged him out of the place, hushing him.

  “No Sana. No Sana,” he said. And I promised him he would never have to sit with that man or any other Santa.

  With the semester over, my schedule eased. Carrie was working part-time, but her load that December was mild. At night, once Miles was down, Carrie and I took to sipping from a bottle of high-end scotch the dean had gifted me. We watched old movies, dozing on the living room couch in the soft light of our red-and-green tree and the black-and-white films.

  Something relaxed in me. In both of us. We talked about future plans. Her returning to work full-time. Finding a good daycare. We flirted with timelines for a second child. We slept closer. I could smell her hair, earthy and warm. I thought of telling her about the kiss—a student’s crush, a lesson learned. But our intimacy was still delicate, our family forming. I wanted no poison in the mix.

  A cold snap kept us inside and we sat on the floor with Miles performing with stuffed animals. Carrie a giraffe, me a classic teddy, Miles a pair of my rolled socks he’d named Bobo and come to adore. Our avatars sat in circles, ate frozen blueberries, used the potty.

  Three days before Christmas, we loaded Miles into a red wagon and walked the neighborhood, Miles clapping for each decorated yard. “Ligh! Ligh!”

  We stopped by a neighborhood party, Carrie and I filling up on eggnog watery with whiskey. Neighbors crowded into a kitchen, patting Miles’s head and laughing as he chewed on star-shaped cookies.

  “He’s so big!” a woman cheered. “He’ll be voting before you know it.”

  I poured Carrie another cup of nog. I liked seeing her just a little drunk, smiling loosely and laughing.

  Miles fell asleep in my arms as we walked home. Carrie walked beside us, her hand on the small of my back. She stumbled once, tipsy and happy.

  At home I laid Miles in his cot. I sat watching him sleep, watched him reach for Bobo the rolled socks and tuck them against his cheek. The house was quiet and glowing with Christmas lights. I was glowing with whiskey.

  I found Carrie already in bed, her eyes closed and a smile on her face. I undressed and crawled beside her, kissing her shoulder. She hummed sleepily and I kissed her again, slower.

  “Tomorrow, I promise,” she said. “It’ll be your Christmas present.”

  She curled into herself, her back to me. She slept.

  I lay there for a bit, staring up at the pockmarked ceiling. I got out of bed and poured myself a deep drink of scotch.

  I sat before the low red glow of our Christmas tree and loved and hated my life. Would sex be an annual gift? Maybe a blow job on my birthday? I drank and pouted. There was my house, my tree, my family. All the things I had gathered around me and they seemed, at that moment, to be under the umbrella of one sad, mush word—domestic.

  Was the party still going on? Should I wander back, bring the scotch with me? It wasn’t even ten yet. The tree lights blurred with each sip. I focused on the buzz behind the lights. A soft electric hum. I drifted, half sleeping.

  It was much later when Miles called out.

  “Dadda! Daaadda!”

  I leapt from the couch, moving before I was fully awake. I found Miles standing in his cot, his red hair scattered like a ravaged bird’s nest. He reached his arms out to me.

  “Sana! Sana came to get me.”

  I picked him up, sloshing scotch from my half-filled glass onto his jammies. He clung to me, his chest pulsing against mine.

  “It’s okay. Just a dream, Miles,” I said, placing the glass on his dresser.

  He buried his head into my neck and breathed out half cries.

  I carried him into the living room, hushing him. His eyes took in the room lit only by the soft red-and-green radiance of the tree. He lay his head on my shoulder as I paced, softly singing Christmas hymns, forgetting words and humming choruses.

  His weight changed as he nodded back to sleep. He was warm, his body clutching me with unquestioning trust. He smacked his lips and exhaled his still-sweet baby breath against my neck.

  My phone beeped from the coffee table. With my free hand, I picked it up.

  A text.

  An image.

  Ashley, her face concealed, her body not. She lay on a green couch, her arm outstretched toward the lens, her body bare.

  Miles gurgled in my ear.

  Another image came through. Ashley. Again, her face out of the picture. Her body wrapped in a pink towel. The towel falling open, like theatre curtains.

  I looked at her. Her body in my hand.

  Another beep: Sorry. I’m drunk.

  I looked at the picture again. It burned brilliant.

  She texted again: MERRY CHRISTMAS.

  I put the phone down and hummed to Miles as I carried him back to his room. I lay him in his cot, keeping a hand on his warm chest and watching him sleep.

  When I came back to the living room, my phoned glowed with a new text. Her address.

  I stared at it for a long while, then moved in a kind of stupor. I wrote a note saying I was going for milk and eggs and eased out the back door.

  An insipid pop rendition of “Silent Night” played on the radio. I switched it off and drove in silence. The roads were nearly empty, the black asphalt reflecting the white lights strung from streetlight to streetlight in long arches like burning smiles.

  I knew the address she’d sent. An apartment complex just north of campus. I pulled up to the curb in front of the three-story building. Flip went the key. Quiet went the car. Red Christmas lights wrapped around the complex’s tree trunks and branches illuminated my hands still on the wheel.

  The engine clicked as it cooled. Through the muffle of my car I heard how this city sleeps. The near hum of the highway, the electric buzz of all these buildings, perhaps the constant flow of water through miles of pipe below me.

  It was colder. I could see my breath in the red light.

  My phone beeped. Are you coming in?

  I leaned across to the passenger window and looked up. She stood just on the second-floor balcony, her figure silhouetted against the quiet yellow of her apartment. She wore some kind of nightgown or slip—her legs a b
lurred V.

  I wanted her. Just once. I wanted to climb those stairs and be with her only one time.

  It was half past two when I got home. Standing in the driveway, I brought up the pictures of Ashley on my phone and deleted them. With a touch, she was gone.

  Inside I put away the milk and eggs I’d purchased at an all-night convenience store, my head already heavy with an oncoming hangover.

  Before going to bed, I paused at Miles’s room. How I loved that room—its play clutter and colors, its ocean roar noisemaker, its smell of baby. Through the door I could see his small form, quiet in his cot. He was growing so long. Soon he’d move to a bed. Soon he’d be a little boy. The mobile drifted above him.

  I did not make love to Ashley Briggers. I never even left the car. Why?

  To honor my wife, our marriage, the trust between us? Yes. But the rawest reason, the motivation base enough to battle the lust of a thirtysomething with a willing and beautiful twentysomething, was fear. I did not make love to her because I believed bad things would happen if I did. I believed in some mystic mathematical equation that my wrongdoing, my breaking of a wedding vow, would garner some kind of punishment.

  I thought the world worked that way.

  Soon it would be Christmas morning. Soon Miles would be waking up and I’d lift him from his cot. He’d totter into the living room holding my hand and he’d find a stocking and presents and Carrie waiting. We would watch him tear into the stocking, watch him unwrap the handmade wooden rolling rabbit Carrie had bought at a farmers’ market. We’d eat pancakes and sip coffee and be a family. I had not slept with Ashley Briggers. I had passed some kind of test.

  I turned from Miles’s door and I headed to bed. I’d later learn that at that moment he was almost certainly already dead.

  They took Miles’s body on Christmas morning. They took photos of the cot—but there was nothing there. Nothing deadly. Nothing but his cot. Wasn’t it the safest spot in our house?

  We were told he was taken to the medical examiner’s office. We were told there would be an autopsy to determine the cause of death. We were told so many things. It all came through like whistles in a windstorm.