As Night Falls

by Jenny Milchman

  Faint hope lofted inside Sandy. Upstairs there might be chances.

  SEPTEMBER 8, 1976

  Barbara stood at the stove, ignoring the chaos all around her. A drift of flour on the counter. Enough kitchen implements to fill the lower level of Swain’s department store. The filet cut of venison searing in the pan, unleashing a meteor shower of grease.

  Barbara was fiercely focused, intent on every moment of this meal preparation. It had been a long time since she’d cooked for Gordon, and he’d been so good to her lately, taking on household tasks, shortening his hours at the shop. For Nicholas, Barbara had pushed herself, fixing his favorites. But those were relatively easy. Grilled cheese, soup from a can, tuna noodle casserole. While Gordon loved fancy dishes and good cuts of meat—his own fresh kills especially—and Barbara had been unable to go anywhere near meat during the infernally long months of her pregnancy, nor her uneasy postpartum. Barbara had felt rather like a hunted animal herself for the last thirteen months in fact, surprised when her wounds didn’t fell her.

  She used a spatula to flip the piece of deer meat in the pan. Joy of Cooking lay open, pages floured and spine broken, near the stove. Barbara turned the flame down, then flicked aside the red ribbon that marked her recipe. She had to spread a mushroom mixture on the meat before somehow getting the whole thing inside a cloak of dough.

  Pastry, Barbara corrected herself.

  It was maddening to work with, but Barbara pushed on relentlessly, lip caught between her teeth, her still loose belly poofed out. She packed the slathered meat into its parcel, adhering sticky flaps of dough like pieces of wet cloth. Then she slid the whole mess into the oven. She brushed her hands back and forth, sending pills of dough onto the floor, before glancing at the hands on the wall clock. Time to get Nicholas up. Ever since he’d started nursery school—Gordon had arranged this, saying that Nicky should be around other children his age, and that Barbara could use the break—the little boy had begun taking naps for the first time in his life.

  She unwound the strings of her apron and tossed the garment at the disarray on the counter. The green-checked cloth fell next to the pan, which was smoking silently on the stove. She’d lowered the flame, but hadn’t turned it off. Barbara shook her head, tsking herself. What a risk to take, almost setting the house afire with Nicholas asleep upstairs. She rotated the knob, then made a few halfhearted stabs at setting things to rights, letting the time idle by.

  Kitchen matters attended to—a warm, buttery smell had started to drift from the oven—Barbara turned and mounted the steps to the second floor.

  On the landing, she paused. There were sounds coming from the rear of the house, muted mews, and Barbara drew up her shoulders as if a mosquito had begun to whine by her ear. She went and closed the door to the spare room with a sharp click, and the cries were immediately damped. Barbara retraced her steps down the hall to Nicholas’ bedroom.

  It lay in a spill of afternoon gold, the walls as sunny as egg yolks. A bicentennial pennant was taped askew by one window. Nicholas had hung this up himself, enjoying the act of decorating his own room. He was turning out to have quite an artistic sensibility.

  He lay sprawled across the top bunk, his curls forming rings on the pillow. Barbara had convinced Gordon to buy bunk beds when Nicholas moved out of his crib, citing slumber parties their son would have with friends. Now his skinny legs dangled over the side. Barbara worried that Nicholas would fall out, and he was so bony—a tumble from this height would be no joke, the thick carpet Barbara had convinced Gordon to lay notwithstanding. Especially because the boy had refused a bed rail. He’d called it a baby thing, and Barbara had applauded Nicholas’ desire for maturity. Even Gordon had been impressed. He was the one who chided Nicholas for whining or throwing tantrums, both perfectly age-appropriate, but they bothered Gordon because his mother had made a big deal about the one she had witnessed. Nicholas just got frustrated. He wanted to accomplish more than a three-and-a-half-year-old really could. There was a parenting book out about gifted children, which Barbara had read, finding Nicholas on every page.

  Still, this lying half out of bed wouldn’t do. Barbara tiptoed across the floor and lifted Nicholas’ legs onto the mattress, shifting his body. He was light enough that she was still able to move him, but gone were the days when she could just scoop him up. Barbara crossed her arms tightly over her chest. She had moved past the time for cradling her baby.

  The sounds coming from the hall were growing louder. Barbara walked to Nicholas’ door and pulled it shut, too. Another parenting book contained a chapter on the new cry-it-out method. Barbara hadn’t spent much time on those pages, but she’d skimmed enough to know that sometimes a little crying was necessary for truly restful sleep.

  She’d never had to let Nicholas cry, though.

  Barbara had tried to close his door stealthily, but Nicholas began stirring. He sat upright, screwing his little fists into his eyes. Throwing one leg over the bed, he prepared to hop out, clearly forgetting that he was on the upper bunk.

  Barbara could picture the impending plunge; Nicholas expecting the floor to be right beneath his feet. She was at his side in a flash, catching her little boy’s slight body in the cradle of her arms as he dropped. An expression of surprise flashed across his face. Then Barbara sprawled out on the floor, Nicholas on top of her.

  She’d come down hard, and something twinged deep in her belly upon impact.

  Nicholas began to giggle. “We went boom, Mama.”

  “Yes, we did.”

  Barbara was trying to determine how great the damage was. She hoped the bleeding, only recently stemmed, wouldn’t start up again. She couldn’t stand the thought of its ugly flocking on this new carpet. Plus, Barbara had already seen enough of Dr. Benedict, and though she now made sure to visit his office mornings when Nicholas was at school, the memory of that nurse getting near her son made Barbara’s insides churn. Nicholas’ regular checkup was long overdue.

  “Again, Mama!” Nicholas ordered. “Let’s do it again!”

  Barbara fingered the little boy’s glossy curls. “I have an idea for a game.”

  “A game?” he asked, interested.

  Barbara nodded. Appealing to the boy’s imagination was usually a wise approach. “It’s about your bed.”

  “My bed?”

  Another furious nod. “The bottom bunk is a boat. And the carpet is water, see? It’s blue.” She pointed. “And you have to stay in the boat because if you fell out, you’d get all cold and wet.” She shivered dramatically. “Nasty.”

  A smile bloomed on the bow of Nicholas’ mouth, entrancing Barbara. She reached to touch a pearly bead of spittle caught on the corner of his lip, like a drop of dew. Nicholas had slept deeply.

  “All right?” she said after a long moment.

  Nicholas looked at her. “What?”

  “You’ll sleep in the boat tonight? On the bottom bunk?”

  Nicholas’ features scrunched. “I wanna sleep on top.”

  “But only the bottom is a boat!” Barbara protested. She moved Nicholas off her, and stood up. “See? And all of this is the sea.” She waved her arm.

  “I know!” Nicholas announced. “The top can be the boat!”

  Barbara shook her head, a little frantically. “The top is too high,” she tried to explain over his rising cries.

  Were his cries rising? Nicholas’ mouth appeared to be closed. She couldn’t tell where those cries were coming from. Barbara took a deep breath and continued to explain the game. “The water wouldn’t be this far beneath.”

  But Nicholas was too smart; he knew it was just pretend. Either bunk could be a boat, and even in the midst of the escalating noise level, Barbara had to admire her son’s logic. She went and crouched before him, detesting the flop of her belly over the rim of her pantyhose.

  “The truth is, I’m scared, Nicky,” she said. “In the night, you might forget you’re high up, and roll over. I don’t want you to fall. It was fine when I
was there to catch you, but think about what it would feel like if you went all the way down by yourself. No Mama to go boom.”

  Her son stared at her, and Barbara offered him a smile.

  Nicholas smiled back. Then he opened his mouth and screamed so loudly that the windows rattled in their panes.

  “I wanna sleep—” He paused for air. “—on top! It’s my top! My top! Mine!”

  The force of his yell toppled him. Nicholas plunked down on the plush blue carpet, before raising his head and gathering breath to go on.

  Barbara got onto the floor, swooping in before the developing bellow could take hold. “All right,” she said. “All right, calm down! You can sleep on top, of course you can!” She had to yell herself now. “It is your bed, you’re right!”

  Nicholas smiled again. “My bed.”

  His bedroom door banged open, hitting the wall.

  Barbara looked up to see Gordon standing there, holding something loud and squalling, rigid as a piece of barbed wire, its arms and legs thrust out of a twisted blanket that Barbara recognized from Nicholas’ infant days.

  “Gordon,” Barbara said. “You’re home early.”

  He looked at her and Nicholas on the floor, and his features settled weightily. He didn’t offer a response; perhaps he couldn’t hear what she’d said.

  After a moment, he took a few steps closer.

  “Barbara,” he said, jiggling his body as he spoke. The noise at last began to wane. “We talked about this, remember? Barbara, honey, why didn’t you go to the baby?” He gazed down at the bundle in his arms, trying to smooth the tangled folds of blanket. “Why are you in here with Nicholas when—”

  Nicholas spoke up. “We were playing boat, Daddy!”

  Gordon frowned. “Boat? When your sister was—”

  All of a sudden, Barbara remembered, and she jumped up. “My Wellington!” She shrank from Gordon as she went by, refusing to brush against the burden in his arms. “I’ve made you the most wonderful dinner, darling,” she said. “We’ll eat on our own tonight, all right?”

  —

  The plates were empty, one thickly smeared with brown streaks. Nicholas hadn’t liked the mushroom part, and had wiped the venison off with his fingers. The romantic dinner for two hadn’t come to pass: Nicholas had insisted on joining them, and Barbara spoke up on behalf of their son’s desire for time alone with his parents. She cited another book, all the adjustments Nicholas had had to make over the past several months. It was the same argument she mounted whenever Nicholas joined them in bed in the middle of the night, or refused to go to school.

  Tonight, instead of saying that Nicholas didn’t seem to be adjusting—that Barbara was behaving for all intents and purposes as if there were nothing for him to adjust to—Gordon simply acquiesced. He cleaned his plate, although he didn’t say a word about the dish.

  And she had worked so hard.

  Barbara put Nicholas to bed. She tried to mound pillows along the side—a makeshift guardrail—but Nicholas knocked them all to the floor.

  “It’s a boat, Mama,” he said. “Boats don’t have pillows.”

  Astounded again by his capacity for logic, Barbara left the pillows on the floor. At least they would provide a layer if he did fall.

  She crept back downstairs to Gordon. Nicholas no longer complained if she left before he’d fallen asleep. Nor did he leave his room, asking for all the things he used to. Barbara had accepted Gordon’s praise over this change, but she knew she couldn’t really take credit for it. The truth was, Nicholas liked to be on his own now.

  Her son had always been precocious. The teachers at his new nursery school seemed to agree, and they were professionals. Which surely meant that everyone else—Gordon’s mother, the nurse, and that awful Glenda Williams—could be disregarded.

  When Barbara reached the living room, the clearing up had been done, and Gordon sat in his easy chair, holding a baby bottle at an angle.

  It was tilted too sharply; it would create gas. And that would mean more nighttime crying. You didn’t need a parenting book to tell you that. Barbara averted her eyes.

  Gordon spoke softly in the waning light. “We have to give her a name.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “People at the shop are asking. People in town will start, too. And at Nicholas’ school. Besides—” Gordon broke off. “She deserves a name. A special name, all her own.”

  Barbara kept her eyes fixed forward.

  Peripherally, she saw Gordon rise. He passed so close by that Barbara could smell the tang of formula on his clothes. She wrinkled her nose.

  The stairs sank beneath his weight as he trod them.

  “Barbara,” he said, pausing in the middle of the flight.

  Tiny hiccups came from his direction. Periodic little clicks in the air, so regular and machine-like they didn’t seem to be made by anything human.

  “Can’t you let yourself love her?” Gordon asked. “Just a little bit?”

  The meal Barbara had so painstakingly prepared threatened to disgorge from her belly. Her mottled, pouching belly.

  The moon appeared in the window over the stairs. After a moment, Gordon turned and continued up.

  —

  Barbara waited a long time to go upstairs herself. She wanted to be sure Gordon had fallen asleep so she could spend time checking on Nicholas, watch him sleep as she drew the covers over his body. But when she passed her hand across the top bunk, it touched no lump, no sleeping form.

  Her heart caught in her chest. She rose on tiptoes, but even in the dim glow the night-light provided, it was clear that this bunk was empty.

  A sparkler of thoughts momentarily blinded her.

  Nicholas had decided to play the game after all. He’d somehow made it down on his own and was pretending the bottom bunk was a boat. Barbara bent over. But the blankets down there lay flat and undisturbed, the bed untouched since the day she had made it.

  She spun around unsteadily, peering into unseen corners of the room. Nicholas had fallen, he’d gotten hurt—

  The room was empty.

  Barbara ran into the hallway. About to cry out for Gordon, something called her attention at the end of the hall. She drifted soundlessly, feet padding over the runner of carpet, in the direction of the spare bedroom.

  Nicholas stood there, his little hands clasped like cuffs around the bars of the crib.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The four of them climbed the stairs single file, an unlikely group of compatriots.

  “I didn’t see a computer downstairs,” Nick remarked. “You must keep them in the bedrooms? Family like you has to have more than one computer.”

  “You don’t know what kind of family we are,” Ivy muttered.

  An inner cymbal clanged—you tell him, Ive—but then Sandy saw Nick’s shoulders level out, a single blade of bone. He turned around on the step, deftly checking his footing.

  “I’m getting kind of sick of you,” he said. “Are all kids today as nasty as you?” His tongue flicked between his teeth as if tasting something bad.

  “Right,” Sandy said. “It’s the kids today who are bad.”

  Nick shifted his gaze to her. “Interesting comment,” he said, like a teacher addressing his class in hell. “Care to elaborate?”

  Sandy pressed her lips together.

  “Mom?” Ivy spoke up. “What are you—”

  “You want to see our computers?” Sandy interjected. “I’ll show them to you.”

  Nick began to mount the steps again. “That’s the kind of attitude I like.”

  They reached the top, Harlan positioning himself on the broad swath of landing with a burst breath of relief. The sleek wood steps, while wider and deeper than standard, weren’t big enough to accommodate him comfortably.

  Nick turned to Sandy. “I’ll need your cellular phones, too.” He seemed to have forgotten his desire for a nicotine fix.

  “The signal isn’t good here,” Ivy said instantly. “And it�
�s out now anyway. Because of the snow.”

  “I don’t recall asking you about the weather,” Nick replied, extending his hand.

  After a moment, Ivy reached into her pocket and took out her phone.

  “Where’s yours?” Nick asked Sandy.

  “I don’t know.” Sandy rarely kept hers on her. “Probably in my room. Along with my laptop.”

  “Harlan,” Nick said. “Don’t let either of them move.”

  Sandy parsed the command. Not stay with them. Or even keep your eyes on them. Harlan was highly literal; he would do just as Nick commanded.

  Nick returned, arms laden with a teetering stack of technology. “I’m assuming the princess has one of these?” he said, using his chin to indicate the slim sandwich of a laptop.

  Someone capable of laying waste to their whole world should be ugly—hunched and gnomic. But Nick wasn’t. He was a rough-looking, gritty, but appealing older man, and you could see that fact reflected in Ivy’s posture, the way she jutted her chin before responding, “Yes. I’ve got a laptop.”

  Nothing could have horrified Sandy more.

  “Okay, then,” Nick said, giving an approving nod. “Shall we enter your chamber, princess?”

  —

  Ivy’s room lay between the master bedroom and the stairway.

  Nick edged in front of Sandy to go inside. He placed the cell phones and laptop on the floor, taking Ivy’s computer off her desk and adding it to the accumulation.

  Nick pointed. “Stamp on these, Harlan.”

  No sooner had Nick asked than Harlan lifted one enormous shod foot. He brought it down on each of the phones, then jumped on the laptops, until all the devices had been smashed into an eely mass of black shards.

  The pounding echoed in Sandy’s ears. Two long trenches had been dug in the floor.

  Nick began stalking around, looking into corners, checking the windows. “No locks?” he asked over his shoulder.

  A pang sealed Sandy’s throat shut as she watched him move about. Because she’d realized that something was missing from Ivy’s room: Mac. How could she have forgotten about him? Nick must have put their dog away somewhere. Alone.