Chaos

by Mary SanGiovanni

  “...was supposed to cater to a respectable tenantry of people, not just anyone off the street—” she was ranting, in her quiet, squared-off New England speech. She and Hal had no children, but she’d been a school teacher for years, and when she was angry, she had a way of punctuating the occasional word to make it sound like a threat just slightly gone over one’s head.

  “Eda, really, why does it matter?” he interrupted her. His own voice was soft from years of conceding points. “Other than their maybe getting ahead of you in line for your favorite washer and dryer, when do you even think you’ll see them?”

  She stopped pacing (directly in front of the television, he noticed), a thin woman graying all around the edges, her angular prettiness sharpened over the years, and sighed at him. “Hal, you really don’t get it, do you?”

  She seemed forever frustrated that the people that came into her life were not extraordinary, or perhaps it was that she worried that extraordinary people only kept company with their own kind and it was a company she might be locked out of. And sometimes, that drove him crazy about her. Still, he got the distinct and unnervingly more frequent impression that there were times it went further than that for her, that she hated him for every extraordinary thing he never was and would never be, and hated him for everything she thought he prevented her from ever being. And maybe, somewhere deep down where her conscious mind only brushed its fingers idly, she hated him for reminding her of everything she knew she never really was.

  What she did manage to be, though, was a thoroughly efficient housekeeper, a pretty good cook, a whiz at Sudoku, and a shrewd woman who balanced the check book every month, paid the bills on time, and had saved them, between coupons, sales, and deals, thousands on everyday household items. Also, when she was inclined, which was rare, she could make him come very fast when she took him into her hands, sliding her thumbs and fingers in ways that seemed to him a mystical, orgasmic art. For those reasons—those, anyway, were the ones that immediately sprang to mind—he loved her. That was the nature of his marriage to Eda—a dichotomy of equal parts love and hate, admiration and irritation, neediness and indifference, which had kept them well if just shy of happy for a good 27 years. Hal supposed all marriages that lasted functioned with the same dichotomy.

  He sighed. “I imagine you’ll explain it to me.”

  She surprised him by storming off to the bedroom and slamming the door in that same curt, squared-off way in which she’d spoken to him.

  It was a while after that, when in all likeliness, she’d changed into something soft and only vaguely feminine, climbed into bed and fallen asleep, that the man on the television advised Hal to kill his wife.

  He had nearly dozed off himself in the faded green easy chair, lulled by the drone of the commentators going through plays post-game in the NFL wrap-up show. Hal was in a twilight state, the pieces of football jargon and commercials weaving their way into something that was neither purely thought nor purely dream. His mind wandered to Eda, who could be cold and sharp like a glass sliver slicing across the skin, Eda, who used to have the prettiest smile, a kind of soft and shy little sideways curl of the lips. Eda, whose parents never failed to subtly suggest in word or facial expression that he had all the intelligence and class of an ox with intestinal distress. Eda, who used to make him toast and coffee and have his paper folded open to the sport section by his plate every Sunday morning for the first fifteen years or so of their marriage.

  The noises on the television rose and fell, dipped and swelled, and their cadence lulled him, rolling beneath his thoughts of his wife, the voices tapering to a monotone, almost a whisper. He shifted in the big easy chair. A McDonald’s commercial ended and a man began explaining about car insurance and how Hal was in good hands. In Hal’s head, he could imagine the man on the TV—a forty-something with a good head of slightly graying hair, a man of substantial presence in his build, his face carved with rugged authority. The man in Hal’s mind wore a polo shirt and slacks. The voice in his ears spoke of simple conviction and inarguable instruction. Hal should have taken his V8 and gotten an oil change, the man was saying. He should have gone for a different play at the 20-yard line. He should have killed Eda yesterday while she was dreaming of men he’d never be and wishing behind his back that some lucky stroke of fate would leave her a well-off widow.

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, an alarm went off. He thought he ought to open his eyes, to clear his head somehow, because the man’s words were getting heavy, plodding, a methodical chant of urgent syllables boring into him. He couldn’t. Other parts of his mind, more in the forefront, couldn’t really see a problem with entertaining the idea. Killing Eda with a quarter back pounder hambone hand sandwich made perfect sense; he knew Tom Brady and the insurance guy would agree. He was in good hands. The sounds dropped to a low drone, and he drowsed deeper into sleep.

  He was dreaming of sitting on a park bench outside the apartments, only in the dream, they weren’t the apartments. There were people in pajamas milling around, some talking to low-hanging branches of nearby trees or listening to other folks speak to them in hushed and soothing voices. The man from the commercials was there, hanging upside-down from a branch of the tree across from Hal’s park bench. Hal frowned, rose slowly, and took a few tentative steps toward him. He glanced around the grounds again. No one noticed the upside-down commercial man, his legs hooked over a low-hanging branch. No one was left to notice; the grounds had cleared like some end-of-lunch alarm bell had sounded that everyone heard but him. Above, the sky was bright and cloudless. There was no breeze, no sound of birds, no movement at all except for Hal, and the commercial man across from him in the tree.

  Hal turned his attention back to the man. He was as Hal had imagined he might be in person—authoritative, even upside-down like that. Gravity seemed to have no effect on his hair or clothes, which underlined that air of authority. Even the absurdity of his position, hanging from that tree, somehow worked in his favor. Hal was afraid to question it, or to question him. In fact, Hal went so far as to wonder what was wrong with him that he wasn’t upside down as well.

  “She’s waiting for it, you know. In the bedroom.” The commercial man pointed over Hal’s shoulder.

  Hal followed the direction of his finger to a large gray stone building with wings extending bat-like behind it in either direction. The apartments were gone; the gray building swallowed up all the land in his line of view. Of the myriad windows it boasted across its front surface, all were black except one on the top floor.

  He turned back to the commercial man. “Who is?”

  “Your wife.”

  “My wife?”

  The man looked at him as if it took supreme patience to be dealing with him. “Your wife,” he repeated. “She seemed upset with you earlier.”

  “She’s just huffy, is all. She...she likes a sounding board, someone to rattle off her views to. I wasn’t in the mood.”

  “Women like to talk, don’t they?”

  “Women like Eda certainly do.” Hal tried a smile which seemed to fall flat before the man.

  “She certainly seems demanding.”

  Hal didn’t say anything to this. He wasn’t sure what the commercial man was getting at.

  “Even now, she has wants.”

  “What does she want?” Hal finally asked.

  “Nothing you can give her. Not anymore. And there lies the problem, doesn’t it, Hal? Real question is, how do you fix that problem?”

  The sky darkened on them then—just a shade, but enough to give Hal a chill. He didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking.

  “Look, pal. I don’t think there’s anythi—”

  “But you do. You know I’m right. You knew I was right earlier. There’s a problem that needs fixing and fixing things, well, that’s what you do, isn’t it, Hal?”

  It had been, for thirty-five years in the corporate world. His little cog in the great machine had been to identify departmental pro
blems and offer solutions. It appealed to his nature, the simple outlining of potential obstacles, and the careful planning of ways around or through them. But Eda? Did he really consider her an obstacle? Certainly not like she thought of him at times, but.... His answer came thin, quiet. “I suppose.”

  “So do it, Hal,” the man told him. This time, the commercial man’s voice seemed in his ears and very close—not coming from the hanging figure at all. “Be a man. Stop letting her dig grooves into your soul with her constant yammering. Kill her. Shut her up once and for all.”

  It started to rain in Hal’s dreamworld, soaking him, soaking the ground around him. As the rain pelted the commercial man’s skin, now somehow rubbery and unfirm, his eyes spilled out like runny egg whites, dripping down into his hair. The dyes in his clothes ran blurry across his frame and he seemed to lose substance, all the fleshy parts of him smearing and eventually running clear. What was left flattened to mere colorless pieces of cloth on a branch clothesline. This seemed to Hal both horrific and natural, that the commercial man should simply run clear like the stains evaporating in a Tide commercial or tooth plaque beneath the onslaught of Crest Whitening toothpaste. But that, like the things he had said, was inarguable. He wasn’t a walking-away man. He wasn’t a see-you-later kind of guy. He was a commercial man, and his message to Hal had been delivered.

  When Hal woke up, he felt stiff in his neck and slightly achy in his chest. He glanced at the bedroom door and frowned.

  “She’s waiting for it, you know. In the bedroom.”

  He pulled a blanket from a nearby basket where Eda kept them, and closed his eyes. He didn’t think Eda would miss him in bed tonight.

  ***

  Their first day in the new apartment started early with cleaning. Myrinda tackled the bathroom, scrubbing down the tiles and toilet, while Derek worked on the appliances in the kitchen. Boxes stacked to different heights created a cardboard Himalayan range in the living room through which they’d carved out a pathway. Myrinda had put up curtains in the living room and laid out a few framed photos and art pictures to be hung on wall spaces which, once they were painted, seemed to call for something to fill them. She’d also cleared a space for the couch and loveseat, for when Derek’s brother arrived with the U-Haul. They were waiting on other big pieces, too—the kitchen table and chairs, the TV, the small dresser. Even without these things, however, Myrinda felt that odd unease scrubbed away, as if her contact with the porcelain, the faucet, the new shower curtain, was transferring some part of her to them, some ownership by touch. Satisfied the bathroom was clean, she headed back through the apartment toward the kitchen.

  A knock came just before Mrs. Roesler—Aggie from across the hall—appeared in the front doorway. “Hello! How you kids settling in? Getting by okay?”

  “Hi, Aggie!” Myrinda maneuvered around a fortress of boxes and crossed to the door. “Hon, this is Aggie Roesler from across the hall.”

  Aggie held an apple pie, which she offered to Derek. He took it and smiled at her. “Well thank you, Aggie. This is very thoughtful of you. It’s great to meet you. Please—come in. We’re just unpacking.”

  Aggie blushed pleasantly beneath the radiance of Derek’s smile. “Well, aren’t you tall, dark, and handsome. Myrinda, he’s a fine man.” She winked.

  Myrinda laughed. “This is Derek,” she said, taking the pie from him to bring to the kitchen.

  “Derek, a pleasure.”

  “Can I get you anything, Aggie?” Myrinda called from the kitchen. “We don’t have much yet by way of food, but I have a few cans of soda.”

  “No, thank you, sweetheart. I’m just fine.”

  When Myrinda returned from the kitchen, Aggie was sitting on a nearby folding chair, helping Derek unpack and refold bath towels.

  “So what do you think of the new place?” Aggie added a fluffy blue beach towel to a pile in a laundry basket.

  “Good, really good,” Myrinda answered, sitting down cross-legged in front of another unopened box. She took the box cutter from Derek and slit the tape across the top. “I think we’re really going to love it here.”

  “Have you met any of your other neighbors yet?” Aggie didn’t look at either of them, but instead concentrated on a hand-towel she was folding.

  Myrinda thought she detected an odd note in Aggie’s tone. “Uh, no, not yet. We haven’t really seen anyone but you and Mrs. Sunderman. Why?”

  “Oh, no reason,” Aggie said, dropping the hand-towel in the laundry basket and picking up another from the box. “Folks here are nice enough.”

  “Are there a lot of other people here?” Derek moved on to a new box marked linen closet. “I mean, the building seems awfully quiet. We don’t hear doors slamming, people walking, nothing.”

  This time it wasn’t just Aggie’s tone, but a strange, faraway look in her eyes that Myrinda found curious. “No, not too many folks. A good part of this floor’s filled up, though I’m not so sure about the first and third floors. Probably no more than a handful of apartments, but the place hasn’t been open to tenants very long either. Most of the folks are nice enough, though,” she repeated.

  “How about Mrs. Sunderman?” Myrinda thought her own tone sounded sufficiently amused to pass off her words as light and joking, but if Aggie were looking to issue a warning of some kind, Myrinda thought she’d opened that door.

  Aggie bit her lip softly, on the verge of saying something, but then in a moment her expression, as well as her voice, had reverted to the pleasantry of the little old lady next door. “She seems pleasant enough, I’d say.”

  “How long have you been here, Aggie?” Derek asked her.

  “Oh, almost four months now, thereabouts.”

  “How do you like it here?”

  A flicker of that strange, faraway look. “This place is very nice. Clean, quiet, very modern. Stainless steel appliances and granite counter tops—my nephew Clarry—Clarence, but we call him Clarry—he says that stainless steel is the ‘in’ thing for kitchens. He thinks this place is a steal, for the price.”

  “What do you think, Aggie?” Myrinda persisted softly.

  Aggie smiled at her, but there was something very old, very weary about the smile. “I’m an old woman—I don’t need much. It’s a nice place to live in, with such sweet young neighbors to humor me and give me their time. I’m just grateful to still have the wits and faculties I need to live on my own, and not in a nursing home to collect dust and bed sores while my life savings leaks through his fingers.” Her smile faltered in the silence that followed.

  Derek broke it with a smile of his own. “Well, let’s say we take a break and cut into that pie, shall we?”

  ***

  Wayne Tillingford of 2B stared at the laptop in front of him until the neat lines of print went a little blurry. He’d been trying to figure out what angle to take for his article. It was on the financial spending discrepancies regarding the upkeep of the historical landmark on the grounds of his apartment building, and on the rebuilding of the apartment complex itself to figuratively and literally bury over the ugly history of that particular parcel of land. He was working toward something that he hoped wouldn’t make the easy slip into lurid sensationalism and yet wouldn’t read like a boring budget report, either. He knew how the locals felt about the land on which his current residence stood, and how propriety and good old-fashioned sense of New England pride prohibited any kind of widespread exploration of the subject or fact-sharing. That meant getting it right would be important. And starting it right would be the key to getting it right.

  So far, that wasn’t happening. He’d figured out in college that sometimes writing genius would strike him if he let his mind wander, his gaze sort of daze over, and the usual half-hearted attempt in halting type to blur up. Sometimes he’d see what he’d come to think of as the words beneath the words, the truth of what he was trying to say. It would gel in his mind then and he’d know what to type.

  He stared out the window above his desk
at the expansive grounds below. It was hard to imagine what the drunken, lonely old folks in tucked away bars said had really happened here. He suspected most of it couldn’t possibly have happened, was just dramatic over-exaggeration. Certainly, he could find no official documents to back the stories up, either in the newspapers or through connections in the records department of the police force. Stories of torture, vivisection, rape, cannibalism. And once the police got to the hospital, it supposedly had only got worse. Blood-streaked bodies of doctors and patients alike, baying and chanting in the same eerie nonsense language, biting and bruising each other in sloppy orgies or loping across the sparsely moonlit lawns. Gore splattered on the walls, the unspeakable things they found in the art building....

  The art building. He closed his eyes, opened them. That little overturned tidbit of news would likely never make it to any publicly printed forum. The art building, which was demolished after the S.W.A.T. teams took down every last crawling, howling, frenzied, crazy-eyed thing on the premises, including a few of the cops, and restored order and control by utter annihilation. The art building, where nurses and patients had been strung up and slowly stripped of skin and muscle, left to dangle and drip from the heating pipes in the basement. Where lines of some kind of complex pictograph text had been scrawled in blood on every available surface of the seemingly endless hallways, floors and ceilings. Where crude finger paintings of doors and windows with stars beyond had been applied to the doors and windows. And in the art therapy rooms themselves, the atrocities continued, grotesque and obscene. What they found in the paint jars....

  Wayne, who had an oddly selective weak stomach, full-figured as it was, had felt a little queasy at the drunk old man’s recounting of all the horrors that had gone on at the hospital. They’d been sitting in the local bar in town beneath the shadow of the hill—an Irish place, McGinty’s. The old man’s intoxicated muttering had created an invisible circumference of atavistic fierceness around him that put the few other patrons at a distance. Every once in a while, his voice would rise in an unintelligible shout which would go largely unacknowledged. Wayne had sat at the stool next to him and bought him a drink. The bartender had eyed him warily and plunked a beer (Wayne’s) and a shot of bourbon (the old man’s) in front of the odd pair.