What You Don't Know

by JoAnn Chaney

  * * *

  It’s easy to spend money, easier than she ever knew. Her father is a man who uses cash to pay for everything, who has a big steel safe in his bedroom full of greenbacks. He doesn’t trust banks, but that’s not a surprise, because he doesn’t trust anyone. He jeers when Gloria shows him her credit card, his face mean as he mashes his cigarette into a saucer.

  “You’re coming up in the world, are you?” he says. “Managed to trick a bank into lending you money you don’t need?”

  “It’s not like that—”

  But her father shouldn’t be one to judge, not when he never let her mother treat herself to a new dress, never let her tithe extra to the church. Her father always called himself frugal, but she sees now that he’s stingy, that he wouldn’t let a dime squeak out of his wallet to make anyone happy, even his own wife. At least Jacky isn’t like that. He likes to give people things, wants to help them—she can’t count the number of times high school kids have stopped by the house for career advice or guidance, or because Jacky promised them a few bucks to mow the lawn or rake the leaves, even if it’d been done only a few days before. She’s heard people say that you sometimes have to sacrifice to get ahead (she’s not sure where she first heard that saying, and even though she thinks it’s about chess, it still applies to her husband), and that’s what Jacky is doing. Sacrificing. Spending a few bucks to make other people’s lives better.

  She still wants a baby, more than anything, but they can’t, so why not get a job? Or go back to school, become a teacher. Bring home her own paycheck, contribute to what they have going on, have something going on that could fill her days. But Jacky tells her no, gently, in a soft voice, reminding her that he provides everything she will ever need. Everything she could ever want. And that’s true, but sometimes Gloria thinks there should be more than this, than grocery shopping and planning meals and watching television and ironing, that she wants more than this, that she never thought this was how her life would turn out, even though women friends are always saying how lucky she is, what a good man Jacky is. And he is. She feels guilty when she thinks otherwise, because he pays attention to her, and takes her out for nice meals and opens doors and pulls out her chair, and he’s always careful about putting the toilet seat back down when he’s finished. And there’s the things he doesn’t do, let’s not forget, heavens no, because the things a man doesn’t do are just as important as the things he does—he doesn’t complain when she comes home from JCPenney and Montgomery Ward with armfuls of bags and he doesn’t care when she burns the casserole and he doesn’t mutter when she wears a flannel nightgown, the one that covers from her chin to the tops of her toes, and tells him that her head hurts, that she wants to go to bed, that she’s not in the mood. There’s never been a repeat of that episode so long ago, no more sex that might be rape but probably isn’t, and he doesn’t say that she’s so beautiful that she deserves to die, and he doesn’t hold a gun up to her head and promise that after he shoots her he’ll shoot himself too and the police will never find them, two bodies lying side-by-side on the cold linoleum, their bodies so close it’ll be impossible to tell one person from the other.

  * * *

  She wakes up one night, suddenly, not sure why. Her heart is caught high up in her throat, and she’s scared, terrified, and she’s not sure why, and that’s the worst of it, to not have a reason for the fear. Jacky’s side of the bed is empty, and the house is quiet, so he might’ve fallen asleep downstairs on the couch after everyone went home, it wouldn’t be the first time. She considers getting up, putting on her robe, creeping downstairs, waking her husband, and bringing him back with her, but she doesn’t want to leave the safety of the bed, as if the blankets might offer some protection against whatever monster is out there.

  Someone screamed, she thinks, but the thought is barely there before she’s asleep again, already gone, and she won’t remember any of it in the morning.

  * * *

  The doorbell rings one afternoon, and there’s a young man standing on the front steps, a handsome one with light hair and good skin. Not zitty and pockmarked like some of the other boys she’s seen, who’re constantly scratching and picking at their faces. At least it’s not a girl—there was a time when Jacky would have sent home any number of young women, girls he’d met while he was out doing whatever it is he does during the day, sent her to Gloria to do things around the house for cash. Beautiful young girls with lean thighs and bright smiles, who’d come over in short skirts and thin T-shirts, not clothes to work in but to be seen in. Once, she caught Jacky staring out a window at a group of girls working in the garden, and it’s not that she minded so much—all men looked at young women, hell, cars passing by on the street slowed to watch the girls at their raking—but did he have to do it right in front of her? But she didn’t say anything, didn’t tell him that it hurt her feelings, that it made her feel insecure. She was forty-five, and she felt every minute of it, every year. In the creaking of her knees, in the bags under her eyes. And those young girls, they made her feel terrible, but what could she say without looking like a complete fool?

  “Mr. Seever isn’t home from work yet,” she tells the boy. She’s flustered, even though she’s dressed and has her makeup on—young men always make her feel awkward, especially the good-looking ones. She knows it shouldn’t matter what a boy half her age thinks, but somehow it still does. “You can wait for him here, if you’d like.”

  The boy follows her in, sits at the kitchen table, and enthusiastically drinks the Coke she pours over crushed ice. She’s irritated at Jacky, because she was in the middle of reading a novel, one from the library that seemed like a stinker but she checked it out anyway; it was like a puppy with big, drooping eyes at the pet store that she had to take home. And now, after starting to read with the lowest of expectations, the book is turning out to be something great, but she can’t leave the boy alone in her kitchen so she can get back to reading—instead, she has to sit there and make small talk and be friendly and keep from glancing at her wristwatch, desperately listening for the sound of Jacky’s car pulling into the driveway.

  But the boy seems to sense how uncomfortable she is, and makes it easy.

  “I’m here to do some chores for your husband, ma’am,” he says. “If it’s all right, I’ll get started and let you get back to whatever you were doing.”

  “That would be nice,” she says, relieved.

  There’s a pause, and Gloria twists the tissue in her hand. It’s moments like this, she thinks, in which important things happen. Choices are made. She could take a step forward, throw her arms around the boy’s neck and slip him the tongue. Drag him up to her bedroom and undress for him, slowly, and move her mouth over all that tight, young flesh. It would serve Jacky right, to have his wife sleep with the boy he sent home to work, because he’s been cheating since the beginning, she knows it and ignores it, and she usually tries to put it out of her head, because it’s just sex, and every man has to have fun, but then there are days when Jacky will take her to the restaurant and she’ll see him looking at one of the waitresses, and the girl will stare right back at him with her dark eyes, and Gloria can practically feel the heat in those looks, and she’ll see how she’s being neatly pushed to one side. Jacky thinks she’s a stupid, unsuspecting housewife, but she knows everything. She’s half-tempted to do something crazy to get back at Jacky, but doesn’t when she realizes it’s probably her library book influencing her even though it’s on the other side of the house. It’s the kind of book where anything is possible, where animals talk and houses fly; the kind of book where a woman can get any man she wants, even if her own father called her ugly and fat, even if that man is a boy wearing a faded T-shirt and a pair of bright-white sneakers. She wants to do something, but instead she doesn’t do anything at all. That’s her deal, like they used to say.

  “So what does my husband have you doing today?” she asks, delicately clearing her throat.

  “I’m diggi
ng.”

  “Digging?” For the first time, she realizes he has a shovel propped up against his chair, the worn metal edge balanced on her kitchen floor. It’s smallish—she can’t remember what it’s called, a shovel like that. Not a trowel—a spade, like in a deck of cards.

  “Yeah,” the boy says, wrinkling his nose in amusement, like he’s giving her the punch line of a joke he doesn’t quite understand. “Mr. Seever wants some holes dug in the crawl space.”

  * * *

  That boy who digs the crawl space, he comes to the house a few times, and he’s always friendly, always smiling. And then he’s gone. When Gloria asks about him, Jacky is vague and distracted.

  “Oh, he won’t be back around,” Jacky says. “He found something else that suits him better.”

  * * *

  Every marriage has rules, not ones that are written down or set in stone, but they’re there just the same, creating invisible fences that only two people can see. And if her own marriage only had one rule, Gloria thinks, it is this:

  Gloria knows nothing.

  So Jacky does what he wants, he always does, he always will, and she knows nothing. It’s easier that way, to let things ride, and Gloria realizes that this same rule may’ve been part of her parents’ marriage, that she not only inherited her mother’s long fingers and blue eyes but also her ability to keep her mouth shut too. To not ask questions.

  It’s not that she doesn’t love Jacky—because she does. It’s a faded love now, gone soft and worn from going through the wash so many times, but it’s there. And what does it matter if that love isn’t what she imagined when she was a girl? The love they have is the familiar sound of Jacky clipping his fingernails over the toilet, the rumbling of his snores when he’s especially tired. The smell of the lotion he always works into his knuckles, especially during the winter. It’s the way he leaves his boxer shorts crumpled outside the shower, even though it irritates her, even though she’s asked him a million times to take the three extra steps and throw them in the hamper, because it means she has a husband, she has a man taking care of her. And besides that one time, Jacky’s never been cruel to her, he’s been nothing but loving, and she’s sure he depends on her, he loves her back. He needs her. He wouldn’t know what to do without her, that he never wants to be apart. And she feels the same.

  But.

  There is sometimes blood on his boxer shorts. Not a lot, but enough to notice when she’s throwing the clothes in the wash and checking for stains. It’s not around the rear end—if it were, she’d insist that Jacky go see a doctor, he could have something terribly wrong if he were bleeding from back there—but around the front, the part where the fabric splits for that ridiculous hole that always makes her laugh, because she can’t imagine a man trying to poke out through that to go to the bathroom when they could just pull down. She asked him about it once, but Jacky shrugged, he said it must be dye from the fabric, running. Cheap shit, he’d said. Buy American next time. Then we won’t have that problem.

  And then, the month before, she was sitting by the open window in their bedroom, reading, and the night wind was tugging at the curtains, and the hem of her skirt was slipping against the back of her calf like watered silk. She heard Jacky coming up the stairs, his feet heavy, but she only looked up from the words when he was standing in front of her, his hands reaching out for her like a child. There was blood grimed into his knuckles, dried blood, but some of it was fresh, and she shrieked, concerned that he’d hurt himself, but when she took him into their bathroom and made him sit on the closed toilet lid and wiped him down with a damp washcloth she saw that he wasn’t hurt, not at all, that the blood couldn’t be his. Almost got away, Jacky whispered, nearly hysterical, and there was something in his eyes that frightened her, that made her want to take her car keys and drive as far as she could, away from this man. But instead she washed him, carefully, then made him lie down in their bed. And even though he said he wasn’t at all tired he immediately fell asleep, and she took his bloody clothes—and the washcloth, don’t forget that!—down to the laundry room and ran them through a cold cycle, dumping in an overflowing capful of bleach during the rinse. She didn’t sleep with Jacky that night but went to the guest room, slept on top of the blankets fully dressed, facing the door, her hands tucked carefully under her cheek. She thought that when Jacky woke up she’d ask him about the blood and what he’d said and all the traveling he did, even though he didn’t need to, and she’d make him be honest, finally get the truth out of him. But when she woke up Jacky was in the shower, singing jubilantly, and before he left for work he put his hand on the back of her neck and kissed her, the way he used to, and she saw that the blood had come right out of the clothes, like it had never been there, no problemo, so what was the point in bringing it up at all?

  * * *

  But there is also the garage, the one he’s converted to his party room. The boom-boom room. He’s said he doesn’t want anyone in there when he’s not home, that it’s his space, his privacy, that she should respect it. I don’t go rifling through your drawers, he says, and this makes sense, although she doesn’t have a padlock on her dresser like he has on the door going from the house into the garage. There’s only one key to that lock, and she doesn’t know where he keeps it. There are times during the day, when she’s vacuuming or dusting or doing nothing at all, and she’ll go to that door, lift the heavy lock, hold it in her hands, and test the cold weight of it against her palm. She tugs on it to see if it’ll pop open, but it never does. Why would it? Jacky is always careful, he always locks it up tight, never leaves the house or goes to bed without checking it.

  But even the most thorough person can have a slip-up.

  It’s a Tuesday when he forgets, he’s in a hurry, he overslept and doesn’t even have time to grab a coffee before he’s out the door, and she hears his car tearing down the driveway. And somehow the padlock hasn’t been pushed shut; he’s forgotten to do it, it’s dangling there, holding the door shut but no longer keeping her out.

  She doesn’t go in, not right away. She drinks a cup of coffee, watches the morning news. She scrubs the bottom of the tub, even though it’s not that dirty, and then showers herself, carefully rubs her lilac-scented lotion over every part of her body. She does her hair, applies mascara. Then she goes downstairs, back to the door. Part of her expects it to be locked, that Jacky might’ve come home during the day, he sometimes does. Maybe she wants it to be locked, so she doesn’t have to see what’s behind there, but it’s still open, and it takes her a moment to pull it free of the metal loop it’s hanging through, because her hands are shaking so damn bad. She is Bluebeard’s wife, who was told to not open a certain door but couldn’t resist the temptation, and found out the terrible secret her husband was hiding.

  She takes only a single step into the garage, and stays in the room for less than a minute. Then she leaves, locks the door firmly behind her, and goes to the kitchen. Washes her hands and starts peeling potatoes. She is making a roast for dinner, with red potatoes and French bread. It’s Jacky’s favorite.

  * * *

  She comes home from the prison, upset and tired, not sure what to think of that reporter woman visiting Jacky, but what can she do about it? Nothing, that’s what she can do. Absolutely nothing. He’s a grown man, he can see whomever he wants, do what he wants.

  He always has.

  She climbs out of her car, her keys in her hand, thinking that she’ll go inside and brew a cup of tea and watch some TV. Not the news, it’s all about these murders, the Secondhand Killer, that’s what they’re calling him, and she knows they’re trying to connect it to Jacky, although she’s not sure how. The police have even come by with questions, and left disappointed. By the sad looks on their faces, they were hoping she was behind it all, or that she knew where Alan Cole was, who’d apparently been one of Jacky’s old friends although the name isn’t at all familiar to her. Oh, she sent them packing, because how is an old woman like her going to be
any help to them?

  She’s already got the key slid into the lock before she notices the words spray-painted in red across her door. YOU KNEW, BITCH, it says in straggling letters. It’s already dried, so it’s been there most of the day already, for anyone with eyeballs in their head to see.

  The world finally found me, she thinks, but she knows that’s not completely true, it’s not as if she were lost at the bottom of the ocean, or hiding under an assumed name. Anyone who bothered to look could’ve found her, anytime, and they have before, like whoever broke in and stole all her things. A search on the computer, even a quick flip through a phone book, and she could’ve been found. But these new murders are upsetting people, and everyone needs to be angry at someone, and she might just be the right person.

  She could get a bucketful of soapy water and a rag, get to work on scrubbing the words away. Three words, it wouldn’t take too long. An hour, maybe less. But does it really matter?

  Instead, she goes inside, locks the door behind her. Puts a kettle of tea on the stove and turns on an old black-and-white movie, rests her feet up on the coffee table. And she pretends those words aren’t on the door at all. The easiest lies are the ones you tell yourself, after all, and Gloria’s gotten very good at that over the years.

  WE DON’T MAKE MISTAKES

  Six hundred thousand people living in Denver. Maybe it’s too damn many. Lots of people from California migrating in, that’s what residents say. All those West Coast people with their bad driving habits and their liberal ideas, taking over. That’s why this city is going to hell, the natives say. That’s why housing prices are going up, why people keep getting killed. Look at what happens out in Los Angeles, they say. All that violence. And now it’s happening here.