Strangers

by Mort Castle

  “Oh,” Beth said.

  “You said your mom called,” Michael said.

  “How’s she doing?”

  Mom was all right, Beth told him, but her pressure was still too high. The doctor had her on new medication and wanted her to take it easier. At age sixty-eight, Claire Wynkoop still put in a forty plus hour week as the librarian in Belford, the small town sixty miles to the south where Beth had been raised. “Mom refuses to slow down,” Beth said, “or even to sit down long enough to consider slowing down.”

  Michael patted Beth’s calf. “Don’t worry, honey,” he assured her, “your mom’s one tough lady. She’ll outlive us all.” Then with an amused smile, he asked, “Mom have any earthshaking predictions?”

  Beth laughed, but she did not really find the question funny. Unlike Michael, she did not think ridiculous her mother’s modest claims to have occasional psychic intuitions of the future. No, Mom had never foretold a Political assassination, air disaster, or erupting volcano, but… Two years ago, Kim, then a first-grader, had broken her wrist in a schoolyard tumble and the call from Mom came only seconds after the one from the school nurse: “Kim is hurt. I know that. How bad is it?”

  Or what about the story, the one told frequently enough over the years to have the feel of truth? Hank Wynkoop, Beth’s father, had died of a sudden heart attack when Beth was a high school freshman, and Claire related: “I watched him get in the car that morning. He waved to me. I thought: ‘This is the last time I’ll see him alive’—and it was.”

  Beth felt a cold tingle at the nape of her neck. So people had hunches. Okay, she could accept that; it was normal. But she didn’t like the disquieting feeling that stemmed from thinking about the “not quite normal,” the “cannot happen” that does happen.

  “I asked if your mom gave us any revealing glimpses of the future,” Michael said, drawing Beth out of her uneasy contemplation.

  “No,” Beth said. She chided herself for worrying about nothing that required worry. Mom was good old normal Mom, the same way she herself was normal Beth or Michael was Mr. Normal Louden.

  And that is that, she decided, and, in order to maintain her certainty, she told Michael she wanted to watch “Trapper John, MD,” when they went down to the rec room instead of going along with his TV suggestion: a rerun of Rod Serling’s classic “Twilight Zone.”

  They went to bed at 11. Beth felt a fresh stirring of desire and expressed it with her hands and lips. Michael responded, his arms around her, tongue in her mouth, and she felt his growing tumescence.

  His pajama bottoms down, hers off and dropped to the carpet, Michael carefully moved over her. He braced himself on his elbows and she guided him to her core. His “There!” was a satisfied puff of complete immersion inside her.

  For Beth their earlier lovemaking had been a wildly reckless attempt at reunification. It had—thankfully—been a success. Now, Michael moving, she with him, a mutually established, pleasure-giving pace, was a confirmation, the final tearing down of any barrier that might yet remain between them.

  Beth wanted no barriers. She wanted to talk with him. And she was certain she could do that after this meaningful ritual of the senses in that mellow time that would follow when they lay in this cool and dark room together, satisfied and fulfilled.

  Michael’s thrusting grew more rapid and forceful. She thought she was not ready, but scurrying messages traveling the maze of her nerve endings signaled yes, she was. Her hips churned. Her thighs gripped him and she clutched his shoulders.

  She had a flash of remembered feelings. She was a child, racing up the ladder of the playground slide, eager to reach the top for that thrilling fright-hesitant instant before the world-blurring descent. And now… Oh, oh yes!… She was there, as head spinning, a pin-wheeling heat in her belly, she zoomed down, each bump of rippled steel a tremor of excitement that tossed her and made her gasp.

  Beth sighed just as Michael convulsed in orgasm. He grunted, pressing down on her. His weight was not oppressive, not now. Beth stroked his hair, the back of his neck. How helpless, how weak Michael seemed, she thought, his penis dwindling inside her, and she felt a special tenderness toward him.

  Michael rolled away with, “I love you, Beth.” She moved close to him, her head on his chest. He put an arm around her shoulder.

  “Are you asleep, Michael?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Do you feel like talking?”

  “Sure, honey.”

  “I’m glad,” Beth said. “It’s been a while since we’ve talked.”

  “I know that, honey, and I told you, I let the damned work pressure turn me into a zombie. I haven’t been spending enough time with you, or for that matter, with the kids. That’s going to change.”

  “That’s probably part of our problem, Michael,” Beth said, “but not all of it. I’m to blame, too.”

  Slowly, Michael said, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” Oh, the feeling she could talk freely was there, but knowing what to say—how—was suddenly a tongue-twisting challenge. She stammered something about intellect and self-realization, knew it was a cliché borrowed from a woman’s magazine article, and said, “Let me think a minute.”

  It wasn’t until her first year of college that Beth had discovered she was truly bright. Grade school and high school had been easy and therefore dull; she’d been an underachiever. But at Illinois Central University, she’d met teachers who praised her analytical questions, complimented her inquiring explorations of complex issues, and she’d found out just how exciting it was to really use her mind. She’d thought of a career in social work or clinical psychology.

  Then she met Michael, a senior, majoring in business. She fell in love with him. He graduated. She married him.

  And that was that!

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Michael prompted.

  “That’s more than they’re worth,” Beth said, a weak joke that she thought too true to be funny. “It’s… Sometimes I feel so out of it, Michael, like I’m a stereotype of a featherbrained little housewife who calls it a national catastrophe if the supermarket happens to run out of tomato-rice soup or Stove-Top Stuffing. That’s why it’s sometimes hard for me to feel we have enough in common. You’re out in the real world, accomplishing real things, and I’m home matching the socks and getting dumber by the day.”

  Michael squeezed her. “No way are you dumb, honey! I’ve never once thought that.”

  “I’ve thought it,” Beth said, “and that’s what counts. I think it’s one of the reasons I probably drift away from you.”

  “I see,” Michael said quietly. “I understand.”

  Bless him, she thought, he did understand—he always understood if she gave him half a chance.

  Even as the decision she’d been pondering for so long was being made, she announced it: “Michael, I’m going to go back to school. I’ll sign up for a course at Lincoln Junior College. I’ll take it slow, just to see if I can revitalize my brain cells, then”—she took a deep breath, somewhat fearful of her boldness— maybe go right on to finish up my degree and get a real job.”

  Michael said, “All right, that makes good sense to me.”

  “You are serious?” Beth moved away from him, propping herself up on an elbow. If he were humoring her, giving her a patronizing pat on the head… She was ashamed to even be thinking this way, but…

  Michael said, “So I’ll watch the kids a few nights a week. Did you expect me to get all bent out of shape because you have a fine mind and want to use it? Come on, Beth, I’m probably a whole bunch of things, but not a male chauvinist.”

  “No,” Beth said sincerely, “you’re a wonderful man, that’s what you are.”

  “True,” Michael laughed, “and I’m pleased you noticed it. Now how about we get some sleep?”

  Beth cuddled as close to him as she could. Happy, excited about college, their marriage, everything! She was not sleepy. The words poured out of her: “There’s s
o much I’ve wanted to say, and now feels so right for saying it, saying it all…”

  “Shh!” Michael hissed sharply. She felt him tense. “Sit up,” he whispered.

  She did. Michael was alongside her.

  “What is it?”

  “Downstairs,” he said. “I thought I heard something.” He paused for a long moment that brought a pinch of nervousness to her throat.

  Michael whispered, “Yeah, I know I did. I’m going to have a look.”

  In his pajamas, Michael slowly walked down the hall. He needed no light. This was his house. He passed the room Marcy and Kim shared, catching a whiff of the pinewood chips that littered the aquarium in which their guinea pigs lived. He passed his office, then, hand light on the banister, he made his way downstairs.

  That’s the nice thing about a modern house, he thought. The steps do not creak. You can move quietly, so quietly, no warning, no sound to mark your coming.

  In the dark living-room, his hand moved unerringly to the cord and the drapes hissed along the rod. He gazed out the picture window at Park Estates, his neighborhood, his neighbors, the houses dark, most of them, except for the glow of 20th century nightlights, the television sets, black and ‘white bedroom portables, the color consoles in nightowls’ living rooms. A night in a good suburb, safe… Yet Michael knew there was a fear in Park Estates, the coast-to-coast fear that blanketed all of America. It was “The Age of Paranoia.” And what genius had come up with the insightful “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you”?

  They were, the Strangers—and he was.

  The woman upstairs was afraid, too, Michael thought, remembering how she’d squeezed his arm, urging him to “be careful.” He’d given her general fear a focal point with the intruding noise of “something downstairs.”

  Michael listened. He heard the chill exhalation of the air-conditioning—that and his own breathing. And that was all there was to hear.

  He’d had to get away from Beth’s babble. He’d felt the impulse come to him, so strong, the wanting to shut her up forever, his hand on her throat, allowing her only enough air so that her mind functioned for the instant it would take her to realize he was not the patient and understanding husband, not a real life Dagwood Bumstead-Ozzie Nelson-Dad “Leave It To Beaver” Cleaver—that he was a Stranger who was killing her, killing her…

  To get away, he’d made up the noise downstairs.

  “Michael?” Beth’s voice thin and worried, drifted down to him.

  Good, Michael thought. Her fear of the unknown was becoming a greater fear of the imagined. Her loving husband—yours truly—might have met a prowler with a tire iron, a wrench, a knife—might have met Death.

  “Michael! Are you all right?”

  He smiled.

  The dumb bitch did not have to worry, he thought. He was not the one fated to die in the night.

  Quickly and silently, he walked back upstairs. He stopped just before their bedroom door and waited.

  “Michael! Answer me!”

  He knew Beth was no more than a dozen heartbeats away from explosive panic, a shrieking, lights-on, dial-the-police, “Oh, help!” frenzy. He counted his own pulsing heartbeat four times…six…

  He stepped into the bedroom. “Guess it was nothing after all…”

  Beth screamed.

  He raced to her, held her. “Honey, hey, it’s okay…”

  “God, you scared me! I was so…” Beth sobbed. “Oh, God, Michael, I didn’t know what to think, and then suddenly, there you were and…”

  “I’m sorry,” Michael crooned. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” And, he thought, I’ll bet there’s nothing you feel like talking about now, is there?

  Beth choked when she tried to turn her tears to relieved laughter. With a sniffle, she said, “It’s okay. I’m fine now.”

  But she had been frightened, so frightened—and the residue of that fear accompanied her into sleep and infused her dream…

  Alone, she waited to be punished. It was unfair. She had done nothing wrong.

  She sat in the first seat of the center row, her hands folded on the desk. On the ceiling, the fluorescent lights poured down a cold light as they faintly buzzed, a sound that vibrated down her spine.

  She knew very well where she was—and there had to be a mistake. This was the fourth grade classroom in Belford Community Grade School, the realm of the feared and hated tyrant Miss Kostner. Other teachers in the school administered discipline reluctantly, Miss Kostner, enthusiastically. Other teachers sent kids to the cloakroom or kept them in after school. Miss Kostner had a ruler. “Hold out your hand, please.”

  No! I do not belong here. Beth wanted to tell someone that, to rectify this error in time. She was an adult now and Miss Kostner was a terror consigned to memory. Except somehow she did not feel at all grown up. Despite this adult body cramped at the small desk, she was a child. Her world was divided into zones of safety and security, areas of known fears, and yet darker territories of fears unknown.

  Young, she was young, and leaden with fright.

  Then she understood. This is a dream, only a dream. A dream cannot hurt you.

  But why did the realization bring no lessening of her fear—misery?

  Now she was no longer alone. Her children—But I am a child myself!—was here, Kim in the desk to the left, Marcy at the right. I can see them without moving my head. Feet flat on the floor, hands folded; they sat stiffly as though mocking her.

  And she knew the teacher planned to punish them all.

  Then the teacher appeared at the desk, appeared from nowhere as people can only within a dream. The teacher was not Miss Kostner.

  Michael was the teacher. He was smiling.

  He would be the one to inflict punishment and she knew there was nothing she could do to prevent him.

  Michael summoned her with a nod. In the eternity it took to walk from her desk to him, she watched the transformation. It was a surprise, but it had the feeling of something that made perfect, irrefutable sense.

  Michael’s face lost its familiarity. He might have been a wax statue whose features had been instantly reworked by a sculptor’s invisible hand. His mouth became a cruel slash. His nostrils flared. His eyes held the too-bright gleam of taxidermist’s glass,

  I do not know him, she thought. I have never known him.

  Michael opened the top drawer of the desk. He took out the ruler.

  Trembling, she held out her hand, palm up. Michael slowly ‘raised the ruler, keeping it an unending, frozen moment at the peak of its climb.

  She waited for the fiery slash.

  The ruler sliced the air, a blur, first the brownish-yellow of wood, then shining steel as it becomes a long, sharp knife that severed her hand at the wrist.

  There was no blood. There was no pain. Her hand lay on the green—desk blotter, fingers curled up, an insect dying on its back.

  Michael-Who-Was-Not-Michael said, “Now the pain. Now the blood.”

  And he—Michael-Who-Was-A-Stranger—stabbed her, the knife a cold intrusion in her belly, stabbed her, a twisting sharpness in her chest, stabbed her, a rending, ferocious agony in her throat.

  This is a dream! Dreams cannot hurt you! Dreamscannothurt! Beth screamed in her mind.

  Her subconscious commanded all its resolve, willed her Out—out of the dream-horror. Thoughts rushed in to soothe her, comfort her: All is well and my children are safe I am safe no fear no harm no hurt no danger no killing no blood no death No Death NO DEATH!!!

  The succession of consoling ideas wove together in a heavy tapestry that covered over her dream, hiding it under a thick-layered cloth of assurance, concealing it from memory.

  When Beth Louden awoke the next morning, she felt tired, a bit achey and cranky, as though she had not had a good night’s sleep. She thought she might have had a nightmare.

  She tried to recall it.

  She could not, not for the life of her
.

  — | — | —

  FOUR

  MICHAEL PIERCED the yolk of his second over-easy egg with the corner of a half slice of toast. At the counter, Beth, in her housecoat, poured herself coffee in a yellow “Smiley Face” mug and then came to join him. Through the east window, the sun cast a sharply angled parallelogram between them on the butcher block table.

  “Good eggs,” Michael said. He performed a Groucho Marx, eyebrow waggling leer. “Eggs help a man restore some of his recently drained vital juices.”

  Beth laughed. “Michael, you are terrible.”

  “I yam what I yam and ‘at’s all what I yam,’ Michael grinned, left eye set in a Popeye squint.

  The portable radio on the counter reported the eight o’clock weather forecast. The start of the work week would be—“What else, Chicagoland?” demanded a manic deejay—another scorcher, temperature near 90, humidity near “hideous!”

  Michael said, “We could use a good rain, break this heat wave.”

  “It would help,” Beth agreed.

  Same old scene in the same old script, Michael thought. Breakfast: The Husband and The Wife discuss The Weather, and then, naturally, The Kids.

  “What time do Marcy and Kim roll in?” he asked.

  “The bus is supposed to be at their school by 10:30. I’ll leave here early, though, so I can stop out at Lincoln Junior College for a catalog and registration information before I pick up the girls.”

  “Uh-huh,” Michael nodded, finishing the egg, then saying what he knew she’d be pleased to hear. “I’m glad to see you’re excited about going back to school, Beth.”

  “And I’m glad you’re glad. I think it will mean something important to us both. I mean, our future doesn’t have to be more of the present routine, does it?”

  “Right,” Michael said—and his future definitely would not be. As for Beth—Hey, kiddo, you probably don’t want to plan too far ahead, okay?

  Toying with the handle of her mug, Beth pursed her lips thoughtfully. She said, “It’s been strange—not having the girls home these two weeks. I’ve missed them and worried about them, but, you know, I think it did work out well for the two of us, Michael.”