Strangers

by Mort Castle

  Marcy, in her nightgown, glanced nervously at the broken lamp, then at her father, then back to the lamp.

  “Those lamps were expensive,” Michael said, “but the money isn’t the important thing. We’ve got a broken lamp. Your mom is going to be heartsick. I don’t think we can have it repaired and I’m sure it can’t be replaced. So, who did it?”

  Neither child answered him.

  “All right,” Michael said. He ran a hand over his hair and then said, “Accidents happen. I understand that. So we’ve got an accident and I’m not happy about it, but I am going to find out who caused it. Once I learn that and when I hear an ‘I’m sorry,’ that will be the end of it, okay?”

  He paused for a few seconds, studying the children. They were on the spot, he thought, and that was a good place for them to be. Uh-huh, and a bit of hurt and unhappiness at the old homestead.

  “Okay,” he said, looking at Kim. “What about it?”

  “No,” Kim said emphatically. “I didn’t bust it, Daddy.”

  “Marcy?”

  “No, Daddy.”

  Michael folded his arms across his chest. “It seems we have a mystery here, young ladies. Something is broken—but nobody broke it. Now how can that be?”

  Marcy tentatively said, “Maybe it fell over by itself, Daddy.”

  “Oh,” Michael said, with an exaggerated nod. “That’s an interesting theory. Or maybe there’s a stranger in the house, somebody we don’t even know lives here, and he knocked it down. That’s a possibility too, isn’t it, Marcy?”

  “I…I don’t know, Daddy,” Marcy said.

  “I always get blamed but I didn’t…”

  “Quiet,” Michael ordered. “The both of you, go to your room.” He made a show of looking at his watch. “It’s a quarter to nine and nine is bedtime. I’ll see you then and one of you had better have something to tell me. Girls, I’m angry now and I’m on the way of being angrier, but if someone owns up to this, it will be okay and nobody gets punished. I don’t punish you for telling the truth. But—” he waited a moment to give the threat extra impact—“if I don’t hear a confession, then you’re both getting spankings—and I mean good ones.”

  It was five minutes after nine when he went to their room. He gave them extra time to ponder his threat, to sweat over it. And hey! Wasn’t paddling your children one of the requisite parental duties in this ‘Forget Dr. Spock’ conservative era? Yeah, smash your kid in the face with a fist and you were a bastard of a child abuser, wallop that kid’s bottom with an open hand and you were a caring, concerned disciplinarian.

  In response to his “Well?” Marcy only shook her head, but Kim blew up.

  “You are going to blame me! I know! You’re not fair! You’re mean!”

  “That’s enough,” Michael warned, but he didn’t end Kim’s tirade.

  “You’re plain mean and you want to hurt…”

  He nearly smiled. Uh-huh, the little toad had that right without even realizing that she did!

  “…I don’t care! You can’t hurt me. You can spank me as hard as you want and I’m not going to cry!”

  Michael slowly rubbed his chin. He somberly said, “I don’t have much choice then, do I?”

  Kim lay on his lap as rigid as a broomstick. “Are you sure you have nothing to say to me, Kim?”

  She arched up, twisting her head to glower defiantly at him. She kept her vow. She didn’t even say “Ouch.” Afterward she said, “I told you you couldn’t make me cry and it didn’t even hurt and I really hate you!”

  He paddled Marcy. She shed all the tears he expected and then some.

  With the girls in their beds, he stood at the door. “I’m sorry you made me do that. And whichever one of you did break the lamp ought to think seriously about apologizing to her sister for getting her paddled. Good night.”

  Walking downstairs, he reflected it had not been a bad evening, not bad at all. And there was still the scene to come when Beth saw that “oh so lovely” lamp!

  “What are the signs”—she hesitated, sipped her old-fashioned. It was her second. The first was a subtle glow within, just enough relaxation to give her courage—“of a nervous breakdown?”

  Across the small table in the comer of the dimly lit lounge, Kevin Bollender stirred his scotch and water. Quietly, he said, “Beth, am I right in thinking that’s not a theoretical question?”

  She smiled glumly. “Does it show?”

  Kevin said, “You’ve got a lot on your mind. There’s something bothering you, probably a number of ‘somethings.’ That shows. Feel like talking about it?”

  “Feel like talking?” she answered with a shrug and a melancholy laugh. “I feel like I have to. My whole life is a mess. It’s like being on a treadmill in quicksand. I keep on walking and walking and I don’t go forward, only down.”

  “Please go on.”

  Whatever floated up in her mind came spewing forth as words, the orders of events no real order at all, her silent lulls made less awkward by swallows of her drink: Brad Zeller and Kim’s accident and the death of a dog and a guinea pig and—It’s good saying this. He is really listening to me—Mom’s stroke and always, always now, this heavy sense of dread…

  She hit an abrupt dead end. She thought there was more she wanted to say but she had no idea how to say it.

  She felt a jumble of emotions: embarrassment, foolishness, annoyance at herself for burdening someone else with her troubles—and relief. She stared at her glass. It would be hard to look at Kevin right now; she had revealed more of herself to him than she ever had to anyone else.

  Even to Michael, way back when she could believe everything was fine between them? She wasn’t sure. She searched her memory for those times of closeness and intimacy between herself and her husband that surely had to be there, but moments like that seemed so long ago, so ethereally distant, that they had no more substance and reality than a dream.

  Kevin said, “Things have been going badly for you. You’re under a great deal of pressure. You’re hurting. I understand. And there’s something I want you to know.”

  “What’s that?”

  He took her fingers from her glass and held her hand. She had to look at him then. She saw the solicitude in his eyes, heard it in his voice. “I care.”

  She wished she could freeze time, hold onto this moment and the near-magical assurance she felt that “Everything was all right.”

  Then she pulled away her hand. There was something wrong in her sitting in a cocktail lounge, holding hands with this young man, her teacher, telling him her private woes. She had a husband and children at home. She felt adulterous and immoral and…

  While she couldn’t abandon her guilt, she did manage to set it aside for the time being.

  “Why?” she asked.

  The corner of Kevin’s mouth twisted. “Sorry, afraid I don’t get the question.”

  “You said that you care, Kevin,” she said. “I…I’d like to believe that. It would help me right now.” She went on in a rush, realizing he might construe what she said as insulting but having to say it nonetheless. “Why do you care about me?”

  Kevin raised his hand. “One,” he said, ticking off points on his fingers, “you’re intelligent. Maybe I’m funny that way, but I have always liked bright people. Two, you’re articulate. Half the people you meet nowadays can’t express a simple thought. Three, it so happens that you’re easy to talk with. How’s that for starters?”

  She had to smile. “Please continue.”

  Her smile was returned. “Okay, let’s not forget that you laugh at my jokes, in class and out. We’ve discovered that we like the same old movies. Besides, when my poor jade plant at home was on its way to the Great Greenhouse in the Sky, you were the one who told me to lighten up on the watering and saved the little critter’s life.”

  Kevin rested his elbows on the table. “I like you, Beth,” His voice dropped and grew husky. “I like your brown eyes and those freckles. There’s something woman
and little girl about you, Beth, and that appeals to a man who…”

  He suddenly leaned back against the booth’s padded backrest. Not looking at her, he too lightly said, “Oh, you know what I mean. It’s just that, well, we’re friends, okay?”

  Friends, Beth thought. That was what they were, and so there was no reason for her to have an ounce of guilt about being with Kevin Bollender. But I do. Certainly no one would condemn her for having a drink twice a week with her friend. Then why did I tell Michael only that some “people from class” stop for drinks, without mentioning that the “some people” are Kevin and myself?

  “Okay,” Kevin said, “let’s take a look at some of what’s bothering you.” His tone became more formal, almost as if he were lecturing to a class of one. “People have what we term a nervous breakdown when they’re overwhelmed by free-floating anxiety. You’re experiencing anxiety, but it’s not free-floating. There are real causes that triggered your feelings of depression and apprehension. To put it simply, some rotten, painful, out-and-out bad things have happened to you. You’ve taken an emotional clobbering. You’ve gone through the grinder, so naturally you feel all ground up. But you’re dealing with it. You’re handling it. You’re meeting your responsibilities and getting along from day to day.”

  “But why do I keep thinking more out-and-out bad things have to be on the way?”

  Kevin pursed his lips to draw in a whistle. “Because that’s the way people do think, Beth. They look for reasons in the unreasonable and patterns in the random events that make up all the crappy stuff that occurs in life. Years ago, someone wrote The Book of Job to try to understand the ‘why?’ of human suffering. You take a look at today’s bestseller charts and the big book is called When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Same old ‘Why’ question, same attempt to find answers.”

  “I see, Dr. Bollender,” Beth said with a nod. “So I am not—what’s the clinical term—becoming a loony?”

  “Nein,” Kevin replied with a comic Viennese accent. “It is nicht crazy to be depressed when der depressing things give you der kick in der keister.” He grew serious again. “I can’t consider you a likely candidate for a nervous breakdown. I sense a real strength in you, Beth; probably more strength than you know is there. You’ve got internal resources, that ability to cope and to keep on coping.”

  “Kevin?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks for…for the free psychotherapy.

  Kevin laughed. He held up his empty glass. “Not free. The workman is worthy of his wages and all that. You can buy me a drink.”

  It wasn’t until the waitress brought Kevin’s scotch and water—“No, no thanks, the lady doesn’t want another”—that Beth gave him the thanks she’d originally intended to.

  She said, “Thank you for being my friend.”

  — | — | —

  FIFTEEN

  MICHAEL TURNED west onto Elmscourt Lane. In the back seat, Kim yipped, “Good! We’re almost there!”“You like visiting Laura and Vern don’t you?” Michael asked.

  “Yeah,” Kim answered. “They’ve got great video games!”

  “Oh,” Michael laughed, “they do? I wasn’t aware that Laura was a video game addict. How about you, Marcy? Glad to have a sleepover at the Engelkings’?”

  “Sure, Daddy. It’s always fun with Aunt Laura and Uncle Vern.”

  Beth smiled, wondering when the Engelkings had become “Aunt and Uncle.” She had to admit that she herself thought of them in much the same way.

  Gazing through the windshield, Beth admired the impressionistic beauty of the setting sun that splashed the hazy blue sky with ripples of orange and pink. Her window was open an inch or so. Today, Friday, had been warm, with a light breeze that seemed left over from summer, and she thought she smelled the lazy-crisp aroma of burning leaves. A moment later, she realized that could not be so. Like most suburbs, High Wood had ordinances against leaf-burning.

  Funny how the mind works, Beth thought. For a day as lovely as this she had naturally conjured up a fitting scent of fall. Well, that was certainly better than dreaming up all that dire, threatening, terrible garbage that had made her feel like a basket case without a basket!

  She was realizing just how much last week’s talk with Kevin—Bless him—had helped, giving her insight into what she had been feeling and why. She’d vowed to take one day at a time, accepting whatever “bad” might occur if there were no other choice, dealing with it, but no longer forgetting to see the “good” of each day when it was there. She could handle life; she knew she could. (In fact, several times, when she felt herself slipping back into the blues, she gave herself a “chin up, shoulders back” pep-talk: You’re okay, Beth Louden. You’re making it and you’re going to keep right on making it.”)

  The power of positive thinking? Or maybe a ridiculous attempt to be Pollyanna? She didn’t think so. She was simply seeing things as they were, and that made all the difference. For instance, when she got home after her conversation with Kevin last week and learned that one of her antique crystal lamps was smashed, she was angry, upset, and sad. Case closed. It was not multiple choice: A) the worst disaster since the destruction of Pompeii; B) a certain portent of imminent catastrophes; C) part of a Cosmic Plot against the Loudens; D) all of the above.

  She wasn’t sure if Michael had been correct in punishing both children but he had and what was done was done. The girls didn’t seem to have any lingering bad feelings, anyway. Everything was settled, everything was normal, everything was “all right” for the Loudens; that was how it felt to Beth.

  And she was hopeful that tomorrow, her mother would take a giant step back to “allrightness,” too. They’d pick her up in the morning and keep her until Sunday evening. While Dr. Rhinehardt was pleased with Claire Wynkoop’s progress thus far, he believed it important that she start moving back into real life.

  “She needs to be with people she cares about,” Dr. Rhinehardt had explained, “and who care about her. She ought to see something besides sickness. It could help snap her out of her lethargy, make her work harder in therapy. It will give her a goal, you see, remind her that as soon as she’s able, she can resume her place as an active member of your family.”

  Claire would have the girls’ room. So she could rest in a quiet house when she needed to, Marcy and Kim were spending tonight and tomorrow night with Laura and Vern. Vern would bring them home late Sunday morning; that way the kids could visit with their grandmother before she had to be taken back to the convalescent home.

  Michael pulled into the long, winding driveway. “Ladies, we have arrived,” he announced, putting the LTD in “Park” and switching off the engine.

  Her train of pleasant thought broken, Beth turned her head in his direction. Michael was smiling; Beth thought he looked as handsome as he had in those carefree days of “UsedToBe,” when she was a college freshman and he was always the joking senior—”I’m trying to woo you, Beth, and make you my woo-man, woo, woo, woo!” More than that, his face was endearingly familiar. Those crinkles around his eyes, she had been with him through the years as time had etched them, and that slightly discolored canine tooth, a root canal three years ago…

  Her throat tightened. She and Michael shared a past, all the moments, important or insignificant, that comprised a life together: watching late movies, painting a kitchen, catching a cold and passing it back and forth like a game of “hot potato,” making love, raising children…

  Kim had pushed open the rear door and was racing toward the house. Marcy followed at a walk.

  “I love you, Michael,” Beth said.

  Michael waggled his eyebrows dramatically as he slipped the car keys into the side pocket of his sportcoat. “That’s always fine to hear,” he said, “but could I ask what prompted it?”

  She knew she couldn’t explain all of it, but she summed it up with, “You’re a good man.”

  He was, he was, she knew he was. He was warm and considerate and loving, and any other feeli
ng she had about him was sheer idiocy. Michael, her Michael, a stranger? Please… and, let’s face the truth, Beth Louden. You isolated yourself from him, sealing yourself inside a shell of unhappiness and crazy imaginings, and then you blamed him!

  “Michael, kiss me,” she said.

  He did, leaning down to her, his, hands on her shoulders.

  “Uh,” he said, “I believe we’re expected for dinner.”

  “Yes,” Beth said. She shivered. “Let’s try to get home early, Michael. I want to make love.”

  Michael clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Honey, seven minutes after we finish dessert, we’re out the door!”

  Beaming, Vern greeted them. “Enter, enter and welcome! If the adults will accompany me to the family room…”

  “Huh!” Kim interrupted, “you’re going to have drinks, I bet!”

  “Indeed,” Vern laughed. “We’ll partake of a potable while Laura finishes preparing the repast, and if you young ladies would like, it so happens there’s a new cartridge in the Atari, awaiting the touch of a youthful hand on the joy-stick.”

  “Is it Ms. Pac-Man?” Kim asked.

  “Far better,” Vern said, “an outer-space adventure in which you get to blast meteorites, missiles, and many-headed monsters.”

  “Sounds like an educational game,” Michael said.

  Vern guffawed. “It’s good for the kids to have a chance to create their own television violence.”

  In the family room, the electronic sounds of asteroids and spaceships being blasted floating down the hall, Vern mixed Beth an old-fashioned, Michael a Seven and Seven, and himself a whiskey and soda. “Beth, Michael,” Vern said quietly, “I know there’ve recently been some rough times for you, so”—Vern raised his glass in a toast—“to better days, and to the friendship that gets us all through the bad days.”

  Clicking her glass against Michael’s and Vern’s, Beth wished she could somehow take them all in her arms right now—embrace all the people she loved: Michael and Marcy and Kim and Vern and Laura and Mom…