The Magpie's Return

by Peter Wright

  Helen places a clock radio on the nightstand and sets the time. The radio old, and she apologizes for the poor reception as she twists the knob. Static, a fading pop tune, and you think of your mother’s kitchen songs. The only clear station the news channel at the dial’s end. The movement of troops, the price of oil. Helen turns it off. A shrug. “It’s there if you need it.”

  Helen offers another piece of chicken to Chestnut and hands over her phone. “Call your people. We’ll get you wherever you need to go. Tonight, tomorrow—whatever they need, we’ll do.”

  You study the screen. The ice over you, the distance beneath. The phone a relic from another world, and for a moment, you can’t remember how it works, and you stare, stupid and transfixed. When memory finds you, you enter the number and hold the phone to your ear. A man answers. You whisper. “Uncle Bill?”

  “Kayla?” A pause. “Kayla, where are you?”

  You look at Helen, Chestnut on her lap. “I’m safe.” You shift the phone from the swollen side of your face.

  “Are you with the police?”

  “No.”

  “Where are you?”

  “With a friend.”

  The dead air an ocean, and you fear nothing more than saying the words that will make the nightmare real. “We’re so sorry.”

  Chestnut rolls onto his side and offers Helen his belly. His ears pinned back, a gurgle from his throat. “They took mom.”

  “We’re trying to find out what happened to her.” Another pause. “The police have been here. They tore through everything. They took your Uncle Alex. They’re holding him in the city. At least that’s what we think. They’ve rounded up lots of people. Don’t worry. We’ll find him and your mom. And we’ll get the people who did this.” Your aunt’s voice in the background, an overheard conversation—the police car that keeps circling their block. Your uncle returns: “Tell me where you are. We’ll come get you.”

  You pause. “I have to go. I’m safe, don’t worry.”

  “Kayla?”

  “I love you.”

  You hang up. Speaking has left you weary. The phone a boulder in your hand. “They have my Uncle Alex. He said they’ve arrested lots of people.”

  “I’ve heard the ones they can’t fit in jail they’re keeping in the stadium.”

  You picture the city stadium, a building slated for demolition before the Shut-In. Its leaky roof, the wooden seats cut for a slimmer generation. You went to the circus there, and now you see the tightrope walker captured in a web of light, the starshine reflection of sequins, a beautiful, floating vision above the darkness where your mother might wait.

  The phone rings. Helen studies the screen. “Your uncle.”

  “Don’t.” Another ring. “The police are watching him.”

  Helen turns off the phone. She sets Chestnut back on the bed. Her hand reaches out, but you recoil, a reflex, the memory of Slater’s fist and the black light that waits on the other side of consciousness. Helen with a heavy smile before patting the bedspread. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it all out.”

  You lie in bed and stare until the clock’s red digits vibrate, an electric pulse, a hum that fills your body. The Earth has almost completed its rotation since the mob burst through your door, and here is your new midnight. You clutch the pillow, your legs tucked against your chest. The movie resumes, and the images now breathe and stretch their legs, and you accept the hallucinations for they seem no less real than anything else. The pictures random, their lack of narrative atoned for in their vibrancy. Your mother crumpled on the living room floor. Your father at the grill, a veil of smoke. Your mother turning as she runs barefoot across the yard. Go!

  11:34—the minute expands, swallowing you. Close your eyes. Images of your parents tumble over you, and you’re reminded of a November day they buried you beneath the backyard leaves, deepening layers, one after the other. Snapshots from last night and a thousand days before. The spasms come, a rocking you can no more stop than a hiccup or sneeze. A reflex rooted in synapses and a truth beyond language. The bedsprings twang, and the headboard nudges the wall. This rhythm your own, the darkness all around, and as long as you keep moving, you can push away the worst pictures, the ones that fight to consume you. A coordinate plane rises from the dark sea, the headboard’s thump a crest, the spring’s squeak a trough, and your body dissolves into a wave, a thin line rising and falling until the sky bleeds from black to gray.

  Exhausted, your skin shining with sweat, you speak to your parents because you feel them near. “I’m OK. I’m OK.”

  The chickadee calls as you drift. Feebee, feebee.

  “I have to go to work.” Helen on the bed’s edge. Blink away your dreams. Your house the summer it was built. Uncle Bill nailing a crooked stairwell, his insistence the twisted runners were necessary to keep the house from falling apart. You look up. Crows on the exposed roof beams. The birds silent save their feathers’ thick ruffle.

  “I have to go to work.”

  The room’s dark washes away. The movie spins back into your head. Morning sun in the curtains. You’re humbled by the room’s lit reality, its modest dimensions and tight corners. Last night you swore this bed was a raft upon a wild sea, swore you’d drown if you tried to escape. Helen sets a plate on the nightstand. A peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. “You need to eat,” Helen says.

  You clear your throat. “I will.”

  “The chicken’s in the fridge. And there’s more bread for sandwiches.” She strokes Chestnut’s side. “He and I already went to the backyard. He’s a good boy, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe I’ll get a dog. He’s got me thinking that.” Her phone rings. She checks the number. “Your uncle again. He’s been calling all night.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He won’t know where we are. At least I don’t think he can find out.” She presses a button and the screen goes blank. She stands. “We can call him tonight if you want. Or later.” She gestures to the nightstand. “I picked up some magazines from the break room. Can’t say there’s anything a young girl would like, but you never know.”

  A goodbye. A final scratch behind Chestnut’s ear. Two windows in the room. The one by the bed faces the alley. You rise and stand at the edge of the other window. The curtain pulled back, a sliver of street. An elementary-school boy on the sidewalk. Flannel sleeves and jeans, a backpack that reminds you of a turtle’s shell. He whips the air with a stick. Your cheek against the cool plaster until the boy disappears.

  The day passes. You dream—a wooden balcony outside your bedroom window, a structure unnoticed before. Below, your field hockey team scrimmages in your father’s garden. Their cleats tear up plants, his pots smashed by balls and sticks. Above you, balanced on skeletal beams, your father and uncles. You call them, but your voice fades beneath their hammer blows. Looking down, you realize your foot is broken and set not in a cast but in a small tree trunk. Snow falls. The hockey game and hammering continue. On the bare wood, eddies of white join the sawdust, the rhythm of waves.

  You pick up the sandwich then return it to the plate. You stay awake until dawn then sleep through the day—you don’t eat—the rhythms of your life turned inside out. You have stopped being yourself and become your shadow. You switch on the radio to hear a voice beyond the one in your head, dispatches from a world that’s continued to turn without you. The weather and traffic. An increase in heating oil supplies, good news for the coming winter. The manhunt for dissident leaders. Campus libraries burned. A turn of a knob and the voice falls silent. Let the world spin without you. You pick up the magazines, drawn by their publication dates, the months before the Shut-In. You flip the pages, scents of stale perfume, then read first paragraphs—dorm-room fashions and exercises for slimmer waists. Lie down and shut your eyes and allow the weight to drag you back into the dark.

  Evening and Helen warms leftovers on the stove and takes Chestnut for a walk, a leash fashioned from a length of clothesline. In
their absence, you feel small, consumed by the house and its emptiness, and when they return, you rush to greet them but then freeze halfway down the stairs. The angling perspective, the waiting living room. The nightmare you woke into the other night. You are a high diver upon the board, and below, a pool drained of water. “I can’t.”

  Helen dims the lights and draws the curtains. She approaches you, her hand out. She gives a light tug, but you’re frozen, and she comes to stand beside you. “I’m right here.” Together, you navigate shuffling steps to the table. Helen guiding, her hand on yours. “You’re safe here, darling. You’re OK.”

  Silence as Helen finishes in the kitchen and brings your plates. She sits and bows her head, a silent grace, and you follow her lead, wondering if you, too, should pray. Helen talks—the troubles in the capital. The checkpoints and fires and roving gangs. The stadium’s new perimeter of fencing and concrete barriers. The dog packs, abandoned animals, their owners missing or dead. A child mauled on her way to school.

  Her tone sharper as she describes her job. A windowless cubicle, but a view unlike any other. Her access to the emails of the police, the mayor and his staff. The secrets she knows, the hypocrites and petty crooks. Men and women she could expose with a few clicks. She rails against Slater. “We’ve had our run-ins. He’s a nobody. He knows it, and he knows I know it, and it galls him.” Chestnut in her lap, a strip of chicken held for him to eat. “It’s a crime what happened to your family. He’s the one who should be locked up. Tomorrow I’ll start looking into the stadium files. We’ll find out where your uncle is.”

  Your first and only bite of meat like putty on your tongue. You brace yourself and swallow. A hand on your throat and the fear of choking. You sip your water. “And my mother.”

  “And your mother.” Helen finishes her last forkful. “You’re not hungry?”

  “No.”

  She stands, the dog in her arms. “Come with me.”

  The basement door just off the kitchen. Helen in front. The steps creak, the shine of naked bulbs. A concrete floor and a silent furnace. Cobwebs and thin, black pipes tucked between the rafters. Along the walls, shelves of metal and plastic, stacked boxes, their sides labeled with magic marker. Tools hung from a pegboard, and in the corner, a bike on flat tires. Helen sets Chestnut down, and he sniffs the floor’s rusted drain. She leads you to the room’s far corner. Here, another set of shelves. Helen moves a stack of boxes, a wooden chair missing an arm. Her feet planted wide, she grabs the shelving unit’s side. “Step back.”

  The shelves swing out. The groan of hinges, the exposure of a hidden room, and you’re taken back by the intersection of reality and your dreams’ warped architectures. Chestnut steps forward then halts, front paw raised, snout twitching. The scent strikes you as well, damp and stale. Helen crosses the threshold and dissolves into the dark. A cord pulled, a harsh light, a framing in a room barely large enough for her to turn around. You step forward. Shelves on one wall. Canned food. A lantern. Unmarked boxes. Against the other wall, a folded cot. You slide one of the door’s heavy locking bars.

  “The kids think I’m crazy, don’t they?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying.” She tiptoes, a quick peak onto the highest shelf. “They think it because their parents tell them. Only a crazy woman would have a secret room like this.”

  “My parents never said anything like that.”

  Helen nods. “No, I’d bet they didn’t.” She swipes a cobweb from the light. “Truth is this room was here when I bought the house. I bolted the shelves to the door, but that’s it. Can’t say I mind having it. Even if someone knew you were in here, they wouldn’t be able to get you out. Not without a blowtorch.” She pulls the bulb’s dangling cord, and you step back into the light. She swings the door and shelving unit back into place. “If something happened while I was gone, you could hide in here. No one would find you.”

  Another night. The digits on the nightstand clock. A march forward, and your past crumbling. Tonight you are not smoke. Tonight you are pure weight. The weight pins you, your heart smothered. The weight not of stone but of memories and fear. Your brain alight with haywire images. The projector’s bony clatter. A thousand moments, beautiful and mundane. Then your father’s broken glasses on the floor. Your mother lifted in another man’s arms. The movies have a hundred thousand beginnings but only one end. You close your eyes and rock. You struggle to bury your thoughts, to overflow them with distractions, the reciting of theorems and formulas and statistics. A thicket of graphs. Trajectories beautiful and elegant. All of it true. All of it undeniable. Sleep coming only when the chickadees wake and greet the sun.

  A note waits on the nightstand.

  * * *

  I already let the dog out. There’s some food here—and more downstairs. Please eat something if you’re ready. There’s a towel and cloth on the sink if you want to shower. Don’t answer the door. I will be home as soon as I can.

  * * *

  A water bottle beside the note, a plate with a fresh sandwich. The dog’s snout nudges your hand. You lie still, listening. A truck in the alley. The roll of wheels. A squawk of breaks and a tumbling din. Trash day, you think. Wednesday.

  Your hair matted. The sheets sour with your smell. You cry as you step into the shower. Your first cry. The vulnerability of nakedness, the shower’s masking drum. You leave the bathroom door open, the curtain pulled back, a view into the empty hallway. Let them come, you think, the men with their ropes and guns. Let them come. You lower yourself, and your hip strikes the tub’s side. Suds circle the drain. Let them come. You’re so tired. Tired in body, in mind. Tired of being adrift. Tired of the horror movies that have taken the place of dreams. You lift your chin. The water stings your face. Your vision blurs. Water mixes with your tears, all of it running down the drain. You say your mother’s name, your father’s. They’re just sounds, syllables uttered to feel them upon your tongue, to hear them spoken in a world that shouldn’t be allowed to forget them.

  You turn off the water. The shower curtain drawn, the space dim. A lingering of warmth. You pull the towel over your shoulders and curl up. Echoes in the porcelain. Your breath. The drain’s gurgle. You close your eyes and fade into the white noise.

  The call of sirens rises from the pipes. You sit, kinks and pain. Your neck stiff. Pull aside the shower curtain. A spray of drops and the clank of metal rings. Chestnut waits on the mat. Your first steps awkward. You latch onto the sink, the door. Your legs dead. An ungainly navigation back to the guest room and a flop onto the bed.

  You bring Chestnut to your side. The sirens swell, overlap, fade, swell again. You turn on the radio. The heralding of arrests in the capital and beyond. The infiltration of terrorist cells, conspiracies squashed. Repeated urgings to tune in to the Civil Defense Network’s twenty-four-hour loop of wanted radicals. Right-thinking citizens called upon to band together and police their neighborhoods. With a click, you snuff the voice.

  You tear the crust off the nightstand’s sandwich and feed it to Chestnut. Your lack of hunger surprises you, and nestled in the shadows of your belly, a tiny, scintillating ember. Your body operating on a kind of internal starshine. The consumption of reserves, a private and pure cannibalism. You alone in control.

  You drift. Dreams, consciousness, and their gray borders. The movement of sunlit patches across the bed and floor. You hold the dog to your chest and try to visualize your existence in component pieces but you’re vexed by the blank spaces. You try to think ahead, but the world beyond this house seems impossible. Dusk comes, and you wait for the click of the lock’s key. An hour passes beyond Helen’s usual return. Then another hour. A quiet radiates through the rooms, and you imagine the stillness rising from the basement’s rusted drain. The hush of broken watches and seized motors and gaping, breathless mouths. A poke from Chestnut’s wet snout, a whimper, and you wish the dog would just go. You can live with the scent of urine, but not his pleas. When you can take no more, you pick hi
m up and tiptoe down the stairs.

  “Helen?”

  The dog frantic, whines of thanks and urgency. A glance out the front window. The driveway empty and no one on the street. All the porch lights out. More sirens. Chestnut yelps. You hurry through the unlit rooms, apologies, calm whispers. “You’re OK. You’re OK.”

  You kneel on the back porch and let the dog go. Chestnut fades into the dark. The night pulses with sirens and crickets. You wait then grow worried. You call the dog, a harsh whisper as you creep down the porch stairs, the concrete cool on your bare feet. “Chestnut?” Your oak tree across the alley, a rising as tall as a ship’s mast, and its leaves sway beneath the hazy moon. “Chestnut?” Panic now. The fear the dog has wormed beneath the gate, the instinct of return. The fear of losing the last thing you love. Then the jangle of his tags, his jerky stride. A reappearance from the night.

  You pick him up and hold him close. “Don’t scare me. Please don’t scare me again.”

  The small hours beyond midnight. Helen no doubt caught at work, stranded by the nightly curfew and the capital’s checkpoints. She’ll return by morning. You repeat this. At first to yourself, then out loud. “Helen will be back soon.” You throw back the covers and pace. Upstairs and down and up again. Your eyes adjust to the dark, and you’re cast into a diorama, a mistake amid the scenes of stillness. Helen will come back with supplies and a gruff story that will make you smile, her adventures, your relief. You repeat the words, you voice a lonely wave in the quiet. “Helen will be back soon.”

  You return to the guest room. Your body’s rhythms twisted. Day for night. Your empty stomach and loss of hunger. Your fear of loneliness and your fear of the mob. Your fear of the life you can no longer imagine waiting beyond Helen’s front door. The feeling of home in a stranger’s house. On the radio, an interview. A local patriot leader, talk of the freedom of submission that awaits a Godly nation.