Dominoes in Time

by Matthew Warner

  “And you call me paranoid?”

  “Or maybe the radio waves from our monitor took twelve hours to bounce off the atmosphere, and then you heard it later. Like an echo.”

  “Fine. Then explain how I saw you smack him.”

  Rick stared at her like she was an alien. Finally, he sighed and placed his hands flat on the table. He bowed his head. “I hate to say this, but maybe you’re seeing things.”

  She threw down her napkin. “You know what? You do the dishes tonight. I’m going to my office.”

  She was crying by the time she reached her desk. Damn him. What had happened to their relationship that they couldn’t discuss anything without him looking askance at her? Something bizarre was going on, and the one person whom she should be able to rely on thought she was hallucinating.

  A framed family portrait from Disney World sat on her desk. Just the three of them. She noticed, as she did every time she looked at it, how Rick and Christopher both wore yellow clothes and the same, idiotic smile. Their hair was identically light brown and fine. Even the sun seemed to shine on them; Heaven smiles on the perfect. She, on the other hand, wore a black T-shirt and blank expression. Her hair hung limp under a pathetic set of Mickey Mouse ears. She stood in the shade. And she was way too thin, fresh out of rehab. I don’t fit in.

  She used the phone on her desk to call her next door neighbor. When Mary answered, she launched in without preamble:

  “Are you playing a prank on me with your baby monitor?”

  “What? Well, hello to you, too, Susan.”

  “Please, it’s important. This is driving me crazy.”

  Mary huffed into the receiver. “No, sweetie. In fact, I haven’t even used our monitor lately. Adam can scream plenty loud enough on his own.”

  Susan felt a wave of relief. “Thanks.”

  “What’s happening?”

  Reluctantly, Susan told her about what she saw that afternoon in the video monitor. Her friend said she was shocked and concerned and to keep her apprised.

  After they hung up, Susan turned on the video monitor and stared at it. Christopher slept in his crib, blissfully unaware of his parents’ troubles. She listened to his soft breathing. Slowly, slowly, she relaxed.

  Seeing things. Maybe Rick was right. He could never trust her state of mind. How could he, when she had no right to trust it herself?

  That’s when she heard, through the monitor, the nursery’s door creak open. She told herself to stay calm. It was Rick—or at least it damn well better be. Nothing was amiss.

  But then Christopher’s visitor opened a window shade. Sunlight—impossible nighttime sunlight—poured into the room. The gray tones of the picture changed as the camera automatically shut off its night-vision mode.

  Susan looked out the window over her desk. It was pitch black outside. Due to it being overcast tonight, there wasn’t even moonlight. Nevertheless, she looked back to the monitor and saw Christopher stirring in slanted sunlight.

  Oh, my God.

  It appeared Rick was right—at least partially. Except she knew she wasn’t seeing the reflected radio waves from twelve hours ago. Like tonight, the cloud cover this morning—in fact, all week long—had been thick and gray. Tomorrow’s forecast, however, called for a sunny day.

  The future. She was looking at tomorrow morning’s events. When she had overheard herself singing “Old MacDonald,” that was from tonight’s bedtime ritual.

  She was so excited that she started to call Rick to come downstairs. This would prove she wasn’t delusional.

  But before she could open her mouth, Rick’s handgun appeared in the top corner of the TV frame. It pointed at the baby’s head.

  Susan screamed when it fired.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Rick caught up to her in the nursery. “What? What is it?”

  But Susan could only hold the baby and sob. Her crying upset Christopher, who also started to wail.

  Rick folded his bifocals. He crushed them in his fist as he crossed his arms. “I’m really getting tired of this.”

  “Tell me something,” she said when she could talk. “Why did you marry me?”

  “What kind of a question is that?”

  “After what happened to Janet.” Janet was his ex-wife. She had died of an embolism shortly after giving birth to Christopher. That was less than a year ago.

  “I still don’t understand you.”

  “How could you remarry immediately after she died?”

  “Uh, love, maybe? Does that seem plausible enough to you?”

  His sarcasm made her want to smack him, but that would have been too hard while holding Christopher. She carefully placed the baby into his crib and made shushing sounds until he quieted.

  “So you married me because it was plausible. Convenient, maybe, for you. Necessary. You thought it would look good to your constituents. Because the mayor is never a bachelor.”

  “Goddamn it, Susan. I wish you’d listen to the garbage that comes out of your mouth. It’s unwarranted.”

  You’re homicidal, she wanted to retort. I know what’s in your heart and how it wants to hold what’s loaded and sitting in our bedroom closet.

  Rick sighed deeply and sat down on a chair beside the crib. “Sometimes you and Christopher both, sometimes I just wish…”

  “Wish what?”

  He looked at her, his eyes hard and defiant. “Wish I didn’t have to deal with you.”

  Susan watched him stalk from the room.

  She knew that was the most truthful thing he’d said in a long time. He had made a terrible political move by remarrying within months of his first wife’s death. The media had lambasted his poor timing, and instead of praising him for acquiring a replacement mother for his son, they excoriated him for it. Susan begrudgingly agreed with them. Rick’s political standing had only worsened when his new wife’s drug habit and psychological problems emerged. Susan had kept those parts of herself well hidden during their whirlwind courtship.

  Her husband was a walking time bomb. Thank God something in the universe—maybe God Himself—had seen fit to warn her.

  She picked Christopher back up and paced the nursery with him. The baby was fascinated with the ceiling fan and kept rearing back to look at it.

  I should take Christopher. Just take him and go somewhere.

  Except she knew she would never get away with it. Rick would call the police and accuse her of kidnapping. Then she would lose all control of the situation, and the baby would go right back to Rick—and into harm’s way. Even taking the baby legally, somehow, if that could be accomplished, would be too hard. If she left right now and fled with Christopher to a hotel, filed for divorce the next day, did she seriously expect to get sole child custody? With her history? Again, the baby would return to Rick and within hours might be dead.

  She put Christopher back into his crib and took a deep breath. After a moment, she went to the master bedroom and rooted through the closet. She found Rick’s handgun in a shoebox, wrapped in oiled rags.

  If she wanted to save Christopher’s life, then there was only one solution.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Rick didn’t even glance up from his newspaper. Folded comfortably into his recliner, the smug bastard just went on peering through his bifocals at today’s headlines. He even raised the newspaper in front of his face, no doubt so he wouldn’t have to look at her.

  She fired through the paper. The bullet opened a stippled, black hole in a front page photo of Rick’s face.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Her hand shook so bad that she had to place the gun on the kitchen counter. She filled up a glass of water and raised it to her lips. Somehow it slipped out of her fingers and crashed into the sink. It didn’t break.

  If only cleaning up her crime could be as easy. She knew she would never get away with it. Her life was over.

  But at least Christopher will live.

  She stood there at the sink for a long time, gazing dumbly through the windo
w at a family of squirrels assaulting the bird feeder. She didn’t snap out of it until she heard a siren approaching from far away.

  The baby was crying, so she went to him. She calmly changed his diaper and pulled a bib onto him to catch his drool. She then took him with her to her office. Stars danced in her vision. Her rasping breath sounded like it belonged to someone else.

  The video monitor would show that everything in the future was all right, though—that it was worth it.

  Except, it still showed a dead baby boy. Blood stains covered the insides of the crib’s bumpers. And Rick’s handgun still dangled in the corner of the screen, the trigger guard hooked over the murderer’s finger. He hadn’t moved since doing the deed, just propped his forearms on the crib’s rails and stayed there, staring down at his handiwork. She imagined what she would see if the camera tilted up: perhaps a zombie Rick with a bullet hole in his face.

  Outside, the siren continued to get closer.

  As Susan watched in awe, the murderer put down the gun next to the baby’s body. The view suddenly tilted as the camera was picked up. For a moment, before it was switched off, the camera pointed at the killer’s face.

  She saw herself.

  Bewildered, Susan looked down at the baby in her arms. Why would I kill my own baby?

  But she already knew the answer. How could she not have seen this coming? Christopher wasn’t really hers. It was Rick’s—spawn of the man she hated.

  Of course, she wasn’t capable of killing Christopher tonight. But by next morning? Maybe. The siren that now turned onto her street would eventually summon more sirens and policemen with bulletproof vests and helmets and loudspeakers. In another twelve hours and without sleep, she could certainly see herself feeling trapped and out of options.

  A few hours prior to killing Christopher, then, she would be the person she saw smack him in the crib. Perhaps by that point she would blame Christopher for the whole predicament. She could already feel some of that anger rising now, so it must be true.

  She hugged the baby close and kissed him on both cheeks. “I can’t let that happen to you. I won’t.”

  Gently, she placed him down on his play mat next to her desk. Then she went upstairs to the kitchen. A police officer was already pounding the door, demanding she open up. The neighbors had probably heard the gunshot.

  A moment later, they heard one more.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The police detective stood on the front porch and stared at the glowing cherry of his cigarette. The fire slowly consumed the tobacco, just as time and crime consumed life. Such a shame.

  Inside the house, the crime scene techs murmured to each other as they examined the bodies of the city mayor and his wife. Someone else had already carted the baby out of here, hopefully on its way to a happy life.

  An officer stepped up beside him. “Excuse me.”

  “Yeah? Find something?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve been looking for that baby video monitor the neighbor mentioned from her phone conversation with the missus.”

  “I saw a device in the master bedroom. Was that it?”

  The officer shook his head. “That’s just an audio monitor that goes from the nursery to the bedroom.”

  “All right, then where’s the camera system that filmed the mayor beating up on his kid?”

  The officer handed him a sheet of white paper. “I found this sitting on top of the file cabinet downstairs.”

  “In the wife’s home office?”

  “Yes.”

  The detective glanced at it. After a moment, he looked up to the officer, questioning, then back down to the paper.

  Upon it, presumably drawn by the mayor’s wife, was a crude pencil sketch of a TV set. Inside the TV screen, she had taped a picture of a baby, cut out from a magazine.

  They regarded it in silence for a long time.

  It’s Just Business

  Tattoos on the arms. Shaven head glistening with sweat. Harley Davidson T-shirt stretched tight over a beer belly. Definitely not the kind of guy who should be parked outside the Grayhill Park tot lot.

  I watched him as I lifted Cody onto the swing and gave a gentle push. Tattoo Guy finally got out of his white van and lit a cigarette. He flipped open a cell phone and called someone. As he talked, he watched us and paced.

  Cody squealed and shook his head. “No, no, no. Get down.”

  “You want to get off the swing?”

  “Get down. Train.”

  I placed him on the ground, and he immediately took off, stubby legs flashing in the sun. He made a beeline for the jungle gym shaped like a train. I glanced at Tattoo Guy and followed.

  The big man stopped pacing and closed his phone. Now he just smoked his cigarette and stared at us. He wore wraparound sunglasses, but I knew he was watching Cody because his head swiveled when the boy left the train for the dirt pile. Cody held his arms up at head level to keep his balance.

  I wondered if we ought to leave, but then I thought, No, we have a right to be here. Let him leave.

  Still, I touched the bulge of the phone in my pocket. I wondered if I could overpower him if he attacked us. I’m sure he would say, Hey, buddy, you got the time? before drawing a gun or knife.

  No, he wouldn’t need weapons. He easily outweighed me by a hundred pounds. I had a bum knee, anyway.

  He crossed his arms, which showed off the twin dragons on his shoulders, visible because he’d torn off his T-shirt’s sleeves. When he flexed, the dragons appeared to breathe. He seemed to be arriving at a decision.

  I stepped onto the dirt pile, where Cody was stooping to retrieve a rock embedded in the dust. “Come on, bud, let’s—”

  Cody lost his balance. He was only two feet tall, if that, so I had no time to catch him. He tumbled forward and planted his face in the ground before rolling over.

  He sat up, shock written across his face. A pebble fell off his cheek. He looked okay—just a red mark on his forehead that would disappear within an hour. But the physical damage of a fallen toddler isn’t what to watch out for.

  I picked him up and held him as he inhaled his first, shuddering breath and screamed.

  Cody shrieked two more times as I shushed him and rocked him, rubbing his back. Twin teardrops traced dirty rivulets down his cheeks.

  But then he was over it. One suck of snot, and he was again saying, “Get down. Train.”

  I realized I’d lost track of Tattoo Guy. I wheeled around to face the van—expected to find him standing right behind me. Hey, buddy, you got the time?

  What I didn’t expect was to see him standing at the base of the big slide, arms open to catch the child now emerging from the bottom. He smiled and swept that beautiful, blond boy into his arms. Then he set the kid down to circle back around to the stairs.

  I blinked at the spectacle—blinked at Cody as if seeing him for the first time.

  “Come on, little man. Let’s go back.”

  We arrived home fifteen minutes later. I lifted Cody into his high chair and pulled a plastic cup of pudding out of the refrigerator.

  He grinned and waved his arms. “Pigging! Pigging!”

  “Pudding,” I corrected.

  He fought for the plastic spoon as I fed him. When the doorbell rang, I gave the spoon to him and went to answer.

  The shape visible through the front door’s decorative window reminded me of the Tattoo Guy. I wondered seriously if it was him—should I open it?—but one’s body has its own inertia. It stupidly responds to stimuli before good sense can take over.

  I opened the door and gasped.

  But it was just my client.

  The wan woman was in and out in less than a minute. She thrust an envelope of cash into my chest and hauled Cody out to her car. She didn’t have a car seat yet, so she lifted him into the cargo area.

  “What’s his name, again?” she asked.

  “Cody.”

  After she shut the hatch back, I could still see and hear the boy through the cracke
d side window. He regarded me with fearful, wide eyes. “Dah-mommy? Mah-daddy?”

  “She’s your mommy now.”

  I cried for a while after they left, but then I always do. They say this job gets easier. But I’m still waiting for that to happen.

  Later that day, I visited a shopping mall in the next town. When I returned home, the car seat in the back had a new passenger.

  The Three Golden Eggs

  The best way to introduce this story is simply to reprint my June 8, 2012 blog entry about it. Enjoy.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Deena and I joke sometimes that while a bigger house would be nice, it wouldn’t change much around here. Our family would still try to occupy the same five square feet of space, all the time. A typical morning will find Dad (that’s me), sitting on the can and realizing a second too late that he forgot to latch the bathroom door. In comes my almost 11 month old, Thomas, asking, “Dah dah dah?” Right behind him is my two year old, Owen. “What’s Daddy doing? He’s pooping!” And then right behind them is my wife to pull them all back out and latch the door properly. I just turn to a fresh page in the newspaper and sip my coffee.

  Working at home with two boys makes time management a challenge. Although I’m fortunate to have a wonderful setup where I only have to spend four hours a day in front of a computer—leaving the other four free for child care—sometimes the only way to get a damn thing done is to sit up late and work with a shot of whiskey on the side.

  And staying up late to socialize? Ha! If it’s 9 p.m. and the kids are asleep, then that’s a good time to pass out, too. (Okay, I’m exaggerating, but only slightly.) Having friends over last Friday to watch a 1980s TV movie, The Incredible Hulk Returns, on Netflix, which kept me up to an ungodly 11 p.m., about killed me. Incidentally, I cut my teeth watching Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno portray Banner and Hulk, but my god were they such pussies compared to the Hulk of the current Avengers movie. I just couldn’t stop laughing at the scene in the 1980s movie where Hulk is felled by tranquilizer darts, and he and Thor are powerless to stop a helicopter from flying away.