The Big Door Prize

by M. O. Walsh

  He’d stood like a moron throughout the entire conversation, holding the phone in one hand and the unlit matchstick in the other.

  “The hospital?” he said. “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah,” Deuce told him. “She had a sort of spell, I guess. The doctors are in with her now. Did you know she was having something going on? I sure as hell didn’t.”

  Douglas looked at his own reflection in the kitchen window, as if he was talking to himself on the phone.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why are you the one telling me this, Bruce? Are you at the hospital, too?”

  “Well,” Deuce said, and took a while before finishing.

  “Well, what?” Douglas said.

  “Well,” he said. “I’m the one that drove her here.”

  “But she’s at her mom’s,” Douglas said. “I talked to her just a couple of hours ago.”

  “Yeah,” Deuce said. “That’s sort of true. We were over there first, for a bit. But then we went out to Parker Field and, I don’t know. You should have seen her. It was scary, to be honest.”

  Douglas leaned closer to the window, so close for his nose to touch the glass, for him to see only his own eyes.

  “You were with Cherilyn?” he said. “Cherilyn was with you?”

  “Look,” Deuce said. “I figure we both have some explaining to do.”

  “We?” Douglas said. “I don’t believe I have any explaining to do.”

  “No,” Deuce said. “I mean, me and Cherilyn. But just come down here, for now. She’s asking for you.”

  Deuce hung up the phone and Douglas didn’t move. He was too curious about his own reflection. Who was that fool staring back at him in the glass? Who was that total and complete asshole? A number of scenes from his recent memory returned to him as poisoned in almost an instant. The way Deuce had mentioned Wick Bart’s wife going so crazy after an affair, how he’d warned them to look out for sudden changes in a person. This story became ominous when paired with Cherilyn’s unexpected request for an encore the other night. Was Douglas, he thought sickly, receiving only the collateral benefits of Cherilyn’s outside love? Impossible. But even the way she had been so short with him on the phone, the way she had asked him to stop whistling for the first time in her life. It was all there. Maybe this wasn’t about her readout at all. Maybe it was all much bigger, much worse than Douglas ever allowed himself to consider. How was it possible, he wondered, that every fear in one’s life, every nightmare, stood always at the ready?

  He tried calling Pete to get his car but got no answer. He then called Cherilyn’s mother, hoping Cherilyn might be there, hoping that it might all be some awful joke. When her mother picked up the phone, Douglas didn’t even say hello.

  “Is Cherilyn there?” he asked, and something in the tone of his voice must have given his position away. He heard her mother let out a long sigh.

  “Oh, Lord,” she said. “I told her this wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Is she there?” he said again.

  “No, Douglas,” she said. “They’ve gone off about an hour ago. If it makes you feel better, I thought she looked like an imbecile.”

  “She’s in the hospital,” he told her. “Did you know that?”

  “Hospital?” her mom said and let out a little huff. “She didn’t look sick to me.”

  Douglas hung up the phone and, after getting a hold of Tipsy, spent the next ten minutes wondering what he should break. He looked down at the coffee cup, now fully assured of all its horrible possibilities, and thought, with total clarity: What would happen if I threw this out the window? He did not, though, and instead walked over to the kitchen table. He looked at the nice little village of birdhouses he had set out for Cherilyn to come home to and picked one up. He held it between his palms and thought to squeeze it, to crush it in his own hands, to just leave it there scattered to bits for when she returned. He thought of making glorious and broken metaphors of all her crafts but saw instead the way the glue was so carefully lined between the sticks, the way it looked as if some miniature mason had run its trowel along every joint and junction of that house, and he set it back down.

  He stormed to their office to look for what? He did not know, exactly. Some emails, perhaps, some awful pictures. He leaned over the desk and moved the mouse but the machine made such an obvious objection to what he was doing that he had no patience for it.

  He went into their bedroom and looked around. When was the last time it had been so clean? He had straightened up his side, he knew, trying so foolishly to impress her, trying to be the best version of himself. But why was her side so clean? Was she also doing that for him or was she, perhaps, doing it to hide things from him? Had she scrubbed the area like a crime scene? Is that what it had become? He walked into the bathroom and dug through the drawers and saw his beret hanging on the doorknob where he had taken it off before. He picked it up and studied it. How pitiful was he? Who was he to think that he was meant for something special, that he had some untapped potential? What arrogance. What selfishness. There was no great destiny for him, he thought. He was exactly what the readout said he was, and nothing more. He saw it clearly now.

  He was a jester who had fallen for a queen.

  So, he folded the beret in his hand and dropped it into the bathroom trash can.

  He looked back into their room at her dresser and Douglas knew what she kept in there. A little lockbox of her personal things. A little cache of evidence. He walked over and opened the drawer and dug around in her clothes until he found it.

  He set it down on the dresser and put his finger on the latch.

  As if to save him, however, Douglas felt his teacher mode coming on. What lesson had he ever taught about history, after all, more than its maniacal commitment to repeating itself? And since Douglas had never opened this box before in all their lives together he understood that doing so would create for him a new history, one that he would be allowing, or assuring, really, to repeat itself.

  Yet the only history Douglas wanted to repeat was the one he’d always thought he’d known, where his allowance of Cherilyn’s privacy was like her allowance of his own and, he believed, one of the cornerstones of their marriage. This unspoken agreement operated as silently and powerfully as many other unspoken agreements they shared, ones he believed distinguished them from many other couples he knew. The way they never mentioned the word divorce, even teasingly, to each other or around friends. The way they never made the other one the butt of a joke to other people. The way they never talked about other people they found attractive, the way they did not complain about the other’s family or friends. The way they never said anything intentionally that they knew might hurt the other, even in some small way. This did not mean that they were dishonest with each other. It meant, Douglas felt, they were instead honoring the other, depending on the other. It did not mean that they were perfect, either. It meant only that, when one of them felt petty and small, as humans are apt to do, they relied on a simple but underutilized trick to bring them out of it. Instead of trying to shrink the other person down to their size, they asked, instead, for their love to make them big again.

  Yet Douglas felt undeniably small with his hand on the latch. If there was anything in that box that Cherilyn did not want him to see, he knew, then there had to be a reason, just as he had his reasons for keeping his box with its two flattened coins from her. And since so much of this history was filled with overwhelming evidence that his wife was the kindest person he knew, he had to trust that the odds of her having something hidden in that box that would diminish his love were not nearly as great as the odds it would make it grow.

  So, he put the box back in the drawer and walked out his front door, where he saw Tipsy driving up the street, flashing the headlights like his own little siren.

  Tipsy cut through the back of the neighborhood to get out to the highway as
Douglas sat in the passenger seat, kneading his knuckles against his suit pants.

  “I’m not even going to bother with town,” Tipsy said. “It’s a zoo. We can make up time with a little speed, I think.”

  “Whatever it takes,” Douglas told him. “Just drive.”

  “I was just over there, actually,” he said. “Not even an hour ago. I didn’t see Ms. Cherilyn but had heard about Father Pete on my police scanner so I just went to say hey.”

  “Police scanner?” Douglas said.

  “Shoot, yeah,” Tipsy told him, and nodded at a little box beneath the dash. “I’m a volunteer firefighter. Two years now. Not a single fire. Plus, when things are slow, this helps me keep up on my gossip. People depend on me for that type of information, you know. You wouldn’t believe some of the things people do in this town.”

  “Tipsy,” Douglas said. “Focus, please. What about Pete?”

  “You haven’t heard?” Tipsy said. “He got robbed out at Lanny’s, sounds like. Has a big old lump on his head. Lanny’s there, too, out of his mind on something. Couple of druggies did it, is the word. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. Just sort of waved at him through the window like this. Anyway, they got cops all over town looking for them.”

  “Jesus,” Douglas said. “What in the living hell is wrong with this day?”

  Tipsy hit the gas a bit more and said, “I’ll get you there. I know you’re worried. I hope she’s okay. There’s nobody in this town people like more than Cherilyn, I don’t believe. She hasn’t hurt a fly. The both of you, really. People look up to you. You just have a sort of love that people see.”

  Douglas looked over at him. He agreed with at least part of what he’d said. He did hope she was okay. But what would okay even mean now?

  “Let’s just drive, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Let’s just get there.”

  “Roger that,” Tipsy said.

  Tipsy got to the hospital in no time and dropped Douglas off in the parking lot. On his way to the door, he passed Deuce’s truck parked in a handicapped spot and looked inside of it. On the seat he saw a small golden crown, and this turned his insides. It was too dark to see much of what was in the back seat, but then Douglas noticed a mattress in the truck bed. He put his head on the side of the truck and squeezed his eyes shut. Be logical, he told himself. Be open.

  He then turned and walked through the door to reception, where a woman named Pamela Walker was working the desk. Once a student of his, she was now nearly thirty years old.

  Pamela looked up at him and smiled. “Hey, Mr. Hubbard,” she said. “She’s in room twelve down the hall to the right. Gave us a little scare, didn’t she?”

  Douglas was so warped with worry that he did not know how to respond. He should have said thank you, of course, but for some reason said only, “I remember that paper you wrote about Jean Lafitte.”

  Pamela smiled as if she were suddenly much older than Douglas and said, “She’s going to be fine, Mr. Hubbard. Dr. Granger is back with her now. Room twelve. Right that way.”

  Douglas took the right and walked down the hall to see Deuce Newman sitting on a chair and thumbing at his phone. Deuce stood up when he approached, and Douglas held up his hand.

  “Not one word,” Douglas said. “Not one word out of your big enormous face.”

  Deuce showed his palms as if in surrender and, without knocking, Douglas opened the door to room twelve and walked in.

  33

  Your Boy Is Here

  Jacob was no athlete. Yet, in this moment, he pretended.

  He ran down the quiet streets of his neighborhood as if timed. He stopped only once to catch his breath and duck behind a neighbor’s tool shed. He wanted to see if his father was coming down the road in his truck, but he was not, so Jacob pulled the phone from his pocket and swiped it open. ­Six-­thirty. He still had time if he hustled.

  He wanted to make it to the log before seven o’clock, before the choir started up, before everyone was in their seats and, most important, while there might still be people milling around on the trail. Random people, witnesses, not involved in any of this. Not every single one of them nor the dickheads but just ordinary people who jangled keys in their pockets and placed them in doors, who sat on sofas next to people they loved and did not say much at all, who had jobs and pets and were sane. Enough of these normal people around, maybe, that Jacob could talk her out of it, could tell her that he knew now, that he understood.

  He texted her back.

  On my way.

  He ran again before getting an answer and in this effort could think only of the times that must have surrounded the video. He imagined Trina in Toby’s car on the way to that party and realized, sickly, the reason she was not in it when he crashed. All this time, he’d thought maybe Trina had abandoned Toby, had let him drive, but now there was the possibility that Toby had left her. That he had been a witness to something horrible, that he may have even caused or allowed it, and yet left her there to suffer. It was too much to imagine, what great distance there was between what she thought her night would be and what it turned into. This idea of distance led him to think about the stretch of time after the video, as well. And as Jacob felt his own feet pound against the pavement he could only imagine the sounds of Trina’s feet against the gravel as she began her own trek home. Such a long walk for her by herself, he imagined, likely full of the realization that she was now a different person than the one she had been just hours before. Her past was different. Her future was different. And in that stretch of time, alone in the dark, Jacob knew she had the opportunity to hatch a million plans, all of them justified, Jacob felt, by each solitary step she was forced to take. This idea broke Jacob’s heart for the world and for Trina, and for everyone made to walk alone in life, and he decided that he would no longer be a part of that. Loneliness. He would do away with it. It did not matter that he was no longer a twin, that he was an only child; whatever Jacob could do to travel in pairs, from there on out, he would do. He and his father. They could be something together, Jacob knew, if he would begin to allow it.

  When he finally reached the square, he thought he might have turned in the wrong direction. He stopped to catch his breath. Nothing was how he remembered it.

  All the lights.

  Where had they come from?

  The square before him was strung with glowing bulbs, sagging from lengths of cable hung between tents and craft booths and food stands. He watched people move about below these lights, carrying boxes and pulling carts as if the earliest settlers of a place they’d just invented. And the way Jacob had felt at Toby’s door that afternoon, about perhaps living in a world where every possibility was open, that every step you took could perhaps be a step toward a different life than the one you thought you knew, appeared very real to him.

  On his right, two women crossed the street wearing corseted Victorian dresses. They twirled umbrellas in their hands and waved at a teenaged boy painting a sign that read “TAX ADVICE AND SHRIMP.” Jacob watched a man across the street from him sit heavily upon an old ice chest, taking a break from the work, it seemed, with a squirrel on his shoulder. He had no idea if he knew these people or not. Regardless, he took a deep breath, pulled his cap low over his head and made his hasty way through the crowd.

  He would stop her, he thought. He would listen to her. He would help her in whatever way that he could and, with these thoughts, Jacob felt physically strong as he navigated the square. He reached the other side and jogged across the street, where he finally saw the hand-painted sign that arrowed him toward the Crane Lane.

  He neared the mouth of the trail and all the strangeness of the glowing square was doubled over by the darkness now before him. He bent to catch his breath and heard an engine turn. On the far shoulder of the road, about thirty yards from him near the woods, he saw a truck flick on its lights. Jacob thought in a panic that his father
had beaten him there but then realized this was another truck he had seen before. It was Father Pete’s truck.

  This possibility thrilled him as he had the sudden notion that Father Pete may be the only other person in the world he could talk to about what was happening. The only other person who could make it stop. Trina’s uncle. A witness. A priest.

  Jacob lifted one hand to block the glare of the lights and tried to wave him down with the other. As soon as he started toward it, though, the driver threw the truck into gear and drove up the gravel shoulder. Jacob yelled, “Hey!” and waved his arms, but the truck did not stop. He watched it head out into the parish and could not see who was in it, only the small square light of a phone that the driver held by the wheel.

  “Come back!” Jacob said, but not loud enough for anyone to hear him. He bent again, with his palms on his knees. He looked into the trail like one might do a deep well. He heard no one in it. He then stood and took off at a jog, trying to both listen and run at the same time, and felt himself nearly trip on every oak root and divot available to him. He pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight, the world seemingly darker beneath this tunnel of trees than any other place he’d known. He pointed the small cone of light to the ground and counted all the roots and colored rocks that he passed.

  Before long, he could hear it. In the distance, his school. The bicentennial kickoff. The choir. The football team. He heard car doors opening and closing in the parking lot, the low hum of activity as parents filed into the gym to watch their kids sing and get trophies or perhaps, if Trina had her way, Jacob feared, to watch them die. The immense gravity of the sick situation took hold of him and everything he heard was transformed. Their innocent conversations and small talk rearranged their sound in Jacob’s head to become like screams and, with only a few more steps, he had reached the hollowed log.