by Leif Wright
Robby loved this kind of day best, just before the tempest was unleashed, before God and his angels started bowling above. The calm before the storm, as it were, let him imagine everyone else in the same condition he was in—completely at the mercy of objects outside his body. The power of the storm was only an impending menace as the thunder rolled gently in over the plains, but the threat alone was enough to drive most into their caves of protection like so many Neanderthal fleeing a rival tribe bent on destruction.
Robby often thought about the way humans work. The body, for all its beauty, design, and genius, was simply a deceptively weak and vulnerable delivery system for the brain, trapped in its aquarium perched atop the machine. Sure, there was the evolutionary process of procreation that seemed to supersede even the brain, but it was just another brain-delivery process in disguise, working to ensure the DNA that had produced the brain continued beyond the limits of mortality. The body was simply a machine that, upon instruction from the brain, carried the brain from place to place, acquired interesting objects for the brain to inspect, brought light into the brain, which was then interpreted as vision, brought vibrations into the brain, which were then interpreted as sound, and brought tiny particles of everything into the brain, which were then interpreted as scent.
The brain would then act on the information and instruct the body to do something to further the brain’s agenda: pick up the object it saw, bob the aquarium to the beat of the sound, salivate and eat in response to the scent—eating a necessary evil designed to fuel the brain and its delivery system and ensure the presence of energy even when fuel was in short supply. It seemed like most people these days were flush on stored energy, and if he could gamble, he would bet at least half of them were waddling around with undiagnosed diabetes. Oh, what he would give to be able to waddle around. Or eat himself into a raging case of diabetes.
Romance was an illusion designed by the brain to ensure the continuation of its DNA. Flooded by copious amounts of dopamine, the conscious part of the brain did whatever it was told in pursuit of that goal—buy flowers, whisper sweet nothings, dress differently, mask natural odors with cologne, get strange hairdos, lie, cheat, steal—and as a last resort, imbue the object of affection with alcohol and compliments. Of course, he knew, his jaded perspective on romance might be tainted by the fact that his brain knew he would never be a candidate for romance and thus it wasn’t worth having.
The brain was only so powerful, though. Occasionally, the thunder would roll in from the west, the sky would turn dark, and Robby’s brain would succumb to the maelstrom of emotions: frustration, hatred, injustice, fear, depression, loss. He sat in this wheelchair or one of its predecessors through his childhood, never playing wiffle ball with the other boys he saw running up and down the street outside his cruel window. He never got a chance to have a secret clubhouse that might be little more than a small spot hidden by shrubbery and debris. Never got to lie to his preteen friends about all the tail he had gotten, as they lied right back about girlfriends from Canada or California. Friends. He never had one. Never sat together and talked about superheroes or TV characters. Never collected rocks, dubious Indian arrowheads, or coins that were valuable only in his mind. Never caught a frog. Never pet a dog. Never got in a fight. Never whispered breathlessly about seeing down Jenny Ronan’s shirt, maybe even catching a quick glimpse of nipple.
Robby and his chair sat silently together through puberty, watching girls grow breasts and start primping and preening instead of running around the playground with the boys, who still looked like boys as the girls turned into young women. He never had a chance to ask a girl out and be rejected. He never got to write a “Yes, No, Maybe so—check one!” love note to a girl in class. He and his chair sat silently as his brain screamed at his body to find someone, anyone, to pair up with, and do it right now! Never got to buy a jalopy of a car with money he had raised working a fast food joint. Never got to sneak a first sip of alcohol. Never got to go to a record store and pick out music to listen to over and over again, identifying with the lyrics as he pined for girls in his class, wanting to cry as the singer seemed to dig into his soul and pull out everything, only to parrot it out to a backbeat and distorted Les Paul.
He and the chair silently sat through the prime of his life, when other guys his age were wrapping up college or trade school, finding women who’d have them and marrying up, sowing little gardens full of children who would prematurely age them as they scrambled daily to prevent the kids from killing themselves by falling off the top of a couch, impaling themselves on a screwdriver they found, walking across a hot stove. He watched through his cruel window as the boys who used to run up and down the street playing games now came back only on holidays, their minivans full of cute and happy looking families that poured out of the car to run and hug grandma and—if he hadn’t had a killer heart attack yet—grandpa, too. He watched as the houses on his street slowly disintegrated and, when their owners died or moved to nursing homes, younger, poorer families moved in, stretched already to make the mortgage, so rotting boards or small holes in the roof went untended and the houses fell into disrepair, meaning the next house that went up for sale would be forced to go for a lower price, attracting even poorer prospective buyers or renters.
The lawns, once neatly trimmed and watered, withered and died as the sidewalks inevitably succumbed to the relentless progress of plants that would not be told where they could not grow.
Robby watched it all with the diligence of a security guard tending a precious treasure. He noticed things that others might have missed. When Mr. Sands across the street and caddy-corner started openly acknowledging his young daughter’s burgeoning sexuality, only Robby had noticed him noticing.
Run! Robby had tried to call to her—he didn’t even know her name. But his body would not obey his brain. Instead, it just did what it always did: drooled and said “Haaaaaa.” Run, little girl! Run! Run!
The little girl hadn’t run. By the time four years passed, she looked like an adult and had already developed a raging heroin habit to go with her wife-beaters and alluring breasts. Two years later, she drove away in an old, yellow Mustang and never returned. Robby had no idea what might have become of her, whether she was even still alive. But he knew Mr. Sands never got in trouble for what he did to her. Mr. Sands outlived his wife, who Robby only ever saw through the living room window as she dusted and cleaned. After she died, about five years after the girl left, Mr. Sands started keeping all the curtains closed and never left the house, except on Sundays at church time and Thursdays for groceries. Three years later, an ambulance showed up one dreary afternoon in October and they brought Mr. Sands out on a stretcher, sheet over his head. He never paid for what he did to that little girl. No one ever knew what he had done. He got away with it. Though Robby had tried—and failed—to understand why, it infuriated him that Mr. Sands had ruined his daughter’s life for his own twisted desires, and then had gotten away with it.
Back in the present, the thunder’s gentle rolling turned briefly violent as God rolled a strike. Or maybe one of the angels. Good. The storm was getting closer. Good.
Storms were the great equalizer. While they were going on, everyone was Robby, stuck inside, stuck looking out a window or at a TV screen. If only for the briefest of moments, everyone was paralyzed during a storm. It was a beautiful time. Not that he wished his own malady on anyone else—in his deepest, darkest moments, he had never done that. Well, on one person. Once. But mostly, he only wished other people could, for even the briefest of times, understand the frustration of being trapped inside a body that refused to cooperate even enough to let people know there really was someone inside.
He would have sighed—if his body would let him.
Mr. Sands’ house had gone up for sale a week after he died. Robby fantasized that his daughter had in the intervening years kicked her drug habit, gotten her life together, and, after the old coot kicked the bucket, called a real estate agent fr
om her fancy and expensive home in some other state and instructed the agent to sell the house, then send her a check, which she would use to fly back home and dance on the old fucker’s grave.
The house stayed on the market for six months, after which the agent, looking uncomfortable setting foot outside her expensive car in this neighborhood, put a “PRICE REDUCED!” sign underneath the “For Sale” sign, and the house sold almost immediately to a dirty-looking single guy who had parties almost every night. He parked a big, lifted half-ton pickup in the driveway, the primer-addled paint job slowly acceding to the weather, as rust started peeking through the edges around the primer.
The dude aged a little and the parties slowed down, and then one day, the sheriff showed up and the dude packed as much stuff as he could into the truck and drove away, never to return. A few days later, a moving truck had come, and a crew of several men threw everything from the house into it, and a few days after that, “FORECLOSURE” stood atop the new “For Sale” sign.
The house stayed on the market for a year before the sign disappeared. No one moved in, however. Robby watched it all from his cruel window. Weather and time had sunk their teeth into the house, first digging a small hole in the roof, then a bigger hole, then a gaping one, mold climbing its way up the picture window in front, wood crumbling down the sides.
Now, as the storm started really kicking into gear, he wondered where the dude was. Had he turned into a man? Gotten a wife, family, adult friends? Was he right now hunkering down inside his home in a better neighborhood, turning up the volume on whatever football game he was watching, hoping the storm passed without knocking out the power—or worse, bringing a tornado along with it?
If he was still in town, Robby was sure that’s what he was doing. For the briefest of moments—the duration of a late summer thunderstorm—he and the dude were as equal as it was possible for them to become. He and Mr. Sands were roughly equal already, except that Mr. Sands couldn’t see or hear or feel anymore, toes-up underneath six feet of dirt. Robby could move no more than Mr. Sands could, but he at least still saw, felt, smelled, heard everything.
He closed his left eye. The right eye followed a moment later. The sound of the rain, the thunder, the power of the storm, soothed Robby. He had two memories of his mother. The best one was during a thunderstorm—he could only have been three or maybe barely four, in this very bedroom with the now-cruel window. The storm had frightened him, and he must have screamed or cried, because Mommy came running, in her housecoat and pink, fluffy house shoes. The shadows of time had cruelly covered most of her face, but Robby remembered that at that moment, he noticed—maybe for the first time—that Mommy was beautiful. He had long since thought that maybe his brain was trying to idealize his mother, but when the thunder was rolling, when the angels and God were both trying to get to that magic 300 score in the sky, the memory of his mother being beautiful was incontrovertible.
She seemed to float above the wood floor, not even making it squeak as her rail-thin frame rushed to him.
“Shhh,” she had said as she held his head to her breast, petting his hair as his tears wet her nightgown. “It’s nothing to worry about, Robby, it’s just God and his angels bowling. They’re having a great time!”
Robby, unconvinced, reached up and wrapped both arms around Mommy’s neck, clasping them together and holding her as tightly as a little boy could hold his mommy.
“Oh, baby,” she had said with a little giggle in her voice. “Thunderstorms are the best! Everything stops when the thunderstorm comes. It cleans up the sky and the earth, and if you listen closely enough, it will lull you to sleep, too.”
“Really?” he said, though it had come out “Weawwy?”
“Yes,” she had said, that maddening shadow still obscuring her face. “Count the seconds after lightning, then when you hear the thunder, stop counting.”
Robby did just that.
“Five!”
“Five, I got five, too,” she had said cheerily. “That means the thunder is five miles away. Now you can count the next one, and if it’s less than five, the storm is getting closer. If it’s more than five, the storm is moving away.”
Robby’s Mommy then kissed him on the forehead, and together, they started counting the seconds between lightning and thunder. And before he knew it, the memory ended. He must have fallen asleep, he knew, but his brain screamed at him every time. If he had known. If he had been able to predict, he would have lain there memorizing every tiny aspect of Mommy’s face. Her loving, kind eyes. Everything. Instead, all he had was the storm, the storm that Mommy had taught him to count his way through.
To this day, Robby counted the storm, and as he did, inevitably, he fell asleep, drool making its way down his side and onto the floor. And inevitably, Mommy, knowing he was asleep, laid his head down and tiptoed out of the room, disappearing back into the ether where God and angels bowled.
And Robby would wake up the next morning, his eyes crusty from tears, but the storm gone, just as Mommy had predicted.
11
THE HOUSE’S MASTER BEDROOM HAD AN OLD ’70S-STYLE BAY WINDOW that was no more than fifteen feet from Pearl Edwards’ bathroom window, which would explain the aging aluminum foil completely covering every inch of glass.
Gross, Bain thought. That window was close enough to the old lady’s bathroom to hear every grunt and groan, and if the windows were open, to smell every lovely scent.
The grass between the two houses had a clear and straight line of demarcation. Edwards’ grass was thick, lush, green, and impeccably mowed. Halfway from her bathroom window to the bay bedroom window, the lush green grass ended, with clover, crabgrass, and dandelions—and maybe a little grass smuggled between them. That ragtag lawn extended to the clapboard house, crabgrass seed tubes crawling up the sides of the house, concealing faded plastic cars and water guns. A disintegrating Sonic cup lay between the two toys, grass poking through what looked like a child’s bite hole in the cup.
Around the front of the building, shrubs that might once have been sculpted were now haphazardly clawing their way up the wall. Yellowed newspapers lay curled up between the front door and the shrubs, as if someone who kept forgetting to cancel the subscription continually kicked the papers aside in contempt. Deputies had been unable to talk to whoever lived here, so Bain was intent on finding them.
The storm door, screen completely ripped out, hung slightly ajar.
Boys. This family definitely has little boys, she thought.
She knocked on the door, gratified to immediately hear Dr. Phil being muted on the TV.
“Hold your horses,” a voice ravaged by decades of Pall Mall coughed. “Dang it.”
Something fell over, followed immediately by a shriek of “Shoot-fire!”
Bain smiled, imagining the housecoat-clad, wrinkled old lady with a Bible in one hand, ashtray in another, curlers in her hair matching her ratty pink housecoat, cigarette hanging off her bottom lip, hopping through the cluttered house after banging her freshly painted toe on a lamp stand.
As the doorknob turned, Bain willed her smile away, putting on her “cop face”.
To her surprise, the woman who answered the door was smartly dressed, late twenties, and markedly pretty, with a white smile that belied the smoker’s voice she had just heard.
“Sorry,” she said as she pulled open the door, revealing a living room cluttered with toys, but clean. “Stubbed my toe.”
“Detective Bain,” she said, flashing her badge. “Sorry to disturb you, but I’m investigating the homicide next door.”
The pretty woman with the raspy voice’s eyes widened. “Homicide? Next door? What?”
“Pearl Edwards. Next door. Little old lady. She was killed during a burglary two weeks ago.”
“What?” the woman repeated. Her eyes widened more.
“I’m sorry. You didn’t know she had been killed?”
“No. No. No. How?”
“Can I come inside?”
Bain handed the badge, not very long ago her proudest accomplishment, to the woman, who held it up as she read it. Bain used the opportunity to sneak an up-and-down glance at the woman’s calendar-quality body. Her libido immediately approved.
“Come on in, detective,” she said as she handed the badge back. “I’m sorry; you just caught me flat-footed.”
The house didn’t smell like a smoker’s house. In fact, the only scent Bain could detect smelled like carpet cleaner. The living room was smallish, sitting off to the right of the door, dominated by an LCD TV, which was surrounded by a rental store couch, love seat, and matching easy chair. On the TV, Dr. Phil was leaning forward—the word “MUTE” standing out importantly on his forehead—lecturing a teen with contempt on her face, arms crossed defiantly across her breasts. The teen’s mom nodded in solidarity with Dr. Phil.
“Please have a seat,” the woman said, motioning toward the easy chair. “Can I get you some tea?”
“No, thanks. I’m fine. I just need to ask you a few questions about that night and about your neighbor.”
“You mean there is a killer on the loose in my neighborhood?”
“Probably not,” Bain said in her calmest cop voice. “It’s been two weeks. My guess is the killer picked Ms. Edwards for a specific reason. Is that your bedroom with the bay window next to her house?”
“Yeah,” she said, not convinced that a killer wouldn’t pick her house next, despite Bain’s attempts to calm her. “I hate that it’s on the east side of the house, because I work nights.”
“Were you working the night of the third?”
“What day of the week was that?”
“Thursday.”
The woman paused, leaning up against the doorframe leading from the living room to the kitchen, her foot casually poised on her other leg’s knee.
Nice legs, Bain noticed despite herself.