The Safety of Objects: Stories (11 page)

Esther in the Night

If something horrible happens it won’t be my fault. It’s the middle of the night and I’m checking things, walking around the house making sure everything is all right. I’m losing sleep. I check the thermostat, the doors, the smoke detector.

I think about a burglar. He would come up onto the porch, turn the knob, and come into my house. He would take things: the television, the VCR, the silver, my jewelry, things I’ve collected over the years, collected as symbols of my marriage, things that sometimes seem as though they are the marriage. I would help him pack. He would take the things that make me who I am, and then I would be able to be someone else.

A burglar would come in and kill us all. He would think of himself as a violent criminal, and I would think he was doing me a favor. We would line up and for the first time in twenty years I would ask to come first: Shoot me, shoot me, please. I don’t have the guts to do it myself.

A burglar would wake Harold and me. He’d tell us, “Round everybody up. I want the whole house in one room.” We’d go down the hall and get Cindy. The burglar would be behind us, his gun pressed into my back. We’d get to her door and find it locked from the inside. While Harold pounded on the door, I would explain that Cindy was fifteen and that’s the way things sometimes are. Harold would bang on the door. He’d scream that if she didn’t open it he’d take the door off its hinges. Harold would say it was his house and he had the right to get into any room. We’d get Cindy out of her room and the burglar would say, “What about in there? What about that room there with the light on?”

I’d tell him there was no one there. He’d poke me with the gun and ask what about the light, the Mötley Crüe poster on the door, and why was the radio on. “Don’t play games with me, lady,” he’d say.

We’d take him in. We’d go in front of him. Harold and I would lead him and then step aside. He’d see the body on the bed, the plastic tubing, the thin blue water mattress that keeps Paul constantly moving. He’d see Paul, eyes open, looking nowhere, the body twisted, or more untwisted like a pretzel undone. He’d see it all and drop everything. He’d run from our house not wanting to take anything, not wanting to hold anything that had been touched by the magic of the living dead.

*  *  *

A fire. Something in the basement, in the wiring, in one of the walls. Before we noticed half the house might be consumed. A wall of fire would rupture through the linen closet, eating the children’s baby blankets. It would lick us in our sleep. I would feel warm dark smoke fill my lungs. In my sleep, I would cough and roll toward it breathing deeply. And Paul. Paul in a fire. His tubing would dissolve into a hot pool of plastic, it would begin to bubble, then turn black. Crystals of plastic would embed themselves in his skin. The oxygen tank, a tall green canister that I once thought was him, would explode. From the doorway I once saw the outline of something tall and rounded, and thought of Paul bending over. I mistook a green metal tank for my son and for a moment thought everything was all right.

I check everything and go into my son’s room. In the middle of the night, I watch him float somewhere between sleep and death. The shades are up. The lights are on as though we think Paul will wake up in the middle of the night and not know where he is; as if light equals life. I wonder if we leave them on so that when we check on him, we don’t have to lean over the bed, the body, stretch out across our son, and flick the switch. Lights are shining in Paul’s face and he doesn’t notice.

From the outside, from the other side of the windows, Paul’s room looks like an exhibit. I’ve seen it at night when I’m out walking the dog. Brightly lit, he looks like something on display, a Christmas window in suburbia.

*  *  *

The Museum of the Modern Dead. Open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, admission five dollars, three for students, free to seniors, children under five, and the severely handicapped. Come one, come all, come to the birthplace of the living dead, come spend a day with us, it’ll last a lifetime.

We’re a working museum. I wear a period costume, like the ladies at Williamsburg. I always wear the blue, red, and purple dress I had on the night the state trooper called and said there had been an accident—my car, my son. I show visitors the telephone that rang as Harold and I were walking in the door, coming home from a dinner party. I tell them about the party, our friends, and how we used to laugh. I have index cards with the recipes Rita used that night. I hand them out while I describe listening to the trooper tell me Paul might not live until morning. I explain wearing the dress for four days and nights while we waited in the little rooms next to the intensive care and surgical suites. The dress seemed all wrong, like a piñata in a library.

I pull the visitors close and whisper in their ears that I prayed that night. I prayed for four days even though I didn’t know if I believed in God. I tell them that if they’re ever in a praying situation to be specific, to include certain clauses. It’s not enough to assume that if a person lives he’ll be all right.

I take visitors into the living room and we pause there. I unhook the red velvet ropes and have them sit on the sofa while I talk about how Harold and I wanted nothing more than for our son to get well. I talk about Paul and show baby pictures. I have pictures of his arm, broken ten years ago when he fell off his bike. I tell them I thought I’d go crazy if everything didn’t come out all right, if he couldn’t play football, baseball, if he couldn’t do everything he wanted to do. I tell them what they already know but still want to hear.

All we ever wanted was a normal child, happy and healthy. We told ourselves we would give anything for our children. We said this as though it was something to be proud of. I whisper everything just in case they don’t want to hear it.

I pass around his medical charts, photographs of his brain, X-rays of his spinal column, graphs and charts they showed us at the hospital, words I’ve learned to pronounce. We talk about what it means to be in a coma, a deep sleep that lets my baby breathe, keeps his eyes open, and sometimes makes him sit bolt upright, like he’s seen a ghost. I ask for questions, ask if anyone there has ever been in a coma. I ask the visitors to raise their hands.

*  *  *

Help. What kind of help are we getting? The doctors didn’t think it was a good idea to take him home. They thought it was better for him to be in our lives from a distance, from a hospital room.

Harold put his foot down. He said, “Not one more red cent,” and they said we could check him out, they’d done all they could. He was ours, we could have him back if we promised to hire help, to see a therapist, to try to rehabilitate him. We could take him home if we promised to pay our bill. I show them Harold’s bill folder, his whole file cabinet crammed with computer printouts, pieces of paper with more zeros than our calculator.

Help. I talk to them about therapy, about all of us in one room, coming together to hate Paul. The shrink said we couldn’t let him run our lives. She said, “Okay, let’s not talk about Paul this week, let’s talk about something else,” but even that was about Paul, because we purposely left him out.

Cindy said, “I wish he was dead.”

And everyone nodded.

*  *  *

I tell them about Cindy, how she showed her brother to her friends just like he showed
her
off when she was a baby. She brought her friends into his room because they asked to come. They stood around the bed in a tight cluster and asked her where each tube went in and where it came out. They asked and finally Cindy had enough of it. She pulled down the sheets and let them look for themselves. She showed them her brother, lying naked, his legs and arms arranged in a pattern that was supposed to be good for circulation. She showed them the special motorized pad, medical Magic Fingers, that kept him moving so he wouldn’t get bedsores. She showed them everything. And then she watched them staring at her brother’s pale frozen body, at the way the tube came out of his penis. They would look at that part of him as long as she would let them. Cindy told me that one time a girl asked if she could touch it and Cindy said yes. She said yes and then turned away. She turned her head and out of the corner of her eye she saw the girl pull her hand back.

“It’s warm,” the girl said.

“He’s not dead, you know,” Cindy said, and the girl blushed, turned red like a maraschino cherry.

“You’re gross,” Cindy said, and she pulled up the sheets and tucked him in.

She tucked Paul in like he was a baby. She was gentle because she hated him.

I tell them about how my daughter came into the kitchen while I was talking on the phone. “I hate him,” she said. “I hate him so much that sometimes I think I’m going to do something terrible.” I told the person I was talking to I’d have to call back. “It must be so difficult for you,” she said.

Cindy cried, and I told her it was all right. I told her it was perfectly normal to feel that way. I told her I felt that way too.

She said, “No, Mom, it’s different, it’s different for me, I’ve always hated him.”

*  *  *

Welcome to the Museum. For your admission fee I show you everything, tell it all, saving the best for last. I bring you down the hall to his room. I explain that what you smell—a sweet, heavy odor, with lingering bitterness, a sharp cleanser-like aftertaste—is the perfume of the living dead. Breathe with your mouth open.

It’s after four o’clock in the morning and I’m in Paul’s room. I sit next to his bed and notice that if I look at just one part of him, an ankle or a hand, he doesn’t seem so terribly damaged. If I look at anything bigger than a couple of inches, I see him pale and rigid, slightly puffy, frozen in a nightmare. I sit and talk to Paul and I ask him what I’m supposed to do.

“Paul?”

He doesn’t answer, or tell me to get out. Paul doesn’t explain things like he used to. He doesn’t say he’s hearing Led Zeppelin in his head, and it sounds so loud that he thought for a minute the stereo was on. He doesn’t tell me his head is like some sort of wonderful stereo because there’s always music in it, always the songs he wants to hear. He doesn’t say he’s commercial-free. I brush his hair back with my fingernails and think about how it’s getting sort of long again. He doesn’t pull away, doesn’t say, “God, Mom, leave me alone, okay?” Paul doesn’t tell me what the hell happened. He doesn’t apologize.

I sit in Paul’s room until I’m sure I’ll do the right thing. I’m with my baby and every thought is connected to him. I know that if I just sit there, I’ll stay forever.

I get up and empty his trash can. I take the bag into the kitchen and leave it by the door. I open a new box of Hefty’s and go back into his room. In front of him, I open the bag, I shake it until it’s filled with air. I go to Paul, pull the oxygen tube out of his nose, lift his head, and slide the bag over it. I put the bag on slowly hoping he’ll stop me, twist away. I slide the bag over his head and pull it tight around his neck, wishing he’d fight. As I do it, I see myself in the mirror of his window.

I watch my reflection and when I see what I’m doing, I quickly lean over Paul and turn off the light. I stop anyone else from seeing me. The room goes black except for small red lights on Paul’s machines, lights that say everything is working perfectly.

I look at Paul. I see how easy it’s been to tie the bag around his head. I watch him with the bag over his head, tied around his neck. He breathes, pulling the bag up close against his features, his nose, eyes, mouth pressing against it. I watch him exhale. His breath pushes against the dark green plastic; the bag puffs out like a balloon. I close the bag tighter around him, thinking the less time it takes the better, thinking I want it over fast. I want the end.

I hold the bag while Paul breathes, and after a minute or a few minutes, he doesn’t breathe as well. He breathes less, as though he’s tired. He is barely breathing and I know I could still stop it. I could stop myself from becoming a murderer, but don’t.

If I don’t do this now, I’ll regret it, and only have to do it later. Later everything will become harder and will always become harder until it’s over. I push the bag into his face, into his mouth, into his nose, and finally he takes a breath, lets out a breath, and is still.

I take the bag, moist with his breath, away from him. I lift his head, pull the bag off, and close it. I sit beside his bed until I am sure the breath was his last, until I am sure he won’t start breathing again when I’m not looking.

I press my head to his chest, to his lungs, his heart. I press my face to his face, there’s sweat on it. I feel the skin go cold. I press my face to his face and feel him die. I sit in his room until I’m sure the end has come and gone, until morning comes. The sun comes up, crossing behind the houses at the end of the street. I sit thinking how easy it was, how simple it seemed. From now on I will always know where Paul is. I will always know how he is. I think about Cindy, Harold, my parents, and how at any moment something could happen, an incomplete accident, and again, I’d be waiting. I think about the number of Hefty bags in a box. It’s six o’clock in the morning. I’m back in my bed, my body pressed against Harold’s. In his sleep he wraps himself around me. I am trapped. He snores, his chest presses against my back. His breath blows on the crown of my head, a strange hot and sour breeze.

Slumber Party

In the woods behind someone’s house Ben and Sally gathered leaves and lit them on fire.

Ben struck two matches at once without ripping them out of the pack. He touched the burning matches to as many leaves as he could before the whole pack ignited and burned into his fingers.

The fire grew and Ben pushed Sally back a couple of feet. “Move,” he said.

The two of them stood in the leaves, sometimes in the fire, the flames sometimes reaching out to the bottoms of their jeans. Sally bent into the fire and pulled out a burning leaf. She held the leaf between two fingers and watched it dissolve into an edge of red ember that left only the hard stern in her hand.

“Get some more,” Ben said. They gathered leaves again and again, moving farther into the woods each time, bending to the ground and scooping them up in their arms, carrying back what seemed like entire forests pressed to their chests.

As she bent to pick up leaves, Ben poked Sally between the legs with the stick he had used to stir the fire. She pretended to ignore him. Ben pushed the stick back and forth, rubbing it not so much against Sally’s crotch as along the inside of her thighs, scratching against her jeans.

As he poked her he laughed, not a regular funny laugh but higher-pitched, like a maniac on the loose.

Sally looked at him the same way her mother sometimes looked at her father and said, “Quit it.”

They lit fires, each one bigger than the last until the flames started jumping wildly and as they stamped them out the bells of their jeans caught fire and the denim glowed red and they could feel the heat on their clean white calves.

The woods filled with smoke and the edge of one of the fires got loose and Ben had to chase after it. Far off they heard sirens, and Sally thought for sure they were for them.

Finally, when they’d scared themselves sufficiently, when both of Ben’s legs were covered with bright red burns so hot they felt cold, he and Sally sat down on the dirt and Sally pulled a pack of Marlboros from the hiding place in her sock.

She shook out one for each of them, then stuffed the pack back into her sock. Ben lit both cigarettes and for a minute held both between his lips smoking two at once, as though doubling the amount doubled the pleasure, doubled the fun.

“That was good,” Ben said as he smoked.

Sally nodded and didn’t say anything. She was practicing inhaling and didn’t want to break her concentration.

“You know,” Ben said, when they were finished smoking and were putting perfume that Sally had stolen from her mother between their fingers so they didn’t smell like tobacco, “I like you better than Julie. Julie wears dresses.”

Sally pulled a pack of gum out of her pocket and they both popped huge wads into their mouths to clean their breath.

“I hate girls who wear dresses,” Ben said, as he chomped down on the gum, lips smacking.

They climbed up the hill and out of the woods. Secretly Sally smiled. Julie and Ben were a year older than she; they would be eleven before she was even ten and they were best friends.

“Sal Lee.” She could hear her mother’s voice over the top of the hill. It came through in broken phrases like a radio with static. “Sal Lee. Sal Lee. Come. In this house. Now.”

It was late afternoon; the edge of the sun was just dropping back behind the house at the top of the hill. The TV antenna, the highest point on the block, was set off against the sky like the peak of a church and glowed like gold.

Cars with fathers coming home from work pulled into driveways, throwing shadows across chalk-drawn hopscotch games and ending basketball tournaments by parking in the court. The echoes of metal car doors slamming shut bounced off the brick houses.

Ben and Sally walked slowly, as though they were tired.

“Sally,” her mother called, her voice clear now. They were one backyard from home. “Is Ben with you?”

Sally and Ben gave each other guilty looks and wondered if they were in trouble for the fires, the smoking, or the perfume Sally stole. Neither said anything.

They came around the edge of the house, with innocent expressions spread across their faces as though they’d been Scotch-taped there.

“I’ve been calling you for twenty minutes,” Sally’s mother said. “You’re sleeping over tonight, remember?” she said to Ben. “Your mother dropped off your things. She’ll call later, to say good night.”

Ben’s father disappeared a long time ago. His parents weren’t divorced, but his father just went off one day and never came back. Sometimes the police would think they found him or found a clue that would help them find him, but nothing ever came of it. Sometimes Ben’s mother had meetings for work at night and if the housekeeper was off Ben spent the night at one of the houses up or down the block, wherever there was someone willing to have him.

“Because we have company tonight,” Sally’s mother said, making a big deal over Ben even though he ate over often enough to be called a regular, “we’re using the grill.”

They looked out onto the back patio where Sally’s much older brother Robert was leaning over the grill, attending to the chicken pieces with the kind of precision and commitment seen only in boys in their very late teens who are determined once and for all to do something right.

He didn’t look up when his mother called him.

“Robert,” she said over and over again and she tapped on the glass door to the patio. “Robert, how much longer?”

“Seven minutes, maybe seven and a half,” he said.

Ben looked out at Robert. Robert was taller than anyone he knew, and thinner than anyone he’d ever seen. Ben stood at the kitchen door watching him, until finally Robert took the chicken off the grill and brought it inside.

“Dinner’s ready,” Sally’s mother said. Sally’s father came out from the den, and Ben and Sally washed their hands and dried them on a dish towel while Robert looked on with mild disgust.

“Your nails,” he said to no one in particular. But Ben went back to the sink and washed his hands again, this time scraping his nails back and forth against the soap, leaving five troughs in the Ivory.

The conversation at dinner somehow took Ben away from Sally and divided them into sides, male against female. Sally didn’t like it. She didn’t like being lumped together with her mother and treated like a maid. She just wanted to sit there like everyone else. She hated her father for telling her to get up and get the salt, and Robert for saying, “While you’re at it, get some ice cubes,” and her father even more for saying, to Ben, “Is there anything you need while Sally is up?”

After dinner, Robert and his father balled up their napkins, threw them into the middle of their plates, and got up from the table. Ben sat at the empty table and waited for Sally to finish helping her mother with the dishes.

When everything was washed and dried they were allowed out again. The sky had dropped down into the shade of blue where everything is still, the moment just before night.

“Don’t go out of the yard,” Sally’s mother said.

Ben and Sally hid behind the metal storage shed in the carport and shared a cigarette.

Ben tried a new thing where he took a deep drag and exhaled straight into Sally’s mouth as she inhaled and then when she exhaled there was nothing left.

“Let me do it to you,” Sally whispered.

Ben shook his head and took a drag and this time kept it for himself.

Through the screen door, they heard her mother asking Robert, “Are you sure you turned the grill off? I feel like I smell something burning.”

They each took one last drag and then Ben put the cigarette out on the bottom of his shoe and Sally jammed the half-smoked Marlboro back into the pack and hid them again in her sock.

Sally’s mother came to the door, opened it, and called Sally’s name. Behind the storage shed Ben and Sally held their breath and waited.

“Sally,” her mother called again.

Ben’s foot slipped and he fell against the metal shed, with a thud that sounded like the shed had burped.

“Five more minutes,” Sally’s mother said, going back into the house and letting the screen door close behind her.

Sally pushed Ben into the shed and again it made the same burping noise.

“Great,” Sally said, and she popped gum in her mouth and rubbed White Linen between her fingers.

“Gimme gum,” Ben said.

Sally threw him a piece, which landed in a puddle on the ground.

“Another one,” Ben said.

“Sorry, last piece.” And Ben picked the gum out of the puddle, wiped it on his shirtsleeve, and put it in his mouth.

*  *  *

“I’ve made up beds for the two of you in the extra room downstairs,” Sally’s mother said.

Actually “downstairs” was the basement.

“I don’t want to be kept up all night with your horsing around,” she said.

Sally looked at Ben. The basement scared her. She didn’t even like going down there during the day and certainly never planned to sleep there.

“We can stay in my room,” Sally said. “We’ll be quiet.”

Sally’s mother shook her head.

“Then Ben can sleep in Robert’s room,” Sally said.

Ben stood in the hall between Sally and her mother, feeling uncomfortable, and unwanted.

“Robert’s too old to be having people sleeping in his room,” Sally’s mother said, patting Ben on the head. “You’ll be fine downstairs. Wash up and get into your pajamas, then you can watch TV for half an hour.”

All during their TV show Sally thought about sleeping in the basement. She thought about the big closets in the recreation room. She thought about the furnace room and what might be in there. She thought about being downstairs in the darkness so far from everyone asleep upstairs. If she was scared she couldn’t tell Ben because he’d think she was being a baby, or worse, a girl. All during the TV show, she thought about staying awake all night.

“Good night,” her mother said to her as she kissed her forehead.

All three stood at the top of the stairs.

“I put extra blankets down there in case it gets chilly. Don’t stay up all night,” Sally’s mother said.

Sally was holding Robert’s old flashlight and kept flicking it off and on with her thumb.

Her mother looked down at Sally. “I put a night-light on down there.” Sally shrugged. “Good night,” her mother said, kissing her again and then kissing Ben even though he pretended to pull away.

“What are those red marks on your leg?” she asked Ben.

Ben looked down at his burns. “Poison ivy,” he said.

“Well, just don’t scratch,” Sally’s mother said.

*  *  *

“Ben and Sally went quietly downstairs, Sally following Ben. The recreation room was dark except for the glow of the night-light, which threw long shadows across the cool linoleum floor. There was enough light for Sally to see her reflection in the sliding glass door. She pressed her face up to the glass and tried to look out but saw nothing except her face pressed close against the glass, Ben standing behind her, and blackness beyond that.

The trundle bed, pushed against the wall under a window, was all made up. It looked small, lost in the big room.

“Pick,” Ben said, and Sally couldn’t decide which was better, safer, the higher or the lower; near the floor where a burglar or killer might not notice her but where something could crawl across her in her sleep, or up in the air at normal height, but unprotected, vulnerable to the night and the big room.

“I’ll sleep down here,” Sally said, picking the lower bed.

She pulled back the covers, looked for crawly things, and then got in, pulling the blanket to her chin and from the inside pulling it tight around her like she was burying herself.

“What’s in there,” Ben said, pointing to the furnace room door.

“Why?” Sally said.

“I thought I heard something.”

“It’s just the furnace,” Sally said.

“It sounded like a man,” Ben said.

And Sally hated Ben.

“A man with a hook instead of an arm, scratching to get out.”

Ben was silent. Sally kept thinking that she could just run upstairs. She could just jump out of the bed and run screaming upstairs and if she screamed enough they wouldn’t make her come back down. Ben would hate her but she wouldn’t care.

“Did you hear it?” Ben asked.

He was silent and then he started laughing.

He started laughing and laughing and he fell off the bed laughing and finally he was snorting and laughing and when he couldn’t breathe anymore he stopped laughing and just sat up on the high bed smiling at himself.

“’Night,” Sally said, and she pulled the sheet up over her ears and turned so she could keep an eye on the furnace room door, but it was hard because there was a window behind her and she felt like she should be looking that way too.

*  *  *

With no warning Ben pulled up his nightshirt, held it up under his chin, pulled down the front of his underpants, and turned the flashlight on himself.

“Look at my boner,” he said to Sally.

The last penis Sally had seen belonged to someone she’d played doctor with in the downstairs bathroom of his parents’ house when his testicles were the size of green grapes and his penis was like a crayon stub at the point where you don’t bother sharpening it again, you just throw it out.

“When I’m older,” Ben said, “I’ll have hair.” Ben swayed back and forth, thrusting his penis into the air.

Sally sat up on the trundle bed and stared.

She fixed on the way this part of Ben seemed separate from the rest of his body. It stuck up and out like the gearshift in Robert’s Karmann Ghia.

Ben pointed his thing toward her and Sally made a sharp sound. Ben laughed and it bounced slightly.

“When it’s like this I can’t pee,” he said.

Sally was impressed with Ben’s knowledge and the way he presented it, as though he were the exhibit in a science class.

“Touch it,” he said.

She shook her head.

Ben’s underwear hung down around his ankles and he stepped out of it.

“I have a hair,” Sally said.

No you don’t,” Ben said.

Sally shrugged.

“Let me see,” he said.

“No.”

As far as Sally was concerned there was nothing to pull up her nightgown for. She had nothing to show except for the lone hair. She had nothing and was increasingly aware of both the nothingness and Ben’s interest in the empty space.