The Slab

by Michael R Collings

  “If you’re not out in fifteen minutes, you go to school without breakfast.”

  Willard surreptitiously monitored the progress in the back bedroom for the next few minutes and was not particularly surprised to see how slowly his second son could move when he wanted. But somehow, miraculously, Burt actually made it up within the required time. Even more amazingly, from Willard’s admittedly biased perspective, all three of the older kids managed to get through breakfast, get dressed, instruct him in the intricacies of making lunches-“ya gotta put the peanut butter first, Dad, then the jelly,” that was Burt’s contribution to fine cuisine-do a lick and a promise cleanup job on their rooms, and present themselves ready for his inspection beside the front door by twenty minutes after eight.

  In spite of the frequent flurries of “But Dad, Mom never does it that way” and “Why do we have to do that?” the kids were finally ready, buttoned into heavy coats and scarves, each carrying a thin plastic raincoat just in case the volatile January weather decided to shift before the end of school.

  “Now you keep a good eye on your little sister, Burt,” Willard instructed as the younger two shuffled through the front door to confront the wide outside world once more. Burt and Suze went to Charter Oaks K-6 Grammar School less than three quarters of a mile away. Catherine had walked the route with them for the first weeks after Christmas vacation ended; today they were on their own for the first time.

  “Go straight to school and no playing around. You’ve only got twenty minutes to get there.”

  “Yes, Dad,” Burt said. His voice was low and muffled, as if he were still upset that his father had had the temerity to insist that Burt actually smooth out the wrinkles in his bed. After all, the whole thing would just get wrinkled again as soon as he slept in it tonight, so why waste the time. Willard grinned to himself at a recurrent memory-that had been precisely his attitude toward bed-making when he was about eleven.

  “Bye, Daddy,” Suze chimed.

  Willard leaned over and kissed the top of her head.

  “Bye. See you this afternoon.”

  “Are you going to stay home today?” she asked, her eyes wide in surprise. “Are you sick?”

  “No, hon, I’m just staying here so Mommy can get some rest after last night.”

  “What happened to her?”

  For a long moment, Willard was stumped. He didn’t want to mention the dead roaches he had swept away this morning, for fear that he would reinforce Suze’s incipient fears of the vermin. He noted that Will and Burt were watching intently as well, as if his answer to that question were the single most important event of the day.

  “She probably just had a bad…dream,” he said finally, aware of the weakness of the excuse.

  “Just like me,” Burt said.

  “Yeah, after you watch one of those monster movies,” Willard said, tousling the boy’s hair. Burt ducked his head and escaped; Willard knew how the boy felt about that kind of display of parental affection and reminded himself to watch it in the future. The kids were growing up. They weren’t all that little any more. Still, his answer seemed to satisfy Suze, who took off across the damp lawn, her plastic Toy Story lunchbox thumping heavily against her legs. Burt followed, shoulders slumped, as if he were marching on his way to certain execution.

  Will, Jr., stood just inside the doorway. He walked a mile or so to the junior high-a squat stucco structure bearing the highly original name of Ronald Reagan Junior High. Still, it had a good reputation in the district and so far Catherine reported that Will was doing all right-working hard, and not too far behind from the trauma of starting mid-year at a new school and settling into new routines. Classes there started twenty minutes later than at the elementary school, so Will’s departures had gradually become more leisurely as he became familiar with the way.

  Willard noticed a pack of five or six kids Will’s age gathering on the front yard of a house several doors down.

  “Those guys look like they’re about your age. Do they go to Reagan?” Willard asked, motioning toward the knot of giggles and laughter.

  Will, Jr., glanced down the street. “Yeah,” he said noncommittally.

  “Do you know any of them. From classes or anything.”

  “A couple.”

  “They seem like fun kids?”

  “I guess.”

  “Have you talked to them at all.”

  “Some.”

  “Why don’t you catch up with them and walk with them to school?” Willard was growing impatient at the boy’s apparent inability to take a hint any faster.

  Will shrugged, an eloquent gesture in a twelve year old that carried meanings impossible for the boy to put into words. “Dunno.”

  Willard looked closely at his oldest son. There was a look in the boy’s eyes that bothered Willard. They were hooded, masked, downcast, as if the boy were afraid that Willard would see into his soul and ferret out whatever problems he was trying to conceal.

  “Well?”

  “They said…”

  “They said what?”

  “Uh…nothin’, Dad. I just like walkin’ by myself. It gives me time to think.”

  In spite of himself, Willard smiled at the sudden adult tones in the boy’s voice. Maybe there was even a hint of a crackling basso beginning to emerge.

  “Well, don’t stick to yourself too much or it’ll get even harder to make friends.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  “Now get going.”

  Will, Jr., got going, trudging down the sidewalk, gripping the rolled-up top of his brown paper bag lunch. He had steadfastly refused the offer of a new lunch pail, arguing vehemently that such things were kiddie and no one else at school ever took a lunch pail.

  Willard watched until his son disappeared at the bottom of the hill. He didn’t notice that Will, Jr., had carefully timed his progress so that in spite of the fact that the other kids paused occasionally to wait for other children to emerge from houses along the way, Will never quite caught up with them, never quite drew close enough for them to spot him lagging behind.

  Willard closed the door with a sigh and slumped against it. Made it, he thought. Got them all off and didn’t wake either Sams or Catherine.

  “Daddy?”

  He looked down. There was Sams, the discolored satin edging of his blanket stuffed into his mouth, the rest of the blanket trailing him like a softly graying ghost. His night diaper hung askew, so sodden that it threatened to pull his printed Iron Man pajama bottoms down to the child’s knees. Willard smelled the pungency of urine and realized that he was not finished yet. One more child to get started this morning.

  3

  By the time Sams was changed, dressed, and fed-dry Sugar Crisps and a glass of milk, both of which Willard assumed would get mixed properly during the course of digestion-Willard felt as if he were ready for bed himself.

  He carried Sams down the hall, wondering to himself how Catherine managed this day after day. No wonder she was tired and drawn.

  He left Sams in the bedroom, happily engrossed with spreading colorful wooden building blocks all across the carpet in random patterns that sent him into fits of giggling.

  Willard set the spring-action child gate across the door. There, that would keep him happy and out of the way for a while. Nothing in there can hurt him, Willard thought as he glanced over the room crowded with piles of toys. It’s been completely kid-proofed.

  Willard returned to the front bedroom and looked in on Catherine. She was still asleep, but from the way the covers were twisted around her and pulled from the bottom of the bed, it had not been an easy sleep.

  He slipped over to the side of the bed and touched her forehead with his hand.

  “Huh!” She startled awake immediately.

  “It’s okay,” he said quietly.

  “What time…oh no, it’s late and I…”

  “I took care of everything. The kids got off to school okay. Sams is up and dressed. He’s playing in the bedroom.”

/>   “But…I…”

  “You needed to sleep. So I let you sleep.”

  She dropped her head back onto the pillow and smiled. “What about work?”

  “You wanted me to stay home today and help out a bit.”

  “I…did I ask you to? I don’t remember.”

  “Well, you were pretty much out of it when I got up. Anyway, there’s nothing at work today that can’t be handled tomorrow, and you really did need to get some sleep. And besides, it was…uh…interesting to see what goes on around here on school mornings. I finally learned the proper way to make a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, compliments of Burt.”

  He grinned. Catherine smiled back, but the movement seemed strained. There’s still some carry-over from last night, Willard decided, like the half-remembered echoes of a particularly bad nightmare that linger well into waking.

  “Are you okay?” he asked gently.

  Catherine seemed to understand that he had subtly shifted the topic of conversation. He was not asking about how well she had slept since he got up at five, or whether she felt better for the additional rest. As obliquely as possible, he was asking about last night.

  “I…I don’t know. It was so horrible. They were everywhere. I touched…I felt them….” She shuddered.

  He hugged her reassuringly. “I think I got most of them with the Raid. There were a…a couple of dead ones this morning. I cleaned them up.”

  She shivered again-and Willard realized that in spite of the exertion of the morning, in spite of being fully dressed, in spite of the furnace roaring away in the living room as it combated the mid-thirties outside, he was chilly, too. He pulled off his shirt (the tie had disappeared long before, about the time Suze grabbed it and smeared a long streak of cinnamon butter on it, a permanent reminder of her breakfast of choice) and toed his loafers off. His pants followed, and then he slipped beneath the covers next to Catherine. They lay together, snuggling in the warmth of their body heat.

  Distantly, they heard Sams laughing to himself, following by the occasional click or thump of his building blocks as he devised new shapes and arrangements.

  Somehow, without quite being aware of the direction of their movements, Willard and Catherine moved from passive cuddling to more active, more directed movements. Willard was momentarily surprised by the fervor and passion of Catherine’s embraces, aware that she had never felt quite comfortable with making love during the day-a hold over from her rather rigidly traditional upbringing. But this time there was an unusual fervency in her movements, a fevered sense that communicated itself to him as she held him and her hands ranged over his body as if seeking solace…or protection.

  Afterward, they lay back, their bodies still intertwined. And as gradually as they had passed from comforting to loving, they passed from loving to sleep. Sams’ cries woke them.

  This time Catherine was up before Willard. He was just pulling on his shirt when she returned, swathed in her robe, carrying Sams. The sunlight glinted in the boy’s eyes. His cheeks were flushed as if he had been running, and a couple of glistening runnels marked the track of tears down his cheeks.

  “Did he fall down or something?”

  “I don’t know,” Catherine said, setting Sams in the middle of the bed and tickling him. Sams looked solemnly at her for a moment before letting down his reserve and falling back on the covers and laughing. The sound was light, tinkling, infectious.

  “He was just sitting in the middle of the room, crying. I didn’t see anything wrong.”

  “Maybe he was just lonely,” Willard said as he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled his loafers on.

  “Or maybe he was frightened by those horrible sounds?” Catherine said, a small smile curving her lips.

  “What? What sounds?”

  “Coming from this room. The moans and groans and…”

  He rolled across the bed, careful not to lay on Sams, who was watching them wide-eyed. “I’ll show you moans and groans, woman,” he said, his voice dropping to a threatening growl.

  Sams laughed as Willard grabbed Catherine and pulled her down onto the bed with him, and suddenly there was a free-for-all of arms and legs and tickling and unbounded laughter. Will felt a flood of warmth as he lay with his wife and baby, in his own house. The day was theirs, and all was well with the world.

  4

  Catherine seemed completely recovered from the shock of the night before, although even after she was dressed and moving through the house on the innumerable tasks a mother must endure, he noticed that she hesitated fractionally before entering each room. It was as if she were checking things out, scanning the floors and walls for any signs of the phantom intruders of the night before. Fortunately, Willard had already made sure that the bathtub and sinks and kitchen were free from infestation.

  Catherine visibly relaxed as they finally sat together at the kitchen table and ate a light breakfast of juice and toast together-fashionably late, but the more pleasant for that. Sams was strapped into his chair, enjoying a second helping of dry Sugar Crisps, most of which ended up on the floor or stuck in his hair.

  On an impulse, Catherine reached over to the small radio on the counter and turned it on to KNWS, the local news station she had discovered a day or so after moving in. The station could be counted on to repeat weather and local updates during the morning, giving her a better sense of how to dress the kids for school.

  The newscaster’s voice murmured largely unnoticed in the background as she and Willard sat without talking, enjoying the muted quiet, enjoying each other’s presence.

  “Cath,” Willard said after a while, as he stood to set his plate in the sink. “How about a drive? It’s cold outside but it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day. We could pack up Sams and head up the coast toward Santa Barbara. Maybe we could…”

  “Wait,” Catherine said suddenly. “What was that?” She leaned over and turned the volume on the radio up.

  “…Struck just after 2:30 and registered only 3.0, with its epicenter five miles off the coast of Malibu. There have been no reports of any damage from the quake, although a number of Valley residents were awakened by the jolt. No aftershocks have been reported.” The newscaster’s smooth voice robbed the announcement of any of the terror Catherine had felt the night before when the temblor had shaken her awake.

  She turned the radio off. “There was an earthquake,” she said, her voice quiet.

  “What?” Willard tore his eyes from the spectacle of his youngest son, mouth speckled with stray bits of cereal, sipping milk from his Scooby-Doo cup so carefully that not one of the strays dropped off.

  “That’s what woke me up. Before I saw the…before I came into the kitchen. There was an earthquake. I felt it and got out of bed and went to check on the kids, then I came out here to get some tea and…”

  “Her face grew white at the memory.

  “Sit down, hon,” Willard said.

  She dropped heavily into the solid oak chair-one of six that surrounded the equally heavy oak table.

  “I woke up from the quake, and I went in to see if the kids were all right,” she repeated, her voice calm and even, as if she were repeating instructions on how to bottle boysenberry jelly or how to change a tire on a car. “Then I went into the living room and turned the furnace on-it was really cold, and you would be waking up in only an hour or so anyway,” she added, looking slightly discomfited at the admission of her guilt.

  Willard shook his head and said, “Don’t worry about that. No problem.”

  “Anyway,” she continued after a long pause, “Then I came into the kitchen and saw… There were hundreds of them. Thousands.”

  Willard almost shivered at the raw horror, the open revulsion in her voice. He reached over and touched her arm.

  “Come on, honey, that’s impossible. Thousands?”

  She whirled to glare at him. “I saw them. I know how it sounds. I know that sometimes I freak out pretty much when I see one or two of the filthy th
ings. But I know what I saw.” She glanced around her-at the table, the counters, the floor. “They were all over everything. They were on the table, in the…” Her eyes flew open, and what little color there was in her cheeks bleached out. Her throat visibly constricted, so convulsively that Willard felt a pang of sympathetic pain. For a moment it seemed as if Catherine was choking.

  Suddenly she burst from her chair and crossed the kitchen in two strides and doubled over by the sink. He heard the sounds of heaving, smelled the pungency of vomit, and rushed to her side. He held her tightly, one hand on her forehead-hot and damp. She vomited explosively again, and once again. He twisted the water taps and ran a stream of water into the sink. It curled around the clotted remains of Catherine’s breakfast, barely able to wash away the bitter-smelling stuff.

  Catherine heaved once more, but this time nothing came. She was trembling beneath his hand, her muscles quivering and tight.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, feeling like a fool-of course she’s not all right, all-right people don’t toss their cookies in the kitchen sink in the middle of the day, all-right people don’t shake like their insides have been vomited loose. But he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded weakly

  He helped her back to the table and lowered her into the chair. She sat with her head in her hands for a long time. Willard watched her carefully, alert for any signs of recurrent nausea. Sams was silent, watching as well.

  Finally, Catherine looked up. “Sorry,” she said quietly. Her voice still shook. Her breath stank. Willard could smell the sourness on her breath and felt his own stomach twist momentarily. She sipped at the orange juice in her glass. That seemed to help.

  “I just remembered…” She paled again, and Willard was afraid that she was in for another bout of vomiting, but she visibly controlled her reflexes, swallowing hard a couple of times. “They were in…,” she began, seemed to choke again, then she continued, her voice breaking, “… in the bread.”

  Willard understood. His stomach convulsed again at the image her words conjured. “It’s okay. There were only a couple of pieces left in the wrapper this morning. I had a piece of toast before I went to bed last night, and I left the wrapper open. Like always.”