When he turned to the doorway, the girl was there.
“Angel,” he said, and for the first time since that day when they took him away, he felt calm. He had put things right now. Even without the notebook he was fine. Doctor Stein would never have believed it, but he would never ever meet Doctor Stein again.
The girl made a noise. It wasn’t words, it wasn’t anything like their nighttime conversations. She shook, hands fidgeting while her mouth hung open and all that came from it were those raw, strained sounds. Her eyes stayed glazed over as if she wasn’t there. As if she had never been there.
See now what you’ve done, his mother said. She’s distraught, poor thing.
“Not now, Mother.”
It’s like I’ve always said, Grandma cut in. He can’t be trusted.
“Oh, shut up.”
He closed the door in the girl’s face, that pasty, lifeless face he couldn’t bear to see. The noises wormed themselves through the keyhole, animal noises, noises almost like the ones Cass had made. Cass in her pink cotton pajamas, playing hopscotch by herself out on the street despite the autumn chill. Chalk lines around her. Chalk wings spreading from her body, and sirens howling like wolves in the distance.
Cassie. Angel eyes.
Don’t look at me like that, freak, said—no, that was a false memory, one of those that Doctor Stein had put into his brain with his pills and his electric shocks. “You wouldn’t,” he said as Cassie jumped from square to square, too focused on her game to notice him. “Never.”
“I loved her just like she was,” he told the door. “That’s why I didn’t want her to grow anymore.” The girl on the other side grunted. The woman was dead and the blood clung to her legs like a demanding toddler. He went over to the phone on the wall and it rang, one sharp signal before he lifted the receiver.
The call came from far away, a sea of static and a male voice drowning in it. “Is this Mrs.—?” The phone line chewed up bits and pieces of his voice. “I’m sorry to disturb this early in the morning. I’m Chief Inspector—and I—” There was a wind howling, tossing the man’s words here and there. “Your name and address were found in a notebook that we believe—and it’s of the utmost importance that—”
Notebook, he thought.
“This man is a highly disturbed individual and—ran away from a mental institution on November 10th.”
The wind tore through again. The thin line of waves and wires between the policeman’s voice and his own auditory canal swayed and shivered like a skipping-rope slapping the asphalt, thud-thud-thud.
“He is very dangerous. I don’t want to scare you, but—his own little sister—”
The girl had stopped with her noises, but there was a different sound now. Slow, unsteady knocks on the door. Bang, bang, little fists.
“Keep your door locked, and don’t invite any strangers inside,” the Chief Inspector continued. “And if you notice anything out of the ordinary, don’t hesitate to give me a call. My number—”
“Thank you.” He pressed the receiver to his mouth, blowing hot, stale air into the transmitter. “It was nice of you to call, Chief Inspector.” He saw Cassie in front of him, her wings glowing in the sun. She was smiling. The banging on the door continued, but it wasn’t important. He would take care of it in a while.
The Chief Inspector shouted something, but that wasn’t important, either. The girl made a sound like that of a dog drowning.
“I’ve got something to attend to now, if you’ll excuse me. When you’re done with my notebook, can I have it back?”
Winnebago Indian Motorhome by Tonka
Eddie Generous
The silver bell jingled from the top left corner of the heavy wooden door of Cooper Collective as Josh Dolan hipped his way back to the sidewalk, the two-foot box held against his chest, hands pinching the nine-inch wide ends. His eyes bounced up and down from the street to the Winnebago images on the box. He shifted the box to his left forearm and dug his keys from his right pocket.
The box slid into the passenger’s seat and he hurried around the front end. He’d left his cell phone stuffed in the cubby behind the shifter, auxiliary cord attached and music still running on random. He turned the key, but not far enough to jog the starter into life. For a moment, there was no music, only the ominous rustling of paper before the piano and horns picked up in David Bowie’s Dollar Days.
The song was an ode to the eventual and a dying man’s recognition that conclusion was beyond his control. Like the lines of Bowie’s bucket list could go unticked, no trouble.
“But not this one,” Josh said and touched the wrinkled and soft Winnebago box, thinking of his own bucket list. He’d inherited a 1974 Winnebago Indian Motorhome by Tonka as a boy, played with it for three summers before his father dragged him from bed, shouting that the house was on fire and they had to get out.
Strangely, he’d forgotten all about the toy until a few years back when he and Claire admitted they’d been facing down their own eventual. He moved into the den and she said nothing. They ate no more than three meals together a week. They hadn’t had sex since she went off the pill.
She wanted a baby—not a child, a baby—of that he was certain. A cat didn’t fill the void and the one they’d taken in lasted only a year before a Honda Civic made crow food of the thing. The book club, the knitting, the yoga, the tea outings, nothing scratched that particular itch. He’d tried to get her into other hobbies and in the process, got himself into nostalgia. There were posters and records. He had a small collection of reissued horror movies from his childhood—available for the first time since their VHS releases.
The Winnebago was better than perfect. As a kid, he didn’t have either the husband or wife dolls, didn’t have the box, and his Winnebago had been rusty with paint nicks and chips. This one had the husband and the box and was showroom mint.
He turned the key and the music silenced for a second before reconnecting. The blinker clicked, but before he could pull into the Sunday afternoon traffic, the music silenced again while his phone trilled a ring.
Claire. She had a work thing in Vancouver for a few days. That she was calling suggested abnormality. Typically, it was a single line of text that came with no expectation of response.
The shifter went back to park and the blinker ceased blinking. “Hey?” he said.
“Is this Josh Dolan?”
The voice was that of a man and Josh sat up straighter in his seat. “Yeah?”
“Your wife is Claire Dolan?” The voice sounded every-man normal, not aggressive or snobbish, no out of place accent.
“Yeah, why?”
“She collapsed this afternoon during a…conference, I guess. At the Radisson.”
“What?”
“I’m a nurse at Vancouver General. She collapsed shortly after lunch and hasn’t regained consciousness. We need to know if she’s on any medication.”
The world beyond the windows of Josh’s Chevrolet Sonic darkened to nothing and the atmosphere in the cab grew harsh. “No, I don’t think so…not since she went off the pill.”
“Any prenatal medications?”
Josh closed his eyes and sneered at the impossibility. “What? No. Why would she?”
“Oh. Um. According to her bloodwork, she’s pregnant.”
Indignant, Josh blurted, “That’s impossible we haven’t had sex in like two years,” and then immediately blushed as an echoing facsimile of his voice said you haven’t had sex, you, you, you; who knows what she’s been doing, who she’s been doing, who, who, who. “Oh. Wow. How pregnant? I mean, can you tell how long?”
“No. Hmm, well.” The nurse cleared his throat. “She’s been unconscious for nearly two hours, but so far we know nothing. You’re in Kamloops, correct?”
Josh didn’t hear this, wasn’t sure how he felt. “I’m coming. Driving. If she wakes up and is going to leave, tell her to call me.” He hung up as the nurse began speaking.
He pulled the shifter and streaked
into traffic. A truck, one not exactly cut off, but close, honked at him. He took a left at the lights and hopped onto the highway.
Two hours into the trip, he stopped in Hope for gas and coffee. A man coming from the storefront, on his way to the Jeep parked in front of Josh’s Sonic, slowed as he pocketed a fat, brown leather wallet, looking into Josh’s car. “Hey, I had one of those as a little guy.”
Josh, in a state of mild shock, said, “Do you have the wife? I’d like to get him for the husband.”
The man jerked his chin in a bird-like reaction and said, “Huh?”
“The wife for the husband. The dolls that go with the camper. You know?”
The guy pouted his bottom lip and shook his head slowly. “Man, had that toy back in the seventies, maybe even nineteen-eighty. I don’t remember anything about it beyond that the wheels squeaked like a bugger and my little sister broke the awning—oh, and our cat stole the dogs.”
“Dogs?”
“Sure, it came with two dogs. Now that I think about it, might’ve been kids, too.”
“Kids?” Josh scrunched his face. “Would you sell them to me?”
“Man, I told you, I had them when I was only little.” The man was shaking his head much faster, eyes widened, as if to say, Ain’t you listening, you wack job?! “Real small. The seventies.”
Josh tutted at this and finished his transaction at the pump.
“She’s still out, sir.” This nurse was not the nurse Josh spoke with over the phone. This nurse was a woman. She double-checked that the contact information on file was correct. “We’ll give you a ring when she awakes. You can stay, too, for a little while.”
“I’d like to see her,” he said. Deep down, a thought, one probably belonging to the owner of that echoing voice, suggested that he’d know who had impregnated his wife once he saw her face.
“Yes, of course.” The nurse stood on the ledge of her stool and pointed down the hall. “Three-two-nine. Please be quiet: there are three other patients in the room with your wife.”
Josh began walking, quickly. The waxy floor shined and the dull white walls bounced a soft blue hue onto the nurses and visitors and the milling patients. The place was busy with motion, but most were respectfully hushed. In 329, Josh passed two very elderly women and a teen surrounded by what appeared to be her family. Tears streaked through a powdery foundation on their way to the teen’s jawline and abrupt end to the makeup. A curtain circled the only remaining bed and Josh peeped around. It was Claire, but he had no idea who’d put the baby in her and immediately forgot the strange inclination. “Claire?” he whispered and then shook her by the big toe of her right foot where it peaked the bedsheet. She didn’t move and the beeping machine kept a constant rhythm. He sidled up to the nightstand next to her and opened the drawer. Her purse was not inside, nor was her phone. He shook her once more before returning to the nurses’ station in the hallway.
“Where’s Claire Dolan’s things? Her purse, cellphone?”
“We have them?” The woman he’d most recently spoken with rose to her feet.
“Somebody called me with her cell, so you must.”
The woman disappeared behind a partition and returned swinging a bulky plastic bag by a string. “Claire Dolan. Here you go.”
Josh leaned against the island’s countertop and began digging with fingernails into the tight knot on the drawstring—made tighter by how the nurse had swung the bag. She was no longer looking at him but had Facebook open on a desktop computer, eyes turned onto the blue grey glow.
The knot finally let free and Josh dug around the bra and blouse, the slacks and shoes. He found the purse and then the cellphone. He held both in his right hand and the bag in his left, as if unsure how to proceed.
“Squeeze tight for me,” a janitor said behind him and Josh leaned in, letting the bag fall back onto the countertop, solving his conundrum by needing space for a garbage cart. “Thanks, bud.”
Josh transferred the phone to his left hand and opened the purse. The Radisson key card and sleeve were in with the cash in Claire’s wallet. “Only one Radisson here, right?”
The nurse didn’t look at him. “Yep.”
“Better take this back in case she wakes up and wants her bra or purse.”
The nurse looked then, reached for the bag and tied the knot, then yanked the bag by the strings as she returned it to whatever lay beyond the partition. “You going to be weird about that phone?”
Josh put Claire’s phone in his pocket. Right then he understood a gossip mill had gone around to the on-duty nurses about his conversation, about Claire’s infidelity. “No. I’m just—no.”
The urge to investigate the phone was strong, but parking tolls ran by the minute at the hospital. He searched out the hotel on his phone and let Google lead him to his destination. Her car was at the airport in Kamloops—she’d flown on the company dime—and the Radisson was right by the airport.
He didn’t go to Vancouver often, but little changed. It was a drab and dirty city. Everything was old and disorganized. Half of the houses appeared empty with mossy roofs and crumbling masonry. Windows boarded up, doors broken open. He’d heard there was a squatter problem, but it looked more like there was a problem with land investors driving market values beyond liveability—something else he’d heard.
Once nearing the airport and the hotel, civilization thinned out. Long buildings and gas stations and outlet shopping filled his peripheries as he drove, mind throbbing with that nettling need to know.
He parked at the Radisson, next to a pair of Enterprise rental Mazdas and a lamppost. He stepped out, got halfway across the expansive lot, and turned around. He jogged to the car and grabbed the Winnebago box. Door kicked closed, he started out anew.
The room number was on the sleeve around the key card. He rode the elevator to the eighth floor and found Claire’s room. He set the box on one of the two queen beds and withdrew Claire’s phone from his pocket. All he had to do was wake it up, look at the messages, and know the truth.
“Ugh,” he said and set her phone on the nightstand. He read the instructions at the base of the landline telephone, just below the number pad. He dialed zero and it rang three times before a young sounding woman answered. He explained that he needed to register a car to his wife’s room.
That done, he picked up the phone. He touched the button on the side and swiped the lock screen—she didn’t password protect, and if she had, it would be her childhood phone number, her pin for everything. He swiped once more and his thumb hovered over the loaded message box. His heart quickened its pace—did he still love her, did he care, what the hell was she going to do with the kid? His eyes hovered away and settled on the Winnebago.
The phone returned to the nightstand and he withdrew the huge tin toy from the box. The husband figurine was on his back, arms out, knees bent. Josh put him behind the wheel. A smile played across his face.
From his pocket, he took out his cellphone and snapped a shot, ignoring all the messages and calls he’d missed while driving—he’d put it on silent when he saw Claire’s mother’s number pop up.
He lay back and turned to face the TV. They didn’t bother with cable at home, so watching bad television was always a treat when on the road. He found Jeopardy! and grabbed his phone. He sent a text to his superior and explained that he wouldn’t be in for at least a few days, Claire’s sick in the hospital.
Before Trebek broke from play for the show’s first sponsor, Josh picked up the Winnebago Indian Motorhome by Tonka and set it on the bed next to him.
Josh opened his eyes. He’d slipped down and curled on the spacious bed; the motorhome’s passenger’s window was eye level. The little man behind the wheel was pale, wore blue pants and a yellow and grey sweater.
“Almost dressed like me,” Josh mumbled into the stiff white bedsheet. His t-shirt was yellow and grey, but those distinctive seventies’ lines…
Josh rolled to his back and reached for his phone. He had s
everal text messages and a handful of missed calls—all the calls came from Claire’s mother, none from the hospital. He dug into the front pocket of Claire’s suitcase and found her phone charger. The zipper around the main compartment seemed to tease him: Look in me, I’m hiding her lingerie, I’m hiding all the good stuff she saved for the other man. Teeth clenched, jaw strained, Josh jerked the zipper around three rounded corners and flipped the lid. Plain underwear, plain undershirts and bras, yoga pants, slacks, blouses, the bag with her toiletries, everything went to the floor until all that remained was a lacy, silky, red teddy.
He swallowed. She’d never…never in the whole time…
The clothes returned to the suitcase and the zipper closed. Josh plugged in his phone and took Claire’s bag of toiletries to the washroom. Working in that same state of mild shock from the day before, Josh stepped into the washroom and stripped. He removed towels and hung everything he’d worn over bars: steam cleaning. The shower ran and Josh sat and stared blankly at the running water until the room fell under a heavy fog, despite the effort of the small ceiling fan. The water temperature lowered and he stepped in.
Fingertips and toes gone to raisin, Josh came to and turned off the shower. Dried but not dressed—he hung the damp clothes in the open closet—and smelling of Crest Whitening and Secret antiperspirant, he went to his phone. No new messages.
The Half That You See Page 2
