They both turned to see Brian standing across the room.
“When are we going to eat, Mom?”
“Soon, hon.” She glanced at Alex.
He gave her a faint smile. “How about now? I’m hungry, too.”
Sarah got the rest of last week’s beef stew from the freezer. She put it in a pot, then set it on the stove on low to thaw. While Alex started the salad, Sarah got out the bread and tomatoes for Brian’s cheese sandwiches. But she couldn’t find the American cheese. She thought there’d been an unopened pack of sixteen slices in the door of the refrigerator, but now there were only a few slices of Swiss in a Baggie and half a pound of cheddar wrapped in Saran Wrap. She shrugged and took out the cheddar.
After dinner, Brian went to the family room to watch TV, and Alex helped Sarah with the dishes. He lifted a wet glass from the drainer and began to dry it with a towel.
“What I said before …”
“What?”
“About the gun.”
Sarah looked at him. He shook his head no.
“You’re right,” he said. “There’s no place for a gun in our house.”
“I know,” Sarah said. “And I knew you felt that way.”
Alex nodded. “Besides, we’re completely safe in here.”
When they were finished, Alex went in to join Brian. Sarah didn’t feel like sitting, though. She needed to sort out her thoughts, and she needed to be doing something while she did it. She considered taking a walk, but it was too cold out.
She sighed.
There’s always vacuuming, she thought.
Sarah decided to do the upstairs first, since Alex and Brian were watching a made-for-TV movie on the Disney channel. She knew that running the vacuum cleaner downstairs distorted the television picture—whether it was just simple interference or something to do with the wiring downstairs, she wasn’t certain. She feared the latter, though, because of the age of the house.
They had two vacuum cleaners, one on each floor. This was a small luxury, which eliminated the chore of lugging one machine up and down the stairs, and which Sarah appreciated almost as much as if she’d had someone to do the vacuuming for her. She had to admit, though, that Alex sometimes helped her with this chore.
The upstairs vacuum cleaner was an old barrel-shaped model with a scuffed-up brown hose and a bagful of attachments. Sarah pulled it out of the closet in the sitting room.
She vacuumed the sitting room, then the hallway around the head of the stairs, the guest bedroom, Alex’s den, and the master bedroom. Brian’s room was last.
Sarah switched off the vacuum and picked up a pair of sneakers and a Nerf ball. She put the shoes in Brian’s closet and the ball in his toy chest beside the cardboard-and-tape sword that Alex had made for him. Then she began vacuuming the carpet, starting at the door and moving toward the bed.
The carpet attachment struck something under Brian’s bed.
“Another toy,” Sarah said aloud, and shook her head.
She switched off the machine, got down on her hands and knees, and reached quickly under the bed with her right hand. She felt a tiny, sharp, biting pain and jerked her hand back in surprise. A drop of blood welled in the crevice between her index and middle fingers.
Sarah snatched a tissue from Brian’s nightstand and pressed it between her fingers. The bleeding stopped almost at once, and she could barely see the tiny puncture wound. She dropped the blood-spotted tissue in the waste-paper basket, then looked apprehensively under the bed, thinking that perhaps she’d disturbed Patches and that the big cat was in one of his less pleasant moods and had bitten or clawed her.
But there was no cat beneath the bed. She saw something, though, and she used the vacuum attachment to drag it out.
Sarah stared in disbelief at the butcher knife.
She recognized it as one of hers. But it seemed so out of place here that it looked alien.
Why had Brian put it there? she wondered.
He’ll have to explain why, she knew, and this bothered her. It wasn’t his purpose for having the knife—whatever it might be—that bothered her. It was that he was keeping secrets and being sneaky.
She lifted the knife by the handle and carried it downstairs.
Alex and Brian were seated on the couch, their faces bathed in the glow of the TV set, their attention focused on the sounds and movements before them. They both glanced at Sarah and then did a double take when they saw she was holding a butcher knife.
“Brian, I found this under your bed.”
Brian looked from her face to the knife and back again. His eyes were wide, and his face was flushed with embarrassment. Sarah realized that she could have been more subtle. She wondered if she should have spoken to Alex first and then approached Brian in a different manner. But it was too late to change tactics now, so she pushed ahead.
“Do you want to tell me how it got there?” she asked.
He opened his mouth to answer.
And all the lights went out.
18
THE DARKNESS WAS NEARLY absolute, and for a moment no one spoke. The only sound was the faint ticking of the heating pipes.
“Damn,” Alex said.
Sarah saw him stand, silhouetted by the dim light from the window across the room.
“I’m scared.”
“It’s okay, son.”
Sarah could barely make out Alex reaching down and taking Brian’s hand. They moved toward her, a pair of flat black shapes.
“What caused that?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Maybe a temporary power outage. It could be the whole neighborhood.”
“But I see lights,” Sarah said. Scattered points of lights could be seen through the trees that flanked their backyard.
“Then it’s just us.”
“I’m scared,” Brian repeated.
“It’s okay, honey.” Sarah reached for him, aware of the butcher knife in her other hand. She considered setting it down, but it was too dark to see the end table. Besides, she’d felt at least a twinge of fear when the room had plunged into darkness. It wasn’t that she wanted to carry the knife for protection; she just didn’t want to leave it where someone else might pick it up. “Don’t be afraid, Brian. It’s just the lights.”
“It’s not the lights I’m worried about,” Alex said. “It’s the furnace.”
Now Sarah realized why the water pipes were making ticking sounds: They were cooling.
“Where’s our flashlight?”
“In the kitchen,” Sarah said. “I think.”
They moved in a tight group from the dark family room to the deeper recesses of the hallway. As they passed the dining room, Sarah sucked in her breath. She’d seen something move out of the black shadows on the floor of the foyer ahead of them.
“Don’t step on Patches,” Alex said.
The cat meowed, and Sarah relaxed. They crossed the foyer, then walked down the short hallway to the kitchen, moving slowly, as if they were all afraid they might trip over something. Alex fumbled through several drawers before he found the flashlight.
He thumbed the switch. Nothing happened. Then he banged the butt end of the flashlight in his palm and tried it again. This time it worked, casting a pale yellow-white circle on the wall.
“I’ll check the breaker box,” he said.
Sarah and Brian followed him through the kitchen to the laundry room, neither of them wishing to be left behind in the dark. Alex shone the light on the door to the basement. Then he slid back the bolt, turned the knob, and opened the door.
Alex’s light danced across the floor of the landing and up the wall to the large gray metal box. The box was new, a replacement of the old fuse box, which Alex had insisted upon right after they’d moved into the house. It was something, Sarah knew, that she probably wouldn’t have considered until after an incident like this one, when they’d be searching for new fuses.
Alex stepped onto the landing, opened the box, and shone his light on two vertical rows of sma
ll black levers. He strained to read the tiny paper tags, one beside each lever.
“The main switch kicked off,” he said. “There must have been a power surge.”
He flipped the little lever. Immediately, the bare bulb above his head went on, as did the kitchen light behind them, making them all squint against the brightness. Down below, the furnace roared to life.
“I wonder how long this has been on.” Alex reached over and flicked the wall switch, turning off the overhead light.
He stepped toward Sarah, then stopped, one foot in the doorway, the other on the landing. He pointed his flashlight down the basement stairs.
“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked.
“I thought I heard something.”
He stood unmoving, his head cocked to one side, as if he were straining to hear through the muffled roar of the furnace. Then he shook his head and clicked off the flashlight.
“I guess it was just the furnace,” he said.
He closed the door, then slid the bolt into place.
Much later that night Sarah was awakened by Brian. He was standing beside her bed and gently poking her shoulder.
“I’m scared, Mom.”
“Wha—? Oh, don’t be afraid, honey,” she said, her voice thick from sleep. “The lights work okay now.”
“But I heard noises. Downstairs.”
“Noises?” she said sleepily. She pulled back the covers, careful not to wake Alex, and swung her feet to the floor. “You were just dreaming, pumpkin.”
She stood, put her hand on Brian’s shoulder, then walked him back to his room and tucked him in bed.
“Go to sleep now, everything’s all right.”
She kissed him on the forehead.
“But—”
“Shh, baby, go to sleep.”
The next morning, right after his mother gently shook him awake, Brian climbed out of bed and took his Sword of Power from the toy chest.
“I don’t think you have time to play with that now.”
“I’m not. I’m taking it to school.”
“Oh?”
“It’s for show-and-tell.”
Brian held the cardboard-and-tape sword in his right hand and let his eyes move along the smooth curve of the thick blade. His father had done a good job cutting it out.
“Are you sure that’s what you want to take?” Sarah said.
Brian surmised that she didn’t like his sword, and he guessed the reason was that in making it he’d “borrowed” her butcher knife without asking. He didn’t have to guess that both she and his dad had been upset last night; he knew that for a fact. They’d made it very clear to him that knives were not toys and that not only shouldn’t he be playing with them, but he shouldn’t be hiding things like that in his room. At that point he’d almost admitted to having the box cutter. However, he’d been too afraid of what their reaction would be to his having two knives in his room. So he’d kept his mouth shut, except to say that he was sorry.
“You have a lot of other nice toys,” his mother was saying now. “Are you sure you want to take that?”
“Can’t I?”
He looked up into her face. She smiled, and he knew it was okay.
“Sure,” she said.
Later, while he ate his Cheerios, milk, and banana slices at the breakfast table, he noticed that his mother seemed kind of upset. He was relieved to hear that it had something to do with the orange juice and nothing whatever to do with him. He didn’t want her to be upset with him for a long, long time.
“I bought two half gallons of orange juice last week,” she said, holding open the door to the refrigerator, “and they’re both gone.”
“We drank them,” Alex said.
“We drank one of them. The other one should be right back here.”
“Are you sure you bought two?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Well, I didn’t drink it,” Alex said, looking at Brian. “Did you?”
Brian was startled for a moment, thinking his father was accusing him of something. But then he winked, making Brian smile.
“Well, I didn’t drink it, either,” he said, trying to imitate his father’s voice.
“Very funny.” She retrieved a large cardboard carton from the refrigerator and shut the door. “You’ll both just have to settle for grapefruit juice.”
“Yuck.”
“That goes double for me,” Alex said.
After breakfast Alex drove Brian to school. Brian was both surprised and dismayed when his father insisted on walking with him all the way inside the building, something he’d never done before, except on the first day of the school year. Brian expected it had something to do with his having borrowed his mother’s knife. No matter the reason, it embarrassed him to be treated like a little kid.
As soon as his father left, Brian saw Eddy Teesdale in the hall. He was eager to show him his Sword of Power, but he kept it down at his side so that he wouldn’t attract attention. He didn’t want everyone crowding around him and admiring it. Not yet. There would be time enough for that after show-and-tell.
The trouble was, Eddy wasn’t alone. He was standing with Charley Brooks. Brian didn’t particularly like Charley Brooks. He was a smart aleck.
“Hi, Brian,” Eddy said as he approached.
“Hi.” He saw that both Eddy and Charley were looking at his sword.
“Did you bring that for show-and-tell?” Eddy asked. “Yeah. Pretty neat, huh?”
“What is it?” Charley asked in a smart-alecky tone of voice. Brian noticed that Charley always seemed to have a half smile on his face and his head tipped back a little bit, as if he were sneering at everything and everyone around him.
“It’s a sword,” Brian said.
“It’s pretty junky looking.”
“It’s a Sword of Power,” Brian said loudly. “My dad made it, and it’s probably better than anything you’ve got.”
Charley Brooks sneered.
“Some sword,” he said. “It’s made out of cardboard. You couldn’t cut anything with that, not even a jelly sandwich.”
“You don’t need to cut anything with it, you dodo, it’s a Sword of Power. You can just do things with it.”
“Like what?”
“Like anything you want.”
“Anything but cut things,” Charley Brooks said with a laugh.
Brian clenched his jaw and stepped toward him, ready to make him take back his words. The bell rang. Charley Brooks turned on his heel and walked away.
“You couldn’t even cut jelly with a cardboard sword,” he said over his shoulder.
“I’ll show you,” Brian said.
I’ll show you something that can cut anything, he thought.
Sarah had a difficult time keeping her mind on her work. More than once she temporarily forgot what she was doing and nearly applied the wrong solution to a customer’s hair. Kay was watching her closely.
“Are you okay?”
“What? Sure.”
“Come on, now,” Kay said, “you’re among friends. You can tell us.”
No, I can’t, Sarah thought, not now.
But she had to say something, she knew, because everyone in the shop was looking at her. So she told them about finding the knife under Brian’s bed last night.
“Shoot, honey, that ain’t nothing,” Kay said, pulling a comb through her customer’s wet hair. “One time when Joey was about four years old, Rick and I walked into the kitchen and found him playing ‘pirate ship’ on the countertop. He’d pulled out the drawers to make steps for himself to climb up there, and on the way up he’d picked out a couple of steak knives. He had one of them tucked down into his belt, and he was waving the other one over his head daring us to ‘come aboard.’”
“Jesus, Kay, what did you do?” Kay’s customer asked. She was a redheaded woman in her mid-twenties, Sarah guessed. She wore designer jeans and an expensive sweater. Sarah had never seen her before.
“I froze, is what I did,” K
ay said. “All I could do was picture Joey falling off the counter and landing on one of those knives.”
“God,” the woman said.
Kay pulled her comb through the woman’s hair and snipped. She said, “Rick started talking real calm and slow. ‘Give me the knife, Joey, give me the knife.’ Joey said, ‘Okay, Daddy,’ as happy as hell, and threw it at him.”
“God.”
“Rick jumped back, and the knife smacked him in the leg, luckily, handle first.”
“So, what did you do to your kid?”
“I carefully took the other knife out of his belt; then Rick gently lifted him down off the counter, calmly explained that he shouldn’t be playing with knives, and then paddled the hell out of his behind so he wouldn’t forget.”
The woman laughed.
Sarah winced, and when she looked in the mirror, she saw that Martha Kellog winced, too. Martha was one of Sarah’s longtime customers. She was a soft-spoken woman, and she usually sat quietly all the while she was in the chair. Now she met Sarah’s eyes in the mirror.
“Did you spank Brian last night?” she asked.
“No.”
“Why not?” Kay’s customer said, butting into their conversation.
“Because he’s too old to be spanked.”
“You think so? Just how old is he?”
“Six and a half,” Sarah said.
Kay’s customer made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a snort.
“That doesn’t sound too old to me.”
Sarah glanced at Kay, who gave her a weak smile and a slight shrug of the shoulders.
“He’s old enough to understand the English language,” Sarah said firmly. “He knew that what he did was wrong even before my husband and I explained it to him. He felt bad about it, and he won’t do it again. There was no need for a spanking.”
“According to you,” Kay’s customer said, turning in her chair to face Sarah. “I’ll tell you what, if I ever have any kids and—”
“Judging by your personality,” Sarah said, “I don’t think that’s something you’ll have to worry about.”
The woman’s head snapped back as if she’d been slapped, and the shop became perfectly quiet.
Sarah had surprised even herself. It wasn’t like her to give a customer a verbal shot. On those rare occasions in the past when one of them had said something out of line, she’d let it go in the interests of business, of harmony in the shop. But she wasn’t herself today.
Night of Reunion: A Novel Page 13
