Voices in the Dark

by Andrew Coburn

  Roland smiled when she came upon him in the kitchen, his face a milky sheen of chubbiness. “What did you mean by that?” he asked, and her mind had to work back.

  “I didn’t mean anything. Forget it.”

  He was in old moccasins, which he used for house slippers, and he was only a few years from retirement, which frightened her. Her sister Joan’s husband had retired two years ago and turned womanish, usurping Joan’s kitchen, soaking bottles in the sink for the redeemable labels, clipping recipes from Mary’s magazines before she read them. When one of her friends phoned, he got on the extension to join the conversation, then to monopolize it. He was seldom out of his slippers.

  Roland said, “You’re in a funny mood, May.”

  “It’s my mood. Don’t fuck with it.”

  His eyes jittered, for the language wasn’t hers, at least not her public one, but his smile stayed unassuming and uncomplaining. He wasn’t one for going deeply into things, but he was, she readily admitted, a good provider, his heyday when the Heights was under development. He had wired most of the grand houses, including the Gunners', the grandest.

  Watching him turn away, she softened her feelings. He was shelter, he was groceries on the table, he was the balance in her checkbook, and he was more than that. He had to be. Watching him rub the nape of his neck, she knew he was ready for bedtime television.

  In the bedroom, he placed his coin purse on the dresser, and they began readying themselves for bed with their backs turned, though she could see him in the mirror. With his shirt off, he looked like a boiled potato. His pants gone, his body struggled for shape. Yet, she wondered, would Fred Fossey, her would-be lover, look any different in the round? Fred Fossey, she suspected, did not wear pajamas.

  Roland switched on the television. Law & Order. “Okay?” he asked and padded to the window to raise the shade for air. Moonlight bathed him, breezes blew in.

  “I think I’d like to watch Barbara Walters,” she said, propping her pillows. Head bent, he stood tranced looking out the window. She waited. “Did you hear me, Roland?”

  He didn’t move. His eyes were cast into the night. “Somebody’s out there.”

  She reached across the bed for the clicker and changed channels and raised the volume. Her interest was in Barbara Walters’s hairdo, which her own at times resembled.

  Roland’s voice was a rasp. “A man’s in the gazebo.”

  Settling back against the propped pillows and curling her legs under the covers, she said, “I know who it is. Let him be.”

  • • •

  “Let me out here,” Regina Smith said when they made the turn into the gateway of the drive. The headlights, supernovas, cast fogbows. Harley Bodine’s foot was on the brake.

  “We’re not hiding anything,” he said in the tone of a younger man. “We’re not children.”

  “I would hope not, Harley.”

  “Friends can’t have dinner?”

  “It was a fine dinner,” she said, opening her door. “Thank you.”

  “No,” he said. “Thank you.“

  She accepted a kiss on the cheek, climbed out, and stepped aside, her mind elsewhere when the car gave a leap back, righted itself on the road, and fled into the night. She began the long walk up the drive at a smart pace. The moon seemed too much stone for the sky, in danger of tearing from its setting. Only a few lights in the large house beckoned.

  Inside the front door, mirrors recording her entrance, she slipped her pumps off. Her purse she deposited on a table where a plume of ferns gave off the scent of cinnamon. She clicked on no extra lights. Her ascent up the grand stairway was silent and attended with a kind of unalterable dignity usually seen in older women, dowagers of the first rank.

  Her daughter’s room was lit but vacant, the television tuned to a music video of Prince or Michael Jackson (she could not tell them apart) rolling epicene eyes, rubbing an androgynous crotch, and gyrating an ebony ass buggered, she supposed, by the wild fancies of adolescent millions. She moved far down the dim passage, well beyond the sound of the video, carrying with her the badge of high purpose and a perverse thrill of anticipation.

  The door to her stepson’s room was half open, and the air pumping out was potent, the scent stronger than what she had drawn from the ferns. The sounds she heard loosed a pulsing vein at her temple, and after fighting through a moment of paralysis in her legs, she looked in. There were clothes on the floor and a rumpus on the bed, the sight at once a grotesque comedy of abuse and an exquisite conspiracy against her. Defiant muscles in her stepson’s taut legs raced into his buttocks, which were banged together like cobblestones. The soles of his feet were dirty, the knees of her daughter rosy. Outrage struck her with the force of a tidal wave.

  She reeled away and retreated, for she did not want to witness the mockery of a crescendo. Passing a guest room, she nearly gave out an hysterical horse laugh that would have brought down the roof on her head. As silently as she had climbed the stairs she descended them.

  • • •

  Harley Bodine returned home and, though he heard his wife at work at her typewriter, knew she had gone out and come back not much before he. This he knew because he had laid a hand on the hood of her car. In a room of her own, her back to him, she sat at a sturdy table in a small chrome and leather swivel chair. “How’s it going?” he asked in a forceful voice, and her fingers slid off the keys.

  “Not well,” she said, turning in the chair.

  “I didn’t think so.” He idly thumbed the wheel of his lighter, not hard enough to scratch up a flame for the cigarette that hung from his mouth. “Why bother?”

  “I want to make my own money again.”

  “I give you enough.”

  “You make it seem painful.”

  “It’s not about the money, is it? It’s something else.” He produced a flame and lit a cigarette. “Tell me what it is.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. It’s in your face.”

  She said, “How much did you love your son?”

  • • •

  Dudley stood outside the gazebo on bare feet, his toes gnawing the grass, and gazed up at the calm calamity of stars, some burning beyond their existence, emitting flames no longer there. He was aware of the figure advancing toward him but chose to ignore it until, bearing a burden, it was upon him.

  “My wife says you might need these.”

  His arms accepted a puffy pillow and a folded blanket, which assured his comfort on the cushioned bench in the gazebo. His gaze returned to the night sky, which he saw as a battle in which many shots are fired at an enemy never seen. “This is too kind.”

  “She wants to know if you’ve eaten.”

  “I could use a bite.”

  “We’ll leave something for you on the back step.”

  His gaze focused on a protuberance of stars strung up like the cocked hind leg of a dog. He had never had a dog, never wanted one. A cat had been his love. “That will be wonderful.”

  “Then I’ll say good night.”

  “And I won’t let the bogeyman get me.”

  In the glassy light of the moon Roland Hutchins’s departure was a shuffle. His footsteps were leavings on the grass, his shadow his skeleton. A stunted tree that had not borne leaves in years gave out posthumous rustlings in the breeze. From the dark of a window came May Hutchins’s voice.

  “Sleep tight.”

  8

  BEVERLY GUNNER ENTERED HER HOUSE LIKE A STRANGER AND avoided mirrors. God knows what she looked like. She had put on lipstick but had not done her hair and had ruined her dress. In the sun room, where a pruned ficus mushroomed its pointed leaves, she gazed out at the pool. Her sons were floating belly up on rubber rafts, though she saw only one clearly, her vision blurred, as if an eyeball had sprung loose. With painful and strenuous effort, she forced the shrunken pumps from her swollen feet and let out two hurt cries of relief, the first the fiercest.

  She
entered the kitchen from one wide entrance, her husband from the other. Wearing only pajama bottoms, he looked more maternal than masculine. Shambling on slow, fat feet, he burst open a cabinet door and plucked out a glass. Without looking at her, he spoke first.

  “I’m not going to ask what last night was all about.”

  “You’re wise not to,” she said in a tone never used with him before. She stood near the breakfast nook and saw that the boys had fed themselves. The milk had been left out, a spill of it on the table, next to the skins of two bananas. Spoons had been left clunked in their cereal bowls. The box was thrown on its side, as if they had fought over it.

  His back to her, her husband gulped orange juice. His rear end was massive and eternal. When he faced her, he said, “You look like hell.”

  She said, “What did you do to Phoebe Yarbrough?”

  They took note of each other, he with his mouth drawn down. Seconds passed. “What did she say?”

  “You hit her.”

  “That’s her story.”

  “You broke her cheekbone.”

  “She’ll be all right.” He put aside the empty juice glass and tugged at his pajama pants. Sizable nipples depended from the mush of his chest. “You want to hear what really happened?”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “She came on to me.”

  She smiled in the abstract behind too much lipstick. Her dress hung heavy on her. “I’ve never trusted you.”

  “Things about Phoebe Yarbrough you don’t know,” he said.

  “And don’t want to know.”

  “In New York she was a call girl. That’s what Yarbrough married. A fancy whore.”

  She turned away from him. “That’s what I wish I had been,” she said, with certain crashes inside her head, tilted thoughts exploding like spilled dishes, through which she heard him snort.

  “You don’t have the body.”

  In high school, sought after, she had almost allowed a fellow to have fun with her. He was later killed in Vietnam. She wished she had given joy to him. Looking back, she was sure she had.

  “But I like what you’ve got,” he said, his face increasing.

  She sheered away when the edge of his hand sought the groove of her rump. “Don’t touch me,” she said and watched his face burn.

  “You’ve got nothing without me.”

  She had her grandmother’s jewelry, inexpensive pieces embossed with memories, and pictures of her daughter handled always with love. Her smile was back, still in the abstract. “And I have nothing with you,” she said.

  • • •

  Sunlight trembled on the grass. Carrying a tray of buttered toast, coffee, and juice, May Hutchins saw that Dudley was not in the gazebo but behind it. When she realized he was urinating, she stopped in her tracks, turned her head, and waited. A small bird, blurred by its speed, flew by like a bullet.

  “Good morning,” she said when, decent, he made his way toward her with an easy step. “Did you sleep all right?”

  Indeed he had, he told her, and with much appreciation took the breakfast tray from her hands. The toast was oatmeal bread, and from inside the gazebo he nodded his satisfaction. He sat on the cushioned bench he had slept on, with the tray balanced nicely on his lap, as if he were accustomed to tea time with women who made of him. She had absolutely no fear of him, though Roland had voiced reservations.

  “I looked in on you earlier,” she said, “but you were dead to the world.”

  “I heard you,” he replied, “but I didn’t want to open my eyes yet.”

  A wasp flew at her, and, in swiping at it, she discovered a curler dangling from the back of her head. Swiftly she dislodged it and clenched it inside her fist. “My husband says you can use the garden hose to wash up. I left soap and towel on the step.” Then, hesitantly, she added, “You can bathe all over. We won’t look.”

  “Nudity doesn’t embarrass me,” he said. “I’ve been an artist’s model.”

  She wasn’t sure she believed that, though neither did she disbelieve it, for he said it in such a natural and offhand way, as if his experiences were well beyond the scope of hers. Hers were bound and gagged in Bensington, her only adventures abortive ones with Fred Fossey, who was no prize but whose attentions touched a need. Her eye spotted the library book she had delivered to his cell.

  Following her gaze, munching toast, he said, “I haven’t finished it yet.”

  “Take your time.”

  This thing she had with Fred was rudimentary, some touching here and there when she allowed it, though always quickly putting a stop to it. She was unconvinced that sex was the means to what she wanted, which was an edge against slipping too fast into old age. She said, “Are they looking for you?”

  He dunked a piece of toast into his coffee, which he had lightened with the real cream she had provided. She wished now that she had served him eggs, not store-bought, but fresh from Tish Hopkins’s chickens.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell.”

  She returned to the house. It was Saturday, but Roland, readying to leave, had a job to do in Andover. Spotlessly clad in his electrician’s coveralls, he personified competence except when he clicked his teeth. Her thoughts on leaving him had always been lame, clubfooted, dink-toed, never a full stride.

  “I don’t like leaving you alone, him still here,” he said, a worry line scoring his rosy face.

  “Don’t talk rubbish. There was anything to worry about, he wouldn’t be loose. Besides, I can tell a person by his eyes.”

  “That may not be the best way.”

  “Go,” she said, and he did.

  In the bathroom she heard water charging through the pipes and knew that her guest was using the hose. In the mirror, while inspecting the small parts of her face, she looked for a wrinkle that appeared only when she was melancholy. It wasn’t there. She restored her hair with a brush and brought color to her cheeks with pinches. When the pipes went silent, she pictured him rubbing himself down in one of her better bath towels. She felt bad that he would be getting back into the same clothes.

  She gave him ample time to get decent and let the screen door slam behind her to give him warning. The grass sparkled where he had dropped the hose. The soap was on a rock and the wet towel draped over a currant bush, but he was nowhere in sight. Looking into the vacancy of the gazebo, she frowned at the cluttered breakfast tray but brightened when she saw the Thornton Burgess book, a slip of paper marking his place. He would, most certainly, be back.

  • • •

  Cool to her daughter, ice to her stepson, Regina Smith confronted neither but chose to hold her tongue, control her rage, and bide her time, none of which was easy. At the breakfast table she watched Patricia try to play eye games with Anthony, who was wise enough not to reciprocate but not clever enough to hide his unease. She grimaced over her coffee cup when Patricia announced that they planned another day at the beach. Frowning at Anthony, she said, “Watch the way you drive. You have my daughter’s life in your hands.”

  Twenty minutes later they were gone.

  She phoned her husband, who was busy but never too busy to talk with her. Washington, he said, was stifling. The war memorials, he joked in a weary tone, were sweating bullets, and Republicans, among whom he was a moderate one, were under a state of siege. And the business that had brought him down there was a royal mess, worse than he had expected. None of this was what she had called about.

  “Listen to me,” she said and rushed out her story in a bitter voice that expurgated nothing, for the image of the crime was lurid in her mind. Vivid was her stepson’s rearing bottom, the cheeks pinched together, creating the tight focus from which the rest of his body sprang. She said, “I want him out of here.”

  “We’ll straighten it out when I get back.”

  “I’ll call the academy,” she said, her head at an angle, her hand sweeping back her dark hair. “I’m sure there’s room in one of the dorms. If not, maybe that teacher, Pitk
in, can take him in until the school year.”

  “That’s something to deliberate, not necessarily to act upon. I don’t excuse any of it, but — ”

  “You’re not listening, Ira. I want him gone.“

  “Regina, we’re talking about my son.”

  “Not at all. We’re talking about my daughter. She’s number one and always will be. I made that plain when we married, did I not?”

  “It would seem Patricia was complicit,” he said in his lawyer’s voice, which infuriated her, as if he expected Patricia to yield to cross-examination. Again she pushed back her hair, a sense of traffic in her head, thoughts coming and going.

  “She’s fifteen, Ira. Complicity is irrelevant.”

  “And Tony’s sixteen. Surely that’s relevant.”

  She dared pursue it no more, for she was pitched high, in danger of saying things that would make yesterday remote and tomorrow unimaginable. “When will you be back?”

  He wasn’t sure. He spoke with a heavy sigh. “I’m dealing here with a felony.”

  “So am I,” she said, though not for his ear. Quietly she had disconnected.

  • • •

  Smoking a furtive cigarette, Beverly Gunner spilled an ash and walked it into the carpet without compunction, without constraint. She was in an airy front room, the walls pale blue, the moldings white, her own shadow more company than she wanted. She was still in yesterday’s dress, which now seemed to be some sort of uniform, as if she had entered a battle and bore wounds. The seam in the right underarm was ruptured, and the hem in back hung short.

  Her posture was slack until a sound from the outside jerked her to attention. Her cigarette stub she buried in the moist soil of a potted plant flourishing on a pedestal. At the window she saw an old car with the town seal on the side and recognized the man stepping out of it. Good, she thought, Phoebe has pressed charges, and the police chief has come to make an arrest.

  When the bell rang, she didn’t move. She waited, her breath half held, and finally, after two more rings, her husband went to the door. She heard pieces of their voices. The chief wanted to come in.