by Amelia Gray
“Thing is”—Aileen looked at the page in her hands—“the thing is that we never called it anything. We would never call it the bathroom scrub challenge. It’s so unlike her to be cruel in that way.” She folded the page again, rolled it and unrolled it. “Maybe I could keep it. You took everything else of hers.”
“You’re right when you say the police should see it.”
“I saw you had taken everything of hers from the salon. It’s fine. You were within your rights. But when I saw, I sat behind the front desk and cried about it. I’m not the kind of woman who cries. This was after closing. I saw everything was gone. Of course, you were well within your rights. The next girl in that room would have put on the apron and put the oils on her fingers without even knowing about them. Really, it’s better you took them. But this is all that’s left.”
He thought of Aileen crying, the LED display of the cash register illuminating her face with a machine-green light.
“I think about everyone who has died where we are.” She leaned forward to speak, then leaned back and held her hands over her stomach, clenching the rolled-up threat in her fist. “We make such a fuss when someone dies in a house now, because the proper place to die is in a hospital or a nursing home, or maybe on the street, but never in a house where we spray antibacterial solution on the counter and scrub the floors and vacuum two or three times a week. Two times a week. What a rude thing, to die in a clean house. Better to go to a place where there is a professional level of clean, we think. We’ve got it figured out. Yet think of the age of the earth and the age of humans on the earth. Think of the number of people in the thousands of years who have died on this very spot. Actually bled out over the ground on which we sit and think about how impolite it is to die in a house. How narrow-minded of us, how selfish.” She unrolled the scrolled threat and held it. For a moment it seemed as if she was going to rip it apart.
When she looked at him, he could just barely see the inner ear parting within the sheen of her lips. She handed the page to David, and he felt the warmth from her hand. After she left, David walked into his kitchen. He cleared some of the broth cans from the countertop, where the threats were still laid out like a treasure map. The pages were all different shapes and colors. Some looked as if they had been around for years, while others were crisp and new. The new threat was stained across one edge with coffee.
63.
THE SECURITY MAP over the dresser featured points of potential entry and methods of resistance. There was a triple-lock system for the door in the den and a series of traps that could be set around the door if the intruder managed to bypass the locks. Franny had wanted to board up the workroom door in the basement, because they never went in there and it seemed possible for an intruder to enter the house through the room’s small storm windows. The plan included some trenches dug in the backyard. A speculative mark on the side of the page suggested that there was room in the family budget for dogs.
Before he got into bed, David brushed aside a line of ants walking over the pillow. He lay down and felt a piece of the mass more obtrusive than usual against the back of his neck. He reached and pulled out the envelope he had left on Franny’s side of the bed days or weeks ago. He took the paper out of the envelope and read:
IF YOU’RE HERE, DON’T LEAVE. I’M HERE IN THE HOUSE. IF YOU’RE HERE, I WILL FIND YOU.
He held the page to his chest and sensed his body alive under it. He felt a great sadness, which caused him to tear off a sliver of the page and put it in his mouth. He packed the sliver into his right anterior molar and tore off another, a thin strip, which he rolled into a ball and pressed into his left anterior molar. He packed the paper into his teeth again and again until each molar was stuffed full, plus the spaces within the single divots of his premolars and behind the deep divots in his maxillary central incisor. David ran his tongue across the newly smooth teeth. It tasted like he was holding a small book in his mouth. He longed to read his words to Franny again but had eaten them. He went downstairs.
Marie was sitting at the kitchen table. “I wanted to try some coffee,” she said. Her hands were stung and swollen to the point where she had to hold the cup by pressing it between the tips of all ten fingers. She brought the trembling mug to her lips.
“Do you need some diphenhydramine?” he asked. It was hard to talk. He clenched his teeth to compact the paper further.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
David poured a cup of coffee. The liquid was viscous. “You put too much in,” he said. He took a sip and felt the coffee soaking deep into the packed paper.
“I have your best interests in mind. You can’t say that much for most therapists. Most everyone else is in it for their perception of a paycheck. I haven’t even asked you for any money. Analysis is a passion of mine.”
The coffee in his cup was like an oil spill. “We should get you an adrenaline syringe,” he said.
“You should come see me again. I’m very helpful, you know. If you release yourself to the potential of help, anyone can be helpful.”
Some of the paper had disintegrated into the hot liquid, thickening it further. “This coffee.”
“I’m good,” Marie said. “I don’t even have to ask you a question. Eventually you’ll give me everything I want, which is, in turn, everything you need.”
David put the mug down and picked up his jacket. “I need to go into town. Could you lock up?”
“Consider it done,” she said, jingling a set of keys. David was halfway to the bus stop before he wondered who had given them to her.
64.
CHICO WAS IN THE MIDDLE of his after-lunch practice of relocating for twenty minutes to a bench outside the police station. He had a spiral notebook on his lap, which he paged through with one hand, reaching into a bag with the other to throw bread crumbs to the birds.
He was surprised to see David, surprised in that way when someone is being discussed and they appear, as if it were a dream. It was a special subvariety of a wider variety of surprise.
“David,” he said. “Good morning.”
David took a seat on the bench, tilting his head to look into the paper bag that rested between them. “Bread crumbs?”
“They give bags of them away at the deli.” Chico scooped a handful and scattered it on the lawn. Three brown birds flew down from a nearby tree and commenced to fight over the crumbs on the ground. “I learned of your father’s passing. Five years doesn’t seem so long ago.”
“It was expected.”
“Neighbors still remember him fondly.”
“He subscribed to magazines about grains.”
“Every individual creates a monument to himself in the end.”
David shook a half cup of the bread crumbs into his palm and brought it to his mouth. “He was a good man,” he said. In speaking, he ejected a tablespoon of crumbs onto his jacket. “My parents were always good people.”
“The human ego is an ommatidium, David. Your mother had a lot on her plate. Having children in a difficult time for medical science, the toll that took. Then, of course, the institution, after your sister’s untimely passing.”
“A home for women.”
The detective checked his notes. “That’s not what this says.”
David leaned sideways to look at the notebook. On the line where Chico pointed, he read the toll that took. Then, of course, the institution, after your sister’s untimely passing. The next line read A home for women, followed by That’s not what this says and then If I’ve learned one thing. Chico closed the book. “If I’ve learned one thing as a detective, it’s that patience gives your surroundings the chance to give up everything you need to know. Not aggression, not even close attention. Patience.” He drummed on his knee with his fingertips. “Are you a patient man, David?”
“You’re supposed to be questioning me now. I saw that on the news. Are you questioning me?”
“I have questions, but you surely have questions as well.”
“They didn’t mention on the evening news that I have questions as well.” A bread crumb had attached itself to David’s chin, and Chico watched it bob as he spoke. “They seemed less interested about my questions, perhaps because I’m not a member of law enforcement.”
“We have some natural concerns. Your wife had no apparent antagonists. No plausible cause stands out. You’ve been very helpful, but they tend to have questions in the main office.”
“Concerns.”
“Natural concerns. Sorry, you seem to have a bit of bread on your chin, there.”
“I have my own theory.”
“Do share.”
David scratched his neck. He looked across the street. “She was hiding things from me,” he said. “There were financial problems at the salon, and she didn’t want to let on. She was losing her grip and creating elements of danger around the house in order to snap herself out of it.”
“You seem to be having these thoughts for the first time, for my benefit.”
“I have had these thoughts for years.”
“And you’re saying she did it to herself.”
“She got caught in her own trap. It snared her and she lost her mind. I don’t think she meant to.”
Chico rolled the corner of the bread crumb bag between two fingers. A bird hopped near, regarded the man’s fingers on the bag, and hopped away. “That’s an interesting theory,” Chico said. “Would you mind if I brought some investigators by your house later and we all took a closer look around?”
David stood. “They said on the news that you had a warrant,” he said.
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
Chico looked at David, shielding his eyes against the winter sun. It looked like he was raising his hand in greeting. David touched the detective’s fingers with his own.
“What’s a warrant?” Chico asked.
“It’s a matter of personal accountability,” David said.
“I understand.”
David stooped to brush invisible elements of the park bench from his behind. The single crumb, the largest, remained on his chin.
Chico watched the man’s limping walk toward the bus stop.
65.
THE GARAGE was original to the house, which meant it was large enough to hold one carriage and two horses. Over time and industrial revolution and questionable advancement, the space had been modified and neglected in alternating efforts. The roof sagged under years of snow and ice and fallen branches. The partition that had once given each of the horses its own private space now separated the barely functional washing machine from the dryer. Hooks and ropes hung from the ceiling, holding old bicycles and gardening equipment above reach, an impractical storage system that required an A-frame ladder to retrieve anything.
David found Marie lying down in the corner. She had hung a mosquito net from the hooks on the ceiling and spread the net around two wooden shipping pallets she had pushed together on the floor. The gauzy white gave the partition the look of a young girl’s room decor. It looked like she had used soap and water to clean the floor and the white-lacquered dryer. The wooden pallets had been stained and varnished. Marie was wearing a blazer and skirt. She looked like a flight attendant, except for the fact that she was lying on pallets on the floor. Her hands covered her eyes. David’s impulse was to turn and leave, but she removed her hands and looked at him, so he kept walking until he was standing over her face. The wasps walked in individual circles across the mosquito net, looking for their way in.
“I need to know if we have doctor-and-patient confidentiality,” David said.
“Technically, you’re not my patient.”
“Can I become your patient?”
“Also, I am not a doctor. Again, speaking technically.”
“I’d like to work some things out.”
She rolled onto her side and pushed herself into a sitting position. “I’m glad, David. You are the best judge of your progress in any matter.” She held out her hand. He ducked under the mosquito net and tucked it under his heels behind him to keep the wasps out. He shook her hand and she turned to address the wasps. “You have my guarantee of doctor-and-patient confidentiality,” she said.
He was aware of the smell of her shampoo. “Do you have the ability to put me in a trance?”
“I can certainly try.” She moved to the side of the pallet, careful to spread the mosquito net in a way that kept her from pulling on it when she crouched next to him. “Here, lie down. Close your eyes, hands by your sides.”
“Right now? Shouldn’t I do something to prepare?”
“The truest result comes from spontaneous action. Careful for splinters.”
The wood felt weak and wet under him. He could smell fresh varnish. The pallet stuck to his hair. Eyes closed, he could sense her near him, and then he felt a soft pressure of air on his face, and then he could not sense her near him. He wondered if she had left the garage, but he kept his eyes closed. He tried to slow his breath. If she was still in the room, she was waiting him out. He stayed like that for a while without making a sound. He had a fearful flash that she had gone into his house and was loading his things into a waiting truck. David was certain she had left the room. He resigned himself to the fact that he would die alone in this warm room with his eyes closed. It was comforting to know. He thought calmly of the fact that sometime in the future he would breathe out and would not breathe back in. It became apparent that he could not feel his left foot in its shoe, and he wondered idly in a small portion of his brain if that foot had vanished or had simply died and remained attached to his body. It seemed possible that when he died, the feeling of death would spread through his body like a deep blush, that the blood on its farewell tour of his veins and capillaries would move slowly and with familiarity, like a man leaving a room for the last time, looking at the items he had purchased and arranged, broken or repaired, the man recognizing each before switching off the light.
A portion of his living body heard Marie speak. “Relax,” she said. “Imagine you’re walking down a long set of stairs. As you walk down the stairs, you realize the air is thickening. Each breath you take in is more productive. Your body fills like a cylinder and presses out through not only your mouth but your ears and skin and eyes.”
David thought of his heavy breath like a supply of air emerging from a plastic tube that was curled inside a velvet bag. He thought of the feeling of receiving oxygen from a mask and the calming sensation it brought, partly because of the concentrated gas but partly too because he could hear his muffled lungs expelling their product within the mask, and it reminded him that he was breathing, that the gas was flowing at all times but most importantly at that moment, a constant and essential truth. His lips and lungs and teeth were witnesses to the passage of breath.
He heard Marie’s voice as if from a recording. The wasps provided the buzz and burr of static behind her. “Your surroundings are wholly familiar yet strange,” she said. He pictured himself on the stairs in his home, descending into the basement.
“The world around you is entirely untraveled, yet you feel no desire to explore it. The mysteries of the world are deeper than your breath, which nourishes your blood and grows your hair and propels your muscles and bones as you guide yourself. Your breath feeds your mind, of which you consciously become less aware, pushing it away, watching it float like a paper boat on a still lake.”
David exhaled. Without sight, the light of his mind barely illuminated a shimmer at the base of the stairs. His mind took a step forward and down, toward the lapping water. The stair underneath him was cold. The concrete of the stair and floor held the water in a quiet pool. There was a ceremony in his posture.
“Like a paper boat on a still lake,” Marie said. Her voice was very close. “A paper boat, on a still lake. Your mind is a paper boat on a still lake, floating away. Your mind is floating away. You see a still lake, you are a still lake. On the still lake is the still in which you place your mind. Your m
ind is folded into the folds of a paper boat. The lake is so still that placing your mind in it causes three ripples that extend farther than your eye can follow. The lake beyond is still. You push a paper boat away and watch it float like a float, like a paper boat, a boat on a still lake.”
David was aware of Marie’s hand on his chest. “Stop,” he said, reaching for it. Her hand was not on his chest. He opened his eyes. She was sitting with her hands on her lap. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just beginning to feel something.”
She looked at her watch. “You were down there for a while.”
“For how long?”
“I’m not sure. I think I put myself under for a while there. Fifteen minutes?”
“Did I say anything?”
“You kept saying ‘Paper boat on a still lake,’” she said. “I thought that was very lovely.”
“You were saying that.”
“Was I?” She touched her fingers to her temple. “Huh.”
David sat up and braced himself on the floor to stand. “Thanks for your help, Marie.” A wasp stung his collarbone on the way out.
66.
THE INSTITUTION would feed its charges as cheaply as possible. Flat sandwiches housed lonesome rounds of bologna. For the lucky, a bag of chips arrived uncrushed. Carton of milk, carton of juice. Foil crimped on the edges, and peeling it unsealed the professional vacuum. The juice could expand and breathe once before dying, like the oysters men opened at Gulf Coast lunch counters.
At all institutions, the diet-restricted were provided with oversweet gelatin and unbuttered toast. The toast was always perfectly prepared, to the point where one could sense years of toast behind it, an entire lineage of toast emerging from the oven. She thought of her husband while she ate toast.
Food at prisons, hospitals, and similar care facilities has the same nutritional profile. Congressmen fought hard for this nutrition, bringing in experts who would claim that patients needed vitamins and that the brains of inmates required nutrients to make essential decisions in violent situations. The inmate brain on excess sugar could rage like any animal, the government nutritionists would claim, and there it would be, written out on a piece of paper and therefore true. David’s mother hadn’t touched a noncontraband square of chocolate in years.
