Bystanders

by Tara Laskowski

  “Hell no,” Derek says at first. It is a gut reaction. But of course…“I don’t know. I don’t want to, but I don’t want him—or her—to be a freak.”

  “Do you trust Hannah?” the therapist asks. He knows what she’s getting at—does Derek believe he’s the father—but he won’t go there.

  “I guess so.” He feels like they skipped seven steps in this process. He feels like, with all this jolly old St. Nick and presents under the tree crap, he’s regressed backwards, picked off the scab, and started bleeding again.

  “It sounds like you’re still grappling with her betrayal, still punishing her.”

  He felt his anger flare up. She’s the one who did this to them. Derek didn’t go banging someone all over town. He didn’t betray their vows, make their marriage into a joke. But he pushes past it. He knows the therapist will jump all over that. This is what he’s supposed to be working on. “It’s the time of the year,” he says. “I just—I hate the holidays.”

  “Do you think you are mentally prepared to be a father?”

  He wonders how many hours he spent in that hotel bed thinking about Hannah and the scumbag, wondering if she ever texted Derek while she had the guy’s dick in her other hand. If she ate French fries off his stomach. It kills him, too, that in spite of all that, he wishes he’d never found out about it. It pisses him off that she was so sloppy. She never was good with the details, always messing up the edges of paint jobs, spilling wine on her collar, forwarding emails she shouldn’t.

  “You know, remember how you told me to try to walk in Hannah’s shoes for awhile? To see her side of things? Maybe that’s exactly what I need to do.” He smiles at the therapist, feeling his lips curl over his teeth. “Maybe I need to sleep with someone else, see how it feels.”

  She is unfazed, and Derek finds himself a bit disappointed. He realizes how much he wanted to shock her. “You could try that,” she says, “but think about how that will make you feel.”

  Derek is done for the day. His head hurts. The sun streams in the win-

  dow like a laser beam. “I know exactly how that will make me feel,” he says.

  ***

  On the Wednesday before Christmas, Derek leaves work a little early to catch the downtown theater’s early showing of the classic Black Christmas. Hannah is working the late shift, so he buys a big box of Goobers and some nachos and calls that dinner. He settles down in his seat, stretches out his legs, and just starts to make a dent in the cold container of cheese when he hears his name. He looks up in surprise and sees Mindy—of course—standing in the aisle, looking up at him. A woman with tattoos leaking from under her short-sleeved black t-shirt stands behind her sipping a very large soda.

  “Hey,” he says. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  Mindy shakes her head. “You didn’t tell me…” she trails off, looks back at her friend, then pushes her way past Derek to the empty seats beside him. Derek moves his Goobers and his coat to his lap.

  Her friend’s name is Martina, and she’s got some weird large disc in her earlobe that Derek is afraid to look at too closely. The movie starts and he is pleased to not have to make small talk.

  It is an odd movie, slowly paced and nonsensical in places, and Mindy’s friend Martina talks in loud whispers over the boring parts. When it is over, the three of them congregate in the lobby, discussing the movie, which Martina did not like very much. “You don’t even like scary movies, silly,” Mindy tells her, tapping Martina’s cheek with her finger, and Derek wonders if they are on a date. “No wonder you didn’t get it.”

  Martina pulls out her phone, and starts flipping through her email. Mindy turns away from her and looks at Derek. She says, “Well, who wants to go for drinks?” Derek is about to beg off when Martina looks up and shakes her head. “I’m beat. I’ve gotta run.”

  Mindy looks like someone just stole her puppy, but then she blinks and straightens up. “Looks like it’s just you and me then,” she tells him, and he doesn’t know how to say no.

  ***

  Mindy likes sweet drinks with lots of fruit. She downs three while they eat some combo appetizer platter with different colored dips and various deep fried foods piled on one another.

  “So who’s Martina?” he asks.

  She looks up at him, shoves a jalapeño popper in her mouth. She rolls her eyes, chews, swallows. “A lost cause.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  She shrugs. “She’s not into me because I’m bi.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  Mindy winks, leans in. “Maybe she was jealous of you.”

  He lets that one roll off him. He realizes he could sleep with her tonight if he wanted to. It is as obvious as if she handed it to him all wrapped up in a neat little present. Here you go, her smile says. Her leg bumps into his under the table, and he shifts in his booth, not sure where to put himself.

  “Do you need some water?” he asks. Derek wonders what would happen if someone they knew walked in—Hannah’s friend Frances, or a neighbor. He thinks about the Days Inn, just a few blocks down the road. He knows the route so well. It would be so easy.

  Mindy wants to talk, that’s clear. She complains about her boss; Derek has heard it before. She finds him creepy. “Dude’s like eighty years old and he’s looking at my cleavage.”

  “He’s not eighty, Mindy. More like sixties.”

  “Whatever.” She waves him off. Takes a sip of her green drink. Looks him in the eye. “Everyone’s the same, you know. We’re all assholes. It’s okay.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I guess so.”

  “I really hate Christmas,” she says with a snort, but he can see as she looks away that there is sadness there. “Everyone acts all nice to each other for a few days, and then they go back to being selfish fucks. It’s nauseating.”

  He tries to picture Mindy around a dinner table with family. He feels a wave of nostalgia then, a tenderness for this whole stupid notion of Christmas, and wants to prove her wrong. He wants the whole gamut—trees and presents and eggnog. He wants to be away from the generic noise of this restaurant and walking around in the snow singing carols. He just wants comfort, love, in whatever form. It is such an intense feeling that when the waitress comes by, Derek asks for the check without consulting Mindy. He looks her in the eye, urgent. Already in his mind he is several steps ahead in the evening, unraveling the plan.

  “Do you want to go to the Days Inn with me?” he asks.

  ***

  The snow everyone’s been talking about starts early, scaring away the last of Hannah’s clients. She turns up the heat in the apartment and eats a quick dinner of leftover spaghetti.

  She should get some things in order—pack books they could give away to a charity, or throw away some junk. They have accumulated so much.

  Instead, she does laundry. She loves folding towels and sheets, making them into perfect little squares, all lined the same way. She loves that they all fit perfectly in the linen closet in stacks of four.

  She checks her phone. No message from Derek. She wanders into the kitchen, peels an orange. She eats it standing at the window, watching the snow fall faster now. They are expecting up to five inches. The newscasters keep making puns about having a white Christmas.

  While she’s watching, Honey Bee’s little black Toyota pulls up in front of the building, blocking three other cars in. The real estate agent gets out, a scarf wrapped around her hair, and drags out her big bag. A few minutes later the doorbell rings.

  The list of New Year’s resolutions Honey must make every year! And she probably keeps every one of them. Hannah smiles at Honey as she opens the door, but she realizes how defeated Honey always makes her feel. Bake one new kind of cake each month! Exercise thirty minutes every day! Write handwritten letters to people on their birthdays!

  “Hannah, my dear,” she says, walking inside without an invi
tation. She is fumbling with her bag. “I just wanted to get you this paperwork before the snow. I told Derek I was dropping it off—did he tell you?”

  “You shouldn’t have come out in this weather.”

  “Oh, snow, schmow,” Honey says, waving a fat, manicured hand. “I grew up in Shawano, Wisconsin. This was summer for us.” She laughs like a large shotgun going off, and hands Hannah a thick folder. “Just look this over for the closing.”

  When Honey’s cell rings, Hannah is not surprised to hear the sound of a little bell ringing, like the sound you hear when you open an old gift shop’s door. “Excuse me,” she says, and turns her back, facing the door. Hannah can hear a man’s voice on the other end, perhaps a boy, definitely male. And then Honey, loudly, “There’s Hamburger Helper in the cabinet.” Pause. “Yes, you can.” Pause. “It’s in the cabinet with all the other pots and pans.” She looks over at Hannah, shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe 6:30. Maybe later.” Pause. “Okay. No. Okay. I’ve got to go. Okay. Bye.”

  “I swear,” she says, fumbling with her phone. “I swear, Hannah, they are going to be the death of me one of these days. Do they think I have time to cook?”

  Hannah blinks. She has never used Hamburger Helper in her life. It is no better than dog food, her mom used to say.

  “Anyway, just look that over and let me know if you have any questions. I’ll be in the office all day tomorrow. We’re closed Christmas, you know, but other than that I’m around.” Honey leaves as quickly as she came, and Hannah is left with sudden quiet and the hint of her strong rose perfume.

  Hannah shoves the orange peels down the garbage disposal. She likes the violent sound it makes as it tears them up. She doesn’t open the folder. The paperwork is too intimidating—this she will leave for Derek. She turns the heat up again. She will miss how quickly the place heats up, that comforting smell of the radiator.

  The wind kicks up and outside the snow is dancing in circles. Already her car has a light dusting, and she realizes she forgot to lift up the windshield wipers like Derek always tells her to. He loves shoveling snow. He’s already brought out the bag of road salt and set it next to the front door. Even though there are days that he doesn’t really talk to her, he always gets up and cleans off her car. It’s how she knows it’s still okay.

  ***

  It was there.

  The room was just how he remembered it, small, suffocating. Mindy had stayed off to the side, careful not to touch the sticky remote control on the desk, the cheap pad of stationary, the plastic cup. She hadn’t really believed him when he told her what he was looking for, but the big dresser was still there, too, and after he pulled the arm out and waved it at her, she had to believe. She just shook her head. “You’re goddamn nuts.”

  He may be goddamn nuts, but he is also excited, pumped on adrenaline. Finally, something feels right. After dropping Mindy off at the bus stop—“Just don’t get arrested, because you’ll have a hell of a lot of explaining to do with that in the back seat”—he drives home, singing loudly along to “O Holy Night” on the radio. It’s a classic version by Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby or one of those guys, the deep, strong voice providing comfort and a sense of nostalgia.

  The Santa arm spans the back seat of his car, chubby and pink, with the wires still hanging off the end. He can hardly believe his luck. He wants to show it to Hannah, even though he knows she isn’t going to understand. He wants to one day explain to his child that this is a special object. He wishes it wasn’t an arm. He wishes it was a pretty gemstone or a rare penny or even a heavy vase. He feels like the father in A Christmas Story who wins the leg lamp; only he can see the beauty of it.

  The snow is falling fast, but it isn’t sticking to the road. Still, it has scared most everyone inside and for the most part Derek is alone. Soon there will be a new route home. He won’t be needing this key much longer, and the parking space assigned to him in front of their building will be someone else’s spot, someone else’s home. He feels very old. He feels very tired. But he feels good.

  As he pulls up to his building, he sees Hannah framed in the window, standing by the sink cleaning up the rest of the dishes. He remembers one of their first Christmases together—a year they decided to disappoint both sides of the family and spend the holiday alone together. They made hot dogs and s’mores and made love next to the fire, the room lit only by the tree lights. How much he had loved her then. How happy they’d been.

  He is struck by all that has happened, but not in a fresh deep cut kind of way, but more like a soldier whose battle wounds have healed and made him stronger. His therapist would be proud of him. And so, he thinks, the Santa arm is more like a peace offering—a chubby plastic olive branch. It is with this that he walks down the sidewalk, presses the elevator button, and uses the key to open what will soon be someone else’s house. It is with this that he waits for Hannah to turn, to smile, to see everything that is ahead of them and all that is behind them.

  Entrapment

  There was something about ruining someone else’s career that really motivated me to get out of bed. That sounds negative, I know, but I’ve never been much of a morning person. Most days at 7:34 a.m.—even with The Professor, my iguana, digging his claws into my naked back—I’d say screw that and roll back over, slapping my hand on top of the alarm clock. But that morning was a special day.

  “All right, Prof,” I groaned, my mouth feeling as dry as his scales. “I’m up.”

  I’m Paul, by the way. Paul Reston. That’s the name my parents crowned me with when I popped out of the womb and started howling. However, you might know me by my other name: Harrison Teeth. I know, the last name is a little pretentious and sounds made-up—that’s what people say. They have no idea that Paul Reston, movie critic and restaurant reviewer for the Daily Star, is also Harrison Teeth, investigative reporter.

  So Harrison Teeth or Paul Reston, or whoever I was at that god awful hour of the morning, shoved on some dirty jeans, carried The Professor back to his domain, and unlocked the dead bolt to find the paper. My new apartment building, which I moved into about seven months ago when Mary Beth left me, had an early bird newspaper carrier. When Mary Beth and I lived uptown our carrier was a grouchy old man who delivered the paper sometime between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m. So that was one of the positives of my new apartment complex—add it to the (meager) list. An almost-working security system that allowed me to beep in guests from downstairs, an extra bedroom for The Professor to roam around in, and a location on the other side of the building from the garbage dumpsters, so the smell of decay and shit only occasionally wafted over.

  No balcony, no yard, and Mary Beth got to keep the dog and the kid (most of the time), but I was trying to keep it upbeat.

  The paper was there, faithful as ever, a single pink rubber band holding it in a tight roll. The Daily Star in fancy scroll script. My story above the fold, front page. I could see the top of the Judge’s head, just peeking out below the masthead. His giant, might-as-well-be-a-mugshot image was arriving on 120,000 doorsteps all across this fine city. There was a certain power in knowing I was responsible for feeding many people their water cooler chatter as the sun rose in the blue sky that morning.

  “Hi, Mr. Paul!”

  In my reverie, I hadn’t heard Theresa approaching. I suppressed a groan, looking up to see her ambling toward me. About that time, my head started pounding, remembering that I was dehydrated from the ten or so beers I had the night before after my editor finally put the story through.

  “Can I come in quick and see The Professor?”

  I knew that’s what she was going to say, broken record that she was. Unshaven, still half-asleep, I wanted to be mean, but there was the guilt. Watch it, watch it, here it comes. Yep. Swelling up inside of me. She was fifteen or sixteen years old, but she looked about twelve. She had some kind of growth deficiency for Christ’s sake. She always had t
his acidic smell about her, like she just came from the hospital, and her arms pushed out of her baggy t-shirts like twigs from a pathetic Christmas tree.

  “Hey, Theresa, well, it’s probably not a real good time right now—” The truth was that it was a good time because iguanas are happiest in the mornings.

  “Just for a few minutes,” she said in that familiar whining voice. It grated on me, but it was damn hard to say no. “Before I have to go to school.” If I was Theresa’s guidance counselor, I’d tell her to go into sales.

  I looked down at the paper, feeling my impatience grow. It was there, screaming to be read. I wanted to see if Tim had cut the fourth graf after all, if he’d included Lila’s picture of the scene of the arrest.

  Theresa shuffled her feet, not meeting my eyes. There would be no way for her to know I had a pet iguana except for the fact that she and her mom saw me in the hall one afternoon as I was juggling my keys and several large tree branches I’d filched from the woodsy area behind the buildings. It looked strange, sure. Anyone would’ve asked what I was doing.

  “I’m kind of getting ready…” I trailed off, knowing it was futile. She pushed past, muttering something about not being long. I took one wishful glance down the end of the hallway, hoping to see her mother poke her head around and call the kid back, but no such luck. It was my own fault, anyway. After Theresa took such interest in The Professor, I sort of had a soft spot for her and her mother. It was good to know people in the building. Just in case. You never knew when you might need a cup of milk or a charged cell phone.

  Theresa went right for the back room, the Professor’s room, and opened the door. It was hot in there, and I could feel the screen of heat pass over my face as I followed her in, watching tentatively from the doorway. The Professor had moved back to his favorite spot, basking under the heat lamp, his green scales magnificent in the light. I was struck, like always, at just how odd he looked—an ancient, wrinkled dinosaur from the distant past.