The Sharp Time

by Mary O'Connell

  But then there is the joy of scraping my key against the doorknob in the darkness. Can you guess who forgot to turn on the porch light this morning? Can you guess who isn’t paying attention? There is the joy of having someone standing behind me, so that I can open the door without the fear of a stalker jumping out of the snowy hedges and pushing me into my house. I get the door open, and first thing I do is look at the answering machine, at the red zero flashing in the darkness: molten, taunting. But then Bradley follows me inside. When I flip on the light, he doesn’t do the jackassy thing where a first-time visitor looks around your home like they’re at a museum, eyes flitting and voice buoyant: I love the red paint! Did you make that vase? What a super print, I didn’t know you liked Marc Chagall. And the framed album cover of Sandinista! Très apropos! Oh, we bought that bookshelf at Ikea too. We painted ours a glossy apple green.

  There’s just Bradley being himself, smiling, his shoulders slightly hunched, his hands in his pockets. He stands like that for a moment before he takes his coat off, slings it on the arm of the couch, and says, “I love it here, Sandinista. I’m never leaving.”

  But he is, of course. He’ll leave us all in two weeks when he goes back to college, the semester break a shocking six weeks, but I try to push this reality from my thoughts and enjoy having Bradley at my house.

  I haven’t had a boy spend the night since the whole debacle with Jonathan H. last summer. Jonathan spent the night on the Fourth of July when my mother went to visit her friend Arla in Omaha. Oh, the embittered drama of last summer now seems swathed in cotton candy, lit by pink and lavender incandescent bulbs. Had I known what the future held, I would have cherished the innocence of smashed romance and written bland odes celebrating my generic teenage heartache. I would have blessed Jonathan for dumping me for Tatiana Turner, she of the porn-star alliteration name and the extensive body piercings. Through her whorishly tight T-shirt, you could see the flat silver hoops that ringed her pierced nipples, two perky Saturns that Jonathan could not, apparently, resist.

  But Bradley is no Jonathan. Bradley sits on the couch and pulls out his cell phone to check his messages. My soul mate. It seems as if he as always been here, not in a ceramic-elf-on-a-shelf way, but in the way of naturalness, of inevitability. And so our angsty slumber party commences: I order pizza without the fear that the Pizza Hut delivery man will peer inside, see me alone, and show up after his shift with complimentary breadsticks and an ice pick.

  We eat a shitload of pizza. We watch TV and we smoke and we drink diet soda. We get in my bed together, some Ricky and Lucy high jinks concerning this: many, many jokes about keeping one foot on the floor and pledges about not taking advantage of one another. I’m still a little buzzed from the caffeine when I hear Bradley’s breath begin to rise and fall evenly. Just when I think he’s dead asleep, Bradley gets out of bed. I listen to the squeak of his footsteps on the pine-plank hallway. The thick 1970s carpet muffles sound in the rest of the house—we had thought of pulling it up, but in the end we just went ahead and stayed with the toxic shag. So I don’t hear anything at all before there is the aggressive jiggling of the sliding glass door.

  Next, Bradley checks the steel locks on the front door—click click click click—and then I hear his footsteps coming down the hallway again, and he gets back into bed. I have the far-off thought that he will make a good father someday.

  Soon, Bradley really is asleep. But my mind is full of parking lots and Alecia Hardaway and the pleasure of having someone in bed next to me. Bradley must use a fruited shampoo, because curled up under the blankets he smells warm, citrusy. I have a sudden sensory memory of an orange Christmas cake my mother used to make. Orange peels next to a blue bowl, ribbons of batter falling from the electric hand beater. And Catherine Bennett. Of course she’s there too. Catherine Bennett, Catherine Bennett. I look at the clock on the nightstand: 2:30.

  Quietly, I creep out of bed and tiptoe out of my room. In the hall mirror, I wipe the sad-clown mascara smears from beneath my eyes, put my coat on and head into the night: the cold car, the choking ignition, the icy air on my face. It’s only because I have someone waiting for me at home that I have the courage to leave the house at this hour. Hear me now, O rapists and muggers and frantic meth heads who will tap my car window at any given intersection: Bradley awaits.

  I take the MapQuest directions out of my purse and let the car warm in the driveway while I study my path. And then I light a cigarette, switch on my headlights and drive slowly and carefully through the side streets of my neighborhood.

  I speed up as I drive on and on into the heart of the cold and starless night, thinking, Oh, Catherine Bennett, I am coming for you, a nervous pioneer exploring the far-flung suburbs with their replicating tanning salons and Burger Kings and Kwik Shops. When the street names start to sound like cowboy movies, I know I’m getting warm. Here is Trailblazer Avenue, here is Cattleman Court, here is Maverick Lane. And here is my right turn, Ponderosa Lane, where shaggy pine trees in the front yards dwarf all the ranch houses. With my heart racing and all my stalkerina impulses on fire, I squint at the passing house numbers illuminated by porch lights. I’m expecting revelation, something along the lines of the humiliation and the exaltation and Christ only knows what. When I reach the 1100 block of Ponderosa Lane, I slow down, my foot taking a soft turn on the brake, and there it is, 1207 Ponderosa Lane.

  Catherine Bennett lives in a cranberry-colored ranch house with a maple door and shutters. Though it’s the first week of January, there’s still a life-sized wooden toy soldier—or is it a fucking nutcracker?—with painted rose-pink cheeks, a modest smile and a tall black hat garlanded with green and red Christmas tinsel.

  I think: Why would a woman so efficient and mathematical not have taken down her Christmas decorations?

  The front is dark, though there is a lit window at the side of the house, a golden rectangle cheering the side yard. Still, as I drive on, inch by inch past her house, there is a pallor here that I recognize. Catherine Bennett’s house has the same doomed whose woods these are/I think I know vibe of my own house. I imagine that Catherine Bennett is in her bedroom. Catherine Bennett is watching a crime show. Maybe Catherine Bennett is dead. Perhaps she slipped on the shower floor and her body is decomposing, because of course there’s nobody to call the ambulance, the morgue, whatever. Of course there’s no one to help her, because she’s all alone, isn’t she?

  I crack my window and throw out my cigarette butt. I immediately light up another, the match sparking blue in the darkness. I must consider that Catherine Bennett might not be home at all. Catherine Bennett might be on some grief-limned vacation. With her affinity for paying attention, her expertise at forethought, she’s surely bought that special device that I keep meaning to buy, the one that I really, really need, the device that allows lights to click on every night at the same time, a device that makes each and every burglar put finger pensively to chin and think, What light in yonder window breaks? Ah, it must be that the homeowner is inside. Alas, I shall try another house.

  But why would I fear someone who merely wants to steal a TV when I am not in my house? So maybe that’s not the device I want at all; what I want is the opposite thing, a shield to blacken the house and make it appear that no one is home so that all the big guns—the rapists and killers—will leave me be and move on to a well-lit house of prey.

  I circle the block so I can drive past Catherine Bennett’s house again, and if I were a person of substance or bravery I would certainly do something. I would perhaps get out of my car and rush the creepy toy soldier/nutcracker; I would fly into him and knock him on his faux-oak ass.

  Instead I park on the street directly in front of Catherine Bennett’s house: Guess who’s here! Catherine Bennett, what light through yonder window breaks? Oh, that’s right, it’s me. In your words, a girl who will not need algebra if she’s just going to get married and have babies. But let’s say I’m not going to get married and have babies. In truth, Mrs. B
ennett, I am not even dating anyone, so that’s not really on the horizon. Let’s also say, for the sake of argument, that I’m not going off to college, either. Let’s say that without my mother, without our doomed year in Europe, I am completely without a plan. Perhaps I should listen to your colleague Lisa Kaplansky and start applying for grants and loans and scholarships to study art or literature. I shall steer clear of mathematics, Mrs. Bennett! But really? I cannot envision myself living in a dorm with a roommate who drinks herself sick on keg beer every night—some random Caitlin or Anna so glad to be away from her parents’ prying eyes!

  Hey, Catherine Bennett, do you think what the counselors say is true: that people without a plan are more likely to act upon their impulses? And the night rises up around me, harsh and black-velvet cold, as I smoke and look at Mrs. Bennett’s house.

  I get my gun out of my glove box; I get out of my car.

  I close the car door very quietly, as if trying not to wake a sleeping baby, I randomly coo: “Shhh.”

  The street is sugared with snow and grit and so I move carefully. I hold my gun up in my coat sleeve and walk, a girl with no hands, across the street. I really should be used to the cold by now.

  I step from the street up to the curb, and then I crunch across the front lawn, each step shattering the ice, a crashing storm-trooper stomp that ruins the snowy silence. In a lame movie, a soft-eyed deer would appear leaping under the streetlights—a moment of foreshadowing and throwaway majesty—but in real life there’s just the gigantic nutcracker standing sentry in the front yard. And I hadn’t seen it from the street, but the side yard features more holiday art: an ancient wooden Santa whose red coat is surely flaking lead paint, waving from his sad sled—a pioneer’s wooden cart full of faded boxes. Santa’s hand waves jovially at nobody. In my own hand, the gun feels like it has adhered to my fingers, like I have an all-new metal palm, because my gloves are mostly for aesthetic purposes—soft navy suede lined with a sateen fabric that makes my fingers feels colder than if I were wearing no gloves at all.

  Earlier, on the radio news, I learned that it’s official: today is the coldest day since 1987. I flare my nostrils so my snot won’t freeze, and when my eyes water, my mascaraed lashes freeze in chunks: my new world is fringed in icy black glitter. It is so quiet that when I hear panting, I expect to turn and see some rottweiller snow monster, icicles dangling from its gaping jaws. But the sound is just me, breathing.

  I crunch through the snow to the side of the house, to the lit window. And I thrill a little—my heart hammering in my chest—Catherine Bennett has no idea that I am standing outside her house with a gun. Who’s not paying attention now? I press my back to the cold house for a moment and then, step by snow-crashing step, I slither down the side of the house, closer to the window, my gun tucked up in my coat sleeve but there all the same, bumping along the cold siding of Catherine Bennett’s house. Mrs. Bennett! Yoo-hoo! Do you know who’s standing outside your house right now! Are you paying attention? Do you even know how to pay attention?

  At the window frame, I lean forward. There are icicles over my head, some sort of icy horror-show premonition. The window is curtainless, though fogged, perhaps just above the heat vent. I put my hand on the side of the wooden frame, press my body closer and take a look inside.

  Gazing though the fogged pane gives me baby kitten eyes, the world wreathed in gauze, but I can see Catherine Bennett. I can see Catherine Bennett sitting on a turquoise couch.

  I am holding my breath so I don’t hear the monster dog panting. When I finally exhale, my breath is a slow plume that defogs a few inches of the window.

  Turquoise.

  The turquoise couch looks to be velvety, with a baroque arched maple back. I had envisioned Mrs. Bennett as someone with a drab, neutral couch, nubby and office-beige and possibly sheathed in a vinyl couch condom. I had not imagined her drawn to the fanciful. Or had I? “Alecia, what kind of earrings are those, goodness gracious. Pull back your hair and let me see.… Oh, ponies …, no, unicorns … sparkly purple unicorns.”

  There is a poster-sized photograph of Mrs. Bennett and a man, Mr. Bennett, I’m guessing, on the wall. Catherine Bennett is eating an ice cream bar. She’s looking right back at me, as if in a trance. But no, no, she’s not looking at me, but just below me, at the TV. The voices are muted, metallic. My head cocked at an angle must look large, floating and tilted. I step forward and trip on something,

  I exhale a snow-star sound, the softest fuuuuuhhck.

  I look down and see that beneath the windowsill are two stone lawn ornaments. The angle of the gutters has protected them from a crush of snow. I imagine they get plonked with the occasional icicle. I crouch down—my cold gun at my knee—and see that they are the granite frog and toad from the Frog and Toad books. The soft light from the living room window illuminates their familiar faces: Toad is reading a small stone book; Frog holds one amphibious finger pensively to his lip.

  Alecia, what kind of animal is a unicorn?

  Alecia, where would a unicorn be found? A zoo? In the wild?

  The air is shaded blue from the cold, my wild roaring breath in my ears and my mother’s voice in my head, her pseudo psychiatrist voice that annoyed me: Do not turn your depression inward. This is what women do. I’m not being sexist, Sandinista, it’s a statistical fact. When you’re sad, baby, man up.

  I look in at Mrs. Bennett, a sad lumpen toad in a lavender sweat suit. She has the hard-glazed look of someone using TV like gin: a little something to take the edge off when she’s home by herself.

  I take in a sharp breath that tingles my sore rib.

  Alecia, hey, sleepyhead!

  Something on TV makes Mrs. Bennett laugh out loud.

  I pick up Toad and I take a few steps back and feel a little like Lady Liberty, like the things I am holding are equally weighted, gun in one hand, yard art inspired by children’s literature in the other. I step back, taking aim.

  And there’s no deciding, of course I’m not going to … of course the gun is a prop. But if I did do it, everyone would understand. Surely my fellow students at Woodrow Wilson High School would remember Alecia’s face, first looking out the window with a dreamland expression, her world locked away, but then … A deep inhale and my teeth sting from the cold as I remember, as I try not to exhale, Mrs. Bennett tiptoeing behind her, splaying her fingers out next to her mouth before leaning down next to Alecia and yelling “Boo!” Alecia gripping the soft roll of her turtleneck sweater with both hands; Alecia letting out a hurt-bird “Whaaaaaat?”

  With an awkward underhanded lob, I throw Toad at Catherine Bennett’s lit window.

  I expect the sweetly lacquered crescendo of glass crashing on snow. But there is only a large thud, then a slow, sharp sound of a crack in the pane. I’m off and not turning back, the snow making my sprint quicksand slow, and then my heart slamming away as I slip-slide across the street to the safety of my car, the chilling second of Oh my God where are my keys, but there they are, right in the ignition, and I get into my car and drive out of Catherine Bennett’s subdivision with the calm assurance of a suburban mom, a firefighter, a beefy police officer.

  As I’m exiting onto the interstate there is the satisfaction of the sirens in the distance, soft, swirling, pleading: Alecia, Alecia. Alecia …

  I crank up the Clash all the way home, my adrenaline harnessed in perfect pitch. My gun is on the passenger seat and I am Sandinista Jones, motherfuckers, all the way home.

  * * *

  I let myself into my house quietly, and from the living room I can hear already Bradley snoring. He has slept through this little adventure. I have the feeling of the wife home from meeting the lover, sneaking in quietly next to my sweet cuckold of a husband: Night, honey! His snoring is loud as a French horn, it even has a golden brassy undertone; I look forward to the day I know him well enough to tease him about this.

  I will myself not to sleep so I can enjoy all the scenarios racing though my mind, how Catherine Benn
ett might say: Officer, I was just sitting here watching TV, minding my own darn business, isn’t that the way, and then Toad sailed through the window, and I could have been killed if it hit me at just the right angle in my temple, and oh, Officer, please can you try to find my potential assailant, and please can you charge them with attempted homicide, and I bought Frog and Toad at a yard sale in 1990 and how will I ever find another Toad? Oh, Officer, my husband, Rupert, is dead, and who will protect a lamb like me? And just think of poor old Frog in the side yard by himself—why, he’s just like me: I have become one with Frog. Then, later, Catherine Bennett duct-taping plastic wrap over her window and having a private pity party: Kids these days! And after everything I do for them.

  So I can enjoy Bradley next to me, I fight the dragons of coziness, my mind abuzz with drama, with faux-rap-star dialogue: Bitch, be glad it was the freaky stone toad and not the gun. I think: Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? And then, sleep.

  THURSDAY

  CONSIDER THE CAKES

  Morning has broken like the first morning and all that, but I try not to be happy about Bradley in bed next to me; I try to accept and surrender to a bitter brand of dirty-nursing-home loneliness. I do not want to be bamboozled by flashes of happiness; I must be inured to the world, I must accept the here and now so that I am not perpetually shocked that my mother is never here to snuggle my back, to vex me with a cheery “Fie, slugabed!”

  Still, I feel some small satisfaction as I think of Catherine Bennett’s broken window, of some tired rookie officer dispatched to her lonely ranch house, how he will go home to his house, kiss his wife and children and be grateful for the bounty that is his life. And I feel the fluted edge of joy as I look over at Bradley, who, like a celibate bridegroom, sleeps on top of the covers in his T-shirt and jeans. His slate-colored oxford shirt is folded carefully on the chair next to the bed; his shoes are lined up next to my bedroom door. Tucked around his shoulders is the red and black quilt my mother made out of an old Halloween ladybug costume. He snores lightly now, the French horn packed away. It seems as if he snores thoughtfully, actually, a certain shushing Masterpiece Theatre yes yes yes I see yes yes yes yes as his breath rises and falls.