Carl’s voice, raw and electric: “You must be in the air. I’m at the hospital. Don’t worry, everything is okay. Wray choked—he bit the head off Barbie. I called 911, but he turned blue, and his eyes were rolling. I Googled ‘tracheotomy.’ I stabbed him in the throat with a shish-kebab skewer, where the picture showed, between his—I forget what they’re called. Oh, God—blood spurt out, not much, and bubbles. I stuck a soda straw in the hole like it said to do, and I held him on the kitchen counter with a dish towel under his head and my hand on his chest, and he looked at me, like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ but he didn’t move, and the paramedics showed up and took over and said I saved his life. But it’s okay. I did okay. Wray’s going to be okay—I—we’re—at the hospital, LA General, I—”
The call ended abruptly, as if Carl had dropped the phone or it had been snatched from him. Breathless, barely able to hear because of a ringing in her ears, she listened to Carl’s message a second, then a third time. Finally, unable to wave off the flight attendant bowing over her—the time for shutting off cells had long passed—Annabelle gave up. She shut off the phone, tucked it in her bag, and showed her empty hands to the attendant, who winked and moved down the aisle.
Annabelle shrank back in her seat. How could news be delivered this way? It was as if an old-fashioned postcard, one with a picture of a monument or tropical sunset, had been blown onto her lap through an open window. As if its message were addressed to somebody else, and by reading it Annabelle was somehow trespassing. Carl’s voice—it had been his, yet more than his—triumphant—tragedy had been averted. How had he done what he’d done? Little Wray’s limp body in his arms—skewering the baby’s throat—a soda straw! When, Annabelle wondered, had she entered Carl’s thoughts? Had he cleared her out as he dedicated himself to saving his baby brother? How long before she reappeared?
Maybe he’d read her text just before—maybe he’d lingered over it a moment too long while Wray bit the head off his doll. Carl had been about to say what when his message was cut off? Annabelle felt like a victim and was angry at herself for it, but that anger was inside a greater anger she couldn’t name. But—Wray was fine. Thank God.
With horror she remembered an early date with Carl at a restaurant where he’d been certain they’d be safe from prying eyes. That night she’d fantasized about choking, because she had choked, just for a moment, on a clot of the melted cheese smothering her French onion soup. She’d strained for air with a rush of panic before clearing her throat, then wondered how the man across from her, his eyes on his own plate, would react if she really were choking—would he rescue her? Would he wrap his arms around her and try to squeeze the death out? Why hadn’t she been the one he’d saved?
The flight attendant offered a beverage, and Annabelle asked for a scotch, and when it was brought, immediately ordered a second. Responding to Carl’s message was impossible—they’d ascended into turbulent skies, and the signs prohibiting electronics remained lit. Carl was a hero. There would be publicity. Layers of privacy would peel away like old wallpaper. Carl would be the toast of Hollywood. Carl Walchuk: son of Raymond Walchuk; savior of his test-tube brother; lover of Annabelle Hadley, rehab slut—it was too soon for her to be redeemed, no one would believe she’d earned it.
She hated jets, but on her flight to New York Annabelle had been so busy reviewing the “Dinghy” script that she hadn’t bothered with the Xanax prescribed for her. Now she gagged down a double dose with her second drink. The cabin seemed to shrink. The jet struggled against the storm, and Annabelle imagined the fuselage gripped by a gigantic hand before she plummeted into a tormented sleep. She dreamed she saw Carl’s back as he stood over a black granite counter. The perspective shifted, directly overhead now, just as Carl raised what looked like a silver spike and drove it downward into the small figure sprawled across the granite. It was Wray, she knew, but it was also a little white monkey, and its limbs jerked when the spike pierced its throat. There was no blood, just a gust of warm air against Annabelle’s face. Carl yanked the spike out, and Annabelle saw only the bloodless wound, like a rosebud mouth, glistening pink and red against the white flesh and fur.
Then it was dark. Annabelle knew somehow she stood behind a curtain on the stage of a theatre, heard a distinctive voice she couldn’t place—but there was no doubt that it issued from the lips cut into the pale throat. She heard “Moreau” and “M’ling One” and “Walchuk.” Then she heard her name—she was about to be introduced! Annabelle reached reflexively for her face, but her fingers couldn’t find her features. Instead, she smeared makeup, like a child finger-painting, and knew she wore a mask. She heard the rosebud lips on the other side of the curtain whispering into a microphone: “and Annabelle has come a long way from the little girl of Svidrigaylov’s dream . . .” There was a thunderous roar. It could only be applause. It was thick with expectation. One finger on those lips would hush them. She could feel the suction on her fingertip as she plugged the straw’s open end.
Interstate Nocturne
I’m driving down Interstate 81 into the blackness of well past midnight. Driving alone, to keep an appointment I have in Knoxville tomorrow morning at nine thirty with a man I barely know about some numbers I’ve compiled concerning his liquor business. The figures are in a briefcase in the trunk of my car; I haven’t thought about them in miles. The car’s a rental, a white Honda Civic, 6138.7 miles. I wouldn’t dare drive my own car on a long trip, especially late at night. I know too much about what could go wrong, what has gone wrong. I picture us—the car a lifeless chunk of metal, me hovering beside, dumbfounded, while traffic whizzes by at speeds that threaten to suck me off the shoulder through the holes they smash in the air.
I’m smashing my own hole through the star-freckled night, nothing around to be sucked into my trail except a few small animals that trickle out of the humps of forest the highway splits. They squat on the pavement, transfixed by approaching headlights. Assuming that only humans can contemplate their own mortality, I imagine the deaths of these creatures for them. The radio wrings only static from the air. I have no CDs for the CD player, but its slot reminds me of the black boxes salvaged from the wreckage of downed aircraft, the mystery of “what happened” locked within.
The engine hums through the night air. My headlights cast an apron of light that extends my isolation only about a hundred yards against infinity. The broken white line flashes from the darkness like grains of rice. With each slight bump the blue digits on the clock trace a blur in the air.
Without warning, I am weightless—falling or flying. The humps of forest have collapsed, and the chill black sky is now beside and beneath me. Balancing on the broken white line as if it’s a high wire, the Honda carries me from stripe to stripe. I flatten the accelerator, desperate to cross a bridge I can’t see. The hairs at the back of my neck tingle at the rumble that follows me. The car and I dive for land, and the forest’s solid darkness embraces us again. I’m convinced that the bridge I’ve crossed has disappeared.
“FFFF . . . .” A sigh of relief from the figure in the passenger seat—the ghost of my mother. Occasionally she joins me for stretches of time along the night highways. The bright numbers of the clock frosts her in blue. She clutches her sweater to her throat.
“These bridges, Jackie,” she sighs. She is wearing one of her better wigs. “When are they going to stop frightening you, hmm?”
“I don’t know, Mom.” I sigh too, partly out of relief, partly at having to admit my fear to my mother. I don’t know how her ghost winds up in my car. Strictly speaking, it couldn’t be her ghost, since she’s not dead yet, which may be why her appearance never frightens me. She doesn’t acknowledge these nocturnal visits when I see her and Dad three or four times a year. “Why don’t you fly?” she asks then if I complain about my lonely drives. My mother’s ghost would never ask such a question. Flying is even more frightening than crossing bridges—it’s a long,
long trip over a bridge of air.
Ghost Mom is wearing her glasses, the wig, and a wool suit she reserves for special occasions. Together we glide along the highway.
“Nice car,” she says. “When did you buy it?”
“Never,” I answer. “Rental. You know I rent for these trips.” She’s got something else on her mind, I can tell.
“Of course you rent, dear. That just makes you a little harder to find is all.” I don’t ask why.
“It’s chilly in here.” She gathers her sweater more tightly about her with bony fingers worn so smooth they reflect the clock’s blue glow.
“Air conditioning, Mom.” She and Dad hate air conditioning. They claim it makes their noses run. “Do you want me to shut it off?”
“No, no. Don’t make yourself uncomfortable on my account.” I turn off the air conditioning. I roll down the window, and the blackness slops in, splashing onto my lap like warm ink, puddling around my feet and the pedals. Darkness pours over my crotch, and the puddle rises over the edge of my shoes. My legs become sluggish. Mom dabs at her nose with a lace handkerchief.
“Aunt Anna died,” my mother says. I barely remember my mother’s aunt. When I was a child she was already so old that I was more annoyed than embarrassed about accidentally walking into the bathroom when she was on the toilet. She’d already stopped counting, even to children.
“She was ninety-seven,” my mother says. “Died in the nursing home. They say she was senile.” My mother speaks the word in a whisper, rhyming it with “kennel.” Mom mispronounces many words that make her uncomfortable, like “gynecologist” and “semen.” “Isn’t it a shame she couldn’t have lived another three years?” Mom asks. I don’t answer. The question feels like a trap.
Black air rushes through my window and down my neck and chest. The tail of some slippery night creature smacks my jaw, flops in my lap, and joins its mates below my knees. Now and then one rubs against my calf like a cat.
Outside, the dotted line penetrates our apron of light like a cartoon gamma ray. Inside, my mother’s glasses absorb the clock’s blue light. Her legs stir the deepening night; it splashes faintly against her door.
“Your father read an article to me about a bridge,” she begins.
“Mom, come on . . .” My hands crowd midnight on the wheel, fists together, index knuckles targeting the pulsing white line.
“Now, dear, there’s nothing to cross between here and Marion, for goodness sakes,” she says. Then, comfortingly, “Don’t I feel what you feel, honey? And please don’t roll up the window. The air feels nice. I really don’t know what air conditioning does to my sinuses.”
The black tide rises above my seat and leaks under my thighs, soaks my butt cheeks and edges up my spine.
“Some major highway somewhere—not too far away, I don’t think—” Night, warm and tasteless, lolls beneath my lower lip; a swell covers my mouth, and another takes my nose and ears. Finally, my eyes. Submerged, I peer at Mom, who’s also under, all but the very top of her wig. She glows blue in the night air. Tiny bubbles of light shimmer off her lips when she smiles.
The white line, now blue, strikes relentlessly. Gliding shapes leave trails of iridescent bubbles about my face. Everything seems soft and comfortable in the night air.
Mom settles into her story, I think of the books she read to me when I was little, how I recognized the letters and studied the pictures, but only her voice gave them meaning. Something like that is happening now.
“There was a bridge, an overpass, above a little stream. With all the rain, the stream swelled and weakened the supports that held the overpass up. Then, just like that”—she snaps her fingers with an explosion of bubbles—“the bridge collapsed! Just dropped straight down, maybe fifty feet, right into that flooding stream.” The lenses of her glasses throb with blue light.
“Right off the bat, about ten cars drove in, nine cars and one tractor trailer. Seems like only one car tried to brake; only one set of tires left marks.”
I am inside each of those cars, falling, wondering, screaming.
“Somebody watching from a local road down by the stream—it was just about a river now, roaring right along—he saw what happened and rushed up to the highway and started waving at traffic. On his way up he saw two cars plunge in.”
I see a heavy man in a plaid shirt and worn overalls waving at me from the side of the road, and I worry at how desperate he looks and I consider stopping to help him, but I don’t.
“The troopers took days to find the bodies because the water was moving so fast. They’re still only ‘reasonably certain’ how many victims there were.”
I see pictures, as if from a children’s book. The cars are vintage, red and blue and mustard yellow. The truck is a moving van driven by a man in a neat uniform who a few pages previous would have carefully packed a worried child’s teddy bear in corrugated paper. The warning man is a round-faced farmer whose grandson and granddaughter, waiting safely on a high bluff, had earlier in the day learned about chickens and milk cows and who will, by their story’s end, receive the kitten of a farm cat to take back to their suburban home.
“The police waited to get word of missing people—folks who didn’t get to where they were supposed to or return from wherever they’d been.”
A slender blonde woman wearing a blue apron holds a telephone to her ear. One of her penciled eyebrows arches. A blonde, pink-cheeked girl wearing an identical apron frowns at her mother’s side. She holds a blonde, blue-aproned doll under her arm.
On the facing page is a bald man with a black mole centered on his forehead. Bristles protrude from his wide nostrils. His upper lip sweats. He also holds a telephone and glances through thick glasses at his wristwatch. Beside his desk are boxes marked with the brand names of vodka. The headline of the newspaper on the desk has a single decipherable word: “BRIDGE.”
“Your father said it was a good thing the bridge didn’t go down at night. Nobody would have seen the stream then, so there wouldn’t have been any warning. Cars from both directions might have kept driving off until dawn. Your father said that after a while the cars would have piled up so high that maybe folks would be able to drive right over them instead of falling in. Isn’t that a terrible thought?”
“Mom,” I whisper, “that’s enough.”
“You’re probably wondering about the police,” Mom says. “Your father thought about that too—if this had happened at night, I mean. Maybe the toll collectors would have noticed that nobody from past a certain point was coming through, and maybe they’d call the troopers. So a few police cars from either direction would be sent. And they’d fall into the stream! When they weren’t heard from, a few more would get sent. Same result. Then so on and so on until morning, when someone finally noticed.”
The round-faced farmer and his grandchildren stare at a glittering mound of automobiles towering over the level of the absent bridge. Cars spill onto both sides of the highway. Here and there men and women jut out form the wreckage, unbloodied, Xs where their eyes should be. A few wear police caps.
“Oh, it’s just your father’s morbid story—something to pass the time.” Mom’s sweet, youthful voice reaches me in popping bubbles. The steering wheel squirms out of my grasp and loops around my wrists. I squint against a blue glare. My mother is no longer visible. I feel her, though, as if I’m an egg waiting to hatch. We fly backwards on the highway: the car spits blue-white dashes into a single beam. My eyes close. I’m floating. My knees bump my forehead.
“Mom!” I cry, “What about Aunt Anna?” But I lie in the soft curve of time’s arm, my words lost in a baritone lullaby, and I am one rock-a-bye away from sleep.
Refugees of the Meximo Invasion
The tall, pregnant woman with the dark curls spilling around her pie dish face sat alone in the back row of the chairs arranged for Leonard’s Barnes and Noble reading.
In front of her an audience of a dozen tired mothers and wriggling children watched and listened as the author read from Mend My Tail, Doc, the latest in his series of Emergency Vet picture books. He’d retired from his veterinary practice and now lived a nomadic life on the road promoting his stories. Leonard displayed the illustrations: here was the cat being fitted for a prosthetic leg; here, the pig with its snout stuck in a peanut butter jar; here, the monkey with its hand super-glued to its tail.
The expecting young woman remained for the question-answer period.
“How long did it take you to make the pictures?” a chubby boy asked around the finger in his mouth.
“I don’t do the illustrations. We have an artist for those,” Leonard explained.
“But how long? And what’s the matter with your eye?”
“Shh, Jake, be polite,” his mother hushed.
“It’s okay, ma’am.” Leonard was walleyed. He’d been born with the imperfection his mother had reassured him a thousand times was “slight.” Frown lines framed her smile whenever she patted his cheek and called him “my handsome boy.” Leonard’s gaze flitted to and from the pregnant woman. She wore a yellow raincoat. “I keep an eye pointed to the side so I can see if anyone’s sneaking up on me,” he told the boy. “Did you know that a chameleon’s eyes work independently? Can you imagine looking at two different things at once?”
The boy blinked, spun his eyes around the room, shook his head and groaned.
“Do you have a pet?” a little girl called from her mother’s lap.
“Nope,” Leonard said. “Traveling around to talk about my books, I can’t really keep an animal. Sometimes I think a companion for the road would be nice, though.”
“What about children?” It was the pregnant woman. Leonard flinched when she batted her eyes at him: on one of her lids, the left, an extra eye had been tattooed.
Women of Consequence Page 6
