Stranger in the House

by MacDonald, Patricia

  “Are you all right?” she cried.

  Paul nodded, his eyes closed, the sweat popping out across his waxen face. Anna guided his slumping form to the chair. He breathed in great gasps as the color slowly returned to his skin.

  “I’m okay,” he whispered.

  “God,” Tracy breathed.

  Anna buried her face in her hands for a moment as Thomas held the boy awkwardly by the shoulders. “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked. “Maybe we should call a doctor.”

  Paul shook his head weakly. “No, I’m okay.” He drew himself up in the chair and sat with his shoulders hunched, his arms crossed tightly over his lap. The dark circles under his eyes seemed to have deepened.

  Anna wanted to reach out and embrace him, but she knew that he would flinch at her touch. He sat as if he were trying to shield himself from their eyes. He would not look up at her. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

  “I’m sorry,” said Anna. “It was the steak.”

  Thomas filled a glass from the water pitcher and handed it to Paul. “Here,” he said, “have a sip.”

  Paul drank the water.

  “Are you sure you don’t want a doctor?” Anna asked him.

  Paul shook his head. “No. I don’t need anything. I just want to go lie down somewhere.”

  “Of course,” said Anna. “Of course you do. I’ll take you upstairs.”

  Tracy looked fearfully at the boy, as if he might suddenly collapse again.

  “You have your old room,” Anna said. Paul looked at her blankly.

  “I hope it will be cool enough up there for you,” said Thomas. “Your mother refuses to get air-conditioning.”

  Anna saw the confusion in the boy’s eyes. “He means me,” she explained sadly. She reached out her hand and laid it on Paul’s thin forearm. “You really scared me. I’m so glad you’re all right.”

  “He looks fine now,” said Thomas.

  The plaintive wail of a cat could be heard in the room. Paul looked around the table and then stood up. “Where’s Sam?” he asked. “I’ve got to put him out. He likes to hunt at night.”

  “Do you think it’s safe? I hope he doesn’t get lost,” said Anna. “I’ve made him a bed in the kitchen.”

  Paul sighed. “I can’t make him stay inside. Going out’s the only thing he knows. It’s bad enough he had to leave the woods.”

  Tracy got up from the table and started through the living room. “I’m going upstairs,” she said.

  “Good night sweetheart,” said Thomas.

  Paul disappeared into the kitchen, calling for Sam. Anna tore her gaze away from the kitchen door and looked at her husband across the littered table. “Tom,” she said, “that was awful. I was so frightened.”

  “You acted very quickly,” he said. “You probably saved his life.”

  “He could have choked to death.”

  “I know,” he said. “It was lucky.” They fell silent.

  Thomas turned and looked blankly toward the kitchen. He ran his fingers absently through his hair.

  Paul returned to the dining room. “Sam took off,” the boy said glumly.

  “Well, maybe he’ll find some cat friends out there. I’m sure he’ll be back. Cats are pretty good that way. Come on now,” said Anna. “I’ll show you your room.”

  “Good night,” said Tom stiffly.

  Paul picked up his duffel bag and followed Anna up the stairs to the room which she had readied for him. The garbled lyrics of a Backstreet Boys album emanated from behind the closed door of Tracy’s room. When they reached the top of the stairs, Paul looked at Anna to direct him. She nodded toward a door down the hall, and Paul went over and pushed it open. He looked around and placed his bag on a chair beside the dresser. Anna felt for a moment as if she were showing a guest to a hotel room. “This was your room,” she said.

  He turned and saw her watching him. “It’s big,” he said.

  “The bathroom is at the end of the hall. Are you sure you feel all right?”

  Paul stood by the head of the bed, his hands jammed into his pockets. “Yeah,” he said. “Fine.”

  There was so much she wanted to say. But it would have to wait. The look in his eyes was wary. “Well,” she said briskly, “I hope you sleep well.” She stepped over to him and placed an arm around his shoulders. He drew away from her, and the kiss she had intended for his forehead brushed his ear instead.

  “Good night,” she said, backing out of the room. He did not look at her.

  For a few minutes after she had left the room, Paul did not move. He stood staring straight ahead of him. A silver cup was gleaming on the bureau in his line of sight. He walked over and picked it up to examine it. It was brightly polished, and on it was the name PAUL, engraved in an elegant script.

  He realized, with a queasy feeling, that the cup had been his. Someone had bought it for him, probably when he was born, years ago. When he had lived in this house. With these people. Paul looked around the strange room.

  His mother had told him before she died that she had a terrible secret. So this was it.

  Paul looked out into the darkness of the backyard, hoping for a glimpse of Sam, but the cat was invisible in the night. He took another look at the cup. What was the use in fighting it? he thought. They were going to call him Paul if they felt like it. He threw the cup away from him, and it rolled across the floor and landed against the wall under a chair.

  Slowly he untied his sneakers and shook them off. He pulled back the bedspread and crawled under it, fully clothed. He was still wearing the camouflage vest he had found in the woods two years before. Dorothy Lee had washed it for him and patched it in a few places and sewn his name on it.

  Despite the blankets and the clothes he was wearing and the heat of the night, Paul began to shiver. His teeth chattered, and he drew himself up, pressing his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around him. No one had mentioned Dorothy Lee. Or his father. Not one word. Just as if everything were perfectly normal. Paul’s lips drew back in a laugh. But his eyes were mirthless. He felt a pressure on his bladder, but he did not want to go out into the hallway. He didn’t want to encounter any of them. His teeth were chattering more loudly now. He wondered if they could hear him.

  Anna put the last dish in the dishwasher and wiped her hands. She turned the lock on the back door and jiggled the doorknob to be sure it had caught. Then she padded through the quiet house and put the lock and chain on the front door. From the den she could hear the drone of the television late news. Anna looked around at the windows. She wished she could lock them, too. But it was too hot for that. They all would suffocate from the heat. It worried her, though, to think they were open. She looked up the stairs. It was dark and quiet. Maybe he’s asleep, she thought.

  For a moment Anna pictured him again at the table, his face ashen, the taut cords in his neck, his hands helplessly clutching the air. Shaking her head, as if to dispel the image, she walked through the house and headed down to the cellar, where she locked the cellar door and windows from the inside. The light was on in the playroom adjoining the cellar, and she pushed the door open and went in. The room was still and empty. In one corner she spotted Thomas’s golf clubs. She went over to the bag and, having disengaged one of the irons, pulled it out and turned it over in her hands. She just wasn’t comfortable about the upstairs windows. At least she could lock the windows down here. No one would be down here. The heat wouldn’t matter.

  Anna leaned the golf club against the bag and made a circuit of the playroom, fastening the windows tightly shut. Then she returned to the golf club and picked it up again. The gleaming steel shaft and head of the club felt heavy in her hands. Anna hesitated, then gripped the club resolutely and started up the stairs.

  As she turned on the landing, she saw a figure looming in the darkness above. “Oh,” she cried out.

  “What are you doing?” Thomas asked.

  “Locking up,” she said, mounting the stairs to the top where he stood. He
was holding the bottle of champagne from the Stewarts in his hands.

  “I thought we might take this up to our room,” said Tom shyly. “Kind of toast the fact that we got through it. Got our son home. Managed to avoid having to call the ambulance. You coming up?”

  “In a minute.”

  Thomas noticed the golf club in her hand and frowned. “What’s that?”

  “It’s one of your irons.”

  “I can see that. What are you doing with it?”

  Anna edged past him and went through the hallway into the kitchen. Thomas followed behind her.

  “I thought it would be a good idea to keep it up here,” she said. “Just in case…”

  “In case of what? Anna, give me that club. Let me take it back downstairs.”

  She drew the club back out of his reach. “No,” she said. “We don’t know…we might need it.”

  Thomas dropped his hand to his side. His jaw hardened. “Not this again.”

  “That man is out there somewhere, Thomas.”

  Thomas stared away from her, his eyes flinty. “I don’t understand you, Anna. Don’t you want to be happy? You have your son back.”

  “Our son,” said Anna. Then she said quickly, “I’m sorry, darling.”

  Thomas glared at her and then turned his back.

  “I think that’s a nice idea, about having the champagne. And I will be along, Tom. Soon.”

  Thomas put the bottle of champagne down on the table and walked out.

  “Tom,” Anna pleaded, but she could hear him climbing the stairs. With a sigh she went into the living room. She pulled back the curtains and stared outside. The patterns of leaves on the driveway shifted as the trees rustled. Anna turned off all the lights in the living room and sat down in the chair beside the window. She held the club in front of her across the arms of the chair, her hands gripped tightly around the cold metal shaft. The light of the moon threw a sheen on the blunt head of the club.

  One blow from this would do it, she thought calmly. You have to be careful with children. You can’t take anything for granted.

  Anna looked up at the clock in the comer. She could barely discern that it was nearly twelve. I won’t sit here long, she thought. Just for a while. She decided that by one o’clock she would go up and get into bed with Thomas. He would probably still be up reading. She would bring the champagne and the glasses upstairs and surprise him. He wouldn’t stay mad at her. He never did.

  Soon. She would go up soon. Unless she heard something. If she heard something, she would sit here all night. Anna glanced out into the foyer at the murky gloom of the staircase. She would do anything that was necessary. Anything at all. She ran her hand over the cold dense head of the club. She wondered if she could sink that deadly weight into the side of someone’s skull.

  Her eyes traveled around the room to the fireplace mantel, where a photograph of a pudgy boy with brown-gold curls laughed into the darkened room.

  Anna gripped the club tighter. You could, she thought. If you have to, you will.

  It was not until the gray light of dawn had banished the shadows that her wary eyes finally closed in sleep. Her head drooped to her shoulder, but she slept lightly, her fingers curled around the shaft of the club.

  5

  “Could you put out the cigarette, sir?”

  Rambo looked up at the pig-tailed girl in greasy coveralls who was leaning into his car window.

  “Sure, sure,” he said, jamming the cigarette butt out in the ashtray.

  “What’ll it be?”

  Rambo studied his narrow billfold and extracted a wrinkled five-dollar bill. “Five dollars’ worth,” he said.

  The girl nodded and walked around to the back of the car. Rambo watched her in the sideview mirror, wondering why they let girls do jobs like this up North. It didn’t make sense, what with good men out of work. He stuck his head out the window and called to her. “Pardon, ma’am. Do you have a phone?”

  The girl pointed behind the station. Rambo adjusted his dark glasses, pulled down the bill of his cap, and got out of the car. Glancing around him in all directions, he walked self-consciously back to where the phone hung on the wall between the men’s and ladies’ room doors. He looked around; but it was early morning yet, and there was no one about. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a slip of paper and deposited his money into the phone.

  All night he had debated whether to call or not. He had waited for a word, a further sign, but none had come. He had read the Gideon Bible furiously, making notes in the margins and girding himself for his mission. At dawn he had decided to call. Now he dialed the number, which he had gotten from information, and put the phone to his ear, cradling it against his shoulder. Before it could even ring, the door to the men’s room opened, and a young man wearing blue jeans and a khaki shirt with the station’s name embroidered in red on the pocket emerged and greeted him with a wave.

  “Morning,” said the young man. Rambo quickly dropped the phone back into the cradle. His thirty-five cents came clinking down into the change cup as Rambo returned the greeting with a scowl.

  The young man walked off toward the pumps, and Rambo watched him go, waiting until he disappeared to pick up the phone again.

  Once again he dialed the number, trying to go over in his mind what he was going to say. There were moons of perspiration forming under the arms of his shirt, and the fabric was sticking to his back. He had to speak just right, to make the heathen understand that there was payment due. That the wicked had been found out and had to be punished. It was the Lord’s will.

  He held the receiver to his ear and waited, his eyes darting around the service station plaza to be sure no one came near him. For a moment there was a clicking sound. Rambo took a deep breath. Then a recorded message came on, advising him to leave his name and number at the beep.

  “Damnation,” he said aloud, and slammed the phone back down on the hook.

  The girl in the coveralls walked out in front of his car and signaled to him that his car was ready to go.

  Rambo thrust his hands in his pockets, and his angry eyes bored into the phone. Then, suddenly, he realized what happened. It had been the sign, the one he had waited for. He was meant to go strike without warning. No time to lose.

  With a sigh of relief Rambo retrieved his change from the change cup and hurried back to his car.

  It was a half hour’s drive until he reached the Millgate Parkway, and Rambo kept his foot pressed lightly on the accelerator, his eyes shifting obsessively from the speedometer to the sides of the road the whole way. He was anxious to get there, but he did not want to attract the attention of any patrol cars that might be lying in wait.

  The best thing to Rambo’s mind about the Millgate Parkway was that hardly anybody used it since the Connecticut Turnpike had been constructed. The fewer cars and people he encountered the better. The bad thing was that no one seemed to bother to maintain it. Rambo’s blue Chevy, which had newspaper plugging the body rot underneath and four nearly bald tires, struck each shallow crater with a shimmy. On the seat beside him the Bible, which he borrowed from his motel room, bounced over and struck his thigh. Rambo gripped the wheel and watched the road, muttering verses under his breath as he drove.

  Although he had been on the lookout for it, he still felt a small jolt when he saw the sign indicating the upcoming exit for Stanwich. Surveying the area, he slowed down as his car took the last miles.

  It looked the same. More than ten years ago, and still this anonymous exit was imprinted on his mind in precise detail. They had been coming the other way, of course, on that long-ago day, driving south after the funeral of one of Dorothy Lee’s cousins up in New York State. That’s what had made it all so simple. When they returned to West Virginia, no one had ever questioned the story they made up that Paul was the child of the dead relative, left alone in the world. Rambo’s eyes darted across the highway. That was the spot all right. They were just planning to pull off the road so he could
take a leak. That’s when he had seen it. At first he had not understood what he saw. And then, before it was too late, he knew.

  It was more than ten years ago since that day he had crouched there in the bushes, witness and then accomplice. And he had suffered since, although never more than now. But he had endured. And now he would have his revenge. Rambo heard the voices like a knell in his ears. “Woe to those who turn aside the needy from justice and rob the poor of my people of their right.”

  The arrow for the Stanwich exit pointed right. His moment was at hand. Rambo turned the wheel and slowly exited onto the peaceful backcountry roads that cradled the homes of the privileged few.

  “Buddy, I’m sorry to bother you. I know it’s early. But I had to call you. I couldn’t get any sleep last night, thinking about that man Rambo.”

  Paul stopped on the stairway. He could hear Anna’s anxious voice on the phone cutting through the silent house. He waited on the stairs, listening.

  “I would feel so much better if Paul had some police protection. Just until that man is captured. Please don’t tell me I’m being paranoid. I can’t stand to hear it again.”

  Paul’s lip curled as he thought of his father. He was probably off on some street corner somewhere, raving about the Lord. The thought of Rambo’s wild eyes, his accusations, and his rambling discourses on the devil released a sluice of bile into Paul’s stomach. The hunger that had awakened him subsided. He could hear Anna in the kitchen, still pleading with the policeman.

  “Buddy, we don’t know that he’s not dangerous. Just because he never hurt the boy before doesn’t mean that he won’t try something. I don’t feel that my son is safe while he is still on the loose.”

  Paul crept down the last few stairs and quietly opened the front door to the house. He stepped out onto the front porch and closed the door behind him. The dewy yard sparkled in the morning sun, and the quiet backcountry road looked like something off a calendar. Paul’s stomach churned as he looked over the peaceful scene. None of it looked familiar to him at all.