by Ray Garton
But then, when were they ever?
The Campbells kept a neat and tidy yard. The grass was mowed each week; the shrubbery that grew along the front wall of the house was always evenly trimmed. Dani kept a flower garden along the front of the lawn that was visible through the redwood post fence running along the sidewalk the length of their yard. It was an immaculate garden in which a single weed was never allowed to see the light of day.
Their nine-year-old son Jason always put his outdoor toys in the garage when he was through playing with them, unlike so many of the other neighborhood children, who often left their front yards littered with skateboards and Big Wheels and wagons. The neighbors took this to mean that Jason was an orderly, well-behaved boy and, for the most part, he was. But the real reason Jason put his toys away was that he was afraid of what would happen if he didn’t.
Dani Campbell did not care much for housework and when she did it, she did it haphazardly and without conviction. Before Jason was born, she’d kept the house spotless, but in the last six years or so, she’d lost interest in dusting and sweeping and scrubbing. It seemed pointless when she knew that her work would be virtually unnoticeable within twenty-four hours. She still did it, but not with the regularity she once had and she supposed not as well.
In fact, there were a number of things Dani did not do as well as she used to. During the first few years of her marriage, she’d exercised regularly and watched her diet and weight as intensely as a broker watches the rise and fall of the stock market. Back then, her body was picture perfect and she was proud of it; she shopped for clothes that best displayed the results of her devotion to fitness and went to the beach regularly to bask in the sun as well as the admiring stares of both men and women.
Not anymore.
Somewhere along the way, she’d slowed down. Her activity had decreased by minute intervals over the years until the only exercise she got was walking from one end of the shopping mall to the other and climbing the stairs in her house. She began to pay scant attention to what—as well as how much—she ate and it wasn’t long before she was ignoring the more revealing outfits on the racks at Macy’s and Weinstock’s and searching, instead, for baggy, more concealing clothing, hoping to hide the porridge-like lumps on her thighs and hips and the roll of flesh that now oozed over her belts. Even her hair, the color of rich honey, had lost its shine and taken on a dull, unwashed look that no amount of shampoo seemed able to erase.
Some days—not often, but once in a while—it would suddenly occur to her, just hit her like a slap in the face, that her lack of enthusiasm toward those things that had once been so important to her had something to do with the fact that she and Richard ended each day by polishing off a couple bottles of wine. Maybe three. Or so. Sometimes she didn’t wait for Richard to get home to open a bottle, and on those evenings, she usually just slipped frozen dinners into the microwave or got some take-out from the Colonel or Wong’s Cantonese Palace. She didn’t care much for cooking anymore, either.
On the evening of what would be the last chorus of hoarse screaming to come from the Campbell house before Dr. Krusadian arrived, they had eaten Kentucky Fried Chicken and coleslaw on paper plates in front of the television set. The Colonel himself smiled from the side of the red and white striped bucket that sat in the center of the coffee table. Two empty wine bottles stood at attention at the end of the table closest to Richard’s recliner where he sat eating, a Coors glass filled with Sutter Home white zinfandel on the lamptable beside him. On the floor next to the chair was a third bottle, half full.
Dani sat on the sofa staring blankly at the television. A pile of unlaundered clothes clogged the other end of the sofa and four days’ worth of newspapers were scattered over the floor beneath the coffee table.
Jason knelt on some of the papers, hunched over his untouched dinner on the coffee table. His Daffy Duck glass was filled with grape KoolAid, watered down by melting icecubes. Beside it stood Dani’s Tasmanian Devil glass; a few drops of wine were growing stale in the bottom.
They ate in silence, as always.
A rerun of Family Ties was just getting over on the television.
Richard browsed through the paper during the commercials.
Jason toyed with his food noncommittally.
Dani ate the last of her chicken breast and muttered, “Jase, pour Mom another glass of wine, will you?”
He took the bottle by the recliner and emptied it into her glass.
Dani chased her meal with a couple gulps of wine. She’d finished off a bottle of Blue Nun by herself earlier that afternoon, so by the time she sat down for dinner, her thoughts were covered with peachfuzz and her vision was only slightly, but pleasantly, unfocused. Now things were beginning to clear up and she planned to nip that in the bud.
She looked at the pile of laundry beside her as she drank, deciding she would have to get it done tomorrow. And she could probably stack the papers beside the fireplace, get them out of the way.
They seldom used the fireplace anymore. There was plenty of wood stacked in the back yard, but no one ever brought it in. The nights were getting crisp as October neared November and they’d been using the gas heater to keep warm. Dani decided to bring some wood in tomorrow, too. Might as well if she was going to do laundry. Wouldn’t hurt to pick up around the house a little, too.
Staring at the black, lonely fireplace, Dani noticed that two of the pictures on the mantle had fallen forward. Although she couldn’t see them, she knew exactly which ones they were. One was a picture of her, Richard, and Jason at Disneyland with Mickey standing behind them, arms raised happily. The other was of the three of them at Richard’s parents’ farm in Colorado. The two other pictures on the mantle—Richard and Jason at the County Fair and herself and Jason on a horse at a friend’s ranch—were laced with cobwebs. She would have to dust tomorrow, too.
Funny, she thought, squinting at the pictures through a zinfandel haze, Jason never smiled.
Dani had noticed that Jason was smiling in none of the pictures several times before, but, as always, she noticed it again as if for the first time. Wondering if the two pictures lying face down were any different, she set her plate aside and rose unsteadily, went to the mantle, and righted the fallen pictures.
Jason stared at her from within the chrome frame, standing between her and Richard and in front of Mickey; his chin was tucked in slightly, the corners of his mouth turned downward just a bit, eyes shadowed and deep. He was a Dickensian urchin, a lost little elf far from home.
Does he always look like that? she wondered.
He did in the four pictures on the mantle.
Dani returned to the sofa, splashed some more wine into her glass and took a couple healthy swallows.
The telephone rang.
On the third ring, Richard said slowly, “I suppose I should get that?”
“Mm-hm,” Dani nodded, suddenly interested in the newsbreak on television, because she didn’t want to answer the phone.
Richard set his plate aside, stood, and stretched. He was just under six feet, wirey but muscular, hard, with impossibly wavey brown hair that refused to be combed or styled; it just did as it pleased, curling here and sticking out there, defiant. He went to the telephone in the hallway with a put upon sigh. His voice was muffled by the opening theme of The Cosby Show.
They used to have a telephone in the living room, but Richard had broken it a few weeks ago and neither of them had gotten around to switching the hall phone into the living room jack.
Dani watched Jason do everything with his dinner but eat it as he watched television. He was a small boy with his mother’s blond hair and light freckles and his father’s strong features and deep brown eyes. He prodded his chicken leg with his fork.
Richard laughed in the hall, but it sounded forced.
“C’mon and eat your chicken, Jase,” Dani said, reaching over to pat his shoulder.
“Not very hungry.” His voice was hoarse, his words garbled by t
he fork as he slipped it between his lips and bit it.
“Well, you’ve gotta eat, hon. Wanna grow up, don’t you?”
He shrugged, using the fork to stir his coleslaw.
“Do you feel okay?”
He nodded.
“Well, why don’t you at least—”
Richard slammed the receiver down so hard, Dani heard the sharp ring of the phone in the living room.
Jason’s fork slipped from his small hand and clattered to the plate.
Dani silently braced herself.
“That was George Winter,” Richard said as he came back down the hall. His voice was different. The lazy dinnertime drawl was gone; his words were succinct now, crisp.
Dani looked over her shoulder, knowing what she would see; she was correct.
He stood at the hallway entrance the way he always stood when he got started: hands in his back pockets, elbows out at his sides.
“You know George Winter, Jason,” he said. “Randy’s dad? Any idea why he might call this evening?”
Jason stiffened and his lower lip trembled.
Randy Winter was Jason’s best friend. Dani had met the boy’s parents at a school picnic; Richard had stayed home.
“Seems there was a little program at the school tonight,” Richard went on. “A student art show. All the parents were invited.” He crossed the room as he spoke until he reached the coffee table, where he leaned forward, his face tensing, eyes narrowing. “All the parents but us.”
Jason slumped forward a little, pulling his shoulders up to his ears.
“How come, Jason?” Dani asked softly, puzzled.
“Forgot,” he whispered.
Richard repeated the word, spat it from his mouth with contempt as he spun around and got his drink from the floor by the recliner. He finished it off and quickly reached for the bottle, but it was empty.
There was a brittle silence as Richard walked a slow circle around the recliner.
Dani knew what was coming, what always came when Richard paced and circled and, as always, she gave it no thought. Instead, she wondered why Jason hadn’t told them about the art show. They always attended his school programs; she did, anyway, even if Richard sometimes didn’t. Why would Jason deliberately keep this one from them?
“Do you know how this looks?” Richard asked. “Do you know how this makes us look? Like we don’t care about our son’s progress in school, like we don’t—” He stopped abruptly and wiped a palm over his mouth once, twice, a third time. Another sign of what was coming. “Get out of here!” he barked, sweeping a hand through the air in Jason’s direction.
Jason was up and running for the stairs before Richard had finished the sentence.
Richard paced again, still holding his empty glass, muttering to himself every few steps. “… have everyone thinking we don’t give a damn about him… don’t even show up at his goddamned art show… and he won a prize, for Christ’s sake.” He spun around to face Dani and shouted, “Can you believe he won a goddamned prize and didn’t even tell us?”
Before she could respond, he went to the kitchen to open another bottle.
Dani listened to him slamming cupboards and throwing things. Glass shattered, he bellowed, “Shit!” and broke something else. “Why don’t you clean this goddamned place up once in a while? Huh? Just once in a while?”
She knew he would come out with a new bottle, sit in his chair, and change television channels rapidly with the remote control as he mumbled and cursed. Half way through the new bottle, he would decide enough had not been said and would go upstairs to shout at Jason some more.
Why would Jason do that? she wondered. It was such a small thing, but so unlike him. Jason loved arts and crafts, was very creative; it seemed he would be proud of his art project, would want them to see it.
The only explanation Dani could come up with was one she didn’t want to think about… one that made her want some more wine.
Richard returned to his recliner and strangled the freshly opened bottle of wine between his thighs as she shot at the television with the remote control. “… goddamned kid… what’m I supposed to say when someone asks why we weren’t there at the… Jesus… “ He curled his lip back, shaking his head back and forth as if he were running his teeth over a file.
The room moved just a little when Dani got up, drank the last of her wine, and went to the kitchen for her own bottle.
Two coffee cups were shattered in the sink.
She opened their last bottle of Sutter Home, making a mental note to buy more tomorrow, and poured until the wine rose above the Tasmanian Devil’s head. As she drank, she heard Richard slam the bottle onto the coffee table and get out of the recliner.
Dani lowered her glass, closed her eyes a moment, then drained it and poured another, starting on it immediately. She felt calm, a little numb, relaxed. Prepared.
“Unlock this door, goddammit!” Richard screamed in the hall upstairs.
Dani went back to the living room, sat in the recliner, found a movie on television that looked interesting and turned up the sound until Richard’s words were indecipherable. She could never shut out his voice completely, not once he got started.
Something crashed against the wall upstairs.
Dani wondered vaguely if it was Jason and turned the sound up a bit more.
Cosby’s over, she thought, realizing it was later than it seemed. She looked out the window and saw that it was indeed dark outside. Had been for some time, she knew.
Dani relaxed a bit more. She found it comforting, seeing blackness outside the windows; it meant the day was over.
She changed the channel to an old rerun of The Brady Brunch; she’d always liked that show.
Jason’s voice rose above the television’s volume in a shrill scream: “No, Daddy, I’m sorry, don’t—’’
Glass shattered.
Dani finished her wine, released a sweet, quiet belch, and filled her glass again.
“—cause you’re ashamed of us? Huh?”
“—please don’t—”
“I’ll give you something to be ashamed of, goddamned little—”
“—noooo!”
Dani’s knuckles burned; she looked down at her right hand and saw that she was clutching the glass so tightly that her knuckles were the color of skim milk. She gulped the rest of the wine like cold water and put the glass on the coffee table beside the bottle.
There was a clamor at the top of the stairs and Dani turned as Jason tumbled from the hall onto the landing. He shielded his face with his arms as Richard stood over him, fists clenched, teeth bared like an angry dog.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” he growled, towering over the boy, “you understand? Huh? Or by God, I’ll… I’ll… “ Richard paced three steps forward, spun, stalked back, his face a mottled red and, pulling a foot back abruptly, he kicked Jason in the ribs.
The boy rolled once and stopped a foot from the stairs, eyes clenched, head pulled back with his mouth yawning open as he made a long miserable retching sound.
Richard paced again, cursing under his breath.
Dani saw it coming, saw it clearer than she’d been seeing the television all evening, and she surprised herself by shooting to her feet and calling her husband’s name in a voice ripe with warning. Her shin hit the coffee table and the bottle fell over and rolled a few inches. Wine made gulping noises as it spilled to the carpet.
Richard ignored her.
He kicked Jason again.
The floor tilted beneath Dani’s feet and her vision blurred as another wine flavored gas bubble burst in her chest and she watched, rooted to the floor, as her son went down the stairs in a blur of small arms and legs.
It happened so fast, and yet it seemed to take forever for Jason to reach the bottom of the stairs. Dani heard a sound rise above the thump and tumble of Jason’s body hitting the carpeted steps; it was an instantaneous sound, there and gone so quickly that she realized she might not have heard that brie
f wet crunch at all.
When he finally hit the floor, landing flat on his back, Jason released a burst of breath, as if he’d been holding it all the way down. Then he lay still, staring up at the ceiling with those big fudge brown eyes that blinked so rapidly, as if he’d just awakened and was thinking, Boy, that was some dream!
Dani couldn’t move or speak at first, couldn’t even breathe, could only listen to the thick liquid rushing sound in her ears—as if she were moving underwater—and stare at her son.
Jason lifted his head, gave it a little puppy-like shake, and sat up. His left arm lay between his legs and he dragged it over a thigh, started to lift it, then let it drop to the floor as if it were just too heavy for him.
“Mommy?” he croaked, sounding puzzled, confused, as he stared at his arm, his round little face clouding with worry, “Mommy?”
“Yes, Jason, yes, yes, Mommy’s here,” she slurred, hurrying to him unsteadily, nearly falling when she dodged the lamp table by the recliner. She saw the bone when she was half way there, dropped to the floor, and scuttled the rest of the way on her knees as he began to scream.
“Mom-meee! Mom-meee! Mom-meee!”
His left arm had broken half way between the elbow and wrist and a jagged shard of bloodied gray bone jutted from his broken skin like a steak knife trying to slice off a bite of meat.
Dani felt the blood drain slowly from her face until her cheeks felt ice cold and her mouth worked numbly for several seconds before words actually came out; even as she spoke, she knew it was the wrong thing to say.
“Oh, we’ll have to put some ice on that, Jase. That’s gonna swell.”
In fact, it swelled right before her eyes, like a flesh colored banana shaped party balloon with a pretty red and gray design in the middle. It seemed a long time before she realized it wasn’t the swelling that really mattered; no, it was that bone…
Richard was groaning at the top of the stairs, groaning in black, sticky waves…
