Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

by Matthew Sullivan

  “It’s not Joey’s photo,” he said. “It’s mine. He obviously took it off me, but—”

  “I don’t want to talk about the photo,” she said, eyes closed, palms flattening the air much more intensely than she’d intended, “or Joey. Not now. I want to talk about what you did at the O’Tooles’. Or to the O’Tooles.”

  “What did Moberg tell you I did?”

  “Why was your blood on Dottie’s body? Let’s start with that.”

  “Because I cut my goddamned hand.”

  He turned around and began tugging the purple latex gloves back onto his fingers. Their sight made her stomach swim.

  “I want to hear what you did.”

  Tomas craned halfway around and stared at her for a long time. “Are you seriously asking me this?” he said. “Because I’ve been waiting a long time to have this conversation. I’m likely to tell you more than you’re here for. I’ve been in that kind of mood since I quit the prison.”

  “I need to know.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, ripping the gloves off again. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  For a couple of seconds Tomas stood dazed in the O’Tooles’ kitchen, squeezing Lydia to his chest and listening to the ticking of the clock and the breathing of the house. A few feet away, the cabinet door beneath the sink was still open—the contact paper inside dotted with his daughter’s blood—and in his dread he understood its invitation, as if it were a doorway to a better dimension. The linoleum was spread with bloody tracks turning watery from the snow he’d dragged in underfoot, and at their center was the hammer he’d been holding a few minutes earlier when he’d stormed through the house, searching for Lydia. Its wooden handle was so syrupy with blood that it had stuck to his palm.

  In his arms Lydia whimpered and lifted her head. He could see her scanning the kitchen with glassy eyes and he didn’t want any more of this awful house being absorbed into her mind, so he pressed her face into his neck.

  —Don’t look, he said. God, don’t look. We gotta go.

  But when he reached the mudroom and unlocked the front door, he could feel her faltering in his arms, growing heavy and boneless, and only then did he realize how seriously in shock she was. Her pajama bottoms were wet and one of her feet was bare and felt sculpted of ice. Her face was crusted under a mask of blood and she was chattering so badly he thought her teeth might crack.

  —Are you hurt? Lydia?

  —i’m freezing.

  The little window in the front door showed a gray morning blowing drifts, and even the draft from the jamb made her curl against him. It had been a few minutes since he’d called 911, but the streets were clogged with snow so he knew they wouldn’t be here any time soon.

  —We gotta go outside. We’ll find a neighbor and get warm.

  —i’m too cold.

  He hugged her tight. He could hear the wind ripping down the street and ticking the windows with snow.

  —Okay. Okay.

  He set her on the little wooden bench by the door and grabbed a coat off one of the mudroom hooks—Dottie’s, nylon, light blue—and made a cape around her shoulders.

  —Let’s get you out of here.

  —i don’t want to go outside.

  She hunched on the bench with her hands in her lap. It occurred to Tomas with a terrible clarity that right now she’d rather climb back beneath the sink than go anywhere else on earth, and though this reality was among the saddest he’d ever faced, it paled next to the horror of a different realization—one that slammed so forcefully into his chest that it nearly knocked him to the floor.

  A pair of green mittens was there on the bench, right next to his daughter.

  He braced an arm against the mudroom wall.

  —what’s the matter?

  —Nothing. I’ll grab you a blanket. Then we go.

  Over the back of the couch in the living room a gray blanket was tented into the girls’ sleepover fort, but he walked right past it and stood in the mouth of the hall, clenching his jaw, just down from the body pile.

  Two days ago, during Thursday’s lunch break, Tomas had crossed the O’Tooles’ frosty lawn, holding the knitted green mittens that Carol had left in the library the afternoon before. Bart’s yellow pickup was nowhere in sight, so he stepped forward and knocked on the door. He was wearing brown slacks and a quilted brown coat, and only when he was standing on the stoop did it occur to him that he should have done more to dress up, but he reassured himself that Dottie wouldn’t mind. Smoke rolled out of the chimney next door, but otherwise there were no signs of people. This was good. Of course he wished he was gripping a fistful of carnations, but the mittens he held were better. They gave his presence here some purpose.

  He knocked again, harder this time.

  Dottie answered in her bathrobe, a red, silky number with an embroidered dragon crawling up the slope of her left breast. She didn’t say anything, just smoked her cigarette and looked bored. Tomas could feel warmth pouring from the open doorway.

  —Are you alone? he said.

  —I am.

  —I’m here for something.

  —I gathered that.

  He handed her Carol’s mittens, then unzipped his jacket pocket and began digging around inside. Dottie glanced at the street.

  —Slow down, she said. Close the door behind you. It’s freezing out.

  Inside, Dottie rested the mittens on the mudroom bench. Tomas followed her into the living room but stopped when they passed the kitchen. In there, next to the sink, a bottle of Coors sat on the counter. A toolbox sat on the floor by the back door.

  —Is Bart home?

  —Yeah, she said, blowing smoke in his face. He’s gonna take a bath with us.

  Tomas coughed into his hand as she strolled down the hall and into the peach-and-blue bathroom. The tub was filling in there, bubbles curling beneath a silver flow.

  —Get in here, Mr. Giggles.

  Dottie dropped a few bath beads into the water. Tomas stood next to the sink, his hands folded politely over his stomach. On the back of the toilet was a boom box with big round speakers and a cord that had to stretch over the sink to reach the electrical socket. Dottie pushed Play and flutish pop came rocking out. The small space of the bathroom, coupled with a broken treble knob, made the music sound tinny.

  —Aqualung! she shouted.

  —What?

  —Never mind.

  She turned it down a bit and let her robe fall to the floor, then slipped into the sudsy water.

  Tomas looked at the bath rug. At the smear of blue toothpaste on the wall above the sink. At the steam billowing against the cold bathroom window. Finally he looked at Dottie, allowing his eyes to ingest everything—her wet skin and soft flesh, her puffy nipples barely underwater, her reddish pubic hair swishing gently between her thighs. She was still smoking, but with great languor she reached out her arm and dropped the butt into the toilet and it hissed and made the hot room smell ashy.

  —You coming in?

  —In?

  —We need to be quick.

  Her hand softly grabbed him behind the knee. He could feel his slacks getting wet and he could feel, in his jacket pocket, the knot of gauze that he’d brought just for her.

  —I have something.

  —Is that a bandage? she said when he retrieved it, her face quivering between a smile and a cringe.

  Tomas untaped Rose’s ruby ring from its bundle, wishing that he would’ve done this right, with one of those blue velvety boxes with plush satin that resembled a tiny coffin.

  —It’s for you, he said.

  When Dottie held the ring up to the light, sudsy water slid down her arms. For a second, seeing it in her hand reminded Tomas that he’d recently promised it to Lydia, and he felt a short, inconvenient tug of shame.

  —Is this really for me? she said. It’s a flower?

  —It’s a rose.

  —It looks old. Expensive.

  Dotti
e slid it onto her pinkie but the ring was too big, so she moved it over to her pointer. There was already another ring there, Tomas noticed—silver and turquoise—and a gold braid on her middle finger, as well as bejeweled bands on each ring finger. He’d known from the start that she loved jewelry, but at the moment he felt a bit threatened by how crowded her fingers seemed.

  —It’s a little loose, she said, splaying her hand against a pillow of bath suds. But I like it.

  —That’s not all, he said, and he couldn’t help but smile as he pulled out the page he’d ripped from the library’s copy of High Country Realtor magazine this morning. The page held a real estate listing for an A-frame cabin on acres of pine a few miles north of Rio Vista. The cabin was isolated from town but close enough to hear the river and feel the shake of passing trains. And it was cheap. Really cheap. A few weeks ago the ad may have slipped past him, but these days the future had settled itself in the center of his thoughts, and in the center of that future was Dottie.

  Her hand came dripping out of the suds and lazily grabbed the page.

  —The one on the bottom left, he said. The cabin. In Rio Vista.

  Dottie looked at him. At it.

  —We’ll have some things to figure out with the layout and everything, he said, but I think we should go for it. It has room for a hot tub and a great view of the Divide. The girls will have to share a room but they won’t mind. Are they too old for bunk beds?

  —The girls? You mean Carol and Lydia?

  Tomas froze when he saw the look on Dottie’s face. Her lips tapped together, then turned into a smile that crinkled her eyes. Water dripped from the ad in her hand. At first the joy he felt was inconceivable, like nothing he’d experienced in a decade or more. She appeared as happy about this prospect as he was, and he thought he might actually yelp with joy at the symmetry that for so long had been missing from his life—

  But then she began to laugh. She reached out her arm and dropped the ad and laughed.

  —Are you completely clueless, she finally said, or is that part of the act?

  —What?

  —Whatever happened to good old-fashioned cheating? You really thought I’d just run off with you? Is that why with the ring? That’s so sweet. I mean it, Tomas—you are so sweet!

  Tomas couldn’t speak. He became aware of muscles constricting in his face.

  —C’mon, she said. Don’t get hurt feelings. You had to know I wasn’t going to elope, for Christ’s sake. We’re not teenagers.

  He saw the soaked ad for the cabin stuck to the linoleum and felt a slow surge of knots popping up his spine until finally there was nothing left to do but to erupt—so he did, and he watched his hand swipe the boom box so hard that it skittered right off the back of the toilet and arced through the air, its cord stretching over the sink, lobbing toward Dottie in the tub, flute rock blasting, and when her arms shot up to cover her face the boom box bashed into her elbow, tearing her skin, and then it hit the rim of the tub and splashed through her thighs and into the water with a thunk. The music stopped underwater. Tomas thought immediately of electrocution, of voltage, and in a panic Dottie tried to stand out of the tub but her feet slipped and she bashed her tailbone on its edge before plunging back in. A wave sloshed to the floor. Blood dripped from her elbow.

  Tomas looked at the black electrical cord. One end was still plugged into the wall above the sink, but the other end had popped free of the socket in the back of the boom box as it had fallen.

  —It came unplugged, he said. It shouldn’t have shocked you.

  —It didn’t. I don’t think.

  —That’s good it didn’t.

  He realized he was smiling. Dottie pressed a washcloth against her bleeding elbow. Water beaded on her face and she blinked hard.

  —Could I have died?

  —Well, he said, somewhere in Japan there’s an engineer we should be thanking.

  —What?

  —For making the cord as short as he did. Everything’s okay.

  —Everything’s okay?

  Dottie rose to her feet and ripped a towel from the rack and tightened it roughly over her body, as if suddenly angry at her nudity.

  —It was an accident.

  —You fucking loser.

  —Dottie?

  —You fucking loser. Get out of my house.

  Tomas stood still for a long moment. Then he walked into the hall and plunged his fist straight through the drywall opposite the bathroom door. He worked his fist out of the wall and crumbles of gypsum rained on the carpet below. He felt no reaction, no pain—just the satisfaction of punching.

  —Get out of my house! Dottie screamed. Get out—

  Tomas turned down the hall and before he knew it he was out on the sidewalk, feeling stunned, walking away from Dottie’s house, rubbing his dusty knuckles in the cold.

  Less than forty-eight hours later, Carol’s green mittens were there on the bench, right next to his daughter.

  He braced an arm against the mudroom wall.

  —what’s the matter?

  —Nothing. I’ll grab you a blanket. Then we go.

  Over the back of the couch in the living room a gray blanket was tented into the girls’ sleepover fort, but he walked right past it and stood in the mouth of the hall, clenching his jaw, just down from the body pile.

  The hallway carpet was soggy in spots and umbras of blood marked the walls. Across from the bathroom, he could see the place where Dottie had hung a family photo over the hole he’d punched. The photo itself was faceup on the carpet below. It was several years old and showed, behind a sunburst of broken glass, the O’Toole family smiling and wearing matching white turtlenecks and freshly feathered hairdos—

  And now they were together in the doorway down the hall, just visible from the spot where he stood. Tomas tried to avoid looking at them, but their gray limbs clung to his vision like a burr. He wanted to go back to the beginning, to jab his finger into the exact moment that led to this unraveling, but as he meandered through his memory all he found were more insistent images of Dottie: Dottie leaning over the library counter to laugh at his misbuttoned dress shirt. Dottie phoning him while drunk on Gallo wine at three in the morning. Dottie dipping her finger into his strawberry sundae at the Dolly Madison shop on Sixth Avenue.

  Dottie in her suds, putting on his dead wife’s ring. The ring he’d engraved years ago with the words A rose for my Rose. The ring that would point to him.

  As he stepped deeper into the hall, pieces of glass snapped on the carpet beneath him. He could see Dottie’s arm flopped out from the pile, just near the bedroom’s doorjamb. Through the sour haze he reminded himself that he needed that ring, that leaving it behind was not an option, so he knelt near the bodies and planted his palms on the carpet to scootch closer. He heard something pop. Pain raced through his hand. He held up his palm and watched a red bead roll down his wrist and soak into his cuff. When he wiped the blood away he could feel the itchy tip of a glass splinter in the pad beneath his thumb. He must have gasped, because he could hear Lydia squirming on her bench in the other room.

  —daddy?

  —Stay put. I’m coming.

  The splinter came straight out when he pulled on it—a sharp shard, the size of a snapped toothpick—followed by a small tide of blood. He pressed his hand to his thigh and felt the cut pulsing there, bleeding into his jeans, but his attention remained focused on getting that ring. Because if anyone else were to find it—

  The air around him was thick and sour as he inched toward the bodies. He found it difficult to breathe and felt a pressure in his ribs so strong he thought he might rip down the middle. But finally he could see, splayed at the base of the doorjamb, Dottie’s small hand, darker and fatter than it had ever been, adorned with a bevy of rings.

  He reached toward her, blood beading on his fingertips.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Lydia sat cross-legged on the floor of her father’s workshop, stunned by the weight of his word
s. The concrete beneath her was icy cold, and her back pressed against a low shelf of paperbacks. She wanted to stand—wanted to walk out of her father’s life once and for all—but thought her legs would crumple beneath her if she tried.

  He pulled a stool out from under his workbench and offered it to her, and when she shook her head he settled atop it and nervously patted his kneecaps.

  “Did you love her?” she said.

  “I gave her your mother’s ring, if that’s any indication.”

  “How long were you two—?”

  “It wasn’t anything like that,” he said. “She was an unhappy person in an unhappy marriage. I thought I could make her happy. To be honest I think she was just lonely, trying to entertain herself. Like dragging yarn before a cat.”

  “So you did.”

  “Love her?” He tried to continue but his words got stuck and he had to cough. Somewhere inside of him a bone cracked. “It’s embarrassing to admit, but yeah. I did. I really think I did. Clearly the feeling wasn’t mutual.”

  Lydia glanced around his book-lined workshop and felt herself beginning to understand.

  “Is that why you did it?”

  Tomas didn’t answer.

  “Is that why you left me alone in the mudroom? So you could take the ring off her finger?”

  “It made sense,” he said.

  “It made sense? Are you kidding me?”

  “At the time,” he said, breathing loudly. “Look. You might not remember this, but when we arrived at the hospital, within minutes of getting you situated in Pediatrics, Moberg steered me to an empty room on a quiet wing a few floors up. He took away my clothes and boots and had me wear a pair of scrubs. I still had your mom’s ring turned around on my pinkie, but when I realized they were about to photograph my hands right there I asked to use the bathroom and slid it into my teeth. They took my fingerprints and took photos of the scabs on my knuckles and the cut on my palm. They drew my blood.”

  “Which was all over Dottie’s skin.”

  “You’re starting to sound like Moberg,” he said, holding up a finger with warning. “When it was all over I went back into the bathroom and crumpled the ring into some paper towels and hid it away with my keys and wallet and haven’t uncrumpled it since. But you’ve got to understand why I had to get it. For days I slept in a chair by your hospital bed, and every time I woke up he was standing there, Moberg, ready to start in on me again. I just wanted to take you out of Denver, to get us going on a new life, but that was the last thing he was going to allow.”