Everyone Remain Calm

by Megan Stielstra

  Brought someone home.

  Took him to my bedroom

  You know this part, I already told you. But what I didn’t tell was that I woke up the next day, slumped in my underwear on the floor, and everything was normal. My bed was made. The doorframe hung. No bruises. The only clothes on the floor were mine. Nothing was under the bed, or in the closet, or the pantry. Not in the cabinets. Not behind the couch. Not in any of the thousand places I could imagine something horrible—not in any corners fear could find. Everything was as it should be and my phone was flashing. I hit the voicemail button and got this: “It’s me. It’s Jim. I can’t make you talk to me, but I need you to know that—”

  I didn’t hear the rest of that message, ’cause I’d picked my coat up off the floor, grabbed my keys, was out the door, into my car, hitting the streets at the corners, speeding all the way.

  “Listen,” I said, when Jimmy opened the door. He looked a little startled, and I tried to imagine how he was seeing me: barefoot, coat, no pants, hungover, hair wild, eyes wild, mind racing. “I know what you’re thinking,” I said, rushing through the words while I still had the courage to say them. “You think that I’m not good for you. You think you should leave. You think it won’t work . . . but what I need you to know is, what’s really there is so much different from what we think.” I didn’t know if I was saying it right, but I was trying, and that’s more than I’d ever done before. “In the end,” I said, “we think too much.”

  And you know what he did, this guy? He reached out and put one hand on my chest. “Shhhhh,” he said. “Be still,” and I looked down and watched my heart pound into his palm.

  03| The Boot

  Penny got a collect call from the Illinois Department of Corrections and her imagination went a little crazy. What if it was Elliot, on a payphone, fresh inky fingertips, using his one phone call?

  Wishful thinking, she knew: Elliot was a law-abiding citizen. Elliot paid his taxes on time. Elliot looked forward to jury duty. Elliot, Elliot, Elliot. You know him, the guy behind the glass wall at the auto pound on Sacramento. He takes your VIN and your hundred-and-five dollars. He is stone-faced and cold, oblivious to sob stories or threats. “It’s illegal,” he recites, “to park or stand to obstruct a roadway less than eighteen inches of width on a two-way street or ten inches on a one-way street in accordance with the City of Chicago Department of Revenue.” Elliot had always respected city departments and legal institutions in general, all except marriage, seeing as he’d left Penny—his soft, thick, pink-faced wife—left her without so much as a Dear John all alone in their tiny two-bedroom on the boulevard, watching anxiously out the front window.

  After he’d been gone a week without word, Penny went to the auto pound to confront him. She rehearsed what she’d say on the drive down, trying out facial expressions in the rearview while waiting at red lights. Here is angry. Here is hurt. Here is dignified. She’d say this, “Elliot, how could you?” Her tone was powerful, dramatic, very NYPD Blue. “You don’t just leave. That’s the coward’s way out. It’s spineless, and I deserve better.” She tried out that last phrase a couple of different ways—I deserve better. I deserve better. I deserve better—and decided in the end to emphasize the I—I—me, this is about me, me standing up for myself, me fighting for what’s mine. Penny felt empowered as she sped down Sacramento—forty in a thirty zone, thank you very much!—and turned up Gloria Gaynor on the stereo.

  The auto pound is a football field of barbed parking lot, gray and dismal, full of trapped, stacked cars and angry people waiting in line at the trailer office to present their registration, pay their fees, and bitch and moan. They don’t want to pay the tow fee. They want to contest. It didn’t say No Parking. The No Parking sign was behind a tree. The No Parking sign had graffiti on it. What do you mean, ten dollar per day storage fee? So if I got towed at midnight, that’s an extra . . . what? What’s expired? The line stretched back between the ropes, out the door, down the ramp, and into the parking lot. It was a slow-moving line and the closer Penny got to the front, the more she lost her nerve. She imagined Elliot looking up over his glasses at her, his shirt buttoned all the way up his neck. “Elliot, how could you—” she’d say as rehearsed, but he’d cut her off. “Vehicle identification?” he’d ask, as if she was any old person waiting in line, not his wife of five years whom he’d abandoned without warning! and she’d be so stunned that she’d forget her speech. “Vehicle identification!” he’d repeat, loudly, like she was deaf, and she’d stammer and eventually cry.

  None of that happened, though, because Elliot wasn’t there. It was a woman behind the glass partition, and her hair was dyed red like a candy apple. “Vehicle identification?” she said. She didn’t look up at Penny as she spoke, just held her hand towards the hole in the wall, waiting for the appropriate paperwork to be slid through. Her nails were red acrylic and she wore cheap gold rings on every finger. Penny knocked timidly on the glass to get her attention. “May I speak with Elliot, please?” she asked.

  The woman raised her eyebrows. They matched her hair. “Who are you?” she asked.

  Penny hesitated. “His wife,” she said.

  The eyebrows went higher. Penny was suddenly afraid of what this woman knew about her. Maybe she was Elliot’s confidante and had listened to him talk about how he and his wife were growing apart. How she had put on weight over the past couple years. How he didn’t come to bed ’til after she’d gone to sleep, and if she tried to touch him, he took his pillow and went to the couch and one night she’d gotten desperate and had put on some godawful lacy underwear and tried to—she just tried too hard.

  “He transferred to another office,” the woman said.

  Penny couldn’t speak.

  “Will you hurry up?” snapped someone behind her. “I’m getting old just—”

  Her eyes were tearing up. She didn’t know what to do with her pride.

  “Come on!” came the voice behind her, and another voice said, “Goddammit, lady!” and lots of other voices started to grumble and raise, and the redhead stood up behind the glass wall. “You’re going to have to step asi—”

  “Where is he?” Penny asked. Her voice was small and scared. She wanted to melt and trickle towards the door.

  “What did you say?” asked the redhead, loudly, annoyed, “I can’t hear—”

  “I said, where is he?” Penny found a spare ball of strength hidden away in the corner of her stomach and looked the woman in the eye. One-Mississippi. Two-Mississippi. Three-Mississippi.

  “I’m sorry,” the redhead finally said. “Do you have photo identification?”

  Penny imagined breaking down the glass and getting that woman in a chokehold across the counter. “You tell me where my husband is, you Crayola-haired bitch,” she’d hiss, and would grasp hold of one long, sculpted nail between two fingers and bend it precariously back. “I don’t know,” the redhead would gasp from the limited air in her windpipe. A snap—a shriek—one nail down, four to go—“I asked you a question!” “I told you I don’t”—snap—“know!”—snap—“Goddamn!”—snap, snap—“Still got five more, sweetheart!”—bending, bending, almost there—“Okay okay okay!” The woman’d write down an address with her one working hand and Penny would loosen her grip. She’d look up and see the miles and miles of people waiting in line to get their cars—all of them staring at her, mouths open, eyes pleading—and feel an overwhelming sense of purpose. She’d rush to the gate and throw it open. “Run, my friends!” she’d cry, as swarms of humankind ran to the lot and towards their vehicles. “Go! Be free! Drive home to your wives!”

  That was the fantasy.

  This was the reality: Penny, in a baggy dress and too much eye makeup, pressing her palms against the glass dividing wall. Never before had she felt this low. She was begging a woman with fake red hair to tell her about her very own husband. “Please,” she implored, humbly, simply. Pri
de was gone, only hope left. “Please.”

  The women looked down at her paperwork.

  There went the hope.

  It came back on the day the Department of Corrections called. Penny accepted the charges and had fun imagining Elliot in prison. Elliot needing her. Elliot in a cell with a guy named Chuckie. Penny knew what it was like in prison. She watched Oz.

  It wasn’t him, though. It was a mechanical-sounding voice telling her that the conversation would be recorded. Then a fuzzy joggly sound. Then a man who thought she was someone else.

  “Michelle?” said the man.

  “No,” said Penny. She’d wanted it to be Elliot. It’d be a lot easier to deal with him being taken away than it was with him leaving on his own.

  “Michelle there?” the man asked.

  “There’s no Michelle here,” she said.

  “Yes, she lives there,” he said. “She told me she did.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Penny.

  “Come on, lady. I know she’s there,” he said.

  Penny hung up. She didn’t want to deal with someone else’s needs. She had too many of her own.

  The Department of Corrections called many times over the next few months, but Penny never accepted the charges. She went around her daily business—operator for AAA, cleaning the apartment, cable television—but always listening for the sound of Elliot’s car, checking the answering machine, the post office, the mailbox, the inbox: nothing. Still she waited—waited and waited and waited—until something finally happened.

  Penny got a parking ticket. Her first ever. She’d stopped at Kmart to pick up some of those Pledge Grab-It dusters that she had a coupon for, and had inadvertently parked outside the diagonal markings. Code 09-64-030(b). Twenty-five dollar fine. Twenty-one days ’til it doubled. She could hear Elliot’s voice in the back of her head: “It’s illegal. Illegal. Illegal.”

  Penny set the parking ticket in the center of the dining room table, poured herself a glass of wine, and sat down to consider her options. What should she do with it? The logical answer, of course, was to pay it. But Penny was a little bit angry with logic. Logic hadn’t been good to her lately, why should she be good to it? She glared at the parking ticket. It made her think of Elliot: you have broken the law, it seemed to say, like on her birthday when he’d refused to dance with her in Buckingham Fountain. “We can’t,” he’d said, holding her arm. She’d toed off her shoes and implored him to live a little. “You’re drunk,” he’d said, and she’d said, “It’s romantic,” and he’d said, “It’s illegal.”

  Penny took the ticket to her bedroom and went to the closet. From the top shelf she pulled a carved wooden box that she’d bought on their honeymoon in Santa Fe. She kept things that Elliot had given her over the years: origami birds he folded out of deli receipts, first-second-third-fourth anniversary presents, a stack of letters he’d written when they’d first met and had gone to different colleges in different states. She’d meant to put the ticket in the box, as if her parking outside the diagonal lines was another milestone in their relationship, but instead put the box on the floor and sat next to it, legs crossed, back against the bed. She took one of the letters out of its envelope, read the Dear Penelope at the top, and got up again. A few minutes later she returned with the wine, sat back down in the same place, and continued reading.

  Here are some of the sentences: I think of you often. We are fortunate to have met each other. I’ve been considering our future.

  There were others, but they all read the same: tepid, at best. Penny wondered how she ever thought he loved her. By the time she’d finished all the letters, the bottle was gone, too, and Penny cried for all the things he was supposed to have said but hadn’t. I love you and I need you and sweetheart and darling, and before she knew it she was ripping the letters into little pieces, slowly at first, with deliberate, even strips; then angry and destructive, papers flying around the bedroom, origami birds crunched underfoot, deep gutsy sobs pulling from her middle ’til she finally collapsed in a lump and balled into the carpeting, that sniveling pathetic sort of crying, the soundtrack to desperate acts.

  The phone rang then. Penny reached up to the bedside table, fell over, picked herself back up, and let the receiver topple to her lap. “This is a collect call from the Illinois Department of Corrections,” said the mechanical voice. “Will you accept the charges?”

  She most certainly will.

  “Michelle,” he said, after a beat or two. “Baby, is that you?”

  Penny bit back a wail. Baby, is that you? Why hadn’t anyone ever said that to her?

  “Baby?” he said again, “Baby, I’m dying in here,” and Penny realized that she’d have to say something back. She felt fuzzy, like she might faint, and all she wanted to do was curl up around the phone and hear him say baby until she fell asleep. She sniffled loudly, and made some of those gaspy sounds like when you’re trying to get your crying under control.

  “Shhhh,” he said. “I know.”

  The room swirled now. “You do?” she asked, through the phlegm and salt.

  “I do,” he said. His voice was sad, and sensitive, and deep. Penny shut her eyes and imagined the man that wrapped around that voice. Strong arms, and a thick chest to lean against, and stubble, and eyes with very dark lashes. “I know how hard it is,” he said.

  He knows, Penny thought through the haze.

  “Just remember that I love you,” he said, then the automated switch, then static, then the dial tone. Penny sat there on the floor, the phone pressed against her ear, listening to the silence where he’d once been.

  The letter came a week later. It had Penny’s address and Michelle’s name typed on the front, and on the back was a blue stamp that read THIS CORRESPONDENCE IS FROM AN INMATE OF THE ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. Penny stood at her mailbox for a long time, looking at that envelope. Then she brought it inside, set it down in the middle of the dining room table, and looked at it some more.

  Here is what she should do: write Return to Sender on it and put it back in the mailbox.

  Here is what she wanted to do: open it, read it, memorize it, sleep with it, read it again, read it eighteen thousand times, and develop an elaborate fantasy.

  Here is what she did do: sprint down the hall, rush to the closet, pull down the Elliot box, close the letter into it, put it back on the shelf, slam the closet door, and lean against it, breathing heavily.

  This was how Penny always dealt with desire: ignored it, hid from it, denied it. Last year she’d tried one of those diets where you couldn’t eat any complex carbohydrates, and, almost immediately, bagels started talking to her. Eat me, they’d say, just this once, and after a while the noodles joined in, and the crackers and rice, too. Penny had to run around the kitchen with a Hefty Cinch Sak, sweeping all the offenders into it and throwing them to the curb.

  She would not give in to desire. Desire was dangerous. She would be safe.

  For a while anyhow, because more letters arrived—five, ten, twenty showing up in the mailbox. Penny put them all in the closet and closed the door, hoping to forget about them, but temptation is a strong drug. Every time she went into the room the closet would rattle. They wanted to be opened. She’d shut her eyes and try to calm the beating in her chest—no go. The more letters Michelle received, the more the closet shook. Penny remembered Poltergeist and got paranoid. She avoided the bedroom, keeping the same clothes on for days at a time and sleeping on the couch. She fought a great inner battle: Open it! No! Yes! Shut-up-shut-up-shut-up! The more letters she put in the box, the louder the yelling in her head ’til eventually she decided Enough is enough and let the envelopes stack up in the mailbox. She took to driving mindlessly around the city, putting distance between herself and Pandora’s box. She’d stay away for hours, camping out in bookstores and wandering the aisles of grocery stores. There were dark circles under her eyes
and she was thiiiiis close to losing all her cookies.

  That’s when it happened: the parking ticket. This one was 09-64-100(g). Parking within thirty inches of a traffic signal. “Goddammit!” she yelled, grabbing the orange envelope. “Why can’t you leave me alone!” She ripped furiously, dropping her purse to the ground to get at it with both hands, taking the small pieces and shredding them even smaller ’til there was nothing left and then she stopped. She stood there, on the sidewalk, breathing heavily, and realized—as the wind picked up the orange scraps and spun them in the air—that she felt good. So good, in fact, that the next day she parked within fifteen inches of a fire hydrant while she ran into the Currency Exchange. When she saw the familiar orange underneath the windshield wipers, she felt a great rush. “A hundred dollars, eh?” she said, as she grabbed up the ticket. “This is what I think of your hundred dollars, Elliot!” and the confetti hit the wind. The next morning, it was street cleaning. Penny drove around looking for the signs attached to trees, and parked wherever she saw them. One, two, three, four tickets by 3 P.M., a grand total of two hundred dollars sailing to the sky, and Penny was giddy. The day after that it was loading zones, and then underpasses, and then disabled parking in public and private lots, and she felt wild and reckless and drove right up onto the sidewalk in front of 7-Eleven as she ran in for a Slurpee. When she came out: the boot.

  Penny stared at it, the metal cage locked around her back driver’s side tire. Then she laughed. Then she walked into the nearest bar and sat there for the next four hours drinking Maker’s Mark until somebody put her in a cab. She teeter-tottered into the house, made for the closet, and read every damn letter he’d sent.

  This time the temperature was just right: boiling burning scalding hot. All the necessary words were present and accounted for: love, cherish, desperate, desire, and Henry. His name. Henry. Henry loved her and cherished her and was desperate with desire and didn’t know if he could go on sitting in that jail cell going crazy from Not Knowing where she was and what she was doing and if she was still his or not and in her wild, drunken, wobbly hand she wrote I Love You on the back of a picture postcard, took it through the midnight darkness to the mailbox, and made it back inside before she passed out.