As Night Falls

by Jenny Milchman

  Sandy emitted a feeble laugh. “Right. I mean, you do.”

  No answer.

  “You do all the hard parts, right?” Sandy went on, forcing out another husk of a laugh.

  It happened then, the way it did sometimes during the exhuming that was therapy. You reached a level of truth—skipping over years of explanation and recounting—because knowledge between therapist and client was forged out of a connection deeper than words.

  “Yeah,” Harlan said in his deep rumble. “He makes me do a lot of things.”

  Sandy looked over at Ben, lying on the floor, still motionless. As Harlan tracked her gaze, some feeling finally sparked on his face.

  “He shouldn’t’ve tried to hurt me,” he said. “Then I wouldn’t’ve had to hit him.”

  Sandy nodded, making sense. “Okay. Yes. I got it.”

  Harlan aimed his bland, sandy gaze at her.

  “If we don’t fight you, then you’ll just leave. Like you said. Right?”

  Harlan gave a single nod.

  The unlatched door to the basement had stayed open, and a wedge of light shone up from below. Sandy felt a frantic impulse to grab this fragile soap bubble of communication, snatch it up and force it to solidify. But the process didn’t work that way.

  “Is there something you want first?” Sandy asked, speaking slowly and quietly. “Some reason why you came here?”

  Harlan lowered himself into a squat, his thighs a tabletop before him. He continued to regard her, and Sandy saw that his eyes weren’t as empty as she’d thought when she peered upwards. The orbs twitched and moved, like newborn, mewling creatures.

  “Don’t you know?” he said. “I mean, you seem like you know so much.”

  Something sour and scared curled in her gut again. She had been coasting along, as sure of her conclusion as any diagnosis she’d ever made. But this wasn’t a therapy session at the hospital. She was in her own house, trying to interpret the words and behaviors of a home invader who had only failed to torture her because his partner had changed the command.

  Harlan began to move his block of a neck, then each shoulder, rolling the logs of his arms around. It was like watching a machine start up, the sight alarming in its power.

  He was hot, she realized.

  Harlan’s coat was thick, and densely padded, and the heat in this house could be intense once the stove got going efficiently. On a normal night, Ben would’ve fiddled with something by now, opened or shut a vent—

  Ben.

  She looked.

  He was still breathing, slowly and rhythmically. If he hadn’t been sprawled out on the kitchen floor, with Sandy in a chair guarded by an oversized stranger, Ben might’ve looked as if he were fast asleep for the night.

  Harlan scrubbed at a slick of sweat on his forehead.

  “You should take off your coat,” Sandy said.

  The speed with which the coat came off, falling like a canopy to the floor, was astonishing. The suggestion had scarcely left Sandy’s mouth before it was obeyed.

  What lay beneath the coat made the first of the bricks in her mind start to crumble.

  If she thought about this now, she wouldn’t be able to stop. She’d simply sink down into a murky bog and never climb out. Sandy turned away from the sight of the green jumpsuit, and forced herself to focus on what she’d learned about Harlan.

  He didn’t want to hurt them. And he had a tendency to follow orders, including Sandy’s. Maybe she could build up to a more important command.

  She was just starting to chart a course in her head when something snagged her gaze.

  Across the room, Ben was trying to stand up.

  AUGUST 15, 1975

  Barbara sat on the couch in her living room, staring at the sun coming through the blinds until her eyes watered.

  After six o’clock in the evening, and the sun was still this high. The heat hadn’t broken; it’d been weeks now. Barbara had sweated all day long, running after Nicholas, her face damp and armpits trickling. But she welcomed the temperature. The heat felt so toxic and punishing that it gave her cause to hope her body might rid itself of the contents it carried.

  The call had come this afternoon, with Barbara listening into the earpiece, as stunned as if a dart had hit her. Although she’d known, hadn’t she? Since that day they’d run out of juice.

  She looked down at the album spread across her lap.

  There weren’t many photos in it, but she liked studying the few there were. The first ones especially, when her mother had still looked into the lens with a faint glow. Later, you could see the march of children and the years palpably on her face. Barbara was the oldest, and by the time her first sister had come along, lines were already being drawn. By the third, wings had been etched beside each of her mother’s eyes, and her mouth was pulled in like a purse. After the fourth, Barbara’s father had taken no pictures at all.

  Barbara let the album cover fall shut. She glanced toward the dooryard, listening for the rumble of Gordon’s truck; she cocked her ear toward the stairs, making sure all was quiet.

  Nicholas had gone to sleep already, worn out by the exertions of the day, and also by a cold he was fighting off.

  “Do you have a tickle in your throat?” Barbara had asked the little boy at lunch, while he was eating his third helping of ice cream. It was so hot out, surely a cold treat was in order. Plus, there was the need to put weight on the little boy. Barbara’s own body was going to balloon, which would make Nicholas look all the skinnier. “Your voice sounds funny.”

  Nicholas glanced up, his mouth wreathed in pink.

  “Give a little cough,” Barbara had urged. “Let me listen.” She’d put her ear to Nicholas’ thin chest. It sounded perfectly clear, but just in case she’d administered a dollop of cough medicine before bedtime. “Come on,” she’d coaxed. “Strawberry. Like the ice cream.”

  “No more pink,” Nicholas had grumbled. “My tummy hurts.”

  But Barbara couldn’t have Nicholas coming downstairs tonight for his usual multitude of trips, which protracted bedtime by an hour. He wanted water, he needed to use the potty, could he have another kiss? What mother would refuse her child a kiss? And yes, Nicholas had already gone potty, once, twice, three times. But how badly would Barbara feel if he wet the bed because she refused to let him try again? They had struggled with training; Nicholas used to soil the linens and his clothes, seeming to take a strange sort of glee in the activity, which Barbara was glad about on the whole. She wouldn’t have wanted her child to feel ashamed.

  Tonight, though, she needed Gordon alone, with her own attention undivided. The need was pressing enough that when Barbara saw a full-scale protest begin to boil in Nicholas, she leaned forward and pinched her son’s adorable little nose between her fingers. Nicholas’ eyes widened, and he wagged his head wildly back and forth, curls flying. Finally he went still. His mouth popped open, and Barbara poured the fruity stream down his throat. She let go of his nose as soon as he’d swallowed, giving the kitteny tip a stroke to wipe away any redness.

  “See?” she said. “Wasn’t that yummy? And now I bet you won’t even come down with that cold at all.”

  She lay a sheet over Nicholas. It was so hot out that just the one layer dampened with the little boy’s perspiration. She sat beside her son, looping her fingers through his dark hair to detangle it, and singing his favorites, one after another, softly, robotically, so that he wouldn’t get up. Nicholas’ gaze soon grew groggy and his lids fell as if weighted.

  Barbara went downstairs to wait for Gordon.

  —

  She’d only been back to the market once since that dreadful visit two weeks ago, and so she had trouble finding in the sparse wares of the kitchen an evening appetizer to prepare for Gordon. She settled on squeezing lemons for lemonade. It was so hot out, a body couldn’t think of eating much that was solid anyway. Barbara herself had hardly taken a bite in weeks.

  The lemon juice ran down her fingers, stinging like a
swarm of bees. She had torn her nails down to their beds. Her hands looked as ugly as her whole body soon would.

  Earlier in the day, Nicholas had upended one of the living room chairs with a crash that shook the house. Barbara hardly noticed. Nicholas had torn a cushion, reaching in and scooping out handfuls of stuffing for snow, spattering his head and hers, while Barbara sat there and tried to imagine the future.

  She wasn’t stupid, and as old-fashioned as their life might seem to some, Barbara considered herself a modern woman. She had subscriptions not just to Good Housekeeping, but also Ladies Home Journal and Redbook, and she took out books the librarian recommended, by female writers like Doris Lessing and even that horrible Erica Jong, although Barbara had returned that one before the due date. Barbara believed that women who wanted to should work, although she herself couldn’t imagine spending that much time away from her son.

  And she knew that far away, in the nation’s capital, a battle had been waged and won, or lost, depending on who you asked. But the effects of that war hadn’t made their way to Cold Kettle, and Barbara couldn’t see how they helped her. The idea of traveling with Nicholas to Albany—or worse, Manhattan—then actually undergoing such a procedure, was laughable. She might as well have planned a trip to the moon.

  Plus, Gordon would never allow it. She wouldn’t have to tell him, she supposed. But that still left the problem of Nicholas.

  A stinging droplet of sweat entered her eyes, and Barbara licked away the film above her lip. Her sweet boy wasn’t a problem. This new factor that had caused Barbara to judge him thus made her look down now, seized by an internal hatred so fiery, the temperature without felt chill.

  The front door opened and Gordon stepped in.

  “Whew,” he said, pulling his shirt out of his waistband and using it to fan his belly. “Beastly out. You’ve kept it nice and cool in here.”

  “I didn’t open the blinds all day,” Barbara said, her mouth numb. She forced her hands, which had made their way into small, knotted fists, to uncurl.

  Gordon set down his toolbox and sniffed the air. “Dinner almost ready?”

  Barbara’s legs straightened and she stood up. It felt as if the movement were accomplished at someone else’s behest. “How about some lemonade first?” Her voice came out smooth, lacking intonation.

  Gordon went to settle down in his chair, then stopped with a frown. “What happened?”

  Barbara spoke over her shoulder as she entered the kitchen. “Nicholas had a marvelous idea for a game. I’ll sew the cushion tomorrow.”

  “Looks like more than a mending will be needed,” Gordon said. “This is my favorite chair.”

  “Don’t scold,” Barbara called automatically. “Your son is creative, and that’s important, especially for boys.” She brought back a glass freckled with condensation and handed it to Gordon.

  He took it, drank, then said, “Does creative have to mean destructive?”

  Barbara stared at him. “Why don’t you leave the care and keeping of Nicholas to me, and you can tend to whatever goes on at the shop?”

  Gordon’s features bunched and his grip tightened on the slick glass. Barbara took it out of his hand. “Go,” she urged. “Sit in my chair tonight.”

  After a moment, Gordon allowed her to scoot him in the right direction. “I guess I will,” he said, a note of confusion in his voice. “You’re sure doing something right, Barb. Only—” He glanced at his wrist. “—seven o’clock and you’ve gotten him to sleep already.”

  Barbara started to look up at the ceiling, but ducked her head so as not to jinx things. She didn’t see how she could dose Nicholas again with her husband at home. He wasn’t as observant a parent as she, and might not register the incipient signs of a summer cold. Those could be such a misery. Barbara sat down on the couch in front of Gordon.

  He frowned again. “Shouldn’t you be seeing to supper?”

  “Gordon,” Barbara said.

  He leaned back, flattening his palms on his thighs. “It’s hot, all right, but I’ve still got the appetite of a crocodile.” He wrinkled his nose. “What’s cooking?”

  “Gordon,” she said again.

  He shook his head. “Can’t really smell it yet. Maybe you need to turn the oven up? Or are we having one of your salads?”

  “Gordon?”

  He gave her a smile. “Never could see how a bowl of rabbit feed equals dinner, but I’m so hungry, I’ll eat anything by this point—”

  “Gordon!” Barbara shrieked, so loudly she was sure she’d break through Nicholas’ medicine-induced haze, send the little boy running downstairs, and lose this last chance she had. “The doctor called today. We have—” The words were some kind of bracing fluid on her tongue, like lye or bleach. She spat them out disgustedly. “—another on the way.”

  Gordon’s whole face went red. It was alarming in this heat. Her husband rose, he stumbled. “Darling,” he said, crouching down before her. “That’s why—” He broke off to nod. “You’ve been acting so strangely.” He placed a hand on her stomach, then snatched it back, staring wonderingly at his palm as if it had touched God.

  Barbara felt a tickle of nausea inside her. “We can’t have this—” She stopped. “We can’t have it, Gordon.”

  It took him a moment to respond, and when he finally did, it was with a smile. “Not much choice in the matter now, is there? But don’t you worry. I’m making good money.”

  Barbara shook her head. She caught her husband’s hand in hers, then dropped it as if it singed, this object that had touched her belly. “No,” she said again. “I can’t be a mother to two children. Nicholas—he’s so smart, so energetic, he takes up all of my time. I can’t give him what he needs if there’s another—” Again she broke off. “—if I have to think about anyone else.”

  An expression that Barbara couldn’t read crossed her husband’s face. Just as quickly it was gone, and Gordon let out a chuckle.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said. “You’re a wonderful mother.”

  Barbara bowed her head. Was that perspiration or tears striking the floor? In a short time, all sorts of emissions would be coming from her body. Barbara used the pointed toe of her shoe to wipe the wood clean.

  “This is good news,” Gordon said, touching her again, although this time on her shoulder. His hand seemed to clench with a terrible, thieving grasp. “And anyway, it’s a little late for second thoughts, isn’t it?” Letting go, he gave a ringing clap of his hands, while Barbara cast an alarmed look up at the second floor.

  “Now,” Gordon went on, “I think I’m going to fix you a little supper for a change.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The entrance to the basement lay just outside the kitchen. Ivy might get a chance to catch a glimpse of her mother—or the man.

  She looked down at Mac. Quiet, she mouthed.

  The dog aimed his snout at the floor in what looked like a nod.

  Ivy felt a charge inside her. They could do this. They were doing this. She walked forward, Mac beside her.

  As she drew close to the kitchen, Ivy heard a sound so familiar she nearly dropped all attempt at concealment and rushed into the room. It was the murmur of her mother’s voice, low and understanding. When Ivy had to hang out at the hospital, waiting outside her mother’s office for a ride, this was the voice that drifted through the door. She couldn’t hear specific words, of course, just the low cadence of comfort. It was the same tone her mother had used when Ivy was little, a lullaby of long ago.

  Mac’s body trembled, giving off a doggie scent. Then he began walking, not exactly toward the basement, but definitely away from where Ivy had been headed, lured by the sound of her mother’s voice. Ivy should be smart enough to recognize when her dog was leading her. She squared her shoulders, turned, and followed.

  Ivy kept her back to the living and dining area walls so that she wouldn’t be visible to anybody in the kitchen. They were going to have to slip through the basement door, though, and during
that moment, either her mother or the big guy might see them. Ivy would just have to hope for a little bit of luck.

  As the flight of stairs came into view—these just normal compared to the ones that led to the second floor—Ivy saw that she and Mac had indeed gotten lucky. A light was on, so their way downstairs would be illuminated. She set her foot on the first step as quietly as she could, then descended two more quickly. Mac hesitated for a fraction of a second, but Ivy knew there was no real debate. She could’ve been walking into a snake pit and Mackie would’ve followed, rather than stay up there without her.

  The basement was enormous. It ran underneath the whole house, although the space was mostly empty. It consisted of smooth, gray concrete walls and floors, with hidden systems here and there that resembled the cockpit of an airplane or something, and which only her dad knew how to use. Plus thin, looping pipes—those were the radiant heating—air transfer somethings because the house was way well sealed, propane tanks, and a hot water heater that never ran out no matter how long Ivy showered.

  In a far off corner, their mountain bikes and her dad’s kayak were stored. Ivy caught a glimpse of shadowed frames, the dolphin hump of the overturned boat, and blinked. Her hand reached down to stroke Mac. They used to explore trails in a blotchy, uneven line, the four of them. Her dad ahead, her mom keeping pace with Ivy, and Mac running back and forth between. They didn’t do things like that anymore; her dad took clients out instead. How long had it been?

  Taking a trip down memory lane, Darcy scoffed. When you’re supposed to be escaping.

  Ivy’s hand left Mac to begin rooting around in her pocket. She pulled the keys out, not taking care to stifle their jingle. If nothing could be heard from room to room upstairs, down here was like a full-fledged bunker or something. Her dad joked that if the apocalypse came, they would be able to ride it out quite nicely in the basement.

  Ivy set off across the football field–sized floor, Mac’s claws ticking beside her. She walked at her usual pace, confident and brisk, and it felt good. It had been hard to creep around upstairs, trying to be quiet.