Approaching Menace

by June Shaw

  Laughing, Josie glanced about hoping to find Andrew’s motorcycle hiding.

  Only the evening’s light traffic slid down their street. No sign of Andrew or his bike. And no more sign of the dark sedan.

  The wind picked up, bringing with it a slight chill. She rubbed her arms, grabbed the gift, and stepped back inside.

  Colin labored around the den. He glanced behind the recliner and on both sides of the sofa.

  “What are you looking for?” Jolene asked.

  “My practice cleats.” He heaved heavy breaths. His eyes appeared drawn together. “Maybe I left ’em in your car.” He started toward the kitchen.

  She scooted past him. “I was going out there, so I’ll look for them.”

  He dropped to his chair.

  Josie located the shoes beneath the front passenger seat. She grabbed them, feeling a slight brushing of softness against the front of her shoulder. Barely attentive to the scarf’s falling, she wished the still-black shoes she carried away were scarred with scuff marks and grass stains.

  She returned to the kitchen and joined the others for dinner. Colin’s plate held the small portions of meat and green vegetables he was allowed. Sylvie picked at her salad, seemingly oblivious to the conversation she and Josie had in her bedroom. The only sign that it actually took place was the colorful scarf delicately pinned at her shoulder.

  After their silent meal, Sylvie rose, straightened the empty chair left for her husband, and insisted on doing the dishes alone. Colin wanted to watch a little TV.

  Josie went off to her bedroom. She relaxed immediately in its soft natural textures and warm colors. She had brought her furnishings with their neutral tones from the apartment she’d rented, and insisted upon using them to replace the ruffles Sylvie had in this room. If Josie stayed much longer, she might like to freshen the room with new curtains, but that could wait. Much more important would be helping Colin.

  Their mother’s ideas needed to return to the real world. What the family required and what she wanted were entirely different. She and Josie were splitting household expenses, and that arrangement had worked for a while. But in the past months, Josie had watched their mother doling out more and more on herself. It seemed as if Sylvie could not get pretty enough. She couldn’t get enough new things on her body.

  Despondency settled inside Josie. No longer did obligations for her home or children seem to matter to their mother.

  And their father did not seem to remember they existed.

  Worn with concerns, Josie lay across her bed and phoned Andrew.

  “You are such a considerate man,” she said once he answered. “You provide everything we need.”

  “Everything significant.”

  His cheerful voice made her smile. She envisioned his head cocked and his grin. “You certainly know how to take care of a woman.”

  “I deliver tissue or anything else of importance.”

  “I’m sorry I missed you. You must have come over while I was waiting for Colin.” She sighed and pressed the side of her head against her pillow.

  “Josie, are you okay? Do you want me to come over?”

  She wanted him to. But she would want him to lie here with her. And she wouldn’t do that with her little brother at home. “Who’s at your place?”

  “Just Johan and two of his German friends. But you could come, too, or we could go out somewhere alone.”

  Josie wished she could but felt too weary. They agreed to spend more time together the next day and clicked off.

  After changing into a large soft T-shirt, Josie read about fashion design, hoping to finish the thirteenth chapter. But try as she might to keep her eyes focused, she found her vision blurring the words. Soon she was dreaming of huge bows on stacks of crimson toilet paper. The stacks sat on the hood of a shadowy dark sedan.

  * * *

  In the morning yellow light blinked through treetops and Josie’s window. She awoke, showered, and dressed in shorts. Cartoon characters screamed and scattered on the den TV, but Colin wasn’t watching them. In the kitchen, Josie glanced out the window.

  The patio swing’s chain was moving.

  She angled herself to see if Colin was swinging, but the phone called her away.

  Sylvie’s friend Jacinta wanted to speak to her. She had forgotten Sylvie was working an early shift at the jewelry store for their special anniversary sale. A talkative woman, Jacinta kept Josie on the phone so long that Josie forgot what it was she’d wanted to do. She made a note for her mother to return her friend’s call.

  Rushing to start Saturday chores, she wished the doctor’s office would be open so she could bring her brother in to get checked. She vacuumed each of the bedrooms and went to plug the vacuum in a wall socket in the den. A newsflash on TV was breaking in. The man who had strangled women on the coast had not been found yet. The victim’s photo came to the screen. Libby. She looked as pretty as Josie remembered her in the supermarket. Sadness engulfed her, especially as she thought of Libby’s family and how distraught Mrs. Antonelli had appeared.

  But Mr. Antonelli hadn’t seemed sad. Possibly his wife had not been his first, and he wasn’t deeply connected to Libby. Of course, anyone should be sad to learn a young woman died.

  Josie snapped off the set. Scouring the room with her vacuum, she couldn’t find even a thread to suck up. Sylvie had always been neat, Josie recalled, hearing the whir of the machine she pushed and not hearing a clink to say she suctioned anything. But their mother had never been as fastidious as she was now.

  With the mindless chore, Josie analyzed that each time their father walked out, Sylvie became more meticulous.

  And every time he returned, he and Sylvie seemed so happy. Jack Aspen would comment on how beautiful his wife had become. The house looked terrific, he’d say. And Colin was dressed neatly. Josie looked pretty.

  Then all too soon, he would leave them again.

  Sylvie normally appeared worried right afterward, but never voiced fears to her children. “Your daddy will be back soon,” she’d tell them, and Josie and Colin learned to repeat that lie to their friends and themselves.

  “He’s just gone off to work,” Josie told other kids. It isn’t me.

  She whipped the sheets off her bed now and then grabbed sheets off Colin’s and Sylvie’s beds. She smoothed clean sheets on, put some used linens to wash, and went out for Colin.

  He wasn’t on the still-moving swing.

  “Colin,” she called.

  The only sound responding was the squawk of some bird. Josie glanced to see what kind it was and noticed the pampas grass parting as a figure pushed through. The outstretched arm trailing behind with its extra-long jacket sleeve left no doubt of who it was.

  Josie moved to the grass. Why had Maurice been out here, now twice in one week? He hadn’t spoken.

  A strange thought came: Maybe he couldn’t speak. He had those other problems, the slight limp and twitch of one eye. She knew so little of him except that his large, otherwise lethargic grandmother used to become enlivened whenever she spoke of him. “Maurice has always been a wonderful grandson. Didn’t he do a good job on the grass?”

  Maybe, Josie thought, her family needed to invite him over sometime.

  But at the moment, where was Colin?

  She strode to the garage. Only her car was inside, and her bicycle and Colin’s, sore reminders of what they used to love doing together. In the last year and a half, his interest in riding had dwindled along with his strength.

  Josie rounded the house to check the front lawn. Children’s voices rang out from the direction of the Allens’ house.

  She crossed the grass and carefully stepped across LauraLee Allen’s dwarf daylilies before walking over the driveway to their side door. Pressing the doorbell, Josie saw curtains at their bay window parting. She waved, and the curtains fell.

  No one came to let her inside.

  Again voices erupted, unmistakably Colin’s and Annie’s. The two were inside the
wooden fence in the rear that enclosed the swimming pool.

  Josie pushed the buzzer once more.

  “Come in. Come on in, Josie.” LauraLee yanked the door open, her face flushed from exertion or the sun. In a flowing beach cover-up, she resembled a colorful tent. “We’re out back by the pool.”

  She led the way through the kitchen past the butcher-block island, and Josie took in the mismatched clutter of items LauraLee Allen had either made or collected. On one counter sat a rice bucket and wedding basket from China. When the Jaffres moved in a few months ago, LauraLee gave Josie a tour. “The objects’ wear and usage denote their age and authenticity,” Mrs. Allen had explained. She’d arranged the silk flowers. She had also prepared the mix of flowering cacti that centered the kitchen table.

  The kitchen opened into a breakfast room that held a tiny table and two stools near the bay window. The wall held sconces and shelves with a bevy of reproductions by famous sculptors. Josie didn’t know art but did like the sculpture of an African-American girl with her hands clenched, her head leaning back as though she were enjoying the sunshine. Josie recognized The Thinker. LauraLee had made him in a ceramics class, and now had the man pondering on a weathered column pedestal. A matching pedestal held a Grecian urn.

  The breakfast room’s long couches seemed to have no ancestry, for LauraLee had not pointed them out. Josie especially did not like the velvet-topped footstool shaped like a bulldog that was set in front of a stuffed armchair.

  Annie’s shrill laughter came as LauraLee slid open the rear glass door.

  Colin and Annie were giggling. They squatted across an expanse of clear water in the kidney-shaped pool. Annie wore a bikini swimsuit and Colin had on denim cutoffs and a T-shirt.

  “Colin, we need to go,” Josie called.

  He stuck out a hand. “Wait!” he yelled, resuming whatever absorbed their attention.

  “Oh, let them have fun,” LauraLee said. “We haven’t gotten to chat lately.”

  “He needs to come home. Fred’s waiting.”

  “That machine can wait a little while longer. Come and sit down a minute.” LauraLee dropped to a lawn chair with sunken webbing.

  The plastic table beside her held a bowl of melted ice cream and thread, scissors, and the bodice of a small dress. “I’m smocking this for Annie.” The child’s mother held up the dress.

  Josie admired her stitches. She also noted the stack of magazines with pages fluffed from dog-ears lying beside LauraLee’s chair.

  Annie screamed.

  Josie shot up to her feet, ready to drop her sandals, dive in the water, and save her. But the child remained beside Colin, whose yelling began to match hers.

  “Do you know what they’re doing?” Josie asked.

  Her hostess grinned and motioned Josie to sit. “Watch them.”

  The kids huddled near a portable TV. Annie was holding something. A yell resounded, but not from the children. Then one after the other, the kids shrieked in imitation.

  “Annie’s new tape recorder,” LauraLee explained. “They’ve been having so much fun watching cartoons and taping themselves trying to sound like the characters.” She touched Josie’s arm. “How about some ice cream, hon?”

  “No thanks.”

  Colin’s voice rose. “Help. I’m being attacked by long-eared monsters.” He and Annie giggled louder than the noises on TV.

  Cartoon characters and Annie shouted, and she and Colin doubled over with laughter.

  “I love to see him happy,” Josie said, watching. “I hate to make him leave anything he enjoys.”

  “Then let them play. Colin can stay awhile. I’ll only be smocking.”

  “Maybe this afternoon, if you’ll be home.”

  LauraLee nodded. “Certainly.”

  “Colin chose Saturday mornings for dialysis because he wants to watch television then anyway. If we wait until later in the day, he finds excuses to put off treatment. He’s just a child, you know.” Josie saddened. With his adult-sized problems, even she sometimes forgot how young he was.

  LauraLee’s eyes squeezed tighter with compassion.

  “And I’d like to grocery shop this afternoon,” Josie said. “I’ve been going after work or late at night after his treatment. I need to start a new schedule.”

  “Colin could come back when you leave.”

  “Thank you.” Josie peered across the swimming pool. “Colin, let’s go.”

  “Not yet.”

  Josie found herself growing antsy as always, when he wasn’t cooperative.

  LauraLee’s hand touched hers. “Did you notice my flowers?” Her question was an obvious attempt to get Josie to leave Colin alone. Josie stared at the corner inside the fence opposite the children. Elephant ears created a wide green background, and before them sprouted an assortment of flowers. Dahlias grew sprinkled in-between wildflowers already choked by pink groundcover roses.

  “You do have a certain touch,” Josie said. She started to rise, but LauraLee’s query stopped her.

  “Do you think that new storm will come up this way?”

  Josie sat back, the idea making hairs rise on her forearms. “God, I hope not.”

  “Really?”

  Josie considered explaining but decided not to.

  LauraLee’s florid cheeks puffed like small balls and her bright smile again revealed how beautiful she had once been. “What about that killer? They haven’t caught him, you know.”

  “I know.” Josie envisioned Libby’s eyes, the gathered fruit.

  She turned to call Colin, but LauraLee tugged her wrist. “Look at this.” She shoved a marked magazine page near Josie’s face and read, “‘How to Lose Twenty Pounds in Two Months.’ Ha, they all make it sound so easy.” Her assuredness dissipated. “But it’s impossible, you know. I tried all the diets.”

  She pinched her waist. “I kept all this on after Annie was born. And it won’t budge.”

  “You’re not too large.” Josie meant it. “And you’re very pretty.” She tried to imagine her neighbor thinner but couldn’t. “Whatever weight you have looks fine on you.”

  The compliment brought a new flush to LauraLee’s cheeks. She leaned back in the lounge chair. “Are you sure you won’t have some ice cream?”

  “No thanks. Colin and I really need to go.”

  “But did you see this article?” LauraLee shoved out a different magazine. The page she’d folded down bore the title “What Really Turns Men On.”

  LauraLee let out a huff. “Can you believe it? Why have a story on something like this? As if we women don’t know what they like.” Her wink indicated she and Josie shared bedroom knowledge.

  Josie didn’t want to chat about sexual turn-ons. She rose, saying she had to get Colin home, and turned to see him darting behind Annie toward the house. Annie’s cat Misty scurried from them in the opposite direction.

  “Colin!” Josie called.

  Her little brother dashed inside. The door slid open and shut.

  “Children will be children,” LauraLee said, but Josie didn’t find the words a comfort.

  She headed for the house. Beside sheer curtains on the door, a male figure was watching.

  The figure withdrew.

  Josie hadn’t realized she had stopped walking until LauraLee nudged her, saying, “Let’s see if we can catch the young ones before they start playing in Annie’s room.”

  Following LauraLee inside, Josie spied feet wearing polished black shoes crossed on the ugly footstool.

  “Hello, Mr. Allen,” she said, moving in front of the man seated now on the stuffed wingback chair.

  This was not Randall Allen. She had never before seen this man’s face.

  “I’m Randall’s partner,” he said.

  “Yes, that’s Otis Babineaux.” LauraLee turned to him and then Josie. “Otis, this is our sweet neighbor, Josie Aspen.”

  Babineaux stood and extended a hand. Josie recalled seeing him leave the Allen’s SUV. Dressed in a fine gray suit, he was abo
ut the same size as LauraLee Allen’s husband. “I know who she is,” Babineaux said. His thin lips pressed together above his thin beard. Deep-set eyes peered through dark-rimmed glasses. A firm grip took Josie’s hand and then let it go.

  “Otis’s car is in the shop, and he and Randall have all that business to discuss.” LauraLee peered down the hall. “Here they are.”

  Josie followed her to Annie’s bedroom.

  Candy-striped walls enclosed a room brimming with porcelain dolls and small rockers. Toys filled colorful plastic tubs in every corner. Colin was painting a feminine face orange on a computer monitor. He’d given the face square lips and horse teeth. From a row of various ears, he selected what looked like cabbages.

  When the green ears sprouted near the face, Annie clapped and Colin snickered.

  Josie smiled at his creation. She clasped his shoulder.

  His dimples faded. “Aw, give us a little while, Josie.”

  “Sorry, friend. We’re late now. Bye, Annie.”

  The girl’s eyes glistened. “Bye bye, Josie.”

  “Colin might see you later, okay?”

  Annie’s ponytail bobbed as she nodded. Josie told LauraLee goodbye and trailed Colin out, finding no evidence of Mr. Allen’s partner in the discomforting breakfast room.

  * * *

  Josie had no idea that a man watched her stride across the lawn to her house.

  The man smirked, assured she would not grin as she did if she knew his plans.

  In his mind’s eye, she was entangled with him, making him silently sing a snippet of a song he recalled an elderly female singing about you and me against the world.

  His mental song halted. The older woman in his thoughts turned toward him. The smile she had worn left her face, replaced by an expression of scorn.

  His mirth left. He was so small, she so large. She raised the big wide hand of hers that always found something.

  As her hand rose up above him, he knew his eyes turned to tiny balls. Balls of fear.

  This time her hand gripped a heavy black pot. The pot headed down for his shoulder.

  No, he inwardly cried.

  He again felt the pot pounding on his center back, where no one could see the places it marked.