Sinister Shorts

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  AUGUST 26

  Leo and my husband are at the door. When I open it, they look stunned and step back.

  They are looking at me. I see myself their way, disheveled and plain. No mask of makeup, no curls, no shoes. My legs are brown now and strong.

  They are both sweating in their suits.

  “We've come to take you home,” they say. My husband starts to cry. They follow me into my room and sit on the bed, their eyes raking around the furniture, looking like tarantulas. My husband is still crying angrily.

  “Who do you think you are?” he asks.

  Leo says, “The new school year is starting next week. Everything is a mess. I'm willing to overlook this irresponsible behavior.”

  They do not wait for me to speak. They rush on, whining.

  I shake my head, and I hear the tone change, becoming sinister. They are talking about nervous breakdowns. My husband says I can't abandon my children. Molly is back and she needs me.

  I shake my head.

  Leo takes my arm. He says I need a doctor, and tells my husband to help him. My husband looks at him, at me. Now he is the one who smells of brandy.

  “Go away,” I say. They pick me up and carry me to the car. Leo drives and I am firmly strapped between the two of them in the front seat. We drive out the long flat highway. It's got to be a hundred ten degrees out here. I see my cactus receding in the distance. The wind is blowing up a real sandstorm.

  Leo turns on the wipers and peers out the front window, going slower. My husband is telling me that they had to do it for my own good.

  SEPTEMBER 10

  I am back at home. I am seeing Dr. Bernstein three times a week. My eyes feel gritty, as if sand were blowing through my head. My soul may already have blown away. My father asks on the phone, “When are you gonna get me out of here?” His voice sounds weaker.

  I don't think anymore. Dr. Bernstein says it would hamper my recovery.

  SEPTEMBER 12

  I am back at work. Leo has started an affair with his secretary. My husband says I better get with the program and start cooking again.

  I wake up with a start, my throat dry, my eyes stinging. My husband is snoring. He has drunk a lot of brandy.

  I'm rushing into the sandstorm. The wind shrieks and picks me up and tosses me into the howling chaos.

  I tumble out of bed. I blow into the kitchen, past the sandy, dirty pots and pans and the sandy, filthy floor, and out the door to the garage.

  Wind is roaring through my head. I tote the can of gasoline into the bedroom and pour gas all around the bed. Then I climb up quietly and take the batteries out of the smoke detector. I light the match and toss it toward the bed. There is a blast of heat and more wind.

  I have made my own desert.

  I force the bedroom door shut on the flames. I walk out into the night in my nightgown, but now the desert is gone, only the darkness remains, there's only confusion, confusion, confusion.

  My body gets into the car, carefully setting the can of gasoline onto the passenger seat.

  Where are we going? I ask, turning the keys in the ignition.

  A siren sounds in the distance as I turn onto the boulevard.

  It seems that we are going to Leo's.

  Tiny Angels

  “Look, Danny! Can you see? This is so fabulous.” Laura leaned back. Her neck cranked around like an alien's, all the way behind her and to the left. They were seated over the wing. Daniel assumed she could see better out the window behind her. He couldn't see out and he didn't care.

  He wanted to say shut up, but his wife's excitement kept him kind. For so many years, Laura had stayed home taking care of the kids while he worked and traveled. This time, for the first time, when she asked to come along, he had said yes. He had agreed for reasons other than timing: a woman who took women's magazines too seriously, that night when he got home she had removed her robe to reveal a sleek black nightie that slid like oil down her ample curves. Wrapping creamy thighs around him, mouth cold and sweet as chocolate ice cream, she had made him beg, and she had made him promise.

  He had no trouble begging, no trouble promising, because he had another motivation. Laura made good cover for this trip. He was a husband taking his pretty wife down to the islands for a vacation. Their wool coats were stuffed in overhead bins. He wore a rayon shirt with palm trees splattered across it, and she wore heeled sandals and a sleeveless cotton shift sprinkled with minuscule blue flowers, hidden at the moment under a sweater against the airplane's chill.

  “All that snow, see it? Going, going… Gone! Good-bye miserable cold! Bye-bye, irksome children.” She let out a giddy laugh. “I can't believe your mom took them. Has she ever before?” Her head cocked to one side. “I don't think so,” she answered herself. “She was willing-almost. I'd suspect you put her up to it but you wouldn't do that just to take me on a trip, or else why would it be three years since we went anywhere alone together?” Possibly to soothe the sting of this implicit criticism, she wound her husband's arm through her own and gave his wrist a squeeze.

  Laura spent most days wrangling the kids like an expert cowboy on horseback, cracking the whip without ever harming a hair of their valuable pelts. He never saw her read a newspaper, he never saw her relax, yet she seemed remarkably tuned-in. She knew current movie stars, and cannily guessed outcomes for the Friday night video rentals he usually slept through. Maybe she listened to public radio in the daytime. Maybe the kids connected her to deeper meanings, or some earthy mom-blood-dirt-detergent-kid link he couldn't comprehend. She continued to have the one thing going for her he had always admired, the ability to say things that surprised him, a good thing, since her chattering need to include him in the running drama of her thoughts often drove him crazy.

  He called what he felt for her love, but differentiated it from what he felt for his children. That feeling, aroused a few times when they were little-when one ran ahead in the store or got away on a busy street just long enough for him to feel desperate, animal, and basic-growled in him, sharpened his teeth, revealed an ungovernable violence within. How could he use the same word for the sexual thrall that kept him with Laura?

  She'd had trouble giving birth to Joey. When he entertained, for one second, the idea that she might not make it, he became efficient rather than terrified, resigned rather than angry. He didn't think he could have been so philosophical if Corinna were the victim. No, he didn't.

  So call what he had with Laura a loving connection rather than the intense, crazy aura of fun he had once fantasized surrounding marriage. Their tie now only allowed him a certain amount of leeway before it dragged him back. He needed her, appreciated her abilities as a parent and as an easy, sometimes ingenious lover. Without her, there would be no flowered curtains on the windows, no soap-smelling, happy children running to greet him at the door when he did come home. There would be no tease, no mystery. She kept the mysterious machinery of their marriage oiled and operating. He played worker bee. Somebody had to.

  But here today, once again, Laura had shown her strong suit, intuiting correctly. He had, in fact, intervened with his mother, Olga, telling her she had to watch his children at their house in Lincoln for the very short time they would be away or Laura wouldn't feel comfortable going. He needed Laura, ergo, Mom had to comply, but Mom never gave in without a fight. He'd had to hire her full-time help for the duration, and had promised to pick up the cost of her housekeeper for three months.

  Too bad he had to keep Laura in the dark about the brevity of this trip. She expected a week away; he planned to finish his business by the time they got off the plane in Puerto Rico. Guilt burned his stomach, a feeling so familiar he barely registered it. He would make it up to her somehow, which was always the follow-up thought, which didn't stop the pain but weakened it like drinking milk. He pushed hair off his forehead and felt sweat beading on his brow, so he reached up to twist on the plastic fan over his seat.

  He wondered if he could declare Mom an expense. Pictu
ring Curtis Patchett in the accounting office of the bureau scrutinizing his report, he felt as giddy as his wife sounded. Curtis, formerly a field agent like himself, would chop him into a hundred pieces and hang the bits on the wall as a decorative advance warning to any potential future jokers.

  The plane ascended through a soupy, oatmeal-colored mass of cloud. Settling in, Laura said, “Olga had her hands full raising you, and you were only one kid, but I read ours the riot act and told them if they didn't behave, I'd make them stay until they got it right.” She giggled. “Not that they don't like your mother. But she can be a pill.” She pulled down her tray table, then pushed it back into place, clicking the lock in place with a satisfied, “Ah. I can't wait to eat.”

  Daniel glanced around his newspaper at the woman with frizzy brown hair, whom he had already mentally named “Curly.” Tall and lean, her head way up on the seat headrest, she adjusted a pair of black corduroy slacks she was wearing that matched a fitted black blouse as she jiggled a baby's hand in her own. The baby made long, up and down sounds like the beginnings of a song sung off-key and minus rhythm. After a while, Curly pulled a windup musical toy out from her carry-on to amuse the child, then played peekaboo with a black and white killer whale puppet that resembled one his kids had when they were little that they had dubbed “Shamu.”

  Laura bent over him to look. “A little over five months old,” she noted. “Good age for a traveler. They can smile and almost sit by themselves, but they're tied to Mama. They can't escape.”

  Daniel pushed her gently back into her seat, resisting an urge to shout at her. “When was the last time you ate a meal on a plane, honey?” he asked her. “Don't expect gourmet. The food stinks.”

  “If someone else cooks it and puts it in front of me, well, I call that delicious.”

  He had a good view of the three women and their babies. Due to the arm-wrestling contest his boss had won with the airline, they sat in rows close by but in front of him. They all had the putative mom's own requirements: getting in and out to change or walk the babies would be easier. He could observe relatively discreetly, since the plane, an Airbus A300, held two seats on each side, four in the middle. There weren't that many places to look, and the movie would play soon, offering him unlimited, anonymous viewing pleasure.

  The three drooling babies, roughly the same age, appeared happy and well-fed, so distinctions were going to be subtle. None of the mothers was breast-feeding, which would have provided a definite clue that they were not the bad one.

  The bureau had identified a few other people with small kids on this flight, but the kids were too old or too young, or the father was along to help. They knew the target was traveling alone with a baby who was not yet crawling. They also knew the mom was white and that Daniel had to identify her before she left the terminal in San Juan so that the locals, who had been alerted by the bureau in advance, could help him grab her before she disappeared into the forgiving sunshine of the Caribbean. She could fly right out of their grasp from San Juan. She could run for Tortola, St. Croix, Nevis, any number of welcoming islands.

  Daniel peered up the aisle.

  Without tearing her eyes away from the airline magazine she seemed to be studying, Laura said, “That one's sitting up already. Six months old, I'd say. But then, our two were so precocious. Joey sat up earlier than Corinna. Hard to tell if it's a boy or girl, all wrapped up like that.”

  The baby faced a second woman wearing a leaf-patterned yellow sundress, thin cotton, just right for the tropics. He wondered how she had managed in that dress. Must have brought a fur coat along to get herself on the plane in Boston.

  She had long blonde hair twisted into a short braid that fell over her left shoulder, but most of it escaped, floating beyond her skull in a permanently windblown state. He code-named her “Fan.” When the baby slept, minutes at a time, she leafed through a movie magazine, looking irritated. If she had looked bored, he might have found her attitude significant; but she didn't. When the baby fussed, she was right there, kissing its cheek, letting it attempt to stand on her knees, generously supported by her.

  “What a sturdy little neck,” Laura observed. “Remember how Cori's neck flopped?”

  The flight attendant, a thin, graying man, asked if they would prefer lasagna or meat loaf. They both preferred lasagna.

  “Meat loaf?” Laura scoffed. “What do you suppose they put into it?”

  Laura made terrific meat loaf. She folded in bits of whole wheat bread with the low-fat turkey grind, fresh tomatoes, garlic, mushrooms, apple-chicken sausages, zucchini, yogurt cheeses. Somehow, the mishmash tasted great. He didn't expect the same from the airline.

  Their red blobs of goo arrived. Dan couldn't eat his. Laura tucked in.

  The third mother, “Mole,” black-haired and blue-eyed, with a flesh-colored mole at the tip of her chin that extended her face into an exact triangle, bottle-fed her baby throughout the meal, eating nothing. She sipped from a bottle of water she had stowed in the back of the seat in front of her. Whenever her child began to move even a little erratically, she picked through a big bag and stuffed a pacifier into its mouth, or dangled a toy provocatively above it. The move seemed to work, as the baby interrupted its near meltdown, satisfying itself by sucking hard on the rubber nipple. The target wore a pair of lightweight jeans with a baggy pink shirt over a tight white T-shirt.

  “These young moms are so attentive,” Laura said, observing his focus, “which is good. It's a blurry time. You're afraid and confident all at the same time.” She put a finger to his cheek. “They're just so darling, such tiny angels. Remember Cori? How she slept for the first three weeks and I had to wake her up to eat?”

  It was a blur. Daniel couldn't believe they had two children. The only way he could cope was to immerse himself in work. He was not cut out to change diapers. The smell nauseated him. He couldn't understand how Laura could pick up a steaming, reeking soggy pile and casually rinse it in the toilet. The process, so primordial, made him glad to be civilized, and after the first time he was left alone to cope, gagging with revulsion, he sprang magnanimously for paper diapers.

  He was proud of the kids, of course. Symbolizing his success as a man, they were his seed. You only had to look at Joey to know that. Daniel supported them and their stay-at-home mother. He would put them through college, by God.

  Laura pulled her hand back and her eyes looked inward. “I thought she might die of hunger. I cried. I was worried. Funny, huh? I mean, now I worry when she eats fast food. She's not thin like you might expect. She's sturdy-looking, even though she exercises constantly.”

  Daniel crushed his napkin and put it onto his plate so that the flight attendant would get that he was done. They were firing up the movie, a comedy featuring Ben Stiller. Every time he thought he had seen every Ben Stiller movie, another one gushed along, about as entertaining as a broken water pipe. He put his headphones on, pretending to adjust the channels, but instead turned the volume down to nothing.

  “He's not handsome,” his wife announced. “Why is he a movie star?”

  Daniel tidied his tray.

  “Well,” Laura went on, “it's that false vulnerability. He believes he's clued-in to what's happening. Truth is, he isn't. He doesn't understand that women need, first and foremost, his attentive regard.” She messed with her controls. “These Hollywood guys, what they care about is big breasts. Hence the over-endowed lead actress. If she has anything else going for her, Ben'll never notice.”

  He felt irritated but forgave her. From what he could see, movies reflected life: women flitted along the periphery. Even his target was not the main player in this incident. She belonged to someone. She did what she was told.

  Read history, he had said to Laura so many times. Women played support staff. Their memorable accomplishments related to raising heroic soldier boys.

  The flight attendant came around with a plastic bag to collect trash. Daniel handed his plastic plate and tray to her, heavily loade
d. Laura's tray was as clean as if she had licked it.

  “That baby,” Laura said, pushing her tray table up, “see how he sticks his toes through the holes in that knit blanket? Just like Joey. His baby blankey? Still on his bed. Did you know that?”

  Joe had always clung tightly to his mother, listening too intently to her, laughing at her jokes before she reached the punch lines. He went to her with problems. He avoided Daniel because, Daniel suspected, he found his father harsh and uncompromising.

  Daniel found all forms of anodyne unpalatable. He didn't offer Band-Aids, he offered solutions which were painful and sometimes left you bleeding underneath. When would the boy get free of her soft umbilical pull? He was almost fourteen. Adulthood belonged to the hardy. Children and their mothers needed protection, loveys, comfort. Men required weapons. He needed to spend more time with the boy, let him know which side was up before he ended up as naive as Laura.

  Four rows ahead of him, Fan sagged. The baby, toes tangled in a blanket as Laura had described, was pushing tight against Fan's right shoulder. It closed its eyes. Fan's mouth gaped. She snored.

  Damn. No ideas occurred. What mom wouldn't take advantage of an unconscious baby to cop a snooze?

  As the movie screen brightened and Curly's baby tired, the mother and baby stuck together like pages of a book, related, but individual. The baby's eyes closed so tightly its little face smoothed over like a marble sculpture. The mother rested her head against the hard curved portion of the seat that substituted for a travel pillow. She breathed fast when she slept. Was she pretending?

  Mole watched the movie, even chuckling sometimes, headphones on her head while her baby slept peacefully. Nothing suspicious there. No reason not to embrace a serene moment.