Shadows Burned In

by Chris Pourteau

  But not back then. Back when he was a kid, Suzie was in her mid-fifties, a big woman of . . . well, must’ve been 250 pounds. She wore her husband’s old clothes after he’d run out on her. She’d literally stepped into his shoes, his pants, his shirt, and his cowboy hat and begun working the half-acre of vegetable gardens they had around back of the house. She drove his truck to the store every Friday afternoon and carried her own groceries back from there, even after David and his buddies were off in college and she was collecting Social Security, even after ordering groceries over the Web and paying a little extra for the convenience of having them delivered became the standard way of doing things.

  She was a hard woman, David remembered, feeling a fear in his bones from that night long ago. Leaning on his car roof, he stared at the slouching house and remembered how much she’d scared two little boys. Suzie was a recluse who only came out to work or “get supplies,” as he’d once overheard her say in the grocery store, or to rent old DVD movies from the 7-Eleven because she couldn’t afford the satellite-based view-it-on-demand service that killed cable television. He remembered seeing her riding atop an old John Deere tractor in December, preparing the ground for seeding in January, bouncing up and down and manhandling the steering wheel.

  When she wasn’t working the land or buying supplies in town, the only other time he really saw her outside the house was when she mowed that big front yard of hers. On the odd cool evening between October and March, she’d sit out on her porch swing and watch the evening pass her by. Her thick legs pushed and pulled the swing lazily, its rusty chains creaking and twanging. And she’d just sit there looking out over the front yard, listening to the chirping of the crickets or the twittering of the birds and the distant

  (always distant, if she was on the porch)

  sounds of children playing down the street and cars passing on Elm Street as folks made their way home from work. When the Web made possible the work-at-home standard everyone enjoyed today, there was much less of that, and Old Suzie seemed to spend more time on the porch then. She’d rock and drink something out of a glass

  (“It’s baby pee, it’s baby pee!” Theron Taylor swore back then)

  that was probably lemonade, now that David thought back on it. She’d listen and watch, and about the time the sun would go down, she’d call it a day and go inside.

  All the children thought she was a witch. David wondered at that now, how children come up with those crazy ideas and torment other children (and adults) mercilessly to play them out, just to give themselves something to do and keep their own little lives from becoming too boring by making others miserable. Or was that the human condition in general? Maybe adults had learned how to be more subtle about it, less obvious. Yes, they’d been convinced she was a witch all right, growing all those herbs and vegetables in her garden to brew concoctions in cauldrons that she used to poison little children

  (and bake them in her oven)

  and throw hexes on the townspeople. An entire mythology had built up around Old Suzie, so much so that the town’s children refused to give her a choice on Halloween. No treats would they have. Only tricks for these kids, and those were the brave ones. For the first few days of November every year, Suzie would spend her time picking toilet paper out of trees and repairing at least one window after a rock had broken it. That was a festival ritual for the children, working off their year’s worth of fears behind devil and skeleton masks. Even the parents, despite a public showing of admonition

  (“How’re you doing today, Miss Suzie?”

  “I’m fine. Just in gettin supplies.”

  “I heard what them kids did. I’m so sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” Suzie would always say, shrugging. “They’s just kids.”)

  didn’t really mind too much, because they didn’t really like Suzie much either; they were just less obvious about it. She was a strange old bird who hadn’t had sense enough to be ashamed when her husband ran away, and she didn’t try to make friends, and isn’t that old plantation house just running down more and more every year, and ain’t it an eyesore, and what’s she doin in there all alone every evenin, and why do you think she’s watchin the children when she sits out there swingin on the porch?

  So for the longest time, David and every other child in Hampshire had skirted around her property. Occasionally someone would start a dare, and kids would walk up and knock on the door, only to run away again with sweat running down their backs. Now that he thought about it, David wondered how she ever kept from killing somebody if for no other reason than it might keep the rest of the little fuckers away from her front porch. Or at least kept from maiming someone. He thought about walking up to the house

  (you’re older now, there’s nothing to be afraid of)

  but looking first at the house and its broken windows

  (how many rocks did you throw through them when Old Suzie was alive?)

  and then at the sun as it was sinking farther west

  (and how badly did you piss her off that night in her house?)

  he decided it was too late. Susan and Elizabeth would be expecting him at home. So, with one last look at the old place, and a brief remembrance of that Halloween thirty years before

  (wonder where Theron is these days, if he’s even still alive)

  David got back into his car and drove the remaining two blocks home.

  As she heard the car pull into the garage, Susan tried to set herself in a positive frame of mind to receive her husband. When they’d first gotten married, she’d thought herself the luckiest woman in the world. She’d found a man she could honestly spend the rest of her life with. He was easygoing, didn’t drink really, didn’t smoke, didn’t seem the cheating type, and had a bright future ahead of him as an attorney. They’d met in college in a literature class, arguing over whether or not the White Whale was truly evil.

  They’d lived together for more than a year before getting married. In those days David had a sharp sense of humor, making others laugh at everything around them, and Susan loved him more than she ever thought it possible to love another human being. After graduating from law school, he’d thrown himself into his career, determined to make a mint before he was thirty, and they’d settled into the familiar patterns of a young married couple.

  Then Elizabeth had come along and David had seemed to change slowly. His sense of humor, like abused vocal chords, had become scratchy and pained at first, then silent. His need to make more money quickly became an obsession. Still, he’d been a good father to the baby, changing diapers and taking his turn at the early morning feedings. Then Elizabeth had begun to grow up and David had become even more distant, as if he no longer knew how to deal with her once she was no longer a helpless baby. Now, if they weren’t talking about school or a 3V program, they hardly spoke at all. And Susan, for all her wish to do so, didn’t seem able to bridge the gap between them.

  “I hear Web Report was really positive today,” she said as David came through the door. She hoped to strike up a conversation right away on something that would interest him, maybe erase last night’s bout.

  “Hmmm?” he said, seeming distracted. “Oh, that’s good.” He walked on into the hallway, probably intent on changing out of his office clothes and relaxing in front of Web Report for a while. Susan let him go, glad for the fact that nothing more volatile had erupted from him. Must’ve been a good day, she thought.

  David walked into the bedroom, changed into his sweat suit, then settled into his chair in the living room. “3V on,” he said, then, “Web Report.” Up came the screen with the commentators at their desk, their voices muted when David gave the command. “Portfolio activity,” he said, and up came the dozen or so stocks he’d invested in.

  Again today MerChrysler was doing poorly. This is a bad sign, David thought. New models just came out, and the stock’s going down? Down by 2¼, which represented about a $10,000 loss to him for the day. He pursed his lips and quickly reviewed their other
holdings. Microsoft-GlobalNet was up 1½. MGN would usually go up even when the rest of the market went down, even if only slightly. At $1,150 per share, they ought to be dependable, David thought. And Webmarket, the online matchmaker that brought consumers and vendors together, was up 3¼ on the news that, after years of debate regarding economic openness, China was finally drafting its own version of the Internet Commerce Act. Some good news at last, David thought. The good news ended when he looked at the oil stocks. BP was down again because oil was so damned plentiful. Thanks a lot, peace in the Middle East. World-Mart was up slightly, only ½, but at least it was up, and like MGN, you could always depend on World-Mart for that. Blue chips were expensive but still the least risky over time.

  Still, in the balance he was down today, and though he was reasonably sure he’d make it back and more tomorrow, losing money never sat well with David Jackson. Nothing crawled under his skin and itched like the fear of financial failure. He’d tried to exorcise that demon for years, with no luck. When the market adjusted every few years, he would drink a little, rant a little, pull his hair out a little, and finally the line graph would start to ascend again and he’d pull the money he’d put in one market and invest in another. He wasn’t a millionaire, but he hadn’t lost his shirt either, and the promise of wealth tempted him every time.

  But on days like today, the old fear of failure reared its ugly head, like a demon creeping up behind him, tapping him on the shoulder

  (too greedy, David, if you’d just gotten out a few hours ago, just given up a little sooner)

  and taunting him with his own failure. And no matter how many times the market came back or his holdings increased in overall value, the little demon with the sharp fingernail tapped him on the shoulder every time.

  The portfolio auto-calculated his oil earnings, and he ran a heavy hand through his thinning hair at the apparent loss resulting from the oil glut. Where was a good jihad when you needed one?

  “Daddy?”

  David turned away from the bar graphs and his ruminations on ruin. “What?”

  Elizabeth started at his tone, thought, Oh great, I picked a great time. “Um—”

  “What is it Elizabeth? You see I’m reviewing the stocks, don’t you? You know you’re not supposed to disturb me when I’m doing that. Don’t you?”

  “Um . . . yes, Daddy,” she said, her eyes focused on the floor.

  “Well, now that you’ve done it, what?”

  “Um . . . I, uh, I just wanted to tell you that the school monitor—”

  “Did he call again? Am I going to find a message from him telling me that you’re holding up the class again?”

  Elizabeth closed her mouth as her heart sank. She had been so excited to tell him, so full of certainty that he’d call her over to him and give her a big hug and tell her how proud he was of her and how he’d known all along she could do it and that if she tried, she could do anything she set her mind to. That’s how fathers talked to daughters in the 3V stories she’d experienced. But now she kicked herself inside for picking the wrong time, for not reading him better or talking to Mom first and finding out his mood. It was all wasted, all her effort for the day, and the words from the monitor that would never come again in a million years would fall on deaf, angry ears now. All because she was an idiot and had chosen the absolute wrong time to tell him.

  Stupid, stupid, stupidstupidstupidstupid—

  “Well?”

  “I-I . . .”

  “And now you’re making it worse because you’re paralyzed, you big baby,” said her 3V voice, imitating Michael. “Now he’s mad, and you’re gonna get it!”

  Elizabeth’s eyes began to well up.

  “Spit it out, girl!”

  “David!” Susan stood in the kitchen doorway. “Elizabeth, go to your room,” she said evenly, trying not to sound too harsh to her daughter, but hoping her tone would short-circuit any more fury from her husband. “Go on. I’ll bring you dinner in a little while.”

  Elizabeth turned around quickly and ran back down the hallway and into her room, sobbing her frustration.

  David sighed. “Jesus, Sue, am I going to find another message from the monitor? Am I going to have to take more drastic steps by cutting off her—”

  “You know, David, if you’d listen instead of talking all the time, you might find life more pleasant,” said Susan, her voice rising as she spoke. She didn’t want it to happen, but her emotions took over, and she slipped into the rut that communication between them had become. “I know we would!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Susan walked into the living room as she spoke and it spilled out of her, a snowball picking up speed as it rolled. “Her monitor called today all right, but not to tell us how bad she was doing. He called to tell us how much she had improved since yesterday. ‘She must’ve spent all evening studying yesterday,’ he said. But you didn’t let her get that out, did you? You assumed she was having trouble again, and when she came to get a little encouragement from you, you squashed it! Jesus, David, you’re such a self-centered bastard!”

  She turned back and walked into the kitchen to finish dinner, leaving her husband to wonder why he was such an ogre for wanting his daughter to be successful in life.

  And that made him angry.

  “Now wait a minute, don’t you walk away from me . . .”

  The evening’s match had begun.

  Chapter 6

  She’d thrown herself face down on her bed, burying her tears in the comforting softness. She clenched the pillows in her fists, hurt and defeated. Elizabeth had tried so hard to please the monitor, and when she’d achieved the unachievable, she’d just known her father would smile at her for a change, open his arms to her, tell her how proud he was of her, not yell at her. How hard was that? How much was that to expect?

  Her frustration gave way to anger as she thought about how hard she’d worked, how long it had taken her to memorize the formulas and apply them under the monitor’s strict and exhausting makeup exam. He seemed to conspire against her, to set her up to fail, as if he and her father had an agreement that the monitor would do everything in his power to obstruct her. And her mother! What did she do to help? Occasionally Mom would take up her cause with Dad, try to explain to him what Elizabeth was feeling and how hard the move had been for all of them, but then she’d knuckle under. Elizabeth knew the whole thing by heart now.

  Often when her mother took up for her to her father, it inevitably led to a “discussion,” as Mom liked to call it, about how hard it had been on Elizabeth to leave Houston. Elizabeth labeled that as Stage One. Stage Two began as her mother’s railings became a lament on how hard it had been on Susan to move, and how she’d had to give up her job, and how life in this Podunk town was so boring, and why had she ever let this happen?

  Stage Three included Dad’s standard argument about the security of the smaller town and how much less stressful it was living here (Ha! Elizabeth always thought when she heard that). Elizabeth would adjust, he’d say for the umpteenth time, and if her mom didn’t like it, she could waddle right out the front door and don’t let it bounce off her fat ass on the way out. This was when Mom would start crying, which Dad had learned to ignore while he gathered the latest information from Web Report.

  The fourth and final stage usually began around nine o’clock when Susan would rap on Elizabeth’s door with a sandwich or something, apologizing for not having made a better dinner, and Elizabeth would say, “That’s okay, Mom,” or anything, really, to get her to leave her alone. Sometimes after an especially difficult argument, Susan felt the need to stay and comfort Elizabeth, which only added to her daughter’s disgust at the whole situation. More and more Elizabeth was finding that the less direct contact she had with her parents, the better she liked it. Occasionally Elizabeth feigned sleep so that her mother left the sandwich on her bureau and retreated from the room without waking her. Then Elizabeth would place a towel along the bottom of
her bedroom door to hide any light escaping from the room into the hallway and fire up the 3V network, losing herself in the games she loved to play alone.

  She started giggling at the absurdity of it all and wiped her nose and eyes on the pillowcase. Cocking her ear at the closed door, she heard Stage Two beginning. Elizabeth thought the whole scripted thing even funnier now that she was laughing—the predictability of it all, history repeating itself, over and over again. Now she was laughing and crying at the same time at how stupid her parents were. They read the same old lines from the same old scene over and over again, and neither’s acting got any better! She buried her face in the pillow again, this time to keep her parents from hearing her laughter.

  But her amusement quickly tapered off when she heard her father’s raging voice. How she hated to hear their fighting! It ripped her apart inside to hear the only two people she really loved being so cruel to one another.

  When they began their bickering, as routine as it was, it twisted Elizabeth’s stomach into knots. She felt certain she was the cause of it all and had that suspicion confirmed when the whole thing started over again as the result of something she’d done. Like today. Maybe if they just got divorced, she had thought a hundred-million times, but no, that thought filled her with a greater fear and loathing than any argument ever had, and she felt trapped between what she hated most and what she was most frightened of.

  Now Elizabeth was crying again, and she wasn’t sure if it was from laughter or frustration, because she couldn’t tell the difference anymore. Her insides fluttered with the giddiness of it, the mixture of heavy pain and shaking laughter that made her want to throw up. She had found only one remedy to this, one thing that kept her insides from exploding and the heartache from bursting open her chest, and that was to put her interactive suit on, climb in her 3V tank, and lose herself. It was a race now as she jammed her arms and legs into the Lycra bodysuit and opened the top to the 3V tank. The suit covered her from head to toe, leaving only her face bare.