By Liz Zuercher
EMILY
It
was way after dark when Emily pulled into her driveway and into the garage
without looking over at Eddie’s house, so she didn’t see the carousel horse
that was new since she left for work in the morning. She wasn’t even thinking about Eddie’s house. Her day had been a disaster, and she
had other things on her mind than her neighbor’s ridiculous yard.
The company president had called a
general meeting and told everyone that business was way down and they were
going to have to downsize in order to stay afloat. That meant layoffs, and though Emily still had her job,
she’d had to lay off seven of her accounting staff people. Two of the women had actually cried in
Emily’s office, begging to be kept on, offering to work for less money just so
they could keep their health insurance, and it was all Emily could do not to
dissolve into tears herself. She
kept her composure and remained professional, but it hadn’t been easy. On top of the upheaval of letting staff
go, she’d had to figure out how to redistribute the responsibilities of the
ones who weren’t going to be there any longer. They were all going to have to work harder and longer
hours. Sadness and fear and
uneasiness and that sick to your stomach feeling that you might be next – all
that hung over the accounting department today as people packed up their
belongings and hugged their former co-workers goodbye.
And then the phone calls started –
vendors who had heard the news of layoffs and were worried that their bills
wouldn’t be paid, and Emily was the one who had to deal with the calls and
reassure the people that they’d get their money when she wasn’t even sure
herself that she was telling them the truth. She was worried for herself, too. Would she even
get a paycheck? She had money to
get by, but she didn’t want to have to dip into her cushion, as she called it,
if she didn’t have to.
So all Emily wanted to do was drive
directly into her garage and shut the door behind her without thinking about
Eddie’s offensive yard. She wanted
to give her kittens some loving and get some back from them. She wanted to pour herself a big glass
of wine, fill the bathtub with hot water and bath salts and soak until her skin
looked like a prune while soft music played and candles flickered. She didn’t want to check her phone
messages. She didn’t want to get
her mail from the mailbox. She
only wanted to soak in the tub and forget the world outside her bathroom even
existed. She fed the cats, then
she turned out all the lights downstairs and climbed up the stairs. She was so tired she forgot to set the
alarm.
As the tub filled up, Emily
examined her face in her bedroom dresser mirror. Tonight she looked way older than her forty-eight
years. Her face sagged and she
looked pale. Her usually neat light
brown hair drooped around her cheeks and strands of gray looked more prominent
to her tonight. She went to the
closet, took off her green silk blouse and hung it up on one of the beige satin
padded hangers she’d bought to pamper herself. She hung up the black suit skirt and jacket and unclasped
the emerald necklace she always wore, laying it gently in the jewelry drawer
built into the closet. After
slipping off her underwear, she stood in front of the full-length mirror on the
closet door and looked at the woman staring back at her. She felt like she was looking at her
mother. When had aging happened to
her? Everything about her seemed
to be sagging toward the floor.
She pulled open the closet door so she wouldn’t be able to see herself
anymore and before she got into the tub, she shooed the cats out of the
bathroom and closed the door.
THE MIDNIGHT
BURGLAR
They
were calling him the Midnight Burglar, though he usually wasn’t out on his
excursions that late. But he did
appreciate the cover of darkness, and he did dress all in black, as had been
conjectured in the newsletter accounts warning Cantata Del Mar residents to be
watchful. He had been dismayed to
see the newsletter reports, as his hope was always that his visits would go
undetected.
He
was never in a house longer than five minutes. It was a matter of pride – enter quietly, locate a trophy,
leave quietly. It wasn’t about
loot like most robberies. It was
about skill. He had no use for the
smash and grab style of those desperate insensitive oafs who threw bricks
through glass doors and made off with all the electronics they could carry and
all the jewelry or silverware they could stuff into their black gym bags. That was low class and usually drug
driven. He was not a drug
user. He was not low class.
For
him the burglaries were as much an intellectual challenge as anything else, a
test of his ability to find the right house at the right time and to enter it
without leaving any evidence that could implicate him in any way. It was the challenge of getting in and
out in those five minutes with one perfect small trophy that would symbolize
the personality of the house, the sense of the people who lived there. And it had to be something they
wouldn’t miss right away, but something they should miss if they were paying
attention to their surroundings.
In
those five minutes he would move quietly from room to room, sizing up the
people who lived there, deciding what small token to take from them, some
object that, when missing, would only slightly tilt that world off balance, but
only enough to make them feel a little off, make them wonder what wasn’t right
about the living room or the jewelry drawer or the china cabinet or the table
in the front hall that held all the knick knacks that used to be in Grandma’s
house. It didn’t have to be
valuable – he had plenty of money – but it did have to say something about the
people who lived there. It was all
about stealth and skill and sizing up people, and it was about time, a timed
test of his prowess so to speak.
Tonight
he had failed that test for the first time in years when he’d misjudged the
house he entered. It was dark, so
he thought the people weren’t home. It was quiet, so he didn’t expect animals. But when he crept inside, the cats were
scratching at him and he lost his composure and tossed them outside before he
went through the house. Then
upstairs, in the master bedroom he was opening the dresser drawer when he
noticed a soft glow of light coming from under the bathroom door and then he
heard someone slosh water in the bathtub.
His concentration broken, he grabbed the first thing he saw in the
drawer – a gold pocket watch on a chain – and he left the house before his five
minutes was up. His heart was
pumping hard as he made his way behind the houses back to his own home, and
when he got back inside his house he was shaking. That was an abject failure. Unacceptable.
He
opened the safe in his master bedroom closet and put the watch in with his
other trophies. Perhaps he was losing his touch. Perhaps he needed to reconsider this activity.
EMILY
Emily woke up shivering in the
bathtub. The candles had burned
down to nothing and the only light in the room was the glow of a shell-shaped
nightlight next to the sink. In
that low light she drained the tub and toweled off before putting on her
nightgown and climbing into bed.
She felt like something wasn’t quite right, but she was too groggy and
too cold to try to figure it out.
She pulled the comforter up to her chin and fell asleep.
* * * * *
Emily overslept and woke with a
start as she felt the warmth of the morning sun on her face. It was usually dark when the kittens
started licking her face to wake her up, just before the radio went on. She looked over at the clock and was
shocked to see it was already 7:30.
She had to be at work in half an hour and she had a twenty-minute
drive. The panic of that
realization was like a slap in the face that brought her fully awake and made
her sit up straight in bed.
Where were the cats? She reached around the bed even though
she knew they weren’t there with her.
She would have felt them there.
They would have complained when she sat up so fast. She looked around the room to see if
they were in their little beds by the window, even though she knew they
wouldn’t be there either. The beds
had been an exercise in futility.
The kittens never slept in those beds. They liked to be with her in the big bed. Even if they started out the night
apart, they always were together in the morning. Maybe they’d tried to wake her but she didn’t wake up and
they went downstairs to play, or went to the litter box in the laundry
room. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Surely there was a logical
explanation. She pushed the covers
aside and got out of bed, put on her slippers and started to look for her
babies.
The kittens were her heart she told
people. They were her children,
her family. After the divorce she
had been so lonely and so frightened.
A friend gave her the first kitten, Sammie, an Abyssinian with a sweet
nature and an adventurous personality.
Where she lived before, in the middle of town, Sammie had been an
outside cat and came and went as he pleased. Sometimes he would scare her by staying out several days at
a time, but he always came home.
After a while she found out that Sammie had lots of human friends and
that he visited them all regularly, sometimes sticking around for a day or
two. Everyone loved Sammie and he
loved everyone. Since they’d moved
to this house, though, Sammie had had to become an inside cat. There were too many dangers for a cat
who ventured outside at night here.
“He’ll be coyote kibble,” Cassie
the sales counselor told Emily.
“You’ll have to keep the cat inside.”
So Sammie had become an inside cat,
but he still longed to roam the neighborhood, and Emily often found him sitting
at the French door looking out at the hills longingly. He was lonesome when she was away at
work, so she had found him a brother.
Pete came into their lives six months ago and had brought joy to both of
them. While Sammie was a mellow
seven years old, Pete was still a playful, mischievous one-year-old, and he
loved to play tricks on Sammie, stealing his toys and running around the house
with them. Emily was amazed that
Sammie put up with Pete’s antics, but Sammie was a patient older brother.
Emily could only imagine what went
on during the day while she was working.
Sometimes when she came home there were cat toys strewn all over the
house and the two cats were curled up together on the wood floor in a shaft of
sunlight. Other times they were at
opposite corners of the house, avoiding each other.
With all his youthful spirit, Pete
could be a little lover, too, and he could sense her moods just like Sammie
did. He would sit there and look
up at her, his black fur gleaming and the white paws perched delicately, and
she could swear he was telling her everything was okay when she didn’t feel
like it was. It was like he was
smiling at her, urging her to smile back.
And she would, because she couldn’t help smiling at him. She had come to depend on both of them
to keep her company, lift her spirits, give her life purpose and bring her joy
– to be her heart.
And they depended on her and were
never far from her, so it was especially disturbing that they weren’t in the
bedroom with her. She called their
names and expected to hear their collar bells ringing as they ran up the
stairs.
Silence.
She called their names and searched
the other bedrooms upstairs.
Sometimes they curled up on one of the other beds or sat on the desk
chair in her home office or played with the computer keyboard even though she
scolded them when they did that.
But she couldn’t find them.
She started to worry now and headed down the stairs to look for
them. She looked in the kitchen
and the family room and the laundry room where their water and food were. Nothing. She looked in the living room, under the sofa and behind the
curtains and she called their names over and over.
They couldn’t have gotten in the garage,
she thought, but she checked there anyway. She’d been so distracted last night, maybe she left the
garage door ajar and they managed to get out there somehow and the door closed
behind them. A flutter of hope
filled her chest. That must be it,
she thought with relief. But when
she opened the garage door no little kitties ran to greet her mewing
frantically.
“Sammie! Pete!” she yelled.
“This isn’t funny. Come
out! Where are you?”
That’s when she glanced out the
window and noticed a black mound in the back yard. A black mound with clumps of white. Oh, no, oh,no. And she held her breath as she opened
the French door and went out to investigate. She approached the mound and looked down to see an
eviscerated black cat with white paws.
The sound that escaped her was less of a scream and more a keening cry,
as she sank to her knees in the grass next to her baby. Poor sweet Pete. Oh, Pete, how did this happen? How did you get out of the house? She picked up the collar and bell that
lay beside the cat’s body and held it to her chest and sobbed.
And Sammie. Where is Sammie? She stood up and turned around full
circle, looking around her yard for signs of her other baby, but there was
nothing. Sinking to the ground she
let out another scream that set all the dogs in the neighborhood to barking and
howling.
KAREN
Karen
Hooper from down the street was walking her dog, Clifford, deep in thought,
replaying her doctor’s appointment yesterday.
“It’s not time to worry yet,” the
doctor said. “You’re young and
healthy and there’s plenty of time.
Just relax,” he said with an easy smile intended to put her at
ease. “You’ll have a baby when
you’re meant to have a baby.”
When would that be, she wanted to
scream at him. Instead she put on
her stoic face, put away her hopes again and left the office. She was glad she hadn’t said anything
to her husband, raising his hopes like hers had been. Still it had been a difficult conversation last night when
he called her from New York. He
could sense it and asked her if something was wrong.
“No,” she told him, “I’m fine. I just miss you when you’re so far
away.” And she had gone on to tell
him about how she’d been running late all day and her tutoring students had
been late and she was glad to be home with a glass of wine and Clifford curled
up next to her. He told her about
his day and they exchanged I-love-yous before hanging up. She held the receiver to her heart for
a long time and stared out the family room window at the twinkling lights of
the distant houses. So many
houses. So many families with so
many children. When will I have
mine?
She had called in for a substitute
before dawn this morning. She just
couldn’t face five classrooms of kids today. She decided to take Clifford for a walk. They could both use the exercise and
the distraction.
The woman’s scream sent a chill up Karen’s spine and set
Clifford, to howling like the hound dog he was. She hardly ever heard this sound from Clifford. He barely even barked, he was so
mellow. But clearly he was
agitated now, howling mournfully and tugging at the leash as they neared the
alligator house.
Instead of staying on the sidewalk
like usual, Clifford pulled Karen toward the house next door to the
alligator. She didn’t know who
lived there or why Clifford wanted to go there, until she heard the horrible
wrenching wail again coming from the back yard of this house. Clifford howled in reply and pulled
Karen along the side of the house to the back yard, urging her to
investigate. She was frightened,
but she quieted her nerves, telling herself that Clifford was a big dog and
would protect her at all costs.
As they turned the corner into the
back yard, Karen saw a woman in her nightgown on her knees next to a mound of
black fur streaked with blood, something clutched to her chest. Clifford went right up to the woman and
started licking her face, trying to comfort her. Karen stood watching and couldn’t stop the tears from
cascading down her face.
