Strangers (26 page)

Her throat tightened as she felt the sting of not unwelcome tears to her eyes. She
did
want to cry but feared that if she began, she might never stop.

She was so terribly
alone.

There was no one she could…

Not Michael. She could not talk to him, not anymore. Michael nodded seriously when she spoke seriously, he murmured consolingly when she needed consolation, and he was just as he had always been
—wasn’t he
?—
the guy with the pleasantly cornball jokes, who usually remembered to recap the Crest after brushing his teeth, who read the morning paper, who belched, who yawned, and who was, somehow, an enigma, a stranger.

The world was full of strangers.

The thought hit her with the sharp-sweet intensity of a religious revelation.

There
was
someone!

I think…

She had a friend.

Isn’t he?

She could talk with him.

She drove to Lincoln Junior College.

The volume of the television was turned up to a window-rattling, kid-pleasing level. They were watching a syndicated rerun of
Mork and Mindy.
Each time’ Mork uttered his brainless “Na-Nu, na-nu,” the studio audience howled appreciation and so did Kim. In her pajamas, she lay on her stomach on the carpet, not more than a yard from the set, chin propped in her hands.

Michael sat on the sofa. It was his night to mind the children. He was tense, keyed up. He wanted to kill.

Killing!
That was his reason for being; it was what he was meant to do. Now, knowing that the killing time was not far off—The Time of the Strangers—he felt like a metamorphosed caterpillar burning to break free of the constricting cocoon of mundanity that had imprisoned him for so long.

Michael crossed his legs. The TV screen
Presented
a closeup of Mork as he declared, “I’m only trying to be a normal guy like everyone else, na-nu, na-nu.” The laugh track proclaimed his comment incredibly hilarious. So did Kim’s burst of laughter.

Michael glared at his daughter. Not so long from now
—but when? When
?—
he would
not need her. He would not need her sister or her mother. They would see him then, see him for the first and last time in their lives, and know
him
as he was, Michael the Stranger. Goodbye to this goddamned self-denying lie: Dear Old Dad and “Happy Husband…”

…And say, Beth was kind of blowing it as “Wonderful Wifey” these days. Most of the time she moped around like she’d had a lobotomy on her peanut-sized brain. And every time she hesitatingly tried to get into one of those “meaningful discussions” that she used to half-paralyze his ears with, working for “real communication to keep us in touch with each other,” blah-blah-bullshit, well, he’d say something—something quite reasonable, goddamnit!
and
Gong! She’d come up with a tired, “Oh, never mind,” or “Let’s forget it,” or end the conversation by turning away from him in silence.

Hell, he was saying all the right things and making all the right moves. He’d tried sex and while in the past the old push-rub-tickle had usually done the job, convincing Beth that all was ginger-peachy, super-fine, and hey-hey okay, not so of late. He couldn’t call her frigid; she didn’t get that worked up.

So she was all bent out of shape about her old lady. That was real sad. Sure too bad. What a goddamned shame…

“Hey, Dad?”

“Hmm? What’s that?”

There was a commercial and Kim rolled over and sat up. “Don’t you like
Mork and Mindy?”

“I do,” he said. “It’s a wonderful show. Brilliant comedy. Superb acting. Yessir, America
needs Mork and Mindy.”

“Then why don’t you laugh?”

“I do
laugh, Kim,” Michael said. “Believe me, your dad is laughing his head off on the inside.”

Kim gave him a puzzled look. “You know, Dad, sometimes I just don’t get you.”

Really?
he
thought. Sometime I am going to get
you!
Michael rose. In fact, he thought—and pleasure chills bubbled down his spine—
now
would be a wonderful time. You’d hear Daddy laugh, Kim. He’d laugh like you never heard him, but you wouldn’t think it was all that goddamned hilarious!

He actually took a step toward her but then stopped. Calm, cool, and collected, that was how he had to be.
Patient and enduring—and waiting.
The call
would
come, Jan Pretre’s call and then, yes then, surely then…

Michael went downstairs. In the kitchen, even after shutting the door to the stairway below, he could still hear Kim’s gales of laughter and that infuriatingly moronic “Na-nu, na-nu.”

He opened the drawer to the left of the sink. There it was, the butcher knife, its long, triangular blade keen and pointed. It was part of a set, steak knives, a potato peeler, a julienne knife, a bread knife, any damned knife you could think of, sold by direct mail and advertised in shrill TV commercials: “You’d think this superb cutlery collection would cost several hundred dollars but it can be yours for the low, low price of only $29.95, that’s…”

Smiling, Michael picked up the butcher knife. It was perfect.

He was vibrating like an engine at top racing speed. So
fine
to do it now—the thrill and rush and waves of incomprehensible joy! Marcy and Kim, and then…

Beth’s class was over at nine but, she’d told him, there was a group from the class that got together afterward for a drink, so he didn’t expect her home until 10:30 or 11. He would say, “How was school?” and she would say, “Okay,” and then he’d say, “You know, I don’t think the girls are feeling too well. Maybe you ought to look in on them.”

He imagined Beth’s face as she looked at the dead children.

Her mouth falls open! Her eyes bulge! She tries to scream but she’s too shocked, can only make a dry coughing noise! She stands swaying, stares at him as he grins, does not believe, even as he plunges the knife into her chest and belly and throat!

No! Not yet and not now, damn it, no matter how strong the urge, the want and the need. The killing time would come.

Michael put the butcher knife back and closed the drawer. Shit, he understood why Eddie Markell drank like a skid row wine-head. When it was in
your
blood to spill the blood of others, the nothing people, and you could not, you had to find solace in other ways.

He walked into the living room. From upstairs, he heard the sound of water splashing in the tub. Marcy was getting ready for bed.

He clicked on the antique crystal lamp on the end table and sat down on the sofa. Then he smiled. So Beth was irritable and out of sorts, huh? He’d give her something to be unhappy about! And might as well spread the misery around a bit—a little something for the girls as well!

A minute later, he was yelling upstairs, “Marcy, get down here!” Then he went to the kitchen, opened the door down to the recreation room, and ordered Kim up.

In the living room, he pointed at the end table. “Kim, Marcy, look what we’ve got here.”

“Oh wow!” Kim exclaimed. “One of Mom’s lamps is all smashed!”

The lamp lay on its side, precariously close to the edge of the end table, its shade crushed, the dangling glass prisms shattered into jagged bits and gleaming dust diamond twinkles atop a new snowfall.

Marcy, in her nightgown, glanced nervously at the broken lamp, then at her father, then back to the lamp.

“Those lamps were expensive,” Michael said, “but the money isn’t the important thing. We’ve got a broken lamp. Your mom is going to be heartsick. I don’t think we can have it repaired and I’m sure it can’t be replaced. So, who did it?”

Neither child answered him.

“All right,” Michael said. He ran a hand over his hair and then said, “Accidents happen. I understand that. So we’ve got an accident and I’m not happy about it, but I am going to find out who caused it. Once I learn that and when I hear an ‘I’m sorry,’ that will be the end of it, okay?”

He paused for a few seconds, studying the children. They were on the spot, he thought, and that was a good place for them to be. Uh-huh, and a bit of hurt and unhappiness at the old homestead.

“Okay,” he said, looking at Kim. “What about it?”

“No,” Kim said emphatically. “I didn’t bust it, Daddy.”

“Marcy?”

“No, Daddy.”

Michael folded his arms across his chest. “It seems we have a mystery here, young ladies. Something is broken—but nobody broke it. Now how can that be?”

Marcy tentatively said, “Maybe it fell over by itself, Daddy.”

“Oh,” Michael said, with an exaggerated nod. “That’s an interesting theory. Or maybe there’s a stranger in the house, somebody we don’t even know lives here, and
he
knocked it down. That’s a possibility too, isn’t it, Marcy?”

“I…I don’t know, Daddy,” Marcy said.

“I always get blamed but I
didn’t…”

“Quiet,” Michael ordered. “The both of
you,
go to your room.” He made a show of looking at his watch. “It’s a quarter to nine and nine is bedtime. I’ll see you then and one of you had better have something to tell me. Girls, I’m angry now and I’m on the way of being angrier, but if someone owns up to this, it will be okay and nobody gets punished. I don’t punish you for telling the truth. But—” he waited a moment to give the threat extra impact—“if I don’t hear a confession, then you’re both getting spankings—and I mean good ones.”

It was five minutes after nine when he went to their room. He gave them extra time to ponder his threat, to sweat over it.
And hey! Wasn’t paddling your children one of the requisite parental duties in this ‘Forget Dr. Spock’ conservative era? Yeah, smash your kid in the face with a fist and you were a bastard of a child abuser, wallop that kid’s bottom with an open hand and you were a caring, concerned disciplinarian.

In response to his “Well?” Marcy only shook her head, but Kim blew up.

“You are
going to blame me! I know! You’re not fair! You’re mean!”

“That’s enough,” Michael warned, but he didn’t end Kim’s tirade.

“You’re plain mean and you want to hurt…”

He nearly smiled. Uh-huh, the little toad had
that
right without even realizing that she did!

“…I don’t care! You can’t hurt me. You can spank me as hard as you want and I’m not going to cry!”

Michael slowly rubbed his chin. He somberly said, “I don’t have much choice then, do I?”

Kim lay on his lap as rigid as a broomstick. “Are you sure you have nothing to say to me, Kim?”

She arched up, twisting her head to glower defiantly at him. She kept her vow. She didn’t even say “Ouch.” Afterward she said, “I
told
you you couldn’t make me cry and it didn’t even hurt and I really hate you!”

He paddled Marcy. She shed all the tears he expected and then some.

With the girls in their beds, he stood at the door. “I’m sorry you made me do that. And whichever one of you
did
break the lamp ought to think seriously about apologizing to her sister for getting her paddled. Good night.”

Walking downstairs, he reflected it had not been a bad evening, not bad at all. And there was still the scene to come when Beth saw that “oh so lovely” lamp!