At Home in the Dark Page 15

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t told him, asked him, encouraged him.

  He’d tried, kindly person that he was.

  But his heart wasn’t in it, not any more, not even to please her.

  His heart was stuck in slam, bam, thank you ma’am, as if he’d turned into a 1950’s advertising salesman with too much “respect” for his wife to bang her like he banged his secretary. Only, there was no secretary, just like there was nothing Melinda would call sex. Once every ten days. In bed. Under the covers. He hated doing it without sheets over them. “I feel so silly,” he’d admitted, sweetly, “with my butt stuck up in the air.” She’d offered to point her butt to the ceiling, instead, but he’d looked so shocked that she’d let that go, too. Oral sex was out of the question. The mere phrase, “oral sex” made his face go all “Ew.” She wondered if he was gay and either didn’t know it, or was still hiding it. In this day and age! Good grief. If he was gay, she would gaily support him and set him free.

  She’d buy the condoms! She’d be their flower girl!

  Please figure out you’re gay, she thought, often.

  Counseling was out, because she didn’t actually want to save their marriage. She’d given up. Plus, a counselor was sure to ask, “Did you know this before you married him?” No, she could honestly say. But Leon was different then; they’d had sex between the appetizer and the entree back then, between dessert and coffee, to say nothing of between the sheets.

  He’d liked it.

  It was all the fault of the First Community Church of God.

  When she thought about how her agnostic husband had suddenly got religion, Melinda wanted to push his face into a Baptismal font. Oh, God—speaking of which—if only he’d have an affair so she could catch him. With a man, with a woman, with a pony, she didn’t care, just so long as he cheated and gave her a thank-God, socially acceptable reason to leave him. Maybe she was too caught up in what other people thought, but jeez, why should she have to go through life feeling condemned for leaving a nice man?

  • • •

  Leon had hoped he could out-sweet her.

  His wife loathed ooey-gooey pudding-mouthed people, especially sweet-talking, compliment-throwing men.

  “You’re always so nice, Leon,” she’d said recently, in a tone in which she had also said, “Yuk. Our trash bin is sticky!”

  He thought he was making progress.

  Any day now she was supposed to get so fed up with his smarmy efforts to please her that she wouldn’t be able to take it any more and would leave him for a ruder, lazier man.

  There was only one place he didn’t try to please Melinda.

  She loved sex.

  Before marriage, they’d done it three times a night sometimes. Definitely three times a week, usually more. Surely, she’d go insane any time now with his every-ten-days regimen, soon to drop to every two weeks if she didn’t get with his program.

  He was surprised she didn’t suggest marriage counseling.

  “Church?” she asked, dumbfounded when he’d told her he was going.

  Church was his excuse for the change in him from loose and thoughtless to zipped up and punctilious. Church wasn’t where he’d met the beautiful young choir director, Staci, but it was where he’d followed her, a smitten lamb trotting along after her wagging tail.

  There was nothing like naked sex in a bell tower.

  Far enough away from the bells not to go deaf; close enough to reverberate like a couple of tuning forks and ring out hallelujah.

  He couldn’t leave his wife; Melinda had to leave him.

  The reason why she had to be driven to abandon a perfect husband was that her parents had given them as a wedding gift a million-dollar house. Leon wanted a For Sale sign on it, and a check made out to him, which he wasn’t going to get if she found out who chimed his bells.

  • • •

  “There’s something you’re not saying,” Melinda’s mother accused her. “You spend too much time with your dad and me, instead of with your husband. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing’s going on, Mom.”

  “Well, there. That’s your problem. Marriages need something going on, all the time, that third thing.”

  “What third thing?”

  “Any third thing. A shared passion for a sports team. Competitive checkers.”

  Melinda snickered.

  “You laugh.”

  “I do laugh. Checkers?”

  “It doesn’t matter what it is, it only has to be something you both love and want to do together! Camping. Fishing. Politics. Crossword puzzles. Building ships in bottles.”

  “You and Dad don’t have a third thing.”

  “Of course we do.”

  “What?”

  Her mother smirked.

  “Stop! Anyway, there’s nothing wrong between Leon and me.”

  “Have you ever gone to that church with him?”

  “God, no.”

  “Well, do it! He’d probably appreciate it.”

  “He’d think another woman had taken over my body.”

  But she decided to surprise him. Make one last-ditch effort to save the damn thing. Their marriage. Slip into a pew beside him. See if it turned him on to convert a heathen like her. She supposed that if it made their sex go back to being what it used to be she might not mind staying married to him, even if she had to get her own head baptized to do it. In fact, if she could combine a man who kept gas in her car with a man who never ran out of gas, she might create the perfect spouse.

  “You never know,” her mother predicted. “Try it.”

  • • •

  Melinda didn’t go with Leon that Sunday to the First Community Church of God. Instead, she slipped into his pew at the last minute to surprise him, which she certainly did, to judge by his double take of a reaction. It nearly made her laugh out loud. She briefly laid her head on his shoulder, to lay claim, so the people behind and beside them wouldn’t think a woman he didn’t know had moved in for the kill on a handsome man.

  Leon was handsome, no question about that.

  In his best suit—his Sunday suit? she could hardly believe it—he looked sharp and put-together.

  The minister spoke, from down on floor level, in front.

  “Good morning!”

  “Good morning!” the congregation chirped back at him.

  “Welcome friends, and welcome strangers whom we’d love to get to know! For those of you who are here for the first time, let me tell you that in some churches they begin by standing and greeting the people all around them with a handshake. In other churches, they start with hugging each other.” Someone in the congregation groaned, and a few people laughed. “But here at FCCG, we start with what we believe everybody needs most desperately in this life. Will you each please stand if you are able and turn to a person near you, and say, ‘I forgive you.’ ”

  “What the hell?” Melinda whispered to Leon.

  Nevertheless, she stood, turning quickly toward the elderly woman on her other side.

  “I forgive you,” the woman said, clasping both of Melinda’s hands and gazing sincerely into her eyes.

  For some reason, that brought a lump to Melinda’s chest. “I forgive you, too,” she found herself saying. Oh, why not? she thought. The woman had lived a long life; surely there was something she couldn’t stop regretting. It wouldn’t kill a person to try to make her feel better about it.

  Everybody then turned to the person on their other side.

  “I forgive you,” Leon said, looking annoyed, she was startled to see.

  “For coming here?” she asked him.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that maybe Leon wanted this place to himself, alone.

  Maybe he wanted some relief from being always at her beck and call, even when she neither becked nor called. If that were the case, then she’d have to keep coming back. Up to this point, she’d merely wished for him to leave her; she hadn’t been pro-active. Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe she neede
d to push him along toward the door. If Leon simply, selfishly refused to give her reasonable grounds for divorce, she’d have to irritate him to death.

  She could do that. She sensed she’d be good at that.

  “You have to say it, too,” he said, testily.

  “You don’t do anything for me to forgive!”

  She tried not to sound pissed off about it, but his slight smirk made her right hand itch to slap him.

  She escaped saying she forgave him because by then it was the turn of the people in front and behind them to pardon her. Melinda felt herself getting into the spirit of the thing. “I forgive you!” And you! What had these people ever done in their lives to look so eager to wipe it clean? Did they speed, not the allowable five, but all of six miles an hour over the legal limit? Horrors. Did they blow their autumn leaves onto their neighbors’ yards?

  It seemed to help, though.

  Melinda felt purged of the guilt of desiring to leave a nice man.

  She felt inspired by her plan of action: divorce by irritation.

  She’d been gritting her teeth and saying, “Thank you!” every time he did a chore for her—pick up anything she dropped, give up the crossword puzzle in the paper to her, hold doors, get her car washed, put the cap on the toothpaste for her, tell her constantly how “lovely” she looked. Now she’d ignore those dozens of “nice” moments every day and night; she’d take them for granted—sweeping the dropped scarf from his hands, doing the Word Jumble first, too, leaving a toothpaste trail on the bathroom counter, skipping the “thank you” to his compliments. When he told her each morning how pretty she looked, she’d lift her chin, smile arrogantly, and say, “I know.”

  The minister waved everybody back to their seats.

  He strode up the three stairs from the floor to the lectern, nodding to the organist and choir. But when he turned to face his congregation, he was a changed man. His friendly smile turned into a ferocious glare. He looked like a preacher instead of a minister.

  He slammed down his Bible.

  “Damnation!” he thundered, sweeping his gaze from one side of the church to the other.

  A number of people, including Leon, jumped in their pews.

  Melinda was so startled by his threats of hellfire and brimstone that it took her through half of his sermon to wonder if that’s what kept his congregation coming back, desperate for forgiveness the next Sunday. First, he gave them sweetness and light, and then he lowered the Biblical boom.

  “Is he always like this?” she whispered to Leon.

  He shook his head, seemingly cowed into silence.

  The preacher’s Cotton Mather oration on the Ten Commandments cemented Melinda’s plan of action—six days a week she would wholeheartedly annoy her husband into breaking as many of the Commandments as a busy man could: coveting another man’s wife, sliding into adultery, stealing away to a hotel with a lover who appreciated him. On the seventh day, she could return to the pews for a chorus of forgiveness.

  At the close of service, the organ player—a very pretty young woman—boomed out a triumphant hymn. It was Bach, so it already had an ominous undertone, but she played it extra loud, as if she were pounding the tips of her fingers into the ivory keys, like a ballerina landing painfully hard on her toes.

  • • •

  The cute little choir director was in a rage.

  “Who was that woman?” she demanded of her lover, via Skype because she wanted to see Leon’s face when she interrogated him. “She sat down by you as if she owns you! She put her head on your shoulder! Leon? Are you married? Is she your wife?”

  She saw his face.

  She heard his hesitation.

  Before he could answer, she screamed, “You lying son of a bitch!”

  Staci didn’t actually belong to the church. She was their hired music director. She had to play their hymns, but she didn’t have to play by their rules. “You fucking, lying, Goddamned son of a fucking bitch! I hate you! Don’t you ever contact me again!”

  • • •

  He was already furious at Melinda for showing up at church.

  Now he wanted to kill her. Literally, bloodily kill her.

  Forget Mr. Nice Guy. He was so sick of playing perfect husband that he wanted to throw the goddamned vacuum cleaner through the front window. He wanted to strangle Melinda with its cord, and stick its suction to one ear and suck her fucking brains out with it.

  Let’s not forget the money, his inner self whispered.

  Consider that widowers get it all.

  “Or, maybe calm down,” Leon advised himself, a little unnerved by his own greedy, violent wishes.

  He walked around a few blocks before returning to his car.

  His phone beeped with Melinda calling, but he didn’t answer.

  A man could develop beaucoup self-discipline and restraint if a man spent months pretending to be a perfect gentleman, Leon thought, as his blood pressure dropped back down from lethal. Weeks of biding his time. Months of biting his tongue. Washing dishes the minute they got dirty, sweeping a kitchen floor every night, getting up to cook breakfast for two every morning. A man could become quite a domestic soldier armed with intense patience and determination. Smiling through every annoyance. Never raising his voice or letting his—okay, evil—intent show.

  He could get Staci back, he was convinced of that.

  She was in love with him, or why would she have been so upset today?

  She was a beautiful young woman of refined and expensive taste. Except, perhaps, when she was pissed off at him.

  As he pressed “Return Call,” to Melinda, he had to laugh at how Staci had cursed him. So cute, so jealous and furious, so sexy.

  He had to get Melinda to divorce him.

  “Hi, Sweetheart,” he said in his smarmiest voice when she answered. He could practically feel how it made her skin crawl, and yet she wouldn’t complain, because how could a woman complain about a perfect husband? Before she could even ask where he’d been that he hadn’t immediately taken her call, he said, “I took a walk to think about what the minister preached this morning, but I’m coming right home now. I’m sorry if I made you worry.”

  “I forgive you.”

  He thought she sounded bored, as if she was in the middle of doing her nails.

  “What? Oh. Uh, want me to get you some of those pork ribs you love, and corn on the cob? Or would you like something else for lunch? I could run by the grocery store on my way home. Or I could stop by your favorite restaurant and get take out, or I could—”

  “Whatever I like,” she said, and hung up on him.

  “Well, that was rude,” Leon remarked to himself. And very annoying. She was supposed to be irritated by how infuriatingly sweet and attentive he was; she wasn’t supposed to take him for fucking granted.

  • • •

  “Is this Leon’s wife?”

  “Leon who?”

  “Leon Christopher.”

  “Yes.”

  It was a woman’s voice that Melinda heard say, “I’m devastated to have to tell you this, but I’ve been having an affair with your husband. Leon,” she said, as if Melinda might have two of them. “I thought I loved him. I didn’t know he was married. He’s been a bastard to both of us. I’m so sorry—”

  “Bless your heart,” Melinda purred. “Do you have photos?”

  • • •

  Leon had only just unclogged a toilet, and made their bed, and pulled her clothes out of the dryer, and she had only just said, “What took you so long?” to the first one, “I hate how you put the top sheet on wrong side up,” to the second one, and “I was nearly out of underwear, Leon,” without once saying “Thank you,” when a man with a gun walked into the kitchen where they stood glaring at each other.

  “You slept with the woman I love!” the man screamed at Leon. “Don’t deny it, I’ve seen the naked pictures!”

  Melinda looked shocked. “Oh my God, you’re the minister!”

  The man, tall
and dour even without his black robes, shot Leon, dead-on through the heart.

  Then he fell to his knees, weeping. With streaming eyes, he looked up at Melinda. “I’ve committed a terrible sin.”

  She smiled. “I forgive you.”

  Giant’s Despair

  Duane Swierczynski

  1

  Middle of the night is when Lonergan’s hands hurt the most. A lot of his bedtime routine entails fidgeting and turning and trying not to roll over on them. As a result, Lonergan only ever falls partially asleep. He stares at the ceiling, aware of every creak and pop and moan in the house.

  So when the frantic knocking comes at 3 a.m. he’s up immediately.

  Lonergan glances over at his wife. Jovie, God love her, is still dead to the world, her lips parted a little as she breathes. That is a good thing. They’d had a rough day with the kids. The baby had only gone down a couple of hours ago after much rocking and soothing and lullaby-singing. And the four-year-old continued her giddy mission of destruction throughout the house. It’s like living with a pint-sized terrorist who giggles. That said, the kids are the only things that keep them both going these days.

  A second round of knocks echoes throughout the house, even louder this time.

  Lonergan sits up in bed, trying to keep the bedsprings from making too much noise. His hands throb so hard he can feel his heartbeat in them. He’s only wearing skivvies, so he pulls on pajama bottoms and tries to find his slippers in the dark. No luck. Hailee takes a lot of gleeful pleasure in hiding her Pop-Pop’s things. The slippers are probably buried somewhere in the backyard under the snow.

  People just don’t turn up at their house. The main road through Bear Creek is Route 115, which rolls along the top of the mountain. To find the Lonergans’ place you have to take a barely-marked gravel road—a glorified driveway actually—and follow it up into the woods. Delivery guys get lost all the time.

  Lonergan has a feeling who this might be. A cold little hunch in the bottom of his stomach, even as he hopes he’s wrong.

  Lonergan hoists himself off the bed and hurries down the hall and into the living room. In the dead silence, each floorboard creak sounds like a scream. He prays the noise won’t wake the baby.