Not Safe After Dark

LAWN SALE

When Frank walked through to the kitchen, glass crunched under his feet, and he sent knives, forks and spoons skittering across the linoleum. He turned on the light. Someone had broken in while he had been at the Legion. They had cut the wire screen and smashed the glass in the kitchen door. They must have emptied the drawers looking for silverware because the cutlery was all over the place.

Someone had also been in the front room. Whoever it was had knocked or pushed over the tailor’s dummy and the little table beside his armchair where he kept his reading glasses, book and coffee mug.

Suddenly afraid in case they were still in the house, Frank climbed on a stool to reach the high cupboard above the sink. There, at the back, where nobody would look beyond Joan’s unused baking dishes, cake tins and cookie cutters shaped like hearts and lions, lay his old service revolver wrapped in an oily cloth. He had smuggled it back from the war and kept it all these years. Kept it loaded, too.

With the gun in his hand, he felt safer as he checked the rest of the house. Slowly, with all the lights on, he climbed the stairs. They had broken the padlock on Joan’s room. Heart thumping, he turned on the light. When he saw the mess, he slumped against the wall.

They had emptied out all her dresser drawers, scattering underwear and trinkets all over the shiny pink coverlet on the bed. And it looked as if someone had swept off the lotions and perfumes from the dressing table right onto the floor. One of the caps must have come loose because he could smell Joan’s sharp, musky perfume.

The lacquered jewellery case, the one he had bought her in New York with the ballet dancer that spun to the ‘Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy’ when you opened it, lay silent and empty on the bed. Frank sat down, gun hanging between his legs. They’d taken all Joan’s jewellery. Why? The stuff obviously wasn’t valuable. Just trinkets, really. None of it could possibly be worth anything to them. They had even taken her wedding ring.

Frank remembered the day he bought it all those years ago: the fairground across the street from the small jeweller’s; the air filled with the smells of candyfloss and fried onions and the sounds of children laughing and squealing with delight. A little girl in a white frock with pink smocking had smiled at him as she passed by, one arm hugging a huge teddy bear and the other hand holding her mother’s. How light his heart had been. Inside, the ring was inscribed, ‘FRANK AND JOAN. 21 JULY 1946. NO GREATER LOVE.’ The bastards. It could mean nothing to them.

Listlessly, he checked his own room. Drawers pulled out, socks and underwear scattered on the bedclothes. Nothing worth stealing except the spare change he kept on his bedside table. Sure enough, it was gone, the $3.37 he had piled neatly into columns of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies last night.

They didn’t seem to have got far in the spare room, where he kept his war mementos. Maybe they got disturbed, scared by a sound, before they could open the lock on the cabinet. Anyway, everything was intact: his medals; the antique silver cigarette lighter that had never let him down; the bayonet; the Nazi armband; the tattered edition of Mein Kampf; the German dagger with the mother-of-pearl swastika inlaid in its handle.

Frank went downstairs and considered what to do. He knew he should put the gun back in its hiding place and call the police. But that would mean intrusion, questions. He valued his privacy and he knew that the neighbours thought he was a bit of an oddball. What would the police think of him, a man who kept the torso of a tailor’s dummy in his living-room, along with yards of moth-eaten material and tissue-paper patterns? What if they found his gun?

No, he couldn’t call the police; he couldn’t have them trampling all over his house. They never caught burglars, anyway; everyone knew that. Weary, and still a little frightened, Frank nailed a piece of plywood over the broken glass, then carried his gun upstairs with him to bed.

The following morning was one of those light, airy days of early June, the kind that brings the whole city to the Beaches. The sky was robin’s-egg blue, the sun shone like a pale yolk, and a light breeze blew off the lake to keep the temperature comfortable. In the gardens, apple and cherry blossom clung to the trees and the tulips were still in full bloom. It was a day for sprinklers, swimsuits, barbecues, bicycle rides, volleyball and lawn sales.

Normally, Frank would have gone down to the boardwalk, about the only exercise he got these days. Today, however, a change had come over him; a shadow had crept into his life and chilled him to the bone, despite the fine weather. He felt a deep lassitude and malaise. So much so that he delayed getting out of bed.

Maybe it was the dream made him feel that way. Though perhaps it wasn’t right to call it a dream when it was so close to something that had really happened. It recurred every few months, and he had come to accept it now, much as one accepts the chronic pain of an old wound, as a kind of cross to bear.

Separated from his unit once in rural France during the Second World War, he had dragged himself out of a muddy stream, cigarettes tied up safely in army-issue condoms to keep them dry, and entered a forest. A few yards in, he had come face to face with a young German soldier, who looked as if he had also probably lost his comrades. They stared open-mouthed at each other for the split second before Frank, operating purely on survival instinct, aimed his revolver first and fired. The boy simply looked surprised and disappointed at the red patch that spread over his chest, then his face emptied of all expression for ever. Light-headed and numb, Frank moved on, looking for his unit.

It wasn’t the first German he had killed, but it was the first he had looked in the eye. The incident haunted him all the way back to his unit, but a few hours later he had convinced himself that he had done the right thing and put it behind him.

After the war the memory surfaced from time to time in dreams. Details changed, of course. Each time the soldier had a different face, for example. Once, Frank even reached forward and put his finger into the bullet hole. The soft, warm flesh felt like half-set jelly. He was sure he had never touched it in real life.

Another time, the boy spoke to him. He spoke in English and Frank couldn’t remember what he said, though he was sure it was a poem, and the words ‘I knew you in this dark’ stuck in his mind. But Frank knew nothing of poetry.

This time the bullet had gone straight through, leaving a clean circle the size of a ring, and Frank had seen a winter landscape, all flat white and grey, through the hole.

He still had the gun he had used that day. It was the same one he had got down from the high cupboard last night when he thought the burglars might still be in the house. It was the one he felt for now under the pillow beside him.

Had he got up that day? He couldn’t remember. He sat propped against pillows on his bed that night watching television as usual. He felt agitated, and whatever the figures on the screen were doing or saying didn’t register. For some reason, he couldn’t get the wedding ring out of his mind, the senselessness of its theft and the unimaginable value it had for him. He hadn’t realized it fully until the ring was gone.

Then he thought he heard some noise outside. He turned the sound off with the remote and listened. Sure enough, he could hear voices. Beyond his back garden was a narrow alleyway, then came the backs of the stores and low-rise apartment buildings on Queen Street. Sometimes in this warm weather, when everyone had their windows open, you could hear arguments, television programmes and loud music. These were real voices, Frank could tell. Television voices sounded different. There were two of them, a woman’s and a man’s, hers getting louder.

‘No, Daryl, it won’t do!’ he heard the woman shout. ‘Haven’t I told you before it’s wrong to steal? Haven’t I brought you up to respect other people’s property? Haven’t I?’

Frank couldn’t hear the muffled answer, no matter how much he strained. He dragged himself up from the bed and went to the window.

‘So if Marvin Johnson stuck his finger in a fire, you’d do that as well, would you? Christ, give me a break. How stupid can you get?’

Another inaudible reply.

‘Right. So how do you think they feel, eh? The people whose house you broke into. Come on. What did you do with it?’

Frank couldn’t hear the reply, though he held his breath.

‘Don’t lie to me. What do you think this is? It’s a gold chain, isn’t it? And what about these? Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly started wearing earrings. I found these hidden in your room. You stole them, didn’t you?’

Frank’s heart knocked against his ribs. Joan had a gold chain and earrings, and they were among the items that had been stolen. But what about the ring? The ring?

‘Shut up!’ the woman yelled. ‘I don’t want to hear it. I want you to put together everything you stole and take it back, or so help me I’ll call the police. I don’t care if you are my son. Do you understand me?’

There came another inaudible reply followed by a sharp smack, then the sound of a door slamming. After that Frank heard a sound he didn’t recognize at first. A cat in the garden, maybe? Then he realized it was the woman crying.

About five of the apartments in the building had lights on at the back, and Frank hadn’t been able to tell from which one the argument came. Now, though, he could see the silhouette of the woman with her head bowed and her hands held to her face. He thought he knew who she was. He had seen both her and her son on the street.

Frank sat in the coffee shop across from the apartment building early the next morning and watched people come and go. The building was one of those old places with a heavy wood and glass door, so warped by heat and time that it wouldn’t shut properly. He knew who he was looking for, all right. It was that peroxide blonde, the one who looked like a hooker.

At about eight-thirty, her son, the thief, came out. He had a spotty face, especially around the nose and mouth, and he obviously had a skinhead haircut, or a completely shaved head, under the baseball hat he wore the wrong way around. He also wore a shiny silver jacket with a stylized black eagle on the back under some red writing. Below his baggy trousers, crotch right down to the knees, the laces of his sneakers trailed loose. At the corner, he hooked up with a couple of similarly dressed kids and they shuffled off, shoving each other, spitting and generally glaring down at the sidewalk as they went.

At about ten o’clock Frank had to move to the next coffee shop, a bit more up market, as he kept getting nasty looks from the owner. He ordered a cappuccino and a doughnut and sat by the window, watching.

At about a quarter to eleven, she came out, the boy’s mother. She struggled with a shop cart of laundry through the front door and set off down the street.

Old though he was, Frank could still appreciate a good figure when he saw one. She wore a white tube-top, tight over her heavy breasts, revealing a flat tummy, and even tighter white shorts cut sharp and high over long, tanned thighs. But she wore too much make-up and he could see the dark roots in her hair. Common as muck, Joan would have said, in the Lancashire accent that had never left her, no matter how long she’d been here. A real tart, a piece of white trash. No wonder her kid was a burglar, a ring thief, a robber of memories, defiler of all things decent and wholesome.

Frank watched her totter down the street on her ridiculous high heels and go into the laundromat. It took about half an hour for the wash cycle and about as long again to get things dry. That gave Frank an hour. He paid his bill, crossed the street and entered the apartment building.

He hadn’t really formed a plan, even during the hours he had spent watching the building that morning. He knew from last night that the apartment was on the third floor at the back, right in the centre, which made it easy to find. The corridor smelled of soiled diapers and Pine-Sol. When he stood outside the door, he listened for a while. All he could hear was a baby crying on the next floor up and the bass boom of a stereo deep in the basement.

Frank had never broken the law in his life, and he was intelligent enough to recognize the irony of what he was about to do. But he was going to do it anyway because the absence of the ring was beginning to make his life hell. Nothing else really mattered.

For three days he had waited for the boy to return Joan’s jewellery, as his mother had told him to do. Three days of nail-biting memories: dreaming about the German soldier he had killed again; reliving Joan’s long illness and death; watching again, as if it were yesterday, the woman he had loved and lived with for nearly fifty years waste away in agony in front of his eyes. So thin did she become that one day the ring simply slipped off her finger onto the shiny pink quilt.

And now that he was on the brink of remembering the final horror, her death, the ring had assumed the potency of a talisman. He must have it back to keep his sanity, to keep the last memories at bay.

He had watched people on television open doors with credit cards, so he took out his seniors’ discount card and tried to push it between the door and the lock. It wouldn’t fit. He could get it part of the way in, then something blocked it; he waggled it back and forth, but still nothing happened. He cursed. This didn’t happen on television. What was he going to do now? It looked as if he was destined to fail. He rested his head against the wood and tried to think.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

His heart jumped and he turned as quickly as he could.

‘I said what do you think you’re doing?’

It was her, the slut, standing there with her hands on her hips. It was disgusting, that bare midriff. He could see her belly button. He looked away.

‘No, please.’ He found his voice. ‘Don’t. I won’t harm you.’

She laughed. ‘You harm me!’ she said. ‘That’s a laugh. Now go on, get out of here before I really do call the police. Old man.’

Frank had to admit she certainly didn’t look scared. ‘No, you don’t understand,’ he said. There was nothing for it now but to trust her. ‘The robbery. I overheard. You see, it was my house your son broke into.’

She stared at him for a moment, her expression slowly softening, turning sad. She was quite pretty, really, he thought. She had a nice mouth, though her eyes looked a bit hard.

‘You’d better come in, hadn’t you?’ she said, pushing past him and opening the door. ‘I came back for more quarters. Just as well I did, isn’t it, or who knows what might have happened?’ She had a husky voice, probably from smoking too much.

The room was sparsely furnished, mostly from the Salvation Army or Goodwill, by the looks of it, but it was clean and the only unpleasant smell Frank noticed was stale tobacco. The woman pulled a packet of Rothmans from her bag, sat down on the wing of an armchair and lit up. She blew out a plume of smoke, crossed her legs and looked at Frank. ‘Sit down, it’ll hold your weight,’ she said, nodding towards the threadbare armchair opposite her. He sat. ‘Now what do you want? Is it money?’

‘I just want what’s mine,’ Frank said. ‘Your son stole my wife’s jewellery. It’s very important to me, especially the wedding ring. I’d like it back.’

She frowned. ‘Wedding ring? There wasn’t no wedding ring.’

‘What?’

‘I told you. There wasn’t no wedding ring.’ Sighing, she got up and went into another room. She came back with a handful of jewellery. ‘That’s all I found.’

Frank looked through it. The only pieces he recognized were the gold chain and the pair of cheap earrings. The rest, he supposed, must have been stolen from another house. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘What happened to the ring?’

‘How should I know?’ She stubbed her half-smoked cigarette out viciously. ‘Maybe he sold it already, or threw it away. Look, I gotta go before someone steals the laundry. That’s all I need.’

He grabbed her arm. ‘No, wait. Can I talk to him? Maybe he’ll tell me. I have to find that ring. I’m sorry… I…’ He let her go, and before he knew it, he was crying.

She rubbed her arm. ‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘There’s no need for that. Shit. Listen, Daryl’s a bit non-communicative these days. It’s his age, just a phase he’s going through. You know what teenagers are like. Basically, he’s a good kid, it’s just… well, with his father gone… Look, I’ll talk to him again, OK? I promise. But I don’t want you coming round here bothering us no more, you understand? I know he’s done wrong, and he’ll pay for it. Just leave it to me, huh? Take the chain and the earrings for now. For Christ’s sake, take it all.’

‘I only want the ring,’ Frank said. ‘He can keep the rest.’

‘I told you, I’ll talk to him. I’ll ask him about it. OK? Here.’

Frank looked up to see her thrusting a handful of tissues towards him at arm’s length. Her eyes had softened a little but still remained wary. He took the tissues and rubbed his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s been such an ordeal. My wife died three years ago. Cancer. I keep a few of her things, for memories, you understand, and the ring’s very important. I know it’s sentimental of me, but we were happy all those years. I don’t know how I’ve survived without her.’

‘Yeah, tell me about it,’ she said. ‘Ain’t life a bitch. Look, I’m sorry, mister, really I am. But please, don’t go to the police, OK? That’s trouble I could do without right now. I promise I’ll do what I can. All right? Give me your number. I’ll call you.’

Frank watched the broken cigarette still smouldering in the ashtray. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He nodded, gave the woman his telephone number and shuffled out of the apartment. Only when he found himself holding the revolver in his hand at home in the early evening did he realize he didn’t even know the woman’s name.

A day passed. Nothing. Another day. Nothing. Long gaps between the memories, when nothing seemed to be happening at all. Most of the time Frank sat at his bedroom window, lights out, watching the apartment. He cleaned his gun. There were no more rows. Mostly the place was dark and empty at night.

At first, he thought they’d moved, but on the second night he saw the light come on at about midnight and glimpsed the boy cross by the window. Then it went dark again until about two, when he saw the woman. She must work in a bar or something, he thought. It figured. The next thing he knew it was morning and he couldn’t remember why he had been sitting by the window all night. The sun was up, the birds were singing, and his joints were so stiff he could hardly stand up.

Still he heard nothing from the mother. He had been a fool to trust her.

After three days he decided to confront her again. Rather, he found himself walking into her building, for that was the way things seemed to be happening more and more these days. He could never remember the point at which he decided to do something; he just found himself doing it.

Halfway up the stairs to her apartment, he suddenly had no idea where he was or why he was there. He stopped, heart heavy and chest tight with panic. Then the memory flooded back in the image of the ring, burnished gold, bright as fire in his mind’s eye, slightly tilted so he could read the inscription clearly: ‘NO GREATER LOVE.’ He walked on.

He hammered on the door so hard that people came out of other apartments to see what was going on, but nobody answered.

‘My ring!’ he shouted at the door. ‘I want my ring.’

‘Get out before I call the police,’ one of the neighbours said. Frank turned and glared. The frightened woman backed into her apartment and slammed the door. He felt the sweat bead on his wrinkled forehead and ran his hand over his sparse grey hair. Slowly, he walked away.

Finally his telephone rang. He snatched up the receiver. ‘Yes? Hello,’ he said.

‘It’s me.’ It was the woman’s voice, husky and low. He heard her blow out smoke before she went on. ‘I heard you come over here again. You shouldn’t of done that. Look, I’ve talked to Daryl and I’m sorry. He said he threw the ring away because it had writing on it and he didn’t think he’d be able to sell it. I know how important it was to you, but-’

‘Where did he throw it?’

‘He says he doesn’t remember. Look, mister, give us a break here, please. Things are tough enough as it is. He’s not a real criminal, otherwise he’d of known he could sell it to someone who’d melt it down, wouldn’t he? He won’t do anything like that again, honest.’

‘That won’t bring my ring back, will it?’

‘I’m sorry. If I could bring it back, I would. What can I do? I’ll save up. I’ll give you some money.’ He heard her inhale the smoke again and blow it out, then he thought he heard her sniffle. ‘Look, maybe we can even come to some… arrangement… if you know what I mean. You must be lonely, aren’t you? I saw the way you were looking at me when I found you outside my door. Just give Daryl a chance. Don’t go to the police. Please, I’m beg-’

Frank slammed the phone down. If only he could think clearly. Things had gone too far. This whore and her evil offspring had conspired to ruin what little peace he had left in his life: his memories of Joan. What did they know about his marriage, about the happy years, the shock of Joan’s illness and the agony of her death, the agony he suffered with her? How could a woman like that know how much the ring meant to him? She probably hadn’t even tried to find it.

The next thing he knew, he was walking along the boardwalk. When he took stock of his surroundings and saw the ruffled blue of the lake and the tilted white sails of boats, heard the seagulls screech and the children play, he felt as if he were in one of those jump-frame videos he had seen on television once, with no idea how he got from one frame to the next, and with seconds, minutes, hours missing in between.

It was dark. That much he knew. Dark and the boy was at home. She was at work. He knew because he had followed her to the bar where she worked, watched her put on her apron and start serving drinks. He didn’t know where he had been or what he had done or dreamed all day, but now it was dark, the boy was at home and the gun lay heavy and warm in his pocket.

The boy, Daryl, simply opened the door and let him in. Such arrogance. Such cockiness. Frank could hardly believe it. The music was deafening.

‘Turn it off,’ he said.

Daryl shrugged and did so. ‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘My mother told me you’ve been pestering her. We should call the law on you. I’ll bet you’re one of those dirty old men, aren’t you? Are you trying to get in my mother’s pants? Or are you a pervert? Is it young boys you like?’ He struck a parody of a sexy pose.

Out of the window, Frank could see the upstairs light he had left on in his house over the laneway. Daryl was smoking, his free hand slapping against his baggies in time to some imaginary music. He wouldn’t keep still, kept walking up and down the room. Frank just stood there, by the door.

‘How old are you?’ Frank asked.

‘What’s it to you, pervert?’

‘Have you been taking drugs?’

‘What if I have? What are you going to do about it?’

‘Where’s my ring?’

He curled his upper lip back and laughed. ‘Bottom of the lake. Or maybe in the garbage. I don’t remember.’

‘Please,’ said Frank. ‘Where is it? It’s all I have left of her.’

‘Tough shit. Get a life, old man.’

‘You don’t understand.’

Daryl stopped pacing and thrust his chin out towards Frank. The tendons in his neck stood out like cables. ‘Yes, I do. You think I’m a fucking retard, don’t you, just like the teachers do? Well, fuck the lot of you. It was your wife’s ring. It’s all you’ve got to remember her by. Read my lips. I don’t fucking care!’

Blinking back the tears, Frank stuck his hand in his pocket for the gun. He actually felt his hand tighten around the handle and his finger slip into the trigger guard before he relaxed his grip and let go. At the time he didn’t know why he was doing it, but the next thing he knew he was walking down the stairs.

‘And stay away from us!’ he heard Daryl shout after him.

Out in the street, with no memory of going out the door, he found himself on the boardwalk again. It was dark and there was nobody else around except a man walking his dog. Frank went and sat out on the rocks. The lake stretched like black satin ahead of him, smudged with thin white moonlight. Water slopped around the rock at his feet and splashed over his ankles. He thought he could see lights over on the American side.

The next thing Frank knew he was at home and something like a thunderbolt cracked inside his head, filling it with light. It was all so clear now. It was time to let go. He laughed. So simple. From his window, he could see Daryl light another cigarette, hear the loud music. What did his feelings matter to Daryl or his mother? They didn’t. And why should they? Nothing really mattered now, but at least he knew what he had to do. He had known the moment he got close enough to Daryl to see the tattoo of a swastika on his cheek below his left eye.

Even though it was dark, Frank managed to arrange the stuff on his lawn. He was thinking clearly now. His life had regained its sense of continuity. No more jump-frame reality. The memory he had tried so hard to deny had forced itself on him now the ring was gone, the talisman that had protected him for so long. It wasn’t such a bad thing. In a way, he was free. It was all over.

It was a warm night. A raccoon snuffled around the neighbour’s garbage. It stopped and looked at Frank with its calm, black-ringed eyes. He moved forward and stamped his foot on the sidewalk to make it go away. It simply stared at him until it was ready to go, then it waddled arrogantly along the street. Far in the distance, a car engine revved. Other shapes detached themselves from the darkness and proved even more difficult to chase away than the raccoon, but Frank held his ground.

Carefully, he arranged the objects around him on the dark lawn. By the time he had finished, the sun was coming up, promising a perfect day for a lawn sale. Now that everything was neatly laid out, the memory was complete; he could keep nothing at bay.

What a death Joan’s had been. She had spent ten years doing it, in and out of hospital, one useless operation after another, night after sleepless night of agony despite the pills. He remembered now the times she had begged him to finish her, saying she would do it herself if she had the strength, if she could move without making the knives twist and cut up her insides.

And every time he let her down. He couldn’t do it, and he didn’t really know why. Surely if he really loved her, he told himself, he would have killed her to stop her suffering? But that argument didn’t work. He knew that he loved her, but he still couldn’t kill her.

Once, he stood over her for ten minutes holding a pillow in his hands, and he felt her willing him to push it down over her face. Her tongue was swollen, her gums had receded and her teeth were falling out. Every time he smoothed her head with his hand, tufts of dry hair stuck to his palm.

But he had thrown the cushion aside and run out of the house. Why couldn’t he do it? Because he couldn’t imagine life without her, no matter how much pain and anguish she suffered to stay with him, no matter how little she now resembled the wife he had married? Perhaps. Selfishness? Certainly. Cowardice? Yes.

At last she had gone. Not with a quiet whisper like a candle flame snuffed out, not gently, but with convulsions and loud screams as if fish hooks had ripped a bloody path through her insides.

And he remembered her last look at him, the bulging eyes, the blood trickling from her nose and mouth. How could he forget that look? Through all the final agony, through the knowledge that the release of death was only seconds away, the hard glint of accusation in her eyes was unmistakable.

Frank wiped the tears from his stubbly cheeks and held the gun on his lap as the sun grew warmer and the city came to life around him. Soon he would find the courage to do to himself what he hadn’t been able to do for the wife he loved, what he had only been able to do to some nameless German soldier who haunted his dreams. Soon.

By the time the tourists got here all they would see was an old man asleep amid the detritus of his life: the torso of a tailor’s dummy; yards of moth-eaten fabrics and folded patterns made of tissue paper; baking dishes; cake tins; cookie cutters shaped like hearts and lions; a silver cigarette lighter; a Nazi armband; a tattered copy of Mein Kampf; medals; a bayonet; a German dagger with a mother-of-pearl swastika inlaid in its handle.