Linwood Barclay - Bad Move

“God, Zack,” she said, shaking her head and reaching for one of the Peek Freans cookies I’d set out on a plate. Sarah’d taught me never to serve right out of the bag. “You’re a piece of work. And a control freak. Where do you get off, trying to control everyone else’s behavior?”

“Sarah called me an asshole.”

Trixie nodded. “Big surprise there.” She had a bite of a jelly cream. “What do the kids think when you pull a stunt like that?”

That’s when I told her about how both of them had suggested that this was a sequel to The Backpack Incident. That was when Trixie asked her question.

“It’s kind of embarrassing,” I said. “It’s like a sickness with me or something, that I have to take desperate measures to make my point. Usually matters related to personal safety and security. That’s the whole reason why I hid Sarah’s car. Not to make a fool of her, but to teach-”

“Yeah yeah, I heard all that. So what’s up with the backpack thing?”

“When the kids come home from school,” I began, “they walk in the door and drop their stuff wherever they happen to be standing. Jackets, shoes, whatever. They haven’t opened the front-hall closet door once since we moved in here. I don’t even know if they know it’s there. The concept of slipping a coat onto a hanger has eluded them right into their teens.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And their backpacks just get dumped wherever. You come in the front door after the kids come home and there’s a good chance, if you’re not watching where you’re going, you’re going to fall over them.”

“No one knows the hell that is your life.”

I smiled. “Gee, is Sarah home? That could be her talking. Anyway, I was yelling at them to take their backpacks upstairs, and for a while there it’s like they were actually listening to me, but that just created another problem, because they’d lug their backpacks up to the top of the stairs-and I don’t know whether you’ve ever lifted a high school kid’s backpack these days but you’ll throw your back out if you try-and they’d leave them there.”

“Where?”

“At the top of the stairs.”

“But that’s where you wanted them, right? Upstairs?”

I nodded furiously. “Yes, yes, but not right at the top of the stairs. Okay, picture this. You’re carrying a laundry basket or you’ve got something in your hand you’re looking at, and you get to the top of the stairs and generally assume that the way is clear.”

“But it’s not.”

“They’ve left their backpacks right there, in the way, so if you’re not paying attention you’ll trip on them and break your neck.”

“Okay, so you talked to them about this?”

“Oh yeah. Many times. And they’d always say the same thing. ‘Okay, Dad, we hear you.’ In that really tired way kids have of talking. I know you probably told me this but I don’t remember-you don’t have any kids, right?”

Trixie shook her head.

“So anyway, the next day they’d come home and leave them in the same place again. Sarah nearly killed herself, grabbed onto the railing at the last second to keep from going headlong down the stairs.”

“She got mad.”

“She blew her stack. Took the backpacks and literally threw them down the stairs. I thought that would do it, better than anything I’d ever done. But a couple of weeks later, they both came in after school, ran upstairs, and dropped their backpacks in the same place.”

Trixie nodded slowly. “The last straw.”

“Yeah. I decided it was time to take action.”

Trixie smiled, rolled her eyes. I continued: “They’d both gone into Paul’s room. They’re not like a lot of brothers and sisters. They fight, but not all that much. They talk to each other, find out what’s going on. There’s things they talk about, Sarah and I have no idea. So Angie was in Paul’s room, and they’d turned on some music in case I decided to put my ear up to the door and listen in.”

“Which you would never do.”

“So I take the two backpacks, and arrange them along the stairs on the way down, as though they’d been knocked by someone who hadn’t seen them.” I paused. “And then I went down to the bottom of the stairs, and arranged myself across them.”

“What do you mean, arranged yourself?”

“Like, you know, I’d fallen. I worked my legs up the first four steps or so, lying on my stomach, then put my head down on the carpet at the bottom of the stairs, with my arms stretched out.”

Trixie didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally: “You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“You didn’t spread some ketchup around? Like from the corner of your mouth, or out of your nose?”

“The broadloom is really new,” I said.

“You pretended to be dead.” Trixie wasn’t asking a question, just making a statement.

“Well, wounded, anyway. I could have been knocked out. Not necessarily dead. A concussion or something. It’s not like I wanted them to assume the worst thing right off the bat.”

“So they came out and found you?”

“Not right away. After about five minutes of lying there, I was getting a bad crick in my neck. I decided I needed to make a sound, a falling sound, so I slapped my hands on the floor as hard as I could. But when we were picking our upgrades for the house, we got the expensive underpad, so it hardly made any noise at all. So I got up, and jumped as hard as I could on the floor, then got back into position as fast as I could.”

I took a breath. “I guess Angie heard it, because she showed up at the top of the stairs first, and I guess she took the scene in pretty fast, because she screamed, and then Paul showed up behind her, and Angie came down the stairs, and I was doing a pretty good job of not moving, and holding my breath-”

“So you were trying to look dead.”

“And Angie was calling out my name and asking if I was okay, and I guess I had my eyes open just a slit, to see what was going on, and I notice that Paul isn’t there, and the first thing I think is, Doesn’t he care? His father’s broken his neck and he doesn’t want to offer me an aspirin or something?”

“Let me guess. He’d gone to make a phone call.”

I nodded. “Two, actually.”

I told Trixie that when Paul reappeared at the top of the stairs, I opened my eyes all the way. Angie nearly screamed, and when she did, Paul almost slipped down the stairs himself. I pulled myself into a sitting position. Angie asked me what had happened, was I okay, and Paul was telling me not to move, an ambulance was on the way.

“An ambulance?” I said. “What the hell did you call an ambulance for?”

“I thought you were dead! Aren’t you hurt?”

I shook my head violently. “No no no! I’m fine. Can’t you see that I’m fine? I was just trying to teach you guys a lesson about leaving your goddamn backpacks at the top of the stairs. How many times have I told you not to do that?”

“I don’t know, Dad,” said Paul. “How many times have we told you not to pretend you’ve killed yourself?”

“I can’t believe you,” said Angie, who was pulling away from me. “You’re totally whacked.”

Paul was shaking his head slowly, then stopped suddenly. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” I said.

“I guess I better call back Mom.”

“You called your mother?”

“When I saw you lying there dead, yeah, I thought she might want to know.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. Who knew that my son was going to act so responsibly, calling 911, getting in touch with Sarah. Kids can let you down in the strangest of ways. “You have to call her back,” I said. “Tell her I’m okay.” And then it hit me. “The ambulance! Call back the ambulance! Tell them not to come.”