Lisa Unger: Darkness My Old Friend

The second book in the Hollows series, 2011

Failure wasn’t a feeling; it was a taste in his mouth, an ache at the base of his neck. It was a frantic hum in his head. The reflection of failure resided in his wife’s tight, fake smile when he came home at the end of the day. He felt the creeping grip of it in her cold embrace. She didn’t even know the worst of it. No one did. But they could all smell it, couldn’t they? It was like booze on his breath.

Traffic on the highway stuttered. He tried to breathe through the trapped-in-a-box feeling that was expanding in his chest, that too-familiar tightness of frustration. He looked around at his fellow commuters, wondering why none of them had taken to screaming, or banging on their dashboards. How did they do it day after day? Killing themselves for pointless jobs that ultimately lined someone else’s pockets. Then they sat in an endless snaking line only to get home to a ceaseless litany of needs. Why? Why did so many people live like this?

This weekend is your very last chance to take advantage of the absolutely rock-bottom prices at Ed’s Automart. No job? Bad credit? Nothing to trade in? No problem. We can help!

Kevin Carr snapped off the radio, that schizophrenic rant of criticism and demands. Eat this. Buy that. Need to lose weight? Whiten your teeth? Bacon double cheeseburger. Personal trainer. Foreclosure auction on Sunday . But the silence that followed was almost worse, because all he could hear then was the sound of his own thoughts-which sounded suspiciously like the radio, only there was no “off” button.

Around him the herd of commuters-some carpoolers, but mostly solitary drivers like himself-gripped their wheels and stared ahead. No one looked happy, did they? People weren’t singing along with the radio or smiling to themselves. Plenty of people were hands-free talking, gesticulating in their conversations as though there were someone sitting beside them. But they were alone. Did people look gray and angry? Did they seem unhealthy, dissatisfied? Or was he just projecting? Was he simply seeing in the world around him a portrait of his own inner life?

He pulled into the right lane quickly, without signaling, cutting off some asshole in a late-model BMW. The other driver made a show of squealing his brakes and leaning on his horn. Kevin looked into the mirror to see the guy flipping him off; the man in the Beemer was yelling, even though he must have known that no one else could hear him. Kevin felt a rush of malicious glee. It was the first time he had smiled all day.

The phone rang. He pressed the button on his steering wheel to answer, though he didn’t like to take calls when he couldn’t see the ID screen. He had so many balls in the air he could hardly keep track of them all.

“Kevin Carr,” he answered.

“Hey.” Paula. “On your way home?”

“Almost at the exit,” he said.

“The baby needs diapers. And Cameron feels a little warm. Can you get some Motrin?”

“Sure,” he said. “Anything else?”

“I think that’s it. I did manage to get us all to the grocery store today.” He heard water running in the background, the clinking of dishes in the sink. “ And we got through it without a meltdown-if you can believe it. Cammy was such a good boy. But I forgot the diapers.”

He could see them there. Claire still in the baby carrier mounted on the cart, Cameron trailing behind Paula-pulling stuff off the shelves, clowning around. Paula was always together, with her hair brushed and her makeup done. She wasn’t like the other mothers he had seen the few times he’d dropped Cameron off at preschool-circles under their eyes, stains on their shirts, hair wild. He wouldn’t allow that.

“Make a list next time,” he said.

In the silence that followed, he heard the baby start to mew. The sound of it, that wheedling little cry that would turn to screaming if someone didn’t figure out what in the hell she wanted, made him cringe. It was an accusation, an indictment, and a conviction all at once.

“Okay, Kevin,” Paula said. Any initial brightness had left her voice completely. “Thanks for the advice.”

“I didn’t mean-”

But she’d hung up already.

In the grocery store, Elton John thought that it was lonely out in space. Elton sang about how he was not the man they think he is at home. Kevin knew too well what he meant. He wandered the massive aisles. They were stacked with garishly packaged, processed promises-low-fat, no carbs, sugar-free, no trans fats, no cholesterol, ultra-slimming, buy-one-get-one-free, all-natural. In the baby aisle, everything went pink, blue, and yellow, little ducks and frogs, Dora the Explorer, Elmo. He searched for the green-and-brown packaging of the diapers Paula liked for the baby-organic, biodegradable. This was his personal favorite, the whole organic thing. Corporations had been raping and pillaging the environment since the industrial revolution-spewing waste into the air and water, mowing down the rain forests, poisoning the earth. And now, all of a sudden, it was up to the individual to save the planet-by paying twice as much for “green” products, thereby increasing the profit margin of the very companies that were responsible for global warming, the almost-total depletion of natural resources, not to mention obesity and all its related diseases. It killed him, it really did.

At the gleaming row of cash registers, the young, pretty girl was free, thumbing through the pages of some celebrity rag. What was her name? He didn’t have his glasses on, so he couldn’t read her name tag. Tracie? Trixie? Trudie?

“Hey, Mr. Carr. I saw your wife and kids earlier,” she said. She dragged his purchases over the sensor. Diapers: $12.99. Motrin: $8.49. Looking at twenty-year-old tits: priceless. He didn’t need his glasses to see those.

Paula had nursed Cameron until he’d turned two, just a month before they’d realized she was pregnant again. And now she was going on eighteen months with Claire (though she’d promised him she’d stop after a year). They’d both come to see her breasts as something utilitarian, the way they came out of her shirt without a second thought as soon as Claire started fussing. Gone were the lace push-ups and silky camisoles. Now, if Paula wore a bra at all, it had this snapping mechanism on the cup to unlatch, so the baby could nurse. Tracie Trixie-Trudy was probably wearing something pink and pretty, her breasts like peaches, no baby attached sucking away her sexiness.

“You’re so lucky,” the girl was saying. “You have such a beautiful family.”

“It’s true,” he said. He looked into his wallet. No cash, as usual. He stared at the tops of seven credit cards peeking, colorful and mocking in their leather slots. He couldn’t remember which one wasn’t maxed out. “I’m blessed.”

With a smile he swiped the Platinum Visa and held his breath until the signature line showed on the electronic pad.