Christopher Conlon - Savaging the Dark

Our mood has gone serious. “Connor, honey, will you put your clothes on now, please?”

“Okay,” he says. I watch him, watch his body vanish from me in stages until he’s completely finished except for his coat and shoes. He stands beside me, taller than me now since I’m sitting on the edge of the bed. I touch him, put my arms around him, feel him embrace me. We hold each other, hold on for dear, dear life.

After he’s gone I call Gracie’s school, apologize profusely, say I got hung up in a meeting. The woman sounds considerably less patient than she had in the morning. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I say, “I’ll be there in a few minutes, just please give me a few minutes.” I rush around the house, wipe down the tub and shower and tile floor, pull all the towels down—did he touch any towels? I can’t remember—and throw them in laundry basket. Then I strip the guest bed, flush the Kleenexes down the toilet, push the blanket into the washing machine along with anything else that fits, switch the thing to Hot, the hottest water it has, the hottest water in the world, start it. I grab the half-filled tea cups off the table and run scalding water over them, soap them, rinse and dry them, put them back where they belong on the shelf. No evidence. No evidence and it didn’t happen. It did not happen.

When I pick up Gracie I’m breathless, flustered. The woman tells me coolly that they’ll have to charge extra for this after-hours care and would I please not repeat this as the staff has responsibilities of their own and the day is supposed to end at yes yes I’m terribly sorry it won’t happen again I promise thank you thank you so much. By the time we get home the first washing is done and I pull the blanket and other things out, place them in the dryer, switch it on. Then I throw everything else into the machine and hit Start again. Gracie watches me, her expression curious. After a while she goes off to read her book in the living room.

Finally I close the door to the laundry room and things grow quiet. I sit in a chair near Gracie, close my eyes, breathe. It’s done, I think. It’s over. And it didn’t happen. As far as the world is concerned it didn’t happen. There’s no evidence that anything happened.

A moment later Gracie looks up from her book and says, scowling, “That boy was here, wasn’t he? I can smell him.”

I am someone’s mother.

I am someone’s wife.

I am a teacher of young children.

I sleep alone that night, Bill away at his convention, Gracie tucked in bed in her own room. But I don’t sleep. Not at all. I stare into the darkness. Shapes seem to form in it when I gaze at one spot long enough: circles, expanding vortexes about to engulf me. I thrash back and forth on the bed, pull the covers over myself, kick them off again. It didn’t happen, I think. It didn’t happen. That was not me. That was a movie, some grotesque child porn movie that somehow found its way into this house. I did not act that way. I did not do those things. My life is secure and complete with my husband and daughter and job. I have no need of anything else. I’m happy, satisfied. I have everything a woman could want. My marriage is a good one to a good man. My daughter is an angel. We have plenty of money. My job couldn’t be more fulfilling. I am a good person.

I curl up in a fetal position, tremble violently in the dark. I push my face into the pillow, cry, cry for hours, cry until my head throbs and my muscles ache and my stomach hurts and the pillow is covered with tears and saliva and mucus. When I’m not crying I’m screaming, screaming with the pillow pushed tightly against my mouth until my throat is shredded and inflamed. Oh my dear God, I think. I’m a child molester. I had sex with a child. I can hardly swallow. I cough and blood spatters the pillow. I’m one of those people, those people you see on the news, teachers, coaches, priests, usually men but sometimes women. Sexual predators. That’s not someone else anymore, it’s me. That’s my life. Back, I think. Turn backward, time in thy flight. Let me have the past twelve hours to do again. Or the past weeks, with Connor and I growing closer, ever closer, too close. I knew we were too close and yet I was unable to stop the train of catastrophe from racing at us, crushing us under its wheels. Let me do it again, those hours again, I plead with someone, anyone. I won’t make the same mistake, I’ll not invite him over at all, I’ll not gaze hungrily at him when I know he’s not looking, I’ll not let my thoughts go wild and crazed, I will do everything differently everything differently please please I will.

Hours of this. All night. As a gray dawn begins to glow dimly in the windows I am utterly, comprehensively exhausted, flattened, dead. There’s nothing left, I know. Connor will tell someone. Connor has been naked in front of Ms. Straw and she’s taken his privates in her hands and made him shoot off everywhere and he’s seen her breasts and nipples and held them and kissed them and he’s kissed her on the lips and she’s French-kissed him with her tongue and he will tell someone, he’s bound to. He said his friends talk about jacking off. How can an eleven-year-old boy not talk? He’ll talk. I know he’ll talk. Bogart’s line from Casablanca , absurdly, comes to me: Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. He might not talk today or tomorrow but he will talk and then for the rest of my life I’ll be a criminal, a felon, jail time, damaged, dirty, sick, humiliated, unemployable, certainly divorced and never allowed to lay eyes on my daughter again let alone touch her or hold her. Stupid! I think, banging my fists against my head. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

And what if he doesn’t? There are other ways it could come out. My body had been jolted, my face drained of its blood the moment Gracie had said, “That boy was here, wasn’t he? I can smell him.” Smell him! Of course. All his sweat, all his hormones raging. Of course my daughter could smell him. All the desperate work I’d done to wash the bed things and the bathroom and dispose of the evidence and it took a four-year-old girl only minutes to realize the truth. Not the whole truth. She could not even imagine the whole truth, at four. But enough to tell her dad, enough to make Bill wonder about his wife’s preoccupation with this boy, why she would have him over when no one else was here, why she was so late (for he might find this out, too) to pick up Gracie that afternoon, why (maybe even this as well) she was suddenly in such a frenzy to do laundry, lots of laundry, unusual things like the blanket in the guest room. What is going on, Mona? There’s something you’re not telling me.

Yes, there is, Bill. Sit down and I’ll tell you about what this boy and I do together when you’re not home. I’ll tell you what your ten years of loyal marriage to me have earned you. I’ll tell you what being a good husband and father and always coming home at night and being caring and sensitive to us both has gotten you.

As the dull dawn slowly brightens I clench my eyes shut. It’s gray and rainy and half-dark but it’s too bright, much too bright for me to face. I can never face such light again. I don’t deserve it. I can’t stand it. But I’m too depleted to feel anything about it. All I know, all I realize, all I suddenly remember is that in the bottom drawer of the nightstand on Bill’s side is a hand gun, an old pistol he insists on having around the house for protection. It was his grandfather’s. I drag myself across the bed and reach to the drawer, open it. The gun is there, gray, ugly. I don’t know what kind it is, I know nothing about guns. I’ve never shot a gun in my life, never held one until Bill brought this one into the house years ago and tried to get me to take shooting lessons. I would have nothing to do with it. I would only go so far as to hold the gun in my hands and pretend to aim it out into the back yard for a moment. After that I quickly handed it back to him. I’m terrified of guns. But now I need it. I take it in my hands. It’s very heavy. I look at it. I don’t know a thing about how it works, only where the trigger is. I hold the terrible gray pistol in my right hand and look down the barrel. I can’t see anything, of course, but I look, hold my eye close, peer into it, study its particular darkness. Then I press the barrel to my right temple quickly and pull the trigger, or try to. But nothing happens. I look at the gun, realize that there is the lever in the back of it, above the handle, that you have to pull back for it to fire. I don’t even know what the lever is called. The pulling back is called cocking, I know that. Cocking. They always do it in old Westerns when they’re having a gun fight. I try to cock the pistol with my thumb, but I can’t move it. I try to cock it with my other hand, but I still can’t do it. My fingers are shaking, my heart smashing. I have to do this quickly or I’ll never do it at all and I will live the life of a despised monster forever. I prop the gun between my knees and awkwardly pull with either hand until the lever finally snaps backward. The gun is now cocked, I know. The gun is cocked and all I have to do is aim and pull the trigger. I aim and pull the trigger. Again nothing happens. I look at the gun and remember that Bill told me about a safety switch, showed it to me. If the switch is on, the gun won’t fire. I look, find it. It’s on. I use my thumb to push it in the other direction, to off. I cock the gun, hold it to my head a third time, feel the hard barrel on my temple, clench my eyes shut, grit my teeth, and pull the trigger. The gun goes snap and jostles slightly in my hand but nothing happens. I cock it again, pull the trigger again. Snap. Again. Snap, snap, snap, snap.