Michael Collings - The Slab

Willard closed the door with a sigh and slumped against it. Made it, he thought. Got them all off and didn’t wake either Sams or Catherine.

“Daddy?”

He looked down. There was Sams, the discolored satin edging of his blanket stuffed into his mouth, the rest of the blanket trailing him like a softly graying ghost. His night diaper hung askew, so sodden that it threatened to pull his printed Iron Man pajama bottoms down to the child’s knees. Willard smelled the pungency of urine and realized that he was not finished yet. One more child to get started this morning.

By the time Sams was changed, dressed, and fed-dry Sugar Crisps and a glass of milk, both of which Willard assumed would get mixed properly during the course of digestion-Willard felt as if he were ready for bed himself.

He carried Sams down the hall, wondering to himself how Catherine managed this day after day. No wonder she was tired and drawn.

He left Sams in the bedroom, happily engrossed with spreading colorful wooden building blocks all across the carpet in random patterns that sent him into fits of giggling.

Willard set the spring-action child gate across the door. There, that would keep him happy and out of the way for a while. Nothing in there can hurt him, Willard thought as he glanced over the room crowded with piles of toys. It’s been completely kid-proofed.

Willard returned to the front bedroom and looked in on Catherine. She was still asleep, but from the way the covers were twisted around her and pulled from the bottom of the bed, it had not been an easy sleep.

He slipped over to the side of the bed and touched her forehead with his hand.

“Huh!” She startled awake immediately.

“It’s okay,” he said quietly.

“What time…oh no, it’s late and I…”

“I took care of everything. The kids got off to school okay. Sams is up and dressed. He’s playing in the bedroom.”

“But…I…”

“You needed to sleep. So I let you sleep.”

She dropped her head back onto the pillow and smiled. “What about work?”

“You wanted me to stay home today and help out a bit.”

“I…did I ask you to? I don’t remember.”

“Well, you were pretty much out of it when I got up. Anyway, there’s nothing at work today that can’t be handled tomorrow, and you really did need to get some sleep. And besides, it was…uh…interesting to see what goes on around here on school mornings. I finally learned the proper way to make a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, compliments of Burt.”

He grinned. Catherine smiled back, but the movement seemed strained. There’s still some carry-over from last night, Willard decided, like the half-remembered echoes of a particularly bad nightmare that linger well into waking.

“Are you okay?” he asked gently.

Catherine seemed to understand that he had subtly shifted the topic of conversation. He was not asking about how well she had slept since he got up at five, or whether she felt better for the additional rest. As obliquely as possible, he was asking about last night.

“I…I don’t know. It was so horrible. They were everywhere. I touched…I felt them….” She shuddered.

He hugged her reassuringly. “I think I got most of them with the Raid. There were a…a couple of dead ones this morning. I cleaned them up.”

She shivered again-and Willard realized that in spite of the exertion of the morning, in spite of being fully dressed, in spite of the furnace roaring away in the living room as it combated the mid-thirties outside, he was chilly, too. He pulled off his shirt (the tie had disappeared long before, about the time Suze grabbed it and smeared a long streak of cinnamon butter on it, a permanent reminder of her breakfast of choice) and toed his loafers off. His pants followed, and then he slipped beneath the covers next to Catherine. They lay together, snuggling in the warmth of their body heat.

Distantly, they heard Sams laughing to himself, following by the occasional click or thump of his building blocks as he devised new shapes and arrangements.

Somehow, without quite being aware of the direction of their movements, Willard and Catherine moved from passive cuddling to more active, more directed movements. Willard was momentarily surprised by the fervor and passion of Catherine’s embraces, aware that she had never felt quite comfortable with making love during the day-a hold over from her rather rigidly traditional upbringing. But this time there was an unusual fervency in her movements, a fevered sense that communicated itself to him as she held him and her hands ranged over his body as if seeking solace…or protection.

Afterward, they lay back, their bodies still intertwined. And as gradually as they had passed from comforting to loving, they passed from loving to sleep. Sams’ cries woke them.

This time Catherine was up before Willard. He was just pulling on his shirt when she returned, swathed in her robe, carrying Sams. The sunlight glinted in the boy’s eyes. His cheeks were flushed as if he had been running, and a couple of glistening runnels marked the track of tears down his cheeks.

“Did he fall down or something?”

“I don’t know,” Catherine said, setting Sams in the middle of the bed and tickling him. Sams looked solemnly at her for a moment before letting down his reserve and falling back on the covers and laughing. The sound was light, tinkling, infectious.

“He was just sitting in the middle of the room, crying. I didn’t see anything wrong.”

“Maybe he was just lonely,” Willard said as he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled his loafers on.

“Or maybe he was frightened by those horrible sounds?” Catherine said, a small smile curving her lips.

“What? What sounds?”

“Coming from this room. The moans and groans and…”

He rolled across the bed, careful not to lay on Sams, who was watching them wide-eyed. “I’ll show you moans and groans, woman,” he said, his voice dropping to a threatening growl.

Sams laughed as Willard grabbed Catherine and pulled her down onto the bed with him, and suddenly there was a free-for-all of arms and legs and tickling and unbounded laughter. Will felt a flood of warmth as he lay with his wife and baby, in his own house. The day was theirs, and all was well with the world.

Catherine seemed completely recovered from the shock of the night before, although even after she was dressed and moving through the house on the innumerable tasks a mother must endure, he noticed that she hesitated fractionally before entering each room. It was as if she were checking things out, scanning the floors and walls for any signs of the phantom intruders of the night before. Fortunately, Willard had already made sure that the bathtub and sinks and kitchen were free from infestation.

Catherine visibly relaxed as they finally sat together at the kitchen table and ate a light breakfast of juice and toast together-fashionably late, but the more pleasant for that. Sams was strapped into his chair, enjoying a second helping of dry Sugar Crisps, most of which ended up on the floor or stuck in his hair.

On an impulse, Catherine reached over to the small radio on the counter and turned it on to KNWS, the local news station she had discovered a day or so after moving in. The station could be counted on to repeat weather and local updates during the morning, giving her a better sense of how to dress the kids for school.

The newscaster’s voice murmured largely unnoticed in the background as she and Willard sat without talking, enjoying the muted quiet, enjoying each other’s presence.

“Cath,” Willard said after a while, as he stood to set his plate in the sink. “How about a drive? It’s cold outside but it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day. We could pack up Sams and head up the coast toward Santa Barbara. Maybe we could…”