Amelia Gray: Threats

David exhaled. Without sight, the light of his mind barely illuminated a shimmer at the base of the stairs. His mind took a step forward and down, toward the lapping water. The stair underneath him was cold. The concrete of the stair and floor held the water in a quiet pool. There was a ceremony in his posture.

“Like a paper boat on a still lake,” Marie said. Her voice was very close. “A paper boat, on a still lake. Your mind is a paper boat on a still lake, floating away. Your mind is floating away. You see a still lake, you are a still lake. On the still lake is the still in which you place your mind. Your mind is folded into the folds of a paper boat. The lake is so still that placing your mind in it causes three ripples that extend farther than your eye can follow. The lake beyond is still. You push a paper boat away and watch it float like a float, like a paper boat, a boat on a still lake.”

David was aware of Marie’s hand on his chest. “Stop,” he said, reaching for it. Her hand was not on his chest. He opened his eyes. She was sitting with her hands on her lap. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just beginning to feel something.”

She looked at her watch. “You were down there for a while.”

“For how long?”

“I’m not sure. I think I put myself under for a while there. Fifteen minutes?”

“Did I say anything?”

“You kept saying ‘Paper boat on a still lake,’” she said. “I thought that was very lovely.”

“You were saying that.”

“Was I?” She touched her fingers to her temple. “Huh.”

David sat up and braced himself on the floor to stand. “Thanks for your help, Marie.” A wasp stung his collarbone on the way out.

THE INSTITUTION would feed its charges as cheaply as possible. Flat sandwiches housed lonesome rounds of bologna. For the lucky, a bag of chips arrived uncrushed. Carton of milk, carton of juice. Foil crimped on the edges, and peeling it unsealed the professional vacuum. The juice could expand and breathe once before dying, like the oysters men opened at Gulf Coast lunch counters.

At all institutions, the diet-restricted were provided with oversweet gelatin and unbuttered toast. The toast was always perfectly prepared, to the point where one could sense years of toast behind it, an entire lineage of toast emerging from the oven. She thought of her husband while she ate toast.

Food at prisons, hospitals, and similar care facilities has the same nutritional profile. Congressmen fought hard for this nutrition, bringing in experts who would claim that patients needed vitamins and that the brains of inmates required nutrients to make essential decisions in violent situations. The inmate brain on excess sugar could rage like any animal, the government nutritionists would claim, and there it would be, written out on a piece of paper and therefore true. David’s mother hadn’t touched a noncontraband square of chocolate in years.

She chewed her toast and thought of her husband on his inversion table, arms loose by his head, the skin of his body sinking earthward. She thought of the image of sweet calm on his face at the moment she told him what had happened to their daughter, her own confusion afterward as he reddened and shouted a series of noises that seemed unlike words, pulling his body toward his ankles, so strong suddenly after years of weakness, the chair swinging forward so violently that she barely had time to jump back as he crouched toward his ankles but overswung his weight and tipped hilariously forward, the entire thing askew — she thought he had been so unhappy — the rear supports tipping into the air and sending the upper piece of the machine back to jam into the wall, trapping him inside, his strangled pleading not unlike the sounds their child had made, her husband wedged there in the wall, the image of him crouched in the corner of their home like some wild creature, blood-bearing veins in his body stretched to capacity around his neck and bursting in his eyes.

It had been a violent enough reaction that she refused to speak for days, despite her husband’s pleading as to where to send the police. She drove to the motel parking lot and broke into one of the old rooms and took her pitiful few remaining nausea pills and stayed there, horizontal on a mattress, until she heard the sirens and drove home and waited for them to come find her.

As an old woman, David’s mother felt ineffective at most things. She remembered her daughter floating in five inches of water, stretched in it, fluid seeping into her little lungs.

THREE NEW MESSAGES. One saved message. First new message. From, phone number two three four, seven three two, seven eight four two. Received, February fourth at ten-twenty a.m.

David, this is Aileen at the salon. I want you to know that you know you know what you say you know and I know you know more than you say you know and you know I know you know and—

Message erased. Next new message. From, phone number two three four, seven three two, seven eight four two. Received, February fourth at ten-twenty-two a.m.

David, Aileen. I need you to call me. Please call me. Imagine how much better you’ll feel if you do. We’ll both feel so much better. We have to get to the bottom of this, and I think that with what you know combined with what I know, you know, I know, David—

Message erased. Next new message. From, phone number two three four, seven three two, seven eight four two. Received, February fourth at ten-twenty-five a.m.

Please come see me. I can’t stay here wondering. I know you’re sitting somewhere wondering what’s going on. We have that in common. I can’t see clients. I can’t see them without seeing her. She’s everywhere.

Message erased. First saved message. From, phone number three three zero, eight four five, three four three three. Received, October fifteenth at eleven-eleven a.m.

Hey. Please wash and prep the vegetables before I get home. We’re in a hurry. Sorry. See you.

Saved. There are no more messages. Main menu. Listen, one. Send, two. Personal options, three. Call, eight. Exit, star.

First saved message. From, phone number three three zero, eight four five, three four three three. Received, October fifteenth at eleven-eleven a.m.

Hey. Please wash and prep the vegetables before I get home. We’re in a hurry. Sorry. See you.

Saved. There are no more messages. Main menu. Listen, one. Send, two. Personal options, three. Call, eight. Exit, star.

First saved message. From, phone number three three zero, eight four five, three four three three. Received, October fifteenth at eleven-eleven a.m.

Hey. Please wash and prep the vegetables before I get home. We’re in a hurry. Sorry. See you.

Saved. There are no more messages. Main menu. Listen, one. Send, two. Personal options, three. Call, eight. Exit, star. To indicate your choice, press the number of the option you wish to select. Whenever you need more information about the options, press zero for help. You can interrupt these instructions at any time by pressing a key to make your selection.

AN EARLY THAW CAME. Brown birds alighted on branches and took in the scene. Ice gave way to slush, which chilled the sewer grates as it slipped through and iced again in the old dead leaves hidden underneath. A pregnant deer walked uncertainly through the yard, frowned in a way a deer frowns, and walked up the road. The world uncovered itself. Children who had been born in winter saw the melting world for the first time, and they were wary.

David took a long walk around the neighborhood. His neighbors were out shoveling rotten leaves. Everyone was still in their winter gear but seemed more optimistic about things.