A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

In all the years, I’ve never failed to show up, have only twice had to reschedule a class, once for a root canal and the other a gallbladder attack.

I call the university, I call my department, I call the secretary of the Dean of the school to which I am affiliated — voice mail everywhere. I cannot find a real person to talk to. What will happen if I don’t show up, how long will they sit there? I phone the security office. “This is Professor Silver. I have an emergency.”

“Do you need a paramedic?”

“I am already in the hospital, but I am supposed to teach a class in two minutes; could someone go and put a note on the door telling the students that I have canceled?”

“One of our men, an officer?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not what we do.”

I try another tactic. “But of course it’s exactly what you do. If no one shows up, if no one of authority takes charge, there could be rioting. This is a course on politics, and you know what that means — radical ideas are loosened, the students feel empowered, mark my words.”

“What should the note say?”

“Professor Silver has had a family emergency and will not be in class. He is sorry and will make it up to you.”

“All right, then, and what building and room?”

“Can you look it up for me? I never pay attention to the names and numbers.”

“Hold,” he says. “Silver, there is no class today. You’re in the School of Arts and Sciences, your people are on vacation. Party on the beach …”

“Oh,” I say. “I forgot. I simply forgot. Thank you.”

I had a life. I was doing something.

I meet the lawyer later at the house. He arrives in one car, his men in another. They carry heavy cases and remind me of exterminators.

“Top of the stairs on the right,” I say, sending them up.

“What the fuck happened here?”

“What do you mean, what happened?”

“The place is a mess.”

“You told me not to touch anything,” I yell up the stairs.

“It fucking stinks.”

Tessie follows me up. Halfway, the smell hits me.

“Fucking shit,” the lawyer says.

The dog looks guilty.

Tessie, home alone, did a kind of clean and purge: she licked Jane’s blood off the floor, made bloody pink tracks across the floor, and then had diarrhea on the bed.

Tessie looks at me as if to say, “It’s been crazy around here. Something had to happen.”

“S’okay, girl,” I say, going downstairs and getting a box of Hefty bags. The dog has done me a favor. Whatever evidence might have remained on the sheets has been obliterated. I stuff the sheets into two Heftys, open the windows, and fire off a can of Lysol.

The trash has been taken out. The lawyer and his men are leaving. “The situation is less than satisfactory,” one of the men says to another as they make their exit.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

I stand in the kitchen, obsessing about the sheets: Is in the garbage good enough? Would it arouse suspicion if I took them to the dump? What would happen if I tried to burn them? Would it send shit smoke signals for miles?

I dial Speedy Mattress Service. “How quickly can I get a new mattress?”

“Where’s it going?”

“To 64 Sycamore.”

“And what are you looking for? Do you have something specific in mind: Serta, Simmons, plush, pillow-top?”

“I’m open to suggestions, it’s got to be a king, soft but not too soft, firm but not too firm, something just right.”

“You’re looking at twenty-eight hundred — that’s mattress and box spring.”

“Seems high?”

“I can do twenty-six fifty delivered, and if you buy our mattress cover you get a ten-year guarantee. It’s usually one twenty-five, but I can give it to you for a hundy.”

“And will you take away the old one?”

“Yes.”

“Even if it has stains?”

“They all have stains.”

“When?”

“Hold on.”

I dig Jane’s credit card out of my pocket.

“Between six and ten tonight.”

I get a bucket of hot water, scrub brush, roll of paper towels, Mr. Clean, Comet, a bottle of vinegar, and Jane’s latex gloves from Thanksgiving. I weep as I pull the gloves on.

I am on my hands and knees, scrubbing. The blood is dark, dry, and flaky. Wet, it softens to a swirling pink, spreading like beet juice through the paper towels. I slice my finger open on shrapnel, a shard of porcelain that tears the skin, and my blood mixes with the mess. Later, I use a tube of Krazy Glue to seal the wound. As I am working I have the sensation of being watched, spied upon. I feel something pass over, brushing against my leg. When I turn to look, something sails over my body, leaping. I spin. I slip on the wet floor, landing on my ass. There is a cat, sitting on the dresser, staring, his tail flicking this way and that.

“Motherfucker,” I say. “You scared me.”

He blinks and looks at me, hot green eyes like emeralds shining.

A creature of habit, I stop only when the job is done, the bloody water bucket emptied, the rags thrown away. I work, and then I look to see what’s for dinner. Standing inside the open door of the refrigerator, I pick at the leftovers, at what we had the night before. I eat random bites of things, thinking of Jane, of our evening snack, of our lovemaking. I make a plate and lie on the sofa in front of the television.

The echo of gunfire wakes me. I come to thinking George has once again escaped and has come to kill me.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

A heavy knocking on the door.

Tessie barks.

The mattress has arrived.

“Nice thing is, mattresses aren’t breakable,” one of the men says, as they wrestle it up the stairs. “I used to do plasma-screen televisions — that was a nightmare.”

They take the old mattress and box spring without comment.

As they exit, a flash goes off in the yard.

“What the …” Flash, flash-flash.

One of the men drops his end of the outgoing mattress and plunges into the darkness. I hear scuffling sounds from within the bushes. The mattress man comes up, holding an expensive camera.

“Give me the camera,” a stranger says, pulling himself out of the flower bed.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“That’s my camera,” the stranger says.

“Not anymore,” the mattress man says, hurling it towards the street.

I have to go home. It’s almost 11 p.m. I lock up the house, lead Tessie to the car, give her a boost up, and head for the highway. Tessie shakes.

“No shots,” I say. “No vet. We’re going to the city, Tessie.”

The dog passes toxic gases. I pull to the side of the road, and Tessie explodes onto the edge of the highway.

“Did you have a good trip?” the night doorman asks. I don’t answer. “Your mail, your packages,” he says, filling my arms, “your laundry.” He hooks the hangers over my crooked finger.

“Thank you.”

He says nothing about the dog, whose leash I’ve lashed around my wrist.

The apartment has a certain smell, familiar yet stale. How long have I been gone? It’s as though everything is frozen in time, has been frozen, not only for the days I’ve been away, but maybe the entire decade preceding. What once was modern, sophisticated, looks like the set of a period piece, Edward Albee circa 1983. The phone is a push-button trim-line, rarely used. The sofa arms are worn. The carpet pile is uneven along a certain path, a well-traveled route from room to room. The piles of magazines are dated eighteen months back.

And still I am grateful to be in a place where everything is familiar, where I could go blind and still find my way. I sink into it, want to roll in it, I want none of what’s happened to be true.

The orchid is still in bloom. I water it, and, as if I were watching a time-lapse sequence, within the hour the petals fall off, as if suddenly released, springing to certain death on the cabinet below. By morning, only the bare stick will remain.