A. Homes - Safety of Objects - Stories

“Freeze.”

Frank was near the far edge of the lot, a tall hill of fill dirt in front of him. He whirled around and crouched down, low, like a catcher. He raised the glove up in front of his face and caught the second bullet.

It struck him like a punch. He rocked back and forth, heel to toe, before falling onto his back, his knees raised in front of him like insect legs.

There was a buzzing in his ears, like a telephone constantly ringing.

Frank lay on his back in the parking lot. No shopping carts wheeled past his head. No one came near him. The glove stayed in place and the crowd over by the mall imagined him skewered, permanently sewn together like a cheap doll, his expression fixed, his hand permanently placed.

It seemed like forever before anyone heard sirens. Red and white flashing lights sucked up the twilight and made it seem much later than it was. A paramedic jumped out and pressed his fingers to Frank’s jugular.

“He’s alive,” the medic shouted and the crowd moved forward.

“Does anybody know who it is?” the medic asked. “Anyone know his name?”

“He lives across the street from me,” Julie said.

Frank fainted behind the glove. The squawking of the police radio woke him up.

“We got a bullet catcher here. Security guard hit him, when he was trying to get away with something.”

I wasn’t trying to get away with anything, Frank thought, and then fell back into a fuzzy kind of sleep.

They slid a board under Frank. He felt pressure, intense pressure, as though his insides were being pushed up and out. He was being squeezed to death. Perhaps they were running him over with a steamroller, pushing him into the fresh asphalt at the edge of the lot.

He tried to remember where he’d parked the car. The CD player was still under the seat. He hoped no one would ever find it. Mary would be annoyed that he hadn’t gotten the tires. Sew buttons.

The medics didn’t touch his face or attempt to remove the glove. They were saving that for the doctors. By the time they tied everything in place with heavy gauze the sky had dropped deep into darkness. The mall had closed for the night. The crowd evaporated: one by one, in a great snake of a line, all the cars pulled out onto the highway. The medics dressed Frank up like a spring float and wheeled him around in a quiet parade on the empty parking lot.

I’m hiding in the linen closet writing letters to myself. This is the place where no one knows I am, where I can think without thinking about what anyone else would think or at least it’s quiet. I don’t want to scare anyone, but things can’t go on like this.

Until today I could still go into the living room and talk to my mother’s Saturday morning Fat Club. I could say, “Hi, how are you. That’s a very nice dress. Magenta’s such a good color, it hides the hips. Nice shoes too. I would never have thought of bringing pink and green together like that.” I could pretend to be okay, but that’s part of the problem.

In here, pressed up against the towels, the sheets, the heating pad, it’s clear that everything is not hunky-dory. I’ve got one of those Itty Bitty Book Lights and I’m making notes.

Today is Odessa’s day. At any minute she might turn the knob and let the world, disguised as daylight, come flooding in. She might do that and never know what she’s done. She’ll open the door and her eyes will get wide. She’ll look at me and say, “Lord.” She’ll say, “You could have given me a heart attack.” And I’ll think, Yes, I could have, but I’m having one myself and there isn’t room for two in the same place at the same time. She’ll look at my face and I’ll have to look at the floor. She won’t know that having someone look directly at me, having someone expect me to look at her, causes a sharp pain that begins in my eyes, ricochets off my skull, and in the end makes my entire skeleton shake. She won’t know that I can’t look at anything except the towels without being overcome with emotion. She won’t know that at the sight of another person I weep, I wish to embrace and be embraced, and then to kill. She won’t get that I’m dangerous.

Odessa will open the door and see me standing with this tiny light, clipped to the middle shelf, with the pad of paper on top of some extra blankets, with two extra pencils sticking out of the space between the bath sheets and the Turkish towels. She’ll see all this and ask, “Are you all right?” I won’t be able to answer. I can’t tell her why I’m standing in a closet filled with enough towels to take a small town to the beach. I won’t say, I’m not all right. God help me, I’m not. I will simply stand here, resting my arm over my notepad like a child taking a test, trying to make it difficult for cheaters to get their work done.

Odessa will do the talking. She’ll say, “Well, if you could excuse me, I need clean sheets for the beds.” I’ll move over a little bit. I’ll twist to the left so she can get to the twin and queen sizes. I’m willing to move for Odessa. I can put one foot on top of the other. I’ll do anything for her as long as I don’t have to put my feet onto the gray carpet in the hall. I can’t. I’m not ready. If I put a foot out there too early, everything will be lost.

Odessa sometimes asks me, “Which sheets do you want on your bed?” She knows I’m particular about these things. She knows her color combinations, dots and stripes together, attack me in my sleep. Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night, pull the sheets off the bed, throw them into the hall, and return to sleep. She will ask me what I want and I’ll point to the plain white ones, the ones that seem lighter, cleaner than all the others. Odessa reaches for the sheets, and in the instant when they’re in her hand but still in the closet, I press my face into them. I press my face into the pile of sheets, into Odessa’s hands underneath. I won’t feel her skin, her fingers, only cool, clean fabric against my cheek. I inhale deeply as if there were a way to draw the sheets into my lungs, to hold the linen inside me. I breathe and take my head away. Odessa will pull her hands out of the closet and ask, “Do you want the door closed?” I nod. I turn away, draw in my breath, and make myself flat. She closes the door.

* * *

I’m hiding in the linen closet sending memos to myself. It’s getting complicated. Odessa knows I’m here. She knows but she won’t tell anybody. She won’t go running into the living room and announce, “Jody’s locked herself into the linen closet and she won’t come out.”

Odessa won’t go outside and look for my father. She won’t find him pulling weeds on the hill behind the house. Odessa won’t tell him, “She’s in there with paper, pencils, and that little light you gave her for Christmas.” She won’t say anything. Odessa understands that this is the way things sometimes are. She’ll change the sheets on all the beds, serve the Fat Club ladies their cottage cheese and cantaloupe, and then she’ll go downstairs into the bathroom and take a few sips from the bottle of Johnnie Walker she keeps there.

I’m hiding in the closet with my life suspended. I’m hiding and I’m scared to death. I want to come clean, to see myself clearly, in detail, like a hallucination, a deathbed vision, a Kodacolor photograph. I need to know if I’m alive or dead.

I’m hiding in the linen closet and I want to introduce myself to myself. I need to like what I see. If I am really as horrible as I feel, I will spontaneously combust, leaving a small heap of ashes that can be picked up with the DustBuster. I will explode myself in a flash of fire, leaving a letter of most profuse apology.

Through the wall I hear my mother’s Fat Club ladies laugh. I hear the rattle of the group and the gentle tinkling of the individual. It’s as though I have more than one pair of ears. Each voice enters in a different place, with a different effect.