A. Homes - Safety of Objects - Stories

On her stomach she crawls across the linoleum toward the coat closet in the hall. When she gets there she opens the door and stands up inside the closet. Her stomach and breasts are covered with lint and dirt. She puts on Paul’s black cashmere overcoat and opens the door.

The police officer is there. It is the same police officer from the other night.

Elaine wonders if you can bust someone retroactively.

“Is there a problem?” Elaine asks.

“Somehow, I didn’t give your husband back his license. It took me a while to find you. The old address and all,” he says.

She takes the license from the cop. “Thank you.”

The cop nods. “No problem.”

She wonders if he knows that she’s naked inside the coat. She wonders what he thinks of that. The phone rings.

“Telephone, ma’am,” the cop says.

“Oh, right, thanks again,” Elaine says.

* * *

“I’m bringing the boys home early,” her mother-in-law says. Her voice is amplified by the answering machine. It sounds like God is talking.

Elaine turns off the machine and picks up the phone. “Is something wrong?”

“The baby is too young to be without his mother.”

She doesn’t understand what is going on. She wonders if maybe her mother-in-law is slipping, getting too old to deal with children.

“Daniel came to me early, but that was different,” her mother-in-law says. “You put him in day care at eight months. He didn’t know you. He didn’t need you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing, just that Sammy is different; it’s always that way with the youngest.” Her mother-in-law doesn’t say anything for a minute. “The plane gets in at five.”

Mother is coming, Mother is here, everything is going to be all right, Elaine thinks.

Elaine goes upstairs, wakes Paul and tells him. They are both silent. They are protective of their freedom. There are other things they want to do. They want to go further. They want to be alone with each other, and alone with themselves.

Paul and Elaine stand in the center of their bedroom, undressing. Paul pulls the bandage from his foot, and strips off his underwear. Elaine strips the sheets off the bed, goes down the hall, strips the sheets in her sons’ room, and stuffs everything into the laundry chute. They smile at each other. They shower together. In the shower, Paul shaves and Elaine scrubs the tiles with the fingernail brush, not getting out until the whole wall is done.

Elaine combs her wet hair back and Paul tells her she looks beautiful.

“It was good,” Elaine says.

Paul puts clean Band-Aids on his foot. They dress. In a way they are relieved. Together they put clean sheets on the beds, puff the pillows, vacuum the bedroom, empty the trash, and load the dishwasher. Downstairs, as they are cleaning, Elaine and Paul look at each other and as if they’ve each had the same thought at the same moment, as if they’re sharing a secret, they go into the living room and carefully check the cushions on the sofa making sure there’s nothing there, no empty vials.

I disappeared a few years ago; I disappeared and then I came back. It wasn’t a big secret. It wasn’t one of those beam-me-up-Scotty deals where I was here and then all of the sudden I was there. I didn’t get to go to another planet or anything. I was gone for a few days and then I came home and the police wanted to know everything. They wanted to know about the car, who was in the car, where I went, what happened. They said I could draw pictures, show them with dolls, but I didn’t know what to say. I disappeared when I was a child. I disappeared when I was nine.

I came home from school, had cookies and Kool-Aid, and went into the living room to watch TV. My retarded sister Rayanne was in there and she kept imitating the people on TV. She was older than me and really was retarded. She kept talking to the television and didn’t stop when I told her to. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore so I left. I said, “’Bye, Mom, be back in a while,” and I picked up my basketball and went to the playground. There were other kids there and almost everyone had their own ball. There were about ten balls going, and sometimes they would hit each other in midair and go off in completely the wrong direction. Sometimes I’d trip over another guy going in for a shot and he might kick me in the butt and say “Asshole,” or something.

It got late and it got dark, and the other kids left one by one or sometimes in twos and threes. I was alone on the court shooting baskets, and I couldn’t miss. The ball kept dropping through the net, and I felt like I had magic in me. I was making all my shots, counting them to myself. When I got to fifteen in a row, I heard someone clap. I stopped playing and noticed a guy standing at the far edge of the court.

“That’s fifteen straight up,” he said. I shrugged. I shot again and the ball sailed through the hoop.

“Nice going, Johnny.”

I caught the ball coming through the hoop and put up a hook shot. It went wide. The guy ran in, caught the ball, and held it pressed into his hip, like a teacher confiscating it.

“My name’s not Johnny.”

“Johnny’s not a name. It’s like ‘hey you,’ only nicer.”

He bounced the ball a couple of times and then held it. “You ready to go? Your mother said I should pick you up. She had somewhere to go.”

I remember being mad at my mother because she was like that. She was the kind of person who would take Rayanne somewhere and send someone I didn’t know to pick me up. She knew lots of people I didn’t know, mostly on account of Rayanne. She knew all the people who had retarded kids and I never wanted to meet them.

“I was looking for you, Johnny,” the guy said.

I shrugged. “My name’s Erol. Okay? Erol,” I said.

He kept my basketball and walked toward his car. It was an old white station wagon, a Rambler with a red interior.

“Did she have to take my sister somewhere?”

“It’s okay, Johnny. We’ll stop at McDonald’s.”

He talked like he didn’t hear anything I said. He talked like it was something he had to practice in order to get it right.

“Are you hungry?”

I’m not retarded. If something had been really strange, like if the guy had a wooden leg, I would have noticed. I would have gotten up from the table and walked away. I would have walked when he got up and said he was going to call my mom. He said he was calling to ask if she wanted us to bring home food for them. He left me at the table with burgers and fries, and I thought more about how many of his fries I could steal than whether or not I was ever going home again. I had no reason to leave; I was at McDonald’s with two burgers, large fries, and a shake. I didn’t know what crazy was. I didn’t know that sometimes you can’t tell the difference between a real crazy and a regular person and that’s what makes them crazy in the first place.

The guy came back, said my mother wasn’t home, and that he was going to take me to his house until she got back. “Hey, hey, Johnny,” the guy said. In the car I played with my basketball. I turned it around and around on my lap.

“I have to pick up something. Is that okay, Johnny? Do you want anything?” I shook my head. “Is there anything you want?”

“No,” I said.

I waited while he went into the drugstore. It was one of those times when the sun goes down but it isn’t dark yet. There was a weird blue light pressing down on everything, outlining it. I stood next to the station wagon and bounced the basketball.

“Hello, Erol,” Mrs. Perkins said. She was pushing a grocery cart across the parking lot even though you weren’t supposed to. She was pushing the cart and it sounded louder than a train. The wheels kept going all over the place. Her two kids were there, squished into the little seat up front that barely holds one.