Michael Collins - The Death of All Things Seen

*

A half-hour or an hour passed, some allotment of time. Norman looked up. In the bathroom, the door was ajar. He had been looking for some time. He was unaware of it, and then he was aware of it.

Joanne was working a washcloth along her extended arm, her head angled so it appeared she was licking her arm with the earnest resolve of a cat. She repeated the process with her other arm and then began on her legs, each leg in turn. He could see between her legs. He closed his eyes.

She approached minutes later, in a wraparound towel tucked at her cleavage. Her hair, gathered in a bun, revealed the sweep of her features, clear to her high forehead. She was of strong German stock, high cheekbones particular to northern regions, eyes blue, lips full, and, yet, she missed being exactly good-looking, second chair flute, always present, amenable, but generally overlooked, at home with Sheryl, and later in school, and with Dave.

She had revealed what had happened, why she was the way she was, as she described it, ‘So fucked up!’ And yes, she had called Peter, and, if he would have taken her, there was a good chance she might have left. She couldn’t be sure, but it had seemed an option.

Norman held nothing against her.

She smelled of cocoa butter, a hydrating ritual religiously adhered to since high school, Palmer’s Formula, bought at a fraction of what it cost for more expensive lotions. She told him this. He was aware she was talking. She had a way of saying ‘Ka-ching!’ when she beat the system, the sound of an old-fashioned cash register.

‘Eleven-thirty, right?’ she said eventually, looking down at her wrist, at a non-existent watch and then at Norman directly.

He was caught staring at her a second time, an assessment of their chances, their odds. He was unsure. He was deeply preoccupied. There were things and moments that held his attention in a gathering of ideas not quite ready to make their presence fully known, but they were everywhere, in the way one courts and invites revelation, how one must be open to what is fast approaching. It was a feeling he longed to inhabit.

It was enough enticement, his look, for Joanne to know she was being watched. You were in grave and present danger in emoting even the remotest interest in her life. She hung on an appeal of any human kindness. She was off on one of her stories. It began as a non sequitur. It could not be stopped, in the way you could only board up against a hurricane, brace the sustaining winds.

She informed him that he could use any of her stories free of charge. In fact, she would be insulted if she didn’t appear somewhere within his work.

*

Time slowed in the way only a family can weigh down life. At the small kitchen table, Joanne explained the term Recon to Grace. That was what Joanne was calling the trip out to the suburbs. She posed, James Bond style, her hands clasped and her index fingers extended in the shape of a gun. She made the sound of the Bond music.

Grace was bemused and eating a waffle drowned in maple syrup. She had not seen James Bond. It was obvious, but Joanne was determined that Norman play the bad guy, Auric Goldfinger, to elaborate and teach Grace.

Norman made a cackling laugh of evil, advancing on Joanne, who said, ‘Do you expect me to talk?’ and Norman answered, in his best evil German voice, ‘No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!’

It alarmed Randolph, who roused, his legs skating out from beneath him on the tile flooring, his bark sudden, determined, a distant memory of how Peter must have been aggressive and might, or might not have, struck Joanne. There were secrets still.

They were forty-five minutes behind. It wasn’t even referenced that there was a schedule, the excitement deflated somehow. Randolph skulked as Norman packed the dishwasher, and then he was gone.

In the hallway, Joanne, in pantyhose and a bra, put her finger to her lip.

Norman overheard Grace say the word recon. He edged to the door, a game already in progress, a circle of dolls around her, Grace ensnared, trapped. She imitated the Barbies’ shrill Chinese voices.

There appeared no way out, then she got into the Bond pose and, turning slowly, with each shot, kicked and toppled a doll.

It was curdling, the depth of her psychological issues. But there had been healing, if he could call it that. In the configuration of her language, the dolls were identified with China. They were on the side of Evil. Randolph represented American experience, his head angled, his ears perked. They were allies.

The dolls were all dead, or in the process of dying. Grace grabbed and spoke harshly to a Barbie, shook her in the act of interrogation with an authenticity that betrayed this was lived experience. She still wet the bed.

Randolph was up on his haunches. He wanted in on the action. Grace put the doll close to her face. She said roughly, ‘You want to finish her off, Randolph?’

The word Randolph was understood, and Randolph barked, his tongue a long sinew of hot affection, all slathering kisses, Grace modulating between Chinese and English. There was no presumption Randolph could speak Chinese. English closed round their relationship.

Grace was done playing minutes later, the Barbies heaped, the collection of them, in the carnage victors are never obliged to clean up. Norman would, but later.

It changed slowly, life. A dog called Blue on the TV needed help finding clues. A bilingual girl, Dora, with a backpack, found it easy to mediate and move from one language to another. She needed help find things as well, with Grace, pointing and shouting in an alliance with Blue and Dora, her circumstance, perhaps, not so out of the ordinary.

*

The Sanchezes arrived in a pickup with a trailer of equipment, most notably a wood chipper. There was no concealing what they were, or how they earned a living. The name ‘Sanchez Lawn Care’ was written in big letters across the side of the trailer’s wooden slats.

A husband and wife and a grandmother exited the pickup.

A second mini-van pulled up. A squat woman emerged with the same thickening middle as Sanchez’s wife. Both wore embroidered sweaters. On the side of the minivan, it said ‘Sanchez Daycare’.

Joanne watched the Sanchezes go up the drive. She turned to Norman. ‘They seem genuinely interested.’

A Cutlass Supreme arrived with alloy rims and music booming. It was evidently the son. His presence, on exiting the car, conferred an immediate menace to the Sanchez wood chipper.

He walked with a rolling gait, gangster-style, up the drive.

*

Norman was brazen in ringing the doorbell to his own house, but then the realtor had never actually met him. He identified himself as a drive-by interest. He was in the market.

He pointed to the sign, while introducing Joanne and Grace. In doing so, he advanced into the hall without the realtor having agreed to it. The realtor seemed on the verge of protesting, but it would have been too awkward and disruptive to try explaining it to the Sanchezes.

From what Norman could evince, the Sanchezes were definitely interested and disbursed to various quarters of the house.

The father — Miguel — his name embroidered on his shirt, was fiddling with the thermostat. His son was alongside him. The father communicated something in Spanish and then the son interpreted in English and said to the realtor that they wanted to see the heating bill.

The furnace was on full blast. The bathroom sink and the tub were all running, the bathroom a microclimate of billowing steam. There was a vent the realtor evidently wasn’t aware of. Norman resisted saying something.

The Sanchezes didn’t care about the dining room, a box off the kitchen that had been much maligned by previous buyers. It was left unexplored.