Amy Gustine - You Should Pity Us Instead

“Do you see her?” Pultwock hollers.

“Sh!” Lavinia hisses. “She won’t come down if she knows you’re here.”

Pultwock walks gingerly down the stairs. He’s staring at the floor, covered with the flattened boxes Lavinia brought home that morning. “You’re not moving,” he says, surprised.

“I told you,” Lavinia says.

Pultwock holds out a can. “Here. They like this, don’t they?” It’s a can of real tuna. The scent cuts through the stench of ammonia.

Lavinia takes the can and holds it high above her head, waving toward the empty spot where Emily’s face used to be. “Emily, look what I have. Look.”

Before going into Shayla’s house, Mike fired up the laptop to check on his wife. Via the home-monitoring website he could see her on the couch wearing sweats and his old Bulls T-shirt. She wore little else these days, needing comfort more than style.

A can of Pepsi and a plate sat on the stool beside her. For years that stool, pink with blue butterflies, had boosted their girls to the sink for tooth-brushing and hand-washing, but it looked ludicrous next to the Italian leather sofa.

Mike zoomed in on Fawn’s face. She looked relaxed. No pursed lips, no wrinkles, except for the usual ones. He shifted the camera down and left to get a better look at the stool. There, on one of the old melamine plates with the kids’ handprints, her yogurt with its foil top and a pile of cheese and crackers appeared untouched, and he wondered if she’d lost track of them, if he should call to remind her. That morning he’d told her he had a lunch meeting and it might seem odd if he called now, when he should already be in the meeting, but what did she know of odd anymore?

Mike had begun to dial before he caught sight of Shayla in the window. She held up a Mountain Dew, his drink of choice, as if toasting him. He signaled with a raised finger that he needed a second, slid the laptop under the seat, checked the volume on his cell, then put it back in his pocket, where he’d be sure to hear if Fawn called.

Shayla and Mike had sex, then over a quick sandwich talked about work. She was a breast surgeon; Mike a radiologist. He’d diagnosed Shayla’s mother with lung cancer a few years ago and after that, when they saw each other in the hospital break room or cafeteria, he always asked about Norma. By the time they slept together, Shayla understood his situation, didn’t expect anything more than what he could give.

At least she’d thought so, but that afternoon while discussing a medical conference in San Francisco, she started to say, “It’s a combination clinical and imaging seminar. We could go…,” then stopped. Laughing lightly, Shayla fluttered her fingers to indicate momentary confusion, harmless forgetting. “Right, sorry, never mind.”

Later, as Mike got ready to leave, he took her in his arms and kissed her hard, as hard as he usually did when first arriving. “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

She smirked. “I’m so glad.”

“I’ll see you back at the hospital. I have a mammogram we should go over.”

Shayla stood at the dining room window watching Mike start the car, then fiddle with something in the passenger seat. A laptop came into view, propped on the steering wheel, and she stepped back into the shadows, but as a radiologist Mike had been trained to identify things in patterns of dark and light that other people thought meant nothing. Glancing up from the computer, he hesitated, then gave an exaggerated wave. Embarrassed, Shayla waved back.

A mile away Mike pulled into a McDonald’s and signed on to the monitoring site again, having decided against doing it in Shayla’s driveway with her at the window, watching him. While he waited for the image of his living room to appear, Mike let himself play back what it felt like to slide that red sweater over her head, her breasts rebounding against his chest, her thick hair, streaked like tiger maple, tickling his face.

Fawn, slumped on the couch, popped into view. She looked exactly as she had before. So did the crackers and cheese. He dialed and watched her feel around for the phone. “It’s on the floor,” he said. “The floor.”

Letting it ring and ring seemed like a kind of torture, but the new phone announced the caller audibly, so Fawn knew it was him and that he’d let it ring as long as necessary.

“It’s on the floor, by your foot,” he said again.

As if she could hear him, Fawn leaned over and saw the phone.

“Hey, how’s it going?” he asked.

“Good. I’m fine.”

“It’s one o’clock.”

“I know.”

“The girls will be home in two hours.”

“I know, Michael. I can tell time.”

“Did you eat lunch?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You should eat anyway.”

“Goodbye, Michael. Goodbye.”

“Okay. I’ll see you later.”

The afternoon bolted past in a continuous stream of CTs, MRIs, a lumbar puncture, two complaint calls from the ER, and countless plain films. At three thirty his watch beeped and he called his oldest daughter’s cell.

“How’s Mom?”

“She’s fine. We’re just having a snack.”

“What’s the homework situation? Does Middie have math?” His middle daughter, Miranda, was struggling with pre-algebra and his oldest would try to help if she had time, if she didn’t get distracted by Facebook, or Instagram, or some other thing Mike felt the danger of but didn’t know how to control. Fawn used to handle things like that.

“Put Mom on.”

He heard mumbling, then Rebecca. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

Mike became aware of a shadow in the hallway. He stepped to the back of the room and lowered his voice. “Give her the phone.”

There was another pause.

“She won’t take it.”

“You sure she’s okay?”

“I guess. I mean, she seems okay.”

Mike could hear Fawn talking in the background. If he went home now, he’d have to read the rest of this stuff tonight, after she fell asleep, which was fine, he could do the MRIs and CTs. He didn’t have the right monitor for plain films, though. His partners had been covering for him, but that couldn’t go on forever. He’d have to buy a high-resolution screen, never mind the money.

Mike told Rebecca he would try to leave early. “Call me if she starts acting weird, okay?”

The shadow hadn’t moved off. Mike stuck his head into the hall. Shayla stood there.

“Sorry. I just stopped by about that mammogram?”

Mike tore through the rest of the films and snuck out the back at four forty-five. On the way home, he thought of Shayla. Later he’d berate himself for getting distracted. For now, and despite the danger he’d sensed at her house this afternoon, Mike thought of her sweater, her hair, and imagined the two of them in San Francisco eating Mexican or sushi, then a walk back to the hotel and slow, quiet sex the way he liked it, with whispers. Afterward he would be allowed to fall asleep.

At home, Fawn lay in her spot on the left side of the couch staring at one of those cop shows, the ones that always began with some poor dead girl.

“Hey, honey, how are you?”

She turned and opened her mouth but nothing came out. Then a little grunt escaped and she frowned.

“Did you take your medicine?”

She just looked at him. In the kitchen he checked her pillboxes: purple for morning, yellow for afternoon, red for evening. Behind them a whiteboard with the day of the week and beside it a computer Mike had programmed to beep and play “It’s time to take your medication.” Still, she’d forgotten her noon meds, which is why she couldn’t speak. Normally, he made sure she took them when he came home for lunch.