On the Edge of Dangerous Things (Dangerous Things Trilogy Book 1) (24 page)

He looked around the cramped space at the blank cinder-block walls painted the color of infected mucous, at the unmade beds whose sheets reeked of semen and sweat, at the dirty clothes strewn across the floor in growing piles that reached like living things toward air or light. For about the thousandth time, the thought of cleaning up the room flickered across his mind, but in the next second was gone. Then in the next he was tempted to call Janet, but that idea passed quickly, too.

Oh fuck it.
He held his hand under the cold water faucet and watched his blood swirl down the drain. He knew what he had to do and that he had to be alone to do it. Isn’t that why he left the party? Isn’t that why he hadn’t called Janet in the first place? Isn’t that why he’d broken into the custodian’s closet and stole the heaviest hammer there was? Isn’t that why right now he was reaching under his bed to find it? Isn’t that why he was going to put Leslie West’s album on the record player and drop the needle in the groove for “Look to the Wind”? Isn’t that why he would turn it up as loud as it would go, so no one, if anyone were around or cared, would hear him scream out in pain when he sat cross-legged on the linoleum and smashed the hammer with all his might into his ankle?

When it was over, he dragged himself to his bed and pulled himself up onto it. He hadn’t broken the skin, so it wasn’t messy. At first it didn’t hurt that much, so he wondered if he really had broken it. His ears were ringing, and he lay on his back listening to both the ringing and the pounding of West’s bass. He reached over and turned off the record player. In the morning he’d holler till someone came into his room. He’d left the door open. He’d show them his ankle, which would be so swollen his skin would be taunt. He’d seen enough football injuries to know how it would go. For now he wanted to sleep, but instead he found himself thinking about his mother. She died when he was eight. As much as he loved her, he hated to think about her. It was too sad. When she was alive—his father told him this—every year on September 14, she would say, “Alexander Bruno Murphy, September 14, 1948, was the luckiest day of my life because it’s the day I had you.”

Now he imagined her saying this again, putting her arms around him, pulling him close, so close he could feel her breath in his hair, so close he could smell her. His eyes were heavy and his breathing slowed. He was stuck in that place between waking and sleeping, and the last thought he had was of dust and wind. Finally he felt himself being blown away.

The next morning the nurse on duty in the infirmary, which was housed in a flimsy trailer next to Bunce Hall, assured him the ambulance was already on its way. In the next cubicle was a freshman girl, just a kid, poor thing. She did something stupid and lost a lot of blood last night and was nearly comatose. They could ride to the hospital together.

The nurse took his blood pressure and temperature and asked what happened. Al said he fell in a ditch and landed on his ankle. The nurse rolled her eyes, but when he winced in real pain, she cupped the side of his handsome face in her warm hand and told him everything would be alright.

He was in Cooper Medical Center, Room 423, by noon. His anklebone had, indeed, been shattered, and the place where he cut his hand on the barbed wire was already infected. They packed his ankle and foot, swollen beyond recognition, in ice. His toes were the size of thick sausages. A young nurse giggled at the grotesque foot that looked more like inflated rubber than living flesh. His confidence waned. How had he come up with such a hair-brained idea? What in the hell was he thinking? There was no way his birthday would be called, even in the top half. Wouldn’t his mother, wherever she was, be looking out for him? Now, he worried if he’d ever be able to walk again.

They gave him antibiotics and pain meds. They were beginning to kick in, and he started to relax. He asked if the radio could be left on, even though he felt as though he’d drift off to sleep any minute. What was about to happen didn’t involve him anymore. He had seen to that.

There were three hundred and sixty-six wooden balls in the metal cage, each bearing a birth date, including February 29. Even the leap-year boys would not be left out of this lottery. Representative Pirnie, R-NY, reached in and pulled out a blue ball.

“The first draftees to be called to duty would be those young men born on…” Al tilted his head toward the radio. “September 14.”

He couldn’t believe it. He felt such…relief, followed by such…justification. He, Alexander Murphy, had been clever enough and yes, damn it, lucky enough to save himself. Yet, in this almost exuberant moment, he was careful to keep his poker face on. Since he’d been smart enough to figure a way out for himself, then he was also smart enough to know that he didn’t want anyone to think even for a moment that he might have done something devious. He wasn’t dumb. He knew how lame his story sounded and that saving himself had cost him something.

The drugs were beginning to make the haunting specters of shame ethereal. What he did truly was the best thing. He’d tell Janet he couldn’t see her anymore because he wouldn’t be going back to Glassboro State College after his ankle healed. He was already figuring out how many of his credits he could transfer to Trenton State so he could graduate from there. After all, that’s where he probably should’ve gone in the first place. It was closer to home, a more prestigious school, and all that. And no one would know him. No one would know exactly when or how he broke his ankle or even give a rat’s ass about it. He’d be 1-H, not 1-A, and everyone would figure he just had a serious problem—a physical one, that is.

He leaned back into the soft pillows—the nurse who had giggled brought him two extra ones—and let himself drift off to sleep. He forgot to listen for Steve’s birthday. None of it mattered to him now.

When Al finished his confession, he downed the rest of his beer. “Now put that in your pipe and smoke it,” he added and looked in the direction of Chet’s kitchen window. “The old news-bag was probably listening to the whole thing.”

Hester watched her husband get up and wobble into the trailer, where she knew he’d plopped into his La-Z-Boy, the bedroom too far away for him in his present state of inebriation. What Al told her was the last straw. His confession rocked Hester to her core. She wasted decades feeling sorry for Al because he had a bad ankle, because he was in pain, because he was mortified that he didn’t get to go to Vietnam and fight for the United States of America, all because of a football injury!

She gathered up the empties and quietly put them in the recycling can. She picked up the remains of the chicken and took it inside. The television was on, and Al was snoring. She dumped the skin and bones in the trash, rinsed the plate, and went into the bathroom. She closed the door so she wouldn’t have to hear the racket Al was making.

Coward, liar, hypocrite!
Hester could barely contain her fury.
He slammed a hammer into his own ankle because he was afraid to go to war. He lied to everyone about it. He pretended he hated Glassboro, said the college sucked and was full of the sons and daughters of hicks and trailer trash. He bragged about graduating from Trenton State College, and he was there for what? One semester!

Hester stood at the sink and looked in the mirror. She was having a hard time focusing on her image. She turned and looked at the toilet. The seat was down. All she had to do was lift it and do it. Do it. Make herself gag and get it over with.

I was that girl in the ambulance. I couldn’t stop the bleeding. I tried. I shoved a washcloth up my vagina. It didn’t help.
She was on a stretcher in the ambulance and was too weak to turn her head to see who was on the other stretcher.

Al was disgusted with me. I got not an ounce of sympathy from my own husband when he learned what I had done. I had to bend over backward to keep our marriage going, to make Al happy; it became my life’s work. He had no right to throw stones when he lived in a glass house.

She came out of the bathroom and walked past her pathetic husband. She went out and laid on the lounge and thought about all that happened since the hurricane swept through the park, wreaked havoc, and passed into oblivion, and she thought about Nina.

Our interest’s on the edge, the dangerous edge, the edge of dangerous…
that line from Browning, she still couldn’t get it right. 

Hester fell asleep.

When she opened her eyes, bright shafts of sun cut through the leaves of the bo. It was a beautiful, hopeful sight, but Hester felt none of that. A realization came to her. She’d been clinging to a slender branch over a precipice. It was going to snap and she was going to plummet into the chasm of failure. More was at stake than her wounded heart and her misspent life with Al. She retired too early. She listened to Al. “We don’t need your pension, Hester, because mine is going to be plenty for the both of us,” and, “You don’t need benefits, Hester, if I have them.”

She should’ve waited until she could collect her own pension and her own benefits. Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve.

She felt like slapping herself in the face.

Forty-Five

In Lambertville in late October, Hester and Al walked along the towpath. The geese waddled from the bank of the canal into the water, and the fallen leaves, like tiny empty boats, drifted south on the swift current. The Murphys, officially retired, tried to walk every day. Some days Al did; some days, complaining about his ankle, he didn’t. But Hester, who couldn’t wait to get outside and away from their new condo, never missed a morning.

Though the development overlooked the Delaware and their unit had lovely views, it wasn’t, in Hester’s estimation, at all like their Moretown Victorian. It was small, not as small as their Pleasant Palms trailer, but drastically smaller than the Victorian; and though Hester would never admit it to Al, she felt like it was a step down from what they had.

Al, she was sure, assumed she’d sold or given away what he called “her junk”—junk she spent years collecting, scouring flea markets, yard sales, and antique shops to find. Now Al wanted new things for the new place.

“Hester, all it was, was other people’s trash,” he’d said.

Trash? It wasn’t trash. Knowing objects had a provenance, a life before her, made Hester feel rooted. How many people sat in that chair? Who walked on that rug? Who ate dinner off that plate and washed it and put it away? New, unadulterated things weren’t intriguing at all. What was there to stir the imagination in a set of Riedel wineglasses from Linen ‘n Things?

Hester fought with Al as much as she dared, about how the condo should be furnished, and surprisingly, he agreed to compromise: twentieth-century Modern. Hester was okay with the decision. He could buy his new stuff, but she’d be able to mix in some Art Deco and some of the things she already had, unbeknownst to Al. Would he know the difference between Arts and Crafts, and Modern? Hester doubted it. He acted like he cared, but eventually the real work of pulling the condo together would fall to her. She started at the Golden Nugget Market, purchasing a Haywood Wakefield blonde wood bedroom set, burled maple twin headboards for the guest room, two Eames chairs, and a seventies Steelcase sofa for the living room. Al stayed home and painted all the walls a pale gray. He’d be happy if the place looked monotone.

“Do you miss school?” Hester turned and asked. Al had fallen behind her on the towpath so Hester waited for him.

“Why would I?”

“Maybe because you were there for most of your life?”

“Not a bit.” He pulled the collar of his jacket up. “It was time to go. Remember, Hester, at least we got out with my full pension and benefits. Who knows? If we waited for you to have your twenty-five years in, it might have backfired. New Jersey’s so screwed up, they could pull the plug on anybody’s pension at any time. When nothing’s fully funded, public servants can’t count on anything.”

“You’re right, I guess.” The wind picked up, dark clouds moved overhead. “Want to turn around? It’s getting pretty chilly.”

“Fine with me. You’re the one who always forces me to come out here. You know me, I’d rather stay home and submit to waterboarding than exercise.”

“Ha, ha…you’ll thank me when you’re old.”

“I am old.”

“Not as old as you’re going to be.”

“Old enough.”

“For what? Staying home and channel surfing for ten hours a day?”

“Don’t start on me, Hester. For Christ’s sakes, I just retired. So what if I watch TV all day? Who gives a rat’s ass?”

Al was right, so Hester shut up and sprinted ahead.

She was home before him and pushed the button on the gas fireplace. The flames danced their predictable dance while Hester stared at them and thought through a plan for the day. The tight quarters in the condo, and Al’s constant presence, drove Hester to plot a daily escape. She’d go to the Kintersville dealer center. Someone at a yard sale said they’d seen a hand-carved Madonna there, probably Mexican, nineteenth century. An old wooden statue like that might add an eclectic touch to Al’s uncluttered decor.

Al came in and clicked on the television even before he removed his hat or jacket. Judge Judy was hollering, “Who do you think I am, anyway? An idiot? On your best day, you’ll never be as smart as—”

Hester avoided the temptation to stick her fingers in her ears. Instead, she went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed, rolled on her stomach, and looked at the clock: 8:14 a.m. It was already second period at school; she wished she were there. It was too early to drive to the dealer center. She couldn’t go online because Al didn’t set up the computer, “Why bother when we’re leaving for Florida soon?” Al was hell-bent on leaving before it got cold.

She rolled again onto her back and stared at the ugly popcorn ceiling and the sleek blades of the overhead fan.
What is water-boarding anyway? It must have something to do with dripping water, maybe on your forehead
. Hester tried to imagine it. It didn’t seem so bad. Drip, drip, drip.

She wished she were tired and could fall asleep for a while, then sex crossed her mind, and the idea seemed like a good one. How many years had it been since they’d done it in the morning? A long time, maybe since they stopped having sex in school, when the brighter the light, the better, when a ceiling full of florescent bulbs didn’t bother them one bit.

Hester took off her sneakers and went into the living room. Al was in one of the Eames chairs with the remote poised for action.

“Hey, you? Want to fool around?”

“What? Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

“Come on, Hester, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No, I’m not kidding you.”

He looked up at his wife like he didn’t recognize her and sank deeper into the leather. He seemed to be considering it until the television screen lit up with the face of a defendant and his eyes were drawn back to it.

“Maybe later,” he said as he totally refocused on the testimony.

Al hadn’t rejected her completely—“later” meant later. So why the bad feeling? Maybe because “maybe” meant just that. She couldn’t remember ever saying to him, “Maybe later, Al.”

Chagrined at her own foolishness for asking him in the first place, Hester looked around the room. Was it the open layout, the obsessive orderliness, the sleek uninviting furniture, the simplicity of it all, or was it Al? But she felt as though she’d fallen into a scary place.

An hour later after a steaming hot shower, Hester, listening to NPR, was driving north toward Kintersville. She didn’t give a damn what it cost, she was going to buy the Madonna.