Stranger Will (12 page)

Sinking,
William thinks
. Dead, buried, and sinking
. But “what child?” is all he says, as sincere as acting can be.

“The hospital said they found,” the officer looks to his notepad, “trace amounts of human Chorionic Gonadotropin.”

William awaits elaboration.

“It means she was pregnant, William. Your wife was pregnant. Very recently.”

Cue tears. “I absolutely don’t believe this,” he says. “Why would Julie not tell me this,” he says.

Mrs. Rose comes running with a tissue and open arms. She pulls his head to her shoulder and speaks sympathy: “it will be okay,” breathing heavy shushes into his ear. She squeezes tight, rips a fingernail down his back, and says softly with her back to the officer, masked by William’s giant sobs, “we’ve got him.” She digs again into his back before turning away. “Cry harder.”

William wipes a paste of snot and tears from his face and claims that he had no idea. “She is a big woman,” he says. Mrs. Rose has moved behind the officer, nodding, mouthing “more tears.”

“She was complaining of stomach pains,” he continues, “so I rushed her to the hospital. I panicked. I wasn’t careful with my driving. I was keeping two eyes on Julie, none on the road, I guess,” he pauses for effect. “I was a father.”

The officer shifts on the couch. He slips his notepad into a hidden pocket. Seconds of silence pass before he opens his mouth, but the telephone cuts his words short. William clenches. He has developed an association with the ring, a feeling that means cleaning stains, and considering the current circumstances contact with the dead is not something he wants.

William stands to answer the phone, but Mrs. Rose, behind the officer, pulls a finger across her throat and mouths “sit.” The answering machine clicks to tape and the first sound through its dusty speaker is Philip’s voice, almost to tears, saying, “
I’m so sorry
.”

The officer retrieves his notepad.

“
I’m so sorry
,” Philip says again. “
When I called earlier I didn’t know
.”

The officer scribbles. William stands for the phone in an attempt to keep his façade strong, but the officer blocks his path.

“
What I said, I didn’t mean it
.” The officer continues.

“
Julie’s not that big
.”

William grinds his mouth’s cut with his back teeth. “
Well, she is appropriately big. Considering…
”

William opens his mouth, ready to sneeze, or cough, or yell when the time comes. But Philip’s voice quiets. “
Sorry
,” he repeats and the phone clicks.

“Who was that?” the officer asks without waiting a breath. He strangles his pen, white-knuckled. He repeats the question, but all William can do is watch Mrs. Rose as she goes back to pacing the hallway, humming fake contention. “I’m asking you a question,” the officer says.

“I don’t know him that well. Just a work friend.” “A friend,” the officer says.

“Not a friend,” William says. “I mean he’s…” and he looks to Mrs. Rose.

“Coworker,” she whispers.

The officer turns to Mrs. Rose, says, “You’re not helping,” and stares like he’s waiting for her to leave the room. But she doesn’t leave. She walks the walls of the front room, taking in the décor; photographs, unopened mail on an end table, walls spotted with discounted artwork. William suddenly realizes that this is the first time she has even explored the home with any depth and turns back to the officer before his concern escapes.

“So that man is a friend?” the officer says again.

Splitting his attention William watches Mrs. Rose examine each framed cross-stitching, thread-by-thread. “More of a coworker. We’ve hung out a few times.”

“Does he know your wife?”

She leans close into fake flowers and the craft wreathes Julie makes out of Styrofoam and squares of patterned fabric.

“Yes. No, actually. He didn’t know Julie that well. Fiancée.”

“But he has met her?”

Mrs. Rose slides toward the west wall. She nears the messages, hung like innocent reminders at first glance, but William quickly forgets that teasing naiveté. She will see her own knowledge. Her own acquaintances. Her own handwriting. She drifts close enough to rattle the farthest pinned neighborhood with her breath.

So William screams. He bites down on the cut inside his cheek until his teeth are glossed in red. He cries and pretends to vomit blood because the situation is “so emotionally disturbing,” he says to the officer. Mrs. Rose turns from the wall, rushes to him.

The officer reaches into his pocket and retrieves a white napkin. William wipes his hands clean until the napkin is just a ball of spit and blood.

The officer denies the napkin’s return and instead stands from the couch as if to dismiss the entire room. He rips a sheet free from his notebook and gives it to William before turning to the door. He vanishes; his car beyond the horizon and his voice beginning its fade from memory before William lets a single breath free.

“Good,” Mrs. Rose says and pulls a fresh towel from her pocket, “but you’ve got to work on the tears.” She hands him the towel. “He’s a good guy. Marty. You’ll like him.” And she returns to the wall of messages.

William looks down to the officer ’s notebook paper. It reads: Work on the tears Less melodrama

Put up a few more pictures of your fiancée. No one will believe you with bare walls.

“You knew him?” he asks, but Mrs. Rose’s interest in the wall dulls his question.

She stares, both confusion and pride on her face. She traces the threads from message to message, reading the headings: Fury Man, Babysitter, PTA, Karma Debates, and all the rest with slow, invested paces. The strings vibrate as she runs her fingers along them; she plucks a slow beat from taut strings.

“Mrs. Rose,” William begins, but she quiets him with a single hand.

“I knew you were taking them,” she says. “But I had no idea you were so devoted.”

“It’s a hobby.”

She traces the thread from a message under Backyard Barbeque down to a slip of paper with distinguished handwriting reading
‘we’ll talk about your situation after we eat.’

“This one is mine,” she says and pulls the distinguished handwriting from the wall. “The lady never showed. I guess I know why now.”

She pulls more from the wall, messages about medical procedures and family histories, pets people treat like children and the
increasing number of non-returning pigeons
. She pulls these words from the wall and asks William for tape. He hands her a fresh roll.

She pulls short strips and sticks the messages back to the wall, rearranging them, “fixing them” she says after a length of silence. “Now you are on the right track.”

“I wanted to tell you,” William says. “First, I wanted to stop shooting them altogether. Then, I wanted to confess to still shooting them, but the way you are so happy when they come back. The messages they bring to you—I didn’t want to compromise that. Or us.” He grabs a pillow from the couch and wipes blood from his teeth.

“You didn’t,” she says, “but they make you happy as well. We all need something to control. We all want to feel empowered. It’s why people have collections in the first place.”

“You?” William asks. He begins to unwind the dirty gauze from his wrist.

“I’ve learned, William. I know better than to believe that I could ever truly control anything.”

William examines the rearranged wall. Connections he once felt so strongly about have been ripped down and moved, and he can do nothing but admit his own ignorance. It hurts, but he enjoys the direction. He enjoys knowing that on some level he follows a correct path.

“Looks a bit like a family tree,” Mrs. Rose says backing away from the wall, studying her manipulations and corrections.

William agrees, but is distracted by the answering machine blinking in jolts of two. One for the call from Philip they just heard and the other, William guesses, for the call Philip referenced. He starts toward the machine, but Mrs. Rose grabs his wrist.

“Your hand,” she says and pulls it close to her face. “Does it hurt?”

William nods. He has thought little of the dog’s bite lately, but now that Mrs. Rose pulls, the pain sears.

“It’s starting to get a little black,” she says and runs to the bathroom yelling about hydrogen peroxide.

“It was all in the van,” he says. “We use it on carpets,” but she doesn’t come out.

William presses the button on the answering machine.
“Hey
William. We got a call for a bad wreck on fifty-one…
”

William knows already what this message is about. He squeezes his wrist to tame the throbbing.

“…Only one body. Shouldn’t be too bad…”

Mrs. Rose yells about gauze. William says to “just cut up a towel,” that he used all the gauze already.

“…real big girl, though. Might be a mess. You know what the large ones can leave behind. It’s like when they die pieces of them just go on living. Melted fat even looks alive, you know…”

She comes running in with scissors and a blue towel William recognizes as a house-warming gift Julie bought for him when they first moved to Brackenwood. She was the only one of the two ever to use it.

“…If you don’t get back to me I’ll take my car out…”

Mrs. Rose holds one end of the towel in her mouth and slices the cloth into strips. Through the embroidery, through the lockstitched hems. She holds William’s wrist, rubbing the infection with a yellow cream deep enough to hurt when though the answering machine Philip says,
“let me know when Julie pops. I want to be there for everything.”

Mrs. Rose smiles and ties the towel strip tight around William’s palm.

“Who was that?” she says. “A recording.”

The answering machine clicks and the quick hum of rewinding tape fills the room. William rubs his bandaged hand, massaging away the pain. “Can we see Julie?”

“We’ll see her tomorrow,” Mrs. Rose says. “For now, stop shaving. Until you grow a passable beard we’ll have to give you a fake.” Then she looks down to the yellow notebook page in William’s hand, grabs it, and reads. “Marty’s right,” she says and turns back toward the wall. “Get some more family pictures on your walls.” She pins the note and connects it with red thread to a group of messages titled Homeless.

Chapter Thirteen

Wednesday morning arrives, though Mrs. Rose warns, “the weekend is already here to most of the kids.” She gives William a fake beard, a Santa Claus, bleach-white, polyester disguise with tight, bouncing curls. William accepts a tattered vest, too, and a t- shirt that reads ‘Blood Donor ’ in faded and peeling iron-on letters. The armpits come pre-stained. She gives him a duffle bag and tells him to fill it with found objects. “Rocks, interesting sticks, a stuffed animal, anything someone might see and use as evidence of a mental condition, something not worth feeling threatened by.” She admires the playground outside the car window. “One of my guys fills his with receipts. We each have our own brand of crazy…”

Collecting these things, he can do, pawning himself as insane, too. But the beard, he fears, wouldn’t fool even a child.

Before the kids arrive at Harold Straton Elementary, Mrs. Rose takes William on a brief tour of the area. She identifies corners where children congregate during recess. She has him take note of the fence over which playground balls most often escape. She points out the most popular equipment, the most used swing set, the areas around which William’s presence would be most effective.

She parks her car after a single lap, kills the engine, and straightens William’s fake beard. “As of this moment you have no name,” she says. “You have no job. You have nothing,” and she nods toward the door. “You’re a homeless man just blending into the surroundings.”

William steps out and surveys the empty school ground through a weak chain link fence. Today is dedicated to staking his claim. He must be visible, though he must hide all intent, becoming a point of interest noted only by distant pointed fingers. The children won’t come near him today. Mrs. Rose has assured him of this. Despite the abundant homeless population, the children maintain distance for days, often longer, to get used to the idea, waiting until he becomes a constant.

William drops a found candy bar wrapper into his duffle bag. The playground rests silent. William weaves through the jungle gym. He kicks wood chips to the asphalt and enjoys a few rounds on rusty swings. He explores his new post and searches for how best to become a part of it. He understands now Brackenwood’s reputation for homelessness. Dirty men with dirty shirts walk the streets. Dirty men with dirty beards occupy park benches. Dirty men with dirty shoes spend time watching downtown shoppers, watching crowded restaurants, watching children play at Harold Straton Elementary. Surely, they can’t all be Mrs. Rose’s strangers, though William knows the woman enough not to assume anything.

All he has now are the instructions to find a perch and wait until a child breaks a rule. He is a nanny cam. William spots a bench three laps into the search. He tests it. He sits at both ends. He tries lying across its seat using his duffle bag as a pillow. The bench slowly comforts, almost enough to relieve the beard’s itch.

Then a bell and they come stampeding from around the building. Each child claims a pack and each pack claims a piece of playground equipment. The slide William chose to sit in front of stays empty just as Mrs. Rose said it would.

She insists on rules, rules she says are necessary to avoid “legal situations:”

Don’t make any propositions. This includes, but is not limited to, coaxing the child off of school grounds, making promises that would lead to such coaxing, and the use of sugars—lollipops, gum, etc. These sorts of things lose court cases.

Don’t use sexual references.

And don’t touch. “Not a game of patty-cake or even a simple high-five.”

“Other than that,” she says, “test them all you want.”

William’s clothes smell of dustbin salvage. His hair remains its usual tangled mess, though with purpose today. It is important that he play the role of the stranger as described by Mrs. Rose’s teachings; fear must distance the children. These fears become life-governing rules, and these rules are ultimately what a child grows greater than.