A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [135]
He followed her into the living room, her silence inspiring him to new heights of benevolence. “So slow down, because we’ve got a very good, very solid, very important thing here, Doe. Just you and me, right? The two of us, still together after all these years. That’s pretty special,” he said with his most indulgent smile. “Don’t you think?”
She opened the door and set his smelly shoes and his tie down in the hallway. “You’re ridiculous, that’s what I think,” she said, her burst of laughter flooding her with relief. His whiskery face quivered in peevish confusion, but she couldn’t stop. “I’m sorry, but you are. You’re so ridiculous!”
CHAPTER 21
A thunderbolt split the night with a savage crack. The room glared white. Gordon jumped out of bed, then stood dazed by the jagged edges flashing black-white-black-white, the hot, pulsing negative of nightmarish images slowly taking shape—rumpled bed, closet door, the cowering form in the mirror, his own. It was 3:43 in the morning. Needles of rain pelted the windows. Home. He was home. He sank onto the bed, head in hands. Dennis was right, he shouldn’t have come back. Don’t, don’t do this, he told himself, but the dark miseries were already nudging one another for the lead. There were too many distractions. Ever since he’d come home he’d been losing focus.
He went to the window and looked out. The rain was letting up, the thunder stalled in sluggish rumbles like a dead engine someone kept trying to start. He leaned closer. The bags were still on Mrs. Jukas’s porch. He grabbed the phone, put it down. He couldn’t call her this late. Had she walked right by without noticing them? The milk and juice were probably spoiled by now, the butter melted. Everything else would be all right, but the rain would ruin the sugar and baking soda.
He hurried through the side yards and picked up the wet bags. Somehow this would be his fault. She’d expect him to replace what had gone bad. This couldn’t have come at a worse time, no money, job, or friend in the world. He thought of Bernie Samuels in the next cell for the last two years. For Bernie, as often a prisoner as he was a free man, life on the outside was far too complicated. Bills, needy children, hounding women, cars that broke down. Going back in had been almost a relief. Just as criminals are locked up to protect society, so are the imprisoned safe from society’s expectations, the nuances of which are like an unfathomable language for some men. Maybe he was one of them, he thought as he toweled dry the last can. Maybe freedom was the worst punishment.
Nine in the morning, three calls, still no answer. Wincing, he tried again, more fainthearted with every ring, dreading her crabby tirade about the constant calls when she was trying to sleep. Relieved, he hung up, then left to get the paper at the drugstore. He’d had to buy it ever since the clerk caught him copying the want ads. He noticed Mrs. Jukas’s newspaper wedged between her doors. She always brought it in as soon as it came. He climbed the steps, rang the bell, then gave a few sharp raps on the door before starting off again for the store. He was on his way home when Jada Fossum came around the corner.
“Good morning,” he said quietly.
“Morning,” she muttered, and hurried on by, hugging herself in the eighty-five-degree heat. Highs in the nineties had been forecast for the next few days. The newscasts were warning people to drink plenty of fluids and stay out of the sun. Especially the elderly.
“Gonna be a hot one,” the mailman said as he came down the walk from the old Lang house on the corner.
“Yes,” Gordon said with a sudden jolt, remembering the old story of Mr. Petracolli, helpless on his cellar floor for days until a mailman found him.
The mailman slid an envelope into Mrs. Jukas’s door slot. He took a roll of magazines from his bag and stuffed them into her mailbox.