Little Deaths(7)

“No, I don’t know. Maybe a nightmare. I thought I heard one of the kids crying, but when I listened—nothing.”

“I went to the bathroom. Oh, and then the phone rang again. It was Frank.”

“He wanted to talk about Linda, my sitter. The one who says I owe her money.”

“I just wanted to get him off the phone. Told him to drop dead. Hung up on him.”

“Yeah, I was mad. He called me sometimes in the middle of the night, hoping to wake me up. He wanted to make me mad, and it worked.”

“I took the dog out again. Around the block. Then I sat outside for ten minutes or so.”

“No, I didn’t check on the kids. I checked on them at midnight. They were fine then. They were . . . Christ.”

“No, I’m okay.”

“I said I’m okay.”

“I took a bath. I was still hot and I took a cool bath. Then I went back to bed.”

“Around three forty-five I guess. Maybe four.”


She woke when the alarm went off at eight, sticky with sweat. The memory of a dream: a crying child, a dark sky, a white face.

She struggled to sit up, ran her hands through her hair, yawned. Another hot day. She heard Gina coughing upstairs, and then Bill Lombardo yelling at his wife through the wall. A door slammed.

She put coffee on the stove and headed to the bathroom where she stripped and washed. Pulled on her robe and back into the kitchen where she poured a cup of coffee and lit her first cigarette of the day. She was supposed to be seeing her lawyer later, but for now, she put on pale Capri pants, a pink shirt. Barefoot, she took her cup into the bathroom. Started the routine that would bring Ruth to life in the mirror.


“I came out of the bathroom and I took the dog for a walk.”

“Eight forty-five. Maybe a little later—I couldn’t find my shoes.”

“Fifteen minutes. Probably less.”

“Um . . . a couple of people. No one I knew.”

“We got back and I fed Minnie. Refilled her water bowl. Drank another cup of coffee.”

“Yeah, about ten after nine. No later.”

“Nothing unusual. I could smell something burning. Toast, I think. And I could hear Gina’s radio. Oh, and I heard a phone ringing somewhere. Distant.”

“No, nothing else. Except . . . well, the silence. The apartment was quiet.”

“Yeah, I remember noticing the quiet. Wondering if they were still asleep. And I . . . then I opened the door.”


But none of that tells how it was.

Minnie whining, restless. Ruth’s hurried, self-conscious walk, tugging at the hem of her shirt, feeling the heat seep through her layers of makeup. Thinking about her meeting with Arnold Green that afternoon, about Frank, about the rent due at the end of the week.

Back at the apartment: the taste of lukewarm coffee. The crack in the ceiling she’d noticed the week before and forgotten about. The smell of hairspray through the half-open bathroom door. Her headache and her clumsy rummaging for aspirin.

And then the silence. Not just the fact of it, but how loud it was. How the space that would normally be filled with voices and giggling and the pad of their feet was just that: space.

And the sight of her hand in front of her, lifting the catch, pushing the door. And again, and again, and again, every moment since: the slow sweep of the white-painted wood, and the widening expanse of light, and her hand falling to her side through the weight of the still air, and her voice catching in her dry throat. And the room beyond. Empty.





3


So that was how it began. With a locked door to an empty room. With her running out into the street, a set of sweat-slick keys held tightly in her hand, pressed hard into her palm. With her circling the block calling their names.

It began with anger. If they’ve climbed out the damn window again, they’ll be in a whole heap of trouble.

And then the anger faded to a gradual awareness of her uneven breathing, of the sickness in her stomach. A realization, as she came back to the corner of 72nd Drive, that her skin, her hair, were wet.

She turned both ways, unable to decide which direction to go.

The wrong choice could mean.

It could.

She bit her lip to kill that thought. Turned left.

So many kids. Every gleam of fair hair was a jolt to her heart. Then she saw a little boy ahead of her, and there was something about his walk. She grabbed his arm and spun him around.

“Frankie! What the fuck . . .”

She looked into the face of a stranger and dropped his arm, saw his mouth open. Barely registered his rosebud mouth breaking into a howl. Barely heard his mother.

“Hey! Hey lady! What the hell do you think . . .”

She walked on, faster, until she lost sight of where she was going. Kept her eyes fixed on the faces that passed her, on the sidewalk ahead. She walked unevenly, avoiding the cracks.

Step on a crack and break your back

Step on a crack, kids ain’t coming back

She pressed her hand against her mouth to stop anything escaping, began to run. She ran with no sense of where she was, then took another turn and she was back on 72nd Drive. She saw a figure hurrying toward her. Realized it was Carla Bonelli. Saw the woman’s lips move, managed to get out: “Frankie and Cindy are . . . they’re . . . I can’t find them . . . help me find them . . .”