Ugly Little Things Read online

  The rains had started the day after they buried her and did not stop for a full week. Insult to injury, he supposed. When the world lost a soul like Glenda, he figured that shedding a few tears was to be expected. God knew he’d wept for days; why shouldn’t the world? Her absence had left an aching void in his life, an open wound of the spirit that would never truly heal. A wound that was always at risk of being pried open by the most innocent of queries from friends and strangers.

  “How are you today, Jon?” was the most common. Their neighbor, Sarah, was the most recent perpetrator of such an infraction. Of course she was only making idle chatter. Of course her heart was in the right place. But oh, the pain, how it seeped back into that wound, festering with a different kind of infection that would take weeks to cleanse. Sarah didn’t know any better. She was half his age, with a family of four to tend to, and wouldn’t learn the agony of losing a spouse for some years yet. Lying to her was one of the hardest things he’d done that day, next to getting out of bed and wandering outside for the mail.

  Those early days, he kept to himself as much as possible, a heartbroken hermit locked away in a cave of perpetual melancholy. Although Glenda was entombed just a few miles down the road, their house had become her memorial, and he was its caretaker. He forced himself to pick up her routines, dusting the mantle and framed photos hung on the walls, feeding their pet guppies in the aquarium, and making the weekly grocery trip every Tuesday morning.

  A few weeks after the funeral, Sarah’s husband, Donald, invited Jonathan over for dinner and beers. Jonathan acquiesced, mainly to stem the tide of their incessant requests, and over the course of the evening proceeded to drink a number of Donald’s brews. By the time the sun had set, Jonathan was two sheets to the wind, as Glenda would say, and confessed to Donald that he was just biding his time.

  “For what?” Donald asked.

  “For the rains,” Jonathan slurred. “Ain’t you ever heard that old saying?”

  Donald shook his head and finished off his beer. He crinkled the can in his fist. “What sayin’s that, Jon?”

  “Sorry, Don. I forget you didn’t grow up here.” Jonathan sloshed the last gulp of beer in the can, made to take that last drink, and then thought better of it. “This whole area’s in a floodplain. When I was just a boy, the gang down at Miller’s Bar where my daddy used to while away his evenings, they’d always joke around with me ‘n say that you know it’s rainin’ rough when your grandma comes to visit.”

  “That’s kinda grim for a joke, ain’t it?”

  Jonathan shook his head. “Those were different times. We weren’t as sensitive to things then. Anyways, the first time I heard it, I asked my daddy what it meant, and he told me that the flood of aught-nine caused all the coffins to rise. Took ‘em weeks to round up and sort out all the caskets.”

  Donald uttered a low chuckle that gave way to a belch. He excused himself and frowned as he put the pieces together. “So when you say you’re waitin’ for the rains . . . Aw, shit, Jon, I’m sorry.”

  “Nah, no need for that, Don. It’s just the beer talkin’.”

  But it wasn’t. Jonathan thought it was, but when the rains came again, they made a liar out of him.

  To tell the truth, Jonathan hadn’t given much thought to that old joke in decades. Not until the storms that followed Glenda’s funeral. He was standing on his back porch and watching the world fall down in thick white sheets when the warning buzzed across his TV. The steady drum of raindrops on the porch roof masked the harsh buzz, and Jonathan almost didn’t hear it. When he turned back and looked through the window at the red band on the screen, he sighed and shook his head. After four days of rain, the weather station’s announcement was obvious: water levels were rising.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the rapid beat of rain overhead. God’s playing the drums again. Glenda always said that. Now that she was gone, he’d grown conscious of the way her words haunted his lexicon. She was a part of him even in speech, living on as a linguistic phantom that could not be exorcised. Not that he wanted her to be. Painful though it was, Jonathan took comfort in knowing she was still there somewhere, living on in his words. He need only speak to bring her back to him, if only for a fleeting moment.

  “God’s playing drums again,” he whispered. “Signalin’ your arrival to His kingdom, darlin’. I hope you’re having a hell of a party.”

  He wondered if that was true. Sure, he was raised in church, but in his adult years, he’d wandered off the path. All that fire and brimstone didn’t suit him—there was enough of it on the nightly news—and besides, he’d rather enjoy his time instead of dwelling on his transgressions. He and Glenda saw eye to eye on that matter, so they’d lived their lives the best they could. Now, though, Jonathan’s imagination ran wild with possibilities. Was she watching him from heaven? Was she really up there, sitting on a cloud and laughing at every little thing he did while he waited his turn to shuffle off this coil?

  A slow, cold sensation slithered into his gut, carrying with it an alternate thought. What if she isn’t up there? he wondered. What if she isn’t anywhere? What if she’s just gone? What if . . .

  “Stop it,” he told himself. The truth was, he had no way of knowing, and he was better off not dwelling on it. Easier said than done, maybe, but he didn’t have much of a choice but to try.

  He locked away those troubling thoughts and leaned forward against the porch railing, watching the churning waters of the river slowly surge and creep over their banks. Most folks would’ve found the rising waters to be cause for concern, but not Jonathan. He and Glenda had lived in their home for over thirty years before she passed, and not once in that time had the waters ever reached their foundation. The rising tide would break at the foot of his driveway, just like it had all the other years.

  He watched until late evening when, in the failing light, he saw the river had crept high enough over the bank to kiss the edge of the road. By that point, the winds had picked up, slapping the branches from one of Glenda’s dogwoods against the siding and reminding him that they needed trimming. He’d forgotten to do that this year, preoccupied with his wife’s illness.

  It’ll keep until the storm passes, he thought, listening to the steady clap of limbs and pitter-patter of rain. Maybe tomorrow. Couple days at most. His vigil concluded, Jonathan turned away from the porch railing and retreated into his house.

  Satisfied, his joints aching from the damp air, Jonathan curled up on the sofa and took his evening deluge of prescription pills. Cholesterol, arthritis (one for inflammation, one for pain), thyroid, and the latest to join an all-star cast: anxiety. He’d kept this last one a secret from Glenda in the final months of her life. She was already down on herself; he didn’t want to burden her with his stress. “Just something to take the edge off,” he’d told his doctor. “Until this ride is over.”

  The ride had ended, but Jonathan was still hanging on. He liked being leveled out. The pills made the nights a bit easier to bear.

  He washed them down with a mug of cold coffee, lowered the volume on the TV, and wrapped one of Glenda’s handmade blankets around him. He hadn’t slept in their bed since she’d passed, couldn’t bring himself to do so. Sleeping there seemed wrong somehow, as if the act might disturb some sacred oath he’d sealed with her in her passing. That if they could not lie there together in union, so shall the bed remain cold and empty, a monument to the time they spent together as husband and wife. And beneath that sense of marital duty, Jonathan supposed it just hurt too goddamn much.

  Another weather update buzzed from the television, but he didn’t bother reading it. Instead, he reclined on the sofa, closed his eyes, and listened to God play drums.

  ***

  He waits at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in his Sunday best while reports of a perfect storm creep into the foyer. “Seek higher ground,” they say. “If you need assistance—”

  But Jonathan tunes out the meteorologist, focusing instead on his silver
cufflinks. They’re miniature books, a gift from Glenda on his thirtieth birthday.

  “Because you love reading,” she’d said, “and because you lost your old pair.”

  Jonathan traces his thumb across the smooth rectangle and smiles. The last time he wore them was at her funeral. The same as his suit, as a matter of fact, and for a moment, he wonders if his attire isn’t appropriate for the occasion. After all, a three-piece suit and tie isn’t practical when dealing with rising floodwaters, but he reminds himself that today is special. Concessions must be made in the face of extraordinary situations.

  Elsewhere, the pretty weather lady says to expect another surge of rainfall by noon, with no signs of slowing down by nightfall.

  He checks his watch.

  Jonathan smiles. Not long now.

  ***

  Three slow knocks woke him from his sleep. The first knock was loud enough to rouse him from his slumber—a troubled sleep of dark dreams filled with lily pads and koi fish and a cluster of small hands lurking beneath the surface. The second knock pulled him through the twilit veil of sleep into a world of consciousness.

  Jonathan opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. The room was filled with the bluish light of dawn, the sun just a promise beyond the horizon. Had he dreamed those two knocks? Could they have been the rain? He held his breath and waited, listening. The rain had stopped, the winds finally quieted, and the earth was still around him.

  Just a dream, he thought, and closed his eyes.

  The third knock came at last. Jonathan sat up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and squinted at his watch. Not even 5 A.M. Who the hell could it be at this hour?

  He climbed to his feet, ignoring the fire in his joints and the urge to take his pills. They could wait. This stranger at the door, however, could not. Someone knocking on his door at this hour would have a good reason. They could be hurt. They might need help.

  As he stumbled across the living room to the foyer, his mind raced with possibilities of who it might be or what might be wrong. He thought of his neighbors, Sarah and Donald and their two little ones. Had the waters risen too high in the night? His house’s foundation sat at a slightly higher elevation, only by a few inches, but those inches could make all the difference in a flood.

  Jonathan resisted the urge to peek out the window. Instead, he twisted the deadbolt and opened the door.

  The floodwaters crested just beyond the edge of his driveway and were already receding, a dark oily border illuminated in the dawn by a pale streetlight overhead. The water, however, was not what held his attention.

  The woman in his driveway wore a sapphire evening gown with jewels sewn into the trim. She shimmered when she moved, the jewels reflecting the light overhead, enhancing the curls of wet, silvery hair draped over her shoulders. The hem of her gown fell at an angle just below her knees, revealing pale legs that had danced the nights away in their younger days. Her bare feet slapped across the water as she approached his doorstep.

  “I was wondering if you’d answer, love.”

  Jonathan’s knees gave out, and he collapsed at the threshold. “Glenda . . . ” Words failed him, their syllables like dry air through empty cornhusks. “Why . . . h-how . . . ?”

  Glenda Crosby tiptoed along the pavement of their driveway. A slow trickle of water followed behind her, an inky black umbilicus stretching back to the ebbing tide below the drive. The longer he watched, the less Jonathan could tell which direction the water flowed. The dark stream followed her footsteps, surging forward in time to her movement, his queen marching along a wet carpet of foam and errant leaves caught in the tumult of the night’s storm.

  She paused where the sidewalk met the driveway. The water stretched thin, barely more than a trickle at that distance. Her safety rope would let her go no farther; he would have to meet her halfway.

  Jonathan remained on his knees, befuddled by what he was seeing, his eyes encased in tears. How was this possible? How could she be standing here when she was buried over in Morningside? Was this a dream? A phantom? Any possible answers were swept away in the maelstrom raging within his head, his heart.

  “Don’t weep, my darling.”

  Now that she was closer, he could hear the lilt in her voice, a gentle rise in pitch that might accompany a tickle in one’s throat. The sound of talking when water’s gone down the wrong pipe. His mind flashed with the image of a gutter spout clogged with twigs and acorns, and he cleared his own throat instinctively. His mouth filled with phlegm, but he resisted the urge to spit it out. Grimacing, he swallowed back the filth.

  “Glenda,” he said finally, bracing himself against the doorframe before climbing to his feet. His knees sang together in a chorus of damp agony. “This can’t be. I watched the life go out of you. I watched them put you in the ground, for Christ’s sake.”

  A smile spread across her damp, pale face. She held out her arms. “And yet here I am, my darling. Come to me.”

  He took one step across the threshold onto the sidewalk but couldn’t bring himself to take another. No, he reminded himself, everything is wrong about this. Glenda’s dead and buried, Jon. She can’t be here.

  She lowered her head and peered up at him. That look made his heart flutter. Her bedroom gaze. He’d teased her about it for years, when they were still young and virile. Even after their son grew up and moved out, she still gave him the stare from time to time. “I’m yours,” it told him. “And you’re mine.”

  Staring into her sapphire eyes, Jonathan felt compelled to join her. And why not? The one thing he’d desired most—to be with Glenda once again—had been granted to him. He’d won some sort of cosmic lottery, the recipient of a gifted miracle of nature. His wife, once deceased, now stood mere feet away from him, awaiting his embrace. How he’d longed for her, to hear her voice again, to hold her hand. All the nights he’d slept without her, even before her passing, raced back to him in that moment. Every night without her touch was another quiet reassurance from reality, a coarse blanket pulled over him that was too scratchy, too short to truly bring him any comfort. He feared those nights would define the rest of his life. One lonely evening of depression would bleed into the next, counting down to the day that he, too, would wither and fade away into the great big nothing beyond.

  But now, somehow, beyond all hope and reason, here she was again. And she was waiting for him. Beckoning for him. Yearning.

  “Come to me,” she said. “Dance with me one last time.”

  And he wanted to. God, how he wanted to, his aching knees be damned. He took one step across the threshold, and then another.

  Glenda turned away and gazed up at the side of their home. She smiled faintly. “You forgot to trim the dogwood again, love.”

  Jonathan choked back a humorless laugh. There was nothing funny about her statement; quite the contrary, her words all but confirmed that what he saw before him was truly happening. Only Glenda would give him grief about those damn branches. His heart climbed into his throat. “Is it really you?”

  She looked back at him, reached out, and took his hand. Her skin was wet, cold, and touching her gave him goosebumps.

  “Dance with me,” she whispered, and leaned in to kiss him.

  ***

  He’s drifted off to sleep when Donald pounds on the door. The sound startles him so bad he bumps his head against the staircase banister. Dark, muted colors explode before his eyes as he clamors to regain his composure, pressing his hand against the back of his skull to dull the pain.

  “Jon? You in there, old man?”

  Old man. He hates when Donald calls him that, even if the name is apropos. Grimacing, with one hand clasped to his head, Jonathan staggers forward and opens the door. Donald peers up at him from beneath his poncho’s hood. The rain’s coming down so hard he can barely hear his neighbor’s voice.

  “Didn’t you hear the emergency siren? The whole neighborhood’s being evacuated. We gotta go.” Donald pauses, confused by the old man’s attire, and for
a moment, there is a flash of understanding on his face. Jonathan can see the young man’s epiphany through the downpour, tinged with a hint of sadness. He thinks I’ve gone senile.

  “Yeah, I heard it,” Jonathan says. “You get your family out of here. I’m staying. Go on.”

  He’s about to close the door, but Donald holds out his hand to stop him, and for a moment, Jonathan sees red. He sees himself slamming the door in his neighbor’s face. He wants to growl and shout and tell Donald to mind his business, but the anger is displaced in an instant as the shrill horn of Donald’s SUV tears through the storm.

  “Don’t make me leave you here, Jon.” Donald turns back and waves to his family in their vehicle. It’s time to go. Past time, really. Jonathan can see the water is almost to the edge of his driveway. Just like last time, he thinks, and struggles to contain his smile.

  “You aren’t leaving me. This is my choice, Donald. Go take care of your family. It’s your duty.”

  Jonathan makes to close the door, and this time Donald slams his palm against the barrier to stop him.

  “She isn’t coming back, Jon. Your duty is to keep living. So help me—”

  Donald doesn’t finish his sentence. He’s stunned into silence by the barrel of Jonathan’s revolver, held a mere six inches from his face. Jonathan keeps his head, maintaining an even tone and a poker face to match. He clears his throat, licks his lips, and speaks steadily: “I know what my duty is, young man. Now I’m giving you until the count of three to get the fuck off my doorstep. One. Two.”

  He doesn’t get to three. Donald steps back with his hands held out, either in defeat or confusion, Jonathan will never know. He opens his mouth to speak but thinks better of it, offering Jonathan one more glance before turning away and sloshing back across the yard.

  Jonathan watches long enough to see Donald climb into his SUV and drive his family to safety. He places the revolver—a gift from his daddy, many moons ago—back into his pocket, and reminds himself to load it. Glancing up at the dark clouds overhead and the sheets of rain pouring down from them, Jonathan smiles. Soon, now.