Stranger Will (5 page)

The man looks up to the house, never to William, and says, “Terrible, isn’t it?”

“Sure. It’s sad,” William says. “Disgusting.”

“You know, I thought so at first.” The words pour out. “But

I’ve seen a lot of ‘em. They go when they need to go.” “Well, this one’s ready to go.”

“I’ll agree. It’s never something you want to think about but you’ve got to consider that maybe she’s just not fit to keep going. That maybe she’s flawed and it’s just a procreation thing.”

Puppy Fur offers an uncertain look. It’s his eyes. His smile remains concrete, hard but lacking emotion.

“Like dog breeding,” William says. “Nature cannot produce perfect specimens all on its own. Human interference, controlled breeding—hence perfect dogs—are created repeatedly.”

The man flattens his grin.

“It
is
a bit militant, but I’ve see so many of these that I can’t explain. This one is actually one of the cleaner ones. I wish I had a camera most of the time. You ever seen a fat man melted to his toilet? I have. It happens because people aren’t perfect, and if maybe we can get perfection we can stop sad things like this.” He waits a few moments. “It’s just an idea of mine.”

“No, it’s okay. She’s always been an eyesore. Most of us around here are ready to see her go.”

William’s eyes widen. “You knew her?” “What?”

William looks into the man’s crooked face and realizes at that moment that he had been talking about the house the entire time, not the woman.

“Well, you’ve got to realize what the thing does to the neighborhood. Brings the value of everything down just a bit. We’ve been getting petitions around, setting up meetings with the city, doing everything we can to try and get this house down. It’s been here, unoccupied for the better part of twenty years—aside from the squatter you found.” He tosses his head to the side, eyes still on the house. “I live just next door so it affects me the most.”

William looks down to see that Puppy Fur ’s grass and this house’s grass are identical. Trimmed to seamless. “Nice yard,” he offers only half invested in its sentiment. It
is
a nice yard, but William doesn’t care.

“Yeah, I go ahead and do this lawn. It’s all I can really do for now. I love this neighborhood, you know. It’s a fascinating place. I want it to look great.”

Cars begin pulling out of driveways lining the street. It’s the normal work hour for most of the world and what strikes William as most awkward about this entire situation is that every car flaunts the same shade of beige. People around here seem to have found the pinnacle of existence in this color and the rest of life means just seeing it all through to the end.

“How’s the hand,” Puppy Fur asks, almost chuckling. “Dog got me.”

The man nods and walks away, throwing a soft pat to William’s back as he turns. “Make sure you clean it,” he says over his shoulder. “You never know the kinds of things a dog bite can plant inside of you.”

Mrs. Rose, a close friend, once told William that people never change. She explained that change is only our understanding of A to B, that in truth A never started and B will never end.

She also told William that people who use the word
fascinating
, usually aren’t.

He leaves the o-zone generator on the front lawn, planning to retrieve it tomorrow with Philip. By that time its weight and its metal feet will have yellowed the lawn enough for a scar, something the Puppy Fur Bathrobe will cart in specialized fertilizers to correct. William chalks his own audacity up to spite but on a separate level entirely feels a little bad because the lawn does look nice.

When William gets home, he falls to the couch. He sleeps in his pants, their new stains setting deep under his weight, their fumes shaping the air his fiancée and child breathe.

Chapter Six

William wakes on the living room floor; Julie has stolen the couch. The red answering machine LED blinks heartbeat steady. He rolls off his keys and tosses them to the large glass table, rousing his bulging fiancée. She pinches her eyes, mumbles under heavy breath. “Philip called last night,” she says and notes too that his voice sounded worried, that he mentioned his sister. “Didn’t know he had a sister,” she says and is back to sleep before a following yawn ends.

He starts the answering machine and enters the bathroom. Philip’s voice delivers snippets amidst porcelain splashes.

“…the doctor says that when she starts to get her color back and regains a conscious sense of pain, she might have sudden stomach cramps…”

Coffee is a diuretic. William knows this because more than blood, more than entrails, nothing threatens the prospect of a good day more than a dead coffee drinker. Cleaning urine is cleaning the waste of the wasted.

“…menstrual type cramps. The only thing that will help is getting out whatever piece is still up there…”

As he zips his pants, the phone rings. The incoming call cuts the message somewhere around
“physical removal”
and William would be fine to let it ring, but Julie yells. “Alright,” he returns but takes his time flushing the toilet, and washing his hands; he and Julie dance a delicate battle.

“Well.” It’s Philip. “Did you get my messages?”

“Some. Just woke up.” Julie has rolled over, cocooned herself under a pillow. William talks louder. “Had to pee.” He escapes to the kitchen and makes a sandwich.

“Her name is Shelia,” Philip says and continues after clearing his throat.

By the time they had arrived at the hospital the paramedics had brought Shelia to a semiconscious state. She could scarcely part her eyelids, her lips too, and any words just spilled; “pushed along the edges of her tongue,” the doctor said, a man with more poetry than tact. At the hospital, Philip lied when they asked his affiliation. He was not going to leave her. He had to be the brother.

Hours passed before a doctor met with Philip. The man swaggered into the waiting room, his own heavy breath expelled along the flutes of his nose, lifting renegade wisps from his otherwise manicured halo of thin brown hair. The strands bounced in tune to the doctor ’s confident stride. He spoke at a distance, full feet separating the men, and informed Philip that Shelia had arrived “pushing clinical death.” Shallow breathing, a heart rate gapped by full minutes, these things the paramedics discovered during the ambulance ride. It was later at the hospital when they found out about her pregnancy. “Does any of this sound familiar?” the Doctor asked.

Philip recognized an implied accusation but curbed his offense and told the doctor that “all of this is new information.” He swears to have smelled pot wafting from the doctor ’s coat.

His fake sister had a child inside her, dead from what the doctor explained was a form of premeditated cardiac arrest.

The doctor asked again if all of this was new. Philip had the benefit of honest ignorance and calmly reassured the doctor that everything about the situation—“everything,” he said slowly— was absolutely new.

The doctor continued. He revealed the abortion. He told Philip about digoxin, that he found near fatal levels of the drug in her bloodstream, about how digoxin is a chemical used in late- term abortions and, under normal conditions, requires little downtime for healing.

“She didn’t seem healthy to me,” Philip told the doctor. “That’s because Sheila didn’t go to a hospital,” the doctor said. “At least not one around here. Alexandria has only this one and we have no record of this.”

“What about a clinic?” Philip asks.

“A respectable clinic would have refused the girl,” the doctor says. “Very few clinics even exist in Alexandria, none of which are equipped to handle abortions after fourteen weeks. Besides, if a clinic is using digoxin, it’s going to have a reputation. Your sister ’s fetus was at least twenty-four weeks. To abort a fetus that size without the proper equipment is legally negligent.”

The doctor doesn’t know where this could have happened. He hasn’t the legal right to speculate, but off the record, the doctor suspects something underground. The doctor assures Philip that, in general, people have heart and are willing to stretch rules on a case-by-case basis. But people also panic. They do something wrong and abandon a project without considering the implications further than themselves.

Because the baby was never removed from Shelia’s womb, the digoxin had time to weave its way throughout both bodies. Someone improperly measured the dosage. Fine for the fetus, which was already planned as dead, not so fine for Shelia. Then they found her in the basement.

Step one was to remove the fetus. Because the digoxin had made Shelia weak, a Caesarean section, although the most obvious route, wasn’t possible. Her body wouldn’t heal. “For the funeral we’d have to lay her in something chest-high,” Philip said. The doctor fought a smile. Philip never intended one.

Step one quickly complicated. An ultrasound revealed a transversely laying fetus, which made vaginal removal also impossible. A normal child sits vertically, its head downward, making delivery as biologically functional as possible. When a child sits sideways, it is already set back in life. Brain damage. Mental retardation. Early ultrasounds in this situation give the family a head start on finding appropriate health insurance plans willing to fund lifelong medications and power wheelchairs. The parents get a few months to research ways to prep the child for verbal abuse, for self-motivated politeness, for guilt-induced invitations to neighborhood birthday parties.

All of this may be great to some people. It may ruin the lives of others. Or, as in Shelia’s case, it might not be an option.

Philip’s fake sister had probably not heard the news. She was probably still laying in the hospital room, watching TV, drinking water, trying to remember a gap in time from basement to room full of beeping monitors.

She had probably not heard that sticking a few tissues, maybe even a latex glove, in her pocket every morning might be appropriate.

She had probably not heard that light colored pants were a terrible idea for at least the next few months.

She had probably not heard that any name she had picked for the child would be reduced from person to placard. Chloe’s foot. Timmy’s left index finger. Johnny’s right ear.

The doctor veiled his explanation as much as possible, dodging questions like a politician.

To remove the child the doctor used tools with names Philip dismissed even as the doctor explained them. These were gripping tools, tools with points, sharp-edged tools, tools with hooks that would be used to clean the uterine walls.

When he first explained the process the doctor used hand motions like sawing through a cheap steak. He’d use two fingers like scissors while gritting his teeth. A mechanical process, technique and skill, like a factory line, pulling out as many pieces as improvised tools can handle.

Ashlee’s elbow by way of a skewer. Eddy’s thigh by way of something resembling a melon-baller.

Damaging Shelia’s uterine walls in her weakened condition could lead to internal bleeding and eventual death. The doctor left some pieces. “When weighing the options I feel Shelia potentially dying is entirely less appropriate than her having to endure a few unpleasantries,” Philip took the doctor ’s smile to mean that referring to the daily tragedy that will be Shelia checking her pants for half the face of her dead child as an “unpleasantry” was his version of a joke.

“Fetus pieces,” William says. The rhyme induces a cough and a dust of broken food from his mouth. “So what was step two?”

“Finding a home for her.”

Julie stares as William turns from the phone. The dial tone fills the silence. Two conflicting routes arise. William could tell Julie about Shelia’s almost baby.
Who
, he thinks,
would raise a fair child after going so far to kill it
? He could swallow his theories for the duration of a few hugs, endure the tears and agree for the time being that Shelia minus one baby is a tragedy. He could offer comfort and bide his time, outlive the initial impact of the situation and endure the rest of their marriage outside this topic. When their own baby is born, he would pretend not to count toes.

The dial tone becomes a siren.

Or he could claim the call was nothing more than “work stuff ”—not far from the truth, really—and take Julie out for a late breakfast. They could eat eggs and sausage and pancakes and describe to each other the effect simple sugars have on a child. She could rub her stomach with each bite, and William could agree with her when she decides the baby’s dislikes by the strength of her heartburn. She will giggle when it kicks and will pull William’s hand under the table, slip it under her shirt, and wait for another. She will never know the telephone conversation.

He could do this, but he wants her fear. The burdens of parenthood, the tragedies of the world, are all the evidence he’s got and closing in on one month until fatherhood means every opportunity must be exploited.

She rises from the couch, repeats his words: “fetus pieces?”

“Nothing,” he says with complete conviction. But Julie probes, as he hoped she would.

William explains the woman and her trauma in broad strokes. He uses the word digoxin. He focuses on the death and avoids mentioning that they found her in a condemned basement. He avoids describing the scene, the way neighbors gathered, whispered, eager for the next morning’s water cooler stories. He avoids mentioning body parts and leaves the details at “fetus.” The specifics do not matter to Julie or their child. All that matters is that Julie understands the world as a terrible place. A place where bad things happen, where bodies fail and fill the streets.

Her eyes break. William cannot afford to hide the hope her tears give him, so he reaches for a hug and whispers, “This is the world saying enough.”

He squeezes, arching his body over Julie’s intruding gut and tells her, “These things happen because people aren’t careful enough to prevent them.” He slides his hand over her stomach.

She steps back, tears still building. “Fuck you,” she says and brings an open hand hard across William’s face. He tastes blood and stands to leave for a towel, but the doorbell rings.