Jonah was putting his third wine cooler to shame when he heard the sound from down the hall.
Had it come from Sally’s room? Was Sally home?
No. She would have answered when he’d first called out. Unless she’d been playing with her dolls and stuffed animals. Her focus then was so intense it obliterated outside distraction. She’d sit so oblivious in her hermetic imagination it alarmed Jonah, as if she were tuned to an alternative frequency, another realm. Waving a hand in front of her face didn’t awaken her to this world. Only shaking her would revive her from her fugue, a measure Jonah resisted at all costs, though Rebecca had been known to shake her back to the present, to reality.
Yet surely if Sally were home, Jonah would have heard her holding court with her stuffies.
So what had he heard? A squeak? No. Not quite. A cry?
He took his wine cooler and walked down the hall, unsteady as an unaccountable apprehension coiled in his chest.
At Sally’s bedroom door, his heart twitched. He stared at the sign—sally’s room—scribed with blue crayon in his daughter’s left-handed scrawl.
Jonah suddenly missed his daughter and wife profoundly and longed for them to be home, now, right now; all three of them together.
He put his hand on the doorknob. The old house’s antique glass knobs were among the intricacies that had sold him and Rebecca on the house. Some intricacies, however, had worn thin; what had seemed “antique” had proved old and in disrepair. The beloved leaded windows were sieves for drafts, and most cold nights now Jonah lay awake listening to his paltry savings bleed dry as the furnace groaned without relent or mercy.
Jonah clutched the doorknob, and since the door stuck in cold weather, he shoved a shoulder into it.
Losing his grip, he stumbled into the room as the door slammed against the wall.
Sally was not here. Everything seemed as it should: Sally’s rock and mineral collection lay scattered on the floor among scraps of paper on which Sally had scrawled the names and traits of each mineral and rock. The dog-eared National Geographic magazines whose pictorials Sally had obsessed over of late—one cover featuring King Tut, another skeletal remains from Mt. Vesuvius, and a third of arrowheads and spearheads—lay splayed open in a toss of sheets on her new, big-girl bed. The cost of the bed had forced a rift between Jonah and Rebecca, who’d argued for a secondhand bed. Jonah, however, had insisted his daughter have what he’d never had as a child.
Jonah sat on the bed and picked up the National Geographic that slid to the floor, the headline beside the cover photo of the unearthed skeleton reading: the dead do tell tales at vesuvius. He set it aside and eyed a stuffie in a tangle of sheets, Ed the elephant. Sally adored her stuffed animals, though lately she’d lobbied for a puppy. Rebecca had explained that maybe when, if, Daddy was tenured, they might be able to get one. Sally had whined until Jonah had said maybe, if Sally were very good, they could find a way to get a puppy.
Rebecca had called him a pushover, said he spoiled her. You spoil her. Said false promises were unhealthy. Perhaps. But there were worse things one could do to their child. Much worse. Jonah knew.
Jonah sighed, exhausted from forever having to choose between his family’s present wants and future needs. No matter which he chose, the other suffered, with no end to the financial strain. He picked up Ed the elephant. “A puppy shouldn’t be a luxury, should it?” he asked Ed.
Ed remained mum.
Jonah stood.
Ed tumbled to the floor.
Children’s books populated the shelves above the bed. Jonah took down Blueberries for Sal. He’d bought it five months before Sally was born, so ready to be a father; yet so apprehensive, with no model on which to base the role.
Rebecca had said, Do the exact opposite of what was done to you, and you’ll be father of the year.
As he turned to leave the room, Jonah twisted his ankle cruelly on a doll. He heard and felt the pop of a ligament, and a wild anger reared in him as his mind flashed to calculate how much a sprained ankle would cost in medical fees.
He jammed Blueberries for Sal back in place, the jacket ripping, and snatched the offending doll and hurled it into the corner.
The doll struck the wall and emitted a meek baby’s cry. Was that the sound that lured me to the room? he wondered.
A zoo of stuffed animals crowded his feet. He kicked all of them, including Ed the elephant, into the corner as a mean, unbidden thought scorched his brain: Spoiled. A spoiled brat who begs for a puppy she knows I can’t afford. If she only knew how—
Jonah tried to harness the forbidding thoughts that, when he was under duress, sprang into his mind and, when spoken, threatened the life he’d built: that fragile curio left too close to the shelf edge.
He picked up the stuffed animals, and weak with indignity, rearranged them with care on the chair, thankful his daughter’s playthings could never reveal his abuse.