15

The first vague awareness Susan had that she was awake was that she was cold. She drew the blankets up around her face; they felt thicker than normal. She half opened her eyes and saw the color scarlet (what could that be?) and slowly remembered the scarlet blanket, a spare, she kept in the hall closet. Lou must have covered her with it. (Why? She recalled, dimly, something about the window being open.)

She liked this feeling of being unfocused; she frequently lingered within it, before letting her thoughts pull together into assignments (get Lou and Andrea up. Make breakfast. Walk S.W.).

She wiggled a foot under the blanket at the thought of Sweet William and waited for him to pounce on it, catlike (their favorite morning game).

He didn’t.

The throbbing in her head and the cloudy feeling of nausea (far off, coming closer) brought everything back to her now and she closed her eyes tight against it. Lying there, trying to fall asleep again, knowing that she wouldn’t, Susan wished, for one brief moment, that she would never wake again.

She opened her eyes to find the bedroom filled with sunlight. For a moment she assumed it had something to do with the broken window, but then, glancing at the clock on the dresser, she realized it was after ten. (The sun never shone into their bedroom until it cleared the building across the street, shortly before ten.) Lou’s side of the bed was empty; that didn’t surprise her. After last night, he would sulk off to his office, glad to be rid of her.

She sat up, felt the hangover (this one would doubtless be a beauty) and slowly went into the bathroom, not looking at the window lest the whole nightmare return before she could deal with it.

Standing at the bathroom sink, swallowing aspirins, (why could she never remember to take them the night before and spare herself this sickness?), she saw her dried blood spots and remembered cleaning Andrea’s bathroom.

A new anger. Why hadn’t Lou let Andrea kiss her goodbye?

It wasn’t until her second cup of coffee that she decided Lou had left quietly so that she could sleep undisturbed. She would have dwelled on that guilt if the doorbell hadn’t rung.

“Morning.” The superintendent looked distressed, but then he always looked distressed when speaking to the tenants, all of whom he feared.

Susan remembered how he avoided her eyes when they carried Sweet William into the basement and left him (what had once been him) in the storage room.

“What do you want us to do with the dog?” he asked, when Susan offered no response.

They had laid him on his side on the cold cement floor.

“I don’t know.”

They hadn’t bothered to cover him; it never occurred to them.

“We can’t leave him there.”

He looked like he was sleeping; as if at any moment, he’d wake and stretch his head forward to be kissed.

“No . . . no, of course not.”

Or roll over, huge legs dangling in the air, whining to be scratched.

“The garbage men said they can’t take him. . . .”

“No, please don’t let them. . . .”

“It’s against the law. . . .”

“Yes, I realize, I just don’t know at this moment. . . .”

“We can’t leave him there. . . .”

Finally it was arranged that the superintendent would call Lou at his office (“Can’t we call him now?” “No, our phone is out of order”) and convey the message that Susan wanted Sweet William buried.

Thus brutalized once more, Susan dressed and left the apartment to seek comfort in the way she always had—by doing menial tasks. (When Andrea, at two, had a violent ear infection, Susan had scrubbed the kitchen till it dazzled.) On Amsterdam Avenue she found a glazier who promised to come to the apartment between two and three. (No small victory, this; they usually made you wait all afternoon.) Then she opted to do her marketing in several small shops, rather than at the supermarket where it was joyless, went to a hardware store for unneeded supplies, and finally, having run out of fake errands, returned home.

The superintendent was in the lobby as she entered the building; she hurried to the elevator to avoid him.

“Mrs. Reed—” he caught up to her before she could press her button, and unwillingly she placed her foot against the door to keep it open.

“Yes?”

“I spoke to your husband.” His voice was hushed (embarrassment? reverence?). “Somebody’s coming by this afternoon.”

“Thank you.” She removed her foot.

“Oh, and the telephone man was here.”

The door was closing as he said it; she had to jump to hit the “door open” button.

“What telephone man? I didn’t send for any telephone man.”

His face, always apologetic before the tenants, appeared stricken.

“He said you did. I only let him in because you said your phone was out of order . . .” and Susan pressed her floor button, leaving him standing there pleading his innocence.

Upstairs, she entered the apartment quickly, stopping first in the kitchen to rid herself of her packages.

The white wall phone, new, glistened at her.

And in the living room, on the table where a phone had always been, a new one sat.

And, the worst mockery of all, in the bedroom, Lou’s phone, repaired, sat on her side of the bed.

“You can’t do this to me!” she screamed.

And they answered.

She stood there, in the bedroom, hearing their metallic jeers echo throughout the apartment, knowing that they would win, would always win, no matter what she did, no matter where she went, no matter what unlistening God condescended to help her.

And stubbornly, she got the shears from the kitchen drawer and silenced them all.

Later, when she was napping (exhausted, always exhausted) grotesquery was added to grotesquery. She was awakened by the sound of the phones.

They had healed themselves.