The Prowler

Sensitive Content: Child death

The living room is bigger than he imagined it would be or at least it feels that way once he is inside. Gary steps out from behind the heavy drapes and takes a deep breath, inhaling the musty scent of the brocade. Although he is in almost complete darkness, he cannot help but admire the room, its impeccably placed furniture and framed artwork. The house’s brick exterior, which he has scrutinized for the past two weeks, seems modest in comparison to what’s inside. He takes a flashlight from the pocket of his sweatshirt. The small click echoes off the high ceiling and pale walls, freezing his muscles. He holds his breath, listening, like a cat ready to pounce on an unknowing bird. 

After a moment, Gary aims the flashlight in front of him, creating a trail of dusty light on the dark, hardwood floor that squeaks beneath his sneakers as he takes several careful steps forward. The light reaches the fringed edge of an antique rug, then travels up the curved wooden leg of a sky-blue sofa adorned with intricate golden flowers—another antique. This stuff must be worth millions, Gary thinks as he touches the expensive fabric. He turns towards the large mantel, his steps precise but more confident, excited as he eyes what he came here for.

The high, wooden mantel is just like the ones in the other houses, neatly adorned with life, frozen and framed; happiness trapped behind glass like trophies in a display case. Gary runs his gloved finger along the shelf, collecting whatever dust was left behind by the housekeeper that morning. He scans the photographs immediately spotting the little girl. Her light-brown hair is the perfect length, just above her shoulders, not like the last girl whose hair was too short. Little girls should have nice, long hair. A bright green bow pins her hair back on one side, revealing her round face and big, green eyes. Even in a photograph, he can see her eyelashes long and black like the whiskers of a kitten. He reaches out to touch them, to feel their lightness on his fingers, but instead feels the smooth glass against his leather glove. 

In the photo, she is held by her eight-year old brother, draped over his outstretched arms as if she were a pile of warm towels. They have the same green eyes, but his hair is much darker, almost black like his mother’s. The boy is standing knee-deep in a pile of leaves, and an abandoned rake lies beside him. Gary imagines the father behind the camera, one eye peering through the lens that fences off the rest of the world from the moment, from the father’s beautiful children and places them in a frame, on the mantel where they can always be watched. Gary lifts the frame off the mantel and turns it over. He gently slides the anterior piece off of the frame, revealing the back of the photograph. In a woman’s loopy handwriting are the words William and Lucy, October, 2005. 

Gary remembers October, 2005. He turned thirty-nine and spent his birthday sitting on the cold, cement floor of the storage locker that he’d been renting for almost eight months. In the beginning, he would go there every day, then a couple times a week, then eventually only once in a while when the pull felt strongest. By that time, he had found another way of comforting himself, a better way, but on his birthday he wanted to be there. He wanted to be surrounded by the cold, decaying remnants of life. He wanted to remind himself that he was still getting older, still living, still warm, even if he shouldn’t be, even if they were not. 

“Lucy,” Gary whispers, then slips the photograph into his pocket and carefully sets the frame back onto the shelf. In the vacant glass he is confronted by two dark eyes, the dilated pupils taking over the irises like spilled ink. He barely recognizes them beneath the hovering eyebrows, and he blinks twice to make sure they’re his own. He watches a gloved hand touch the overgrown curls that hide the chin, the cracked lips, the small, almost feminine nose. His gaze returns to the black ink spots and he blinks twice. Turning towards the doorway, spots a dim light in the distance. He puts his flashlight into his pocket and moves silently over the antique rug, across the polished wooden floors and onto the checkered tiles of the kitchen. The light, he realizes, is coming from inside the oven.

Gary imagines the mother flipping on the oven light to check the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies she’s baking, Lucy’s favorite. Gary opens the oven, releasing the faint sugary scent that has been trapped in with the light. Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are Gary’s favorite, too. Gary notices that the oven, along with the other appliances in the kitchen, is modern, sleek—probably installed within the past few years. He thinks of his own kitchen—the old range, the buzzing refrigerator, the broken dishwasher. He hates that place with its ratty couch and creaky floors. That house is no place for children, especially for little girls. Little girls deserve new leather couches for jumping on, and Sub-Zero refrigerators for storing their lunches, and electric ovens for baking cookies. The other houses had new kitchens like this one, which was good because they had little girls like Lucy, too.

Gary switches off the oven light, then creeps toward the staircase as his eyes adjust again to the darkness. He draws the flashlight from his pocket and turns on the beam that shines behind him. Realizing that he is holding it backwards, Gary swivels the flashlight, creating an orbit around him. The brass handles of a wooden cabinet catch the light. The cabinet has an old-fashioned lock and the door is slightly ajar, and Gary carefully pulls it open, knowing its old hinges will creak. Gary holds his breath, anticipating what’s inside. Just as he expected, the shelves of the cabinet are lined with expensive bottles, the kind he has only seen behind the counter of a liquor store but whose contents he’s never tasted. He considers pouring himself a glass. Just one glass couldn’t hurt, he thinks. But it can hurt; it has, and it will. He sees a snifter out of place, several drops of auburn liquid have collected at the bottom. Gary thinks of the father, coming home after a long day at the office and pouring himself a glass of brandy. His wife smiling sympathetically as she watches her husband relax. When she’s not looking, however, her husband goes back to the cabinet and pours himself another glass and then another. By the time they’re ready to go to bed, he’s had four, maybe five glasses—he can’t remember. He carelessly leaves the cabinet door ajar, the key still in the lock. Lucy is too small to reach the lock, but William is just tall enough. He has seen his father going to that cabinet often and wonders what’s inside. He can go take a quick look. Maybe it’s something wonderful and then he can tell Lucy all about it. William reaches his hand up to the brass handle when he hears his mother’s voice calling him. It’s bedtime. 

Gary closes the cabinet door and locks it. He places the key into his pocket. Maybe he should have had a cabinet with a lock and key, instead of keeping the bottles stashed in his car, in his workroom, in his sock drawer. Maybe, he thinks, if he’d had a lock and key, he wouldn’t have drunk as much or as often, but he knows he would have. A lock and key wouldn’t have stopped him. It wouldn’t have kept him out of Ernie’s that night or gotten him home any earlier. He still would have passed out on the cement steps, covered in urine and beer, under the blinking neon sign that read “Come in, we’re open;” he still would have been driven home by Officer Ryan like all the other nights. No, a lock and key wouldn’t have changed anything.

Gary locates the staircase and places one hand on the wooden banister, one foot lightly on the first step. He gently raises himself, listening for the creak beneath his foot, but all he hears is that deadly silence. He continues with the next foot until he reaches the top of the stairs, using the back of his glove to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He sees a yellow glow coming from an open doorway and creeps silently towards it. Along the wall are more framed photographs: professionally taken pictures of the children in their new Easter outfits or matching overalls. Lucy’s hair is pulled back with a bow. Even though the photograph is black-and-white, Gary knows the bow must be green. The children are together in most of the pictures, but there is one of each of them as babies, beautiful babies. Gary continues through the hallway, his gloved hand tracing a path beneath the even wooden frames.

The glow, he finds, is coming from a small, plastic unicorn. Gary walks into the room. The yellow light reflects off the clean, white tiles like the sun off the surface of a glistening pool. He can almost feel the steam from tonight’s bath rising onto his face, and he tries to breathe it in. He pulls off one of his gloves and touches the tiles, hoping to soak up their warmth through his fingers, but they are ice cold. He peers into the bathtub still filled with drowned Barbies, sunken boats, water-logged Hot Wheels. He slips his glove back on, then picks up a doll and wrings the water out of her hair. 

Barbie was there that night in the bathtub with Molly. Gary had hidden the doll behind his back while he ran the water, using his finger to test its warmth, but it was just out of habit; he couldn’t feel the water, his fingers were usually numb those days, his toes, too. He remembers the shriek as she stepped into the tub, her naked little body jumping out into his arms. 

“It’s too hot!” she shouted at him. He smiled at the pout on her round little face and put his hands to her eyes. She batted her eyelashes back and forth across his fingers and giggled, then reached behind his back, locating her doll and grinning excitedly.

“I’m sorry, Cupcake. I’ll make it better,” he assured her.

Gary slips the Barbie doll into his pocket, her plastic feet sticking out from inside his sweatshirt. He steps back into the hallway and stops. In the silence of the house he can hear the family’s rhythmic breathing. A father’s quick, deep breaths; a mother’s long sighs; a son’s short gasps and a daughter’s soft hums, like a lullaby. Gary tries to breathe with them, but his breaths feel too heavy, too practiced. His breathing becomes choked sobs that gurgle in his chest, then spew out his nose, his mouth like an erupting volcano. He tries to hold his breath, to become silent again the way it was that night, that night there was no breathing, no lullaby. 

Gary had awoken on the living room couch, his foot stuck in one of the holes in the upholstery. He looked around at the darkness surrounding him, wondering what time it was. He lifted himself slowly off the couch, one hand holding his throbbing head, then stumbled up the stairs to the landing. At first, he didn’t notice the silence; the hammering in his head was too loud. He held onto the wall as he walked to their room, his feet tripping over each other. He always went to their room first. Sometimes he never even made it to his own room and would fall asleep at the foot of their beds. 

He stood in the doorway, the room bathed in the moon’s faint blue glow. The walls were mostly bare except for a wooden “S” painted blue with green stripes and a wooden “M” painted yellow with red polka-dots that he had made for them in his workroom. The shark clock Gary had gotten from a buddy at work tick-tocked in sync with the throbbing of his head, which was growing worse. He carried himself over to their beds and stood between them. 

To his left was his son, his first-born. The one who convinced him that he wanted to be a father, that he really could do it if he just tried—and he did try. On the night Steven was born, his wife Hannah placed the baby into his arms, and Gary felt the warmth of the new life tingling in his fingertips. To his right was his little girl, his baby, his cupcake. When Molly was born, Gary didn’t think he could ever love anything as much as he loved her—those little fingers, those big gray eyes. He wanted to hold her in his arms as tight as he could for as long as he could. But he had to give her back to Hannah. He had to let go so that she could grow up and go to kindergarten and play tag with her big brother and bake cookies with her mother. He had to let go so that he could go back to the Camden County Post Office where he sold stamps and weighed packages day in and day out in order to give her Barbie dolls for the bathtub and new roller skates for her fifth birthday. The worst days were during the summer, when young fathers came into the post office with packages wrapped in pink paper—gifts, they said with beaming smiles, for their little girls at sleep-away camp. Those days Gary drank the most. He would sit at Ernie’s for hours, wishing he could give her sleep-away camp and pink packages and everything she ever wanted, but knowing that he couldn’t and would never be able to. 

He reached down to give Molly a kiss on the forehead, pushing her light-brown hair back. His fingers didn’t feel the cold, but his lips did. He tried shaking her awake. 

“Molly! Baby, wake up!” Her body lay limp on her pink sheets. Gary felt dizzy with disbelief. He stumbled backwards onto Steven’s bed. He grabbed his son’s shoulders, shook him desperately, trying to send a shock of warmth through the boy’s body. Gary ran into the bathroom and began running the hot water, filling the room with steam. His head ached as he stumbled towards his bedroom. His vision blurred, and he could barely see the glow of the bedside lamp that Hannah always left on for him. He fell to his knees and dragged himself into the room, hoping, praying, but he knew even before he reached her body, her glasses still on, her latest book-club novel lying open beside her on the floral comforter. The chill crawled over him like hundreds of tiny spiders. 

Lucy’s room feels warm. Hanging on the wall is a framed poster from the Cape May Zoo and a sign that says “Ballerina” with a little mouse in a tutu. At the foot of her bed is a large wooden toy chest with her name painted across it and dancing kittens around each of the letters. He imagines all the beautiful dolls that must be inside. Dolls from all over the world—China, France, that arrived in neat, little pink packages with notes that said “Your new friend is here!” The hand-painted porcelain faces with their wide eyes and blank stares intertwined with Raggedy Ann and Cabbage Patch kids, whose lifeless bodies are stacked one on top of another. Gary stands in the doorway, listening to her breathing. Tears drip down his cheeks onto the pink carpet. He can no longer hear Lucy’s humming breaths above his own sobs.

Carbon monoxide poisoning, they said. Improper installation, outdated appliances, lack of ventilation—any number of possible causes, they told him. The most important thing to remember is that it’s not your fault; they said it again—it’s not your fault, over and over. The Silent Killer, they called it. Yes, the Silent Killer, Gary thought.

Through his crying, he hears a small sound.

“Daddy?” Gary holds his breath, frozen in the doorway. “Daddy, what’s wrong?” That voice, the sweetest sound. 

The last time he heard that sound was the week after it happened. He didn’t go to work. He tore through the house, filling cartons with photographs from Steven’s soccer games and Molly’s preschool graduation, books, and toys. In the bedroom he stopped at the blinking light of the answering machine. He didn’t want to listen to the messages, the consoling voices of distant people would only mock him. He pressed a button on the machine.

“Hi! You’ve reached the Landers! Please leave a message! Okay! Bye!” The sweet sound of his little girl echoed through the empty room. He played it again.

“Hi! You’ve reached the Landers! Please leave a message! Okay! Bye!” And again, until the little voice was drowned out by his own tears. He tore the machine from the wall and threw it into a box. He loaded the blue minivan, drove to Steele Moving & Storage and rented a unit. He unloaded his life into the cement box and locked the door.

He clears his throat. 

“Nothing, Cupcake. Go back to sleep.” His body is shaking. The room is silent for a moment.

“Okay, I love you, Daddy.” His fingers tingle with warmth inside his leather gloves and he takes them off. He turns away from the door and steps into the hallway.

“I love you, too,” he whispers behind him as he walks slowly down the hall, his hand inside his pocket, fingering the brass key, Barbie’s damp synthetic hair tickling his wrist.