Читать книгу Looking Backward in Darkness - Kathryn Ptacek - Страница 5

THREE, FOUR, SHUT THE DOOR

One. Five. Fifteen. One. Five. Fifteen.

Dottie Brewster counted to each number. One. Then to five, and then to fifteen. Then up to fifteen, then to five, then one.

And repeat.

At the back door, she rested her gloved hand on the shiny brass knob, polished from many such sessions. She frowned. Was she counting to five, or fifteen now? She’d lost track.

It didn’t matter, she told herself.

Really.

It. Didn’t.

But it did.

Her hand fluttered as she gnawed at her lower lip. One, two, three...all the way up to fifteen. Then she started over. One. One, two, three, four, five. And then the next sequence of numbers to fifteen.

She had to get it right.

Then she could open the door and go through it. Close it behind her. Go outside.

Had to get it right because nothing in her life went the way it was supposed to—the right way—when she didn’t get the sequence correct.

After all, she hadn’t been counting the day her mother and sister’s car had been broadsided by a semi and they’d died in the flaming wreckage.

She hadn’t been counting the day that Farron left her.

She hadn’t been counting the day she got fired from the job she’d held ever since college graduation, the job she’d been groomed for during those four years of school and the two years of postgraduate work.

None of this would have happened, she told herself, if she’d been counting.

One...two...three....

Suddenly the lines from the old nursery rhyme drifted through her mind.

One, two, buckle my shoe.

Three, four, shut the door.

Damn.

She’d lost count again.

She leaned forward slightly, her forehead against the chilly glass of the door’s pane, and closed her eyes. Tears trembled beneath her eyelids, gumming her thick lashes.

She hated this. Truly she did. With all her heart she wished she could get over it. But it wasn’t like some virus where you got sick and went to bed with fever and chills and after the illness had run its course, you got up and got on with your life.

Her problem didn’t work that way.

One, two, three....

She knew she had a problem, had known that for some time, and she knew there were people who could help her, or at least try to help. She wasn’t so sure they really could be of use. Psychiatrists, Farron had suggested, go see a psychiatrist or a psychologist.

Although she recognized the truth of his words, she’d responded angrily, telling him that she wasn’t crazy.

“I never suggested that, honey,” he said plaintively.

One, two, three, but she hadn’t heard his apology, hadn’t seen the look of anguish on his face because she had been counting. Seven, eight, nine. Farron had tried to convince her that it was for her own good, but she wouldn’t hear of it, couldn’t hear his words. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

A feeling of relief: good.

Time to start over.

Farron hadn’t understood, she told herself, as much as he claimed he did. It wasn’t the counting that was driving her bananas, not really, although that was annoying. It was the fear that she wouldn’t get the counting, the sequences right.

Don’t get it right, and you screw up your life.

She had ample evidence for that.

Farron, her job, her mother and sister’s deaths. There was her father’s cancer too. She knew that was related. Somehow. It was her fault. Somehow her father had died, because she hadn’t gotten it right.

There were other episodes, other times from her early childhood, her teenage years when she hadn’t gotten it right, and things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to. Her mother’s closet alcoholism. Her best friend from childhood dying from complications of diabetes. Her boyfriend ditching her right before the senior prom. Her sister’s botched abortion.

All these incidents were tied together with a thread that ran from her; she was the loom, and because she was coming unraveled—because she wasn’t getting it right, the fabric had developed holes. And it was her fault.

Three, four, five, sang the litany in her exhausted mind.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. She watched as a huge fly crawled across a food-flecked dish in the kitchen sink. Plates and glasses and saucepans, all dirty, piled high in the stained enamel sink. Something buzzed—a handful of flies at the window over the sink.

She wrinkled her nose, noticing for the first time the odor of sour milk, the sickeningly sweetness of over-ripened) fruit. The stink of something else underlay all the others, and she wondered what it was. She couldn’t identify it, not immediately.

She had to do something first.

One, two....

She should wait a bit before she went out. Yes, that was right. She could wash the dishes with really hot soapy water and dry them with some of her linen hand towels bordered with the fancy embroidery she used to have time for, and put them away in the cabinets, and then she would make herself a nice lunch.

Or was it dinnertime?

A sandwich...she could make that for either meal, and so it didn’t matter which meal it actually was, because the sandwich would be for lunch or dinner.

No, she had to get it right. She looked out the window, saw it was still light, but couldn’t see the sun’s position. It could be afternoon. It had to be, since she was wearing gloves which meant that it was cooler outside which meant that it had to be autumn or winter or spring, and night came so much earlier then. Afternoon.

Or late morning.

One, two....

Buckle my shoe.

She almost giggled aloud.

In the last few months of her job she had grown increasing late. She had recognized that—she certainly didn’t need anyone, much less Farron and her boss telling her—and so had started out of the house earlier and earlier each day. In the beginning she’d left on time, then that had graduated to twenty minutes earlier, then an hour earlier. Finally she was getting up at 4:10, so she could get out of the door and get to the University by nine.

It didn’t take her long to get ready in the mornings—she showered, dressed, threw on her makeup, ate a quick breakfast. What took so long was the ritual of going through the door, because she had to do it right—or else—and every time she blew it, and she had to start over, and the ritual grew longer and longer.

Three, four, shut the door.

Five, six, pick up sticks.

Seven, eight, nine....

Thirteen, fourteen—

Why hadn’t she chosen longer numbers? Something like a hundred would have been better. It would take more time to reach; but she hadn’t selected the numbers. They had chosen her. Her mother had always told her to count to ten before responding when she was angry. She remembered as a child counting slowly to ten, and then over again because she liked the feel of control it gave her. She realized she could count and even as she was doing that, she felt her anger or frustration melting away.

She didn’t remember having a temper, but her mother always insisted she did, and her mother must be right.

She counted as high as she could go the first time her father put her in the closet and left her alone with the darkness. She had counted because she had nothing else to do. Counted. And eventually he had come back and let her out. He had said then that she was a good girl, not the screw-up she normally was.

She came to realize during the long hours when she was alone that it really was all her fault, and that she had better learn to get things right.

And the numbers had just popped into her head, and without warning, she started counting—to one, to five, to fifteen, then to fifteen, to five, to one. She tried to draw out the ritual sometimes, tried to slow the counting, but it didn’t always work, and so she would count over and over and over, and the quickness of it irritated her.

It had become her mantra. When she was angry, she summoned it; when she was tired or stressed out, she did the numbers. Knowing that somehow things would be right again.

Only the reassurance she obtained from it had decreased, and so she had increased the number of times she counted. Doubled the times. Then tripled.

Quadrupled.

Until the numbers bled together in her mind, jumbling—one, six, eleven, five, ten—and she had to start over from the beginning. Sometimes it seemed like every minute, every second of her life was devoted to the numbers...to getting it right.

Eventually, even her boss had noticed, and he’d taken her into his office one morning, and asked gently if there was a problem.

“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice trembling. She had been so upset that she forgot to count.

“You’ve been late six months in a row now, Dottie,” Hal said. “I’ve looked the other way because you’ve been here so long and you’ve always been on time, but you’re getting worse. You’ve got to do better. You’ve had a perfect record—and now this. And you’re making mistakes in your work—you’ve never done that before. It’s like your mind is on something else. Is something going on at home?” He had leaned across the desk and for a moment she had thought he was going to place his hand on her shoulder.

“No, there’s nothing wrong,” she lied.

“It’s got to get better,” Hal said.

She nodded.

Only it hadn’t, and finally he had said regretfully that he must fire her, and they’d given her a generous severance check because of the years she’d been there, and she had gone home and sat in her living room and looked out the window at the dying flowers and counted.

To one, to five, to fifteen.

Too late now, she told herself, because she hadn’t gotten it right.

She should have been counting more, should have slowed it down, made it last.

Only she hadn’t.

The fear wrapped itself more tightly around her heart and squeezed.

The tears flowed freely now, and she brushed at her cheek with her other gloved hand, and left a streak there. She stared down at the dirt on her glove and wondered vaguely how it had gotten there. They had been clean when she put them on.

To one, to five, to fifteen.

One, five, fifteen.

She listened to the house, and heard nothing. Didn’t hear the sound of the furnace, didn’t hear the grandfather clock in the front hall, and wondered why. The clock must have run down, and she wondered when she had wound it last. Hadn’t it been yesterday? No. Friday. No...before that. But when she didn’t remember.

Five, six...seven, eight, open the gate.

She told herself she would get through the door now. She had things to do. She had to get outside and get to—

Get to where? She frowned, wondering if she’d been heading to the store or someplace else. Maybe a job interview? Yes, that was it. After she’d been fired, she’d pored through the classified section of the newspaper for jobs that interested her. A number of positions called for workers who stayed at home, which appealed to her. So she had called for an appointment, and she was headed for it.

Only...she frowned...only that appointment had been yesterday.

Or the day before.

She had blown it again.

One, five, fifteen.

She must have stopped the sequence somewhere, some place, and she’d royally screwed up again.

She hadn’t been counting last week when she’d been singing along with the old Bee Gees song on the car radio, and she hadn’t seen the van in front of her stop abruptly and so she had thumped into the back-end of it. Her car had been more damaged than the other driver’s, and she’d had to have it towed away, and she wasn’t sure how she would get it back, because the bill was so huge, and she was running out of money. Farron tried to help her with money from time to time, until she got on her feet and got another job. But she hadn’t gotten another job. She wouldn’t be getting another job if she couldn’t get out the door.

Three, four, five.

One, two, three, four...thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

She was so tired. So weary of the repetition. Over and over those numbers floated in her head, drifted through every waking thought. She was so tired of them. She should try them in foreign languages, she thought with a sudden giggle.

Unos, dos...cinco.

It wasn’t the same.

...three, four, five....

She yawned. She could lay down on the couch, and take a nap for a while, and then when she woke up, she would be rested, and she would get up and wash the dishes and she would go out the door.

For whatever reason she had to go out the door.

But first she had to count. And she had to get it right. Because if she didn’t...she shuddered, thinking what might happen.

One. One, two, three....

She didn’t count in her sleep. At least she didn’t think she did. Usually she woke, and for the first few minutes of her day, didn’t think about counting.

Maybe that was a mistake.

It had been morning, after all, when Farron told her he was leaving her. She had cried and screamed at him, and then fallen into a silence and simply stared at him. Why, she wanted to say, why? But every time she opened her mouth, all she could do was cry.

She had counted much too late then. She had counted to one, to five, to fifteen as he picked up the suitcase he had packed before she woke, had counted as he went down the stairs and she trailed after him, had counted as he walked out the door and she had stared out the front window as he got into the car and drove away, counted as the only man she’d ever loved left her.

Counted.

Too late.

She hadn’t gotten it right.

Her father was right; she was such a screw-up.

The fear was in her veins, in her lungs, in her tissue; it permeated every bit of her body.

She wept then, loudly, forlornly, and she wanted it all undone. She wanted it to be all right again, although she never knew it would be.

Suddenly she felt a warmth in her groin, and then down her leg, and she looked down and saw the piss running there, making the pool at her feet even larger, and she recognized the foulness she’d been vaguely aware of, and realized then that she hadn’t been there for a few minutes, she hadn’t been there at the door even for hours.

She had been there all day.

Maybe all night. Maybe longer.

One, two.

Three, four, shut the door.

But how could you shut the door, if you couldn’t even open it?

Seven, eight....

How long before you begin to decay? she wondered vaguely, and knew now why there were so many flies.

Nine, ten, do it again.

She would get it right. It was just a matter of time.