Instinctually she crouches behind the stacks of boxes and peeks around. The shadow is the shape of a tall, tall man. He appears to be doing some kind of dance, his midsection swaying just a bit. Although she’s frightened, it comes to her that this isn’t a person. It’s definitely not a dimensional living breathing human. It must be a garment bag or something she didn’t notice on her way in. She shoves her pile of plastic boxes, keeping it between her and the shadow. At last she reaches the anteroom bound off by the utility sink, the furnace, and the ring of light over the steps.
She bounds up the steps to get—wait. The door’s shut. The door is stuck shut. She wrenches the handle this way and that, yanking and pulling the door with her five-foot tall frame and… nothing. Deep breaths. She tries turning the handle both ways, this time more calmly. Nothing. Goose bumps ripple across her skin. She feels them crawl across her back and over her stomach. She sits on the steps and peeks over at the hulking shadow. Now the dust motes she raised swirl everywhere.
She remembers something…feels a sense of déjà vu she can’t quite…yes she remembers now, finally. This inspires her to throw herself at the door one more time, again to no avail. This happened to her before when she was pregnant with Betsy. This happened before, but last time it wasn’t an accident. All those years ago. Erik trapped her down here. He was drunk and they were watering the plants and taking in the mail while his mother was out of town.
He wanted to convince Anna that he grew up under the oppressive presence of his father, and he succeeded because there it was again. It was no garment bag. It was Erik’s father, the shade of the man hanging by the neck from his belt, secured over the water pipe. She peeps over the banister in his direction, and faint and shady though it is, he is there. He’s little more than an outline, the shadow of a large man’s body hanging from the neck, dead.
How could she forget this? How? How? She’d been seven months pregnant when Erik terrified her by locking her in the basement for what seemed like hours while he paced and ranted and raved about his father. Erik had been only seven when he’d discovered his father there in the basement. At first she screamed and begged to be set free, but she quickly realized she was wasting her breath. Erik would never hear her over his own shouting. And even if he did hear her he wouldn’t let her out until he was good and ready. She gave up and sat on the middle step, right where she sits now.
How many times did he tell her that story? How many times did the pitiful image of that brokenhearted little boy trapped inside the man convince her to forgive, to forget, to show godly compassion toward the victim.
He came home from his paper route to a strangely silent house. Normally his mother would be clamoring around frying eggs or if he was lucky bacon. His father would be reading the paper muttering about the news. They might argue about some unimportant detail. Then again they might scream and yell and lob pots and crockery at one another. But silence was a rarity.
That particular morning Erik junior came home to silence. He tiptoed around the silence to find his mother. She wasn’t in the kitchen or the bathroom by the back door. He took the hallway towards her bedroom. Perhaps she was sick, lying in bed. She wasn’t there, but he was shocked. The room was torn apart. Every drawer was pulled out, every shred of clothing flung about. Lamps were overturned, and the mattress almost shoved off the frame. He was young, but not naïve. Once he was certain she wasn’t there hiding somewhere he headed back to the kitchen. There he would telephone his aunt as his mother had instructed him to do in an emergency.
But something caught his eye, drawing him instead into the sitting room (what his mother called it anyway). More overturned lamps and end tables. Ahh, there she is. He caught sight of her shoes and ankles from behind the reading chair. “Mother?” he cried out. “Mother, are you alright? Shall I call Aunty Jean Mother?”
As he rounded the couch and could finally see over it he realized mother was not fine. Mother was awash in a pool of blood bubbling from her head. He knew immediately she was dead because she wasn’t moving, or talking, or screaming. She must be dead. There was so much blood. Blood everywhere.
Erik junior realized he was standing in a puddle of his mother’s blood and leapt free only to realize he was leaving tracks. This made him realize there was another set of tracks already there. Bigger tracks heading…he followed them…toward the basement door, which was flung open.
The tracks disappeared, worn away, nothing left. But momentum carried little Erik forward through the door, down the stairs. At first he saw nothing amiss. Figured he misunderstood the tracks, and he turned around to retrace them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw it, the dark shadow where streaky light should have been. His father dead, hanging by his neck from his black leather belt absolutely still, silent.
Erik junior didn’t call Aunty Jean. He called an ambulance. Then he called the police. Then he went to get Mrs. Hartford next door, and she called Aunty Jean who took Erik home with her where he stayed for nine months while his mother recovered from the two gunshot wounds to her head and spent some time gathering herself in a sanitarium. Erik senior was quietly cremated and his ashes buried unceremoniously in a rural pauper’s graveyard, where they could bury sinners and those certainly damned to hell.
Anna couldn’t count how many times he had slurred his way through that story in a drunken stupor. How central that story was to the man he’d become was clear to Anna perhaps for the first time as she sat staring at the shadow in the dim light. Only now, she can see there is nothing more than a shadow, a memory, a dense fear hanging like a ghost in the dusty air.
Anna shakes her head at her own naïveté. How had she managed to forget that her own husband had locked her in a basement he believed was inhabited by the ghost of his homicidal father? How had she managed to use this childhood incident to excuse every terrible thing Erik had become?
What she sees now for the first time instead of pity, sorrow, compassion, or anything else is that Erik is potentially dangerous. All these years she felt only for the pain of the boy, never fully realizing the boy had become a man—a man who had inherited a wide streak of family madness with the potential to inspire mortal hatred.
No longer afraid, Anna carries her strength to the door and not surprisingly this time it opens…as if by magic. She does, however, prop it open before she retrieves her boxes of memories from that dingy basement once and for all.
Weeks go by and the weather changes from cold and snowy to chilly and damp. During this time not much changes for Anna. She has been urging Erik to get a place of his own and sending out feelers for a job. She still drives back and forth to care for the kids, make meals, and run them to and from school, practice, and various lessons. The list never seems to end but, honestly, Anna doesn’t mind.
She’s had a few so-called meetings with Erik; a few lunches and dinners to discuss their divorce, which only remind her of their early dates, each one to more and more expensive, more exclusive restaurants or events. Just like now. Erik recovered nicely despite the incident and was gradually spending a few more hours a week at the office. Today they had the restaurant practically to themselves. The state Senate and House of Representatives were out of session and therefore the downtown steakhouse was unusually empty. Anna treads carefully, noting that Erik (despite doctor’s orders) is on his fourth scotch rocks.
“OK, so what I’m going to do Anna is go back to our former divorce agreement and simply have the remarriage of three years ago invalidated. That way, the original divorce will simply stand.” Erik says.
“I’m not sure what that means ‘invalidated.’” Anna replies. Over the years she learned it’s best not to ask questions directly or insinuate that he was unclear or wrong. Sure, operating this way is slower and more cumbersome, but it’s also less likely to inspire an outburst…especially after four scotch rocks.
“It means, simply, dear that our remarriage will be declared farcical, nonexistent…for all intents and purposes, invalid.” He replies.
Anna has a million questions but dares not pose them now. She gestures