Issue 19

Stefan Kiesbye

When he returned from his run, the garage door clicker was gone. Troy was panting next to him, his tongue fat and purple. Richard fished through his pockets, three in his jacket and two more in his pants, then let himself into the house through the kitchen sliding glass door he had left unlocked. He poured fresh water for Troy, left the house once more, and retraced his four-mile run. Any moment now he would spot the black plastic device with its shiny metal clip.

The melting snow didn’t cooperate with his search, and when he returned to his house on Grant Street a second time, he still hadn’t retrieved the clicker. Elizabeth kept another one in her car; they would be fine. Richard needed a shower, and there was no time left for breakfast. Who might be in possession of the remote at this point? Not for a second did he believe that it was still lying in the street. It must have fallen from his pocket, maybe when he’d reached for a plastic bag to pick up Troy’s turd. Someone had found the remote and pocketed it, maybe a town clerk on the way to her office, or maybe a miner on his early morning stroll to Fancy’s to buy his first bottle of the day. Whoever it was, that someone had gained the power to open Richard’s garage door. Richard had meetings and presentations scheduled until evening.

How would the finder know which door the clicker opened? Richard imagined a sixteen-year-old, one of the misshapen creatures the town brought forth, or one of the Grants, less misshapen than miseducated, picking up the device. On their way home from school they would simply try every house.

Richard picked up the phone and called St. Mary’s School for the Deaf. He was Director for Outreach and Marketing, a fundraiser, and he had called in sick just once during his six years at the school, after Elizabeth had stepped on a rusty nail on the lawn and needed to be driven to the emergency room.

“I’m not feeling well. Actually, I’m feeling terribly sick. Food poisoning, I think,” he told the secretary. He felt perplexingly guilty, but the woman only said, “Feel better,” and suddenly he had the rest of the day to himself. He noticed his hair standing on end. His ears were waiting for the garage door to lift.

Richard forewent the shower and just rinsed in front of the kitchen sink. Troy trotted off into the living room, taking up his usual spot on the leather sofa. Richard wasn’t fond of leather, it made him sweat even in the winter, but Troy’s fur had made the purchase necessary. Elizabeth had insisted on owning a dog in Severe. “Either I get a dog, or I won’t move to that town,” she’d said. Later she’d taken a job, and now Richard was Troy’s main caregiver. Before coming to Severe, he’d owned a blue plush sofa with a curved back and wooden frame. How elegant it had been.

Richard joined Troy, only to draw the sheer curtains and sink into a giant armchair moments later. He had cubed some cheese, warmed some nuts, sliced an apple, and poured a third cup of coffee. The house felt empty; they had certainly splurged when looking for a home, but as the realtor had encouraged them, “A house is always a stretch.” They could afford it. After living in Madison and Ann Arbor, every house in Severe had felt risibly cheap. He couldn’t remember the last day he’d spent indoors without Elizabeth.

By noon he grew restless. Nobody had opened the garage door. Maybe the kid who had plucked the clicker from the snow was still at school. He considered the possibility of a car tire pulverizing the remote. Or maybe it had already changed hands.

The garage was filled with shelves. Their two cars stood under a carport at night, an ugly but practical solution. Still, on the worst days of the year, when snow and sleet drove sideways, he was forced to pour hot water over the driver’s door to open it.

The boxes on the shelves were filled with tax returns and negatives of photos they had stopped looking at. There were boxes full of old records and boxes full of research papers. One held baby clothes they had received seven years ago. They never opened it anymore; he never opened it. He didn’t open it now. There were toolboxes and suitcases and books. Four bikes, three of them his.

He didn’t switch the lights on. The open kitchen door thinned the darkness well enough. He wore sweatpants and a Vikings sweater. “Good grief,” he said out loud, then retreated and made more coffee.

At four, Elizabeth returned smelling of cracked glass and lipstick and constipation. Her suit was creased, her faux curls limp. She was the principal at Severe Elementary, and her pumps were soaking wet. “You’re already back?” she said. His answer scrunched up her face. “What’s wrong?” she demanded. He repeated his food poisoning lie yet again, got used to its sound and probability. It already had lost a lie’s bright sheen and seemed as dull as truth.

He offered to cook and did, though to further diminish his lie, he only drank water. And by the end of their meal, the garage door still hadn’t budged. Maybe they were safe. Perhaps this episode would pass. Richard poured Elizabeth a bath, but refused to join her, even when she invited him a second time and pouted. Nor could he fall asleep after he had walked in on her clipping her nails in the bedroom, filing them without a paper towel underneath her feet. He read a novel in which vacationers on a remote island were sucked into a projection until his eyes blurred the lines and hurt, then killed his light and lay awake. His heart kept racing, his ears producing sounds he expected to hear. He smelled the intruder entering the kitchen.

After Elizabeth had left at 6:50, Richard called the office at St. Mary’s and said, with a deepened voice and short awkward pauses, that he would miss a second day. He couldn’t see what use dress pants might be to him or why he needed an Oxford shirt. He went into the garage, sniffed the air, then looked for the aluminum bat he’d last used as a second baseman for the La Crosse Beavers. He swung it a few times and felt reassured.

The many noises inside the house left Richard unsettled by noon. So intently did he listen, he forgot to let Troy into the yard until the smell revealed the dog’s mishap. Richard didn’t raise his voice, just cleaned the kitchen floor.

From the living room window he could see a boy in a long coat standing in the street, watching the house. Richard was hooked. He got on all fours and slowly, very slowly, pulled the curtain away at one corner, just a tiny bit. The boy looked very pale. He looked lost. Why wasn’t he at school? Why was he standing near the old car with its four flat tires, which no tow truck had come to move in five years? Richard was getting angry at this boy, who could not be older than fourteen or fifteen. He wanted to run outside, grab him by his high collar and search the pockets of his coat. The clicker—he surely had the clicker.

Troy joined Richard at the window and nudged him gently. Richard looked at the dog’s brown eyes and heard Troy whine. He scratched the dog’s head. When he looked back out at the street in front of his house, the boy was gone.

In the early afternoon, he once more entered the garage. He moved shelves in front of the door, and after that tied the door to the shelves with twine and bungee cords. Finally he pressed the switch next to the kitchen door. The electric motor strained, groaned, lifted the garage door an inch, and gave up. A bit of gray daylight crept in.

He put on a down coat, not bothering to exchange his pajama bottoms for khakis. In his house shoes he walked down the small paved path—it needed salt—and onto the driveway. He inspected the footprints in front of the garage door and further on, toward the sidewalk. Eli’s were an 8.5, heels. His own, from the day before, were icy, thawed and frozen over again. No others, save for Troy’s soft paws.

He walked into the street, looked at the spot where the boy had stood. Car tires and shovels and school kids had compacted the snow, worn it smooth. He couldn’t detect any suspicious prints. Of course, whoever was in possession of the clicker had no need to come close to the house. Richard, in his early days on Grant Street, proud owner of a home in the best Severe neighborhood, had pressed the clicker at the closest intersection, a four-way stop, and found his garage door open on arrival.

Richard did not shave that day. He needed his bad looks to explain why he had stayed home a second day. Elizabeth, her lipstick and hairdo gone, poured him a hot bath, heated some chicken noodle soup, gave him four Advil, and sent him to bed. He acquiesced, he knew better than to resist.

The doctor listened for symptoms, asked him about bowel movements, intake of water. He checked eyes, ears, throat. He ordered blood work. He ordered rest. This was Friday, and Richard felt every bit as bad as he needed to. Upon coming home, he walked around the house searching for, but not finding, any signs of an intruder. The garage door still stood open an inch. Troy had again defecated in the kitchen.

The air inside the house felt changed, and Troy was not to blame. It appeared colder, with a smell that was neither Elizabeth’s lack of exercise, nor his own scent of warm peas and mushrooms. Richard watched Troy poop a second time in the yard, sniff the frozen bushes, and trot back inside. A watch Richard had never seen before lay on the coffee table in the living room. Digital, quartz, cheap.

That weekend, Elizabeth insisted on staying home. She canceled their trip to her parents in Milford. She cooked recipes from a book that had stood wrapped in cellophane since their wedding eight years ago. The chicken proved bloody on the inside; she’d grabbed sugar instead of salt. She pored over a federal grant all Sunday.

On Monday, after an early morning walk with Troy, Richard found a book on the kitchen table, held open by a stapler. The stapler he recognized as his own; the copy of A Good Woman he couldn’t place. The air smelled cleaner than when he had left, scrubbed of his own presence.

She didn’t agree at first. The early trips to one of the two realtors in town he took by himself. Karen was a big blonde, the outdoorsy kind who liked her neckline to show what she couldn’t hide. She kept four horses. “You have kids?” he asked, but she didn’t hear him. “I wish I’d had parents with horses,” he said. Karen was inches taller than Richard. Their drives around town were short and uneventful. She encouraged him to appraise the houses and not hold back. “More land,” he specified in one place. “A barn would be nice,” he said. “Nature.”

Ed Glasgow’s house was for sale again. Two structures stood to the side of the main building that the previous owners, a couple from out of town, had freshly renovated. One room had very obviously served as a nursery. He entered, then shook his head, the way Troy shook it after getting up from a nap. He had heard people talk about the couple; she had disappeared, maybe run off and taken their baby daughter with her. The husband hadn’t stuck around.

Inside the master bedroom, he asked, “No closet space?”

“It’s an old house,” Karen said. “The owners probably used an armoire. It was before everyone built walk-in closets.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, Eli won’t be happy.”

Richard liked Karen, who said that the beard he’d grown gave him an “edge.” He agreed to look at a few more properties, just to not look desperate.

Elizabeth fell in love with the eight acres in back that ended at the railroad tracks. She didn’t mind buying an armoire and dressers. Richard looked from her beaming face to Karen’s, and they appeared to be sisters. They could have been sisters. Karen assured them they were making the right choice.

Ten minutes after the moving truck had pulled into the driveway, Pete Saeger arrived with a cake in his scarred hands. Richard had seen him before, even talked to him occasionally at the store, whenever he needed advice on the best ant spray, or what to plant in the fall. Elizabeth asked their neighbor to come in, and minutes later she poured coffee and sliced the cake. Raisins gave Richard the hiccups.