Excesses
Ronald Jackson turned the door knob, and the front door of his house cracked open the slightest bit. As he always did, he called out, “Honey, I’m home.”
There was no immediate response.
He frowned. Well, that’s odd.
He pushed the door open and stepped over the threshold into the living room. “Honey?”
No response. Only an eerie silence. Then the utter pervasiveness of that same silence washed over him. He felt a slight chill.
The door opened onto a modest living room. The stairwell to the second floor was there, to his right front. To the left, as he swung the door wider, was an oak end table with a crystal lamp on it, then the plush arm of the couch. His four year old daughter, Mandy, had dubbed it “the long couch.”
The matching coffee table in front of the couch stretched away over the thick, off-white carpet to within a few feet of the loveseat. He grinned. Mandy called that one “the short couch.” In the corner formed by the two was another end table and a lamp, both duplicates of the first.
At the near end of the loveseat was an old, narrow telephone table—probably pine, but finished with a mahogany stain—with a sloping magazine rack beneath it. He kept a phone book in the rack strictly to lend an air of nostalgia.
There was nothing on the surface of the telephone table. That’s where Julia would have left a note if she’d felt a need.
Then his expensive brown leather wingback chair complete with built-in lumbar support, aka “the Papa Bear chair.” It was his one luxury. Or at least the only one that was all his. The only one he’d insisted on. Even then, it had cost only several hundred dollars. Nothing compared to the few hundred thousand he’d strapped himself to when he bought the house.
He’d have preferred having the telephone table on the other side of the chair, too. It would be more convenient for him there as he was right handed.
But his wife, Julia, wanted it between the loveseat and the chair, so that’s where it went.
He shook away the thought and grinned again. Mandy was so cute with her little nicknames for everything.
That wingback chair is where he always sat to relax while his wife was putting the finishing touches on supper. Even if Julia called to him to help her with something or other, he always managed to drop into the chair for a long moment first. It was important to relax, even if for only a few seconds, after spending a day with inane clients and an insecure, muddle-minded boss. Advertising—it wasn’t for everyone.
As he stepped into the room, he set his briefcase on the floor, removed his jacket and hung it on the coat rack to his right. It was curled oak and stained to matched the coffee table and the end tables. “Honey? I’m home.”
He picked up his briefcase, closed the door quietly. Julia didn’t like it when he shoved it closed with his heel, bless her heart.
He crossed to his chair, where again he set his briefcase on the floor. He always kept it there just in case the necessity struck him to open it and review an account or add notes to a white paper or whatever. He never had up to this point, but business was always in the back of his mind. Business and his overbearing boss and his pain in the ass clients.
But it was his living, after all, and goodness knew he had to keep bringing in the money. The house was much larger and nicer than they really needed. The excess didn’t matter though. Julia had wanted it, so he had provided.
To his left, on the front wall, two bookcases flanked the entertainment center, which held a large flat-screen television and the receiver for a small sound system. That consisted of a radio and a CD player. He didn’t mind the soft music Jules sometimes insisted on, but he despised the television. Never had any device been more ruinous for families.
The blue display on the front of the CD player read 7:16.
He frowned. How very strange. That can’t be right. I’ll have to reset that later. Odd that it was off by exactly two hours. He’d been home only about a minute, so obviously it was 5:16, not 7:16. Even given fluctuations in traffic, he arrived home each day at 5:15.
Instead of dropping into his chair and removing his shoes, he put his fists on his hips and glanced toward the kitchen. “Julia? I’m home, Honey.”
Still no response.
No sounds of anything boiling or frying or spattering. No creak of the oven door or running water or the refrigerator being opened or closed. The house sounded utterly empty.
Where in the world is Julia? Or Mandy? She was in the afternoon kindergarten class, but her mother would have picked her up around 4, maybe 4:15. Somewhere in there.
Typically, according to his wife, Mandy raced straight up the stairs to her room when she got home. There she’d play or color or something until about the time her daddy was due home. Then, most often, she would wait for him near the bottom of the stairs.
But not today. Weird.
He faced the bottom of the stairs so his voice would carry up them. “Mandy,” he called. “Daddy’s home.” He paused, then called, “Julia?” He paused again. “Jules?”
To his right, something emitted a faint click.
He looked around.
It was only the display on the front of the CD player. It displayed 7:17 now.
Does it click every time the minute changes?
He’d never heard it before. Maybe it only did that when the time was two hours off.
Well, enough of this nonsense. He’d worked hard all day, then walked into this strangeness. No time even to sit in his chair to relax for a moment.
He turned on the ball of his foot and walked through the small dining room—no plates or silverware on the table, no glasses—into the kitchen.
“Julia?” he called, but he could plainly see she wasn’t there.
The counter along the far wall was there, the cabinet doors beneath the double sink that hid the plumbing. On the left, the expensive coffee maker Julia had insisted on, even though it didn’t even have a timer like the less-expensive models. When he wanted coffee, he had to stand there in limbo, waiting the two or three minutes it took to brew a cup of coffee. He couldn’t just walk up and pour a cup from a pre-brewed carafe.
Then the green-glass cookie jar full of sweetener packets and the ornamental black wire basket in which they kept the coffee pods. Coffee pods. Sounded like something from outer space. Or something to do with spiders.
Then the twin sinks with the one ugly pivoting stainless steel spigot above them. Then the broad kitchen window above that, Julia’s herbs growing in small pots on the window sill.
On the right, the fancy electric can opener that managed to open cans without leaving any sharp edges, the four-slice toaster, and the bread box, another old-oak throwback.
On the right wall, the combination four-burner stove with the oven beneath it, the refrigerator-freezer with both an ice and water dispenser in the freezer door.
The coffee maker, the can opener, the freezer door—all excesses. His life was a life of excesses. Well, her life was. His was a life of working to pay for excesses. Unnecessary excesses.
In fact, the kindergarten she’d enrolled Mandy in was an excess too. A thousand dollars a month tuition. Probably there were less-expensive colleges. Certainly there were less-expensive junior colleges. And this was only kindergarten.
A thousand dollars a month for four hours of so-called schooling four days per week. And the teacher put Mandy down for a nap for at least an hour of that time every day. It was ridiculous. Just another stupid excess.
But it’s what Julia wanted. Nothing was too good for their little girl, she’d said. And what could he do but agree?
Still, what was Mandy getting there that she wouldn’t have gotten from kindergarten in a public school?
Absolutely nothing. Excesses. It was all excesses.
He’d come up in public school, including attending a state university. And certainly he was a success. Not an ex-cess.
The oven door was partially open at the top. It was designed that way to allow heat to escape while keeping a meal warm.
He reached for the handle, crouched slightly, and pulled the door open.
Steaks. A large, thick steak, a medium steak half as thick—probably eight or ten ounces for Jules—and a small steak, probably trimmed from the end of Julia’s, for Mandy. They were lying on the broiler.
But there were no flames beneath or above them. For the broiler, the flames would be above, if he remembered correctly. But there were no flames in either place.
And hardly any heat wafted from the oven. So probably it had been turned off for awhile.
But if she wasn’t going to be here for supper, why would Jules have put the steaks in the oven in the first place? That didn’t make sense. The steaks would be wasted. Another excess. Just one more in a long list.
He closed the oven door tight as he straightened. Might as well preserve what little heat was left.
On the back left burner of the stove was a pan with a lid. No flame beneath it.
At least she turned everything off before she went wherever she went.
To the right, set in the backsplash of the stove, a small clock with a round face read 7:19.
Seriously? Are all the clocks in the damn house wrong? Is that what he’d gotten for almost a half-million dollars? A house with bad clocks?
Of course, the house didn’t come with clocks. They’d added those themselves later.
Still.
He shook his head as he leaned forward and pinched the round knob on the pan lid between his thumb and forefinger. It was cool to the touch. But then, the little round knob should be cool even when the pan was hot, right?
He tilted the lid so he could see inside.
Steam rolled out from beneath the lid.
Peas.
The other three burners were bare, and the oven was empty except for the steaks in the broiler.
So no potatoes.
He’d told Julia a hundred times if he’d told her once, peas went better with potatoes. It gave the little green orbs something to cling to, made it less likely they’d roll off the fork. Preferably mashed potatoes, and preferably with gravy.
But at least some sort of potatoes with some kind of sauce. Au gratin, maybe, or scalloped. And there were probably other options. More expensive ones, maybe. That would be more attractive to Julia.
He shook his head again and lowered the pan lid, then turned and crossed to the shelf unit on which was a toaster oven. A microwave nestled on the shelf beneath it. The clock face on the microwave read 7:20.
Strike three. Three clocks, three wrong times.
Seriously?
But who needs a stupid clock in a microwave display anyway? A timer, certainly. But a clock? Was it just to give that space something to do when it wasn’t busy marking time?
Maybe she cooked the potatoes in the microwave. I’ve told her repeatedly not to do that. Cooking potatoes in the microwave turns them to rubber.
But when he swung the door of the microwave open, it was empty save the glass turntable in the bottom.
Another excess. They could easily have gotten by with a microwave that cost half as much but didn’t have the stupid turntable. Was it too much to expect her to turn the dish in the microwave when it was halfway through the cooking cycle?
He reached for the handle on the door of the toaster oven and noticed the surface was warm. He pulled open the door and there it was: a small casserole dish of scalloped potatoes.
Well, good. Good for Julia. Way to remember, Jules, once out of a hundred times.
He let the door of the toaster oven slap closed with a metallic sound, then looked around.
Where the hell are they anyway? Doesn’t it matter to them at all that I’m home?
He turned and walked out of the kitchen. “Jules? Hey, Julia! Mandy?”
They have to be upstairs.
Julia’s car was in the driveway. He’d parked alongside it.
But why was it in the driveway anyway? It should have been in the stupid garage. There was room for only one car in the two-car garage, so he insisted she use the garage.
After all, Julia’s car was much newer and much nicer than his. Because as everyone knows, it’s important to drive a status symbol to drop your kid off at an over-priced kindergarten or go to the grocery once a week.
That’s much more important than driving a nice car to entertain clients. Or to impress the boss who wrote the checks that keep you living in an excessive monstrosity of a house.
So there it was. She should have parked in the garage. It was only a matter of common sense. Anyone could see that.
Then again, what’s common to some is a luxury to others.
He smirked, then let the smirk fade. No reason to be snarky.
He’d have to mention it to her again, that’s all. He’d have to remind her to keep her car in the garage when she wasn’t dropping off the kid or shopping or whatever the hell else she did.
He would remind her when he found her.
If he found her.
As he neared the base of the stairs, he called again, “Julia? Mandy? Where are you, ladies?”
I’ll take the stairs two at a time, that’s what I’ll do. That would make his shoes clomp louder on them, and the excessive sound would convey to the ladies that Papa Bear was a tad annoyed at their lack of a greeting and all the rest of this nonsense.
If they could interpret it.
He reached for the newel at the base of the stairs.
He’d swing himself around to the left and he’d clomp up the stairs two at a time. Like a real Papa Bear. A tired Papa Bear, one who’d damned well had enough.
Damn it! Where do they get off, ignoring me like this? Mandy’s just a baby, really, so it isn’t her fault. She’d only take a lead from her mother. But Julia knew better.
And speaking of knowing better, what in the world was she doing all day that she didn’t notice the clocks were two hours off?
Maybe Mandy wasn’t here at all.
Maybe her mother had dropped her off next door.
Maybe at this very moment Julia was upstairs.
In his bed. With someone else.
He gripped the newel tightly, his knuckles peering white through the skin, and swung himself around to the left.
His right shoe came down hard on the second stair.
And he stopped.
Looked left, surprised at the sensation.
Jerked his left hand away from the newel.
Something sticky. Something red and sticky.
He frowned again.
Damn it! Did Mandy manage to smear strawberry jam on the newel post? Could she even reach that high? And why hasn’t Julia cleaned it up?
He took his handkerchief from his right front trouser pocket and wiped the palm of his left hand, then shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket.
His left foot went to the third step. As he raised his right foot and reached for the fourth, he gripped the rail again.
And again jerked his hand away. Looked at it. Something sticky and red.
What the hell is going on?
Up another step as he took out his handkerchief again. Up another step as he wiped his left palm, balled the handkerchief in his right hand and put his left hand on the bannister again.
Jerked it away.
What the hell?
His neck and face grew hot. Did she smear the stuff all the way down the bannister?
She could definitely reach that high.
An image came to mind of Mandy with a slice of bread in her right hand, reaching high. The bread smeared with strawberry jam, but lying face-down on the bannister as she moved quickly down the stairs to join her mother.
But join her where? Julia’s car was in the driveway.
He took another step, then another and another.
Well, he might as well use the handkerchief to wipe the rest of the way up the rail.
He transferred it to his left hand, folded it so a clean side was showing and—
But it wasn’t strawberry jam.
He saw it as he folded it.
He opened the handkerchief again and leaned forward, peering at it in the dim light filtering through the small window at the top of the stairs.
It was reddish black, not red. Or red going to black.
He held it close to his nose.
It smelled of copper. Rotted copper.
What smelled of copper that wasn’t an old penny? There was something. From his only forensics class in college, there was something.
Blood.
Blood? But where would blood—
And he remembered.
Julia in the kitchen.
And new carpeting. She wanted new carpeting throughout the house.
He hadn’t even reached his chair yet.
“Ronald,” she called. Her voice was squeaky, shrill, annoying. “We need new carpet. There’s nothing really wrong with the old,” she said, in an effort to ward off any logical argument. “It’s just that it’s so... well, old.”
Then she turned a knob on the oven and opened the door part way. As she came through the dining room toward him, she said, “And really, you’re making good money now, Ronald. It isn’t like we can’t afford it. Let’s go tomorrow, all right?”
Tomorrow was Saturday. Tomorrow was the first of the two paltry days per week that he didn’t have to drag himself into his slave chambers downtown and put up with Old Man Morrison’s bullshit.
The first of two lousy days per week when he didn’t have to abide a seemingly endless array of idiotic clients, every one of whom thought they knew advertising better than he did.
Every one of whom would laugh like braying jackasses as they rejected one after another of his foolproof, professional advertising slogans and jingles and print ads until he agreed to do it their way. To create the useless and utterly worthless crap they wanted. After all, they were paying extra to get exactly what they wanted.
And Old Man Morrison raked in the money and agreed with them—with them—every single step of their flawed, faulty damn way.
And every ad failed miserably, as he knew it would. As Morrison himself knew it would. And every client loudly blamed the failure on him.
And Old Bastard Morrison berated him after the client stomped out. He was like an ominous judge pronouncing sentence. If he lost only one more client through Ronald’s ineptitude, he said, Ronald would be out on the street.
But sure. Sure. He was making really good money now.
And it all might come crashing down as early as Monday.
He’d tried to explain it to her, but the more he talked the more she interrupted. And the more he talked the more whiny and nasal her voice got.
The more he tried the more she sounded exactly like all the other braying jackasses in the world.
“And is said so. That’s what I did. I said so.”
She had clawed his face with the fingernails of her left hand. And she had jutted out her stupid chin and called him a weakling. A nobody. A nobody who would never amount to anything.
And he grabbed her by the right arm and dragged her upstairs.
She grabbed the newel post, then grabbed the rail all the way up.
And he threw her to the floor of their bedroom. And he beat her and beat her and beat her.
And Mandy came in and stopped behind him, screaming and screaming.
And he turned and hit her.
Without thinking. It was an accident, that’s all.
But he hit her hard, wanting to make her stop screaming over the braying jackass on the floor. The braying jackass whose head was split open. Who was bleeding all over the old carpet like it didn’t matter. The perfectly good carpet whose only crime was being old.
And anyway it didn’t matter, did it? Because it was old so it had to be replaced anyway.
He could practically hear her saying so in that whiny, aggravating voice. Braying at him.
And he hit the braying jackass again and again, until she stopped braying at him in his mind. And then he hit her a few more times. And his temper finally abated.
Then he straightened and wheeled on the ball of his foot.
He avoided looking at cute little Mandy. Surely she was all right. Surely she was only scared and finally quiet. Finally not screaming for the braying jackass.
Surely she was fine, so he didn’t need to look.
Besides, if he’d looked he might have seen that her head was turned at an unnatural angle. And nobody wants to see something like that. Nobody.
And he raced back down the stairs.
*
At approximately 5:30, at the base of the stairs, Ronald Jackson stopped and breathed.
Just breathed.
He’d leave, that’s what he’d do. He give it some time. Give Jules and Mandy some time. He’d drive around awhile.
Then he’d come back and start over.
He crossed the room to pick up his briefcase, then went to the coat rack and put on his coat.
That’s what he’d do. He’d leave and come back. Give them some time.
He’d come back, and he’d open the front door of his house and he’d call out, “Honey, I’m home.”
Then he’d go inside and join his wife, Julia, and his adorable little girl, Mandy.
They would enjoy a great meal together. Julia always cooked a great meal even when she cooked peas and forgot the potatoes.
And afterwards, maybe, today he’d even suggest they watch the television.
* * * * * * *