Boxed

image curtesy of the Public Domain Review

by Margaret Ries

Make the pieces small. Easier to explain a hand or a foot. A whole body’s something else.

But what to do about the blood? What if the ground sheet of plastic is not enough? I had imagined the job would be as easy as sawing logs for a fire. But when I start in, the blood begins oozing thick and gloppy onto the basement floor. It’s hard to keep a grip. She’s already gone stiff and she shoots down the plastic like she’s on one of those waterslides I used to make for Danny out in the backyard. 

“Damn it to hell,” I yell, throwing the saw on the floor. 

The door at the top of the stairs opens. 

“Hey, Dad,” Danny calls. “You all right down there?” 

“Uh, yeah, fine. Just dropped one of my tools.”

I walk toward the stairs. The basement is big and I’ve dragged her to the far corner, over to my workbench, so he probably won’t be able to see her if he comes down a step or two, but no need to take chances. 

The cuckoo clocks go off upstairs. Nine on the dot.

“I’ll be up in a bit. Just want to finish down here.” 

Lila and I met six years ago, when she strayed into my post office.

“Top of the morning to you,” she said. 

I looked up from counting the float in my cash register and found the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. 

“It’s a wonderful day for a parade, isn’t it?”

I tore my eyes off her long enough to peer out the plate-glass window in front. A typical gray Seattle day. It might work, I thought, if the rain holds off.

“How can I help?” 

“I have a package to pick up.”

She placed the slip on the counter, adjusting it so that it lined up with the edge.

“I’m not sure why they sent it here. Maybe it was too big for my regular post office.”

She lowered her voice like she was going to tell me a secret. Something stirred in me. 

“I’m a Tupperware Sales Consultant. I’m giving my first party in a couple of weeks. I know their products like the back of my hand.”

Her hands were small, like she was, the nails done up in a pretty pink polish. No wedding ring.

“I know how to fit the product to the person. That’s my special forté.” She leaned back from the counter, looking at me, tapping her index finger against her lips. I straightened my shoulders. Good thing I ironed my uniform last night. 

“Now, I would recommend the starter set for you. It’s only got four pieces, nothing to junk up your kitchen, but with the advantage that one of them holds up to thirty-seven cups. You can double or even triple a recipe and have something to freeze it in. No need to rely on Reynolds Wrap, which always seems to fall apart at just the wrong moment. I bet you do that a lot, make a big batch of something and eat it for weeks.” She gazed deep into my eyes. “And I’d bet my bottom dollar you’re a Reynolds Wrap kind of man.” She tapped her nails on the counter. “Better safe than sorry, that’s what I always say.”

She could see into my soul. Could see me in my efficiency kitchen on Sunday afternoon, figuring out something to make that would last the whole week. Could see how, just last night, my lasagna landed top-down on the linoleum when the tin foil gave. I’d blamed myself for buying a cheap brand.

“I better get you that package.” I took the slip and went into the back. 

The package wasn’t hard to find. Big, like a washing machine or dryer. I lifted it onto the dolly expecting to have to strain, but it was surprisingly light. I guess that’s the beauty of Tupperware.

The problem was the box wasn’t going to fit on the conveyor belt used to send packages back to the mailroom, or down the aisle that runs between the counter and the wall. I turned to my co-worker.

“Jerome, could you keep an eye on the front for a sec? I’ve got to help a lady out with this package.”

He glanced up from where he was running letters through the sorter. 

“Man, I been doin’ nothin’ but favors for you all week. When you gonna do one for me?” Jerome tossed the letters on the table and started walking towards the front. 

I pushed the dolly through the door that leads directly into the post office lobby. I lowered the front end carefully to the floor. The box almost reached her shoulders.

“Oh, my,” she said. Her whole face seemed to clench up like a fist. And then, just as suddenly, opened again. She gave a little laugh as she walked back out through the ropes that show people how to wait in line.

“I guess I overdid it with my order. I’ll be better next time. Live and learn, I always say.”

“I better help you to the car with this.”

She held the door open for me and I pushed the dolly out onto the sidewalk.

“It’s that one,” she said, pointing to a powder blue Cadillac. Why would anyone with a car like that need to sell Tupperware? I maneuvered the wheels over the curb, keeping a tight grip on the box so it wouldn’t go flying. 

“If we’re lucky, we can probably fit it into the trunk,” I said.

She pulled her keys out of her purse. The trunk yawned open. She watched me carefully, jingling her keys, while I balanced the box on my knee so I could get my arms around it. Somehow I knew better than to put my foot on the bumper, though it would’ve made things a whole lot easier.

”You really think it’s going to fit?”

I set it on the edge of the trunk. The height was going to be a problem. I could see that right away.

“Maybe it would be better on the back seat,” she said.

“Pretty hard to see out the back then.”

The trunk was never going to close. I got the box in as far as I could and then fished the twine any good postal worker carries out of my back pocket. I threaded it through the locks and pulled it tight before tying the ends together. 

“That ought to do you till you get home.”

“You sure it’s going to be okay?”

I tried to rock the box up and down. It didn’t budge.

“Tight as a drum,” I said.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” she said, a hand on the trunk. “I know it’s mainly a gal thing, but you might just want to pop by my Tupperware party.”

She pulled an invitation out of her purse. It matched her nail polish. She looked into my eyes again.

“I’ve seen Tupperware change people’s lives.”

She pulled out of the parking lot with ease. The bottom of the car didn’t even scrape as she took the dip onto Union. I thwacked the card against my palm a couple of times. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been invited to a party.

Blood streaks my trousers when I wipe my hands on them. The saw is now under the workbench and I have to get down on my hands and knees. I have to be there anyway, to finish the work.

I fit the saw into the tiny incision I’ve made in the back of her calf and try again. She’s face down. On purpose. I can’t look at her face, frozen in surprise as though I’d goosed her. 

The blood has dried a little so her leg isn’t so slippery. I can do it. Push the saw, pull it back, follow the groove, don’t think about it. 

But then the saw bites into the bone and sticks. This isn’t a log with an especially knotty core. This is my wife’s leg. Which she shaved every night smooth as a baby’s bottom. I catch a whiff of her perfume and have to stop. I always loved the care she took with herself. No hair on her head out of place, no hair on her leg overlooked. I would watch her sometimes, when she’d allow it, as she went through her nighttime routine: curlers, hairnet, cold cream, shaving cream, pumice stone, nail polish. Her forehead was always creased in concentration, but then, out of nowhere, a little smile would stray across her lips like a secret. Being close enough to see it made me feel like a lucky man.

Now sitting back on my haunches, I stare at the jagged, wide-toothed saw embedded in her flesh. I’m sweating. The saw forms a cross with her leg. Everyone has their cross to bear, she would have said. 

I’m gonna be sick.

Turns out the bathroom I put in down here was a good idea. It feels like I lose my guts in the bowl, but I don’t feel a stitch better. I’m soaked through with sweat and when I open my eyes I see spots. I can’t bear this one alone I think as I lay my head on the cool, white rim.

I went to the Tupperware party. Even bought a new pair of slacks for the occasion. It wouldn’t do to turn up in my postal uniform. And I bought the starter kit. At a discount, for all the help I’d given her at the post office that day, she said.

She let all the ladies at the party know about our meeting, too. She’d pick up some piece from the display table, where she’d arranged the Tupperware into pyramids according to color and function, and say something like, “Now, Linda, without my guardian angel Roy here, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to show you this super new set of cereal containers. How many different brands did you say you buy? Five? Now who needs five open boxes of cereal going stale in the cupboard? ‘Waste not, want not,’ that’s what I always say. ”

Those twelve other ladies in the room didn’t exist. It was like being in the front row of a Barbra Streisand concert. The star acts like she’s singing to the whole audience, but you know she’s really only singing to you.

I was embarrassed at first. I could feel my bald spot burning, but then I just relaxed and enjoyed the heat.

I finally understood what Jerome was talking about all these years when he said “Man, you know what your problem is? You gotta get you a woman. Put a little smile on your face.” 

Lila and I got married six months later. Danny was the best man. He was nine at the time, the product of her first marriage to her high school sweetheart. They’d split, she said, because he didn’t understand her ambitions. He made enough, more than enough, selling life insurance, and didn’t want her to be distracted from taking care of him and Danny. 

Later I wondered what kind of man leaves his wife the house, the car, the kid and a couple grand a month without a whimper. Or maybe the question was really what kind of woman gets all that? 

My parents died in a car crash when I was a baby and my grandmother raised me. She was old to start with, but the death of her daughter aged her in ways she never recovered from. She’d been sitting in her La-Z-Boy when she heard the news and it’s like she never got up again. She sat in front of the TV most of the day and when I got home from school, I’d pull up a chair and watch along with her. Eventually she’d get up and make dinner and bring it back to the den on TV tables.

I couldn’t wait to graduate from high school, to get out on my own, start living. I got a job at the post office. Eventually got enough money together for an apartment, a TV, a La-Z-Boy of my own. It’s amazing how many years you can lose in the cushions of a comfortable recliner. I missed my grandmother. “You want some dinner?” “That was a good episode of Bewitched, wasn’t it?” May not be much, but it’s something. 

When I was forty-one, I learned what it was like to be around people who talked to each other. Or at least made an effort to get words, full sentences, a conversation out of their mouths. Danny was only nine so he chattered like a chipmunk. I swear he once talked half an hour about this worm race he and his buddy Tim tried to run, complete with bets and odds. In the end they had to give everybody’s money back because the worms never left the starting block. He would have gone on, but Lila cut him off. “That’s enough, Danny,” she said. “I’m sure your dad wants to tell us about his day, too.” 

Lila regulated our lives like a Swiss clock. If things got off by a minute or so, she’d start to get antsy, tapping her nails and saying “A stitch in time saves nine,” but even that suited me fine. I’d had enough years where time stretched empty before me like the Grand Canyon. 

Dinner was at six. Sharp. Since I got off at two, I was always there when Danny came home from school. I helped him with his homework and then we’d play ball out in the backyard. He was allowed to watch TV for an hour after dinner—two on the weekends—before she sent him off to bed. Friday nights we hired a sitter and went out to dinner at Ponderosa. Saturdays she cleaned the house from top to bottom. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, she said. When she pulled out the duster, we had to get out from underfoot. There were enough home-improvement projects I could work on, and after Danny had wiped all the kitchen cupboards inside and out—that was his job—he’d join me down at my workbench or outside while I was raking leaves. 

We built a tree house together, in the big oak out back. He knew exactly what he wanted: two floors, connected by a ladder, with the top level completely open so you could see the stars from every side. I remember showing him how to cut the two-by-fours, line them up, nail them into place. As I watched him hold the hammer and take aim, I suddenly felt a hollow open in my stomach, wondering what I might have done if I’d had someone to give shape to my dreams. I patted his back after he drove in a perfect line of nails and swore to myself I’d be that person for Danny.

Lila always said the family that plays together stays together, and every Sunday morning, that’s what we did. After church and after a breakfast of pancakes or eggs and bacon, we’d get in the Cadillac and head off for an adventure. We did a lot of tourist stuff in the beginning, visiting sites like the Space Needle, Pioneer Square, but she also came up with things I’d never considered in my life. Even though I drove past Lake Washington every day on my way to work, I didn’t know you could rent a canoe and go paddling around in it, or that it would even be fun.

That day, once we’d had our sandwiches and coffee, Lila leaned back against the bow and dangled a hand in the water. A stick floated by. “Hey, Mom, look,” Danny called from where he was swimming. He caught the stick between his teeth and starting paddling after us furiously like a dog. The sun caught Lila’s little teeth, the back of her throat, as she laughed. He did look funny. A dog in a life jacket. I had to stop paddling for a moment, had to just sit back and watch the two of them and feel my heart swell.

A splash of cold water on my face feels good. I gargle a palmful to get rid of the vomit taste in my mouth, use another palmful to smooth down my hair. Nothing to do about the blood on my clothes. Nothing to do but put a foot on the first step, and then another. Slowly, heavily. My hands feel big on my wrists as if I’m Frankenstein’s monster, going to crush the one thing I love. 

Danny is at the kitchen table, his head bent over a book. He’s fixed himself a couple of slices of toast and a pitcher-size glass of milk. He doesn’t even look up when he hears me. 

I sit down across the table from him, glad I can hide my trousers. They’re covered the worst. His jaw is working with concentration.

After a while he looks up, his eyebrows raised in a question. I guess it is a little peculiar that I’m just sitting there, not saying a word, my hands folded like I’m saying my prayers. Which I guess I am. 

His breath catches when he sees the polka dots of blood on my shirt. His gray eyes are round with fear. 

“You said you weren’t hurt.”

“I’m not.” I want to reach my hand across the table to him, give him a reassuring pat on the arm, but I can’t. “It’s your mother.”

He lets out a sigh. It sounds like relief. “Mom? But she’s not even home.”

“Yes, yes, she is. You know that as well as me.”

Danny stuffs a half of a piece of toast in his mouth. He chews it as hard and fast as he can and stuffs the other half in before he’s even swallowed. He picks up his glass, chugging the rest of his milk as he carries his plate over to the counter. He rinses both off, dries them, puts them back in the cabinet, his Adam’s apple working to get the wad in his throat down. I wonder how many times he’s done that before when he’s heard her car in the driveway. 

“She’s in the basement.” 

He stares at me as he wipes the last drops of milk from his lips. “What’s she doing down there? I thought she was at one of her Tupperware things. That’s what she said last night.”

Now it’s my turn to stare. “Well, she said a lot of things last night, until…” I rub my hands on my thighs. The fabric of my trousers is stiff with blood. I don’t know why he’s making this so hard. “You know, son, I can’t do this alone.” 

Danny sidles up to the table like a spooked cat. He doesn’t sit down, just stands behind his chair, his hands clenching the top rung.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

He grabs his book and backs out of the room, eyeing me the whole time with those round, gray eyes.

His feet pound up the front stairs. My head is in my hands. For the first time since the whole thing started, I feel like crying.

Everything went pretty smooth the first couple of years. In fact, everything went pretty smooth until last night. There were tremors, of course, every once in a while, if things didn’t go exactly like she wanted. One time she threw out Danny’s scrapbook of Washington wildlife—he’d spent months getting that thing together—because he forgot to take it up to his room after she’d asked. Another time it was my favorite mug, which I’d accidentally left on the counter after she’d already done the dishes. But there was only real trouble if you tried to break out of the mold, shake things up a little, which was what happened the time Barbra Streisand came to town. I’ve been listening to Barbra Streisand my whole life, but I would never have dreamed of going to see a show. But living with Lila had changed me, had made me see that life was full of possibilities.

I was on the phone the very minute those tickets went on sale. I got through on the fifth try. It cost me a wallop, but I managed to get front-row seats. To Barbra Streisand. 

I slid the envelope across the table towards Lila while we were eating dinner that night. She put her index finger on it and pulled it towards her, the rest of her fingers fanning out like the feathers of some exotic bird. “Now what on earth could this be?” She made a big show of holding the envelope up to the light, shaking it, weighing it in her hand before she finally slid a fingernail under the flap. “Oh, I do love a surprise,” she said. 

When she pulled out the tickets—“first row” embossed in gold right across the front—her face clouded over and she pursed her lips. After a couple of seconds, she slid the tickets back into the envelope and said “I’m sorry, Roy, but this concert’s on a Monday night. Monday night’s inventory night.”

And that was that. I tried to get Jerome to go with me, but he wasn’t interested. “You crazy?” he said. “I don’t want to see no old white bitch who’s past her prime.” In the end, I went by myself. I should have saved myself the hassle. Don’t get me wrong, it was thrilling being in the first row, so close to her, but Lila didn’t talk to me for a week after that. Just stepped around me as if I didn’t exist. Talk about raining on my parade, to use one of her favorite expressions. 

The clock is ticking. It is getting on towards lunchtime. That was the first thing she did every morning. Strap her black industrial-size watch around her wrist. Before she got into the shower. I used to tease her, ask what a dainty woman like her was doing with a watch like that—a thin gold one would have suited her better—but she’d just laugh and tap the face of the watch. “There’s no time like the present,” she’d say, as if that explained things.

Even with that watch she’d still felt the need to hang a clock in every room. Big, loud cuckoo clocks. When the hour strikes the whole place sounds like feeding time at the zoo. If we ever get past this, I think, the first thing I’m gonna do is take those clocks down and smash them out on the driveway. Every last one of them. 

The cuckoos go off at eleven and then ticking fills the room. One, two, three, four, five…I’m still right here at the kitchen table, my head in my hands. If I slid my eyes to the side, I would just see the basement door. Awful. I’ve never felt such dread in all my life. It has me pinned to the chair. Nothing in the world can make me get up and walk down those basement steps alone again. I figure she’s just gonna have to rot down there and maybe in a year or so I’ll have the courage to go and bury her. If the police haven’t come for me first. 

I adjusted after the Barbra Streisand episode. I submitted to the schedule and didn’t spring any more surprises. Little things were starting to niggle, though, like all those sayings. I guess there is a saying for just about everything in life, but sometimes you gotta find your own words. Sometimes, when I was getting ready for my shift, I’d look at her and go cold, wondering who that woman in curlers and cream really was. I didn’t feel the same sort of awe and gratitude I once had, but I stilled loved her. I loved her for hauling me off that La-Z-Boy into life. 

And I loved her for giving me Danny. The whole time I was at work, I used to look forward to those afternoons at home with him. If the weather was nice, we’d climb up into the tree house, stretch out on the planks of the top level, and watch the sky go by. Up there was the first time he ever asked me about girls, about asking one out. He must have been about twelve or thirteen. I didn’t have much experience to draw on, but I did tell him to be polite and respectful and that I’d never known a girl who could resist being told how pretty she was. Later he came up and gave me a hug. “Thanks, Dad,” he said, his voice muffled against my chest. 

Our little family would have bumped along like this for good, except that for some reason I woke up last night after midnight craving milk. I got out of bed and put on my robe, figuring I might as well get some cookies while I was at it. Lila wasn’t in bed yet. Unlike me, who sleeps long and deep, she didn’t need much and often puttered around the house at all hours.

I flipped on the light and stopped dead in my tracks. Lila was sitting on the floor, leaning against one of the cabinets. Her head was at a funny angle. Her mouth was hanging open. Blood was spilling out of it, across the cold cream, onto the lace of her nightgown. There was a streak of red running down the front of the cabinet, ending at her head. Danny was on the floor, huddled in a corner by the fridge. His hands were covering his face. He was sobbing—high, sharp wheezes that were painful to hear.

“Danny, what happened? Are you alright?” I rushed over to him and pulled him up into my arms.

He squirmed out of them and slumped back against the cupboard, sliding slowly down to the floor. 

I took his hands from his face. They were freezing. “Danny,” I said. “What happened? You gotta tell me. Did somebody try and break in?”

He wouldn’t look at me, his eyes turning circles in his head. He kept trying to get his hands back, but I held tight.

“Danny…”

He wriggled and squirmed and then he started head-butting me in the chest. 

“Danny, hey! Hey.” I got his head in a sort of vice grip and wrapped the other arm around his back. “Hey. Calm down.” He was still trying to grind his head into my chest, so we just sort of rocked back and forth on the floor, with me sighing out a soft “Hey” every once in a while. 

“I…I… I didn’t mean it,” he finally whispered into the hollow of my armpit. “I didn’t.”

“Course not, son.”

“She…she scared me.”

“Sshhh,” I said. “Everything’s gonna be alright. Everything’s okay.”

Which of course it wasn’t. Not only was my wife lying crook-necked on the kitchen floor, but once I heard what had happened, I couldn’t shake the feeling she’d had it coming. Don’t get me wrong. Nobody deserves to die and I know I’m gonna miss her, but I also know now that some things can’t be organized or ordered, no matter how bad you want them to be. 

It took a while to get the story out of Danny. At first he couldn’t say anything more. Just kept pointing at the fridge. It took the longest time to figure out what he was getting at, but then I saw it. 

“What the hell…” I said. There was a steel chain wound through the handles of the freezer and the actual fridge. The two ends were secured with a padlock. I fingered the chain, gave the lock a tug. I’ve seen the type in the hardware store—they’re the ones that have words like “our best and strongest lock ever” printed on the package. I pulled on the door. It opened just a crack. 

There was a straw lying on the floor. I bent down and picked it up. Two straws, actually, wedged into one another. I tapped it against my hand, still trying to make sense of the padlock on the fridge, when a little bit of milk dribbled out of it. And then I understood. I opened the fridge door as far as I could, just to make sure. Sure enough, the lips of the milk carton were open and waiting. Thank God we don’t have plastic jugs I remember thinking, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten anything.

I sat back down next to Danny. I handed him the straw. “How long’s this been going on, son?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Since I started growing? She didn’t like that I couldn’t stick to meal times. She said it made too much mess. And that it wasn’t normal that I was hungry all the time.” Danny gave a strangled little laugh. “She wouldn’t even let me have seconds.” 

I looked down at Danny. The bones of his wrists stuck out like warts. He’d always been skinny, but this wasn’t normal. Growing kids need to be able to eat their fill. 

“How come you never came to me?”

He shrugged his shoulders again. The outline was sharp and clear through his pajamas. “Remember Barbra Streisand? She didn’t talk to you for a week. How long do you think it would’ve been if you’d tried to help?”

He had a point. Barbra Streisand was just a music concert. This was life. Our life. What would she have done if I’d meddled there? 

I pulled Danny towards me. “I’m sorry, son. I’m so sorry.”

Sitting at the kitchen table, the dread of what is lying on the concrete floor below begins to ebb. This isn’t about me. It’s about Danny, and those two sharp little shoulder blades poking out of his pajamas.

I lay my hands flat on the table and am just about to push myself up, when I hear something behind me. 

“Dad…?”

I turn.

Danny is standing there, his eyes red and swollen as a wasp sting. He’s put on his work clothes, the ones he wears every Saturday.

“I’m ready.”

“Are you sure, son? I mean, really sure? It’s not going to be pleasant.”

I wait. Danny looks down at the floor for a second and then looks up again, that winsome, crooked smile I love so much on his face. 

“I’m sure.”

I’m not gonna lie and say it’s like one of those home-improvement projects we’ve done together. Turns out a leg is not a two-by-four, but we manage somehow. Danny holds and I saw, and slowly she gets smaller and smaller. We put the pieces in Tupperware containers—we have to use every last one of them, including the ones that are already filled with pot roast and noodles and those from my starter set—and we put them in the huge deep freeze we have down in the basement. I feel a little bad about wasting all that food, but it can’t be helped. About once a month I wrap one up tight in brown paper, drive it to a different post office, and send it off to another corner of the earth without a return address. I keep waiting, but none’s come back yet.

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