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Happy Halloween.
Returning
With the dogs gone, Marissa changed. My sweet wife, who had disliked reading newspapers because she thought they were too depressing, became obsessed with morbid stories. Every day, she walked to the Village Market to buy a paper. She studied accident reports, murders, and death notices. At dinner, instead of her usual cheery conversations about Garden Club or a new recipe, she would recite the grim statistics of the dead. In less than a week, she lost weight, her hair hung in dull wisps, and her face took on an unhealthy pallor. I began to avoid her company.I know now that it is true: in the late autumn when the leaves are burnt gold and the skies deepen, when sunlight slants acutely in the afternoon and fades to the obsidian evening, the veil, that amorphous distance between two worlds, grows thin. For me to accept this had not been easy.
As a toxicologist for Abbott Laboratories, I was not by nature or habit given to flights of fancy. Research and rational thought, preferably expressed in scientific terms dictated reality for me. My wife, Marissa, was far more imaginative. Indeed, it was her effervescent personality that enchanted me when we first met, and her cheerful attitude was often just the tonic I needed when work or the word in general depressed me.
Two years ago, we decided to move from the large house where we had raised our children to something smaller. We chose a charming little Victorian in Lake Bluff. The realtor had shown us through the octogenarian house on a bright Saturday morning in September. Her nervous little admission that the previous owners believed the place was haunted amused my wife, but carried absolutely no weight with me. The house, recently remodeled, suited our needs perfectly. It meant a much shorter commute to my North Chicago office. There was a fenced-in yard for our two dogs, and Marissa was delighted by the third-floor view of Lake Michigan. We moved in on October 19th.
It was the dogs who knew first. Watson and Crick--two pleasant, well-behaved golden retrievers--had been part of our family for nine years. Even before our children grew up and moved away from home, the dogs had been slightly spoiled. They ate their home-cooked dog meals when we ate our dinner and slept at the foot of our bed every night.
The first night in the new house, both dogs whined about climbing the stairs. I was all for leaving them in the kitchen, but Marissa wouldn't hear of it. I carried Crick up the stairs. Reluctantly, Watson followed behind. But the night didn't go well. Twice, they woke us barking their fool heads off. At three in the morning, Watson began frantically scratching the bedroom door, destroying paint and woodwork, while Crick set about howling in a way that made my blood run cold. They bolted down the stairs the minute I opened the bedroom door. Later, I noticed that one of them had, uncharacteristically, urinated on the carpet. They spent the rest of the night outside. Fro days, rain or shine, they refused to set foot in the house so that we had to take them to stay indefinitely with our daughter.
As a toxicologist for Abbott Laboratories, I was not by nature or habit given to flights of fancy. Research and rational thought, preferably expressed in scientific terms dictated reality for me. My wife, Marissa, was far more imaginative. Indeed, it was her effervescent personality that enchanted me when we first met, and her cheerful attitude was often just the tonic I needed when work or the word in general depressed me.
Two years ago, we decided to move from the large house where we had raised our children to something smaller. We chose a charming little Victorian in Lake Bluff. The realtor had shown us through the octogenarian house on a bright Saturday morning in September. Her nervous little admission that the previous owners believed the place was haunted amused my wife, but carried absolutely no weight with me. The house, recently remodeled, suited our needs perfectly. It meant a much shorter commute to my North Chicago office. There was a fenced-in yard for our two dogs, and Marissa was delighted by the third-floor view of Lake Michigan. We moved in on October 19th.
It was the dogs who knew first. Watson and Crick--two pleasant, well-behaved golden retrievers--had been part of our family for nine years. Even before our children grew up and moved away from home, the dogs had been slightly spoiled. They ate their home-cooked dog meals when we ate our dinner and slept at the foot of our bed every night.
The first night in the new house, both dogs whined about climbing the stairs. I was all for leaving them in the kitchen, but Marissa wouldn't hear of it. I carried Crick up the stairs. Reluctantly, Watson followed behind. But the night didn't go well. Twice, they woke us barking their fool heads off. At three in the morning, Watson began frantically scratching the bedroom door, destroying paint and woodwork, while Crick set about howling in a way that made my blood run cold. They bolted down the stairs the minute I opened the bedroom door. Later, I noticed that one of them had, uncharacteristically, urinated on the carpet. They spent the rest of the night outside. Fro days, rain or shine, they refused to set foot in the house so that we had to take them to stay indefinitely with our daughter.
Work kept me occupied, but the commute became a problem: I dreaded time at home. The logical escape was household chores, so late on Halloween afternoon, I decided to clean the gutters. Never acrophobic, scaling a ladder to the roof-line of a three-story house did not distress me. I clambered up the rungs with the energy of a man half my age, and began the messy but necessary task of clearing dead leaves and debris. Leaning far out to my left as I reached around a dormer window, I was concentrating on my work, so I did not see, until too late, the waxen face grinning viciously at the window.
Now I, too, await the autumn twilight when we souls, no longer within our corporeal selves, try to find our way home.
1 comment:
I didn't read the "winners", but I liked this story. The pacing was good; the dogs were distinct characters, and their reaction was believable (at least, from what I know about dogs. All mine does is refuse to "go" outside whenever the weather changes more than five degrees in either direction).
Apart from a few typos, my biggest concern is the short time frame. Marissa would have to be a very tiny woman for an acute weight loss to be visible in just a week. Did she suffer the same fate as the narrator, or is she just terrified?
Remember, submitting is always better than not submitting, even if you don't win. I keep telling myself that all the time, and one day I'll believe it.
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