Dark, Darker
by Pamela Painter
When our sheep dog Dooby begins to whimper and bite at his leg, I take him to the vet. The vet examines Dooby’s leg, palpates the area, then frowns. “Look,” he says. He parts Dooby’s fur to reveal a beige rubber band wound tightly around Dooby’s leg. “It’s buried in his fur. He could have lost that leg. Someone did this,” he says, and shakes his head. “Who? Who would do such a thing?”
I have my suspicions: Jason and Juke. The twin boys, age eleven, who moved next door a month ago. They have been torturing beetles and ants with a magnifying glass in their driveway adjoining ours. The third time I noticed this I confiscated their weapon and replaced it with a plate of cookies. Later, when I gave their mother the magnifying glass she rolled her eyes. Then she nodded at my stomach and asked when my baby is due. “Soon,” I told her, “soon.” I felt oddly unwilling to be precise. Later I realized she was rolling her eyes at my disapproval of her twins’ idea of fun. “The usual kid stuff,” my husband says. Gary hasn’t met the twins yet. They always scuttle off when his car pulls into the drive. There’s never been a father in sight.
The week after my visit to the vet, the twins come looking for me. They kick the door of my potting shed where I am repotting a large aloe vera. “Hey, Mrs. Frame, have any cookies for us?” Juke says. He has a missing front tooth, so I am able to tell them apart, though I suspect their hearts are identically evil.
Under my workbench, Dooby is whimpering. As if I needed proof. “No cookies today,” I say, slapping down my trowel. Jason kneels to peer at Dooby. “If you have a ball we could play catch with him.” I coax Dooby to come out so the boys will see his bandaged leg. “Someone put a rubber band around his leg. Do you boys know anything about that?” They shake their heads. Then Jason says maybe their sister did it. Juke says, “Yeah. Ask Jilly.” Jilly is a cherub of two and never leaves her sandbox. Her mother plonks her down there in the morning and only intermittently checks on her. From my dining room I can see into their study where their mother sits at a computer. I asked the boys, once, what their mother did. Juke said she does numbers not words.
“Jilly is not the villain,” I say. When Jason asks what’s a villain, I say someone who does nasty things. Juke asks what’s nasty. “Naughty. Wicked. Wrong. Doing that to Dooby’s leg was wrong.” They nod in unison. Jason pats Dooby’s head and then they are out the door and off to home.
That evening, I tell Gary I know they did it. “Dooby never growls at anyone.” We’re peeling old wallpaper off the room that will be the nursery. Steaming it off, a messy project, but scenes of lavish steamboats sailing the Mississippi River didn’t appeal to either of us.
“I need to meet these boys,” Gary says. “Where’s a father, or at least I haven’t seen one.” When I shake my head, he says, “Next weekend maybe I’ll take them to the park. Throw some balls around.” He unearths his old baseball mitt, and the next day he brings home a frisbee. That Saturday, their mother is delighted when Gary knocks on their door with his offer. Their outing lasts all of one hour. Gary reports, “Fifteen minutes into playing catch, the twin with the missing front tooth said they were missing too many of their shows.” The other twin said, “The park is boring.” Gary shrugs and tosses his mitt into the hall closet. “Those boys are boring, but I tried. I’d rather peel wallpaper.”
Two days later, a doll shows up, planted head down and naked in a new clay pot just inside the door to my shed. I pull it free. Surely it belongs to Jilly. The doll’s eyes no longer close but I clean it up and wrap it in one of Gary’s handkerchiefs. Then I take it back to Jilly who is whispering to herself in her sandbox. She is tearfully grateful and tucks it under her shirt. Ten feet away, Juke is twisting on the tire swing and calls out, “Why did you take Jilly’s doll?” Jason is keeping the swing in motion. “Yeah, that wasn’t nice,” he says. “But at least you brought it back.” I stare at them. I want to slap their impudent faces, but instead I pat Jilly’s curls and tell the twins they better take care of their precious sister. A day later I put a simple lock on the shed door. It almost makes me feel better.
But not enough. That afternoon I stand in the doorway to our unfinished nursery and realize I’ve lost heart for this project. The steamboats can stay awash on their river for all I care. The blue and pink paint samples seem silly. Why not green. Later that evening, I tell Gary, “I want to move before our baby arrives. Our daughter.” Earlier that day we learned we are having a girl. “But we love this house,” he says, citing our work in the nursery, my potting shed, and how he’d soundproofed his studio so neighbors wouldn’t complain that the music he composes for comics isn’t musical. “I worry about Jilly,” I say, and I tell him about Jilly’s buried doll. I say how do kids get to be this way. I can see him pondering “this way.” Surely he isn’t thinking “boys will be boys.”
A week later, a neighborhood cat is missing. Signs are posted about the missing Prissy. An email is circulated among the neighbors. Mrs. Wilson, Prissy’s elderly owner, roams the streets, stands at the perimeters of our yards calling Prissy’s name. The next week, a strangled Prissy is found in the Cardiffs’ swimming pool, not swimming. At our block’s annual July 4th barbeque, Mrs. Wilson is inconsolable. “Who would do that?” she says. “Who?” I ask her if the twins from next door ever asked to play with Prissy. “A few times,” she says. I am about to suggest that she should question them, but Gary sees where I am heading and drags me away. Fireworks postpone the beginning of the argument we might have had.
Several weeks later, I am again working in my shed when I hear muffled cries from the sandbox. Squeals. And a boy’s command to “hold still.” Seconds later, I find Jilly, prone, and up to her neck in sand. Her eyes are closed and her rosy mouth is wet with sand and spit. Jason is telling her to hold still so they can get her feet covered. “Stop that,” I yell. “We’re playing beach,” Jason says. “You need a beach for that,” I say. “And a life guard.” Roughly I push the boys aside and gently dust the sand off Jilly’s stomach, her arms and legs. Her eyes are closed, but she holds out her arms for me to pick her up. I dust off more sand then I carry her across the patio and pound on the back door. Their mother appears, frowning, I begin, “The twins…” But she cuts me off saying “those damn scamps.” She bends down and holds out her arms for Jilly, who buries her face in her mother’s jeans. Sand crunches under her feet. I repeat, “The twins were burying Jilly in the sandbox.” I turn to accuse the twins to their faces, but they aren’t in the yard. “I told them to play with Jilly,” her mother says. “They ignore her most of the time. Just wait till you have kids of your own.” Instinctively, my hands cup my large rounded stomach. She notices this and nods tiredly, saying, “But thanks, anyway.”
I am momentarily speechless—until that evening, when I tell Gary how the twins were burying Jilly in the sandbox. I describe a terrified Jilly and her sanguine mother. I recall the various incidents: Dead bugs. Dooby’s leg. Jilly’s doll. Mrs. Wilson’s drowned cat. He frowns when I mention the cat and says, “We don’t know that for sure.”
“I know it,” I say. Outside it is growing dark, darker. I tell him I do not want to bring a new baby—our daughter—into this house.
He puts his arms around me. Between us, our daughter moves across my stomach in a giant swoop as if to agree. “We have to think of names,” he says. He doesn’t hear me.
A week later I disappear with Dooby. I take nothing else. I leave the shed door unlocked. No note. I check into a rundown motel in the next state over with an old ID in my maiden name. I arrive in the afternoon and settle in. I imagine Gary startled that the shed door is swinging open, and then searching through the house calling my name, realizing that Dooby is also gone. He probably knocks on our neighbor’s door to ask if she has seen me. When he suggests he talk to the twins, she reluctantly agrees. His questions are too sharp, annoying their mother. I imagine the twins shaking their heads, wide-eyed, wary, and surprised.
Later that evening my husband goes to the police. Desperate now, it is Gary who recounts the crimes of Juke and Jason. He calls them crimes: the tortured bugs, the ailing Dooby, the doll planted in my shed, a rescued Jilly, and yes, he tells them about Mrs. Wilson’s drowned cat.
The policeman on duty says, “But they’re just kids, right. Eleven.” They put out a Missing Person bulletin. Finally my husband has more to tell them. Gary recounts the traces of sand on the passenger’s seat of his car, the dead bird he assumed had flown into his windshield and not been “placed there,” a foul wet odor like urine in his old gardening boots. Happenings he’d kept from me—and from himself.
Reluctantly, the police together with a woman from social services visit my neighbor and ask to talk to the twins, who manage to look like angels. “She bakes us cookies,” one twin says. “Jilly really likes her,” the other says. Back at the station a policeman tells Gary, “I think we have to rule out the twins. They seem to like your wife.” He cautions Gary not to talk with them again or ask them any more questions. Gary says, “At least now the twins are on your radar.” The Chief acknowledges this. Then he asks Gary, “Was your wife unhappy?” Gary says, “Unhappy? No. My wife was afraid of the twins.”
Gary pleads for word of me on the local news stations. At home, he searches for a note he might have overlooked. He replays my concerns about the twins. The next day he lures them onto our back porch and interrogates them, doling out candy bars and chips. His voice rises to a pitch that brings the twins’ mother running, a frightened Jilly in her arms. Then she places her own frantic call to the police.
I learn all this when I reappear a week later. It is early evening. Gary weeps with relief when I pull into the drive, and open the front door. He promises that we will certainly move. Put our house up for sale. Begin looking for a house tomorrow. We alert the police to my return then we check into a hotel. A hotel that welcomes dogs. Tearfully Gary apologizes for ignoring my stories about the twins. He apologizes for calling them stories. He says that during the whole week that I was missing he plumbed the depths of despair. He describes how he terrorized the twins. How he stalked them in their back yard. Left boxes of mutilated cookies and torn Pokemon cards by the sandbox. Slashed their tire swing. He bought a Ken doll and buried it in the sandbox. He shadowed them at five miles an hour on their way to school. And in every minute of every day of his campaign of terror he desperately hoped that I would be found, that we would both be saved from the revenge he was plotting to deal with their young sick hearts.
I have my suspicions: Jason and Juke. The twin boys, age eleven, who moved next door a month ago. They have been torturing beetles and ants with a magnifying glass in their driveway adjoining ours. The third time I noticed this I confiscated their weapon and replaced it with a plate of cookies. Later, when I gave their mother the magnifying glass she rolled her eyes. Then she nodded at my stomach and asked when my baby is due. “Soon,” I told her, “soon.” I felt oddly unwilling to be precise. Later I realized she was rolling her eyes at my disapproval of her twins’ idea of fun. “The usual kid stuff,” my husband says. Gary hasn’t met the twins yet. They always scuttle off when his car pulls into the drive. There’s never been a father in sight.
The week after my visit to the vet, the twins come looking for me. They kick the door of my potting shed where I am repotting a large aloe vera. “Hey, Mrs. Frame, have any cookies for us?” Juke says. He has a missing front tooth, so I am able to tell them apart, though I suspect their hearts are identically evil.
Under my workbench, Dooby is whimpering. As if I needed proof. “No cookies today,” I say, slapping down my trowel. Jason kneels to peer at Dooby. “If you have a ball we could play catch with him.” I coax Dooby to come out so the boys will see his bandaged leg. “Someone put a rubber band around his leg. Do you boys know anything about that?” They shake their heads. Then Jason says maybe their sister did it. Juke says, “Yeah. Ask Jilly.” Jilly is a cherub of two and never leaves her sandbox. Her mother plonks her down there in the morning and only intermittently checks on her. From my dining room I can see into their study where their mother sits at a computer. I asked the boys, once, what their mother did. Juke said she does numbers not words.
“Jilly is not the villain,” I say. When Jason asks what’s a villain, I say someone who does nasty things. Juke asks what’s nasty. “Naughty. Wicked. Wrong. Doing that to Dooby’s leg was wrong.” They nod in unison. Jason pats Dooby’s head and then they are out the door and off to home.
That evening, I tell Gary I know they did it. “Dooby never growls at anyone.” We’re peeling old wallpaper off the room that will be the nursery. Steaming it off, a messy project, but scenes of lavish steamboats sailing the Mississippi River didn’t appeal to either of us.
“I need to meet these boys,” Gary says. “Where’s a father, or at least I haven’t seen one.” When I shake my head, he says, “Next weekend maybe I’ll take them to the park. Throw some balls around.” He unearths his old baseball mitt, and the next day he brings home a frisbee. That Saturday, their mother is delighted when Gary knocks on their door with his offer. Their outing lasts all of one hour. Gary reports, “Fifteen minutes into playing catch, the twin with the missing front tooth said they were missing too many of their shows.” The other twin said, “The park is boring.” Gary shrugs and tosses his mitt into the hall closet. “Those boys are boring, but I tried. I’d rather peel wallpaper.”
Two days later, a doll shows up, planted head down and naked in a new clay pot just inside the door to my shed. I pull it free. Surely it belongs to Jilly. The doll’s eyes no longer close but I clean it up and wrap it in one of Gary’s handkerchiefs. Then I take it back to Jilly who is whispering to herself in her sandbox. She is tearfully grateful and tucks it under her shirt. Ten feet away, Juke is twisting on the tire swing and calls out, “Why did you take Jilly’s doll?” Jason is keeping the swing in motion. “Yeah, that wasn’t nice,” he says. “But at least you brought it back.” I stare at them. I want to slap their impudent faces, but instead I pat Jilly’s curls and tell the twins they better take care of their precious sister. A day later I put a simple lock on the shed door. It almost makes me feel better.
But not enough. That afternoon I stand in the doorway to our unfinished nursery and realize I’ve lost heart for this project. The steamboats can stay awash on their river for all I care. The blue and pink paint samples seem silly. Why not green. Later that evening, I tell Gary, “I want to move before our baby arrives. Our daughter.” Earlier that day we learned we are having a girl. “But we love this house,” he says, citing our work in the nursery, my potting shed, and how he’d soundproofed his studio so neighbors wouldn’t complain that the music he composes for comics isn’t musical. “I worry about Jilly,” I say, and I tell him about Jilly’s buried doll. I say how do kids get to be this way. I can see him pondering “this way.” Surely he isn’t thinking “boys will be boys.”
A week later, a neighborhood cat is missing. Signs are posted about the missing Prissy. An email is circulated among the neighbors. Mrs. Wilson, Prissy’s elderly owner, roams the streets, stands at the perimeters of our yards calling Prissy’s name. The next week, a strangled Prissy is found in the Cardiffs’ swimming pool, not swimming. At our block’s annual July 4th barbeque, Mrs. Wilson is inconsolable. “Who would do that?” she says. “Who?” I ask her if the twins from next door ever asked to play with Prissy. “A few times,” she says. I am about to suggest that she should question them, but Gary sees where I am heading and drags me away. Fireworks postpone the beginning of the argument we might have had.
Several weeks later, I am again working in my shed when I hear muffled cries from the sandbox. Squeals. And a boy’s command to “hold still.” Seconds later, I find Jilly, prone, and up to her neck in sand. Her eyes are closed and her rosy mouth is wet with sand and spit. Jason is telling her to hold still so they can get her feet covered. “Stop that,” I yell. “We’re playing beach,” Jason says. “You need a beach for that,” I say. “And a life guard.” Roughly I push the boys aside and gently dust the sand off Jilly’s stomach, her arms and legs. Her eyes are closed, but she holds out her arms for me to pick her up. I dust off more sand then I carry her across the patio and pound on the back door. Their mother appears, frowning, I begin, “The twins…” But she cuts me off saying “those damn scamps.” She bends down and holds out her arms for Jilly, who buries her face in her mother’s jeans. Sand crunches under her feet. I repeat, “The twins were burying Jilly in the sandbox.” I turn to accuse the twins to their faces, but they aren’t in the yard. “I told them to play with Jilly,” her mother says. “They ignore her most of the time. Just wait till you have kids of your own.” Instinctively, my hands cup my large rounded stomach. She notices this and nods tiredly, saying, “But thanks, anyway.”
I am momentarily speechless—until that evening, when I tell Gary how the twins were burying Jilly in the sandbox. I describe a terrified Jilly and her sanguine mother. I recall the various incidents: Dead bugs. Dooby’s leg. Jilly’s doll. Mrs. Wilson’s drowned cat. He frowns when I mention the cat and says, “We don’t know that for sure.”
“I know it,” I say. Outside it is growing dark, darker. I tell him I do not want to bring a new baby—our daughter—into this house.
He puts his arms around me. Between us, our daughter moves across my stomach in a giant swoop as if to agree. “We have to think of names,” he says. He doesn’t hear me.
A week later I disappear with Dooby. I take nothing else. I leave the shed door unlocked. No note. I check into a rundown motel in the next state over with an old ID in my maiden name. I arrive in the afternoon and settle in. I imagine Gary startled that the shed door is swinging open, and then searching through the house calling my name, realizing that Dooby is also gone. He probably knocks on our neighbor’s door to ask if she has seen me. When he suggests he talk to the twins, she reluctantly agrees. His questions are too sharp, annoying their mother. I imagine the twins shaking their heads, wide-eyed, wary, and surprised.
Later that evening my husband goes to the police. Desperate now, it is Gary who recounts the crimes of Juke and Jason. He calls them crimes: the tortured bugs, the ailing Dooby, the doll planted in my shed, a rescued Jilly, and yes, he tells them about Mrs. Wilson’s drowned cat.
The policeman on duty says, “But they’re just kids, right. Eleven.” They put out a Missing Person bulletin. Finally my husband has more to tell them. Gary recounts the traces of sand on the passenger’s seat of his car, the dead bird he assumed had flown into his windshield and not been “placed there,” a foul wet odor like urine in his old gardening boots. Happenings he’d kept from me—and from himself.
Reluctantly, the police together with a woman from social services visit my neighbor and ask to talk to the twins, who manage to look like angels. “She bakes us cookies,” one twin says. “Jilly really likes her,” the other says. Back at the station a policeman tells Gary, “I think we have to rule out the twins. They seem to like your wife.” He cautions Gary not to talk with them again or ask them any more questions. Gary says, “At least now the twins are on your radar.” The Chief acknowledges this. Then he asks Gary, “Was your wife unhappy?” Gary says, “Unhappy? No. My wife was afraid of the twins.”
Gary pleads for word of me on the local news stations. At home, he searches for a note he might have overlooked. He replays my concerns about the twins. The next day he lures them onto our back porch and interrogates them, doling out candy bars and chips. His voice rises to a pitch that brings the twins’ mother running, a frightened Jilly in her arms. Then she places her own frantic call to the police.
I learn all this when I reappear a week later. It is early evening. Gary weeps with relief when I pull into the drive, and open the front door. He promises that we will certainly move. Put our house up for sale. Begin looking for a house tomorrow. We alert the police to my return then we check into a hotel. A hotel that welcomes dogs. Tearfully Gary apologizes for ignoring my stories about the twins. He apologizes for calling them stories. He says that during the whole week that I was missing he plumbed the depths of despair. He describes how he terrorized the twins. How he stalked them in their back yard. Left boxes of mutilated cookies and torn Pokemon cards by the sandbox. Slashed their tire swing. He bought a Ken doll and buried it in the sandbox. He shadowed them at five miles an hour on their way to school. And in every minute of every day of his campaign of terror he desperately hoped that I would be found, that we would both be saved from the revenge he was plotting to deal with their young sick hearts.