Stained - 1. Stained

I fingered the list and fiddled with my pen. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember exactly what items had been in the middle drawer. I swore the debit cards for the health savings accounts were there, but I couldn’t be sure. After we had picked up all our belongings and placed them back as best we could, it was so hard to be certain. The past two days had been a frenzy of activity after finding the condo tossed and calling the police.

“Dew, can you do me a favor?” Malcolm called from around the corner. He stuck his head out, his wet hair plastered close to his scalp. He waited for my response patiently. Below him, our cat Rhubarb appeared peeking around the corner. The corner of Mal’s towel swayed and touched him, and he jumped. Rhubarb was the ultimate scaredy cat.

“Yeah, what do you need?”

“Can you wipe down my closet door? It’s still black with fingerprint powder.”

I smiled back at him and nodded. He grinned and his freshly showered face disappeared from view. Luckily, I had a few days off after the burglary. Mal didn’t have the luxury. His job was on commission and therefore time off was money lost. We were still in a financial pinch after only six months at the new place. We hadn’t calculated the extra costs carefully enough and when my partner went through a dry spell at work, no sales, no pay, we got a little behind on our bills.

That was the least of it.

Bills could always be paid off eventually. Right now, it was our peace of mind which had been shattered.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I heard him say. I jumped and my heart lurched uncomfortably in my chest.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “Today I’ll go to the store and get the laundry done.”

“And clean my closet door?”

I grinned at him. “Yes, I won’t forget.”

Malcolm combed his short sandy blond hair with his fingers. His boyish grin and twinkling golden brown eyes made my stomach gurgle a little. He was so beautiful, charming, and all mine. He straightened his tie, swirls of teal against an azure background and grabbed his suit coat. As a car guy, he could dress more casually, but Mal always said, ‘Dress to impress and the money comes next.’

“Maybe you should call Joey or your sister to come over.” Mal was leaning over me, his face close and lips pursed in concern. “You don’t have to be here all alone.”

“I’m fine,” I said again. “Give me a kiss goodbye and go make us some money.”

“Okay,” he replied. He leaned in and the erotic smells of freshly washed coconuts and musk filled my head. I loved how Mal filled me up. His kiss was quick but satisfying. It had the firmness of his ardor yet said goodbye, for now.

“Have a good day,” I said, forcing a smile onto my face. As he headed for the front door of the condo, I was shocked at how anxious I suddenly felt. Having two days of us together had spoiled me. It wasn’t like me to be so needy. Being scared wasn’t normally something I had to worry about.

I sat in the chair fiddling with the police inventory and thinking about the events of the past two days. It was like someone else had experienced it. I could almost envision another person, an actor like Kevin Spacey, walking into the place and seeing the disarray and reacting like he should. He would be surprised, then scared, and later angry. It would feel like a violation. I could see the reactions of his family and friends he told them about his experience. Everyone was so kind and thoughtful to him.

When I replayed Kevin Spacey’s reaction to the theft, it was much like my own. Also, I could see myself replaying the role over and over quite spontaneously. Those feelings were all there bubbling under the surface, but there was something else as well. There was a distinct feeling this wasn’t happening to me. It was too Hollywood or TV movie or Broadway or something playacted. It didn’t seem real.

This disjointed feeling had taken root and it made me more than anxious. It had made me scared. I was actually quite frightened and I didn’t know why.

After taking a sip of my now-cold coffee, I pushed the police inventory list away and thought about my overreaction. When I told Mal about my strange, nagging apprehension, he asked if I was worried about them coming back. He asked if I was feeling anxious because this time I’d be home or walk in on them or something. That wasn’t it. I wasn’t worried about the robbers or burglars or whatever they’d been. It was something else.

Snorting in disgust, I stood up and walked into the kitchen. As I grabbed a bucket and filled it with hot water and soap, I pondered my weird feelings. Why did I feel this sense it was all unreal, fake, phony, and without a basis in reality? The sound of the water gushing into the pail was real. The smell of the soap as the water mixed with it was certainly real. I turned off the water, hefted it by the handle, and the weight was real. What had happened was not.

Grabbing a blue scrubbie and plopping it into the wash water, I headed to our bedroom. As I walked down the hall, I noticed how clean the light switch plates were. They gleamed in the morning light. After the police crime scene squad had finished up fingerprinting everything, Mal and I had wiped the place clean. They had sprinkled the fine black powder on every hard surface in the condo and that meant every switch plate in the place. The tech explained we should do this right away. ‘Use a dry cloth and brush it away or else it will stick. Only use soap and water if you miss an area.’

Obviously we’d forgotten an area. As I walked into our bedroom, I was again struck with this sense it was all surreal. We’d never been robbed. I’d dreamt it all and soon I’d wake up and this would be something my imagination had cooked up. Mal’s closet doors were pristine white and clean. They were flung open as always. Mal never closed his closet doors.

I approached them slowly setting the bucket on the carpet. I grasped the edge of the door and pulled it toward me. At first, I thought Mal must have been mistaken. The door was clear of any of the black soot-like powder. Then as the door swung closed, I saw the gray cloud on the white paint. Obviously, when he’d tried to clean it after the police left, he hadn’t gotten all of it. When the other door was closed, it had a matching smudge as well. With the doors meeting together, the cloud became a large, haunting moth with pale gray wings. There were two white spots at the top of the smudge. They seemed to stare at me.

I shivered.

Quickly, I hustled over to the bucket and picked it up sloshing water onto the carpet. The blue scrubbie escaped from the foamy surface and squirted onto the dark brown puddle in the rug. I bent and picked up the sponge and threw it back into the pail. Again, the water seemed to repel the thing and it bounced out onto the floor.

I set the bucket down, picked up the scrubbie and doused it in the water. When it was damp and sudsy, I walked over to the gray cloud and started to wash it. The water glistened on the gray cloud, but none of it came off. Even when I pressed hard causing a trickle of soapy water to spill down the surface of the closet door, the gray didn’t rub clean. In fact, in the bright morning light, the gray seemed to become darker, more ominous. The stain on the closet door was even more malignant. The two white spots were mocking me.

I stepped back, threw the scrubbie into pail -- this time it stayed -- and shook my head. Obviously, the fingerprint powder had soaked into the white paint and colored it. Maybe it would need something stronger.

I marched out of the room back to the kitchen. I began digging under the sink in the cupboard for the spray bottle. Sure enough, I had a nice new bottle of bathroom cleaner with bleach as its main ingredient. I’d get that closet door clean one way or another. I smiled to myself as I returned to the bedroom. I sprayed the pungent stuff onto the gray cloud. I felt better as the cleaner foamed up and streaks of light ashen liquid streaked down the surface of the door. I coated the cloud with a white froth and then picked up my bucket and left the room.

As I emptied the bucket into the sink, I thought about how tired I was. Exhausted. A couple of times while Mal was getting ready to go this morning, I felt somewhat dazed and closed down. My eyes kept drifting shut. I knew it was because my sleep pattern was shattered since walking into our condo and finding us violated.

My sleep had been thin and light the past two nights. Usually I sleep deep and hard. Mal would have to shake me awake me if we had an early morning. I didn’t have trouble falling asleep, and, once I visited slumber-land, I was there for eight hours.

Since the burglary, I awoke at the slightest sound. I never realized how loud the wind was outside our windows nor how many creaks and groans the building made in the wee hours of night. I started and bolted upright each time a branch on the tree outside rattled against the building’s siding. I could hear as the elevator whined and stopped with a soft beep down the hall from our condo. I’d never heard it before. After I found our lockbox broken open and its contents spread out over the sofa cushions, I gained superhuman hearing. I could now hear a spider spinning her web; at least it seemed like it.

I decided a nap would make me feel better. I felt so ditzy and strung out like my brain was dull and stretched too thin. I rarely napped because I never felt the need. Today a nap sounded simply divine.

I wandered into the living room and laid down on the sofa, arranging a throw pillow for my head and pulling up an old afghan my grandmother made up to my chest. Sleep overtook me at once.

***

There was something white in the distance, there at the end of a long hallway. No. It wasn’t a hallway. It was a tunnel of sorts and it smelled dank and almost coppery, like blood. I wasn’t scared though. I was curious as to what the white thing was. I floated down the tunnel. The walls were stone cold and damp. The smell of copper grew stronger as I got closer to the white. It wasn’t really all white. The center of the white was a kind of gray cloud.

No. It was a gray mask. The mask became clearer as I got closer. The mask was the likeness of a face I knew better than my own. Malcolm’s face was outlined in gray and shades of black. His grin was maniacal, mocking and seemed malevolent. There was something about the curl of his upper lip which made me shriek when it moved. The face wasn’t really Mal. It wasn’t my Mal. Or was it?

The mouth on the mask started to open. It was going to eat me. I don’t know how I knew that. I just did. The mask was going to munch down on me and eat me alive.

The smell of copper was now even stronger, and I looked over to the side. There was our cat. The orange-striped cat was in a blender. I could now hear it whirring, and the glass revealed a bloody mass swirling and yet Rhubarb looked up at me and simply meowed.

***

I awoke with a jolt. Rhubarb was staring at me. I realized I had inserted our big orange furball into my dream. Also, I’d taken the gray stain on the closet door and joined it with my lover’s face. Dream worlds are bizarre things. I sat up and looked at the clock on the wall. The dream had felt long and involved yet only about twenty minutes had passed since I’d lain down.

I felt surprisingly refreshed though. When I first closed my eyes, I thought I could sleep for a week. Apparently a little less than half an hour was all I really needed.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. The cat jumped down and scurried toward the bedroom. Had I really sprayed a closet door with bathroom bleach? What was I thinking? Finally, the haze my brain had been in had cleared. I jumped from the couch and ran for the bedroom. Bursting through the doorway, I saw exactly what I feared. Mal’s closed closet doors still had a grayish moth stain, but now it was covered in a white film. The dried foam gave the gray color an iron color, dull, leaden, and weighty. The moth had turned into an iron butterfly.

The chocolate brown carpet below the stained closet doors was white in spots, tan in others, and all shades in between. The bleach had leaked down and ruined the carpet. I stood there agape as the sight made my stomach flip. First, we were robbed, and then I pull this stupid stunt.

Sighing, I turned and walked back to the kitchen and began filling my trusty bucket.

It only took a few minutes to clean the dried soap off the closet doors. This time I used a rag and ignored the carpet as a lost cause. The gray stain had faded from the bleach, but it was still quite obvious. I’d need to paint over it. Obviously the black powder had leached into the paint permanently. Only a fresh coat of white would cover up the memory of the theft.

At this point, all I wanted was relief from that night.

I’d walked into the place and saw our lockbox open and the papers scattered around it. At first I thought Mal was already home and looking for something. The coat closet had been ajar which was odd, but not enough to give me pause. I’d then called out for him as I walked fully into the living room. That’s when I saw the coffee table drawers had been ripped out and overturned onto the floor. The books were pulled off the shelf and a bottle of wine had been smashed on the wall.

I pulled out my phone and called Mal, only slowly realizing what I was seeing. When he answered, I told him we’d been robbed. It clicked. I told him I needed to call the police. He said he’d leave work immediately. I called and they’d shown up.

Finding the mess had only been the first stage of a painful process, a process which still wasn’t over.

The damned stain had faded, sure, but it was still there, and it was a constant reminder. Every time we look at the fucking iron butterfly on the closet doors, it would remind us of the invasion, the intrusion, the rape of our privacy.

Grabbing my keys and wallet, I pocketed my phone and headed down to my car. I was going to get a quart of white paint and cover the abomination on Mal’s closet door.

Once the elevator stopped in the basement, I felt a little better about my screw up. The chocolate brown carpet was something we wanted to rip out and replace with something more our taste anyway. Money was the issue as it had been since we moved in a few months ago. Strangely enough, I thought our insurance check would pay for new carpet, a new television and speakers, and even help us catch up on some bills. Sure, we’d lost some special items, but they were just things. We weren’t hurt. Our cat was fine. All we’d lost were a few replaceable tchotchkes and not anything vital to our lives.

I walked over to my Ford Focus, forest green, and got behind the wheel. That’s right. At least I hadn’t walked in on the people robbing us and got hurt or killed. Hell, Rhubarb hadn’t even seemed that freaked out when I walked in the door. The dumb cat came running over to me meowing like he always did when it was time to be fed. A great deal of time must have passed between the burglars leaving and me returning home. That night, the cat had purred as I petted him. He was fine. Not even traumatized.

I started the car and headed down the ramp toward the exit. I switched on the radio and a song came on I hadn’t heard before. It was by a musician named Roger Roman. I hummed along with the chorus the second time I heard it. The song was quite catchy. Afterwards, the DJ said the song was on the Thor: Loki’s Gambit soundtrack. The song kept reverberating in my head as I parked at the hardware store.

As I looked over the different kinds of paint, something odd occurred to me. It was a bit strange there were fingerprints on the front sides of the closet doors. Mal never closed his doors. Ever. I picked up a small can of antique white semi-gloss enamel and read the label. It promised easy washing and never discoloring. I wondered if the old paint on the doors had made that promise to the painter.

Probably.

I paid for the quart of paint, a brush, a bag of rags and a roll of plastic. I threw in a couple of rolls of blue masking tape for good measure. The cashier placed a stir stick into the bag with the other items. I walked out of the store feeling somewhat disjointed, again. The sense of things being ‘wrong’ had come back to haunt me. Something was niggling at me, making my scalp itch and my brain race.

As I got behind the steering wheel and closed the door I tried taking deep breaths to calm down. Out loud I said, “When people get robbed, they feel wronged. It’s natural to feel things are awry. Of course I’m jumpy.” Saying this out loud should have helped. Instead, it felt like I was lying to myself.

I purposely turned up the volume on the radio and sang along with the music with as much effort as I could assert. If I kept busy singing, repainting the closet, and cooking a special dinner, my nerves would calm. The problem was time. Enough of it hadn’t passed for my sense of well-being to return.

***

The paint went on the closet doors, and I was making a pot of chicken chili and had a blueberry crisp in the oven. I was sitting at the table looking over the police inventory sheet and making a mental tour of the condo. As I went through each room, I tried to imagine things as they were when I left that morning. I started with the bathroom. Nothing was missing from there. The drawers of the vanity had been gaping open when I walked through the house with the police officers. The guy, Officer McMurty, had commented it was rather strange how they’d even tossed the bathroom. Few people ever stashed cash or valuables with their toilet paper and cold cream. He had looked at me curiously. I nodded as he talked and we walked into the office/second bedroom.

I ticked off the items I found missing from the next room. The thieves had taken a pair of Austrian goblets my parents had given me. They were quite pricy, but it was surprising the robbers had identified them as such. My Mont Blanc pen was gone as were my Waterford crystal decanters.

I continued going through the accumulated list and pictured each room in turn. When I heard the timer go off, I went and pulled the dessert out of the oven. It was bubbling and smelled of toasted pecans and caramelized brown sugar as well as a hint of ginger. The blueberry aroma filled the kitchen.

“Something smells good,” I heard Malcolm say as he walked into the room. “What’s the special occasion?”

“The last couple of days have been awful. I’m making us treats. We’re having chicken chili and corn bread as well.”

“Well,” Mal said grabbing my shoulders. He leaned in and kissed me deeply. “I think your idea is wonderful. Work was hell today, but I did make a couple of good sales.”

“That’s good,” I said. Mal’s presence calmed me considerably.

***

I fell asleep right away that night. Mal held me until midnight when I woke up. I edged away from him, turned, and hoped sleep would return. It didn’t, not then. Instead, I kept thinking about things the cop said as we walked about the condo. Some of the questions seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, but now they kind of bothered me a little.

He’d asked if we had an enemy, someone who may want to get back at us. I thought it a little off-kilter. I answered him though without hesitation. We didn’t have enemies. We both had exes, but it seemed ridiculous Tony would want to ‘get back’ at me after four years had passed. Mal’s former boyfriends hadn’t even been that serious. I think I was the first man he dated exclusively. What had the cop said exactly? Something about the tossing of the apartment was a little too thorough. Wait, he said—

The search appears almost orderly, organized, like the perpetrators had all the time in the world and wanted to go through each and every room.

The cop had been right. Each and every room had been methodically searched and tossed. There wasn’t anything damaged. Except for the smashed wine bottle, our things were treated almost carefully.

I opened my eyes and looked across the room. Mal’s closet doors were glowing in the moonlight. The silvery sheen of pearly illumination pushed against the shadows in the corners. Faintly, the moth-like shape of the stain was evident under the single coat of white paint. The instructions warned a double coat may be necessary when covering a darker color.

The strange look of the iron butterfly from earlier flashed into my head. The image of Mal’s mask from my dream followed. The mask looked different from the moth. Somehow my mind had morphed the image. But why?

On the morning of the robbery, I left shortly before Mal had. I came into the bedroom and remembered Mal was getting out of the shower. I kissed him goodbye and I left. I closed my eyes. When I left, was the closet door open or closed? Why was the closet haunting me so?

Another thought occurred to me suddenly and I opened my eyes and stared at the faint gray blob. Again, I went through the police inventory list of the missing items. I thought about my dream and the meowing Rhubarb, the scaredy cat who was so calm when I walked in on the mess. I thought about Mal’s promise to me a couple of weeks ago.

Don’t worry, sweetie. We’ll find the money somehow. I’ll think of something.

***

After I woke up really early, I couldn’t stop staring at Mal. His sleeping face looked both guilty and innocently relaxed. Why did he do it? Why would he put me through the trauma? I saw his eyes twitch as he slept. Was he dreaming of how he staged the crime scene?

I couldn’t take it anymore. I shook his shoulder. His eyelids flickered and then slowly opened.

“What time is it?”

“I know what you did,” I said, watching for his reaction; to see his guilt and fear.

“What’s that?” he said, yawning, stretching, and pointedly not looking at me.

“You faked the robbery, didn’t you?”

Mal snapped to attention. His forehead was wrinkled in confusion. “Huh?”

“I figured out you staged the apartment to look like we were robbed. Did you do it for the money?” I could feel my anger and fear flow out of me. He pulled away and sat up.

“You’re reacting to the violation. Are you not sleeping?”

I couldn’t take this anymore. He was lying. I could tell. His eyes were shifting, his shoulders tense and bunched. “Why traumatize me like this, all for a little bit of money? I don’t feel safe here anymore. Why did you do it? We’re not that fucking broke. To have violated my trust like this? Fuck, Mal!”

Mal shook his head, processing. He paused, his face becoming red and said, “Are you so paranoid that you think I faked a robbery for the insurance money?” His head shaking was becoming more animated, and he tilted his face, looking at me closely, like he was trying to figure me out.

I jumped out of bed and turned to him, my eyes were wet and my face was burning. “Look at this. Look at the iron butterfly. It proves you faked it, you made up the whole thing. Admit it.” I was screaming at him now. Tears were streaming down his face too.

“What are you talking about? What iron butterfly?” he screamed back at me. Mal’s head dropped. He looked at me and his stark desolation scared me.

He looked miserable and confused. He looked innocent.

It was only then I calmed down. I tried to slow my breathing. I wiped my eyes. My face was burning hot. Mal’s face was red and raw looking. He had gone through the same thing I had. That first night I awoke with him pacing and drinking a glass of Scotch. It was only after he was half in the bag, he came back to bed.

I began considering my accusation. How could I think my dear Malcolm could do such a thing? Why would it even occur to me? I looked at him, upset, on his knees, almost praying for me to see reason. Embarrassment washed over me, like a cold shower. I blinked.

As the morning light crept through the bedroom window, I saw the iron butterfly was gone. The closet doors were white and clean. The image was gone. I walked over and touched the door and it was smooth. I’d created the whole thing in my head. Poor Mal, what had I done?

I turned and saw Mal was in a fetal position on the bed. I went to him and held him. After a moment of resistance, he relaxed in my embrace. I whispered my apologies. He murmured back. I felt release, both in him and in me. We both cried more and this time our tears washed the stain away.