The dog ran into the kitchen and began marching back and forth in front of the glass sliding door connecting the kitchen to the backyard, whining and barking and scrabbling at the glass.
“Hang on,” Anne said. “I can barely hear you. The dog’s going crazy.”
She opened the door and watched Acer take off like an arrow and disappear through a gap in the fence that her husband always threatened to repair, but never did.
“I’m back,” she added, scooping up her pie and tossing it into the oven. “We can’t have the crazies running amok in our park. Our children play there, Shana. If the cops are too busy to help, we’re going to have to do this ourselves. Just like last time.”
“Oh Anne, don’t go vigilante again.”
“Me? I’m not doing anything. Big Tom’s going, not me.”
Her kids tramped by scowling and she followed them with her eyes, monitoring her little ducklings for signs of conspiracy.
“I got to go, Shan,” she added. “I have to go vigilante on my kids.”
“Tell Big Tom to be careful if he’s going out today.”
Anne frowned and laughed. “Sure thing. Bye, Shan.” Hanging up, she turned on the hot water tap, squirted in some dishwashing liquid, and began filling the sink. “Children, come here!”
Peter tramped back into the kitchen, followed by Alice and Little Tom. They gazed sullenly at their mother.
“Well?” she said, hands on hips. “What’s wrong?”
“Dad says we can’t go outside today and we’re bored out of our minds.”
Anne turned off the tap and dumped a stack of dirty breakfast dishes into the foamy water.
“Did he now?” she said. “TOM!”
Big Tom was in the living room, sitting on the couch watching the news, already an hour late for work. After a few moments, he entered the kitchen scratching the back of his head and looking worried. Her husband was a large man—not muscular, not fat, just big. His smile lit up his entire face. People thought he was a natural comedian but they also respected him when he was serious. He was the kind of guy who finished but did not start fights.
“The authorities are saying it’s some sort of plague,” he muttered. “Things are getting pretty hairy out there.”
“Tom. Tom. We can’t keep the kids locked up like this.”
“They’re telling everybody to stay indoors, dear.”
“It’s just more of the crazies. Kids hopped up on drugs.”
“It’s the screamers, they say. The screamers all woke up, and they’re like maniacs.”
Anne snorted. “Give me a break. In any case, all that stuff is going on downtown, not here. The only thing we got going on here is two crazies hanging around the park that I want you to give a good talking to. Go kick them out of there so our kids can go play outside.”
“They can play in the backyard,” he offered.
“Tom. If you were here each day with these little darlings since the Screaming like I have been, you would know that they are wild animals and need space to roam. You cannot keep children bottled up on a beautiful day like this. They will tear the house apart. I am speaking from experience.”
Anne suppressed a smile, enjoying their game. She knew he would obey her. He always did. The truth was he loved her more than anything and after a good deal of token hemming and hawing he always did as she said. Anne was the type of person who mouthed off to strangers about their driving, their parking, how they treated their kids in public. She had actually gotten her husband into a fistfight once over her editorializing about a man taking two parking spaces at the supermarket with his oversized truck. Big Tom had apologized after knocking him to the ground.
“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying,” her husband said with a massive frown.
Her eyes narrowed. He was not playing. He was serious. Well, so was she. When it came to things like this, she was very much in charge. And she could be very, very stubborn.
“Go, Tom. Go be the man.”
“You want me to go?”
“Don’t go, Daddy,” Little Tom said, his voice cracking.
“Don’t you say another word,” Anne warned him, her voice quiet and deadly. A hush fell over them all; the mood in the house had suddenly become tense. She went on sunnily, “Your father is not working today, so he can help out around the house.” She looked him in the eye, accepting his dare. “Yes, dear, I want you to go take care of that problem in the park.”
Big Tom stormed out of the kitchen and returned holding one of his shotguns. The kids watched this in stunned silence except for Little Tom, who choked back a long series of sobs.
“Oh, Tom, don’t go Rambo or anything,” she said. “It’s just stupid kids, I’m sure of it. Just give them a stern warning so they leave and don’t come back.”
Big Tom loaded the shotgun wearing a grimace that was almost a sneer, blinking rapidly. She could tell he was scared and it confused her. The only time she had seen Big Tom scared was their first date, their wedding day and the birth of their firstborn.
“Okay, I’m going, then,” he said.
Anne looked at the ceiling, almost laughing, and said, “That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“Lock the door after I leave the house.”
She waved him off, already focused on her next task. Anne had never locked her door during the day and she was not about to start now. If she needed to lock her door, she wouldn’t be living in this neighborhood.
After Big Tom left, doubt began to nag at the back of her mind, a little voice whispering, bring him back, which she overcame through diving back into the endless housework that constituted her 24/7 job. She washed the breakfast dishes, dried them, put them away. She took her pie out of the oven and set it to cool. Big Tom loved her pie and she almost laughed thinking about him devouring it. He would come back feeling silly about being scared and she would say nothing and put a big piece of pie in front of him with a cold glass of milk. She tried to call her girlfriends to talk about all of these things on her mind, but there was still trouble on the line. Around noon, she made sandwiches for her kids and began to seriously worry.
The kids ate their lunches sullenly at the kitchen table. Little Tom’s chin wobbled as he chewed mechanically, watching his mother with big, watery eyes.
“Where’s Dad?” Peter said, his voice challenging.
Alice stopped chewing. Little Tom sobbed and rubbed his eyes. Anne, who had been staring out the window wondering that very thing, realized they were all looking at her.
Fear flickered across her face, followed by a smile.
“Dad went for a walk with Acer,” she said.
She stood, picked up the phone, and tried to call his cell, but the phones were jammed. She tried again. And again. Always the same. Always that frantic busy signal indicating system failure. The kids studied her closely with worried expressions.
Peter understands what is happening, she thought. Perhaps even better than I do.
“Ha!” she said. The phone was ringing.
Big Tom’s ringtone, Leo Sayer and the Wiggles doing the chorus of “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing,” sang out from the living room.
Anne slammed the phone down, biting back a nice, juicy F-bomb. That was just like him. He was always forgetting to bring his cell phone.
“Where’s Dad, Mom?” Peter pressed.