Written By: Brigitte Surette
“I swear to all that’s holy if you sniff and swallow one more time, I’m going to rip your face off.”
Diane looked at Harry, her husband of twelve years and wondered why she’d married him. She hated his freckles. When they’d met, she thought he looked like Prince Harry. Over time, he and his freckles had morphed into someone else, someone resembling that comedian, Carrot Top with the weird smile and steroidal muscles.
“You scare me,” she’d told him more than once. His blank stares when she shouted at him for the umpteenth time to pick his newspaper up off the floor. How banal their lives had become, a cliché, an ongoing battle to see who’d toss up a white flag to end this already.
“Diane,” Harry said in that infuriating tone, as if she were the idiot, “My allergies are especially bad this time of year. You’re the one that wanted to move to the burbs so you could have your house with a picket fence and room for five dogs and what was it? Ah, yes, chickens.” They had one dog. No chickens. Diane always had plans. The actual doing of the plans was what she never could master.
Harry rattled the newspaper, scratched his balls, sniffed and swallowed. It was Halloween and soon, the neighborhood kids would be roaming the streets. Candy-seeking predators knocking on doors with their hands out. Trick or treat, they’d scream while their parents stood off to the side, smiling benevolently. Last year Angela and Tom Bedford had dressed their bespectacled kid up like Einstein. Trudging up the stairs to Diane and Harry’s porch, Brandon Bedford held a canvas bag heavy with candy and decorated with sharpie-sketched mathematical formulas Angela had found on a Wikipedia page. He held it out toward Harry. Just stood there with his bag, holding it out toward Harry, with one arm out like a skinny lawn jockey statue. The bag made a red slash on his pale wrist.
“Brandon, what do you say?” Angela’s lips puffed out like a blowfish when she talked. She over-enunciated her speech as if everyone was a child or maybe it was from all the lip fillers. She fanned out the acrylic hairs on Brandon’s white wig into a halo, long blue nails pecked at his head. He wore fluffy slippers on his feet. Harry looked down at them.
“You know Einstein was known for his playfulness,” Angela said. She curled those big lips into a duck smile and winked at Harry. “I saw a picture of Einstein sitting on a porch with fluffy white slippers. We are going for authenticity this year, aren’t we sweetheart?” She squeezed Brandon’s shoulders, moving her son statue slightly.
No wonder the kid didn’t talk.
“Trick or treat.” Brandon said in a low voice, his normal lips barely moving. His eyes were watery and big behind his glasses. Tom Bedford stood at the bottom of the stairs. “Treat or trick!” he bellowed out, holding up a flask. Harry dumped candy in Brandon’s bag and Angela said, “What do we say when someone does something nice?”
“Thanks,” Brandon mumbled, casting a glance up at Harry. Harry bent down to Brandon and looked directly into his eyes. “Enjoy this while you can, kid.” Harry was dressed up like a sheriff, Diane’s stupid idea because she, who still wasn’t ready, wanted to dress up like a salon girl.
Brandon blinked his big, wet cow eyes at Harry. When Angela turned her head to talk to her husband, the little brat stuck his tongue out, then pulled it back into his mouth, like a frog catching a bug. His face, an achromic scowl, seemed to mock him. Brandon shook his head, barely, just an imperturbable nod and then he grinned, showing a sliver of pink gums and tiny square teeth.
Harry had stood up abruptly and later told Diane, “There’s something wrong with that Bedford kid.” Diane, three glasses into a Chardonnay fun slide, had said, “No.” She’d splayed out her arms, shook her upper body and walked over to him. The feather on her salon girl headdress had fallen over to the right side of her head. She sat on his lap, straddling him with fish-netted legs and put her face close to his.
“There’s some-then’ wrong with yew.” Her southern accent grew more pronounced when she drank.
Hard to believe a year had passed since then. They hadn’t discussed who was going to be what this year. They weren’t pairing things up anymore. Harry had something in mind though.
He glanced over at Diane as she bent over to pick up the newspaper from yesterday. At one time, her bending over would give Harry other ideas besides wanting to stick his foot out and push.
She made a big deal out of it; her passive-aggressiveness drove him crazy. It scared him, the way she could go from calm to rage in a matter of seconds. He was much more controlled, a master of his emotions. “Diane,” he’d told her several times, “Until you grasp that you are the only one who is responsible for your emotions, you’ll always overreact to situations.”
Sometimes he left the paper there on purpose just to watch her huff and puff and swear. He liked to think of it as giving her practice to master her emotions. So far, she wasn’t doing that great.
What’s the big deal about leaving yesterday’s paper on the floor?
If Harry wanted to reread an article he’d leave a section of the paper, there. He’d then forget about it and wouldn’t read it. But he wanted it left there. It was better than her having twelve different hair products in the bathroom. Bottles and bottles which made her hair shine, curl, straighten—whatever, it looked the same blonde-streaked brown she paid a gay hairdresser named Xavier to do every month for three-hundred and seventy-five dollars.
Diane tucked her hair behind her ear and looked at Harry. He quickly looked back at his newspaper.
“What?” Diane stood there above him, looking down. “Why did you look at me that way?”
“What way?” Harry looked down at the paper. The seven train wasn’t running tomorrow because of construction. Macy’s had their billionth sale that month. There was an article about the pollen count being particularly high this fall. Harry took that section out and laid it on the floor to read later.
“NO! You asshole. You are purposely putting that section of newspaper on the floor to piss me off.” Diane thought Harry had become a misogynist who enjoyed toying with her emotions. It scared her when he intentionally tried to goad her into acting like a shrew. She never wanted to be a wife who nagged. They once laughed about couples like that; the husband who ignored the wife who nagged.
When Diane met Harry fourteen years ago, she had been working as an art curator for a large museum in the city. He’d been invited to one of the museum’s private events by a friend of a friend. Harry had a PhD in linguistics and worked as Chief of Political Affairs at the UN.
Standing in front of Kasimir Malevich’s “Black Square,” Harry said to her, “My basic feeling about this hinges on whether I like black or whether I like white.” He shuffled his feet in a step ball change and said, “Some days, I does and some days, I doesn’t.” He jazz handed and smiled at her, sweetly and open, like a child. She loved his hands, big, square and clean with perfectly shaped moons on each fingernail. She pictured them on her and four weeks later they were. It had been their fourth date. “You,” he’d said as they stumbled toward each other, drunk with wine and lust. Their first time, in his large colorless apartment on a beige nubby rug. Lights from the tall windows scattered across their bodies, as they laid on the floor afterwards.
I’m afraid of snakes Harry told Diane. “What are you afraid of, Diane? Harry held her face between his big clean hands. “Clowns,” Diane had said. “I’m that pedestrian.”
Harry had studied every part of her and two hours later said, “You are the furtherest thing from pedestrian.” She asked him if furtherest was a real word. “It is, in informal circumstances,” Harry said. His ice-blue eyes glowed at her in the dark. Diane fell hard, down the love rabbit hole. Two years later they were married at a beach in South Carolina.
Diane strode across the room into the open kitchen. She opened their massive Sub-Zero refrigerator, where she kept fresh vegetables from their garden and bowls of brown eggs bought from an organic farm five miles down the road from them, and pulled out a pitcher of water. She poured herself a big glass, took a drink and walked over to Harry.
“Pick it up.” She stood above him.
“Diane,” Harry sniffed and swallowed without looking up at her.
“Calm down, don’t be so dramatic.” He rattled the paper and pulled out another section, laying it on top of the other one.
Diane poured water over Harry’s head. Newspaper print bled onto Harry’s fingers and pants. She poured more water on the newspaper lying on the floor and threw the glass toward the fireplace. It shattered, a couple of big slices landed near Harry’s feet, the sun catching them and stippling rainbows across the oak floor. The sprinklers swished on outside and spurted water out over their expansive, organic Zoysia grassed lawn.
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Harry stood up, slinging his auburn hair off his face. Diane got a kick out of making Harry swear. He prided himself on not cursing. “One resorts to profanity when one can’t find the correct word,” he’d told her more than a few times. If Diane stubbed her toe and dropped an f-bomb, Harry would look at her pointedly, eyebrows raised and shake his head. It scared her, how angry she would get at him.
Diane was tall, nearly as tall as Harry and they stood inches apart, breathing hard, glaring at each other. The phone rang. Neither moved. The answering machine picked up after the third ring.
“Diane, Harry? It’s Mother. Dad and I are will be in your neck of woods in a couple of hours. We thought we’d stop in for cocktails and help you with the trick or treaters if you’re up for it!” Harry’s parents lived further upstate, both of them retirees from international careers and Ivy-leagued alumni. They said things like, “Let’s go color-touring in October, the leaves are purported to be splendid, intensely vivid and more prismatic than ever!”
“Go ahead. Mother’s waiting,” Diane said. Harry’s parents adored Diane, but Diane knew their decision to not have children was a disappointment. Harry and Diane had decided that five years into their marriage. They got a dog instead and invested their energy into their careers. They traveled, acquired, saved. Most of their friends had children and conversations became strained, with odd lulls during parties. Eventually, Diane and Harry stopped going to parties. What was the point?
But they did go full on during Halloween. Every year, dressing up and handing out obscenely expensive candies from the best pastry shops in the city. They felt smug, telling each other (and themselves) they got to enjoy the best of the “children thing” without all that responsibility.
“Of course, Mother. We’ll see you then.” Without looking at Diane, he told her, “They’ll be here in a couple of hours. I’m getting dry and dressed.” Their home, a 4,500 square foot mid-century modern ranch, had two master suites, one on each end. Harry had taken to sleeping in the one on the north end.
Diane yelled after him, “Harry, we need to talk.”
Harry headed toward his bedroom, ignoring her. He would make himself presentable. It would take some time to perfect his Halloween surprise for the kids. There was plenty of time to talk. I will not give into her dramatics, Harry told himself.
Diane strode toward the other end. I will not go after him, the unfeeling bastard. Diane had something in mind for Halloween. It would take her an hour or so to get everything just right.
Two hours later, dusk streamed in through the lofty windows of their home, an autumnal blush coating everything. A massive C-shaped metal tray holding several tall white candles sat atop a mahogany library table. Diane had crept into the living room and lit them. They stood like sentinels, flickering their shadows onto the floor, walls and ceiling.
She knew exactly where she’d stand. Perfect. She walked back to her bedroom to put the finishing touches on her costume.
Harry tiptoed into the living room ten minutes later and noticed the candles. She really is pedestrian. Candles on Halloween. He placed a tiny speaker on the edge of the kitchen island and a device on the floor that he’d step on when he needed to.
The doorbell rang. Diane walked out and stood in front of the table that held the candles. Harry walked out and stood just past the kitchen island, pushing a button on his mobile phone as he did.
“Clown!” Diane screamed. Blood red paint spilled out of his garish, grinning mouth. Fun house music played loudly as a kaleidoscope of colors swung crazily up from the floor, flinging rainbows up around Harry.
“Snake!” Harry yelled. Diane, silhouetted in front of the candles, wore a flesh-colored bodysuit with leaves tacked on in strategic areas. A huge python, gleaming with dayglow paint curled around her neck and down her body. A real one, from a place that rented real snakes. You really can find anything on the internet.
The doorbell sing-songed again and again. Diane and Harry stood in the shadows they had each created, not moving. Outside, voices.
“Harry? Diane?” And then, “Trick or treat!”