Shakedown
an excerpt

I slammed my hand down on the snooze button on my alarm clock and then slid it into the top drawer of the nightstand. I hated dragging myself out of bed at six every morning. The sound of the alarm nearly always sent me into cardiac arrest. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were a soft alarm that gently called me from the arms of Morpheus, instead of the four alarm fire bell that Adam insisted I use.
Of course, it wasn’t his alarm. Adam didn’t need an alarm for anything. He always knew where he was supposed to be and when. Usually by six, Adam had put in the equivalent of 10 miles on his treadmill or had lifted the equivalent of four oxen in our private gym in the basement. He had consumed the equivalent of a pound of beef in his protein bar. He had showered and groomed his lovely tanned and sculpted body into his three piece suit and was enthroned at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee and the morning paper. By seven, his children sat on either side of him and I, his not so well groomed wife of 17 years, stumbled around preparing breakfast and lunches and reminding everyone else where they were supposed to be and when. Everyone but Adam.
I rolled out of our king-sized bed with a groan and pulled my silk robe around me, cinching the belt tightly at my waist. My feet found the matching slippers but I had to push my stringy mop of hair back from my face before I could see to walk. Even then it was a chore finding my way downstairs with only one eye open. And my hair kept falling back in my face. A trip to Bernie was looming.
“Good morning, Beth,” Adam said as he entered the kitchen. “I am surprised you managed to wake up so early. You were up late last night.”
“I had to finish the planning committee schedule. I got started late but it had to be finished.”
“You really need to structure your time better. You have a whole day to do what needs to be done but you are constantly up late trying to catch up.”
The children came in at that moment so I decided not to respond. They sat down and each one opened a book and placed it next to their plate. I shoved my uncombed hair back from my forehead and poured orange juice into three glasses, took a long drink from one and placed the remaining two before my offspring. They never looked up from their reading material. I studied the trio a moment before shaking my head and turning back to my breakfast preparations. I usually ate after everyone had left the house and I could eat without Adam watching over his reading glasses. Once I’d dreamed of family meals. Now, I simply thought about them once in awhile, and shuddered.
This morning was not to be that simple. Nicole was in a mood because her best friend, Shelly, couldn’t pick her up this morning. “I don’t know what her problem is. It isn’t like she hasn’t got time. She could run by and drop me on her way to the doctor. She goes right by here.”
Adam turned the page and raised the paper until nothing but his black hair showed above it.
“Perhaps,” I began, “she is pressed for time and has to be there before school starts. You’d hate standing outside alone for half an hour.”
She tossed back the last of her juice and slammed the glass down. “Oh Mom, what do you know.”
My son, Mark, looked up from his latest edition Warlords of Yuk or something of that nature, pushed his glasses up his nose, and went back to reading. I blinked because it was so Adam and Mark looked nothing like Adam. In fact, people often commented on how much he didn’t resemble Adam. I can vouch for the fact that he is of the seed of Adam. By that time, I wouldn’t have dared anything else.
“Well, I’ll be ready to take you in about 15 minutes. Oh, and I have plans for lunch today, so if anyone tries to call, you can reach me on my cell.” I said and began to clear the table.
‘Mom, would you mind taking me over to Jeff’s after school? He has a new game I want to see.” Mark turned sparkling brown eyes up to my own green ones. They were his sole acknowledgement to his father. Adam had wonderful warm brown eyes.
I smiled, “Sure, sweetie, not a problem. Did Jeff’s mom say it was o.k. with her?”
‘She said yes but you can call her if you like.” He got up and began to stuff his book into his satchel. “I gotta run, Mom. I hear the horn.”
He grabbed his satchel and dashed around the table. “Bye, Dad,” he called. The door slammed without a word from Adam.
I reached for my bag and my keys and started for the garage door. “Nicole, I’m going to start the car. Hurry up!”
“You are not going out looking like that.” Adam spoke.
I turned and looked. The paper was lowered and he was looking at me with an expression of not quite distaste. “You look like a…”
“Housewife?” I offered and then smiled, “I’m sorry, I don’t have time to change. Nicole will be late for her first class.”
He folded the paper neatly and got up. He placed it on the buffet along the wall. I watched him walk that slow seductive walk that had literally melted all my resistance 20 years ago. The man was walking poetry. And he knew it.
He walked up to me, moving close enough for me to feel the heat from his body. Once, I’d have been incapable of speech. Today, I wanted to laugh because he expected to still have that effect on me. He placed his long fingered hands on my shoulders and gently rubbed. “Darling, you could have an accident and be injured.”
I smiled up into one of the most attractive faces in the world, bar none. There were no wrinkles, no sags, no bumps. There was only smooth tanned skin stretched taut over a square jaw, straight nose, and high brow. The lips were firm and full and believe me, they did an expert job at what they were designed to do. I have warm memories and I could feel the flush as it moved up my neck to my face. Adam, adorable dope, misinterpreted as usual. His hands slowly pulled me toward him.
I closed my eyes as he pressed those lips against my brow and whispered, “How would it look if you showed up in the emergency room dressed like this?”
I smiled again, waited for three beats and whispered, “I won’t have to wear a hospital gown.”
I felt his body stiffen, beginning with his lips and traveling down, in waves, to his hands. The heat of his body retreated and waves of ice water rushed in to fill the void. He stepped back, dropping his hands to his sides. The warm brown eyes were now chips of obsidian and the jaw had become an anvil.
Nicole rushed into the room and skidded to a stop as she sensed the frigid temperature. “Mom?”
“Nicole, I’ll be taking you to school this morning.” Adam spun on his heel and reached for his briefcase. “I’ll be late for dinner.”
“O.k.” I replied, hanging my keys back on their hook near the garage door. “Should I cook at all?”
“Just for you and the children,” he said. He turned at the door and looked at me, “I also have a lunch engagement today at the Palomino Club.”
“So, if I try to call you won’t be in?”
“Correct.”
“Fancy that.” I said and tightened the belt on my robe. “Well, you call if you want something.”
He turned and walked out. For a moment, a feeling of panic overwhelmed me and I was tempted to run after him. I took two steps and whispered, “Adam wait...” But he was gone and I didn’t know what I wanted to say anyway.
But the feeling lingered. The bright sunny kitchen had become gloomy, as if a cloud had actually moved into the room. I poured myself a cup of coffee from the carafe and sat down in the breakfast nook. It was my favorite place to spend an hour alone in the mornings. I sipped my coffee and looked at the beautiful manicured lawn. At the back of the lot was a heavily wooded section with a small one room storage building we used for storing our camping gear. It looked like a playhouse with it’s window and small porch. There was a small seating area beneath the trees where I’d had many picnics with the children. But that was in another time.
I looked up past the trees. There were no clouds outside. The sky was a blinding blue and a breeze stirred the trees and my garden. I looked for the birds that always appeared at my feeder every morning but today, they were nowhere to be seen. I glanced at the squirrel feeder near the Japanese maple that stood next to the patio. Corn lay all around but no squirrels. I frowned. Where were all my wild friends. Every morning they sang to me and chirped and flitted outside my window as if they sensed I needed their company.
The ringing of the phone brought me out of my reverie. I leaned over and picked up the cordless from the counter nearby. “Hello?”
“Beth? Hey, are we still on for lunch today?”
“Hi Kirsten. Yeah, I guess so, unless there is a problem. Is there?”
“No, there isn’t. I just wanted to know if you would mind if I brought a friend?” There was a long pause in which the line crackled. “I have a friend from out of town flying in and I thought it’d be nice if she met some people.”
“Sure, why not. Bring her along.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up around eleven. Bye now!”
I lay the phone down and stared at it for several minutes. I didn’t even like Kirsten. Why did I think I would really want to go to lunch with her? We had nothing in common, nothing. She was involved in theater and arts and charities. I was into reading and sewing and camping. Her kids were younger than mine and she was always carpooling and running to soccer and baseball and swim meets. I was just trying to get my kids to get outside. They weren’t bad kids. But in the last six years, the atmosphere in the house had frozen us all into ice statues that the smallest jostle could shatter into a million pieces.
I released a long sigh and got up. I crossed the kitchen, picking up Nicole’s pink scarf that had slipped unnoticed from her shoulders. It smelled of the perfume I had bought her for her birthday last month. As I climbed the stairs I looked around at the beautiful home that I called mine. The small pale yellow foyer with it’s antique chandelier, draped in amber beads. Adam and I had found it in a small shop in the Caribbean on our honeymoon. It has been a rusty relic of a day long gone. I’d shipped it home, painted it, rewired it for lights and strung the amber glass beads on it. It was the most beautiful thing in the house and got the most compliments. I made a face. O.k. so I was sort of artsy, too.
I showered, washed and dried my hair and got it into a braided bun. It was longer than average but I loved long hair and my mother had never let me wear it long. Once I was 18, I let my hair grow long and let it down as well. I’d stored a lot of oats by 18.
I glanced at the clock as I pulled clothes from the closet. It was eleven o’clock and my lunch companions would be here any minute. I quickly dressed in a navy skirt and knit pullover and slipped my feet in to navy low-heeled pumps. I hadn’t bother to tell Adam I was supposed to have lunch with Kirsten or have my teeth cleaned today. He wouldn’t have cared but I had become perverse this last year about such things. If he asked where I had been, I’d tell him.
But he never asked.
I spritzed my favorite cologne on my neck and gave myself one final pirouette in front of the mirror. I looked good for 38. Then, I grabbed my matching navy handbag and started for the stairs. A strange quiver seemed to move through the whole house and then the floor lurched beneath my feet. At the same time, I heard a booming sound, like heavy piece of equipment had been dropped somewhere. I reached out to grab the wall.
“What in the world?” I said. Before I got the words out, the floor heaved again and I heard the tinkling of the amber beads in the foyer. The walls quivered and the doors to all the rooms popped open and began to sway. Only then did I realize the whole house was moving. I rushed toward the stairs and grabbed the banister to keep from being pitched headlong to the parquet floor below. I was five steps from the foyer when the stairway gave a lurch and tossed me. I slid down the remaining steps on my back, landing in a heap at the bottom. The floor heaved again, as if trying to toss me back onto the bucking stairway.
For what seemed like minutes but could only have been seconds, I lay on my back and looked up at the ceiling. My beautiful chandelier was swaying madly, the beads dancing to some insane music I couldn’t hear. As I watched, I saw great cracks begin to snake up the walls and across the ceiling until they reached the point where the light fixture was attached to the ceiling. It was swaying so violently that it nearly struck the ceiling on one of the arcs. Then, in slow motion, I watched as it broke away and began to fall. . . directly on top of me.
At that moment, everything became a blur. I remember rolling and throwing myself toward the kitchen doorway, grabbing the frame and pulling myself through just as the my Caribbean treasure struck the floor and glass beads shattered in a million tiny pieces. The house was making terrible noises and I could hear things falling and glass breaking all around me. Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice began screaming, “EARTHQUAKE!” Instinct must have taken over at that point because I found myself lying in the middle of my back yard as the earth’s convulsions gradually calmed and finally stopped.
I sat up and looked at my beautiful dream home. It still stood, tilted toward the neighbors house. The only thing preventing my house from sliding into the neighbor’s yard was their house. It too, was tilted and leaned against my house. They were two drunken friends, staggering home together. I had a feeling that the morning after was not going to see an improvement.