noise. From the landing two floors below, an odd noise, slow, like someone is creeping. Her head snaps up. Yes. I heard that. No, no I didn’t. It’s nothing. Someone is creeping up the stairs. I can’t pretend I didn’t hear that. There it is again. She rises and presses her back up against the wall. She tries to see down through the opening for the hand railings. Another cautious footfall below her. Someone is slowly climbing the stairs. Too slowly. She slips out of her heels and tiptoes in her stocking feet toward the railing to look over. Yes, she sees something. Something on the railing below, is it a shadow, no a hand. A man’s hand! Ben’s hand. Twirling around, she rushes back up the stairs out through the fire door stumbling into the third floor corridor. She sees no one. A few teachers are in the hall speaking with the assistant principal and they watch flabbergasted as Alison blasts passed them in her stocking feet carrying her shoes. At the other end of the hall, where there is an open staircase, she leaps down the steps two at a time for three flights, and then bursts through the front door of the school. Shredding her stockings on the asphalt, she races to her car. In a wild panic, she reaches for her purse. No purse. In the classroom. Her purse is in the classroom and her keys are in her purse. Oh, her mind whines loudly, no keys, no keys. She looks frantically around the parking lot. A number of parents stare wide-eyed and mouths open at Alison shoeless, coatless, and trembling. Parents exchange worried glances. What should they do? Alison spins to face the school building. No. I cannot go back. I can’t go in there. He’s in there. I can’t go back in there. I know. At least that I know. She takes a step back, another step. She turns her back to the school and runs away leaving her purse and her jacket back in the classroom racing down the frigid street.
Alison looks up. She is on her back porch stoop breathing heavily. How did I get home? Wait. She doesn’t remember. I ran? Did I run all the way home? She looks down at her feet. They’re filthy and bleeding from numerous cuts and stubs. Her toes are numb and white from the cold. Oh, god. What’s happening to me? She raps on the back kitchen door. Jimmy opens the door and looks warily at his mom.
“Mom?”
She forces normal, “Hi, honey.”
“What are you doing?”
“Left my keys by accident.”
“You don’t have any shoes on?”
“Oh, ah, yeah, stubbed my toe and I just…my shoe didn’t. Enough questions young man.” She pushes past him and goes upstairs.
In the bathroom, she turns on the hot water faucet for her sink. As it fills with steaming water she closes the connecting pocket door that leads to Jimmy’s bedroom, leaving the door to her room opened so she can hear. Pulling off her shredded stockings she tosses them in the little bathroom trash pail. She pulls a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the vanity cabinet and pours a bit into the hot water. Sliding up onto the bathroom counter she plunges her feet into the sink to soak. I know what I saw. The hot water hits her toes and they feel like she is walking on fire! She scrunches up her face, vigorously shakes her feet and leaves them to soak. She knows this happens when one is close to frostbite. I know what I saw. She massages the toes encouraging circulation. God, did I look like a crazy woman running barefoot down Hilldale? Who saw me? She drops her forehead to rest on her bent knees and allows the hot water to do its job, to coax life back to her damaged and frozen toes. I know what I saw. The hydrogen peroxide will be an adequate disinfectant because the street was so cold it is unlikely any kind of infection can result from these cuts. I know. Over and over in her head like a line from a song she cannot let go of: I know what I saw. It repeats without her thinking it. It repeats in time with her heartbeat.
Jimmy watches his mom all through dinner with trepidation. His conversation stutters around in aimless fits and he feels no subject is the right one. Clearly, school did not go so well for his mom,