Matt Dinan
Family Man
The first snowflakes of the year are now sticking to the hard Chicago earth. David sits in his den with a dust-covered album on his lap and his reading glasses hanging near his chest. He watches the snow drift from left to right and eventually add to the pile already formed on the neighbor’s roof. He breathes in the crisp winter air from his window, which is cracked about an inch, and exhales with a sly grin. He sets the album on the end table and slowly rises from his La-Z-Boy recliner. His toes begin to curl up as he walks on the cold hardwood floor toward the window. He shuts the cracked window and shivers as a quick rush of cold air hits his body. He does not return to his seat right away but stands at the window for at least five minutes and watches the snow bounce off the neighbor’s undraped window. Eventually, David returns to his recliner and reaches for the dusty album on the end table, blowing off a coat of dust to reveal the word "Family." He puts on his glasses, opens the album and slowly sifts through the pages. The loosely laminated pages are covered with pictures of a woman who seems as if she did not like to have her picture taken, because in every picture she was either turning away from the camera or at some distance from the photographer. David stops at the first picture of someone actually posing. It is of a young girl around five years old with dark brown hair put up in pigtails and tied with pink ribbons. She has one large dimple in her left cheek that illuminates her innocent smile. As David stares at this picture, a small arm comes from behind the chair and tugs on his crimson sweater.
"Daddy, Daddy, let’s go play in the snow!" The young girl with pigtails and the large dimple from the picture jumps up and down waiting for his answer, "Not now honey, Daddy’s busy. Now go and play in your room." At that request the little girl disappears. David’s eyes move back to the album where the same little girl sits frozen in time. He puts his index finger on her face causing the lamination to crinkle. He raises his eyes back to the window and removes his glasses, seeming to notice something he hadn’t before. The snow is still moving at its same slow rate and the house next door is still intact, but David stares adamantly. He quickly flips through the album’s pages until he is halfway to the back where there are no more pages. In their place is a hollowed-out rectangle holding something in a black velvet sack. He removes the sack and shuts the album. He quickly opens up the sack and pulls out an earphone headset and a tiny pair of binoculars. He puts on the headset and leans forward in his chair, taking a deep breath. He raises the binoculars to his eyes and points them in the direction of the window.
II
The snow falls slowly on the road ahead of Emily. The Chicago Times had correctly predicted the first snowfall of the year, and the Department of Public Services responded to the paper’s long string of year after year correct forecasts by laying salt on all the city’s roads before the first flake hit the ground. The streets are as dry as they were the day before, but still Emily clinches the wheel of her minivan so hard that sweat begins to drip from her hands. She slows the minivan as she approaches an intersection showing a green light. She is getting ready to pass through the light when the color changes to yellow. She quickly stomps on her brakes, and her car comes to a swift halt. Cars on either side of the light sit immobile. She finally takes one hand off the wheel for a split second to turn off the barely audible radio. As her light switches back to green, she carefully looks left and right, then back left and right until the car behind her honks. Emily jumps at this but keeps her eyes focused on the road ahead. She slowly raises her foot off the brake and eases it onto the gas pedal, finally passing through the intersection. She makes her way into her neighborhood, passing through much of the same dry terrain as the streets before but with the same obsessive caution. She turns her blinker on and pulls into her driveway. As she puts the car into park, she lets out a gasp of air equivalent to someone coming to the surface after nearly drowning. She sits in the car for a minute to catch her breath and calm her nerves. With her emotions collected, she reaches into the back seat for her briefcase and locks up the car.
The house is extremely stuffy and smells of mothballs. Emily places her briefcase near the door and hangs up her black cashmere coat in the hall closet. She stops at an office on the left side of the hall and searches for the light. She tries the switch twice, but the bulb is burnt out. The streetlight gleams through a window in the back of the room providing enough light to see several cardboard boxes and unfinished pottery sitting around and on top of a cherry oak writing desk. She continues down the hall to the kitchen where she pulls a bottle of Chardonnay out of the refrigerator. She pours herself a glass and heads toward the living room where she turns on a halogen lamp and takes a seat on the couch. She reaches on the ground for a small paperback titled Love Once Remembered and opens it to her bookmarked page. She leans back on a fluffy pillow and begins to read out loud, clearing the dead silence that has filled the house since she came through the front door.
III
David slumps in his desk and rubs his heavy eyelids, when a knock at his office door causes him to jump in his chair. He clears his throat and straightens his tie, "Yes, come in." A tall black man with a bushy black beard opens the door to David’s office, "Mr. Jonas, there’s a woman outside without an appointment. I didn’t promise her anything, but I said I would check with you."
"Get to the point Jeffrey." David had little patience left in his exhausted body.
"Your next appointment isn’t for another hour. Would you be willing to see her today, or should I schedule her an appointment for another day?"
David straightens up in his chair and flips through his planner. He goes back through it again and then nods his head and motions with his hand to send her back to his office.
"I’ll send her right in Mr. Jonas." Jeffrey leaves David’s office and shuts the door behind him.
David had been working at Midwestern Home Realtors for the past three years since he moved to Chicago from Seattle. He didn’t mind the job; he was paid well and received great benefits, but he didn’t like dealing with people. David was more of a homebody and would rather watch people on television than deal with them in real life. He had not been out once since he moved to Chicago and made no indication that he ever planned to.
David wasn’t always this way. Actually he was quite the opposite and lived to party. He would make sure he went out at least two times during the week, including his weekend festivities on both Friday and Saturday. He loved to drink and didn’t attempt to hide that fact from his friends, family or fellow workers at Mackinson’s Law Firm. But things had abruptly changed for David one cold December night three years earlier.
The first snow of the year was gracing the beautiful landscape, and David was making his way home from an early Christmas party at the firm. He had started drinking earlier that day during work and was still going strong on his way home. With a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and the steering wheel in the other, David swerved between the yellow lines, while his head bobbed up and down. He nearly slid off the road twice and did a complete 360-degree turn at a stop sign due to the slick coating on the streets, but he made no attempt to correct his driving. Instead, he took another healthy swig from the bottle and pressed forward.
He saw headlights coming from ahead and forced himself to stay in his lane, but his head wouldn’t cooperate and continued to bob up and down. When he raised his head again, he saw a car turning to avoid his and, in effect, run off the road to his left. David spun out of control and ended up in a small ditch on the opposite side of the road. He stumbled out of the car and held his hands to his head, which had smacked the steering wheel quite hard, leaving a trail of blood streaming down his face. He looked in the direction of the other car and saw that it had run head on into a tree. This sight seemed to sober him up a bit as he ran to the other car. Looking inside, he saw a man at the wheel crushed in between the front and back of the car. David grabbed his cell phone from inside his coat and dialed 911, only to remember the state he was in. He hung up the phone and reached into the car to retrieve the man’s wallet. He wanted to know the man’s name for some reason, although it couldn’t possibly help a thing. The first thing he saw as he opened the man’s wallet was a picture of a little girl in pigtails with one large dimple in her left cheek. As David looked at this picture, he remembered a hole he had seen in the passenger side of what was left of the windshield. He walked in front of the car and saw a small body covered in blood sprawled out in the snow. He looked back at the picture and then back at the body. David began to hyperventilate and started to run back to his car, falling several times on the way. He started his car up and sped easily out of the ditch, leaving his tire marks in the freshly fallen snow.
David begins straightening some papers on his desk and removes a notepad and pen from his drawer. He is moving very slowly this afternoon and expresses his drowsiness with an enormous yawn, just as another knock comes at his door. "Just one second." David grabs the framed picture sitting on the corner of his desk. Inside the frame is a very bad copy of the picture of the pigtailed girl.
Daddy, she’s never "gonna love you." The girl appears behind David sitting on the windowsill, "You did a bad thing, Daddy."
David gets furious, "What are you doing here! You should be at home! I told you to go play in your room!" David turns around, and the girl vanishes. He massages his temples and grabs a pillbox out of his top drawer. He quickly pops two pills and chases them with a glass of water. He clears his throat, "Come in."
IV
Emily sits in the waiting room of Midwest Home Realtors, hoping to be able to fit in a meeting with someone on her lunch break. A tall black man with a bushy black beard approaches her, "Ma'am, when is your appointment?"
She looks kind of embarrassed, "I don't actually have one. See, I'm wanting to move as soon as possible, and I just need to find someone who can sell my house with the least involvement on my part."
"Well, ma'am, that's what we're here for. Let me go check and see if anyone can fit you in this afternoon."
Emily brightens up, "Oh, that would be great, thank you."
Three years ago, Emily had a husband and a five-year-old daughter, and today she had neither. The police had told her that their car was found entangled with a tree off of Dodson Road, and they were pronounced dead at the scene. There were tire marks still apparent up the road a bit leading in and out of a ditch, and a pair of size 11 footprints was left in the snow, but no one else was apparent at the scene. An empty bottle of Jack Daniels was found in the snow near the ditch, and it was presumed that the wreck had been a hit and run. Emily couldn't take the pain of losing her most precious assets in the world and was dealt an extra blow when no one was there for her to blame. She moved to Chicago soon after the accident, hoping to put all her sorrows behind her. She felt the distance would make the pain disappear but found that it only grew deeper having to be away from any memory of her family.
"Ma'am, he said he could see today. Come this way." Emily collects her briefcase from the ground and follows the tall man down the narrow hall until he stops at the last door on the left. He knocks on the door, and a voice answers in return, "Just one second." The man turns to her holding up his index finger to indicate it will be a second. Emily brushes off some lint that had collected on her jacket's sleeve when from the other side of the door comes a man's weak voice, "Come in."
V
The door to David's office opens and in walks Jeffrey followed by a small-framed body hidden behind his large frame. "Mr. Jonas, this is Mrs. Emily Minay." The man steps out of the way and walks out of the door shutting it behind him. David's jaw drops, and his eyes widen. He quits breathing, and his heart stops beating.
"Mr. Jo..." Emily looks at the nameplate on the desk, "Mr. Jonas, are you alright?"
David looks to the floor and begins rubbing his temples. "Mr. Jonas, may I take a seat?" She hesitates and waits for a response, then sits down without an answer. David's eyes race back to her to confirm what they're seeing. His eyes turn to the picture on the corner of the desk, and he breaks out in a cold sweat and starts to hyperventilate. His heart begins to beat again but now at an irregularly fast pace. "Mr. Jonas, are you alright?"
David reaches into his drawer to retrieve the pillbox and pops two more pills, this time grinding them in his teeth rather than downing them with water. He looks back at Emily, "Um...yes, Emily...I mean, Mrs. Minay. I've been getting these horrible migraines. The pain is just excruciating."
"I can't imagine how that must feel. I've never gotten a migraine, but I've heard all the horror stories."
He tries to speak in the most professional manner, but the sweat continues to trickle down his forehead, "So, what can I help you with today?"
"Well, the thing is, Mr. Jonas..."
"David. Call me David."
"David, I'm wanting to move as soon as possible, and I need your help in selling my home." David's jaw drops again. "Actually, I'm wanting to leave it all up to you. I can't wait around for it to be sold. I need to leave as soon as possible."
"Well, Mrs. Minay, these things do take time. Are you sure you want to leave our beautiful city?"
She lets out a little giggle at his concern, "Yes, I'm sure."
"There are many steps we have to take before you just pick up and go."
Emily's voice becomes much more desperate, "Mr. Jonas...David, I really need your help." With this request David had to agree, even if it meant the end of his world. The eyes he had dreamed of one day looking back into his now did so, and he was under their spell.
"Let's get some information down on paper." He begins to jot down her name on the notepad, "Minay, right; m-i-n-a-y?"
"Wow, I don't think anyone's ever gotten that right."
David's voice cracks, "Just a lucky guess, I suppose. Your address?"
"1223 Del..."
"Delroi Lane, no kidding?"
Emily looks at David bewildered, "Yes, that's right, Delroi Lane."
"You're not going to believe me, but I live on Delroi Lane. 1223?"
"Yes?"
"David's smile stretches from ear to ear, "I live at 1221, right next door. We're neighbors."
Emily sits staring at David and his quickly uplifted spirit that was so strangely different the minute prior and doesn't know how to react or respond. "Hmmm...yeah, what a coincidence."
"You're telling me! I can't believe we've never met."
"I don't get out much. I'm sorry, nothing against you. I haven't met any of the neighbors."
"Oh, me neither; not much of a people person." David's grin fades away, and his body slumps back into his chair. "I haven't got out much...since...since my daughter died."
Emily feels the sharp pain in her stomach that she had tried so hard and long to avoid. "Oh my god, that's horrible. I'm so sorry."
David no longer looks at Emily but stares at the framed picture. "She was only five-years-old, my only love in the entire world." The pain in Emily's stomach grows deeper. "She was in a car wreck...hit by a drunk driver." Emily begins to hyperventilate, just as David did when she had entered the room. "It was the first snow of the season, just like last night." Emily's body begins to tremble uncontrollably. David reaches for the picture and continues to speak, "They never found the driver...what I would do to find that...that motherfucker!" David begins grinding his teeth and squeezing the picture frame.
At that moment the pigtailed girl appears at the doorway to David's office. David stands up from his chair and stares at the little girl. "Daddy, don't do it!" she yells.
David's voice rises, "Her mother blames me for the wreck! She tries to act like I don't even exist!"
The pigtailed girl screams at David, "Daddy, NO!"
David slams the picture on the table, shattering the glass frame and sending the picture flying into the air, "I told you to go to your goddamn room and play! Can't you see me and your mother are trying to have a conversation?!"
Emily sits trembling in her chair, mouth agape and eyes wide. The picture slowly drifts in the air and lands on her lap. She looks down to see her daughter's face with her one large dimple smiling back at her.