On the night of the break-in, I was upstairs painting my daughter’s bedroom. I hoped Erin would see it as a surprise, a kindness, but with kids, you never know. The week before she’d asked us to paint her room ocean blue, and I’d said that was too dark a color, that she’d regret it, and that her mother and I would be forced to spend days going over it with primer, lightening it, erasing the stain. Erin didn’t argue with me; she sighed, a long, drawn-out whistling like a whole second person was leaving her body.
I wanted to shake her, but just because I wanted to hold her like when she was little and wanted to be held by Dad. I told her I was sorry—blue? Okay, blue, why not. She shrugged, defeated, I guess. She’s fragile like that, but only lately.
Many things cannot be erased, no matter how much you wish that they could be. This is one of those truths you have to get to on your own.
The neighborhood we live in is exceptionally safe, and I still think this, despite the break-in, despite what happened. Things can happen anywhere to anyone—who is too precious for a violation? But listen. I mean, no one listens to me, and that’s fine.
We live on a cul-de-sac in a two-story house with gray wood siding, a newish roof (freak hail damage), a greenish lawn, and a mailbox shaped like a mailbox. Our neighbor’s mailbox is shaped like a shark with its mouth open, and I admit I enjoy the novelty, even though it makes me wonder about people.
I say the neighborhood is exceptionally safe not because it’s gated or we’re Richie-Rich types. No, this is mostly white-collar, a little blue-, and we’re not white flight either, not anymore at least. This is Maryland, so by and large we’re Democrats, and that makes me proud. Though the line between relief and pride is thin.
It’s a safe neighborhood because nothing happens here beyond the usual teens with weed, the unauthorized kegger, pills, tax fraud, domestic abuse—because that’s everywhere—maybe even rape, though I hate to think of it. But we’re not a place for burglaries. The crimes committed here are largely internal, within families. The harm we cause is to the ones we love the most.
It’s strange to imagine an outside force slipping in. A giant hand lifting off a roof, plopping the burglar inside. Like Polly Pocket, which my daughter used to beg for. Erin is fourteen and used to be an athlete/scientist, a mix of youth-league soccer, orange slices, Bunsen burners, and a little duffel full of sweaty lab coats, but last year she turned to drama. Musicals, mostly. When I catch her belting out Rent in the shower, I listen to the lyrics from the hallway and wonder what she understands. I guess she knows a lot, maybe more than most her age.
My wife, Marcia, calls the cul-de-sac the panopticon, but that’s a joke from when we first moved in, when our son, Ryan, was born. We had left the city for the country, the burbs, really. “Cul-de-sac” as panopticon, she’d say, that beautiful throat of hers spinning out the words like candy floss. Like any idea, even a silly idea, when she says it, it has legs.
We’d play “Somebody’s Watching Me” on the portable boom box at the neighborhood picnic when we’d host, and we’d look across the barbeque and laugh, because no one was watching, not really. People are wrapped up in their own misery and vanities, their sex lives and job worries, their kids’ lives.
I like being a regular person caught up in this human mess. I don’t yearn for anything grand. I tell Erin, “Your dad’s an average guy, and that’s okay. When you’re young and want to stand out, it’s normal.” But I like being just another dad in a photograph in an album somewhere. A middle-aged white guy, still on the skinny side, still caring a bit about the clothes he wears, former hippie, but an all-around decent person who helped make two lives, and that’s all right, isn’t it?
* * *
I was the only one home when the break-in took place. Marcia was out of town on business; she’s a grants manager for an environmental nonprofit, always flying off to places like Toronto or Toledo, and it’s good for her, I think, this getting away. She stays in hotels and brings home the little soaps, and we joke about opening a B & B.
Erin was away at a friend’s house. I wish I could say which friend, but I’m not sure. I try to be easy and say yes to her because she really doesn’t ask for much (blue room being an outlier). Let’s say it was Gloria’s house. It was a Thursday night, and she went home with the girl on the bus. They don’t need permission to do that in high school like they used to in elementary school, so you have to trust them, which is something I’m working on, trusting your kid to do what they say they’re doing. That if they need something, anything, they’d let you know.
Erin doesn’t like to stay at the house when Marcia’s away on business. She tells me it feels lonely with just the two of us there. And I get it, of course I get it, but it’s even lonelier when it’s just me.
Marcia tried to talk to Erin about not wanting to be home when she’s not home, but Erin started crying, and then Marcia started crying. I can’t blame them, of course. Some things just can’t be put into words.
So, it was a Thursday night, and I was coming off a hard day of work. I do logistics for a construction company, and we’d started a new project. It was a nightmare, with ancient plumbing and loads of additional costs. On the way home, I kept thinking about the empty house I was returning to, the six-pack waiting in the fridge, and how I knew I’d drink them all eventually because what did it matter? I’d be alone.
And this might be why when I saw the Ace Hardware in the shopping center with the Giant Food and the duckpin bowling, I turned my car into the lot and decided that if I could remember the paint color Erin wanted, I would buy everything we needed. I could surprise her with a pyramid of paint cans, and over the weekend we could work side by side with blue rollers, and she’d understand intrinsically that Dad listens, that he’s always in her court, and that even if he doesn’t get it at first, he can come to understand her viewpoint.
I got home just after six, and because it was early March, there was still sunlight at that hour. Since it was just me, I grilled myself a steak. A little reward is how I thought of it, for my good parenting. I had a beer while I grilled, and another while I ate standing up in the kitchen, using the counter as my table. I’d cooked it right, pink and earnest, but it was only me, so what did it matter. No one there to impress.
Die Hard was on, so I watched it as I had the third beer, then the fourth. I was only half watching, really, because I’d started to think that buying the paint was one kind of gesture, sure, but wouldn’t it be something to see the blue in action? Not that I could finish the job overnight, but wouldn’t that be meaningful? A blue wall to come home to?
And sure, maybe this was the beer, or maybe it’s that being lonely makes you want to be busy, but I got excited thinking about putting down the tarps and prepping the walls—it’d been too long since I’d done something with my hands—so I went upstairs to suss out the situation.
At the top of the landing, Erin’s door was open, and I went in, even though it gave me a little bit of pause, like entering without permission. At the same time, painting was clearly an act of love—who could argue with that? I put down the first can and drop cloth, the roller and tray, and I breathed in a lungful of her girl air, which honestly smelled less like cupcakes and sweetness and more like cheese and dirty laundry than I’d expected.
Her walls were pale yellow—I think honeysuckle was the name of the color we’d picked out when she was little. Marcia and I are of the generation that pushed against the strict pink and blue—we liked the neutrality of yellow, the life it gave the space. We always said we’d be the kind of parents who would let their kids be who they were. We’d teach them about safe sex and safe drinking, and we wouldn’t lie to them and call pot a gateway drug, and they’d trust us and tell us everything and we’d tell them our truths in kind. We’d reveal our humanity to them, and maybe they’d choose to reveal theirs to us.
I stood in Erin’s room debating which wall I ought to start with, until I realized how badly I had to pee. I’ve started sitting to pee sometimes, and this was one of those. I think I felt a little overwhelmed at the prospect of what I was taking on, the painting and taping and moving of furniture, and also Erin’s reaction, which, again, you never know. Plus, it was just after seven, and it was already getting dark, so I worried about how well I’d be able to see what I was doing.
Sitting there in the hall bathroom, I was unbelievably tired all of a sudden. Not tired like I wanted to sleep, but tired like I didn’t know how the rest of the day would go, and all the other days after that—and maybe I didn’t care. Something I never let myself think.
I thought about Marcia, too, and whether I was doing enough to make her still love me. Loss is one of those things that either makes you closer to the other person or wedges itself between you like an unwelcome pet. Hungry, taking everything, offering nothing in return. Mostly, I think we’re the brought-closer-together kind, but when she travels, I don’t know. And maybe this is what scares Erin. How easy it is for Marcia to see herself in other lives, other beds, at other kitchen tables. I make a point of holding Marcia when she gets home, reminding her how our bodies align just so.
After I peed, I started trying to remember what color Ryan’s walls were, but I hadn’t gone in there except when Marcia said we needed to get rid of his things. Not get rid of but donate, that was how she said it, to kids who could use them. This was maybe six months after the accident. I remember coming up with a system where I’d hold my breath each time I entered, so I couldn’t smell him or so I’d have something else to concentrate on. His room never smelled adolescent, never the stink of sweat or the cheap colognes to offset the newly hormonal body. His room smelled like boyhood still, skateboard grease and fruity Skittles. And sleep.
It’d been like deep-sea diving being in that room, and I think I would have been okay leaving it as it was, but Marcia said if we weren’t moving (which we couldn’t really afford at the time), we needed to make sure his clothes were put to good use. She refused to maintain a shrine to things, that’s not how she would remember her boy, no. So I held my breath, gathering up his shirts and jeans and putting them into boxes, and when I felt lightheaded, I’d go to the hallway and breathe out. I don’t know if Marcia knew what I was doing. I could only think of it as just another shipwreck, like I’d be all right if I could avoid the bends.
I stood outside Ryan’s room, or what used to be Ryan’s room, for what felt like a long while. This was a night of long whiles, I guess. But I knew that even if I wanted to go into his room, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt like a cliché to be in that position, so I thought about that too. What it meant to have a room stand in for a person, and for that person to be gone so that the room becomes a way to visit them, only the room itself has been stripped of them, so it’s just an empty space. My head hurt. I reminded myself that the whole reason I’d bought the paint, besides making Erin happy, was to busy myself away from thoughts like these. Why be maudlin when I could be useful.
I went back into Erin’s room and began to clear a space. I chose the least busy wall, so all I had to do was move a dresser, take down a couple posters of people I didn’t recognize, not knock over all the tiny bottles of nail polish arranged so precariously. I got so far as to lay down the cloth, to open and stir the paint. I would tape later, I’d decided. I just wanted to see it there, to splash the blue on the yellow so there’d be no going back, unless she wanted to, of course. I was working hard is what I mean, so maybe this is why I didn’t hear anything before the crash. But then there it was, a smashing sound, hard to mistake.
If I’d had to guess, I would have thought it was a window breaking, which it wasn’t, it turns out. I’d left the front door unlocked, so it was the sound of a plate being dropped. The boys—the intruders, I guess you’d call them—had knocked the plate off the counter by accident, and it broke. This was the plate my steak had been on. If we’d had a dog, the dog would have licked the shards of broken plate covered in the dried blood of the animal I’d eaten earlier, but we don’t have a dog. We have indoor/outdoor cats.
I felt a little afraid at first. Then I wondered if Erin had come home, and I got excited. Maybe she’d gotten in a fight with Gloria, or whoever it was whose house she was meant to be sleeping at. Maybe she could join me in painting. I opened my mouth to say her name, but I hesitated. If I was wrong, then what?
They say fear sobers you, and it does, but not really. It makes you think you can make a good decision, but the alcohol doesn’t just eddy away in the blood. It’s still there. So I did say Erin’s name, but I said it softly. Not a whisper, but the same thing.
Downstairs the TV was still on. But I could hear a voice now, a boy’s, though the words were unclear. I decided I wanted to hear the words he was saying. I wanted to be near that sound. And maybe that doesn’t make sense, but it’s what I thought.
I headed toward it.
* * *
What needs to be said is that three years ago, our son, Ryan, Erin’s older brother, was alone in the backyard, playing with lighter fluid and matches, when he accidentally doused himself and his clothing and caught fire. A failed experiment, a nod toward Jackass, an entry into magic we were unaware of—we don’t know. I say accident, because I do know he couldn’t have meant for the fire to go as far as it did. This Marcia and I agree on. He could not have meant to cause the misery he caused, not to himself, and especially not to his sister and his mother. Ryan didn’t die in the backyard; he died two weeks later in the burn unit at Holy Cross Hospital. The truth is, I don’t talk about Ryan’s death, none of us do, but that doesn’t mean it’s not right there, a sinkhole disguised as a pothole, a bottomlessness we know to avoid.
Instead, Erin is what we live for. Sweet sibling-less Erin, who may or may not have come home early from her sleepover, maybe to spend time with Dad, who’s lonely, she intuits it even if I’ve never wanted her to need to care for me and Marcia in that way.
I decided to stop midway down the stairs and wait, just to assess the situation. If it was Erin, she wasn’t alone. Like I said, I could distinctly hear a male voice, a boy’s voice—no, two boys’ voices. They were in the kitchen, it sounded like. A GEICO commercial played in the background.
“Erin?” I said it loud enough this time to be heard. Loud enough that maybe whoever was in my kitchen would run away, would scatter.
But they didn’t. They already knew someone was home. Car in the driveway, open door, television quietly transmitting entertainment. Or possibly, and this is what I thought not at first but later, they knew I was home. I mean, they knew it was me.
I am not a big man. When I tell people I work in construction, they know I don’t mean on the jobsite; they understand intuitively I’m an engineer, or a planner, someone who occasionally dons a hard hat to walk among more traditionally masculine men.
I said Erin’s name again, and I made myself walk down the rest of the stairs. Her name feels like a talisman, I remember thinking. If I say my daughter’s name, what further brutality can await me?
Whoever was in the house grew quiet, and then I heard the distinct sound of a beer—my beer—being opened, the bottle opener being dropped on the counter. They knew I knew they were in my home, and they didn’t care. My adrenaline started coursing. We have no weapons. No gun. No rifle. No crossbow. We have a baseball bat, Ryan’s from Little League, but it’s in the garage with all the other repurposable tools. Items that can be made violent by human need.
I wondered what would happen if I stayed where I was at the base of the stairs. If I didn’t move farther, maybe they’d drink the beer and leave, and I could pretend it was Erin and a friend up to no good, taking advantage of Dad, since he’s been made mild by death. Only, that wasn’t the Erin I knew. And what had choosing ignorance ever gotten me? Didn’t Marcia and I talk about the importance of knowing, of not being in the dark?
I walked toward the kitchen. Our house isn’t so big, but big enough in this moment. I was fifteen feet away, then ten, then five. I was just outside, and all I needed to do was peer around the corner and let them see me. On instinct, I put my hand over my stomach, like that was the most vulnerable part of me. Or maybe it was because with all the beer I’d drunk, I could feel my softness, my inherent weakness, in contrast to their youthful vigor. This is what I thought at least. I listened to what they were saying; there were two of them—definitely boys, definitely young—and one of them was laughing. I heard the other beer being opened, and I felt sad because Ineeded that beer. Especially with all that was going on.
Then I was in the kitchen. All three of us were surprised, I think, though they were wearing ski masks, balaclavas actually, so I could see their lips and the whites of their eyes but not much else. There was no sudden movement like what you’d expect—instead, a strange quiet as if each of us wasn’t sure what we were meant to do. And maybe this is what eased my initial fear, the uncanniness of what was happening. An eerie calm punctuated by the voice of Bruce Willis and Hollywood explosions.
. . .
For more of this story or other great fiction in Issue 21.2, order now in our online store. Digital copies are only $5.
Rebecca Bernard is the author of the story collection Our Sister Who Will Not Die (Mad Creek Books, 2022). Her fiction has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe. She is an assistant professor of English at East Carolina University.
