“Who are you?” I beg breathlessly into the phone, and Maisie imitates me saying, “Who, Mommy, who?” so that I must press a finger to my lips and whisper a silent, Shhh. I move to the kitchen window and lower the blinds, consumed again with that sense of being watched, the same sensation that preoccupied me out on Harvey Road. Is someone out there on my back lawn, standing in the rain, staring through the window at me?
The lights of the kitchen burn ablaze, a contrast to the darkness that is quickly falling outside. A stranger could see right in. They could see everything about this moment: me on the phone, Maisie clinging to my leg. Is this what they want, for us to be sad, confused, afraid? Is someone there, lurking in the backyard? I hesitate with the blinds only partly closed and scan the backyard quickly, fearing the trees. A dozen of them or more, big, tall oak and maple trees with much breadth, enough that a man or a woman could stand behind them and not be seen. The perfect hiding place.
I’m about to send Maisie to other rooms of the house to help lower the blinds, but then the thunder comes again, immediate and out of the blue, and like pent-up steam about to escape from a hot teakettle, Maisie screams. I press a hand to Maisie’s mouth, asking again, beside myself now with a need to know who this woman is on the other end of the phone. “Who are you?”
My heart is beating quickly; like Maisie, I feel like I could scream. I whisper to Maisie, shhh, and to be quiet, and slowly remove my hand. But before the woman on the other end of the phone can reply, an abrading sound like nails comes from the door, and I feel my blood run cold, my legs stiffen, as Maisie says softly, delicately, her little arms clenched tightly around my leg so that I can hardly walk, “There’s a man at the door, Mommy. A man.”
“A man?” I beg, knowing that from this distance Maisie could not see whether there was a man at the door. In the kitchen we’re out of sight, impossible to see from the beveled glass that lines the front door, but still, Maisie assures me with an inappreciable nod that there is a man at the front door, a man with a hat on his head and gloves on his hands. “A hat and gloves,” I implore, “in summer?” knowing it can’t possibly be true. Despite the storm, it’s much too hot outside, much too humid for a hat and gloves.
“Stay here,” I say to Maisie as I pry her fingers from my leg and move toward the front door, though what I want to do is climb under the breakfast nook and hide. But I can’t let Maisie see that I’m scared. I ask the woman on the phone to hold on. I move away from the kitchen, telling Maisie again to stay, slipping past a disabled home security system that has been unarmed now for three years, since Nick and I agreed it was silly to pay the rates to keep it activated for nothing, and stare through the glass at the world outside. I peer into the yard, trying to see whether or not someone is there, a man in a hat and gloves, as Maisie has said, one who pressed his face to the window while I was in the kitchen and peered in, making eyes at Maisie.
But so far as I can see, no one is there.
But then the noise comes again, a scraping noise right there at the door’s wooden panel, and I jump, crying out. From the kitchen, comes a whimper. I breathe in deeply and gather the courage to open the front door just a bit, my body weight behind the door so I can slam it closed if needed.
But I don’t need to.
I breathe a sigh of relief, grateful to discover that the noise is only the wind rattling a grapevine wreath so that it thumps again and again on the front door pane. No one is here, but then I think again of the wide-open expanse of our backyard, a man in a hat and gloves, and wonder if that’s true. Did Maisie see a man, or no? Was it a man on the TV, like Curious George’s dear friend, the Man with the Yellow Hat? Is that what Maisie means? I don’t know. Is someone here, skulking behind those trees, peering through binoculars at Maisie, Felix, Harriet and me? I find myself wishing and hoping that I could arm the home security system right now, feigning a false sense of security knowing our home is being monitored from someone afar.
“Who are you?” I beg again of the woman on the phone as a burst of thunder cracks. On the other end of the line is the distinct sound of something dropping and shattering glass. A gruff male voice interjects, startling me even from the distance. “Shit,” he says.
“Let me call you back,” the woman begs, but I say no. I say it more uproariously than I’d meant to, barking out the word so that even Harriet’s eyes rise up to mine, her tail getting lost somewhere in the confines of her rear legs in fear. “No!” Harriet’s ears tumble; she looks sad. She thinks that I’m yelling at her. Harriet is a rescue dog, the kind with a sketchy past, an easy startle reflex and a habit of always being underfoot lest we decide to ditch her. She was Nick’s dog before she was mine. Nick was the one who found her, suckered in by some sad ad on the TV for homeless and abandoned pets. He said he was running errands, and when he came home, at his feet was a dog, a sorry creature with patchy fur still healing from a mite infection and a ridge of bones that should have been hidden beneath fat and muscle but wasn’t. It appeared to me that this animal had been starved. I didn’t want to keep her. I said no. Chances were good that she wasn’t going to make it anyway. But it was winter and outside the weather was deplorable; snow had begun to fall fiercely from the sky. Tomorrow she goes back, I said, but by morning I’d changed my mind.
“Please,” I beg. “Please tell me who you are.”
“Tomorrow,” the woman replies, whispering quickly into the phone. The line crackles and I fear I’ll lose her, thanks to the storm. “Meet me,” she says. “There’s a park on 248th Street. Near 111th. Commissioners Park. I’ll be there.”
“I know the place,” I force out. I know it well. I’ve been there with Maisie many times before. To Maisie it is the hippo park. They’re all just nicknames to her, the hippo park, the whale park, depending on which structures catch her fancy. This one has a giant blue hippopotamus that children can climb through, in his backside and out the mouth. “What time?” I ask, saying it twice for good measure, “What time?” fearing she may not reply because quite possibly she’s already ended the call.
“Eleven o’clock,” she says and then, just like that, there’s silence on the other end until another thunderbolt thrashes the evening sky, making Harriet cower and Maisie scream.
I spend the first part of the night not sleeping, but rather staring through the window as the rain falls, scouring the backyard for a man in a hat and gloves. Certainly something triggered this sighting from Maisie. Or was it simply an illusion, a figment of a little girl’s imagination? I can’t say for sure, but as the night goes on and no man comes to call, I start to have doubts about the veracity of the words that emerge from Maisie’s mouth. I want to shake her as she sleeps, to shake her awake and demand to know if she really saw a man in a hat and gloves, or if that was only make-believe.