He raised the pot into the air and didn’t know what he was about to do with it so he dropped it into the sink to get it out of his hands. A sharp, metal clang filled the kitchen. Brian startled.
Apollo rushed to him and picked him up. “I’m sorry little man,” he said, kissing the boy, holding him so tightly he squirmed to be free. “I know that was loud.”
Emma spoke over him. “GOT HIM. That’s what the text said. Right under the picture. GOT HIM.”
Apollo moved to the garbage again, stepped on the lever, and reached inside. “Show me that on this phone. Show me just one of these texts.”
Emma crossed her arms and leaned forward, looking as if she would throw up. “They’re gone,” she said. “You know that. They’re always gone.”
“They were never there,” Apollo said.
Emma looked up to the microwave clock again. “Let’s just go, let’s get ready.”
Apollo looked into Brian’s face, then back at her. “We are not going to church with you. You probably told this priest you wanted an exorcism instead of a baptism.”
Emma shot up in her chair. She held on to her pants with one hand. “That’s not it. I just want to talk with someone else around. You and me are not talking to each other. On the message board, they suggested therapy or church. And we can’t afford therapy.”
“On the message board? I’m so happy a bunch of stir-crazy mothers offered suggestions about fixing our family. But the answer is simple. You’re what’s wrong with our family, Emma. You. Are. The. Problem. Go take another pill.”
Emma left the kitchen and went to their bedroom. Apollo stayed in the kitchen with Brian, trying to give him another spoonful of oatmeal even though the boy had already had his fill. He just felt too angry to enter the bedroom and speak calmly with his wife.
Emma reappeared. She’d thrown a coat over her shapeless clothing. It shrank her, tidied her slightly. Apollo couldn’t ignore how small she’d become. He felt himself wobble slightly. He scooped Brian up and held the baby while Emma opened the front door.
“You don’t see,” she said. “But you will.”
As she left, she slammed the door. Apollo saw she’d left her keys hanging on the wall. Instinctively he thought to give them to her, but he stopped himself. Instead he locked her out. He held Brian up and looked into his son’s eyes.
“No matter what happens,” Apollo whispered, “you’re coming with me.”
SOMEONE IN THE apartment was screaming. Had been screaming for a while now. Was it him? No. He didn’t think so. How could he scream underwater? Underwater was how he felt. Sunk. Waterlogged. Drowned. He couldn’t see. Felt nothing. But he could hear. That goddamn screaming. Wailing. And it wouldn’t stop.
In a way this was good. If he couldn’t hear that high-pitched voice, he’d be lost in this darkness at the bottom of the sea. But the screams were like a light, flickering at the surface of the waters. He could move toward it. Hone in on the howls. Did he really want to? Better than being left down here. He could hardly breathe.
He kicked his legs. He was a strong swimmer. He tried to use his arms, but for some reason they wouldn’t move. They’d gone so numb that he couldn’t even be sure they were attached to him anymore. There was only this deep chill in his shoulders. An arctic stab in both sockets. This was because his arms were chained behind him. They’d been that way for hours now.
He didn’t open his mouth for fear of swallowing water. He wasn’t in a river. Nor in the ocean. But that’s how he felt. Submerged.
He was in an apartment in New York City. His apartment. Where he’d lived with his family for two years. Being guided back to clarity, to consciousness, by the lead line of another person’s agony. In a way, he had to be grateful for this stranger’s pain. If not for that screaming, he’d only flail aimlessly in this darkness. Lost.
When he finally opened his eyes, once he blinked away the seawater of stupefaction, he saw he was in a kitchen. His kitchen. Sitting in one of the white IKEA chairs Emma had ordered for them six months ago. He was backed into a corner. Was saturated not by seawater but by sweat. There was vomit across his chest, on his pants. Still moist. The color of a crème br?lée. He couldn’t smell it, not yet, because he was too confused.
He kicked his legs again, like when he’d been swimming, and his feet rattled. He shrugged his pinched shoulders and heard another rattle. He tried to look down, but when he did, his neck got squeezed so tightly, he had to open his mouth to gasp. He was in his own kitchen. Chained to one of his chairs. A bike lock, a U-lock, had been looped around his throat. It held him tight to the steam pipe that ran from the kitchen floor into the ceiling. Because winter had lasted so long, the steam pipe was on. When he pulled forward and gasped, the lock resisted, and he slumped backward. As soon as he did, the back of his exposed neck touched the steam pipe like a pork cutlet pressed against a hot skillet. He hissed, the same sound as frying meat, and lurched forward but got yoked in the throat yet again. He had to sit in one position, exactly straight, to keep himself from being choked or burned.
The whole room felt tropical. Heat in the high nineties filled the place. The steam pipe was partly to blame, yes, but he could also hear now, from the other rooms in the apartment, the rattle and fizzle of the radiators. All were on. The apartment might as well be melting. His face, his exposed arms, his bare feet. His skin puckered all over from this heat.
And then there was the screaming. Which still hadn’t stopped.
He could turn his head if he did it carefully. He could look around the kitchen if he mastered the natural panic. He scanned the kitchen, panning like a security camera. There was a claw hammer on the counter. A carving knife on the windowsill. And the wooden floor was littered with hundreds of tiny green pellets. This was rat poison. They’d found a box of the stuff under the kitchen sink when they moved in and just left it there. He’d meant to get rid of it now that Brian was crawling, but there had been so many other things to handle that he’d forgotten. Now the pellets were sprayed across the kitchen floor like buckshot.
Upturned on the floor, right near his feet, lay a bowl. His bowl. Morning breakfast. Oatmeal spread in a burst.
And there on the oven, finally, he found the source of all that screaming.
Not a person, but a kettle.
The flame was turned high, and the water inside was on the boil. The kettle wailed and spewed a plume of smoke from its snout. A little dragon. It had been sitting on the fire for so long, the water inside roiling, that it jiggled and jumped on the stovetop. The kettle couldn’t wait to pounce.