I run back down the hallway except this time I go into the spare bedroom where we keep my old bed I’ve grown out of, plus the old gun safe that used to be my father’s but was too heavy to get out of the house.
I am not allowed to open that safe or even touch it under any circumstances, my mother has said more than once. There’s something about the bolts in the door that are extra dangerous. Because they have springs in them that automatically lock when you close the door. But today seems like good circumstances to me all of a sudden after what I’ve just seen, and I don’t want my father to do to me what he’s done to Mr. X, so I pull the safe door open and I get inside. It’s empty now, of course, because my father doesn’t live here and he doesn’t have any guns or anything else to put in it, so I have just enough room if I sit cross-legged. Then I pull the door closed.
That’s when I realize that there is no handle on the inside. I can’t get back out even if I want to. Not without somebody on the outside spinning the right combination. I start to wonder if I really will suffocate or how I’ll even know if I am. I remember all those times when I’d be under my blanket and the air would get heavy until I stuck my nose out and the air would be so cool and delicious. It starts to feel like that, the heavy part I mean, but then I notice that there’s a thin line of light on the side of the door where the hinges are and if I put my nose up to it I can almost smell the fresh air.
So I stay in there with my legs crossed and my nose up against the side of the door. I can’t hear what’s going on outside the safe very well, but I know one thing for sure. As much as I’ve ever known anything in my whole life. I have to be quiet.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Until I finally hear the footsteps. Into the room. Then out. Then into the room again. My father’s voice.
“Michael?”
Then farther away. Then closer.
Then right next to the safe.
“Michael? Are you in there?”
I must be quiet.
“Michael? Seriously, did you go inside there? You know you shouldn’t be in there.”
Quiet, quiet. Not a sound.
I feel the safe being tipped over a few inches.
“Michael! Come on! You didn’t really go in there, did you? You’re gonna die in there! There’s no air!”
I feel the warmth spreading in my pants again.
“Michael, open the door, okay? You’ve got to open it.”
I can hear the dial being spun now.
“I don’t remember the combination! You have to open it!”
More spinning. Such a simple idea. If those three numbers come into his head, he will spin those numbers and the door will open.
“What was it? Fuck! It was two years ago! How am I supposed to remember?”
A hand slamming down on the top of the safe. I stop myself from crying out. Nothing. Not a sound.
“Listen to me. You have to open this thing right now. Just reach up and turn that handle. You have to do this, right now!”
Be quiet. Be quiet.
“Come on, Michael. Turn that handle.”
There is no handle.
“I promise you, it won’t hurt. Okay, buddy? I swear to God. It won’t hurt. Just come out and we’ll do this together, okay? You and me.”
Be quiet.
“Come on, Mike. I can’t do this by myself. You have to come with me, okay?”
There is no handle. Be quiet. There is no handle.
“It’ll be so quick. You won’t even feel it. I swear to you. I cross my heart and hope to die. I want us both to be together when we do this. Okay?”
I keep my nose against the edge of the door, but I’m getting dizzy.
I hear my father crying. Then I hear him go away. At last. At last he’s gone.
The relief and the panic all at once. He’s gone but now I’m going to be in here forever.
Then the footsteps again. A crinkling noise, all around me. The light getting dim.
“We’ll go out together,” he says. “I’m right here with you. I wish I could see you one more time. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid. We’ll go out together.”
The air getting thinner and thinner. My mind starting to shut down. A pinhole of light, at the bottom of the safe. Whatever he has wrapped around it, he isn’t covering the whole thing. He’s trying to cut off my air but…
Everything’s black for a while. I think. I’m out and then I come back. I can hear his breathing.
“Are you still there, Michael? Are you still with me?”
That’s when I feel the whole world tilting. I hear the steady squeak of the wheels underneath me. The rumbling across that wooden floor. Down the steps. Whump whump whump. A fresh blast of air through that crack along the safe’s door. Waking me up. We are outside now. We are on the sidewalk. Hitting every crack. Bump bump bump. Onto the smooth road. A car passing by us, honking its horn. Then the motion of the safe almost stopping. I can hear my father laboring outside now, fighting for every inch. We must be on rough ground. The dirt and weeds and gravel beside the road. Where are we going? We can’t be going toward the river. We can’t be.
A few more feet. Then we stop.
“You and me, Michael. You hear me in there? You and me. Forever.”
Then the fall. The impact, slamming me against one side of the safe. The sudden darkness.
Then the water, seeping in through the crack. It’s cold. It fills up the safe, one inch at a time. It’s squeezing out the rest of my air.
The seconds ticking away. I feel the water covering my face.
I can’t breathe. I am cold and I am dying.
I can’t breathe.
I close my eyes and wait.
I finished the last panel. Amelia was right behind me, darkening the lines and making everything stand out as if we had burned it into the wall. For the second time that night, the tears were running down her face.
We stood back and looked over what we had done. The panels started in the room where the safe had been. They wrapped around three walls and out into the hallway. They continued into the living room and finished on the wall opposite the front door, right where the couch had been. The last panel was the biggest of all. A complete underwater panorama, with the trash collected there on the bottom of the river. An old tire. A cinder block. A bottle. A piece of lumber with the nails still in it. The stringy weeds pushing up through the debris and swaying with the current.
In the middle of everything, tilted slightly with one corner submerged in the sand, the great iron box. Sunken. Abandoned. Never to be brought back to the surface again.
That was it. That was the very last panel.
“Why does it stop here?” she said. “They got you out. They saved you.”
I understood what she meant. In the reality she was thinking about… yes, they got me out. It was a cheap safe, after all. That’s why the door didn’t quite seal shut, and why I was able to keep breathing, at least until I was in the water. That’s why the men who pulled the safe from the river were able to open it. With a big crowbar? With the Jaws of Life? I didn’t know. I wasn’t awake to see that part. It didn’t really matter. In my own mind, the safe was and always would be at the bottom of the river. With me locked inside forever. That was the only real part for me. As real as anything had ever been real.
“You’re not in that box anymore,” she said, wiping her cheeks. “You’re free now. You can leave the box here.”
I looked at her.
“Now that you’ve done this. Can’t you leave it all right here in this house?”
If only it were that easy.
She kissed me, in that room where the worst parts of that day had begun. She kissed me and she held me tight. We both sat down on the floor and stayed there for a long time. Just the two of us in that house.
When I opened my eyes again… it was so late. Past the middle of the night. We had been here in this house so long. We collected our things. We went outside and got on my bike. Then I took her back to Ann Arbor.