F E A R F U L W I S H E S

By C.W. Smith

(originally published in Mademoiselle)

Because Cleo urged it, Roberts rushed home at five, but when he got there, she and the children were gone. First he cursed. Then anger turned to fear: his God! Hacked! Burned? Mangled, stabbed or maimed? Cities tucked death away in secret folds -- hot grease snickered, sprang up in faces; hoodlums slithered in through unlocked screens. The back door stood ajar like a mouth agape with terror; bureau drawers hung open, trailing their contents like the entrails of gutted beasts -- signs of VIOLENT haste?

"Whoa now!" Roberts reined in his fear. "I should investigate further before reaching such a hasty conclusion. I'll look for a note beneath the sugar bowl or on the ledge of the bathtub or in the refrigerator door."

On a square of brown wrapping paper laid out in the middle of the kitchen floor he found a mound: a large safety pin with three buttons impaled upon it, a diaper which smelled of furniture wax, a matchbook cover from Leong's, an old issue of Time, one blue sock, a half dozen bobby pins, two hair rollers, and a circular lawn sprinkler made of brass. Now here are things to sink the teeth of the brain into! he thought. He stuffed the smaller items into his coat pockets; he lifted the sprinkler to inspect it, then thrust his left arm through the opening up to his elbow to test the hole's sincerity. Next he strode to his neighborhood tavern, where

A melancholy, almost sullen hush prevailed, with some half dozen solitary drinkers at the bar brooding like scholars in the archives of the soul.

"Large schooner," Roberts told the barkeep. "You know," he added, gesturing with the arm encircled by the sprinkler, "the drinkers at the bar here put me in mind of scholars brooding in the archives of the soul."

"We get all kinds," the barkeep grunted. "It takes all kinds," he added, after reflecting. An aspiring writer, he considered himself a perspicacious student of human nature.

Roberts wanted to give vent to his grief, his confusion, but the barkeep had turned away to dust the bottle beneath the mirror.

"It's quiet in here," Roberts complained.

"Yes," mused the barkeep. "Only the soft click of bottles jostled against each other can be heard as I move along the counter under the mirror."

Suddenly the door burst open and in rushed a barbershop quartet taking a break from a rehearsal in the annex of a nearby fire station. Their names were Phil and Frank and Bill and Jack. They sang hello:

"Hellooooo--"

"Helloooo--"

"HellOOOOOOOOOO--"

The chord was G7. Like magic the mood changed; now there was gaiety and joyful exuberance mixed with the intimations of sorrow and pain. Near tears, Roberts rejoiced in their presence.

"I've lost my wife and children," he announced at large.

"I should be so lucky," someone snorted down the bar.

Having ordered, Phil and Frank and Bill and Jack hummed "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag."

"I'd kill the bastard!" growled the man who sat two stools down from Roberts. He wore a railroad hat with a rounded peak like the cupola of a church.

"What bastard?" Robert asked, puzzled.

"Have another drink -- then you'll remember," the man promised bitterly, then swept up his change and departed.

"You don't know what you got until it's gone," spoke a man who was seated on Roberts' right. He wore a crumpled tweed suit and a fedora pushed back on his head. His name was Carmichael; he was a reporter and he had been up all night and day watching an especially tragic or profound story unravel itself to a fateful conclusion. His words seemed to come from deep within.

"You got a lot of depth, fella," Roberts told the reporter. "Your words, they come from deep within."

"Thanks," Carmichael said. After a moment, he added wisely, "I just don't know, you know?"

"Yeah, I don't know either," Roberts put in. They shook their heads sadly and drank in silence for a moment, and their not knowing seemed to them the culmination of human wisdom.

"Maybe it was my fault," Roberts offered, absently revolving the sprinkler around his elbow.

"Takes two to tango."

"Still--" Roberts insisted. "Had I acted differently, maybe I wouldn't be sitting here right now wearing this." He tapped the sprinkler lightly with a forefinger.

"Women!" Carmichael snorted. "Happens all the time to everybody -- try to be philosophical about it."

"Thanks. You know, I find myself growing stronger somehow, more stoical, as though already I'm bucking up to accept whatever strange turn my destiny might take."

"Maybe, too, you're a little excited to suddenly find your life in turmoil and realize you'll have to fight like hell to keep from going under but if you bear the scars you'll emerge a stronger man."

"It's possible." While Roberts thoughtfully stroked his chin, the sprinkler clanked against the bar. He slipped it off his elbow and laid it gently beside his schooner, then patted his bulging coat pockets as if to console them.

"This is all that remains," he declared as he removed the articles from his pockets.

"Jesus, if only they could speak--"

"Ah, but they do!" Roberts snarled. "Take this matchbook cover, for instance. Obtained at the scene of the crime. Leong's. Our tenth anniversary. Such dancing!" His eyelids drooped in vivid reminiscence. "Such indescribable elation!"

"Tell me about it," Carmichael mooned.

"Take this old Time. The matchbook cover. Old Times. Not like the new times. Anniversaries grown increasingly tinged with the bittersweet mixture of joy and sorrow."

"Huh!"

"Next I offer in exhibit this diaper--" Roberts held it in his palm like a crippled songbird. "Look at it. Used as a dustcloth then discarded. Discarded!" He wagged his head, overwhelmed. "Can this be phantomed?"

"Could it be she left you because your relatioonship isn't as satisfying as once it was?"

"Yes," Roberts hurried to agree. "Also, this discarded diaper suggests a rebellion against domestic chores, as does likewise this--" He proferred the safety pin with the three buttons impaled upon it. "Safety. Security. Cast aside in hopes of adventure!"

"The plot thickens!" Carmichael exclaimed in alarm, his cry arousing Phil and Frank and Bill and Jack and the barkeep into alert expectation. There was a pause while Roberts lifted the sock from the bar and dangled it before his eyes, mulling over its implications. Finally he looked up. "Blue sock?"

"May I?" Carmichael extended a palm for the sock; Roberts handed it over with courtesy, open end first.

"Maybe she's implying that living with you is sort of like a sock from the blue," Carmichael decided.

"Or--" Roberts added with mounting excitement. "This is what she hopes I feel like now. Blue sock -- a bruise."

"At any rate, the general tenor is unmistakeable. That leaves the hair rollers and the six bobby pins," Carmichael said, nodding sagely.

They studied the items on the bar in deep silence for a moment. The reported moaned softly with revelation. "Well, it's all there now, isn't it?"

Roberts shook his head sadly. "The final link." He and Carmichael looked at each other.

"She's letting down her hair with a man named Bobby!" they shouted in grief-stricken unison.

"Oh no!" cried Frank and Jack and Bill and Phil.

"Or--" Roberts wailed in anguishg. "Six men all named Bobby!"

"Ah, my God!" Carmichael groaned. Phil and Frank and Jack and Bill began to blubber out a chorus of "Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine," after which

They all sank into a sullen silence. They drank deeply in sorrow. They thought of Destiny as a whore.

"Destiny is a whore," Roberts muttered.

"I was thinking the same thing," the reporter replied.

"I wonder," Roberts mused bitterly after a while, "was it her intention to reveal herself so clearly through these simple objects, too cowardly to utter aloud her infamy?"

"Cowardly bitch!" growled Carmichael.

"Or have these objects simply been strewn about the rooms of the psyche with Freudian abandon?"

"Freudian bitch!" Carmichael snapped into his schooner.

The phone rang. The barkeep answered it, listened, hung up.

"Carmichael, your old lady wants you to come home."

The reporter rose from his stool.

"I'm a crud," he said, tears springing to his eyes. "I don't deserve such a woman."

After he left, Phil and Frank and Bill and Jack hurriedly crowded into the phone booth to call their wives. They closed the door. Tears welled in their eyes. They sang "I Want A Girl Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad." They emerged chastened, humble.

Roberts felt all alone. In the end, he thought, a man is all alone. "When you get down to the nitty-gritty, nobody really gives a hang about your troubles." He began to sing. Nobody knew de trouble he'd seen.

The quartet eased silently up behind him. "Doo-wah, doo-wah," they sang.

"My friend," the barkeep spoke gently when they finished, moved beyond his usual callous cynicism by their touching rendition of the old spiritual, a favorite of his departed mother's, "Let me give you some advice. If you want her back, go get her. Find her, love her, hug her, kiss her, squeeze her, cherish her forever!"

Roberts felt he was on the verge of a new phase. "I think you're right!"

"Hooray, hooray and hooray!" the quartet cheered.

Outside, night had fallen. Frank and Bill and Phil and Jack leaned against a lamp post, while Roberts checked his coat pockets to secure his treasure and to give the sprinkler a tug against his elbow to firm it.

"These are my only clues. They've got to be protected at all costs," he ordered, charging the quartet with the mission. "Great secrets lie in them. Clues to location. In the days to come, as I wander the face of the earth in search of my... my home, my essence, my epipsyche, these simple objects may come to have a meaning far beyond their mere instrinisic monetary worth. Can you see how, trudging across trails grown faint with time, I might grow weary of the quest and these few semeingly insignificant items might help restore my dedication? There will, no doubt, be moments of doubt, say when I am braced against the railing of a tanker, staring out across the icy gale which lashes the ship from sterm to stem in some wild, half-charted North Sea voyage." "Oh, can you see him braced against the railing of a tanker," chimed in the quartet.

Roberts started off down the sidewalk. "'Perhaps she lies ahead somewhere,' perhaps I'll think," he mused aloud while the quartet shuffled off behind him, choreographing themselves about trees and bus stop benches. "Questions to be put to Missing Persons Bureaus the world over, tattered photos to be taken gingerly from my wallet, explanations made difficult by language barriers: avez-vous seen estos personnas?"

"Oh, five-foot blue, eyes of two, could she, could she, could she chew--" sang the quartet after forming a diamond around a trash barrel.

"Despair!" Robert cried out in lamentation. 'Maybe another year will find me drunk in a Paris hotel, sheets wet with cognac-sweat, a stinking whore beside me, down to my last franc, my final lead having worked its way to a dead end, dark thoughts of ending it all worming their way into my dissipated brain when--"

"A clue from the blue?"

"A note from the boat?"

"A friend of the whore?"

"Slipped under the door?"

"Yes!" Roberts exclaimed with joy. "And from there perhaps the long climb to the restoration of faith in the mission of recovering that which once made me whole -- how many men can boast a suffering so great, a challenge so meaningful?"

"Too few, too few!" They proceeded in silence for a block while Roberts brooded. There will be other women! he thought suddenly. At the corner he paused to wait for the light. The quartet hung back at a respectful distance, huddled, eyes averted. Then Phil stepped forward.

"We were wondering--"

"Yes?"

"There will be other lips that you might kiss--?"

Roberts smiled with the bitterness of ironic defeat. "Yes, but you know how that ends. No matter how tempting their siren call, my vision will remain forever fixed on that one bright star of my life, my Cleo. Their arms, their lips, their kiss, their hair, their hips -- they cannot hold a candle to her simple smile, her warm embrace."

They continued to walk. "I'll leave my job," Roberts planned aloud. "Go on the bum, hitchhike, hop freights, sign on freighters, do odd jobs, I'll find a way. Somehow."

"--had to leave a little girl in Kingston town," the foursome finished for him.

When they reached his house, Roberts invited them all in for a final drink before his solitary quest began.

But when he opened the door, Cleo leaped up from where she had been perched on the couch, chewing her little nails to the quick.

"Oh Darlinnnnng!" she gasped and ran to clasp her arms about him. "I was so worried! I thought you'd been run down in the street or wracked in a wreck or struck by a stroke or hacked by a thug or slain by a train--"

"Oh, Cleo, my dearest dear!" he yelped and drew her close to him. "My own true blue! I thought the very same of you!"