by J.D. Chapman

Things have not been going well for us.

I dreamed that Doreen took a second job, teaching at Lewis’ preschool to help ends meet. I dreamed that she brought home an extra lunchbox, one of those construction worker lunchboxes with the gothic-arched lid, only canary-colored and shrunk down for a child. She put it in our linen closet and shut the door.

She asked me, “Do you remember Caroline?”

I said that I did, since I had taken Lewis to her birthday party. I remembered that she had monkey knees and that her hair was carroty and cut in a bob.

Doreen patted the lunchbox. “She died. We didn’t have anything else, so we put her in this. I called her mom, but she wouldn’t pick her up, which I can understand I guess. She said to flush her, but I brought her home in case the woman changes her mind.”

The box sat on our shelf over the weekend. We didn’t go near it, but avoided it and avoided talking about it until it began broadcasting a smell. Every time I walked past it to pee or get some cereal, it rose up sweet and hard, and I thought about the box of fetal pigs we used to keep in the school’s attic. They’d been donated by some college, and were sealed in a row of thick plastic pockets like a chain of condoms. The pigs were all gray and rubbery and had sleepy little faces, and I knew Caroline must look like that too, walled up in the thermos well.

I told Doreen to call the mother again. The mother called her “bitch” and Doreen cried.

I said, “Someone’s going to bury her, and it’s not our responsibility! We can’t afford that!”

I called the number and asked to speak to the husband. I said, “Listen. My wife is Doreen, Caroline’s teacher, and we’ve been holding Caroline here for a week now. Our house is not a morgue. Your wife—”

“I know,” said the husband. “She’s not handling this well.”

I gave him directions to our building and took the lunchbox down to wait in the parking lot. Then I went back up and picked up my wife’s purse because I knew she’d have a pad and a pen. I sat on the john and started writing this.
Doreen opened the door. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked. “Are you reading my diary, you sonofabitch?”
I thought, ‘Diary? Good to know.’ I said, “Bad dream.”

Doreen read what I’d written. She said, “This is what you think? You think you would handle this? You think any of you men would? I tell you what: that child would have been buried and dealt with before you ever got off your ass and noticed there was a problem.”

Later, when I woke up, I thought, “She’s right. I would have just opened a window.”