I Hope You Are Happy by Shane Kowalski

I could feel my face go hot, my neck strain. What do you think you just did? I said. Ethan looked at me, then at the street. What’s that? he said.

The more I read and accept and publish stories here on Short Story, Long, the more I’m realizing just how much I’m drawn to a strong voice, and often, a strong voice that’s not just surprising but a little off-kilter.

This Shane Kowalski story is exactly that. It starts with a kind of… misunderstanding (?) between the narrator and his son-in-law, and then it just keeps double-and triple-downing from there, escalating in new and surprising ways that I haven’t really stopped thinking about since I first read it as a submission.

—Aaron Burch

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My new son-in-law, Ethan, and I went for a walk with my dog, Eddie. It was my ritual, my solitary evening walk with Eddie around the neighborhood, where a strange secret self of mine would waft out and calm me, but this time Ethan asked if he could join us. He did little to interrupt the routine, almost going out of his way to be silent. I was enjoying it. It was a beautiful evening. Eddie had already gone number one and two and so we headed back.

When we went to cross the street is when it happened. It was one of those moments that seem to be collected from an accident of moments—smaller ones that have collided together blindly, creating a staccato’d reel of separated scenes that had to have at one time taken place together before some unruly child had ripped them apart. There is Ethan… holding Eddie’s leash… whipping the dog’s neck back very fast…The car… almost out of nowhere… that seems to be still feet away and posing no harm… yet close enough to change everything… Eddie’s yelp—sharp and loud—pierces the air… Ethan’s smile: his looking at me and smiling after the fact… His hand tight and firm on the leash… while he smiles… And in all these tiny pieces something in my gut curls tight and tells me with utter clarity that something is deeply wrong…   

Asshole, Ethan said. Then he looked at me and said: Driving like that in this neighborhood…Did your life flash before your eyes too?

I could feel my face go hot, my neck strain. What do you think you just did? I said.

Ethan looked at me, then at the street. What’s that? he said.

What did you just do to Eddie? I said.

He laughed. Oh, yeah, he said. Sorry Eddie, had to save your life back there, buddy.

He patted the dog’s head and back. Smiling.  

You’re enjoying it, I said.

Enjoying what? he said.

Enjoying it, I said. You enjoyed it. 

Ethan laughed again, this time more like he had a secret. Then he stopped and bent his eyebrows. I bent down and patted Eddie on the head. Are you alright, boy? I said to him.

Um, Ethan said. I’m not sure I understand.

I waved my hand at him. Listen, I said, I don’t want to hear it. What you did was… well, frankly, it was a little sick. Give me the leash now, please.

Ethan then really began laughing. He said: Are you serious? I’m not even sure I understand. I—

I am serious, I said. You understand perfectly. Give me the leash.

He tried to begin to justify what he did but I stopped him. I put my hand up again and said, Stop, stop. Ethan, stop.

I didn’t realize how loud I’d gotten until I could still hear my voice echo and bounce off the homes down the street. Most likely at somebody’s dwindling picnic my voice was heard, causing a minor pause in the conversation.

Ethan looked at me, didn’t say a word. He handed me Eddie’s leash and I held it very tenderly. We didn’t say another word on the walk back.

When we arrived home, nothing was said of the incident. Ethan seemed like a man I had just let follow me home. He was very stiff, like he was unsure of how or where to place his body. He said nothing but was cordial doing it. A guilty man who knew how to act.  

A couple days later Annie confronted me. I knew something was coming. She called in the afternoon and asked if Mom was home. When I said no, she said she was coming over. She had something she wanted to talk about. She let the word “talk” come out of her mouth as if it were a scorpion.

I awaited her arrival trying to control some sudden convulsions in my hand. I could feel something inside the hand knot up and pull, and then slowly—very slowly—release and then unknot, over and over. I knew what I had done was right. I acted in defense of Eddie. I was fifty-five years old. I knew what I knew. Yet my hand convulsed. 

Fifteen minutes later she arrived.

I gave her a hug. She reciprocated the hug, but I could feel a reluctance in it. Her body in the embrace felt like a coffin holding the loved one inside.

I kept on with the kindness, having no need to do otherwise. I said: So what’s up, bub?

She sat down. She breathed in deep. She looked at me.

Dad, she said. Did you yell at Ethan?

Almost too quickly I said: Yell at Ethan? No.

He said you berated him. She crossed her arms now. She stared right at me.

I would hardly call what I did berating, I said.

So you did do or say something? she said. He saves Eddie from being run over, and you yell at him for doing it?

I would hardly call what he did saving, I said.  

Dad! Annie yelled.

The car wasn’t even going that fast, I said.

Oh my god, Dad, she said.

Please don’t use that language, I said.

Ethan was really upset, she said. He didn’t want me to say anything. He doesn’t even know I’m here.

Listen, dumpling, I said (though I had never called her dumping before). You are accusing me of something I did not do.

Dad, she said. Ethan told me you accused him of… like… liking it? Of like, enjoying pulling Eddie’s leash? I mean, he was confused and just… just upset. I’m upset, too, over this. 

I sat down in the chair I had sat in since before Annie was even born. It was my favorite chair. Listen, my little angel (again, something I never called her), I did no such thing. I merely told him I did not approve of him pulling the leash like he did. It was a conversation between two men, and obviously one of them was confused.

Yes, dad, she said, you’re the one confused.

Watch that language, I said.

I’m not saying anything that you already aren’t saying, she said. Then added after a pause: Dad.

All I said to Ethan was basically please don’t do that again to my dog, please. That was all. He obviously took it a different way and I’m sorry for that.

Annie looked at me, sighed real deep. I thought her breath smelled like apples. Ethan is my husband, she said.

I waited for her to say something else, to finish her sentence, but she just stared at me.

I said: I know Ethan is your husband. 

Days passed. I thought a tooth was falling out in my mouth. I kept going to it with my tongue, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The moment with Ethan kept playing in my head. His pulling of the leash. That yanking. His smile. It just felt too much like the thing I was feeling for it to be anything else. Father’s intuition, I assume.

Ever since Ethan had pulled that leash, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this man who had married my daughter was, unequivocally, a sadist of the sexual kind. I had pored over articles online on the topic. BDSM. Tops. Bottoms. Sadomasochism. Daddies. Ha! I began to see the language of it in my dreams. And I realized that this man, my daughter’s husband of all people, enjoyed inflicting pain on others. He got off on it sexually. He had a perversion.  

These days there are so many things to get off to, it seems. I watched one video online one night of a woman who got off by popping her boyfriend’s zits. Then when the boyfriend said enough was enough, he found her in an affair with another woman. He asked her why. You know what his girlfriend said? She said: She lets me pop her zits, it’s as simple as that.

Simple as that? I am sorry, but I don’t understand some people’s desires.    

I waited for them—Ethan and my daughter—to leave, the two of them in the car together, one day. They packed a couple bags and left for the weekend. A romantic getaway perhaps… What was he going to do to her? 

I could feel a waggling of my tooth but it went away when I touched it with my finger.

I technically did not break into my daughter’s home. I used the spare key in the fake rock near the garage. There were no broken windows or cut screens or jimmied locks. This was nothing like that. 

Their home inside, I was pleased to find, was orderly and neat. Immaculate, spotless. Lived-in but not too lived-in. It felt like everything was floating.

It was the home of a new couple who had not yet allowed years of objects to clutter their home and lives to the point where it was also familiar, they didn’t recognize anything anymore. 

I sat on the spot of the couch where I believed Ethan sat in. Put my shoes up on it. Touched my tooth.   

All of it was their space yet still I could smell my daughter in everything. She was in my mind. I loved her in that moment and wanted nothing horrible to happen to her ever.

Their bedroom, too, was clean, orderly, inauspicious. It appeared to be the bedroom of a couple who sleeps, and not much else. The bed itself was made tightly, faultlessly unwrinkled.

In their closet I expected to find some perverted toy box filled with instruments of torture. The things he used on my daughter. A picture of her as a baby visited my brain and almost made me weep. 

Through the closet I searched…

A paddle with a splintered edge as if it had been wielded with unnatural force at trembling flesh. A whip with nine tails frayed. Brushes and belts. Rope and ball gags. Dangling chains. None of it was there…

I sat on their bed, putting wrinkles into the tight firmness of its body, and thought about where I was.

I laughed—put my head in my hand and laughed.

Outside the window I could hear neighbors talking faintly in the next yard. Saying something about the niceness of the weather. Fuck you! I yelled.

I couldn’t tell if they had heard me or not because I didn’t move from my spot on the bed to see, but a deadening silence fell outside. Their idle chatter was gone.

Then as a last gesture I opened the nightstand by my side. There was where I found them: a pair of cold, metallic handcuffs, a set of keys attached to them. I picked them up and looked at them. 

A vindication flew threw me. I knew it! I laughed again—this time in victory. I placed the handcuffs back into the nightstand drawer, but I took the keys. I closed the drawer and put the keys into my pocket.

I stood up from the bed and skimmed my hand across its surface, smoothing out all traces of my sitting there except one tiny wrinkle at the edge.

When I arrived home Sharon asked me where I had been. Getting gas, I said.

That took an awful lot of time, she said.

You’re right, I said. Do you want to go next time?

She curled her arms around my shoulders and gave me a stern look. She then put her head to my chest and listened to my heart beating there as she would often do when we were younger. She was quiet but I imagined her, ear to my ribs, hearing something angry in my heart, trembling wildly, humming like an empty machine in my chest.

Later, with horrible images of my daughter handcuffed and crying in my head, we made love.

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I seemed to be haunted in the days after.

There were times I thought I heard the scream of a young girl in the house. A yelp of pain. I’d go around, walking in and out of rooms of our home, checking.

I’d open doors, stick my head out the windows, check closets, and then all of a sudden Sharon would come up behind me and ask me what I was doing.

Getting some circulation in here, I’d say.

At night before falling asleep, visions of Annie bound and gagged and bullwhipped would blink in and out of my head. 

Some days I could barely stomach putting the leash onto Eddie to take him for a walk.

I kept thinking of the handcuffs. They talked to me in one dream. Said things I didn’t want to know. I’d keep the keys to the handcuffs on me at all times and take them out every once in a while to look at them. I put them in my mouth once and kept them there. The two of them sat on my tongue in the dark wetness as I sucked on them, tasting metal, awaking my taste buds with their sweetness.   

Then one day Sharon says the kids are coming over for dinner.

What kids? I say.

She laughs and says, Annie and Ethan, who else?

They are hardly kids, I say. At least he isn’t.

I didn’t mean they were actually kids, dear, Sharon says.

Why are they coming? I say.

Because, she says.

Because why? I say.

She laughs again. What do you mean? she says.

I say: I mean, who set it up?

I asked them, she says. If it really makes a difference.

I say nothing.

Is there an issue, Nosey? she says.

Why would there be an issue? I say, after not saying anything for such a long time Sharon has disappeared into another room.

The clinks and scrapes of silverware overshadowed what polite conversation was had. What words were spoken were cordial and ineffectual—familial, really.  

After dinner, we did a strange migration to the living room. There was a weather all of us seemed to be avoiding, but pleasantly.

Oh, Sharon said, turning to me. Eddie has to pee. Darling, will you get him?

As if waiting, Ethan jumped up. I got him, Mom, he said.

Before Sharon could utter the words thank you, I stood up real fast. The gesture was more dramatic than I had intended.

They looked at me. I said: No, I have him.

Annie looked at me sternly. Dad, she said.

What? I said.

Don’t, she said.

It’s okay, I said. Ethan doesn’t have to take Eddie. I can take him out.

Ethan looked at me. Sure, Mr. C, he said.

I went to grab the leash from the table when Annie stood up herself in a dramatic fashion. She said: Okay, okay. This is… I’m sorry, but this is not acceptable.

I laughed. Acceptable? I said.

Sharon, realizing a scene had materialized seemingly out of thin air, said: What are you talking about?

Mom, Annie said. Dad thinks Ethan is out to… I don’t know… kill Eddie or something? He thinks he means to hurt Eddie. Or that he likes to hurt Eddie?

Everyone’s body language was like scaffolding, wobbly and unsure and skeletal, except Ethan’s. He stood with his arms crossed, staring at my daughter. 

Sharon laughed a little, not a laugh exactly but an expelling of a confusion out of the body. What are you saying, dear? she said.

Annie explained to her the situation. Ethan sat down as she did. In my recliner. The sick bastard. I kept giving him looks. As I did I could feel my leg begin to lose itself. That is how best to describe it. If all body parts are in possession of themselves, as all people are in possession of themselves, this leg—my right one—lost possession of itself. I couldn’t move it. The leg, or absence of leg, pulled at my pelvis, weighing me down considerably. 

Is this all true? Sharon asked me.

This is silly, I said. All I did was say a thing and Ethan took it a certain way. That’s all.

But you accused Ethan of intentionally hurting Eddie? Sharon said.

I did no such thing! I said.

Dad, Annie said. You did.

Because he says I did?! I said.

Babe, Ethan said, putting his hand on Annie’s leg. It’s fine. Seriously, it’s fine.

No, Ethan, said Sharon. It really isn’t.

She looked at me and said, I think you need to apologize to Ethan now. This is a very silly situation. And apologizing isn’t going to make it all better but it’s a start. Come over here and apologize now. 

No, I said.

No? Sharon said.

No, I said.

You are being very silly, Sharon said. Darling.

Don’t darling me, I said.

He doesn’t like Ethan, Annie said. He never did.

I said nothing.

Oh that’s not true, Sharon said. We love Ethan.

He doesn’t, Annie said again.

I said nothing. Again. I could feel the lack of a right leg begin to create a vertigo sensation in my eyes. In my left hand was Eddie’s leash. I forgot how it had gotten there, but I couldn’t seem to let it go, so with the leash still held inside my hand, I tapped on my right leg. It was still there, physically, but in its psyche it was somewhere very far… 

Annie began to cry. I could see it building up and now it was coming. She was never a crier when she was little. Both Sharon and Ethan went to her.

I just don’t get why you’re doing this, she said. I just don’t get why you don’t want us to be happy.

I do, I said. I really do.

A moment passed, it seemed, where a monkey, deranged and violent, could’ve come and swept through the house, wreaking havoc, throwing shit on the walls, and none of us (for different reasons) would’ve moved.

My failure to move led me to blurt out: I know about the handcuffs. 

Handcuffs? Annie said.

What are you talking about now? Sharon said.

They know what I’m talking about, I said.

Ethan burst into a deep, vibrating laughter. Annie gave him a look and then turned to me and said, Dad.

With my free hand I took the keys to the handcuffs out of my pocket, where I had been keeping them through the evening, and held them high above me.

Dad! Annie said again.

There is nothing you can say to try and convince me, I said. I have these!

Did you—did you really go into our house? Annie said. Are those really…

She trailed off and just looked at me, dumbfounded. Ethan looked at me with a face I had never seen on a human before. Sharon said: What are those?  

You don’t have to stay with him, darling, I said to Annie. Don’t worry. Your mother and I can help you. You don’t have to live like that.

Howard, you are scaring me, Sharon said. Her face was looking at me but also not looking at me.

Annie said: Dad, I cannot speak to you right now.

No, I said. It’s okay. Everything’s okay. You don’t have to go home with him. You’re safe here.

Safe from what? she said.

Howard, Sharon said, just please say you’re sorry please.

You’ve threatened her haven’t you, you sick bastard, I said to Ethan. He just looked at me, saying nothing, his hand on Annie’s shoulder. I tried to go at him with the leash in my one hand and the keys in my other but my daydreaming leg gave out from beneath me and I toppled over. 

Dad! Annie said.

Oh, Howard, said Sharon. I hope you’re happy now…this is so very silly… 

I lay in a pile on the floor. Because of the way I had fallen, with my one arm under me, I could feel the keys needling into my lower back. 

Eddie walked over and licked my face. His eyes looked into mine and communicated the pain of the silent. I cried, but inside.  

I couldn’t seem to move to get up from the spot where I fell so I just looked up at them from there. I couldn’t say anything, or if I could, they weren’t the words I wanted to say anyway. Time passed even though I couldn’t see a clock. Everyone disappeared or turned into shadows. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. I wanted somebody to come help me but they didn’t. Long after it got dark and silent and I was the only one left—a pile of mud in some ancient, glowing forest—I tried to say to whatever would hear me: Pookie, you do not have to live like this.

STORY:
Shane Kowalski lives in Pennsylvania, where he teaches creative writing at Ursinus College. He is the author of Small Moods (Future Tense Books).

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ART:
Matthew Austin is an artist & designer from Maryland, he can be reached at www.matthewaustin.net.

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Next Tuesday, we’ll feature an interview with Shane about this story!

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