Something Alive in the Basement

Middletown, New Jersey

June 2000

Piano notes wake her up. She is drifting back to sleep, believing them to be the remnants of a dream, when a chord resonates from downstairs. She dons her robe and slippers and creeps to the stairs. Halfway down, she hears singing. … Mike is singing.

Me, I just wanna know,
Why Snuffy is part of the show,
Are the animals real?

Amy pads across the foyer and peeks into the living room. Her husband and son are sitting side by side on the piano bench, their backs to her. Mike is playing a song she’s never heard. His singing is tentative; he’s definitely making it up as he goes. He hasn’t done that in … years. He’s making funny faces, and Caleb is totally captivated.

Where’s my camera? Amy hurries quietly upstairs, grabs her camera, and comes back down. Please please please don’t move, guys. …

But the song is over. Damn—missed it! She drops the camera into the pocket of her robe and starts to join them. But they are whispering together, and she has the odd feeling that she’s intruding. She goes to the kitchen instead and pours a cup of tea.

Caleb comes in a few minutes later and hugs her good morning.

“Did you guys make up a song?” Amy asks.

She feels him nodding against her belly, and the baby shifts in response. He jumps back.

“Oops!” she says. “I think you woke the baby up. What’s it about?”

“It’s about Oscar, Grover, and Snuffy,” Caleb says.

“Will you sing it for me and the baby?”

Caleb shakes his head.

“Aw, boo,” Amy says. Caleb looks like he might start crying again, so she drops it. Have to ask Mike what Caleb was upset about when he’s done in there. …

But Mike stays at the piano all day, playing, writing music, muttering lyrics to himself. He stays there through dinner and bath time. He’s still there as Amy is turning things off and heading to bed herself.

“You coming?” she asks.

He says yeah, but she knows better.

She wakes up to the sound of his voice in the hallway downstairs. It’s early, and she’s definitely going to puke. Mike is leaving a voice mail for his boss; he’s calling in sick. She asks him what’s up, and he says he’s fine, but he’s distracted, almost manic, as he pulls on sweats, gathers up his keys and wallet. She hears the front door close and his car pulling away.

Two hours later, Caleb is down for a nap, and she takes a break from her manuscript to call Mike’s cell, only to discover it buzzing away pointlessly on a table in the foyer.

It’s after five when she hears the car pull up. She gets up too quickly from the sandbox in the backyard, and her back gives a jolt. Caleb looks up worried.

“I’m okay, honey,” she says. “I’m going to go inside for a minute.”

“Is Dad home?”

“Just stay here for a minute, okay?”

She hears Mike talking on the walkway. He can’t be on the phone—who the hell is he talking to?

“… unreal, unreal, shit did I get a co-ax?” The front door bursts open to reveal Mike with an armful of boxes—so many that he can’t see her standing in the hallway. “BABE! AME! How many power strips do we have? Don’t think I …”

He drops the boxes in the foyer. He’s sweating, and his eyes are wide.

“… don’t think I’ve got enough. HEY! Oh my God! Hey, honey! Hey, little one!” He kisses her belly. “You gotta see this, hang on, you gotta see this. …”

He’s back out the front door. She should be irritated, but he’s so excited. About what, though? He returns with a huge grin and a small, rectangular box covered in blue velvet. Inside is a harmonica.

“Highway 61 Revisited!” he gasps. “Dylan played this on Highway 61 Revisited! This harmonica! This very one!”

“How do you know?” she says. Why is that the first question that comes out?

“Guy gave me a certificate. Whatever, not like I’m going to sell it, but still … unreal, right?”

He’s out the door again, this time returning with four more cardboard boxes, each printed with images of electronic equipment. Recording equipment.

“Weirdo,” she says as he passes her on the way to the basement.

He laughs and goes out for another load.

###

Three weeks go by.

She sees Mike only in passing, and both she and Caleb know that if they want him, they can find him in the basement. He’s slept down there at least five times. He’s called in sick or worked from home twelve times. He’s on the phone a lot, but not with his company—with music stores, remodelers, tech support. And always, strange sounds come from below: static, feedback, a single note played twenty, thirty, forty times in a row, more feedback, cardboard ripping, heavy things sliding across the floor, thunks from the staple gun, another note played fifty times in a row. Is that even music? What is this?

Her gentle nudges haven’t managed to capture his attention; her more direct attempts have brought him out of the basement and back to Planet Earth only for short periods. But he always ends up back down there.

Last week, she caught herself eyeing her and Caleb’s Book of Mysteries and crafting some new entries in her mind: Why is my husband building a recording studio? Is this a midlife crisis … at thirty-four? Am I living with a doppelgänger?

Then, she got proactive. She started with his friend and former recruiter, Sergio. She had a list of questions for him—not those questions—that were intended to shed some light, provide context, or something. He’d laughed and recalled a few occasions when, as a freelancer, Mike had disappeared for weeks on end to work on a project or newfound hobby. She didn’t respond well to the laughter, and she knew Sergio sensed it. He assured her that Mike’s commitment to his family and career was still there, beneath the surface of this renewed obsession with music.

“Don’t worry too much, Amy,” he said. “Mike made that choice a long time ago, and he never looked back. You know how he is. Sometimes you just gotta wait it out.”

No, that’s not it. She’s been through the wooden-ship-building phase, the sea-glass collection project, the metalworking obsession—which tapered out before he installed a forge, thank God. The remnants of those interludes are resting safely in storage containers in the garage, like leftovers in giant-sized Tupperware.

This is different. Something is happening.

Today she opened the credit card bill, and now she’s about to adjust her strategy and go straight to the source with some questions. It’s that or beat him over the head with a keyboard until he wakes up and starts husbanding and dadding again. She ducks under the low jamb, pulls the lightbulb cord, and descends the basement stairs. Halfway down a contraction pins her to the railing. She checks her watch. When was the last one? Seven minutes? Can’t be. Must have been seventeen.

The basement is cavernous but choked with debris: heaps of discarded cardboard, mounds of Styrofoam packaging, stacks of amps and speakers, dozens of instruments, and six rotting bookcases full of the previous owners’ collection of appliance manuals. Never did get a good explanation from Fran about why the Schmutzes left those … or all the other stuff, for that matter.

Amy studies the floor to discern a path through the maze to the “studio” corner, where Mike is hunched over a sound board, his back to her. She picks her path and follows multicolored streams of wiring and cords. She says his name, then shouts it, but he has headphones on and is lost in the pages of a thick instruction manual. Why is he clutching those wires so tight? Is that … does he even know how to play drums? She places a hand on her stomach, takes a breath, and finds her way to him without breaking anything.

She’s right behind him. No change. She begins to pull his headphones off from behind, gently. He gives a start, grabs them, and swivels around, a look of shock and anger on his face.

My God, is he on something?

He smiles and drops the headphones onto his shoulders. He looks so vibrant, alive. Maybe I should—but a contraction ends the thought. Mike pops up, pulling her toward the chair.

“Hey! Here here here, sit, babe,” he says. “Scared me!”

She straightens up and waves him off. Need to check the time, but have to get this out first.

“Mike, you know I love how—no, thank you, MIKE, no thank you, I don’t need to sit.” Deep breath. She starts again, slowly.

“I know how much having a creative outlet means to you. I love that you’ve rediscovered your love for music …”

“But,” he says.

“But now I’m worried, and I need some answers.”

She sees him glance at the bill in her hand.

“Ame, I’m getting super-good deals, I promise,” he says. “My bonus comes in a few months—”

“In February. It’s June,” she says.

He starts to talk again, but she holds a hand up.

“The money is only part of it. Mike, we haven’t seen you in three weeks.”

“What?” he says. “I’ve been home way more than usual.”

“Yeah, but down here. Always down here.” She glances around at the instruments, waiting patiently on their stands, with microphones perched in front of them; at the soundproofing foam staple-gunned to the walls and rafters; at the banks of electronics. “What does work think you’re doing?”

“So, it is about money.”

“It’s been three weeks. Three weeks of you going to work … much less often than usual—is that fair to say? Three weeks of you spending all your time and energy building a recording studio, of you going out shopping at all hours. You’re spending money like … Mike, this is over ten thousand dollars. And that’s not counting whatever that guy is going to charge to repair the damage from hauling the Schmutzes’ piano down here.”

Mike starts to smile, but she stops it with a look.

“What do you need to know?” he asks.

Fuck, he is really pushing it.

“I need to know where this is going, for starters,” she says.

“I know, I know,” he says. She waits it out. He takes a breath, then says, much more slowly, “I know.”

There it is. Something shifted. She feels a surge of positivity.

Mike reaches for her hand, the one not holding the credit card bill.

“I don’t know. I’ve just been, like …”

She squeezes his hand. Keep going. …

“This isn’t another sea glass thing. …” It’s all he can manage, but she can tell that was hard for him.

“I know,” she says softly. “That’s what I’m afraid of. It’s weird. It’s a little spooky. It doesn’t make sense. It feels like … something else.”

He looks her full in the face, and there’s a struggle there. She feels a few things—an ache in her heart, a jolt in her belly, and the thought that she’s going to be sick. She checks her watch.

Several thoughts tear through her mind simultaneously—I am not having this baby in the Schmutzes’ basement. … Where is Caleb? … Say good-bye to the basement, Mike. But only two words come out of her mouth: “Oh shit.”