The disclaimer: none of these characters belong to me; they belong to Shoot the Moon Enterprises and Warner Bros to whom I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to take them out for a spin and a bit of light humour.
Uncommon Knowledge
(Or: Sergeant Schultz would be proud)
There were a lot of things Amanda didn't know when she'd finally figured out how to make the evening work. When Lee had called her at the last minute for help with a surveillance job, she'd agreed, not knowing Dotty was going out to a new seniors' dance lesson night. It was Dotty who had pointed out – perfectly reasonably – that at 12 and a half, Philip was old enough to be in charge for an evening, especially when it wasn't even a school night.
"I don't wanna be babysat by Phillip!" Jamie had immediately protested.
'He's not babysitting – he's just going to be in charge of making sure you both get into bed on time and besides I don't even think either of us will be out that late anyway, will we, Mother?" Amanda had replied. She'd leaned over and ruffled Jamie's hair. "You're both getting much too big to be babysat, but I'm sure I can trust you both, right, Fellas?"
Jamie had nodded vehemently and if Phillip had been slower to agree, neither his mother nor grandmother noticed. Both women had just been pleased that neither of them had to adjust their evening plans.
There were a lot of things Amanda didn't know when she'd finally figured out how to make the evening work. She hadn't known, for instance, that one of the men at the class would invite Dotty to extend the evening with a late supper in Alexandria at the Argentinian restaurant which opened up the floor for tango dancing every Friday night. Of course she'd taken him up on it – after all, Amanda had said she wouldn't be out all that late, right? So there were things Dotty hadn't known either.
And, of course Amanda couldn't have known that the one time when Lee remembered to take the keys out of the ignition, he'd promptly lose them while he was dumpster diving trying to find whatever it was that they'd just seen that Bulgarian diplomat throw in there.
The 45 minutes he'd had to spend in there looking had made for a late evening but certain that her mother would have gone home early, it never occurred to Amanda to protest when Lee had suggested they stop at his apartment so he could change his clothes since they truly reeked. In fact, two minutes of being trapped with the smell in the Corvette was enough to leave her praying that it wouldn't transfer to her clothes as well, so she'd rolled down her window and gulped in the bracing October air on their way to Lee's apartment and never gave the time a second thought. And if Lee had then asked if she'd wanted to stop at the all-night diner in Rosslyn on the way home and have a slice of mile-high apple pie as way of an apology, what harm could it do?
It was nice to spend time with Lee off the clock these days – it had been quite a tumultuous fall, but the evening at the opera had been lovely and it was the quiet times like this these days when Lee often told her his best stories. It was odd how so many things had happened in the last few months that could have destroyed their friendship – like Harry asking her to spy on him – but had instead led to them being closer. Tonight she'd been telling him all about what the boys had planned for their Halloween costumes and he'd responded with a sidesplitting tall tale of his uncle trying to grasp the importance of trick-or-treating to an eight-year-old. He'd almost sounded sorry for his uncle, describing the standoff they'd had over it with Lee wanting to go as Zorro, complete with sword (no surprise there) and Uncle Robert trying to convince him to just wear an old sheet and go as a ghost. It had been Alice's mother who'd intervened in the end, suggesting that Lee could go as the Lone Ranger with Alice as the faithful Tonto. He'd been sad to give up the idea of the sword, but at least he'd gotten to wear a mask – and no one had questioned Alice tagging along since he'd obviously needed a sidekick. Lee had almost been laughing too hard to tell the story when he began to describe Alice the tomboy's increasing exasperation with people who kept telling her she made a lovely Pocahontas and how after the fifth time, she'd stamped her foot and launched into a tirade about how much better Tonto was because he actually fought people to save the Lone Ranger instead of just crying like Pocahontas did to save John Smith. The unsuspecting mom at the receiving end of that lecture had apologized and given her two extra chocolate bars and then turned and given Lee the same, because "Tonto's sidekick" should get equal treatment.
"Seems like you started working with partners early," Amanda had teased him.
"Yeah," Lee had agreed, a sudden touch of seriousness to his response. "I guess I should have learned then that the Lone Ranger was much better off when he wasn't actually a loner."
"Ah well, if nothing else, you learned you wanted to be the guy in the white hat," Amanda had replied cheerfully, and Lee had smiled, grateful that she'd lightened the mood, but not sure how he felt about the fact she hadn't had any obvious reaction to his hint that he preferred not being alone these days. But that was another thing she hadn't known, so she'd been very careful to hide the way her heart had leapt at that tiny admission of Lee's, tucking it away in the "if only" part of her feelings for him, and then she'd steered the conversation back to safer ground.
There were a lot of things Amanda didn't know when she'd finally figured out how to make the evening work, but the biggest thing she didn't know was exactly what Phillip's friend Kenny had done at his sleepover birthday party the weekend before. Unbeknownst to his parents, Kenny had convinced one of his older brothers to rent a bunch of scary movies to tie in with his birthday being so close to Halloween. She had no idea that Phillip had broken her iron rule about not watching inappropriate movies and had indulged in a triple feature of Halloween, The Amityville Horror and When a Stranger Calls. As the youngest one at the party, he hadn't wanted to be the one to say 'no' to watching them even after the first one had scared him silly and he certainly hadn't wanted to confess after the fact, so his mother had no idea that he'd been having nightmares every night for a week since the party and that the reason he'd been so quiet when she'd put him in charge for the evening was because all he could imagine was that scene where the police tell the babysitter "The calls are coming from inside the house."
It hadn't taken long for Phillip to work himself up after the two women had left, his vivid imagination aided and abetted by the slight rainstorm that had blown up that evening. He'd tried to convince Jamie to stay up with him until Mom or Grandma had gotten home, but Jamie was tired and unwilling to get in trouble so he'd dragged himself off to bed pretty much exactly on time and left Phillip alone with his fears. Phillip was torn now between the comfort of being in the same room as his brother but in the dark, or staying up with all the lights on downstairs where he could watch for intruders. In the end, he'd opted for the bright lights, turning on every light on the ground floor and curling up on the sofa to wait for someone to come home. When the rainstorm arrived around 9:30, the wind rattled the Halloween wreath Amanda had put up on the front door, lifting and dropping it in an irregular rhythm that sounded exactly like someone tapping on the door and of course, every time he'd looked out the peephole, there'd been no one there, which had only ratcheted up his anxiety. When the tree branches began scraping along the rain gutter as the wind got stronger, he became convinced that there was something on the roof trying to get in, and when the Hendersons' dog howled briefly next door when it had been left out in the rain for a bit too long, he knew for certain that the house was definitely under some kind of paranormal attack and that without a doubt his mother and grandmother hadn't come home because they'd been grabbed by zombies or body snatchers or whatever it was that was outside the house, tapping on the door.
One of the things Phillip, aged 12 and a half, didn't know was that when you don't hang up the phone properly (after lifting it up several times to check that it's working), it will beep for a while and then go silent, which meant that when 11 o'clock rolled around and he decided that maybe it was time to call the police for help and lifted the receiver only to hear no dial tone, it was almost the final straw. The actual final straw came two seconds later as the phone line reactivated when he hung it up and the phone gave off a quiet half-ring from the electrical surge. With that, he armed himself with the largest kitchen knife he could find, barricaded himself into a corner of the family room where he could watch all the entrances and prepared himself for what he had no doubt was the upcoming attack of the undead. Adrenaline can only get you so far though, even when you're young, so it was somewhere around midnight when he dozed off in his fort of dining room chairs and the upended coffee table where he'd planned to make his last stand.
Amanda, of course, knew nothing of this when she got home around 12:30. She had given Lee a puzzled look when they'd arrived home to find the house ablaze with lights but everything seemed calm from the outside, so she just put it down to Dotty being absent-minded, or perhaps as a silent comment about how late Amanda had been out without calling. She had headed inside, walking briefly into the kitchen and family room to flip off all the lights before going upstairs, noticing the homemade Alamo in the corner but laughing it off silently as some kind of Khartoum Revisited that the boys hadn't cleaned up. As was her routine, she paused and pushed open the boys' bedroom door to check on them, picking her way through the dark to pull the covers up over the soundly sleeping Jamie and then turning to check on Phillip.
At first, she thought it was just a trick of the light in the darkened bedroom that she couldn't see him but as she got closer, she realized his bed was still made and he really wasn't there. Her heart may have stopped a tiny bit before she got hold of herself.
"He's probably in your room," she scolded herself internally before walking to check there. He wasn't there of course, nor was he in his grandmother's room or the bathroom or indeed anywhere on the upper floor where she had begun to run from room to room, double checking.
Lee, of course, hadn't known any of this was going on when he'd gotten back in the car and realized that Amanda's wallet had fallen out of her purse and was poking halfway out from under the passenger seat. He didn't even hesitate to pick it up and head up her driveway and around the side of the house, since he knew she'd either still be puttering around and he could tap at the back door, or, if she'd already gone upstairs, he could easily pick the lock and leave it on the counter for her to find in the morning. It certainly never occurred to him that anyone other than Amanda would be up at this time of night inside of 4247 Maplewood Drive. He couldn't have known there was a witness lurking in the family room.
Which is why, when Phillip woke up from the sound of Amanda running around upstairs and then starting to run down the stairs at high speed, calling his name with increasing fright, the first thing he saw was the shadow of a man against the French doors, with what appeared to be a large brick in his hand. In that instant, he began to scream in terror, and tried to get up, only to find that his legs were asleep and he was more or less paralysed.
Lee, hearing the screams, and fearing the worst, did what he always did which was to leap forward and begin rattling the door handle, bellowing Amanda's name, which of course set Phillip off even more. By now, Amanda had arrived in the family room, her eyes darting around the dark room, trying to find Phillip, before finally spotting his arms flailing in among the chairs. She raced forward to help him although it took him several moments to realize that it was really his mother and not some kind of evil spirit. With part of her brain, she could hear Lee trying to break in the back door and she began calling out to Phillip, but also loud enough she hoped for Lee, "It's okay! It's okay!"
"Noooooo!" Phillip wailed, pointing to the rattling door. "There's something in the backyard!" and Lee, hearing that, actually pulled his gun and whirled around to look before realizing Phillip had meant him. He immediately crouched, back flat against the side of the house and listened, trying to decide if Amanda really was fine or if he should toss caution to the wind and just break in. When he realized it was now quiet in the house, he chanced peeking through the gap at the bottom of the blinds and watched as Amanda got Phillip untangled from his redoubt and pulled him onto the couch, rocking him back and forth until he calmed down. He waited there, his own heart pounding, while Amanda took Phillip upstairs and put him to bed, waited until she came back down and quietly let him in, and waited while she tried to control her giggles enough to fill him in on how Phillip had worked himself up over the course of the night. Catching himself thinking that these were his favourite times, when they were alone, laughing together at something ridiculous and that maybe he hadn't known before now that those empty spaces in his life that he'd tried to fill with adventure and action and movement were actually just the right shape and size to be filled with quiet and friendship and people that smiled at him just that way.
They were so caught up laughing as they put the pieces together of the fragments Phillip had managed to gasp out in his tearful confession that neither of them heard the front door open until Dotty's voice came lilting in from the entryway.
"Amanda? Are you still up? You know, that silver sportscar is parked on our street again – I am really beginning to think someone around here must be having a fling, the way it only ever appears at odd hours of the night!"
With the practice of many years now, Lee had dropped like a rock behind the kitchen island and slithered into the dining room just as Dotty appeared at the top of the family room steps and joined Amanda.
"Oh Mother, now I know where Phillip gets his overactive imagination!" Amanda had teased her, carefully moving to block her mother's view of the dining room as Lee worked his way toward the front hall. "Next you'll be saying I'm hiding a man somewhere in the house!"
"Well I'm not imagining that car and the way it appears and disappears and no one ever seems to know who it belongs to!" answered Dotty. "Now, why ever are you still up? And did I hear you talking to someone when I came in? And why does the family room look like a bomb hit it?"
"Well, Mother, that would be a product of that overactive imagination I was just telling you about," Amanda answered. As she started to tell her mother the tale of Phillip's evening "in charge", she kept one ear open for the sound of Lee sneaking out the front door. She was almost certain they'd gotten away with it, when she and Dotty both heard the unmistakeable sound of the front door creaking open.
Eyes wide, Dotty had gone instantly to the steps and stared at the front door as it swung back and forth in the wind. "Now how did that happen?"
"Maybe you just didn't close it properly when you came in?" suggested Amanda helpfully, peering over her mother's shoulder and pleased to see that Lee must have made it out undetected.
"No, I'm sure I closed it and locked it!" replied Dotty firmly, as she crossed the hall and went out onto the doorstep and surveyed the empty street.
"Maybe it was Phillip's monster," laughed Amanda as she waited for Dotty to step back inside so she could once again close and lock the front door.
"It is the season for ghosts and goblins," agreed her mother. "Ugh!" she added, tossing her hands in the air. "Now how am I supposed to sleep with all these ghost stories rattling around my head? Honestly, Amanda, I don't know how people can watch those scary movies! I'm going to be up all night!"
"Well you and Phillip can commiserate over that in the morning, I don't think he'll be watching any of those again anytime soon," Amanda said soothingly as she ushered her mother toward the stairs. "I'm just going to turn out the lights and I'll be up in a minute."
As she turned away to go lock the back door and turn off the lights, Amanda shook her head, laughing quietly to herself. "Lord, I really don't know how much longer I can keep doing this!"