Saint Leonard of the Chaos
by Amy Cuomo
When Olivia turned the corner and saw the flashing blue lights, her heart started to race. She pulled her Honda Accord onto the lawn and quickly turned off the engine. She jumped out and smoothed her skirt without thinking. A uniformed officer ushered two paramedics out of the house. They guided a stretcher carrying a figure draped in a sheet. Olivia ran toward the body. The officer stood in her way.
“Ma’am. You can’t—”
“Is that my—”
“No, ma’am. Mr. Becksted is inside.”
She tried to move past the officer, but before she could go into what was once her home, he stopped her saying, “If you wouldn’t mind, ma’am, I have just a few questions.” He saw the anxious look in her eyes. “Mr. Becksted is fine, ma’am. She nodded and tried to compose herself. “There’s no sense standing out in the cold,” she said. “Let’s go in.”
Ten minutes later, he left. Olivia looked around the sitting room. Every place you looked, there were remnants of life. Newspapers, magazines, a chain from a bike, books on everything from ancient Egypt to mushroom farming, frames with missing photos, throw rugs, an oar, musical instruments in various states of disrepair, and roofing tiles. Yard sale ephemera climbed like kudzu in every direction.
She started down a thin path leading to the hall but stopped when she spied her once beautiful chintz sofa now collapsed under the debris of strangers’ lives. She slowed her rapid breathing and told herself there was plenty of oxygen. She stared hard at the walls falling toward her, stilling their motion with a glare. Five years ago, she had finally stopped believing that her sweet husband would free himself from his demons. It had been five years since they separated. Five years since she’d walked out that door.
She made her way to the dining room. There he sat on a step stool. Her mouth was dry. She swallowed.
“Hello, Leonard,” she said.
He looked up. That old gentle smile played on his lips.
“You came,” he replied, clearly touched.
“Of course. The police called. They said it was urgent.”
He answered her unasked question.
“They said he had been burgling houses in the neighborhood for the last six weeks. No one could catch him. He climbed in through the upstairs window in the dark and fell against – everything.” Leonard hung his head in shame. “He’s been dead for three days.”
When they were young, they had hiked through Wales, amazed at the country’s austere beauty and its desolation. Olivia remembered how carefully she packed all the essentials. The extra weight would only slow them down. They traveled for two weeks, taking in the sights they believed would become the bastion of memories that could steal them against the onslaught of old age. Now, staring at her ex-husband, his eyes wide with shock, his hands dangling between his legs, she couldn’t comprehend how their promising lives had fallen into all this rubble.
When Leonard spoke again, his voice was barely audible, “He was only twenty-three.” “I’m sorry,” she murmured, fearful that a change in tone, a shift in pitch, or a rise in volume would cause the stack of yard tools piled high against the wall to come tumbling down on her head.
Leonard looked at her, searching desperately for consolation. “He might have changed. He could have. . . reformed. If he hadn’t...”
She cut him off. “There’s no way to know. Try not to think about it.”
“Do you think they’ll arrest me?” He asked her earnestly.
“What on earth for?”
“I killed that boy,” he replied.
She answered in one breath, “You didn’t kill anyone. He wasn’t a boy; he was a burglar. He broke into your house. He had an accident and died.”
Before he could speak again, she leaned toward him and put her hands on his shoulders.
“Leonard,” she said softly. “You are not responsible for that man’s death.” Her words seemed to slip through the narrow crevices that she knew existed but couldn’t be seen in the clutter surrounding her. He stood. The streetlight glared into a corner of a window left uncovered. He looked haggard. Gaunt. He had let himself go completely.
“Olivia. I have to stop. I have to fix. . .”
She shook her head.
“Shhh...” She couldn’t hear this again, not now, not ever.”
He looked around the room. “I’m going to get rid of it. All of it.” She didn’t move. She glanced away.
“You don’t believe me.”
“No,” she replied.
Her voice held no accusation or acrimony. Even during the last years that they lived together, she knew that even though his compulsive collecting had come between them, there was no malice. It wasn’t about her, and that fact was the one that was the most difficult to bear. She wasn’t even part of the equation. If she were younger, she might have hoped that this was it. This was the miracle she had waited for. Lightning strikes. Saul falls from his horse. Paul emerges.
He spoke again.
“I’ll start right away.”
“No,” she said quietly.” He looked at her, pleading. “Please, this time, it will be different.”
This time, she was firm. “No.”
He understood. “No,” he agreed but could not stop himself from asking, “Stay? Just for tonight. Please. Stay with me.”
Olivia put her coat on and walked over, and gently kissed his forehead. Carefully, she made her way back through the hall, into the sitting room, and out of the house. As she walked down the drive, she thought that when the police called again, it would not be a stranger found dead in that house. Dry-eyed, she slipped into the car, put the key in the ignition, and drove away.
Amy Cuomo is a Professor of Theatre at the University of West Georgia, where she teaches courses in theatre, film, and women’s studies. She is also a playwright. Her short play, “Happy,” was a nominee for the Heidiman Award, and her ten-minute plays have been produced by theatre companies in New York, California, Arizona, and New Zealand. She is a member of Working Title Playwrights. "Saint Leonard of the Chaos" is her first Flash Fiction piece. Amy Cuomo can be reached at acuomo@gmail.com.