Shame

had told him. “My wife will be waiting for you with bated—if not wheezing—breath,” Sanders had promised.
    Caleb pushed the doorbell again. He could hear the chimes sounding throughout the house. A minute passed, but still there was no sound of footsteps, nothing to indicate that anyone was home.
    Except for the opened front door.
    Caleb reached out with his right hand, rapped with his knuckles, causing the door to open several inches, enough for Caleb to get a look inside.
    “Hello,” he called. “Anyone home?”
    Caleb wondered if he might have set off one of those silent alarms, wondered if at that very moment guards were being dispatched to the house. But he wasn’t afraid of burglar alarms so much as the alarms going off in his mind. Caleb sensed that something was very wrong. He could feel it. Standing at the threshold, he was afraid to go forward and afraid to retreat. Scents from inside reached out to him, the beguiling aroma of freshly cut flowers and potpourri, but he still didn’t feel reassured.
    “Hello,” he shouted again, willing his voice to be loud and strong.
    Again, nothing.
    Caleb couldn’t bring himself to just push open the door; that wouldn’t be quite right. Once again he knocked. The front door was oversized and made of heavy wood, but it was well-balanced. The door swung completely open, allowing him to see in. Windows and skylights made the interior light and cheery. He contemplated the tiled hallway. It led forward, first to the living room, and beyond that to the stairwell.
    “Anybody here?”
    Even to Caleb’s ears, his voice sounded strained. Almost desperate. Turn around, he tried to tell himself, and walk away.
    But he couldn’t. Caleb took a deep breath. No one would be able to fault him for going a little ways forward, maybe as far as the stairwell, where he could shout upstairs. The circumstances all but dictated that. It was possible Mrs. Sanders had succumbed to her allergies. But he still found himself balking at the doorway, his foot hovering over the entryway as if he were girding himself to jump into cold water.
    The foot dropped. He was inside. He took a second step forward, then a third. Caleb saw the white, plush carpeting in the living room, a color that bespoke no children, or the ability to afford very frequent carpet cleaning, or both.
    Then he saw the bare leg.
    “Hello,” Caleb said, the word coming out as not much more than a whisper.
    The leg didn’t move.
    Caleb stepped into the living room and found Mrs. Sanders. She was naked, her back propped up against a love seat. Her legs were spread apart. On the inside of her upper right thigh the red letters
S
and
H
had been written. An arch wound its way along the outskirts of her golden pubic patch, with a letter barely visible through the hair. An
A
. The
M
and the
E
were scripted on the inside of her left thigh.
    SHAME.
    Caleb wanted to be shocked. He wanted to feel outraged. But he couldn’t. It was almost as if he had expected just such an encounter.
    I tried to believe I could escape, he thought, but it’s always been there, always been a part of me.
    Caleb turned and ran.
    As fast as Caleb was driving, the terror was still catching up to him. He sneaked another glance in his rearview mirror. Nothing pursuing him, at least not yet. The mirror showed only his white face and his scared eyes. He didn’t find his reflection in any way reassuring.He’s dead, Caleb told himself. He’s been dead for more than twenty years.
    Caleb took a deep breath. Maybe I should go back, he thought, and call the police. But facing up to the situation frightened him. It went against a lifetime of habits. His urge to deny everything was strong, too strong. Given a choice, he didn’t want to be connected in any way with Mrs. Sanders, but as fervently as Caleb wanted to believe that his stumbling upon her was an accident, the word—the curse—belied that.
    Someone knew his secret. Caleb had been found out. He had always dreaded the thought of this moment, but the death of Mrs. Sanders made it even more horrific than he had ever imagined, and he had always imagined the worst.
    Thinking about her made him feel sick, and also guilty. He hadn’t even made sure she was dead. He’d been too afraid, too panicked, to check. He had to do something.
    Neither of the pay phones at the supermarket was being used. Caleb punched 911.
    “Emergency nine-one-one,” the dispatcher answered.
    Disguising his voice, making it