Mancave

The Mancave

By Renee´ Flemings

© February 2021

Dayna Harbor stood in the middle of the dilapidated room in the basement that her husband Harvey called his mancave wondering what the big deal was. It wasn’t like any of the mancaves that she’d seen guys boast about on television, yet Harvey was proud of this space and spent many evenings down here alone with the door locked. Since the house had been built in the 1940s the walls of the basement were made of cinderblock, which was common at the time and no matter how much paint she or Harvey had put on those walls they always looked shoddy. The entire basement reminded her of a slaughterhouse room she’d seen in one of those slasher/horror movies. There were old wires sticking out everywhere and several of those multiplug things that were so filled with plugs they looked like tumbleweeds. This had to be some kind of fire hazard. Well, what did Dayna know? According to Harvey, not much.

“Sheesh,” Dayna muttered. “What a mess.”

She smiled remembering a line from a Bette Davis movie that some people argued she’d never said, but Dayna chose to believe she did, “What a dump!” There was a time Dayna had chosen to believe many things. Like, she had chosen to believe that maybe deep down Harvey was a wounded puppy and that’s why he frequently lost his temper. She had chosen to believe that everyone had a good heart, a good soul, but couldn’t help being flawed. She unconsciously touched the tender spot on her jaw where Harvey hadn’t been able to control his flaws night before last when she’d knocked on the door of his mancave to ask him for grocery money.

“What do you think you’re doing?! Huh?” He’d shouted as he flung open the door.

She’d been softly pawing at the door, trying to get his attention without raising his ire. She’d succeeded with one of her objectives.

“Sorry, Harv, I’m sorry… I just need to get groceries tomorrow-- didn’t mean to bother you--”

“YOU KNOW YOU DON’T BOTHER ME WHEN I’M DOWN HERE! THAT’S RULE NUMBER ONE—YOU FRIGGIN’ IDIOT!”

With that, the blows had begun to land, and the muffled cries followed. He had taught her not to cry out loud, “For Christ sakes, you want somebody to call the cops? Then who’s gonna take care of you? Nobody wants you but me!”

So Dayna had learned to cry softly. She had learned to do many things softly over the years. Afterall according to Harvey, it was his world, and she was just living in it. Hence, she never spoke when he was watching television. She never interrupted him while he was talking. Instead she always waited until he asked her to speak. She learned to walk softly or stay on the second floor of the house whenever he was in his mancave so that she wouldn’t disturb him when she moved around. She had become so soft the two friends she once had never heard from her anymore. Harvey had actually forbade her talking to one of them, Sharon, after she’d called a few times and encouraged Dayna to leave Harvey. But this was the way Dayna’s father and her mother had lived. She had watched as her mother had kept quiet around her father or quietly cried while applying ice to her jaw or eye.

Dayna had told Harvey she was leaving once, and he’d gotten really mad at her. So mad that she thought she might have to go to the hospital, but he had cried then and begged her not to go. She didn’t and he was right-- everything healed up just fine.

But something had changed over the past two weeks.

Harvey was coming home from his job at the meat plant and going straight downstairs and staying there almost all night. He’d also been eating his dinner alone in his mancave. Aside from worrying that the sound of the dishwasher or her footsteps might make him angry at her, she enjoyed the peace and quiet. Honestly, she was sick and tired of his endless chatter about work and what stupid a-holes everyone else was at the plant but him and how he couldn’t wait to retire.

What Harvey didn’t know was that something had changed for Dayna too.

Last week she’d found this book stuck in the mailbox. It was a black notebook, very thin and about the size of her hand. She had no idea where it came from or why someone had given it to her. She knew it was for her because it was wrapped in brown paper with her name on it. For some reason she felt she shouldn’t tell Harvey about the book. She’d stuck it in her dress pocket to keep it safe and had starting reading it upstairs while Harvey was down in his mancave. There were handwritten notes and phrases of encouragement, also articles about women going through things were taped inside. Some of those things reminded her of her mother and some reminded her of herself and it made her feel funny inside. This book said she had rights. That’s what Sharon had told her, too: “Rights.” That’s why Harvey had even forbade her from watching certain television shows.

He’d said, “Rights are just a bunch of stupid ideas that make women think they can do shit they can’t.”

As she continued to read the notebook she began to think that maybe Harvey had lied to her. She began to think that she did have rights. What kind, she wasn’t sure. Maybe like the right to see what was so important in the mancave?

After Harvey had gone to work this morning she went downstairs. She began her search in boxes and on ledges hoping to find a key to the padlock on the door instead of it being on his giant key ring. She thought there might be a key hidden somewhere because Harvey always hung his ring with all the keys from work on a hook when he came home, and that ring was still on the hook whenever he went to the basement. Inside the hollowed-out center of an old lamp, one of the many things that had come with the house when Harvey’s mother had died and left it to him, was a single key.

Dayna’s hands were sweaty, and they shook as she tried to open the lock. In fact they were so sweaty that she dropped the key at least twice before she got it into the padlock. Now she stood there looking at the drooping wires, the ugly walls, the poop-brown recliner sitting on a hideous orange rug facing the only modern thing in the room, a flat screen TV propped up against a ledge. On a prefab shelf shoved into the corner a collection of Harvey’s high school sports trophies were displayed next to a photo of Harvey and his mom, Eloise.

A woman of questionable sanity.

For the most part Dayna recalled her as being mean except when discussing a vast array of conspiracy theories. Dayna would sit listening to Harvey and Eloise discuss how the world could possibly be flat, how aliens had killed JFK or, how the banks were run by Satanic cults, while she quietly sipped her tea and never spoke.

She believed that’s why Eloise would often remark to Harvey, “This one’s a keeper.”

Harvey would smile smugly and grasp Dayna’s knee with his meaty, hairy hand grinning, “Yeah, I think so too, Ma.”

After reading some of the passages in the book Dayna scoffed realizing that may have been a clue to run. Run like hell. It had been three years since she’d married Harvey and one year since Eloise had died leaving them alone in the house that they’d all shared. As she stood there thinking about Eloise and her eccentricities she noticed that something seemed out of place in that dingy mancave. It was the cats.

Eloise had kept a collection of ceramic cats in her room and now they stood scattered on the half wall ledge and the shelves with a big one right near that foul looking recliner. All of them had goofy grins and wide eyes, and they were painted an array of colors. They were kind of scary looking in a bad clown kind of way. It was beginning to freak Dayna out. The one nearest the television had eyes that seemed to be following her movements.

“Oh my God,” thought Dayna, “What if it’s a camera and Harvey is watching me right now?”

In a panic she rushed towards the ledge and tripped over a mass of plugs and wires. Her hand grazed the cat causing it to fall and break.

“Shit!” Dayna exclaimed, “Shoot, sorry, I mean shoot.” She apologized to the empty space looking down at the shattered cat.

What had she done?! Harvey was going to be REALLY angry now. First of all, she’d trespassed into the mancave, then she’d been snooping. Harvey had told her many times how much he hated snoops.

“They should be shot on sight,” he’d say.

Dayna was having difficulty breathing.

“He’s gonna kill me for real this time! What am I—”

She stopped mid-sentence, mid-panic, when she noticed there was something within the scattered shards of the broken cat and it wasn’t a camera. It was a stack of money, neatly rolled in a rubber band. Dayna sat on the putrid rug, mesmerized by what she held in her hand. She counted five hundred dollars in tens, and twenties. Curious, she began to examine the other ceramic cats. Inside each was a roll of money, which she pulled out and began to count. Absently, she began humming the song from the musical “Cats,” which she had sung in high school choir. Dayna kept opening cats, humming and soon a plan was forming in her mind. She was invigorated because all while doing this her fear of Harvey had begun to dissipate, replaced by her plan. She thought of the notebook in her pocket.

Once Dayna had counted all the money it totaled forty thousand dollars. Some bills had been rolled and re-rolled.

“Is that what he’s been doing down here for the past two weeks? Planning a life change?”

Maybe. It was time, Dayna decided, for her own life change. She took twenty thousand dollars putting it into a laundry bag. If nothing else, life had taught her the kind of person she wanted to be and that was fair. Not like Harvey.

The first step in her plan was to get out of Dodge. Dayna closed and locked the door as she composed the letter in her head telling Harvey that she was going to start over—that was an article taped into the black notebook, “Starting Over” --and if he bothered her for any reason she would press charges against him for hurting her these past years. He’d have half the money and the house. What more could he want? She was climbing up the stairs when she began to smell smoke and heard a pop followed by a whine. It was a chilling sound, like all the cats were crying at the same time. Maybe she’d pulled a wire when she’d tripped? Or, was it wire overload for the old house?

Dayna shoved the money into her favorite zippered shopping bag and walked quickly out of the house wondering if she should call the fire department. Instead she thought that maybe it was better to let it burn. Let it burn away all the history of her short time with Harvey. Then she realized that the money would burn too. He wouldn’t know she had the twenty thousand dollars.

“Where would she go?” She wondered as she walked down the street towards the train station. She had no idea, and it didn’t matter. For the first time in three years, Dayna laughed out loud.