by Jeff Bell
“I dunno. What if it just came off?”
Sam narrows her eyes. “Okay,” she says, “let’s assume it came off. Not much we can do about it now.”
My skin is growing cold, despite the tropical heat. I want to retrace our route, make sure that the hubcap hasn’t become some hazard, lying like an unexploded land mine some place in the road. Perhaps a guy on a motorcycle will hit it, sending him flying across the pavement and into a life as a paraplegic. There are so many possible horror scenarios. But as much as I want to go back for a look, it’s simply not an option, so instead I focus on the Tempo.
“Maybe there’s a safety issue,” I say.
“For the Tempo?”
“I dunno.” Logic is not a factor here.
Sam has closed her eyes. She doesn’t know what to say to me. Pregnancy has made her somewhat less patient with all my challenges and quirks.
I break the silence seconds later, conveying the message that Doubt is whispering in my head: “We’ve got to tell the rental office that the hubcap is missing.”
“I’m sure they already know,” Sam says, “or they will know, when they look it over.”
“You’re not hearing me,” I say. “We have got to say something to the gal behind the counter. I am not going to spend the rest of my vacation wondering whether they know.”
I am learning the game. Handle this now or pay the price later with hours of blurry playbacks. I can’t explain this to Samantha, but I can and do again beg her to mention the hubcap when returning our keys. I know if I get involved in the dialogue, I’ll blow things even further out of proportion, so I stand off in a corner of the rental office and watch the confused clerk ask Sam again what she’s talking about. A hubcap? Oooh-kay.
Samantha is still frustrated with me the following morning. I am ruining our vacation. But today is October 21, so she has no choice but to be nice to me. It’s my thirtieth birthday.
We spend the day at Waikiki Beach. Sam suggests I rent a sailboard and play in the waves, like I used to in our college years. But somehow after the whole rental car ordeal, we both know that’s not such a great idea. Instead I get a small raft and join the throngs of tourists bobbing like driftwood in the shallow surf.
Samantha strips down to her maternity swimsuit and stakes out a spot on the beach just in front of me. Within minutes, her eyes are closed. She looks so peaceful. Six months pregnant with a belly the size of a basketball, yet she couldn’t appear any more comfortable, any more at peace. I wonder what that must be like, to relax that way. It’s been so long, I can’t remember.
A nearby couple are in stitches about something, giggling so hard they wind up gasping for breath. They’re doing this in front of me on purpose, I decide. Just to show off. Just to rub it in.
There must be two hundred people around me, all of them showing off how much fun they can have, all of them rubbing it in. This is Hawaii, for God’s sake. How can you not have fun? I close my eyes and try to think happy thoughts. I can’t find any. Only looping clips of everything I’ve ever done wrong in my first three decades on earth. I try instead to think about the future, but for some reason, it’s not there anymore. After years of conjuring up vivid images of my big career in radio, and my house in Tiburon overlooking the Bay, and my precocious kids’ first piano recitals, I simply cannot put myself into a scene from the future.
I shiver the full length of my life raft, wondering just what this new development means.
“A tropical Mai Tai greeting. Scrumptious roasted pig, fresh from the imu. Songs and dances of Polynesia—”
Samantha is rattling off a list of the treats we’re in for at Paradise Cove. We are headed there for an authentic Hawaiian luau, Sam’s plan for the perfect culmination of my thirtieth birthday celebration. The bus trip is long and winding, and by the time we arrive, my stomach hurts as much as my head has for days.
The place is breathtaking. With its lush greenery and coconut palms, there’s no question whatsoever that Paradise Cove is worthy of its name. It strikes me, in fact, that every Hawaiian postcard I’ve ever seen must have been shot on these grounds.
We make our way to the arts and crafts booths and the various game areas. Sam is like a kid taking her first lap around Disneyland. There is so much to do. She wants to take it all in.
“Hey, you want to try the spear throw?” Sam asks me, and I wonder if she’s making a joke.
I tell her there ain’t a chance in hell that I’m going to pick up that spear and send it flying through a crowd. I can’t even walk through a shopping mall without inflicting damage. But it’s too late. Some Polynesian stud with bulging muscles and a string of bones around his neck has appeared out of nowhere and is handing me a spear. I have no choice but to throw it, so I do. It lands safely on the grass. As near as I can tell, no one has died—though I myself am suddenly feeling gravely ill. Our island host retrieves the spear and suggests I try again. I shake my head no, and send him on his way.
“Ooops,” Sam says, scrunching up her face. “Sorry ’bout that. What do you say we just go make a bead necklace for Nicole?”
I dunno. My stomach is all messed up now, and I can’t be sure I’m not coming down with some bug. I probably shouldn’t go putting my paws in that big vat of beads. What if somebody else gets my germs and gets sick?
I tell Sam that she should go have some fun without me. She says that’s ridiculous, that she wants to spend my birthday with me. So the two of us stand around for the next several hours—stand around and do nothing, because I’m afraid to string beads. And afraid to throw a spear. And afraid to rent a sailboard. And afraid to drive a rental car. And afraid to use a snorkel. And afraid to look out my plane window.
Just plain afraid.
Soon the sun is setting and Samantha and I are standing on a beach at the edge of the luau grounds. The sky is a thousand shades of yellow and orange.
“I’m so sorry,” Sam whispers. “I really thought you’d enjoy all this.”
“I am,” I say, but the lie just hangs there in the air between us. We stand in silence for a good five minutes, watching this huge ball of brilliant golden light sink slowly into the Pacific.
The sun setting on Paradise. What a prophetic moment this would prove to be.
seven
fast-forward 5 months
And baby makes four.
Brianna is ten weeks old now. Samantha is back at work part-time. Nicole is adjusting to life as a big sister. And I am trying like hell to be a contributing member of my family.
Never before has Sam needed me more; no longer can she carry our whole team on her own. I want to be there for her. I want to be a husband and father. I want to help shape the life of this precious little creature, who from the first moment I saw her has reminded me that I am still capable of doing something right, even if that something is merely passing along my chromosomes.
Today Sam needs me to pick up Nicole from daycare and watch her for a few hours. I’ve promised to oblige, so when my shift at Channel 2 wraps up I rush off to my car and head for Crayon College in San Bruno, where Nikki is waiting for me.
The traffic leaving Oakland is stacked up even more than usual this morning. Road crews are working on the Jackson Street on-ramp to northbound 880, doing earthquake retrofitting, I think. I hate construction zones. All those workers milling around within inches of my passing car. More and more, I catch myself worrying that I might clip some guy in a hard hat and not even realize it. Thank God for rearview mirrors, although they too have their limitations.
Now I see what’s going on. A series of orange road cones, the narrow tubular kind, is squeezing two lanes into one in the thirty feet or so before the on-ramp. Crap. These merges are the worst. I want to find an alternate route, but it’s too late. I am sandwiched between cars to the front, rear, and side of me.
I get lucky; the merge goes smoothly. As for the construction workers, it turns out they are well off the road, safely away from me.
I let
out a sigh of relief, but it turns into a gasp of panic as I watch an orange road cone pop up from under the right rear tire of the car just in front of me.
I’m no more than five feet away from it now, and closing in quickly. Four feet. Three feet. Two. The cone disappears, only to pop up in my rearview mirror a second later, then vanish again beneath the car behind me.
My pulse and blood pressure go through the roof. I want to pull my car over, but I’m on the on-ramp now and there’s very little room. I check the mirror again and see one car after another knock over the beleaguered road cone. Like one of those old Weeble toys—the ones that “wobble but they don’t fall down”—the damn thing just keeps popping back up.
I’m on 880 before I know it. The cone disappears from my line of sight. The Broadway exit is coming up, and I tell myself I should take it so I can loop around to Jackson and have another look at the cone. I’ve been doing this a lot lately—retracing my route when I’m behind the wheel. Just to make sure that potholes and street bumps aren’t really pedestrians I’ve hit, and that car honks and sirens aren’t the results of anything I’ve done. Sometimes a single loop will make me feel better, sometimes it takes two or three. But I haven’t got time to loop back even once now. Nicole is waiting for me.
I try coaching myself as I make my way across the Bay Bridge. Clearly I was not the only vehicle—or even the first—to run over this cone. Hell, I watched the car in front of me do the very same thing.
Or did I?
Right on cue, Doubt checks in to make sure I question my rational conclusions. Perhaps you just imagined seeing the cone emerge from under that car ahead of you. Maybe you knocked it over first.
My physical senses, I am finding, are growing almost irrelevant in my day-to-day life.
The Treasure Island exit is coming up. I could turn off and go back to Jackson Street and still make it to Crayon College no more than twenty minutes late. That would be entirely forgivable. But a bus keeps me from getting over to the exit in time. I tell myself I can wait until tomorrow morning after work to check things out.
The trip through San Francisco is painfully slow. My head is throbbing again. I need to see the flattened cone, figure out its position relative to traffic and everything else. I think back on all the sleep I lost over the boat incident in those early days and realize I’m never going to rest tonight if I don’t go sort out everything in Oakland this afternoon.
Nicole and I will just have to take a little field trip.
12:00 noon. The morning session at Crayon College is letting out. Vulnerable little kids are running around everywhere. If there’s one thing I hate even more than construction zones, it’s a parking lot full of toddlers and minivans.
Nicole is thrilled to see me. Several weeks ago she turned three, and suddenly she seems so grown up. So much more plugged in to what’s going on in her world. I know I have to be more careful now in covering my tracks around her. So when she asks me if we can go to the park, I’m quick on my feet.
“I’ve got a much better idea, honey,” I tell her.
“Really?!” Nicole’s eyes light up. Her smile brightens.
“How ’bout you and I go for a walk.”
“Where?” she wants to know.
“In a really special, secret place.”
Nicole loves adventures. The more mysterious the better.
“Cool!”
My older daughter can’t wait to see what I have in store for her this afternoon.
12:50 p.m. The trip back to Oakland took a good forty minutes, enough time to boost Nicole’s excitement about my plans for the two of us. She looks perplexed as I pull our car up to a metered spot beneath the freeway at the Jackson Street on-ramp, and so too does an obviously drunk, unkempt man in his fifties who watches us park.
“We’re here!” I say with feigned excitement.
“This is where we’re going to walk?” Nicole’s enthusiasm is gone in a heartbeat.
I explain that there’s a really cool construction zone just around the corner and that the two of us are going to check it out.
“Oooh-kay.” Nikki decides to give me the benefit of the doubt.
The sidewalk is torn up, but I need to get closer, so I walk my frightened daughter along the gutter. Cars whiz by, inches from the two of us. Nicole turns to look at me. I tell her everything is fine.
I find a spot on the corner just across from the on-ramp, maybe ten feet from my orange cone, whose base I now note is somehow affixed to the concrete. Car after car knocks it over as it tries to spring upright time and again. I see that the cone is set well into the lane and right in the path of traffic. It would be damn near impossible to avoid running over it.
Perhaps, indeed, everything is in order.
“Daddy?” Nicole is tugging on my sleeve. “I don’t get why we’re here.” She’s grown up so much since our last covert mission.
I try explaining that I wanted to show her how a construction crew works, but I can tell she’s not buying my act.
“You’re right,” I say. “I guess this isn’t really all that interesting. Let’s just go home.”
2:30 p.m. Nicole is playing with her dolls in the living room, and Samantha arrives home with Brianna. She finds me sitting on the stairs, hunched over and stretching my hair back across the top of my head.
Sam puts Bri in her jumper and walks over to me. “What happened?” she asks. “You look awful. Is everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say. But I am not, and Sam knows it.
“Talk to me, Jeff.”
“I can’t.” I know if I try now, I’m going to break apart into a thousand pieces.
Sam puts her arms around me, feels me shaking. I pray to God Nicole won’t come walking into the hallway.
“Tell me what happened,” my wife begs of me.
I start to cry, slowly at first, but uncontrollably within seconds. I do my best to recount my morning, in all its gory detail.
Sam assures me that everything’s fine. I shake my head, tell her I need to go back to Oakland.
“Why?” she asks. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ve got to talk to the road crew.”
“And tell them what?” Sam is trying so hard to tap into my thinking.
“That one of their cones is in the wrong place and keeps getting run over.”
“I must be missing something,” she decides. “I honestly don’t get why that’s your responsibility.”
Because that’s how it feels, I want to tell her. Because Doubt is whispering that I’ve got no other choice—except, that is, to keep reviewing the whole thing in my mind until I can rule out all the potential consequences and my own culpability.
“It’s just easier this way,” I say under my breath, as I grab my coat and car keys and head for the door.
4:00 p.m. Where the hell are they? I am looking everywhere at the Jackson Street construction site for someone I can tell about the misplaced road cone. It appears the workers have gone home for the day. But after another forty-five minutes of sitting in trans-Bay traffic, I am unwilling to accept this unexpected development. Damn these guys for making me wait until the morning to share my concerns. I can now add anger to the mix of emotions tearing me to shreds.
By the time I’m back on the Bay Bridge for my sixth trip of the day across the span, traffic is in full rush-hour mode. Bumper to bumper. Crawling along the upper deck at three miles an hour now, I find myself staring off to the west at the four jutting towers of the Embarcadero Center, wishing I had a reason to be there tonight. With each passing week, KCBS has become more of a safe haven for me. Behind the microphone, I am king of the world, even more so than I was at KSFO. I live for my on-air hours every week, for that rare sense of pride I always manage to find in them.
Anchoring the news is the one thing in my life I can still do with any confidence. Yet, sitting here now thinking back on recent shifts, I realize that even at KCBS, I have started hedging my bets. After years of rolling
tape on my air shifts, more out of habit than anything else, I now find myself playing back my cassette airchecks all too often, listening for something or another I may have said or failed to say. So important have these damn tapes become to me that I recently snapped at an assistant editor who turned off a machine airchecking my show. “Sorry, just an old quirk of mine,” I explained when he asked why, unlike any other anchor in the building, I see this need to record everything I do on the air.
6:00 p.m. Samantha is waiting for me at the door. She’s been worried, she says, wondering why I’ve been gone so long. Dinner is getting cold. She wants me to eat.
I tell her I’m not hungry and disappear into the downstairs bathroom. As the door closes behind me, I let it all out. Tears. Screams. Sixteen months’ worth of pent-up rage. I simply cannot stand the pain anymore.
Soon I am curled up next to the toilet on a cold tile floor, the very one on which I found myself a full year ago during Nicole’s second birthday party. From my vantage point down here, the world is spinning with the fury of a Midwest tornado. I am a mere passenger, spiraling without hope into a violent vortex.
Suddenly an arm reaches out and saves me from my fall.
Samantha, it seems, has laid herself down next to me and is burrowing her head into my upper back.
“It’s okay,” she whispers, “Everything is going to be okay.” My wife is speaking in the same hushed tones she uses with baby Brianna in the middle of the night.
“I—don’t—know—what—is—hap—pen—ing—to—me.” My words come out as single syllables between gasps for air.
“You need help, Jeffie. We’re going to find you help.”
I turn around and see that I’m not the only one crying.
12:00 midnight. A piercing horn sounds just in front of me. It’s coming from the car I’m about to slam into. I throw my head back and it hits something soft. My pillow. I am in my bed. The car crash is a dream. The horn is my alarm. Another nightmare about crashing vehicles. This is the rest I get when I finally close my eyes for five or six hours every night.
