Swallowing Stones

by Joyce McDonald

  Michael was only half listening. He felt as if his insides had been drained from him, as if he’d been stuffed with cotton. He did not trust himself to speak.

  “Are you listening?” Joe said. “Because we got to act like nothing’s happened. We got to turn this car around, and you got to take your driver’s test just like everybody expects.” He slapped the door handle with his hand, kicked the door open, and came around to the driver’s side. “Move over.” He shoved Michael’s shoulder. “Get over,” he said, pushing him to the passenger side. Then he slid behind the wheel and drove them to the DMV.

  Later Michael hardly remembered the driver’s test, remembered only how he’d felt as if he’d left his whole future sitting back there on the shoulder of the road. And when the man who gave him the test told him to turn right, Michael thought of all the years he had spent becoming the best track star Briarwood Regional had ever had. And he thought about the college applications he was planning to fill out.

  When the man told him to do a three-point turn, Michael carefully put the car in reverse and thought about his parents and his younger brother, Josh. What would they do if they knew they were harboring a killer under their roof? For that was what he was, right? A murderer. He tried to let the word penetrate, but it lay like a lump of lead, silent and unspoken, on his tongue. Accident or not, he had taken another person’s life.

  And when the man told him to drive down the block and turn left at the stop sign, Michael thought, for some crazy reason, about Amy Ruggerio and her torn bikini top, and suddenly he wanted to cry.

  He did not pass his driver’s test. He would have to try again later. He did not pass, because when the man told him to pull up next to the orange cones and then parallel park, Michael found he could not think clearly. His eyes burned so badly he couldn’t see. His hands shook so much that he could not hold the steering wheel. Desperate, he reached for the key, shut off the engine, and climbed out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition. The man, wearing a short-sleeved white shirt but no jacket, had loosened his tie and stared through the window at Michael, who had simply turned and walked away.

  Later that day Michael went to a hardware store and bought a three-and-a-half-foot piece of PVC pipe and two end caps. That night, while the rest of his family slept, he put the Winchester inside the pipe, sealed the two end caps to keep water from getting in, carefully unstacked the firewood from the pile behind the garage, dug a three-foot-deep trench, buried the rifle, and restacked the wood. Then he went to bed and lay awake the entire night, wondering if he would ever sleep again.

  jenna

  2

  charlie Ward’s death made the national news only hours after it had happened, although few people noticed. They were too caught up in watching the brilliant dazzle of color exploding above them in celebration of Independence Day. The anchorman on one major network called Charlie Ward’s death a “bizarre accident”; another referred to it as a “rain of death from the sky.” But Jenna Ward did not watch the news that night. Fred Campbell, the family’s physician, concerned about the effect that the barrage of firecrackers and cherry bombs in the neighborhood would have on Jenna and her mother, had given them each a sedative and sent them to bed. They had slept through the entire night, unaware of the reporters stalking below their bedroom windows.

  The Briarwood police had cordoned off the area, stretching yellow tape across the front yard to ward off morbid spectators. Dave Zelenski, the local police chief, had stationed police officers round the clock at the scene of the accident. And so it was that Jenna, her head dulled from the aftermath of the sedative, peered out her bedroom window on the following morning to see a police officer standing at the end of her driveway. That was how she knew the nightmare of the day before had really happened.

  Outside, the July sun was just spilling over the rooftop of the church across the street. Without checking her clock, Jenna knew it was early, probably no later than six. As she watched the police officer take a Thermos from his car and pour himself a cup of coffee, she wondered what she should be feeling. Because the truth was, she felt nothing.

  Below, on the roof of the front porch, a tight line of mourning doves had gathered. They sat as rigid as little gray soldiers, their feathers pressed so close together that Jenna thought if one flew off, they would all be lifted into the air in a long silver rope of birds.

  For a long time she watched the birds, because she did not know what else to do. Then she rummaged through one of the drawers for a pair of shorts and a top, dressed indifferently, and wandered into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

  She splashed cold water on her face and reached for a towel. The unmistakable scent of her father’s Royal Copenhagen aftershave rushed up to greet her. He had used this towel, probably only the day before. She held the towel in her hand for a few minutes, then folded it neatly and hung it on the rack, as if she were expecting him to use it later.

  Barefoot, her dark blond hair still a tangled mess, she descended the stairs. The house seemed unusually large and silent. But it smelled the same: an odor of rose-petal potpourri, strategically placed in bowls and baskets in every room by her mother. The odor had never seemed so overpowering before. It made her gag.

  The kitchen was no better, so she took the basket of rose petals from its place on the counter and dumped the contents into the trash compactor. Her mother would be furious. Jenna shrugged at the thought. So what else was new?

  She reached for the teakettle, filled it with water, and put it on to boil. It was all so odd, she thought. Here she was, calmly going about her morning routine as if nothing had changed. She felt as if she were standing outside herself, watching as she opened the small white envelope and pulled out the tea bag. Watching as she set it in a mug. Watching for her hand to shake, which it never did. Not so much as a tremor. She poured the boiling water and added a packet of sugar substitute, all very matter-of-factly.

  While she waited for the tea to steep, she studied the list of chores that her mother had made up for her father and taped to the refrigerator door. The list was an old joke between her parents. Her father had called it the “Honey Do” list. At the top of the list, underlined twice, was PATCH LEAK IN ROOF. Jenna lifted the magnetic pencil from the door and crossed off that first item.

  When her tea was ready, she picked up the mug and carried it down to the basement. In the far corner was her father’s workshop. She knew she had come here on purpose. The smell of sawdust was as powerful a reminder as his aftershave. She set the mug on the workbench and positioned herself on his stool. The metal rung bit into the arches of her bare feet.

  She looked around the workshop. This had been her father’s sacred place. He had loved nothing better than to spend a few hours on weekends building things.

  Jenna lifted a hammer from the bench, turning it over and over in her hand, feeling its weight. Her father had never spent as much time down here as he’d wanted. His life had been an endless round of meetings and negotiations. He had been in upper management at AT&T for as long as she could remember.

  She set the hammer down, reached for her mug of tea, and blew into the rising steam. Usually her father would be halfway to his office by now. And in some strange way it seemed as if he were on his way to work, just like any other day. At six o’clock that evening or thereabouts, he would come bounding through the front door, fly up the stairs, grab his swim trunks, and make a mad dash for the pool in the backyard, just as he had done every night in the summer. That was the reality. It had always been the reality.

  Jenna could not make herself believe otherwise. Yes, the ambulance had come. Yes, the attendants had strapped her father to a gurney. And yes, the blood from the wound in the back of his head had leaked onto the white sheet. But that didn’t mean he was dead, did it?

  She stared down at the floor. Small piles of sawdust littered the area like anthills. Her father rarely had bothered to sweep it up. He’d liked it on the floor. She dug into one of the piles with he
r big toe, suddenly aware that she had her ear cocked toward the staircase, listening for her father’s footsteps.

  But when the footsteps came, they were lighter, quicker, and Jenna knew that her mother was overhead in the kitchen. The basement door clicked open.

  “Jenna, are you down there?” Her mother’s voice was like the crash of cymbals coming at the end of a lullaby. It was always like that these days. Jenna’s body grew rigid, a simple reflex action. She sat silent and motionless.

  “I need you up here.” There was a brief pause. “Now.” Couldn’t her mother leave her alone for even a minute? Just a few minutes alone to try to understand this terrible thing that was happening to them?

  Jenna took a swallow of her tea and tried to remember if she was even talking to her mother this week. They had had so many fights over the past few years, spent so many weeks barely speaking to each other, that she found it hard to keep track.

  She stared down at the mug in her hand. The tea had become lukewarm. She shouldn’t be behaving like this. She had lost her father. Her mother had lost her husband. They should be trying to comfort each other, not bite each other’s heads off.

  Reluctantly she slid off the stool and padded up the stairs to the kitchen, where she found her mother, a bottle of Fantastik in one hand and a wad of paper towels in the other, frantically wiping down the stove. Her mother nodded toward the vacuum cleaner in the dining room.

  Jenna blinked but did not move. Surely her mother didn’t expect her to vacuum the carpet.

  Meredith Ward tossed the clump of soggy paper towels into the trash compactor and pulled another handful from the roll next to the sink.

  “Mom …” Jenna found she could not finish her thought, because she didn’t know what it was she wanted to say.

  Her mother was staring down at the bottle of Fantastik in her hand as if she were trying to remember where it had come from. She set the container on the counter, wiped her hands on her yellow shorts, and tucked the loose strands of her hair—hair much like Jenna’s, only shorter—back into the wide barrette at the nape of her neck. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee.

  “People will be coming to the house,” she said. “We have to get organized.” She looked over the rim of her coffee mug at her daughter’s face, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply. “I’m sorry, Jen. I wish I knew a way to make this easier for you. For both of us. But I don’t.” She set the mug back on the counter without taking a swallow. “We have to get through this somehow. People will be coming to the house, and it’s a mess. I’m counting on you.”

  Jenna stared over at the vacuum cleaner. Suddenly it was just like any other morning. Especially those Saturday mornings when she wanted to go to the mall with her friends and her mother insisted she stay home and help her with the housework. Those Saturday mornings almost always ended in a screaming match.

  “Nobody’s going to care if the house is a mess.” Jenna sucked in the sides of her mouth, a habit she had acquired as a small child when she was upset. Then, as if she needed to test the words, she whispered, “Good Lord, Mom, Daddy’s dead.” She waited to see if saying this out loud would somehow make it more real. It didn’t. “Nobody’s going to notice lint on the carpet.”

  Their eyes locked. Her mother seemed to be holding her breath. Then, without a word, she grabbed a bottle of Soft Scrub from under the sink and left the room. That was when Jenna understood that her mother did not believe what was happening to them any more than she did.

  Jenna sat down cross-legged on the floor next to the vacuum cleaner, her hand resting on the cool plastic as if she were stroking a family pet. Well, fine. Her mother could Soft Scrub the bathroom tiles until her fingers bled, but Jenna would not be a part of it.

  In the end, though, Jenna vacuumed not only every rug in the house but all the upholstered furniture and all the bedspreads and drapes. The work kept her busy, and she didn’t have to think, which, much as she hated to admit it, might have been just what her mother had in mind. By the time Chief Zelenski arrived to take their statements, the house was spotless.

  the police were the only people her mother allowed in the house that morning, except for Mr. Krebs, the widower from next door, who, although almost eighty, kept the reporters at bay like a loyal palace guard, screened telephone calls, and took messages.

  An autopsy had been done only hours after what everyone kept calling “the accident,” but Chief Zelenski would not reveal the findings, explaining that giving out any information would interfere with the investigation. Jenna stubbornly refused to accept that this was just some accident. This was a murder. Her father was dead. And somebody was going to have to pay for it.

  She slid her hands under her thighs to warm her fingers. The room was ice-cold. Her mother always kept the central air-conditioning running. Jenna hated having the house all closed up in the summer.

  She looked over at Dave Zelenski, who sat in the chair next to her. He was a middle-aged man with a robust, ruddy face and wire-rimmed glasses that seemed to be constantly sliding down his nose, no matter how many times he pushed them back in place. Under different circumstances, she would have found this funny.

  “I know this is difficult for you, Mrs. Ward,” he told Jenna’s mother, looking slightly embarrassed. “But I need you to tell me everything that happened yesterday.”

  Jenna glanced across the room to where her mother sat on the couch, looking calm and composed. Meredith Ward had changed from her shorts into a sleeveless sundress. The sheer fabric with tiny pastel flowers fell in soft folds about her ankles. Jenna’s hand went instinctively to the side of her head. She suddenly remembered that she still had not combed her hair. Her mother was watching her. She attempted to give her daughter a reassuring nod, but Jenna pretended not to notice.

  She scarcely listened as Chief Zelenski began asking her mother questions. When he finally turned to Jenna, she slowly and methodically related what she could remember from that day. Images flooded her mind, images of her father lying at her feet; of the staple gun, still on the roof where he had dropped it, glinting in the sharp noonday sun; of her mother running from the house, drawn by her daughter’s unbearable screams, running toward her, balancing a plate with a tuna fish sandwich, unaware that she had it in her hand. But these were the only images that came to mind. The rest of the morning was a blank.

  “Can you remember anything else?” Chief Zelenski asked. He raised his eyebrows, and as he did, his glasses once again slid down his nose. This time he took them off and slipped them into his shirt pocket. “I know it’s hard, but—”

  “How would you know?” Jenna said. She wasn’t trying to be rude. She simply hated it when people assumed they knew what she was feeling. Especially now, when it bothered her that she wasn’t feeling much of anything at all.

  Chief Zelenski stared at Jenna as if he thought she was intentionally trying to impede his investigation. But he said nothing. Instead he began to drone on about how the local ballistics team didn’t have the knowledge or the equipment to figure the trajectory of the bullet. So they were going to turn it over to the experts, engineers from Picatinny Arsenal, who could figure the coordinates on their computer. They could, according to Chief Zelenski, determine the arc of the bullet from the point of impact all the way back to where the gun had been fired. But, he explained, looking apologetic, the men from Picatinny were in the middle of another project and wouldn’t be available for a while.

  “A while?” Meredith Ward asked. “What does that mean? Two days? Two years?” Her mother’s voice, usually even and controlled, wavered slightly. Jenna studied her mother closely, watching for other signs that there might be a crack in her professional veneer.

  Meredith Ward was an account executive for a large New York advertising agency. She was not a person to be kept waiting. Jenna knew this from experience. She had seen her mother hang up the phone dozens of times just because someone had dared to put her on hold. To hear her mother’s voice quake, even slightly, was
disturbing.

  Dave Zelenski shifted uneasily in his chair and ran his palm across his thinning hair. “Hard to say. These guys can be unpredictable.”

  Jenna rose abruptly. She stared down at the police chief. “So was the lunatic who shot my father.”

  “It’s okay.” Meredith Ward crossed the room and put an arm around her daughters shoulder.

  Jenna pulled away from her. “What’s okay?” She narrowed her eyes at her mother. “What are you talking about? Nothing’s ‘okay.’ Nothing will ever be ‘okay’ again.” Each time she emphasized the word okay she sounded as if she were trying to take a bite out of it.

  Her mother shook her head. “I was talking about the investigation,” she said, ignoring Jenna’s outburst. “I meant sometimes these things take time, even if we’d like them to go a lot faster.” Her mother’s composure only infuriated Jenna all the more.

  “Well, I can tell you this, anyway,” Chief Zelenski said, looking relieved that he could offer them something. “One of their guys will be out here tomorrow to start collecting information from the site. They’ll probably want to go over the police report then, too.”

  Meredith Ward began to massage the space between her eyebrows with her thumb and forefinger. She looked over at Jenna. She seemed to be waiting for something.

  Jenna thought that if she stayed in the room another minute, she would suffocate. All she wanted to do was get out of there. Without another word, she headed for the front foyer. She would take a walk, and when she came back, everything would magically be just as it had been before the accident. Her father would be there, and Chief Zelenski and this whole horrible nightmare would have disappeared.

  But when she opened the front door, she found herself right in the line of fire, assaulted on all sides by a barrage of reporters and photographers. Too shocked by the intrusion to react, she merely pulled back into the foyer, like a turtle seeking the safety of its shell. Then she sat down on the stairs, folded her head into her lap, and waited for the tears that would not come.