Switchback

by Matthew Klein

  ‘I will, Timothy.’

  ‘Thank you, Ann.’ He hung up.

  He looked at the clock on his nightstand. It was ten past nine. He sat on the foot of the bed, waiting for his wife. He listened for the click of her heels on the slate path to the house; the tinkling of her keys in the front door; the sound of her voice echoing off the ceramic tiles in the foyer. But there were no sounds except for the crickets outside, and except for his breath, thin and ragged.

  11

  He slept fitfully, half-dreaming, and woke at seven o’clock in the morning. The sun streamed through the tall windows onto his face. He had not drawn the curtains.

  When he opened his eyes, the events of the last night rushed back to him in a jumble, and for a moment he felt as if they too had been part of a dream. But then he looked to his left, at her side of the bed, and saw that Katherine was not there, that the bed was still made, and that he was sleeping on top of the covers.

  He was hungover. He hadn’t realized last night how much he’d drunk. First there was the afternoon at the Circus Club with Pinky, drinking vodka in the sun, and then the hour and a half at the BBC with Tricia and her friends – three Dalmores more.

  He remembered what had happened with Tricia. How he followed her back to her apartment, with the upside down letter D on the door; how she climbed on top of him, unzipped his pants. He remembered that they had kissed. That her lipstick rubbed off onto his lips.

  He stood up – too suddenly – and the room whirled around him. He sat back on the bed, took a breath, tried again to rise. He stumbled to the bathroom, looked in the mirror. As if he was in an old, bad soap opera, he saw lipstick stains on his collar. He took off his shirt, put the collar under the faucet and scrubbed it with a bar of soap until the lipstick vanished, then crumpled his shirt into a ball and threw it into the hamper.

  He unzipped his pants, and, with one hand on his hip, urinated.

  As he stood there, pissing, the phone rang. He stopped, snapped his underwear back up. Urine dribbled down his leg. He waddled across the bedroom with his pants bunched at his ankles, to the phone. He picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Timothy,’ she said. ‘It’s me.’ It was Katherine. She sounded far away, and there was noise in the background – a rhythmic static, rising and falling, alternating loud and soft.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘You have to listen to me. I need to tell you something.’

  Timothy’s stomach coiled into his throat. Could she know about last night? Was she leaving him? Had he destroyed his marriage of twenty years in a fit of craziness, a mistake, with a stupid secretary?

  She continued. ‘I’m dying, Timothy. I don’t have long.’

  ‘Dying?’ He was confused. ‘What are you talking about?’ Her words did not fit the neat story he had already constructed: Angry Wife Walks Out on Pathetic Cheating Husband.

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you before. I didn’t want to drive you away. I’ve known for a while.’

  The only thing he could think to ask was: ‘Katherine, where are you?’

  ‘At Big Sur. Near the rocks.’ And then: ‘It will be easier this way, you’ll see.’

  On the phone he heard the static, loud and soft, rising and falling. He finally understood the source of the noise. It was ocean crashing against the shore. ‘Better like what? What do you mean?’ But, inside, he already knew the answer. A sick feeling grew, and he felt a wave of nausea sweep over him. He said weakly: ‘Katherine, what are you doing?’

  ‘I love you, Timothy. Everything will be okay. You’ll see.’

  ‘Katherine, wait—’

  She hung up the phone. ‘Katherine!’ he tried to scream into the receiver, but it came out a hoarse croak. His heart pounded in his ears, and he tasted vomit at the back of his throat. He dropped the telephone and lunged across the room toward the bathroom, but couldn’t make it. Vomit poured out of his mouth, a torrent of yellow mucus and phlegm and bile, splattering the hardwood floor. He stopped in the middle of the room, vomit dribbling from his chin, his hands clenched at his sides. He was powerless. In his whole life, forty years and seven, he had never felt like this, never felt so small, so little, so out of control, so helpless.

  12

  The Palo Alto Police Department sent an officer, Detective Neiderhoffer. Neiderhoffer was short and muscular, a little plug of a man, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a black caterpillar mustache.

  Palo Alto property taxes bought the best services in San Mateo County, including: a city-owned cable TV franchise which, in addition to delivering HBO and Showtime, also dug up city sidewalks and ran a fiber-optic T1 cable to any home that requested it; the only city-owned electricity generating co-op in the country; and a suburban police department whose officers called citizens customers and which annually surveyed city residents to determine its ‘customer satisfaction score.’

  Detective Alexander ‘Ned’ Neiderhoffer had been promoted twice in four years – and had seen his pay rise from forty-five thousand to eighty thousand dollars per year – largely because he knew how to keep his customers satisfied. He followed two simple rules: he always said, ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am,’ and he treated every citizen that he spoke to as if that person were a millionaire, because, odds on, they were.

  Neiderhoffer arrived at the Van Bender house and Timothy led him to the kitchen. The policeman sat down at the table, but Timothy paced back and forth in front of the patio doors. He stared through the glass into the backyard, as if Katherine might come walking through the yellow sedge at any moment, with sand on her shins, dripping seaweed.

  ‘Mr. Van Bender, sir,’ Neiderhoffer said, ‘I appreciate that this is a very difficult time for you. But it’s important for you to bear with me. I want to get to the bottom of this.’ He placed his clipboard on the kitchen table and stared at it intently, as if it was the clipboard he wanted to get to the bottom of. Then he pushed open the metal clamp and flipped over the stack of papers. He removed a pen from his suit pocket and clicked the ballpoint.

  ‘I have a few questions for you. I know you may have answered these questions before, when you spoke to my colleagues. But please be patient.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Timothy said.

  ‘Now – when was the last time you actually saw your wife?’

  ‘Yesterday. In the morning. Before work.’

  Neiderhoffer wrote something on his clipboard and muttered, half to himself, ‘Monday morning.’ He looked up at Timothy. ‘How did she seem to you?’

  ‘Seem?’ Timothy shrugged. ‘Fine. The same as usual.’

  ‘Does your wife work, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she have any appointments yesterday?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Okay,’ Neiderhoffer said. He looked up from his clipboard. ‘You told the reporting officer that your wife called you this morning on the telephone.’

  ‘Around seven o’clock.’

  ‘Did she say where she was calling from?’

  ‘Big Sur. She … I think she killed herself.’

  ‘Did she actually say she was going to commit suicide, Mr. Van Bender?’

  Timothy thought about it, tried to recall the exact words of their conversation. It seemed so long ago. ‘No. She said she was very sick, and that she didn’t want to tell me about her illness. She said, “It’ll be easier this way.” I know my wife. That’s what she meant.’

  Detective Neiderhoffer scribbled something on his clipboard. As he looked down, writing, he asked: ‘Why Big Sur?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Neiderhoffer looked up. ‘It just seems far away. To drive so far away just to commit suicide. There are a lot more convenient places. Places around here, for instance. Don’t you think?’

  Timothy shook his head. ‘I don’t know. We went there last weekend for our anniversary. She loves it there. Loves the ocean. The rocks, the cliffs.’ Timothy looked at his watch. She had called him only two hou
rs ago. She could still be there, in the sea, maybe even treading water, still alive. ‘I really should go down there …’

  ‘Please, Mr. Van Bender. Relax. I’ve already called the Big Sur Police, and the rangers at Point Lobos. They’re looking. If she’s there, they’ll find her.’

  ‘What do you mean, “If she’s there”? Where do you think she is?’

  ‘I’m not doubting you, Mr. Van Bender. Maybe she is there. But maybe it’s not as bad as you think – maybe she drove down there just to scare you a little. Maybe she’s in a hotel, taking a nap. Or maybe she didn’t go south at all. Maybe she’s driving north up 280 right now, to visit a friend in Modesto. Where’s her family?’

  ‘Boston.’

  ‘Parents alive?’

  ‘Just her mother.’

  ‘I’ll need that phone number.’ And then: ‘Was your wife mad at you, Mr. Van Bender?’

  ‘Mad?’ He thought about it. ‘Not more than usual, I guess.’

  Neiderhoffer jotted something on his clipboard. ‘Did you fight recently … more than usual?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you do anything that would upset her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The reason I ask – nine times out of ten, in cases like this, the person turns up, perfectly fine. Usually it’s just a fight. Or one spouse decides …’ He stopped in mid-sentence.

  But Timothy knew what he meant. ‘One spouse decides to leave the other,’ he said.

  ‘Divorce is very common, Mr. Van Bender.’

  ‘My wife is not divorcing me.’

  ‘If we had to choose between divorce or suicide, I think we’d both choose the same. Right?’ He looked at Timothy, but didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Has your wife ever attempted suicide before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is she mentally ill?’

  ‘No.’

  Detective Neiderhoffer put down his clipboard and clicked his pen closed. ‘Okay, Mr. Van Bender, let me tell you what’s going to happen. With your permission, I’d like to look around your house. Sometimes I see things that catch my eye, but which seem unremarkable to the person that lives here. Also, I have two officers going door-to-door to your neighbors, with your wife’s photograph. I have Officer Karpsky calling the taxis, the bus stations, Caltrain, the airlines. We’re speaking to the hotels and motels in the Big Sur area. We’ve put out a notice to the regional sheriff departments and CHP to look for your wife’s green Lexus. I am willing to bet dollars to donuts that we find your wife, Mr. Van Bender, and that she is fine. So I want you to stay calm. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Timothy said.

  ‘One more thing, Mr. Van Bender. When your wife called, she told you she was very sick. Do you know the name of her doctor?’

  Timothy thought about it. Who was it? The name was on the tip of his tongue. Then: ‘Yes … Dr. Charles. Something Charles. At the Palo Alto Medical Foundation.’

  ‘Great,’ Neiderhoffer said. ‘Right down the street. That’ll save me some gas.’

  The morning, which began with high hopes as Neiderhoffer departed, promising a rapid and probably happy end to the search – ground into tedium and despair. Timothy sat alone in the house, mostly in the kitchen, waiting for the phone to ring. He tried to take his mind off Katherine by making himself a pot of coffee, but that task was usually Katherine’s responsibility – there was always a pot waiting for him when he rose in the morning – and he wasn’t entirely sure how to operate the drip machine. He guessed the ratio of water to beans, and the result was a deadly brew: acrid, bitter, like an industrial solvent. He drank the whole pot anyway. Afterwards, he felt sick and had the runs, and he crapped in the bathroom four times before his bowels finally emptied.

  The phone rang at one o’clock in the afternoon. Timothy raced from the bathroom to the kitchen and lunged for the receiver. He half-expected to hear Katherine, but it was only Neiderhoffer.

  ‘Mr. Van Bender, it’s Ned Neiderhoffer. I don’t want to alarm you. I have no news for you.’

  Timothy’s heart dropped. ‘Have they looked near Point Lobos like I said? Have they at least found her car?’

  ‘I just checked again with Big Sur. Nothing has turned up. But they’re still looking. I wanted to call and give you an update so you weren’t sitting by the phone. Is there anything I can get you?’

  ‘Just my wife.’

  ‘I understand. Mr. Van Bender, we’re working hard on this. This is what we’re trained to do.’

  Timothy wondered how many missing persons, how many suspected suicides, the Palo Alto Police Department had ever handled. Their expertise seemed to involve recycling bins left out on the front lawn too long, loud high-school parties, feral cats. Wives jumping off cliffs was probably not on Neiderhoffer’s CV.

  ‘I need you to be calm,’ Neiderhoffer said. ‘I want you to stay in the house, in case she calls.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Neiderhoffer hung up. Timothy went into the living room and turned on the television. He flipped through the stations – past home remodeling shows, past cooking shows, past a gardening tutorial – now suddenly the entire broadcast spectrum was filled with scenes of tranquil domesticity. He landed finally on a Nascar race. He liked the mindlessness of it, the blur of the colors, the thunder of the engines, the cheering crowds. As he watched, his mind kept returning to Katherine. Could she really be dead? When he spoke to her at seven in the morning, he was sure of it; he knew from her voice exactly what she intended to do. It seemed so real, so imminent. He could taste the salt spray, feel the ocean mist on his forearms. But now, after talking to Neiderhoffer, who seemed so blasé about his wife’s whereabouts – now, sitting in his living room, with stock cars whizzing around the Deep South on his television, it seemed crazy, improbable.

  What had Neiderhoffer said? It just seems far away to commit suicide. He was right. Would his wife really drive ninety miles in the dark to kill herself? Katherine would barely drive five miles to a supermarket to pick up a ham. Or was she punishing him, tormenting him, trying to teach him a lesson about how much he needed her? Was she going to waltz in through the front door an hour from now, hoping for a warm and tearful embrace? Now, as he thought about it – about the smug expression she no doubt had when she made the phone call, the feeling of power she must have enjoyed – Timothy began to have that old familiar feeling: the heat on the back of his neck, the tightness in his throat. What he felt, more than anything, was anger.

  The doorbell rang. Timothy shuffled to the front door. He opened it to see the Kid standing there with a box of Krispy Kreme donuts and two cups of coffee.

  ‘Cholesterol delivery,’ the Kid said. He smiled. ‘I thought you might need some sustenance.’

  ‘Thanks, Kid,’ Timothy said. ‘Come on in.’ He stood aside to let him enter and led him into the living room. The Kid looked at the Nascar race on the television.

  ‘You watch Nascar? Jews don’t get Nascar. It seems kind of pointless, driving around in a circle.’

  ‘For once,’ Timothy said, ‘I agree with the Hebes.’ He took the remote control and muted the television. Now the doughy Southern fans – little boys in flat-front trucker caps and men with cans of Miller – cheered silently.

  Jay laid the donuts on the stone coffee table. Timothy gestured for him to sit on the sofa, but Jay shook his head. ‘I won’t stay. I just wanted to see if you needed anything.’

  ‘Please, sit.’ It occurred to Timothy that he had never had the Kid over to his house before. It had seemed inappropriate to show him his personal world, to let him see the rooms where Timothy walked in his pajamas, the toilet where he pissed before going to work. It was a form of weakness. And also: letting his business world into his home had other dangers. What might the Kid say to Katherine, even accidentally, about Tricia?

  ‘We miss you at work,’ the Kid said. ‘I mean, I can’t believe this is happening. And Tricia, she’s …’ He shook his head. ‘She’s devastated, obviously.’ He looked sidelong at Timoth
y, testing.

  Timothy thought: Obviously? What did that mean? The Kid wanted to see how Timothy would respond: would he provide details about what happened last night at the BBC, after he’d left? What had Tricia told him? Timothy wondered. Had she revealed that he went home with her?

  The Kid said: ‘I heard about last night.’

  Timothy wasn’t sure about that. The Kid was too interested, too eager to learn more. Tricia had probably spoken in generalities. Jay, after all, was a suitor, too. One thing slutty women know how to do, Timothy thought, is to keep everyone in the game, keep the losers thinking they still have a chance to win.

  ‘Well,’ Timothy said, vaguely. He reached over and opened the box of donuts. He took a maple glazed. ‘Good choice on the donuts. Maple glazed are my favorite.’ He bit into the donut and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘How are our Japanese friends doing this morning?’

  The Kid shook his head. ‘The yen’s up again, unfortunately. Back to seventy-five, where we started. That wipes out any profit. And you know Pinky Dewer called. He said he spoke to you. He wants to withdraw everything but a hundred thousand. What do you want to do?’

  ‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’ Timothy smiled at him. Even now, with his wife either dead or missing, with his career tottering on a precipice, with his world possibly about to change forever, and for the worse, he knew to stay confident. Never show uncertainty. Never show weakness. ‘We need to stay the course,’ Timothy said, with sudden vigor. ‘We keep Pinky’s money, and we keep it all short on the yen. Fuck Pinky Dewer, fuck the Japanese, and fuck the yen.’

  Jay nodded. But for the first time, Timothy noticed it: a narrowing of the eyes, a hint of uncertainty in his face. For the first time, the Kid doubted Timothy’s answer. And who, Timothy thought, looking at the Nascar race on the muted television, and then down at his own unbuttoned shirt collar and rumpled pants – who could blame him?

  The day passed.

  Neiderhoffer called again at five thirty, to tell Timothy that he still had no news, and that Katherine’s car had not been found. He told Timothy that the Big Sur Police would continue the search in the morning, and that Timothy should stay confident, and not give up hope, and that, if he could, he should get some sleep.