Not That I Could Tell: A Novel

by Jessica Strawser

  “Are they opting out?”

  “Most have not. But his partners came to me because they felt his grudge against those who have seemed disproportionate, all things considered. Just be aware, in case that grudge were to extend to you. Can’t help but notice he’s quick to divert blame.”

  Bored of the mulch show, Maddie fixed her eyes on Thomas and began yanking Clara toward the swings, while Pup-Pup tried to follow. Clara felt torn between jumping at the excuse to slink away and staying to prod for more. But the detective was on her knees now, bemoaning the condition of her filthy toddler. Game over.

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” Clara said carefully. “I’m glad I ran into you. Not so much the bar…” Detective Marks laughed, and Clara bent and offered a high five to the mulch-covered boy, who instead gleefully handed her a handful.

  She’d been peripherally aware of a siren in the distance, but it was growing closer, and to her horror an ambulance appeared, lights flashing. She shot a look at the detective, who held her hands up. “He’s a friend. He’s just going to look, as a favor to me. If you’re okay, he’ll go.”

  The kids whooped in excitement, but all Clara could think about was the way the passing motorists were slowing to gawk at her standing here bleeding with her neighbor’s investigator. Whether speculation cast her as victim or suspect, it was looking less like anyone was going to buy her in the role of bystander—the only part she wanted to play.

  * * *

  Clara peered through the curtains of Maddie’s room and across the street toward Izzy’s dark house. Behind her, her daughter was sleeping heavily, her breaths deep and rhythmic, both tiny fists curled up by her chin in an irresistibly photogenic fashion. On the other side of the hundred-year-old wall, Thomas was sprawled unapologetically on his back, a stuffed jungle animal under each arm, his face slack-jawed and utterly vulnerable. Benny’s soft snores came from down the hall, where the sheets were askew and the TV was still tuned to the sports report. Even when so much had gone wrong in Clara’s world, the most important things were still right with it.

  Her head seemed okay—mostly. She’d been allowed home with strict instructions to be vigilant, one more thing to remain on high alert about. Word had indeed traveled fast—Benny found out about the incident before she could tell him herself. He was too kind, too concerned, to say what she imagined him to be thinking: that every throb of her temple, every brush against her bruise was like a harsh reminder to keep her head out of other people’s problems.

  Still, she’d do it again. She could still see that boy unsteady on the ledge, still feel her heart-plummeting fear that he was going to fall. She was glad she’d been wrong. If she hadn’t, she’d have been too busy reeling from her own blind spot to catch him.

  You seem to have pretty good instincts.

  So many people went through their lives in a blissful denial that anything truly bad could ever happen to them, or to anyone they knew. Clara wasn’t one of those people. And she wasn’t jealous of them, either. She felt sorry for them, because she knew how wrong they were.

  Clara possessed a vicious animal instinct indeed when it came to protecting her children. So vicious that it coursed almost calmly through her veins even when there was no imminent danger. She had no idea if she felt it more strongly than other mothers, or if it was the same for everyone. The onset of the sensation had been so primal, the unsummoned immediacy of it. She’d been lying in the darkness after one of Thomas’s feedings, in those early days when he seemed to eat more than he slept. She was sleepily marveling at how beautiful he was curled beside her bed in his bassinette, his little tufts of hair matted down on the top of his head, his tiny curled fingers peeking out of his swaddle, his angelic pout and rounded cheeks. And the thought had struck her so clearly she might have spoken it aloud: If anyone ever tries to harm you, I will kill them. The ferocity of it delighted her.

  It was too bad women weren’t born with that fire. If biology could program us to guard our offspring, why not also ready us to fearlessly protect ourselves? Where was the sixth sense that would have been so helpful when it came to certain dangers especially—the kind that talked smoothly and smiled handsomely and draped themselves in sexy suede blazers and unassuming button-downs?

  Or that coached you through a pregnancy when you were steeped in loss, alone and overwhelmed at facing motherhood times two?

  Or helped you with neighborly things when you were in over your head in a new house and a new town, and desperately in love with someone who would never be yours?

  It had been so nice, in adjusting to a life of all-day mothering, to strike up a friendship with someone younger and single and bringing news of what Clara sometimes thought of as “the outside world.” Izzy had a no-fuss, semiserious way about her that was just on the naïve side of sweet, with an air of inexperience but not without an edge, and Clara liked the edge best.

  She’d been trying to push Hallie’s insinuations about Izzy and Paul out of her mind, but with Detective Marks’s casual warning they had flooded back. It nagged at her now, the idea that maybe she should have said something to Izzy. The idea that maybe she still should.

  She padded back to her own room. She felt around in the blue light of the TV for the remote control buried in the comforter before switching it off and climbing in. She had to get to sleep; Benny was to wake her in three hours—a concussion precaution—if Maddie didn’t beat him to it. She was settling herself on her pillow when she realized his eyes were open, staring at her through the short span of darkness between them. She smiled sleepily, but his expression was unreadably serious, and she suddenly found herself holding very still.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  “Good on you,” she murmured, but he didn’t crack a smile. She really was incredibly tired. She just wanted him to wrap his arms around her and spoon her to sleep.

  He took a breath. “Maybe you should think about going back to work.”

  She closed her eyes, then opened them.

  “I’m concerned all this drama next door is dredging up bad memories. I’m not sure it’s good for you right now, being alone here with the kids all day.”

  “How could you say that?” Conflicted as she sometimes felt, she was surprised at the conviction in her voice. But not at the hurt. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

  “Is that still true, though? Like it or not, this is the state of our neighborhood: investigations, suspicions, for who knows how long. I’m worried you’ve been obsessing over it—and I’m not saying I blame you. It’s upsetting, and it’s right here, and so are you. But at the mere sight of the detective today, you concussed yourself. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep your brain busy with … something else.”

  She sucked in a breath. “That is not how it happened, and you know it.”

  “On a subconscious level, you don’t think it might be?”

  Benny didn’t sound like himself. He’d awoken possessed by one of those other husbands, the ones who said infuriating things and did not know when to stay in their own lane.

  “No, I don’t. Because one, I didn’t even know it was her until after I hit my head, and two, on a subconscious level, my brain is busy with plenty else. I can’t believe you’d have the gall to imply that I don’t have enough to do.”

  She cued up her day in replay. Even before her run-in at the playground, it had been another exercise in not getting through half the things on her list. Maddie’s diaper blowout had cut a half hour off their time at the park before they’d even arrived. It had also bumped the towels from the laundry queue, a fact that proved inconvenient during dinner when Thomas upended his milk and she had to soak it up with an old sweatshirt. Never mind that any other person with a bag of frozen peas affixed to her forehead would have been sprawled on the couch to rest.

  Benny sighed. “That’s not what I said. You’re twisting what I said.”

  “I’m not. First Pam yanks Thomas out of preschool, and now you’re question
ing my decision to be a stay-at-home mom, and you think I’m the one putting too much stock in ‘the drama next door’?” The more she talked, the angrier she got.

  “I only want you to be happy,” he said more quietly. “I’m just concerned that you’ve been being pulled in … a dark direction. I’m sorry. If you’re happy enough, that’s good enough for me.”

  Was she happy enough? Was anyone fully happy immersed in cleaning up one mess after another while chasing people who seemed all at once utterly fragile and impossibly stubborn, without a second of head space to hear herself think? Was anyone fully happy going off to even the best of careers every day, when clients could get irrational and bosses could get unreasonable and work could pile higher at the worst possible times?

  Happiness, to Clara, was an elusive thing that came in the form of the overall feeling that tucked you in at the end of the day, even when you had a headache. If you were lucky, it was soft and warm, made up of tiny memories of Maddie’s first high-speed jog across the living room and Thomas’s reliable glee at her same old knock-knock jokes and the scent of freshly cut grass on the breeze.

  Benny gave her a peck on the nose and pulled the covers high, turning his back to her with a pleasant enough “Good night.”

  She hated going to bed mad. One of the more infuriating things about Benny was that he had no problem doing it, and the next day he’d act like everything was fine. Which, to him, it often was.

  She could handle herself. Did he not trust that she could? To Clara, trust was so tangled up with love that it made her chest hurt when she thought about it. Maybe she didn’t have much sense of herself these days. Her every choice was ruled by the children. But that in itself was one of the few choices she had made. What right did Benny have to call it into question?

  Even on days when she’d grappled with her stay-at-home role, she hadn’t fantasized about going back to work in anything but the most tangential terms: To eat lunch uninterrupted at a desk. To get through a cup of coffee without it growing cold.

  If it took Benny questioning her place to make her feel more solid in it, then she wouldn’t begrudge the question. She’d be glad of it even as she answered him with an emphatic no.

  But she couldn’t help but wonder what it meant, really, that he had asked.

  27

  Campsites designated “walk-in” are reserved on a first-come basis. Stake your claim by displaying your receipt on the numbered site post. Anyone caught tampering with reservation tags will be asked to leave the park. Because seriously, who does that?

  —Sign posted at the John Bryan State Park camp office

  A week to the day after Izzy’s brunch, Paul rolled tentatively down his driveway, successfully steered onto the street, and sat revving the motorcycle engine at the end of her driveway. He was wearing a bulky black leather jacket, narc-like mirrored sunglasses, jeans, and black boots she’d never seen before—and looking so much like he was playing the role of some parallel universe Paul that she had to laugh.

  “Hello, Parallel Universe Paul,” she said before she could stop herself.

  She let go of the walk-behind aerator she’d been pushing awkwardly through the soil and wiped her sweaty hands on her jeans. She might not have made any progress with Penny, or Josh, or even her parents, but she had read up on fall lawn maintenance, and thus here she was. Maintaining.

  He laughed. “You could say that. Want to join me on a ride through the other dimension?”

  She stepped back to take a better look at the machine rumbling beneath him. It was … well, she knew nothing about motorcycles, but this one was quite shiny at the moment. Beads of water trembled in the spots he’d missed wiping dry after its bath.

  “Tempting. But this is the first day all week that it hasn’t rained, so I feel like I need to take advantage.”

  He eyed the primitive contraption at her fingertips, its wheel of steel spikes poised to resume its laborious tilling. “I do enjoy a medieval torture device on a crisp fall day. It’s a close second to riding through the cool air, the colorful leaves all around you…”

  “I’ll have you know this torture device is going to fortify my lawn before winter.”

  He looked around. “It’s unfortified? I didn’t realize. Should I dig a moat while you push?”

  She raised an eyebrow, trying not to waver. This of all tasks seemed so much like the sort of thing one should enlist either a husband or a lawn service to do that it somehow seemed important—symbolic, even—that she do it on her own. And she’d had a mind to do it now, today—to act on the conviction before it faded.

  “I promised my mother I’d never ride on one,” she said. It was true—her mother loathed motorcycles—though she’d made the promise only because she’d been quite sure she’d never be tempted.

  “Ouch. I should hope not,” he said, shrinking back from the aerator, and she laughed. Admittedly, when Randi and Rhoda had agreed to let her borrow the machine—evidence they really did have all the tools—she hadn’t been expecting something so lethal looking. Or so surprisingly difficult to push.

  “I promised Kristin too,” he admitted, and he said her name so unflinchingly that Izzy managed not to cringe. “It’s one of the old toys I’m not allowed to play with anymore. I was just cleaning out the garage.” They both turned to look at his house, for no reason other than the fact that he’d mentioned it. “I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but it’s been a month. Something about that benchmark makes it seem like they’re really gone. And if they are … I can’t hang on to this house. It’s too much.”

  She wasn’t sure if he meant in the physical sense, as in the house was too big, or the emotional sense, as in too many painful memories resided inside, but she suspected both applied. Halloween was approaching, the Little Holiday That Could in that it spanned weeks of festivals and events here in small-town Ohio, and she imagined him busying himself to avoid thinking of a year without his own duo of costumed trick-or-treaters. Avoidance would be a hard trick.

  “This might be its last spin,” Paul said, turning the grip so the engine revved again. “I should have sold it years ago, and I can’t start riding again now that I’m allowed to. It would look too much like I’m having a midlife crisis.”

  “Are you, though?” He had reason enough.

  “Yes, of course. But it would look like it.”

  She laughed. He wasn’t as unlike her as she’d once thought, really. If nothing else, they were both misunderstood.

  “Sure you don’t need a break?” he asked once more. “Or a hand? I don’t have to go.”

  Again Izzy wondered if she should feel more hesitation about Paul. But what she felt was the opposite: the sort of compulsion toward forward motion that could finally pull her out of her funk. If she couldn’t do it herself, why not let some external force give it a try? And the only force that had been making itself available was again right here before her.

  “I’ll get my coat,” she said.

  * * *

  The ride was exhilarating. It made Izzy feel alive. And not so much because of the wind tangling her hair or the road rumbling beneath them as they headed away from town, following the county highways that curved intermittently through expanses of farmland and patches of forest, but because of all the reasons she perhaps shouldn’t be doing what she was doing—her arms tightly wrapped around Paul’s waist, as he’d instructed—and all the reasons she had every right to do it anyway.

  She’d always thought that a bicycle on a beautiful day was pure freedom. If that was true, then a motorcycle was a notch above freedom into the realm of danger. It was rebellion. No wonder every stereotype put a rebel at the handlebars and a gritty girl along for the ride.

  Ahead was an overlook, a simple semicircle on the side of the road, and Paul slowed, pulling the motorcycle onto the patch of gravel and cutting the engine. They dismounted in silence, unstrapped their helmets—which Izzy had insisted they wear, in spite of his halfhearted grumbling—and walked co
mpanionably to the stone wall. Izzy must have driven past this spot a dozen times going to and from Springfield, but she’d never stopped. The drop was dizzying: Far beneath them, a rocky creek disappeared into a canopy of trees clinging defiantly to their brightest leaves. In the vacuum left by the sudden silencing of the motor, she could hear the calling of a single whippoorwill.

  She said the word aloud, almost involuntarily. “Whippoorwill.”

  Paul cocked his head to listen. “How can you tell?”

  “It’s saying its own name.” The bird paused as if waiting for Paul to catch on, then started up again. She never heard one without thinking of the first time she’d noticed the bird’s song. Her father had pointed it out one summer evening as they’d been sitting around the campfire, just the two of them, neither her mother nor Penny having an interest in the overnight, and it had suddenly seemed so clear to her that the bird was relentlessly asserting its place in the forest. Whip-por-will, whip-por-will, whip-por-will … She liked to think that even if her father hadn’t been there at all, she’d have recognized the birdsong for what it was.

  If only she had asserted herself so clearly in the landscape of her own life, rather than waiting for it all to fall into place around her, who knew where she might be now.

  “So it is,” Paul said. The bird was hitting its stride, picking up steam. “And the song is long. Like Randy Travis promised.”

  She smiled. “I had the same thought first time I heard it.” She’d felt gratitude toward the whippoorwill that night, her tired feet propped on the fire ring next to her dad’s, as she took in the reminder that knowing something existed wasn’t the same as experiencing it for yourself. Like reading about love: You couldn’t fully understand it, no matter how brilliant the prose, until you had your first taste.

  It was the memory of her father’s easy company that delivered the sharpest pang now. Her humiliation at the way he’d called her out last weekend still burned; her fear that he thought less of her than he once had was almost more than she could bear.