The Fragile World

by Paula Treick DeBoard

  “It’s a bullet. A cartridge, whatever you want to call it,” he said. “It was in your car.”

  “It was not.” My face was hot. “That was not in our car. We don’t have a gun. My dad doesn’t have a gun. So why would we have a bullet in our car? And what were you doing in our car, anyway?”

  He closed his palm around the bullet, and it disappeared, like a twisted magic trick. I felt sick to my stomach all of a sudden, like I had a bad case of cramps, or the bowl of out-of-season fruit from breakfast was catching up with me. Slowly, Sam explained, “When I got here this morning, my stepdad asked me to check for any warning lights in your car, and I moved the driver’s seat forward a bit. Your dad’s a lot taller than me. So I reached under the seat—”

  “And there was just a bullet lying there, under the driver’s seat?” Two pink spots rose like balloons on my cheeks. I didn’t wait for him, but answered my own question. “You’re wrong. Believe me, I would have noticed if there was a bullet rolling around down there.” I wasn’t absolutely sure this was true, given the amount of snack wrappers and pens and other things that tended to accumulate on the floor of our car—but still.

  Sam opened his hand again, rotating the bullet back and forth along his palm. It was funny how small and innocent it looked, like something that couldn’t possibly hurt anyone. Guns don’t kill people, I thought, stupidly. Bullets do. “When I was reaching down there, my hand rubbed against the top of the underside of the seat, you know?”

  I stared at him.

  “And I felt something kind of funny, so I got out of the car and I bent over to check it out. They were taped to the bottom of the seat with a bunch of duct tape.”

  “They?” I was going to throw up. I leaned over my knees, breathing hard, but still I heard Sam say “Yeah. Five bullets, all taped up there.”

  I concentrated on breathing in and out, my eyes pinched closed. In and out, in and out. Where was Mom, to come to the rescue with a paper bag?

  “Maybe it was for—I don’t know, some kind of protection for your trip,” Sam offered.

  “But he doesn’t have a gun,” I huffed. “I would know, believe me. He doesn’t even go hunting or anything. He’s not a gun guy.”

  “These bullets aren’t for hunting,” Sam pointed out. “I’ve been hunting, and I would know. These are for a handgun.”

  “No way, there’s no way,” I whimpered, pulling my hoodie over my head so that it shielded most of my face, and Sam Ellis wouldn’t be able to see me cry.

  Sam tried again, probably alarmed by my display. “You know, there are a lot of reasons why—”

  I cut him off, blubbering. “No, there aren’t. There are no reasons.” I couldn’t think. Why in the world did my dad need a gun? Was he involved in—something? I couldn’t even imagine. He was my dad, for goodness’ sake. What was he hiding from me? I sniffed, trying to hold back an impending tidal wave of mucous. And then I felt it, hesitant at first, and then firm as anything: Sam’s hand on my back, rubbing a slow, comforting circle.

  “I’ll help you,” he promised. “Okay? We’ll figure it out.”

  curtis

  I emerged from the barbershop in a daze. Catching my reflection in a storefront along the main drag, I saw a middle-aged man with a new haircut and a shiny face, but I had to stop to make sure it was really me. In my post-dream haze, I half expected to see a younger version of myself, the young man who had escaped an abusive childhood to luck into the good life with Kathleen Eberle.

  I popped into a convenience store and emerged a few minutes later with a two-pack of pens and a pad of writing paper, the words already forming in my mind. When I rounded the corner, Olivia and Sam were still sitting at the folding tables, the display of snow globes arranged before them. Olivia had her hoodie up, and Sam had his arm on her back. I restrained myself from crossing the street and instead entered the diner with its blazing red sign. She’s being a teenager, I reminded myself. I’d spent most of my life around teenagers, but couldn’t pretend to fully understand them—because even though I’d lived through those years, I hadn’t been one myself. She’s having a little flirtation, and good for her. Why should she be miserable? Why should she carry the weight of the past, when I could do it for her?

  It was just after eleven, and only a few tables in the diner were occupied. I was seated in the back, although if I strained I could make out Olivia and Sam, who seemed to be having an intense conversation.

  A waitress approached, handing me a laminated menu. “You’re a little late for breakfast, but if you want, we could probably rustle something up.”

  “Oh, no—just some coffee, black.”

  “You got it,” she said, and I set the pad of paper and a pen on the table in front of me. My palms were sweaty; holding the pen, my hand shook. The first words came out more like a child’s scrawl, I was fairly rusty at this, one of the most basic forms of communication. When had I written anything besides a grocery list, a lesson plan? Every few weeks I’d bundled up mail that came to Kathleen and forwarded it on to her in a padded envelope, writing nothing more than her name and Omaha address across the front.

  It took several tries to get it right. First I wrote, “The Last Will and Testament of Curtis Kaufman.” Too formal—like a character on an old episode of Murder, She Wrote, with a room full of weeping relatives who had gathered to hear how my wealth was going to be distributed. There wouldn’t be much wealth at all, when it came down to it. The house in Sacramento was paid off, and that could be sold—but the housing market was in a slump. I’d managed to stay debt-free by driving an old car, by planning our purchases in advance—but Visa would be paying for a rebuilt transmission, and after the hotels and gas and food for this trip, there wouldn’t be much left in savings.

  Besides, it wasn’t absolutely certain what would happen to me. That was the great unknown, the variable I wouldn’t be able to control. Robert Saenz could easily fight back, wrestle the gun from me, return fire for fire. If everything went according to my plan—but why would it?—I’d be arrested by the Oberlin police, booked and put on trial. I would request only a public defender—no heroics. I wasn’t planning to deny anything. I imagined A.D.A. Derick Jones handling my case for the prosecution, laying bare the facts: a man who hadn’t come to terms with his son’s death, a man who was so consumed by his desire for revenge that he allowed his family to fall apart, a man who had executed his crime with malice aforethought—traveling thousands of miles and purchasing a handgun illegally along the way, all to hunt down his son’s killer. I would plead guilty, not denying anything. Best case scenario, I’d only be locked away for half of my remaining years.

  The coffee came, and I angled myself in the booth so that my writing wouldn’t be visible to anyone walking by. I tried again: “To Whom it May Concern”—but that was ridiculous. There were only two people on earth who this would concern, and they deserved to be named.

  I began on a third page, “Dear Kathleen and Olivia.” For a long time, letting the coffee grow cold, I stared at the paper. A few people trickled in and out of the diner; a man at the counter spoke loudly about the construction on Highway 189, leading north. I imagined Kathleen finding the letter, long afterward, opening the sealed envelope with trembling hands. I pictured Olivia reading it, encountering for her what must have been the sum of all her fears. Even after the fact, I didn’t want them to feel responsible, to carry secret knowledge, to be hounded by a relentless D.A. in search of the truth. I needed to be vague, to speak in generalities. I wouldn’t allow myself to hope that Kathleen or Olivia would visit me in prison, that they would send letters, that they would be waiting for me on the other side.

  And so I wrote:

  Dear Kathleen and Olivia,

  You will want an explanation, and you deserve that, and so much more.

  I could say that I did it because I was hopeless
and desperate, but that wouldn’t be true. With both of you, how could I have been?

  It may be said that I was full of rage, but that isn’t true, either. At least, I am equally full of love for both of you, for Daniel, for the life we had, all four of us together. All my rage was focused in one direction, but I wouldn’t say I was blinded by it.

  Years ago, I made two promises. One was to myself, that I would rise above my circumstances and be a better person. Another was to you, Kathleen, and I kept that promise as best I could. I’m still remembering it now, even as I write this, even when I find it’s too late to convince myself of any other alternative but what I’m about to do.

  If you had known what I was planning, you would have talked me out of it—and that’s exactly why I couldn’t tell you. I knew I couldn’t be stopped, and I didn’t want either of you to get hurt in the process.

  This letter is a goodbye, because I don’t know when or if I will see either of you again. It would be bliss for me to believe that you have moved on. I can only be sorry, Kathleen, now and always. Remember your drive, Olivia? The way the sun glittered off the salt, and the world was peaceful and quiet and endlessly good? That’s what I’ll remember, too.

  I thought for a long time, and signed the letter simply,

  Curtis (Dad)

  I bunched the other pages with my sloppy beginnings into little balls, and tossed them into the trash basket next to the counter. Somehow, without my notice, most of the booths were full. The diner smelled pleasantly of grease.

  “I should hardly charge you for that,” the waitress commented, ringing me up for a $1.19. “You barely drank a sip.” Her tone was faintly accusatory, fishing for an explanation.

  “Thank you,” I said simply, handing over two dollars.

  Outside, the day had gone cloudy, and Lyman looked faintly gray, as if it were buried beneath a layer of dead skin cells waiting to be sloughed off. I was suddenly hungry, the overload of carbohydrates at breakfast long forgotten. Maybe Olivia was ready for some lunch, too. I’d get her and Sam, too, and come right back to the diner.

  When I looked across the street, the tables were still there, light glinting faintly off the snow globes—but Olivia and Sam were gone.

  olivia

  As I saw it, once I stopped hyperventilating with my head between my knees, there was only one reason why my father might have bullets taped to the underside of his driver’s seat: he was planning to kill himself.

  Wasn’t that what I’d been worried about all along—the real reason I’d stayed with him in California rather than gone with Mom to Nebraska? It hadn’t been about my fears for myself, but my fears for him. Hadn’t I watched him carefully these past few years, playing straight man to his jokes, finding excuse after excuse for why I couldn’t hang out with the Visigoths after school at the skate park, subconsciously devising some of my more elaborate fears as a way of keeping myself close to him, and keeping him close to me? I gulped in air greedily, remembering Dad on the roof. My airway felt no larger than a pinprick. Of course, of course, he’d been about to jump.

  Sam was trying to calm me down, his knuckles zigzagging back and forth across my back. It was helping, because I could feel my lungs expanding, the frenzied pace of my breath slowing. “I’m probably wrong about the whole thing,” he said. “What do I know? Maybe the bullets weren’t even his.”

  I couldn’t answer. They weren’t mine, that was for sure, and there was no way in the world they belonged to Mom, who hated guns. And before that, the only other person I could remember being in the Explorer was Daniel, who wouldn’t have had any need for bullets or guns, who would have looked at the bullet in Sam’s outstretched hand and been just as confused as I was.

  Sam tried again. “Maybe they’ve been there for a long time, and your dad has forgotten all about them. See? It’s probably nothing.”

  Gathering my breath, I told Sam, “My dad is a Democrat,” hoping that this would explain everything. He raised an eyebrow curiously, as if I’d named a rare type of parakeet. “My whole family—we’re Democrats. We don’t believe in guns. I’m serious. My parents would never in a million years have had a gun in our house. My mom, especially. She would have flipped out if...”

  Sam glanced at me sideways, afraid to suggest it.

  “No,” I said firmly. “That is not why she left. She wouldn’t have let me stay if she thought he had anything to do with a gun.”

  He nodded slowly, probably thinking I was the biggest nutcase in the world, and probably relieved that he hadn’t actually kissed someone with such a screwed-up family. “Okay, then. Maybe the bullets came with the car?”

  “You mean an added feature, like heated seats or a moonroof?”

  Sam didn’t register the sarcasm in my voice. “Was it a used car?”

  I thought back, remembered the four of us at the dealership, piling into the Explorer for a test drive, years and years ago now. “No. We bought it new.”

  Sam considered, then held up his hands, as if to ward off an attack. “I’m just going to say this, because sometimes you never know. Is there a way your father is involved in something illegal, like a burglary ring?”

  My laugh turned into a wheezing cough. “You mean, has he been robbing gas stations along I-80 to finance this glamorous trip?”

  “Well. You’ve been together this whole time?”

  “Yes, the entire time.” And then I remembered. “Except three nights ago.”

  “What happened three nights ago?”

  “He dropped me off at the hotel and went for a drive. That was in Winnemucca.”

  Sam nodded soberly, considering the possibilities. “What was he like when he came back?”

  “I don’t know. Fine. Normal. He brought me a slushie. We watched TV.”

  Sam looked at me knowingly. “And where do slushies originate from?”

  “Really? You think he filled up my giant slushie cup before or after he robbed the convenience store?”

  “Okay,” Sam agreed. “That doesn’t make much sense.”

  “Forget it. My dad couldn’t rob anything. He wouldn’t rob anything. He’s not some criminal, he’s my dad. He’s Mr. K. He’s a freaking teacher.”

  “What kind of teacher?”

  I glared at him, not answering. Even though I wasn’t hyperventilating anymore, I put my head back in my hands. Dad wasn’t a drug manufacturer, or an armed robber, or some kind of negligent chump who was unaware that five bullets had been taped to the underside of his driver’s seat. Those possibilities were each worth their own panic attack, but the possibility of Dad wanting to kill himself was infinitely worse.

  “Well,” Sam said finally. “I think we should go to your motel room while we can.”

  I raised my head slowly, giving him a sharp look. My world was crumbling around me, and he thought there was the possibility of sex in his future?

  He sighed, reading my mind. “I’m only thinking that if there’s a gun, we should find it.”

  Oh. Right.

  The Drift Inn was completely deserted, a closed sign flipped in the office window. “Tell the truth,” I whispered to Sam as we left his truck and crossed the empty parking lot. “Doesn’t this place remind you of Bates Motel?”

  “You watch a lot of television,” Sam commented, and I bit back the urge to say that actually I was referring to a movie, a classic, spawn of many a late-night fear. For an intense moment, I wanted to be back in my life in Sacramento, even sitting in the far stall of the D-wing girls’ bathroom, where there were no bullets beneath car seats and no strange boy accompanying me into a desolate motel room. When I pulled the key from my back pocket, I was surprised to find that my hand was shaking.

  “We have to be fast,” I said, pushing open the door. The room had been cleaned, and a fresh set of towels was sitting on the end o
f each bed. My suitcase was still heaped on top of the table, contents spilling out. Dad’s bag was on the floor next to the vanity, neatly zipped. Nothing was wrong, exactly, but I felt wheezy and light-headed, anyway.

  “Are you okay?” Sam asked, and I shook my head.

  Sam nodded sympathetically. It occurred to me that he was the best possible person to be around in a crisis. He didn’t get upset—or show emotion at all, really—didn’t yell, didn’t panic, didn’t judge. Instead, he began to tackle the task in front of him, which involved systematically lifting each corner of Dad’s mattress and neatly retucking the sheets.

  “Nothing?” I asked.

  Sam shrugged. Flat on his back, he poked his head into the narrow space between the bed and the wall and came up a few seconds later, coughing. He checked behind my bed the same way, while I felt around beneath the pillows and blankets. We worked our way silently around the room, moving and replacing the items in the center nightstand, then turning our attention to the dresser. Sam pulled out the bottom drawers, running his hand into the dark space at the bottom of the dresser. He yanked his hand out, grimacing, and wiped a dusty smear across his jeans. Apparently deep cleaning was not a high priority at the Drift Inn.

  I entered the bathroom in a state of dread, considering how many Godfather marathons Dad and I had watched together. But there weren’t too many hiding places, and each was empty—the cabinet beneath the sink, the single drawer on the vanity, and the inside of the toilet tank. I scrubbed my hands fiercely after repositioning the lid, and when I came out of the bathroom, Sam had unzipped my dad’s suitcase.

  “Um,” I said.

  “What?”

  “It’s just that...I mean, those are private things.”

  Sam looked offended. “Do you want my help or not?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but kept patting his way through the suitcase—Dad’s boxers, a few pairs of jeans and khakis, T-shirts. He held up a roll of gray duct tape, raising his eyebrows significantly.