In Short Measures

by Michael Ruhlman

  “I was only curious,” she interrupted. “You’ll find that I’m clean. And no, this was an accident, so I don’t know how paying a lawyer to sit with me will help anyone.”

  “Good,” he said, accelerating.

  He paused at an empty intersection to crawl through a red light. Karen saw the bald pate of Silent Curt turn to Williams. She heard him tap something, a notepad of some sort. Williams seemed to nod as he accelerated.

  “Can you tell me where you were coming from?”

  She didn’t want to pause. “Shaker Heights, Len and Melissa Thomp—”

  “That’s fine, ma’am. I can get the names later.”

  She hoped she didn’t throw up in the car as they accelerated and the hospital came into view. Of course they would call Len and Melissa to corroborate the story.

  *

  “Good news,” Officer Williams said. “You’re clean.”

  “Not news to me,” Karen said. She had sat in this generic exam room for what seemed an eternity and now felt ill and exhausted. The clock on the wall read 1:30. She could scarcely believe how little time had passed.

  Silent Curt followed him in, then leaned against the door, shutting it with a click.

  Williams said, “I can fill out the rest of my report now, here if you want. Or we can do it back at the station. I’m calling this an accident. It seems clear that this was an accident.” He turned to look at Curt, who did not look back at Williams, only stared coldly at Karen. Williams returned his gaze to her as well. “So I’m charging you with negligence. But I don’t need to bring you in. You’ll be sleeping at home tonight, with the agreement that you not leave town.”

  “I’m hardly going to flee,” she said, giving Williams a look of mortification and confusion.

  “I only said that because it’s the holidays and people travel.”

  “Oh. No, we spend Christmas in town.”

  “Good.” He pulled up a chair and said, “Okay. I’ve got to take a statement. Technically you’re now under arrest. The victim did die, this is confirmed. I’ll be charging you, so I now will tell you that you do have the right to remain silent and the right to a lawyer.”

  “That won’t be necessary, I’ll give you a full accounting of what happened.”

  “You’re waiving your Miranda rights?”

  “Yes, I’m aware of my rights.”

  “To confirm, this is a voluntary statement?”

  “That’s correct.”

  Officer Williams appeared relieved.

  Karen had had a full hour to compose her thoughts and reason out the details of her story as the driver of the car.

  *

  Karen entered through the back door, closed and locked it.

  Frank had fallen asleep with the television on, his head tilted back, his mouth slung open. The alcohol, the stress, the hour—the clock read 2:45—had allowed him to sleep. It’s a Wonderful Life was on, as it seemed to be everywhere at this time of year. She found it unbearably pat, but Frank adored it and she loved his adoration, loved his capacity for innocent belief in this story. As far as she was concerned, Lionel Barrymore’s verdict on George—“Sentimental hogwash”—was an apt verdict on the movie as a whole. His love of the movie reminded her, after all these years, of the love she had always felt for him.

  She stared blankly at the screen, a graying Jimmy Stewart striding down a sunny, snowy Bedford Falls street, pipe in mouth and newspapers in hand, a happy man without a care on Christmas Eve day, moments before it all goes south on him, what the whole film has been leading up to. She shut off the TV and Frank awoke with a start. Not sleepily, but alert, as if having fallen asleep while on guard.

  Panting, and realizing where he was, he said, “Thank God you’re home.” He stood and they hugged hard.

  “Yes, I’m home.”

  They rocked slowly for a solid silent minute before releasing one another. She unzipped her coat and hung it on the hook by the back door.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I’m officially charged with negligent vehicular manslaughter.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “What can I get for you, sweetheart?”

  “A very stiff vodka, please.”

  He set it before her at the table, refilled his water glass, and took a seat at the table.

  “How’s Nick?” she asked.

  “Presumably asleep. But I’ve spoken with him.”

  “And?”

  Frank shrugged. “I told him the truth.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yes, everything. He was in the car. He turned back and saw her as I was bringing him in. He knows what happened.”

  “Okay. Did you tell him about after?”

  “Yes, I told him that, too.”

  “How did he respond?”

  “Quietly. Confused. Terrified. He understands how bad it is. I think things will be clearer in the morning. That’s what I told him anyhow, that nothing more would happen tonight and we’ll know more then.”

  He waited for her to have another gulp of her drink before saying, “Okay, what happened?”

  She stared at the table, finished off the drink, went to the sink, and filled the glass with water. She sat again. She took a deep breath, said, “Okay,” and recounted the events, the ride to the hospital and what was said, the taking of blood, the wait, and the report she gave, every detail of the story she had fabricated for Officer Williams and Silent Curt, which they had not simply to remember but convert in their minds to fact.

  When she finished, and he’d had a minute of quiet to absorb it, he said, “But if they call Len and Melissa, we’re finished.”

  She looked into his eyes, repeated “If,” and then looked down at the table.

  “You told them about Nick?” he asked.

  “He was there—he’s our only link to the party.”

  “They’re going to want to talk to him.”

  “Yes, they said that. This was the only time Williams seemed to be mad. As if I’d withheld this information.”

  “What did you say?”

  “The truth: ‘You never asked, it’s irrelevant, and I wanted to keep my son out of it.’ As I’m sure he could understand. He just looked down and kept writing, saying, ‘I’ll need to speak with him.’

  “I told them he’d be sound asleep by now, could it wait till morning? They said yes. Or Williams did; Curt whatever-his-name-was didn’t say a word, just kept giving me the stink eye. Gave me the creeps. I don’t know if he was even capable of talking.”

  “He was. He told me in the street, ‘point nine.’ But that was all.”

  “Silent Curt. I kept thinking he knew something. I tried not to look at him.” She reached for Frank’s hands across the table. “Okay, so here’s what happened. We were there, but the party was so big we never really saw Len or Melissa.”

  “Really.”

  “It’s the best I could do. And it is possible. We’ve been the last three years. It’s huge. And you know, most of the people there are smashed. They didn’t ask more about the party and I didn’t offer. Big holiday open house I called it, and left it at that. Oh, except for this. What a creep. Silent Curt wrote something on a pad, had to be a question, showed it to Williams and he asked it. Given that I had been to a holiday party, why did my blood come back completely clean? So. I don’t drink, okay?”

  Frank nodded, apparently astonished by how cool she had been and was being.

  “And that was it. Short report. We left the party. I insisted on driving and you sensibly agreed. I told him the car did what you said it did. That—”

  He squeezed her hands hard, halting her. “Did he ask about adjusting the seat?”

  “Oh, Jesus. Thank God, no.”

  “So you realized?”

  “Yes, after the fact, after the noise it made. I thought we were done for.”

  “I tried to distract him. He saw it but it didn’t register. I
don’t think it will come to him.”

  “There are a lot of things that won’t add up in the morning.”

  “How did they leave it?”

  “He’s coming back to get statements from you and Nick.”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Frank stood and paced around the island, rubbing his face hard with his hand. His father had done this as well. Then Frank did what she’d seen his father do many times in the two decades she’d known him. With his right hand, Frank drew two fingers down either side of his narrow nose. And then the last gesture, a strange contortion of the wrist and arm so that his palm covered the nose, and the fingers swept from one side of his jaw over his forehead to the other side. It was so uncommon that she couldn’t fail to see Frank Senior in the gesture, and she knew that her husband, too, even if unconsciously, was summoning his father for help in the matter at hand.

  Frank returned to his seat.

  “It’s not too late,” he said.

  “What’s not too late?”

  He reached across the table to hold her hands in his.

  “To do the right thing.”

  Her stomach clenched when he said it.

  “We both know what the right thing to do is,” he said. “I’ve got to come clean.”

  She felt as though she were about to throw up and took a quick gulp of water.

  “You can’t go to jail,” she said. “I won’t let you.”

  “I might have to.”

  “I can’t, I won’t live without you.”

  “It won’t be forever.”

  Tears filled her eyes and, with something close to anger, she said, “How do you know?”

  Frank looked away.

  “What’s more Frank, I’ve already lied. I’ve filled a whole police report with lies.”

  “If I come clean and take all the blame, you will be forgiven.”

  “We can’t know that. How do we know we won’t both go to jail for this? I’m pretty sure what I did is equally punishable. I’ve lied to the police. I could go to jail, couldn’t I? I don’t know. I could and you could. We have to accept that as one possible outcome.” She covered her mouth, then quickly released it. “And what if we both got put in jail—what would happen to Nick?”

  Frank closed his eyes at the thought.

  “Your mother’s not healthy enough to take him,” Karen added, as if he needed reminding. Frank, a devoted only child, was in active negotiations with his mom about moving her to assisted living, as much for her comfort and security as his piece of mind, now that she’d already taken a rib-breaking stumble in the dining room.

  “He’d go over to protective services,” Karen said. “Who knows where he’d wind up? Wherever it would be, even with my sister in Boston, it wouldn’t be better than this home, with both his parents safe inside it….

  “And your mom,” Karen said with fresh dismay. Already she cooked extra portions of nightly meals that Frank would take to Polly every other day to make sure she was eating. He’d sit with her so she had more company than the nightly news and Alex Trebek. “This will devastate her emotionally. And who will take care of her?

  “That couldn’t happen. It can’t happen. Can it?” Karen was almost talking to herself. “Since we don’t know for certain, we have to accept anything as a possibility.”

  “No,” Frank said. “If I don’t come clean and we are caught, all of the above is sure to happen.”

  “I don’t think we have a choice now. My hand was forced and now we have to play it.”

  “We need information,” he said. “We have to find answers to these questions before we do anything.”

  Visibly trembling with fear and disbelief, Karen said, “This is impossible. How did this happen? It’s not fair. It’s not fair. This can’t be happening.”

  Frank made the sweeping motion again across his face, as though trying to wipe everything away so that he could see clearly. Then he looked at Karen and spoke definitively: “I’ll call Dan Jeffries. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Who’s Dan Jeffries?”

  “Dan? He’s a lawyer. You’ve met him at parties. We went to high school together; he was a year ahead of me. We saw him in October at the Neil Young concert.”

  “You want to call that guy? He was tripping.”

  “It was a concert.”

  “Isn’t he an ambulance chaser?”

  “He does disability and worker’s comp cases. And personal injury, yes.”

  “Ambulance chaser,” she said.

  “What pulled away from our house three hours ago?” Frank whispered almost angrily.

  That quieted her. But she said, “Can’t you call Roger?”

  “Roger’s a tax attorney; he won’t know how to handle this.”

  “Dan just seems a little on the sleazy side.”

  “He’s not sleazy—he’s got a wife, two kids, he’s like us. He went into his dad’s practice. Karen. We’ve both committed crimes, probably felonies. We’re on his side of sleazy now. He’s not the one who has broken the law.”

  “Can you trust him?”

  “We went to high school together.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means he’ll help. He’s smart.”

  “Can you trust him? I don’t trust him.”

  “He and Grant are friends. So, by extension, I think so.”

  “Because you and he have a mutual friend, you can trust him?”

  “Grant is my oldest friend, not just some acquaintance. The most decent guy I know. He wouldn’t be pals with some sleazy ambulance chaser. Dan’s a good guy.” Frank paused. “And besides, right now we don’t have a choice. We need to be prepared.”

  She stared at the ice in her glass, sickness settling into her body, like the flu.

  Frank took a breath. “You should check in on Nick, make sure he’s asleep.”

  “I know,” Karen said.

  *

  Nick was asleep, on his side diagonally across the double bed, gangly legs hanging off one side and uncovered to reveal shins with, to her, a strange coating of fur that had arrived last summer and ankles so thick as to suggest he still had several inches to grow. His shaggy light brown hair was matted with sweat. She sat and felt his forehead—cool. She had turned off the overhead light, but there was enough light coming in from the hallway to see his soft features, so much like his father already, the nose, the eyes, uncommonly long lashes, just slightly more rounded, softer than Frank’s—a young man coming into focus. Such a lovely boy.

  On his bedside table she saw his phone. She never snooped around in his phone—he was a good kid and she had never felt any need whatsoever. She really did trust him, and what was his business was his. Besides, what if she came across porn sites? What does a parent do? She perpetually felt like a beginner in the parenting department, which of course most parents were until it was too late. But now she would be a different parent, and she didn’t hesitate to pick up his phone. It wasn’t password protected. She tapped Safari, tapped history, and saw an endless string of YouTube videos. First turning off the volume, she tapped the most recent one: a Chinese girl separating an egg by sucking up the yolk with a two-liter plastic bottle. This made her feel better somehow. Though what useful knowledge did she expect to glean? Did she expect him to be Googling legal sites? It wasn’t beyond him. He was a smart kid, smarter than his B average implied. And smart enough not to already be discussing this situation on Facebook. This new possibility alarmed her, and she reviewed the entire history in the hours since he’d been home. No, nothing. She set the phone down.

  Nick was in the artsy crowd at school. Last spring, he’d played Albert—rock star Conrad Birdie’s manager—in the seventh and eighth grade production of Bye Bye Birdie. This year he had joined the writing forum. She knew he kept a journal but had never read it. Once talkative to the point of being chatty, Nick had all but shut down once he’d begun ninth grade. He never spoke at dinner unless a
ctively brought into the conversation.

  Normal, she knew. But what would become normal now?

  She walked through her bedroom—Frank slept mummy-like, or so it appeared until he asked, “Asleep?”

  “Yes, he is,” she said. She kissed Frank’s forehead. “I’m going to shower. You try to sleep.”

  *

  It had likely been the noise of the snowplow that woke her, just enough to gaze dreamily at her husband of twenty years, who was staring down at the spot where the accident had happened. And then to come fully awake at the horrible illusion of his becoming an old man before her eyes.

  He continued to stare out, streetlights through the blinds streaking him with light and shadow.

  “Hold me,” she said.

  He took a drink of water and crawled under the covers.

  “You’re cold,” she said. “Let me warm you.”

  He took her up on this, pressing his legs up and down over hers, between hers, hugging her and rubbing her back to warm his own arms. He put his face into her neck, her skin still smelling of soap from the shower.

  He kissed her lips and rolled onto his back.

  They lay quietly for many minutes, so desperate for sleep, for unconsciousness, that they could not come close to it.

  “I had to do it,” she said. “It wasn’t even a choice. What had happened had happened. You could go to jail for this. Not could, you would have been arrested on the spot.” She turned her head to look at him but remained supine. “The woman died, Frank. You would have been cuffed and put in the squad car. You would have been charged with vehicular homicide. You would have gone to jail. Our life together would be over. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear to live without you.”

  “Karen, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t say that. I just wanted you to know that it wasn’t a choice. I didn’t hesitate once I saw your eyes. I became the driver, I just was. It’s you and me, and Nick, and as long as we’re together, nothing can be wrong.”

  He kissed her.

  “I love you so, so much,” she said.

  He reached for her hand. He kissed her again, returned to his back and stared at the ceiling. Both were able to doze, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, like two dead lovers resting upon a shared sepulcher, until a 6 a.m. snowplow passed their house again, waking them both to the new darkness, soon to become cold and clear.