Valley of Ashes

by Cornelia Read

  “M’okay,” he insisted, but he leaned on me hard all the same.

  Dean and I piloted him gingerly toward the picnic table, taking tiny steps while he hopped right-footed between us.

  I glanced at the girls. They were fine. Toddling happily around in T-shirts and diapers—it was that hot out.

  Bittler kept asking where his bike was, over and over, until we’d maneuvered him gently down onto the wood-plank bench.

  “In the creek,” Dean told him each time. “In a lot of pieces.”

  I crouched down in the grass the second we had him settled. “Look at me, okay?”

  Bittler blinked, then slowly raised his head.

  His left pupil was twice the size of his right.

  “Call nine-one-one,” I said to Dean. “Now.”

  He took off at a sprint. Three leggy strides and he’d cleared the back porch steps, barreling into the kitchen—screen door yanked wide so fast and hard it slapped the wall’s brick face with a crack before rebounding twice off the door frame.

  Bittler fidgeted like he was trying to stand up. Well, not “fidgeted,” exactly—unless you could stretch the use of that word to include the movements of someone just waking up on the bottom of a swimming pool, after a long winter. But “trying to stand up” was definitely being telegraphed, all the same.

  “Stay on the bench,” I said. “You have a concussion.”

  “Do not.” He gripped the bench plank’s front edge with both hands, knuckles paling on either side of his bloodied knees.

  To our left Parrish shoved India, who toppled backward onto her diapered butt and started wailing.

  I stood up. “Mr. Bittler, do I look like a woman who needs a third one-year-old here?”

  He glowered at that, all pissy, while I scooped India off the grass and onto my hip.

  Her crying ratcheted up to full aria mode.

  Bittler squinted up at me, slurring “Where’s my bike?” through the racket.

  “In the creek,” I said.

  “D’you do that for? Creek.”

  “I didn’t…”

  India hiccuped, gave one more whimper, and then dragged her face back and forth across the front of my right boob, grinding snot into my shirt.

  I was about to raise my left hand to wipe it off, but Bittler looked groggier all of a sudden and started listing to port. “You took my bike?”

  I whipped my left arm across my stomach and India’s chubby calf, gripping his shoulder to steady him, willing Dean to come back outside.

  How the fuck long could it take, dialing three digits on a goddamn Touch-Tone phone and telling whomever-the-hell picked up, “send an ambulance to Nineteen thirteen Mapleton”?

  “Where’s Setsuko?” mumbled Bittler.

  “Mr. Bittler, you’re at Dean Bauer’s house, remember? You had an accident at the creek.”

  “Fine piece of tail,” he said, leering.

  Well, not like a concussion stops someone from being an asshole.

  Bittler leaned harder against my hand. “Lost my bike.”

  He was getting heavy. I tried moving my feet farther apart for leverage.

  That worked for all of five seconds.

  I slid my right foot toward my left, trying to lean back into him.

  “Want to lie down,” he said, pushing against my arm with his torso’s full weight. “Tired.”

  “Mr. Bittler, you have to stay awake now. You’ve got a concussion, okay?”

  I needed to get my body wedged between him and the bench before he knocked all three of us over—which meant moving India to my other hip so she wouldn’t get crushed between us.

  “Dean!” I yelled, trying to pivot in the other direction, but I was already canted at too weird an angle, India weighing on me like a downhill anchor.

  I couldn’t put her down—she’d dug her knees into me, front and back, and I was afraid of dropping her.

  Like a bad game of Twister, with a bucket of blood and snot thrown in.

  My arms started quaking. “Dean? Get back out here!”

  No answer.

  “Look, can you just…, ” I said, but then Bittler coughed up scary-red phlegm all over his chin and his eyes rolled back.

  I got one knee up on the bench next to him.

  Then he got all floppy on me, India’s foot now wedged between his shoulder and my knee. Along with my left hand.

  I said, “Motherfuck,” clenched my right arm tighter around India’s waist, and just yanked her across my stomach, which thankfully popped both her foot and my hand free of the man’s slack weight.

  But it also started him toppling forward.

  I don’t know how the hell I did it, but somehow I twisted and kind of ducked simultaneously—without letting go of my daughter—and managed to get under him before he did a face-plant into the lawn.

  I ended up down on one knee with my back to the guy—crouched forward with his head lolling over one of my shoulders and his arm dangled over the other.

  He was hot and sticky-wet and he weighed a gazillion pounds.

  I gripped poor India, meanwhile, diagonally across my hunched chest like she was a Kalashnikov and I was Che fucking Guevara.

  Bittler moaned, drooling into my neck.

  I yelled Dean’s name at the top of my lungs, telling him to get his sorry ass back out into the yard.

  I must have arched my back with the effort or something, because Bittler’s other arm flopped down, crashing into the outside of my thigh.

  “Mummie,” said India, “want down now.”

  “Want down now please,” I muttered automatically, letting go of her legs.

  She got her feet under her and wriggled free.

  I dropped my hands to the dirt, elbows locked to brace myself against Bittler’s deadweight. I took the deepest breath I could and started yelling, again, for Dean.

  A siren started up in the distance—drowning me out just as my husband walked back onto the porch, phone still in hand, his head craned away from us toward Mapleton Street.

  I realized he was waiting to flag the ambulance, probably still talking to the dispatcher, but the siren sounded entirely too far away.

  Bittler felt like a dump truck, parked across my back.

  And where is Parrish?

  I tried to turn my head toward where I’d last seen her, but Bittler’s weight shifted ominously.

  Then I couldn’t catch my breath, and dark spots started crowding the edges of my vision.

  “Daddy!” piped India, toddling toward her father with both arms up in the air, “Look!”

  The paramedics burst into our backyard just as Dean was lifting Bittler off me, which meant the three of us were covered in blood and must have looked like a particularly scary tableau of domestic threesome what-the-fuck scary shit, right off the bat.

  I dropped my other knee to the ground and then slid over onto a hip, straightening my legs out.

  “Sir!” said the first guy hauling a stretcher. “Please step back!”

  “I don’t want to drop him,” said Dean. “He’s out cold.”

  My legs prickled with a rush of blood, but I got to my feet as quickly as I could. “The guy crashed his bike—this isn’t a fight or anything.”

  They looked unconvinced.

  “Really,” I said. “He has a concussion. My husband went inside to call you guys and he kind of fell on me when he passed out…”

  Bittler groaned in Dean’s arms.

  “For God’s sake,” I said, “they work together. Bittler crashed his bike by the creek and Dean carried him here. Get him onto that stretcher.”

  And then it was like everything sped up again, all crowded.

  Dean handed off Bittler and reached for me but I told him to make sure Parrish was okay first, because suddenly I was so exhausted I didn’t think I could make my legs move again, but I could see India sitting right on the porch steps in her diaper so I knew she was all right.

  Dean said, “She’s right here behind the table,
sucking her thumb. She’s fine.”

  And then I kind of slumped over and he got me onto the bloody bench, his arm behind my back, and the ambulance guys shined a penlight in my eyes and wanted to know if any of the blood on me was mine, and they put a blanket around me even though I kept saying I was fine.

  Dean was holding my hand and I told him to just get the girls inside, and safe.

  They had Bittler in a neck-brace thing by then, strapped to the stretcher all snug.

  One of the guys said, “Miss? We’d like to take you down to the hospital, make sure you’re all right.”

  “Look, nothing happened to me,” I said. “I mean, the guy fell over and I caught him, but the whole thing probably lasted three minutes or something, okay? Bittler’s the one who’s hurt. I just need a bath.”

  And then suddenly I was really, really tired… like all the adrenaline had galloped off at once, with the dregs of my iron-poor blood riding along into the sunset on the back of its horse.

  I yawned, and right then it seemed like holding my eyes open was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do.

  “You’re sure?” the guy asked.

  I nodded, yawning again.

  “Let me just take your pulse, okay?” he said.

  His hand was gentle on my wrist.

  I eyed the ground, aching to lie down on the grass.

  “You’re fine,” he said.

  “Told you. I just need a bath. And maybe a nice long nap.”

  He smiled. “Your little girls are twins, right? How old?”

  “Just turned one,” I said.

  “In that case, I’ll tell your husband that you not getting a nap for the rest of the afternoon would constitute a life-threatening emergency. How’s that?”

  “Dude,” I said, humbled with gratitude, “I would so hug you right now, but I don’t want to get Bittler’s blood on your shirt.”

  He laughed at that.

  “Should I ever lose my mind and decide to have more children, however,” I continued, “I’m naming them all after you.”

  PART III

  No really provident woman lunches regularly with her husband if she wishes to burst upon him as a revelation at dinner. He must have time to forget; an afternoon is not enough.

  —Saki, “Reginald on Besetting Sins”

  20

  Dean and I were upstairs in our bedroom several days later, getting ready for a business dinner now that the babysitter had finally arrived. Well, I was getting ready. Dean had already been primping for an hour while I fed the girls their dinner.

  “Who else is coming tonight?” I asked.

  “Lots of visiting Japanese, Renfrew, most of the VPs, Bittler,” he said.

  “Bittler couldn’t be out for a few more days with that concussion?”

  He didn’t answer, busy rifling through his ties.

  “Who else?” I asked.

  He selected a tie, draped it around his neck. “Cary’s driving Setsuko.”

  “Again?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He leaned in front of me, commandeering the mirror to deal with his tie.

  “Let me do that,” I said, turning toward him. “I mean twice in one week? Doesn’t Setsuko have a car?”

  “I think so.”

  I knotted the tie. “So, what’re they, dating?”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  Now that I’d perfected his tie’s dimple, Dean looked over my head at the mirror again and started smoothing his hair back with both palms, then raised his chin and waggled his face side-to-side to check the closeness of his shave.

  I turned back toward the bureau to reach for my freshly re-strung pearls. “Why is that ridiculous?”

  I watched him roll his eyes in the mirror.

  “Nice tie by the way,” I said, trying to hook the clasp on my pearls at the back of my neck. “You get that in New Orleans?”

  Dean leaned down to pick up his loafers off the bedroom floor. “Where’s the shoe polish?”

  “Linen closet,” I said. “Third shelf from the top.”

  Where it always fucking is. But don’t worry about me, I can fasten these by myself.

  I pulled the pearls around, the clasp’s ends to the front.

  Everything felt hollow, slipping away from me.

  Had I changed, somehow? Was this discomfort with Dean my fault?

  Maybe I was just so exhausted I was imagining all of it. Maybe we were fine.

  I tried to remember the last time he’d seemed truly happy in my company, and all I could think of was the way he’d grinned at me the morning after our girls had been born, walking toward me across my crowded maternity-ward room at New York Hospital.

  I leaned forward until my forehead rested on the edge of the old white bureau.

  Don’t fucking cry, you don’t have time to do your makeup all over again.

  Well, hey. At least I’d finally remembered to pick up my pearls from the jeweler.

  I looked like shit, but they were real.

  So I had that going for me.

  “You look great,” I said, after Dean and I had given our last instructions to the babysitter.

  “Thanks,” he said, pushing past me through the front door and across our porch, out toward the car.

  I stood on the threshold transfixed, one hand raised to my throat.

  Really? “You look nice yourself, dear,” was too much to fucking ask?

  “For God’s sake, we’re already late picking the guy up at the Boulderado,” said my husband, scowling back at me across our car’s roof.

  “What guy?”

  “Mr. Tanaka. From Tokyo. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  Okay then: As a couple, we were officially, totally, utterly fucked.

  Dean always drove like some ancient cranky elderly lady in a vicious girdle: constipated velocity with a perpetual smolder of road rage. He’d only brake at the last possible moment, as though any obstacle with the goddamn gall to thwart his progress deserved the squealed-rubber threat of imminent retribution.

  I smiled at the visiting business dignitary in the rearview mirror. Mr. Tanaka was directly behind Dean—the seat I’d’ve paid good money for, especially winding up Boulder Canyon’s switchbacks with my petulant spouse at the wheel—but Japanese politesse supposedly dictated that only the untermensch rode shotgun. A category that of course included wives.

  “We will see beers, in this mountain?” asked Mr. Tanaka.

  “So many beers,” I reassured him, smiling. “Microbrews, Budweiser… Kirin and Ichiban…”

  Dean downshifted as the incline of Boulder Canyon grew steeper. Swear to God, he could’ve made a Bentley drive like a tractor.

  Mr. Tanaka shook his head and said, “Beers,” raising his hands up like claws and growling at me.

  “Oh. Bears.”

  He growled again, nodding. “Many bears?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Also elk, and moose.”

  The skin between his eyebrows crinkled. “Moose?”

  “Antlers?” I said. “Very big animal?”

  The poor guy looked really confused.

  I turned toward the backseat and raised my hands to either side of my head, thumbs touching just above each ear with my fingers splayed out wide as they could go.

  Chin raised, I bellowed “Mooooose,” in the lowest range I could manage.

  “Ah!” said our passenger, making finger-antlers himself. “Bullwinkle!”

  “Bullwinkle!” Dean agreed, raising a hand of his own to the side of his head, while I grinned and nodded at our passenger like an overmedicated psychotic clown.

  “This is going to be the longest business dinner ever,” I confided to my husband, through clenched teeth.

  “Alcohol will help,” said Dean, waggling his one-handed antler once more before dropping it to regrip the steering wheel. “Preferably several martinis.”

  Our passenger was busy peering out the window now, searching the canyon for Moose and Squirrel.

/>   “I think that sounds like a really bad idea,” I said, for Dean’s ears only. “I mean, the poor guy just flew into Denver from Tokyo yesterday, and we’re driving him up another four thousand feet to this restaurant, right?”

  Dean punched the brakes halfway through a particularly tight turn in the darkening canyon.

  Idiot. You accelerate out of a curve.

  I gripped the dashboard. “It would be highly irresponsible to let him have half a wine cooler, much less pound straight gin.”

  “He’s a prospective client. Basic Asian business etiquette requires that we encourage him to puke repeatedly.”

  I figured it would be lousy for business were said honored guest to check out permanently, à la high-altitude Hendrix, but I kept that observation to myself.

  And martinis would help me, as long as I didn’t get hammered enough to trot out the only Japanese phrase I knew: Tayo agay detekoy.

  My first stepfather had been ordered to memorize that circa February 1945, during his third Pacific tour with the United States Marine Corps.

  It meant, “Come out of the cave with your hands up.”

  We hooked a right at Nederland—8,233 feet above sea level—and barreled along the spine of the Front Range for a few more miles. The engine sputtered, trying to gain purchase on the high thin air, and our passenger chuffed and panted like the Little Engine That Could in Lamaze class.

  Dean turned into a narrow dirt lane still banked with waist-high snow. I caught Mr. Tanaka’s eyes in the rearview, white showing all the way around his irises as he ratcheted up toward sheer stranded-goldfish panic.

  “Look,” I said, pointing out the right-side corner of the windshield, “baby beers!”

  Two fat little furry cubs lolloped and tumbled through fresh powder, crossing a pine-ringed glade.

  “So wonderful,” said Mr. Tanaka, grinning as Dean slowed the car to a crawl.

  The sun was low behind us, tipping the snow’s meringue peaks pink and gold amidst long pools of cobalt shadow.

  The mother bear padded into view behind her furry twins, glancing our way before she loped ahead to chase them toward invisibility, beyond the trees. When her children were safely away she stood on her hind feet and stared at us.