Things You Won't Say

by Sarah Pekkanen

  After Christie wrote down the address and promised to come pick up Henry, she took a moment to finish painting her nails (in Essie’s Forever Young, and if Freud had anything to say about that, he could screw himself). A few minutes later she headed out, blasting her favorite Dave Matthews CD all the way Sara’s house. She found Henry and his friend tossing around a football in the front yard. The front door of the ­expensive-looking Tudor was open, and Sara stepped out and locked it behind her, then hurried toward Christie.

  “Thanks for coming so quickly,” she said as Christie got out of her car. Christie felt herself standing up a little straighter. She was the good mother in this scenario, the responsible one.

  “I just can’t imagine why Jamie forgot,” Christie said, shaking her head. She was thoroughly enjoying this role.

  Henry came over and gave Christie a hug. She wondered if it would ever stop feeling strange to have her cheek brush against her son’s jaw.

  “You ready to go?” she asked. “I thought I’d grill some chicken if you’re hungry.” That line was for Sara’s benefit, too.

  “Jake, come on, we’re late,” Sara said, climbing into her car and turning on the engine. She waved as she pulled out of her driveway.

  “Are you really making chicken?” Henry asked.

  “Sure,” Christie said. “We just need to swing by the store to get some.” Thank goodness she hadn’t gotten too deep into character and said she’d make coq au vin—which she’d eaten once with Simon, the pretentious jerk.

  “I wonder what happened to Jamie,” Henry said.

  She probably forgot you, Christie wanted to say. But she couldn’t. Any passive-aggressiveness she felt toward Mike’s wife paled in comparison to the love she felt for her son. She couldn’t put Jamie down if it meant hurting Henry. There weren’t many lines she wouldn’t cross in life, but this one was firm.

  “Maybe there was some emergency,” she said instead.

  “I tried calling the house, but no one answered,” Henry said. “Should we go by there first?”

  Christie thought about it. “Sure,” she finally said. She was curious, and she also wanted to see the look on Jamie’s face when Jamie realized she’d messed up.

  They drove to Jamie and Mike’s, arriving a little before 5:00 P.M.

  “Looks like they’re home,” Christie said. “Her minivan’s here.”

  She rang the doorbell and heard the sounds of running feet. “I GOT IT!” Eloise shrieked.

  “No, let me,” someone was saying—a woman with a deep voice. There was the sound of a brief scuffle, then Jamie’s sister, Lou, who quite frankly weirded Christie out, opened the door.

  “Yes?” Lou said. Recognition dawned in Lou’s eyes a second later. “Oh! It’s you. Sorry, I thought— Never mind.” She had the door open about six inches, and she looked like a bat peering out of its cave. Lou didn’t make a move to let them in.

  Seriously, there was something wrong with Jamie’s sister.

  Eloise was screaming, “I wanna get the door! I wanna get the door!”

  “Sorry,” Lou said again. “I’m going to shut the door. Can you ring the bell again so Eloise can open it?”

  “For real?” Christie asked. The door swung shut. Christie stabbed the bell again.

  “Herro?” Eloise said in her little-girl voice. “Henry! Henry! Henry’s home!”

  “Can we come in?” Christie asked. “It’s really hot out here.”

  “It isn’t much better in here,” Lou said, but the door finally opened.

  The first thing Christie noticed was the mess. Jamie wasn’t one of those 1950s-style housekeepers, but her place was generally clean, if not tidy. Today, though, there was a bag with wet bathing suits on the wood floor just inside the entrance, leaking a widening pool of water, and another bag of groceries nearby, slumping over as if it had given up hope of ever being unpacked. Toys were everywhere, and the mail was scattered across the floor, where it must have fallen after being pushed through the slot, and was that. . . ? Christie squinted. Yes. A big old dog turd decorated the middle of the living room rug. She just hoped one of the kids didn’t step in it.

  “Everything okay?” Christie asked. The yippy little mutt was jumping all over her and barking—probably desperate for someone to take her for a walk, Christie thought. And Lou wasn’t kidding; it was stifling in here. Christie lifted her hair off her neck with one hand and fanned herself with the other. “Where’s Jamie?”

  “I’m here,” Jamie said. She came around the corner, and Christie noticed her eyes were swollen and red-rimmed. “Hey, Henry.” Jamie reached for the boy and hugged him for a long time, then she let go and turned to Christie. “Thank you so much for coming, Christie,” she said. Then she did something remarkable—she hugged Christie, too.

  For a moment, shock paralyzed Christie. She couldn’t remember if she and Jamie had ever even touched before and now here stood Mike’s wife, her arms wrapped around Christie’s neck, her face buried in Christie’s shoulder. Despite the heat Jamie felt cold. She was trembling, too, and Christie’s heart began to pound. Mike worked the seven-to-three shift—he had for years—and his cruiser wasn’t out front. He should have been home by now. Had something happened to him?

  “What’s going on?” Christie asked. Jamie shook her head and held on to Christie tighter.

  “Jamie?” Henry asked. “Where’s my dad?”

  The quaver of fear in Henry’s voice was what finally seemed to break through to Jamie.

  “Oh, honey,” she said. She finally pulled away from Christie and cupped Henry’s cheek in her hand. “I’m so glad you’re here. Your dad is going to want to see you as soon as he gets home. He’ll be here soon. He’s fine, everything’s going to be fine . . .”

  Everything was not fine. The house was an oven and Eloise was wearing shorts but no shirt and holding on to Henry’s leg and there was poop on the floor and Jamie was babbling in that way that seemed a thin edge from hysteria.

  “Can you go say hi to the other kids?” Lou asked Henry. “They were excited to see me, but you’re like a rock star to them.”

  Lou inched up a bit in Christie’s estimation. Henry smiled modestly and went into the living room.

  “We should sit down,” Jamie said, motioning toward the dining room. Christie followed the sisters to the big wooden table, feeling anxiety gnaw at her.

  “Where’s Mike?” she asked. “Did something happen to him?”

  “No,” Jamie said at the exact same moment Lou replied, “Yes.”

  “Someone tell me what the hell is going on!”

  Before either woman could reply, Henry appeared in the doorway of the room, clutching his cell phone.

  “Jamie?” he said. Just a little while ago, when she’d seen him at his friend Jake’s house, Christie had been struck by how big her boy was getting. The fuzz above his upper lip, that deepening voice, those broad shoulders—he was teetering on the brink of manhood. But now he looked like a little boy again, all gangly limbs and huge brown eyes.

  “One of my friends just texted me,” Henry said in a wavering voice. “Did Dad really shoot someone?”

  * * *

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  MIKE DIDN’T COME HOME until nearly seven o’clock that night. Jamie watched as a cruiser pulled up in front of their house and Mike got out of the passenger’s seat. She ran to the front door, flinging it open, as the police car pulled away. Her husband’s gait dragged as he approached their house. His head was bowed, and he still wore his uniform.

  Jamie closed the door behind her, so the kids couldn’t hear, and leaned into him. After a moment, she felt his arms rise and encircle her body. They stayed locked together, wordlessly, for a long moment.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she whispered.

  She felt his shoulders heave, just once, then he re
leased a sigh. “A bunch of bangers were fighting. I don’t know, maybe it was an initiation or something. It was too big to be spontaneous . . .”

  She nodded when he paused. Tell me, she thought. Please don’t hold this in, too.

  “We were close by. A car had skidded through an intersection and wrapped around a streetlight. Anyway, no one was hurt, so when the call came in we got there first. Jay, the fucking idiot they paired me with, he just starts running into the scene. He doesn’t wait for backup, he doesn’t stay behind me, he just goes. Maybe he figured they were young-looking so they’d be scared of the cops. What the hell was he thinking?”

  “I don’t know,” Jamie whispered.

  “The rain’s still pouring down, and Jay’s heading straight for two guys fighting. He’s screaming, ‘Freeze!’ like he’s on a fucking TV show. And I’m trying to get to him, to cover him, but guys keep running in and out of my line of sight. Someone punches me in the head from behind, and I spin around but he’s already gone. When I turn back, I see a guy reaching around behind him. Like to the back waistband of his pants, and I know what he’s doing. He’s getting his piece. Jay’s about twenty feet away and he’s got out his pepper spray. How does he think a hot shot versus a gun is going to end?”

  Mike’s breathing was rougher now.

  “The guy started to draw on Jay and I had a shot. I took it.”

  “You thought he was going to shoot Jay,” Jamie said.

  Mike nodded. “He was going to shoot Jay. Another two, three seconds . . . I see people looking up, like they think maybe the shot is another crack of thunder. Then the sirens come. Everyone’s running around, yelling. Our backup arrives and they secure the scene while I call for an ­ambulance.”

  Jamie rubbed his back like she did the kids’ when they were hurt or upset.

  “I knew it the second I fired. Before I even got close to him and saw his eyes.” Mike shook his head, like he was trying to deny his own words. “He was a year older than Henry.”

  “I know,” Jamie said. She kept rubbing Mike’s broad back because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “I play basketball around there sometimes. I might’ve played with him.”

  Mike hadn’t done it in a few months, but on occasional weekend mornings when he was off duty he joined a pickup game in the community he patrolled. It was a way of showing young men another side to the police. They sweated together, argued over fouls real and imagined, and walked off the courts slapping each other’s palms.

  “You need to rest,” Jamie said. “Come inside.”

  “Do the kids know?” Mike asked.

  “Henry heard something about it from one of his friends,” Jamie said. “I told him we’d talk about it when you got home.”

  Mike pulled away from her and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Yeah.”

  “Lou’s here,” Jamie said. “Christie, too.”

  Mike jerked back. “What’s she doing here?”

  “She wants to help,” Jamie said. “But we can ask her to go if you want.”

  Mike shook his head again. “I keep seeing him, lying there. You know how the kids like to make snow angels? That’s what he looked like. A snow angel bleeding out on a piece of asphalt.”

  A tremor ran through Mike’s body, and Jamie could see his throat working convulsively.

  “Honey,” Jamie said. “You didn’t start the fight. You didn’t put the gun in his hand. This wasn’t your fault, Mike! You were just doing your job.”

  Mike nodded, but the expression on his face told Jamie her words hadn’t penetrated.

  “They didn’t find a gun,” he said in a low voice.

  Jamie felt herself go ice-cold as Mike’s words echoed in the space between them. “What do you mean?”

  “The union rep came. He told me not to say anything, but that’s bullshit. I didn’t do anything wrong. I told them what I could tonight and I’m going in tomorrow for a formal statement.” Mike shook his head. “Jay told them he didn’t see a gun. He thought the guy was just drawing back his fist to punch the kid again. Jay couldn’t even look at me.”

  “He was wrong!” Jamie cried. “He’s an idiot. You said so—”

  Mike cut her off: “A few of the bangers were questioned, the ones they could round up, at least. They all said the same thing: No gun.”

  Mike’s voice was a monotone now.

  “There wasn’t a gun?” Jamie echoed, her throat closing around the words. “Did they look around? Maybe it fell out of his hand.”

  “They looked,” Mike said. “I looked. I was the first one to reach the guy.”

  “No,” Jamie said. She felt her insides collapse. “No, Mike.”

  “I swear to you,” Mike said, staring at her, his eyes hard and intent. He gripped her shoulders, his fingers digging into her flesh. “I saw it, Jamie.”

  “We have to think,” Jamie said. She was breathing hard now, her mind scrambling. “It was raining! It was hard to see! Anyone could’ve made that mistake! They can’t blame you!”

  She felt hysteria rise within her. She saw Mike leading with his SIG Sauer as he walked through their shadowy house, imagining a threat that had never existed. Her eyes went instinctively to the holster on his hip. It was empty. They must’ve taken his gun as evidence.

  Jamie turned to look at their house and the four innocent children who were depending on them. Then she spun back around at the sudden sound of an engine. A white news van was coming down their street.

  Mike didn’t appear to notice the approaching van. He was in his own world now. He had been for quite some time. Why had she ever thought he needed to go back to work? He hadn’t been ready, not even close, and now a teenager was dead and his family was shattered and all of their lives were wrecked.

  Jamie began to tremble. The news van stopped in front of their house.

  This can’t be happening, she thought.

  * * *

  Part Two

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  IT WAS THE FIRST time Lou had taken a sick day since she’d begun working at the zoo. The flu, a broken toe (incurred when she’d been assisting with an examination of a hippo who changed his mind about cooperating), a lingering sinus infection . . . none of it could keep Lou from her beloved animals. Being around them felt healing.

  She craved the elephants’ calming presence even more than usual today, because the scene at Jamie and Mike’s was so alarming. By now there were three news vans with big antennas crowding the street, and Lou had glimpsed a reporter she recognized from television standing in front of the house, talking as a cameraman filmed her.

  Inside, things were just as disorienting. After Mike had come home last night, he’d changed into shorts and a T-shirt, then slumped on the couch, staring at a Disney movie with the kids. Jamie had stationed herself in the kitchen, making spaghetti and a huge salad and garlic bread and, of all things, an apple pie. An apple pie! As if Jamie had time to be coring and slicing fruit. And the last thing they needed was for the oven to be on, adding a few more degrees of heat to the sweltering house.

  “What are you doing?” Lou had asked. “Don’t you think you should be with Mike?”

  But Jamie’s lips had trembled. “It’s Mike’s favorite.”

  Lou had understood then: Her sister was trying to find a way to give her husband some small measure of comfort. So Lou had picked up a knife and begun slicing Granny Smiths, too. No one had seemed to notice as the clock ticked later, so at around 9:00 P.M., Lou had cajoled the kids to bed with the promise of a special contest—whoever could pee the longest would win a lollipop.

  Lou had realized belatedly that none of the kids had brushed their teeth, and she was pretty sure she’d forgotten at least one other part of Jamie’s nighttime routine, but at least they were asleep. She�
��d finally done one small thing to help her sister, something concrete. Jamie had asked her to spend the night, so she’d borrowed the minivan and hurried home to grab a quick shower and pack up her toothbrush and a nightshirt and change of clothes. Luckily no reporters had followed her. The relief on Donny’s and Mary Alice’s faces when she told them she’d be gone for a day or two had reminded her that she needed to move out soon, on top of everything else. When she’d returned, Jamie and Mike were talking quietly in the living room, so Lou had gone upstairs to lie down on their bed. Somehow she’d fallen asleep, still wearing her shoes. She’d forgotten to brush her teeth, too.

  Lou figured she’d check in after work to see if Jamie needed her to run to the store or something, given that Jamie had used up just about everything in her pantry last night cooking a meal that easily could’ve served twelve. But this morning, when she’d crept downstairs in the grainy, gray light of dawn, she’d seen Jamie and Mike sitting side by side on the couch, in the same position as the night before. They weren’t talking. Lou wondered if they’d even slept. She felt dazed and muddy; it must’ve been eighty-five degrees in there. It was hard to breathe, let alone think.

  “Hi, Lou,” Jamie said without turning around, and Lou started. She thought she’d been quiet, but Jamie seemed to have developed supersonic hearing since having children.

  “Hi,” Lou whispered. She didn’t want to interrupt the intimate moment—it seemed like that was all she was doing lately—but Jamie motioned for her to join them. Lou brushed some Legos off a chair and sat down. She looked at her sister and brother-in-law carefully. Jamie was still wearing the same outfit as yesterday, and she was twirling her hair into knots again. Mike hadn’t shaved, and his eyes were bleary. They both looked wilted, like flowers whose source of water had run out days earlier.