Things You Won't Say

by Sarah Pekkanen

  He guffawed then—actually guffawed—and she walked back to switch out the milk cartons. She hoped she didn’t have to spend long with him in the hotel room. She could expire from boredom.

  “So maybe we should check it out, as long as you’re in town,” Doug was saying as he walked her to the cashier station. “The champagne bar.”

  “Maybe,” Christie said, throwing him another flirty glance. She could do this in her sleep—and she might have to, if Doug kept up his corny lines. She put her milk on the conveyor belt.

  “Any chance I could get your number?”

  She smiled and pulled her phone out of her purse. “Give me yours,” she said. He rattled off the digits, and she programmed them into her phone, then hit the “Call” button. A second later, Doug’s cell phone rang.

  “You’ve got my number,” she said. She’d left her real phone in the car. This was a cheap throwaway cell Elroy had given her. She’d get rid of it, and be given a new one, for the next job. An expense account was a wondrous thing. Maybe she should’ve picked up some Diet Coke and Lean Cuisines along with her milk, she thought.

  “Two forty-nine,” the cashier said. Christie started to pull out her credit card, but Doug was faster.

  “Allow me,” he said, swiping his through the machine with a grandiose gesture, as if he was paying for a diamond. “Next time I’ll buy you a real drink.”

  “I’ll look forward to it,” she said. “But I’m only in town for a couple days.” Elroy wanted to close this deal quickly.

  “Then I better call you soon,” he said, putting his gallon of milk on the conveyor belt. He hadn’t even picked up the diapers. What a jerk. He deserved everything that was coming to him, Christie thought as she walked away.

  This job was almost too easy. Tomorrow or the day after, she’d suggest meeting Doug at the hotel. As soon as the job was done, she’d get paid—probably three or four hundred dollars, when all her hours were tallied up. It would be almost as much as she made in a full week at the salon.

  Christie got into her car and turned up her radio, singing along with Adele as she sped toward the nearest public bathroom. There was a Starbucks on the next block; she’d stop there.

  At the end of the song, just as Christie turned into the parking lot, the radio announcer began to speak, his voice deep and stern. “Sources say a special Metropolitan Police Department investigative team is collecting evidence in the shooting of a fifteen-year-old boy by veteran police officer Michael Anderson. Sources say several eyewitnesses report the teenager was unarmed when shot by Anderson. The MPD will bring the evidence to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which could decide to take the case to a grand jury for an indictment. We’ll have another update on the hour.”

  Christie slammed on her brakes just in time to avoid hitting a car that was pulling out of a parking spot.

  She picked up her phone and dialed Mike. The media loved to play stuff like this up. Surely once the facts were sorted out, it would blow over. Still, he might welcome a little support. But it was Jamie who answered. “Hey,” Christie said. “I just heard the news . . . Wow, what a bummer.”

  Jamie released a sound that wasn’t quite like a laugh. “Yeah,” she said. “A bummer.”

  “Anyway, is Mike around?” Christie asked after a little pause.

  “You know, I don’t think now’s such a good time,” Jamie said. “He’s resting.”

  Jamie did this sometimes—acted like the gatekeeper between her and Mike. It never failed to annoy Christie.

  Christie felt her spine straighten. “Well, my kid is being affected by all of this, too. Am I allowed to talk to him?”

  Jamie sighed then, and when she spoke again, she sounded so beaten down that Christie felt bad for snapping. “Of course you can talk to Henry. Let me go get him.”

  After a minute Henry’s voice, which had deepened over the past few months, came on the line.

  “Hey, honey,” she said. “How are you doing?”

  “Okay, I guess,” Henry said. “Kind of a weird day.”

  “Let me know if you want me to come get you,” Christie said. Her evenings seemed longer now that Simon was out of the picture. Chinese food and a movie at home wouldn’t be pathetic if Henry were there.

  “No, I should hang with Dad,” Henry said. “Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” she said. She was all dressed up, her makeup fresh. Surely she could find something to do. But her best friend, Robyn, wasn’t speaking to her because she thought Christie had flirted with her boyfriend. And most of the other women Christie knew would be with their husbands tonight.

  “I love you,” Henry said.

  Christie blew a kiss over the phone. She kept her voice light. “You, too, kiddo. See you soon.”

  Christie wasn’t a perfect parent; she knew that. She’d never baked a muffin in her life, let alone hidden pureed vegetables in one. Whenever Henry asked for her help with homework, she told him to Google his questions. She let him fall asleep at night without brushing his teeth—she was pretty sure Jamie and Mike blamed her for Henry’s three cavities—and she’d let him watch an R-rated movie when he was seven, mostly because she wanted to see it, too. But somehow, Henry was as close to perfect as it was possible to get.

  He wasn’t just the most important thing in her life, she thought. He was the only thing she’d ever done right.

  •••

  Motherhood had steeped Jamie in stress endurance. She’d once had four kids down with a norovirus, all of them moaning and retching while she ricocheted from room to room with buckets and Pedialyte and fresh towels. Another time—Jamie still shuddered at the memory—Mike had left an open bottle of Drāno on the bathroom sink as he bent over the shower drain, trying to unclog it. Eloise had tottered by, her little fingers reaching out and grazing the plastic bottle. Somehow, Jamie had swooped in and yanked her daughter to safety just as the bottle tumbled down toward her baby’s face. (She and Mike had had an epic fight moments later, hurling accusations like spears: “I thought you were watching her!” “Why the hell didn’t you take two seconds to put the cap back on!”) After so many years of raising children, Jamie had grown accustomed to feeling her heartbeat explode with the intensity of a racehorse pulling away from the gate: a fall from a playground structure, a sudden high fever, a car speeding around the corner just as Sam’s ball bounced into the street . . .

  She worried every day when Mike left for his job, too. Watching him strap on his gun and baton and pepper spray was a constant reminder of the danger he faced. Jamie dreaded domestic disturbances—those were the scariest calls, the ones proven to be the most deadly—but she also feared the ­officer-needs-assistance signal, which indicated a situation was spinning out of control fast. She no longer read the police blotter in the newspaper, because it made the scenarios she tried to push out of her imagination even more vivid.

  But she’d never experienced anything like the sustained, raw fear that pulsed through her now, as steadily as if it were being infused by IV.

  Earlier this morning, Sandy had phoned. “I’m here for you,” she’d said. “What can I do? Do you want to bring the kids over?”

  An echo of the words she’d spoken to Sandy after Ritchie’s shooting.

  But Jamie couldn’t see Sandy. Not today. Buried beneath the sorrow and anger and pain she’d felt over Ritchie’s shooting had always been a kernel of horrible gratitude that Mike had chosen that precise moment to crack a joke and push Ritchie out the door first. She’d always been afraid that Sandy would sense it. But now it was Sandy who pitied her; Jamie could hear the emotion infusing Sandy’s tone. Ritchie was being hailed as a hero; they were going to put up a plaque in his honor at police headquarters, along with one for the fallen rookie. An entire elementary school had sent notes thanking Ritchie for his service. Ritchie was getting better, and now Mike might go to jail.

  Sandy
couldn’t understand what she was going through. Their sorrows were different species.

  “Lou’s here,” she’d told Sandy, ending the call quickly. “But thank you.”

  Then she and Mike had left the house to go to the police station so Mike could meet with the lawyer provided by his union and give a statement. Mike hadn’t wanted her to come, but she’d insisted. Their minivan had been trailed by news vans as they traveled down their quiet street. Jamie stared out the window, at buildings and intersections that seemed familiar yet changed, as if she were viewing them through the prism of a dream.

  After they’d parked at the police station, reporters had leapt out of their vehicles and crowded around her and Mike while they tried to make it into the building. A cameraman had bumped Jamie, and she’d released a little cry of surprise. Mike had whipped around, snarling a warning, as a dozen cameras whirled and snapped. The expression on his face, Jamie was certain, would be the one that appeared on the six o’clock news.

  Now they were in the station, and Jamie was sitting on a hard wooden bench in the waiting area while Mike conferred in a private room with his lawyer. After the stifling heat of her home, Jamie felt chilled. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, wishing she’d put a sweater on top of her simple blue cotton dress. Would Mike actually be arrested? She imagined one of his colleagues rolling the tips of her husband’s fingers into black ink before pressing them onto a card, then someone reading Mike the Miranda rights he’d recited to so many suspects.

  It was impossible to believe it had been only thirty-six hours since Mike had left for work. She tried to grip on to the memory of that morning, her final taste of normalcy, but time had turned loose and hazy in her mind. She was pretty sure Mike had already been up and showered by the time she’d gotten out of bed around six. She didn’t think she’d asked him how he’d slept, maybe because she knew the answer wouldn’t be reassuring.

  He’d been leaning up against the counter, gulping coffee while she poured cereal into bowls for the kids. She remembered reaching around him to open the refrigerator, and noticing they were almost out of milk. She’d jotted a reminder on the running list she kept on the refrigerator door. Or had that happened the day before? No, it must have been that morning, because she’d been about to put away the milk she’d bought at the store when the phone had rung.

  She was certain she recalled the thick, dark clouds hanging low in the sky, blotting out the sun as effectively as an eclipse. “It looks like rain,” she’d probably said as she’d kissed Mike good-bye. Had she kissed Mike good-bye that morning? She hoped she had.

  Jamie flinched at a sudden touch on her shoulder. She looked up to see an officer named Arun Brahma, a man she’d gotten to know through the years because he and Mike shared a passion for football and sometimes attended games together.

  “We’re all behind Mike,” Brahma said softly. “Is there anything I can do?” Jamie nearly wept with gratitude; Brahma was dark-skinned, and his support meant he didn’t believe the horrible accusation that race had played a part in Mike’s decision to pull the trigger. If his brothers and sisters in blue had abandoned him, it would’ve been the end of her husband.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “I’ll let you know.” Brahma nodded and walked away. Jamie wished she’d thought to ask him what was happening with Mike. She visualized her husband sitting across from the lawyer, giving an account of the day. Mike wouldn’t break down, that much she knew. He could get emotional about small things, like Eloise learning to ride a two-wheeler, but when it came to a crisis, he never panicked. Sometimes Mike’s steadfastness irritated her, like when their kids were babies and they cried in the night. “I let Henry cry it out, and he’s a great sleeper now,” Mike had said. But Jamie was physically incapable of letting her kids sob in their cribs, which meant she had to get up and rock them and soothe them while Mike rolled over and went back to sleep. She got anxious when their kids ran a fever; he simply reached for the Tylenol. She worried about germs on the handles of supermarket carts; Mike told her kids needed to build up their immunity. Whenever her emotions ran high, he was the tonic that neutralized them. He was the steadiest man she knew.

  The steadiest man she knew—but not lately, a traitorous voice whispered in her head.

  How had a few seconds erased the thousands of days he’d spent risking his own life to do good? Mike had once talked down a guy who was threatening a woman with a gun. He’d arrested a man who was abusing his dog in public—and had personally taken the little mutt to a no-kill animal shelter so the man would never get it back. He always talked to kids on the street, urging them to avoid gangs, asking them about school and what books they were reading. This wasn’t just a job for Mike, it was a calling, as strong as the priesthood.

  She wrapped her arms around herself again and looked at her watch. They’d been in the station for only an hour, though it felt like much longer. She could hear the jangling of distant phones, and the front door kept swinging open as police officers walked in and out. A young woman came in and walked to the front desk, her pretty sundress swaying above her knees, saying she’d gotten a call that a Good Samaritan had turned in a wallet she’d lost. The desk sergeant looked at her, then checked her driver’s license photo before handing over the wallet. The woman thanked him and turned around, her eyes meeting Jamie’s before flickering away. But not before Jamie registered the surprise in them.

  No, it doesn’t make sense that I’m here, Jamie thought, answering the woman’s unspoken question. I should be driving a carpool, or attending a PTA meeting, or roasting a chicken. The woman exited the building, and Jamie stared at the door as it shut behind her, wondering if the media were still gathered there, waiting to pounce.

  She leaned her head against the hard wall behind the bench, forcing back tears. The door opened again, and an officer carried in a paper bag with the logo of a fast-food restaurant. Burgers, she thought, catching a whiff of grease and cooked meat.

  She’d waitressed at a burger joint near Capitol Hill when she was twenty-one. It was how she’d met Mike. Jamie had just graduated from the University of Maryland and had accepted an entry-level job at a D.C. public relations firm. That wouldn’t start until August; in the meantime, she was hustling for tips six nights a week. She’d lived in a crowded town house with five other young women, and on weekend nights, the smell of hair spray and perfume and scented candles was overpowering.

  That night she’d put on her usual uniform—a black skirt, black T-shirt with an embarrassing restaurant logo of a hamburger with a giant tongue trying to lick itself, red apron, and black sneakers—and headed to her job. The place was a little grimy and the food wasn’t anything special, but twenty-­somethings flocked there because the burgers and beer were cheap and there were long tables that could be pushed together. On Friday nights there was karaoke and on Saturdays Jell-O shots made with vodka instead of water. It was always rowdy.

  It was ninety-nine-cent Jell-O shot night, which usually meant good tips. Capitol Hill staffers didn’t earn much money, but drunken ones became more generous when filling in the tip lines on credit card receipts. Jamie was bouncing between five big tables in section three that evening, and she ran back and forth from the kitchen dozens of times, balancing metal trays on her upturned palms, clearing away empty beer pitchers and soiled paper napkins, refilling drinks. One of her tables was especially busy—a group of six or seven guys who cheered each other on as they sucked down shot after shot. At about eleven o’clock, a few of the guys peeled away from the long table, leaving just three. “Can we have another pitcher of Bud?” one of the guys asked. “Sure,” Jamie said. She cleared the empty glasses and plates off the table as a new group claimed the unoccupied seats, then went to put in the order with the bartender.

  Then she made a mistake. She went to the bathroom.

  She was near the end of an eight-hour shift, and it was the first break she’d had. She
used the toilet, washed her hands, and splashed cold water on her face. She smelled like grease and stale beer, her hair was coming loose from its ponytail, and her mascara was smeared. She took a moment to fix her hair and wipe away the flecks of black from underneath her eyes. She walked back out and grabbed the full pitcher off the bartop and headed into the dining area.

  Almost immediately she spotted the problem. The table of guys, the group responsible for her highest bill of the evening, had walked out.

  She ran to it, hoping they’d left some money under a beer stein but knowing she wouldn’t find any.

  “Did you see where these guys went?” she asked the people seated nearby. They shook their heads.

  It had never happened to her before, but it certainly occurred from time to time at the restaurant. It did at every restaurant. The real problem was the owner of the burger place—a middle-aged guy who’d designed the logo and had logged far too many nights hanging out at the bar, drinking steadily and arguing politics with the customers—was an ass. He’d instituted a rule that the waitstaff had to cover the cost of any walkouts, to prevent them from letting their friends escape without paying the check.

  The bill was over a hundred dollars—more than Jamie would earn that night in tips.

  “Miss?” someone was calling, but she ignored them. She ran out of the restaurant and looked down the street, then swiveled to check the other direction. She could see a big group of people in the distance. Were those the guys? She sprinted toward them, her breath coming faster, her speed increasing along with her anger. Those jerks thought they were so cool, sneaking away. Maybe they didn’t realize she’d have to cover the cost of the bill, but that didn’t make what they’d done any less infuriating.

  They didn’t hear her coming—probably because they were too drunk.

  “Hey!” she bellowed when she was a few feet away, and one of the guys turned around.

  “Oh, shit,” he said, leaning against his friend. They exploded with laughter.