He pulled onto the highway, turned around at the next exit, and returned to Bedford.
FOURTEEN
Dead Soldiers
Bang! Bang! Paul heard from the window of his car. For a moment, he thought it was Susan, breaking her way inside.
No, please, no.
“I almost couldn’t find your car in this rain,” Danny said as he opened the door and sat down. Paul looked around the empty lot behind Main Street where only one other car, Danny’s Jimmy, was parked, and wondered if Danny said stupid things just to break the silence. He sat facing forward, his white-knuckled hands wrapped around the steering wheel, breathing slowly, one breath at a time.
“So what’s the big secret?” Danny asked. His rubber raincoat squeaked along the leather of the car. “I told April there was a brawl over at Montie’s. I feel like I’m playing cops and robbers here.”
“You are a cop,” Paul said.
“True.” Danny looked closer, examining Paul’s face. “What is it?”
Paul didn’t answer.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Center’s not holding, gyre’s widening.”
“Lord,” Danny muttered. He unsnapped his yellow raincoat. “You didn’t get pulled over for DWI, did you?”
“No, Danny,” Paul moaned, “Do you think I’d call you to out to the Kmart parking lot for a DWI?”
“I’ve heard of stupider things. You get into a fight with Cathy?”
“Danny…” Paul looked down at his hands.
“Out with it,” Danny said. “It can’t be that bad.”
Paul shook his head. “It’s bad. There was an accident and Susan got hurt. She died.”
Danny sucked out his breath. “Oh, no. Susan Marley?”
“Yeah. She fell.”
“Where’d she fall?”
“I checked for a pulse. But she’s dead and I’m drunk.”
“You drove after the bar? I thought you were just walking her home.”
“I’m telling you somebody’s dead and you want to arrest me for a DWI?” Danny lifted his hands in surrender, and Paul continued. “She looked sick. I thought it was the cold. But her place, you should see it. It’s not a place anyone should be living in.”
“What’s the matter with it?”
Paul’s lips contorted into a sneer. “She was alone for too long. She wasn’t acting like a person anymore.”
“Oh, Paul. That poor girl never acted like a person.”
“Would you shut up, Danny? She bit me, for Christ’s sake, like she was rabid.” Paul’s eyes began to tear, and he did not look at Danny until he gained control of himself.
Danny turned on the overhead light and examined Paul’s bite. Punctures shaped like child-sized teeth had broken his skin. The half-moon wound was swollen and red. Danny blew out his breath in a low whistle. “Did you call the hospital?”
“No. She fell down the stairs and I was going to call somebody but she was dead and then, I don’t know…She waved at me when she fell.”
“Like hello? She waved hello at you?”
Paul’s face turned red. “Like good-bye, you ass, like good-bye. She waved good-bye and she jumped.”
He gritted his teeth. “Oh. So then you came here, called me?”
“I took a drive.”
“You fled the scene.”
Paul’s whole body sagged. “Shit,” he said. He banged his head against the steering wheel hard enough to rock the dashboard. Once. Twice. The third time, he remained slumped against the wheel. It occurred to Danny that his wife might have been right all along. There was something wrong with Paul. He was not just a big talker. He was not just a drunk. When pushed, when his life was going badly enough, he would get violent, and that violence would be unleashed on whoever was unlucky enough to be standing in his way. If you had told Danny this a year ago, or even this afternoon, he would never have believed it.
“I really screwed things up, Danny,” Paul said.
Danny sat straight. “I’ve got one question for you: She fell down the stairs, right?”
“Right.”
“And the fall killed her.”
“Right.”
“Did you push her?”
“No,” Paul whispered, still with that violence underneath the curl of his lips.
“You didn’t tap her, maybe knock her off balance? No accident?”
“No. I swear to God,” Paul whispered, and Danny knew it was true. He also knew that he didn’t care. Because there was a line, and maybe it had been crossed tonight, maybe a long time ago, but it had been crossed. After this night Danny would no longer call Paul Martin his friend.
“Then don’t say that again. Don’t ever say that again. You start telling people it was your fault she fell, and even if you don’t go to jail, it could last for years.”
“Shit.”
“Ride with me in my car. You can’t drive. And don’t talk to anybody but me when we get to the department or somebody’ll want to give you a Breathalyzer.”
Paul’s brows knitted. He looked like he might argue, but reconsidered. He pulled his keys from the ignition.
“I’ll call it in and then you and I’ll drive over to the police station. You can make a statement and we’ll put some alcohol or something on that bite.”
“Iodine,” Paul corrected.
“Whatever, Paul. I don’t give a horse’s ass.”
When they arrived at the police station, one of Danny’s deputies informed them that Susan Marley was alive and had been taken to the Mid-Maine Medical Center in Corpus Christi an hour earlier. Danny presided over Paul’s tape-recorded recollection of events in the interrogation room. “If she dies and the autopsy checks out, there won’t be an inquiry so don’t say anything about your little drive,” Danny told him while they sat in a small, dingy room with folding metal chairs that Paul imagined, aside from himself, only drug dealers and wife beaters had ever graced with their weight. “If she lives, you’d better be telling the truth.”
Danny quelled Paul’s fears of being caught fleeing the scene of an accident, and gave rise to new and more subtle ones when he turned off the recorder and said, “You’re not popular around here so it’s tricky, but everybody expected this to happen to her. It’s no surprise. If it had been someone other than Marley, you’d have real trouble on your hands.”
Later, as Danny pulled up in front of Paul’s house, he said, “Don’t go to the hospital, I’ll go down and explain everything, they’re not gonna want to see you. I’ll have a couple of my deputies drop off your car, leave your keys in the mailbox. I’ll tell ’em you were too upset to drive.”
“Thanks, Danny. But I don’t want you to lie. They’ll understand if you tell them what happened,” Paul heard himself say.
Danny nodded toward the door for Paul to get out. “Who’s gonna understand, Paul? I don’t even understand.” Then he peeled away.
Paul walked on tiptoe through the front door. Poured himself a glass of water. Danny’s words kept running through his head. The whole time they were at the station, he’d been looking at Paul like he was the dumbest man on earth. “If I’d known I wouldn’t have left. I thought she was dead,” Paul had said.
“Or maybe you were pickled and you left a little girl,” Danny had answered under his breath on their way out.
In the den he could see his son James watching television. Lights flickered against James’s face. Paul suddenly felt angry that the kid was not in bed while, upstairs, Cathy was probably sleeping the peaceful sleep of the terminally stupid.
He went into his library, the liquor cabinet. Nothing there, absolutely nothing but a bottle of tonic. Cathy had been screwing around with his stash again. He went to the kitchen, looked in the garbage. There they were. Absolut, Bombay, even the red wine. Poor dead soldiers who’d never even gotten to see battle. One had a broken neck. Susan had a broken neck.
“James,” he called a few times until his son walked into the kitchen. Paul put his
arm around his son’s bony frame. James bristled. He pointed at Paul’s gauze-covered arm. Brown paint stained its edges.
“What happened?” James asked.
Paul considered what the best explanation might be. There was no best explanation. “You’ll hear about it tomorrow,” he said.
James nodded. His hands were curled into balls underneath the heels of his blue flannel shirt. “What’d you do tonight?” Paul asked.
“Nothing.”
“You should be in bed.”
James shrugged.
“Well, shouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
Paul pointed at the garbage. “Your mother get a little crazy?” he asked with a smile. Maybe he could turn this around, make it a joke, something they could share. Turn that day upside down.
James didn’t answer.
“Yeah, she’s crazy, all right.”
“No, she’s not,” James whispered.
“She awake?”
James pursed his lips like he was protecting her, and it made Paul want to slap him. Something rose in his stomach, a slow-burning bile, and Paul felt himself shake. James stepped back. “James,” Paul said, but there was nothing else to say because the boy had read his thoughts, and while he had never raised a hand to either son in his life, it was out there, the threat, and could not be drawn back.
“Go to bed,” Paul said.
James fled the room. A few seconds later, a door slammed. Hard.
Paul looked in the direction of James’s room for a few seconds and considered following him, but he didn’t. The condition he was in, there wasn’t much chance of making things better, and a hell of a good chance of making them worse. So instead, he felt his way through the dark house. He lay down on the couch in front of the television and thought maybe he’d just sleep here tonight. Not see Cathy, sleep next to her, smell her, on the same night he’d watched a woman bleed inside her head.
He closed his eyes and things swerved, crossed, jiggled. He ran to the bathroom and threw up. Again he thought: This is your life, a grown man gagging as quietly as you know how so your son doesn’t hear you steer a toilet.
When he got out, Cathy was waiting for him. She was wearing a frayed terry-cloth robe. She crossed her arms around her waist in a hug.
“He can hear you,” she said. She looked like she was going to cry. When she cried, it was a soft crying, and you only knew it if you looked at her closely and saw her tears.
He wanted to tell her everything would be all right and he’d take care of her and sorry, so sorry, little Cathy. But he didn’t do that because you’re well now, right little Cath? You’re fit as a fiddle and now it’s somebody else’s turn. You’re not the one waiting for a phone call from Danny about whether a girl died tonight. But you’re standing there because you want me to say: I’m glad you tossed out my booze. I love you so much I don’t need it. “Who can hear me, Cath? That’s only if you believe in a higher being,” he told her, flinching as he said it because this was Cathy, and being cruel to her was about as admirable as kicking a puppy.
He expected her to cry. Fully expected it the same way he knew when she wasn’t taking her lithium and claimed the Prozac worked just fine on its own; she didn’t want any drug giving her hyperthyroidism. That wasn’t hard to notice because she’d cry about her messy hair when she woke up in the morning.
He expected her to cry right now because he always knew what she was going to do before she did it. She didn’t cry. She leaned against the opening of the doorway, saw the toilet that reeked of bile and booze, and then looked back at him.
He crossed his arms.
“One of these days he’s going to hate you and you won’t be able to take it back.” Not at all what he had expected. The sentiment itself was not original, but the delivery, baby, the delivery. He thought about telling her that if it weren’t for him, she’d be in a loony bin chasing down piles of pills with water-filled Dixie Cups, but he could smell his own vomit. He wondered if he was sober right now, whether her words would sting more than they already did. “Which day, Cathy?”
“Andrew’s with you but James won’t be and I don’t know how much longer I’ll be with you, either.”
“You what?” he spit at her. “Who do you think you are?”
Now she started to cry. The tears came down, one at either end of her calm, pale face. “We’ll talk about this later,” she told him, enunciating every syllable like his brain had gone too soft to comprehend English.
“Talk about it now.”
She sighed. “I don’t know what to say.”
He took a deep breath, had a quick retort, but bit it back. She looked so frail. She always looked so frail. He could never say a goddamn thing to her because she always looked like she might break.
“I was worried about you today. I don’t know why. I was afraid something might have happened. Did anything happen?”
This concern took him by surprise, and all he could do was shake his head.
“I had this feeling you might be hurt. Are you hurt? Is there some way I can help?”
Again, he shook his head. She’d never asked such a question, and he was vaguely suspicious, like maybe next she’d announce that for the last three months she’d been serving high tea to little green men. This was the woman, after all, who’d pretended she had pneumonia the night before his protest, just so she could worm out of standing by his side.
“I feel like something’s coming. Maybe it’s just the rain, I don’t know. I had this terrible dream about Susan Marley.”
Paul shook his head. “What are you talking about?” His lip curled into a look of contempt. For a moment he forgot what had happened to Susan, or even that he’d dreamed for the first time in decades, too. He forgot everything except his pride, and he knew that shaming his wife was the only way he had left of holding on to it.
Cathy shrugged. “Forget it. Anyway, James is out of school in a few months.”
“So?” Paul asked.
“After the rain, I thought I’d take him to Saratoga Springs to see his relatives. I can travel now. I can do things.”
“I see. And when will you come back, dear?”
“When things are better.”
“Tough love?”
“Is it love?” she whispered. She waited for him to answer and when he did not, she turned and went back upstairs.
FIFTEEN
Down a Rabbit Hole
By the time the EMTs arrived at Susan’s apartment, Liz had fainted. She woke up speeding sixty-five miles an hour in a gurney next to Susan’s naked body. When they got to the hospital, she’d recovered. She watched as a pair of orderlies in pink scrubs pushed Susan down the hall and out of sight.
Bobby, who had followed the ambulance in his car, rushed into the emergency room soon afterward. Taking her quite by surprise he hugged her hard, then kissed her cheeks and the bridge of her nose and finally her lips. “You’re okay,” he said. “I was scared you weren’t okay.”
To keep from crying she started talking. “I guess I should call my mother now,” she said. “I told her I wasn’t going to see Susan. There’s blood on my shoes. It was so good you gave that CPR—you’re so good at that stuff. You’re so smart,” she babbled. Then she saw the troubled look on his face and tried to slow down. “I’m okay. Don’t worry. Really.” She came close to crying again. “Do you think someone did this to her? How could someone do this?”
Bobby led her to the visiting room chairs. “Take a deep breath,” he said. She did. “Another one,” he instructed. She did. “Okay, now give me your hands.” She put her hands in his. “Squeeze,” he said, “No, not like that, really squeeze as hard as you can. Harder.” She squeezed until the muscles in her fingers cramped. “Better?” he asked.
“Better,” she said.
“I’ll call your mother,” he told her.
Within a half hour, Mary Marley came storming through the waiting room doors, her Shaws grocery store apron still wrapped
around her waist. Liz sat back and closed her eyes while Bobby did the talking. Distantly, she heard him say, “Yeah, we went over to her apartment. No, we’ve never been there before, at least I haven’t…. It was lucky we found her though, so I guess you should be glad we went.”
A half hour after that Sheriff Danny Willow arrived. Holding his hat in his hand, he stood before them in the waiting room and spoke softly like he was in church. He told them that Paul Martin had witnessed Susan’s fall. He hadn’t thought to use her phone and had called the police from a pay phone instead. They’d just missed each other. Then he held up his hands in a show of frustration as if to say: That’s the way these things always happen. It’s absurd, but there’s never anything you can do. There’s a lot of spilled milk in the world. Mary nodded in agreement. Yes, lots of spilled milk. All kinds of spilled milk.
“How is she doing?” he asked.
“Oh, we don’t know. She’s a sly boots. Can’t believe a thing she does,” Mary answered.
“She’s got internal bleeding and brain damage. She’s going to die,” Liz said. Though she did not turn to look at him, she felt Bobby’s hand reach for her own, and they clasped fingers.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Willow said.
Mary took a deep breath. “Accidents happen,” she said.
Liz let out a quick, nervous giggle that sounded less like laughter and more like a noisy facial tic. “Right Mom,” she said.
Before he left, Sheriff Willow smiled warmly at Liz. He was a small, round man with thick arms and callused hands. Seeing him made her wonder what her own father might have looked like if he’d ever lived beyond forty. It made her miss him, as she always missed him when she wanted someone to hold her tight. “You let me know if you think of anything you and your mom might need, okay?” Danny asked.
“Yes,” Liz said, “I’ll let you know. Thank you for coming all the way down here.”
The three of them sat together after that, none speaking. Bobby sat to her left, her mother to her right. Like at an airport; each with one arm on a seat rest, waiting for their flight to be called. Or maybe they were following Susan down a rabbit hole.
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