The Last Good Day

by Peter Blauner

  It took him years to understand why that didn’t cheer her up more.

  A few blocks up on Haverstraw Road, he passed the entrance to the old aqueduct and remembered the way his father used to explain how water passed through here on its way from a place called Tear in the Clouds, high in the mountains. A tear becomes a trickle, a trickle becomes a leak, a leak becomes a stream, a stream joins other streams in a brook carried along by the force of gravity. And the brook becomes a rushing river. And then nothing can stop it.

  Even though he was loaded up on Vicodin, Advil, and Maxwell House, the world had a kind of stark diamond-hard clarity for the first time in weeks. He could remember the names of birds, trees, addresses on his paper route, golfers he’d caddied for, and boys he’d been friends with in fourth grade. He glanced off to the side and recalled pissing with his brother down into the reservoir, hoping it would eventually come out of a tap into some Manhattanite’s drinking water. As the sun strobed through the pines, it seemed his whole life had been leading to this. Water seeking its own level.

  God knows, he’d tried to be the one person in his family to make it out of this town. Roamed all the way out to Arizona and married an aerobics instructor who couldn’t even find Westchester on a map of New York. But part of him dried up in the desert. Too much arid open space and sagebrush, too many Taco Bells and Outback Steak-houses, too many senior developments beside new superhighways. He found himself getting lost all the time, on the job and in the marriage. No, this was where he was supposed to end up.

  It doesn’t matter what you do in the next life.

  He thought of making a detour back to Regan Way, just to see the kids one more time. Marie would have them corralled, washed, and ready for school. But stopping by to try to set things right would only distract from his sense of purpose. He had to keep going. The only solace was that Marie had talked about selling the house and taking the kids to stay with her sister in Florida for a while. At least then somebody in the family would finally get to see the rest of the world.

  A half-mile up the hill was the high school, Old Glory just raised. It’d been more than a week since they stopped flying the flags at half-mast. How quickly they forget. He pulled around back and parked in the empty lot by the football field. The blank scoreboard and deserted bleachers reminded him of long sweltering afternoon scrimmages that had left him hurting more than the actual games, and the girls in their kick skirts who jumped and cheered for him when he was playing and passed him by in the hall as if they didn’t recognize him without his helmet.

  He unzipped the gym bag, took out the .45 and the .38, and carefully started to load the shells in. A mild oily scent made him wonder when the old man last cleaned these things. Didn’t it ever occur to him that a weapon could jam? He packed the guns away and set off up the road again, passing the early bird commuters on their way to the train station. He waved going by Sarah Breen’s husband in his black ’95 Jaguar. Bob, the assistant coach from Saturday morning soccer. He wondered if Bob would recall that little gesture later and make it into something more than it was. Funny thing, memory.

  He watched the black car sweep past him and become a speck in his rearview, easily doing forty-five in a thirty-five zone. I will never see that car again, he told himself. I will never see these trees in this light again. I will never drive on this road. I will never pass these enormous white houses with their three-car garages and sprawling lawns. I will never take my sons fishing in the river. I will never listen to my daughter read Harry Potter aloud again. I will never write another speeding ticket. I will never have to apologize.

  As he stopped to brush his hair and knot his tie in the bedroom mirror, Jeff felt a subtle heightening of his spirits. Maybe the worst was over. Isadora’s hug had been a kind of absolution. Even though he was due to spend the first part of the day with Ronald Deutsch and the second part with the estate lawyers, his hair was fully rising to the occasion, fluffing up and cresting above the crown.

  He was going to get past this somehow. Up until that moment in the shower, he hadn’t quite believed it. But the dark clouds were rolling away. At some point, it would all get taken care of. People forget. They move on with their lives. He’d mourn in dignity a few more months and then quietly announce that he was going to Florida or Texas to look at other opportunities. Saul would probably take the kids in the meantime and give him a cash settlement to go away. He put the brush down and smoothed back the sides of his hair with his palms, hearing the children yelling at each other in the foyer downstairs. Angry as he was, the old bastard didn’t have the heart or the energy for a long drawn-out court fight.

  Jeff went downstairs and found Izzy wearing a pair of jeans with a huge chocolate stain near one of the pockets and Dylan sitting on the onyx floor weeping piteously over his Scooby-Doo lunchbox.

  “What’s the matter?” Jeff said. “You guys still aren’t ready for school like I asked you?”

  “Dylan doesn’t want to go. He says his legs don’t work.”

  “What do you mean his legs don’t work?”

  She hunched her shoulders and gave a small indulgent smile, as if she somehow knew she’d be taking care of her brother for the rest of her life. “He says he needs someone to carry him.”

  “Mommy would carry me.” Dylan sniffled, wiping his nose on his jacket sleeve.

  Jeff sighed and looked at his watch. “Tell you what,” he said, determined to ride his swell of optimism as far as he could. “I’ll pull the car around front from the garage and save you most of the walk. Deal?”

  “Deal.” The boy hugged the lunchbox to his chest, trying to be brave.

  “All right. Look out for me. I’ll honk the horn.”

  He went out, leaving the front door half-open behind him. The day contained multitudes. The air felt charged with possibilities beyond the end of their little cul-de-sac. A warm forgiving sun reflected off the children’s jungle gym in the front yard. The chard in Sandi’s garden was still a vigorous shade of green with a deep maroon glow in the middle, and pumpkins were growing like small orange muscles on the vine. He felt that quickening of his pulse and heard a crackling sound in the distance like cellophane coming off a new package. Maybe he’d change his name again when he moved. Maybe after a while, he’d send for the kids to come live with him. Or maybe not. They’d probably get pretty comfortable living the good life with Saul and Barbara in Manhattan and going to private schools. By the time he got established enough to send for them, they’d probably be spoiled preteens who’d barely remember him.

  He walked along the circular driveway to the garage, reached into his pocket for the remote, and opened the automatic garage door.

  The Mercedes ML320 looked as if it had never been driven. My ride. The last time he’d brought this baby in for service, the mechanic in White Plains had said, If you take care of your family the way you take care of this car, they’re lucky to have you around. It almost gave him a little erection of the heart, looking at it sometimes. Do I deserve this? Yes I do. He’d worked for it, taken more than his share of brickbats across the skull to earn it. Let everyone else pretend their priorities were the kids and the house; he saw the way they looked over when he pulled alongside of them. They envied him—that’s right! But they didn’t have that durability, that suppleness, that splendid acuity that gave everything he did a little backspin.

  He unlocked the door and got in, savoring the smell of the leather seats and the vacuumed carpets that seemed to promise new beginnings were possible even in a two-year-old car. Especially for a man with an eye for detail. He started the engine and backed out slowly, noticing the garage wall looked perhaps a little conspicuously barren since he threw all the saws out.

  In the rearview, he saw a red pickup truck sitting at the foot of the driveway, blocking him from coming around the circle back to the front door. His first thought was that someone was lost and looking for directions. Understandable. Some of these roads made about as much sense as varicose veins.
Okay, so he’d do his little good deed for the morning and set the man on his way. He turned the Benz around slowly and cruised toward the truck, only slowly realizing where he’d seen it before.

  Mike got out of the Tundra and walked around to the front, with the .45 held stiffly down by his pant leg, remembering Sandi looking up at him and asking, You’ll watch over me, won’t you?

  He saw Jeff recognize him and then panic. The Mercedes’s engine going into overdrive. The foot pressing on the accelerator. The silver grille rushing forward like a set of clenched teeth.

  It doesn’t matter what you do in the next life.

  Steadying his aim with the numb hand, Mike squeezed the trigger. The gun coughed, and Jeff’s right ear flew off over his shoulder in a din of shattering glass. He clapped one hand to his spurting temple and tried to steer with the other as his wheels shrieked. With a step to the left, Mike pulled the trigger again, and a hole formed in the middle of Jeff’s forehead and started spouting deep-red blood. His eyes rolled back into his head as if he’d just heard something embarrassing, and he slumped forward on the wheel.

  The Mercedes swerved off the driveway, fishtailing across the lawn and smashing sideways into a willow tree shading the jungle gym. Thin yellow tear-shaped leaves rained down on the roof, and the horn sounded, a plaintive German cry breaking the morning.

  Mike stuck the gun in his waistband and got back in the pickup, ready for the next stop. There, the bad guy’s dead. He threw the truck into reverse and started to pull away, ignoring the blaring horn.

  But just before he turned off the little dead-end street back onto Prospect, he looked up in the rearview and saw Sandi’s two children come bounding out the front door with their lunchboxes, running to find out why their father had parked the car under the crying tree.

  62

  AT FIRST, LYNN ONLY heard the siren as a subliminal tone, a far-off whine that made her tense up slightly.

  She’d finally started to put the garden to bed, finishing the task she started that first day Mike came over to talk to her. Ever since, it’d been one thing after another, jarring the foundations. All she wanted to do was get her hands in the soil one more time this season.

  Barry came up from the wooded slope just before the fence line with a wheelbarrow full of mulch, singing “Ol’ Man River” in a manly Paul Robeson baritone. The kids had already caught a ride to school, so he was just hanging out and trying to make himself useful as they waited for the state investigator to show up.

  “I gets weary an’ sick of tryin’ …” He dumped the wood chips into a mound beside her asparagus plants with their raccoon-devastated leaves.

  “Don’t just leave them there in a big pile. Help me spread them around.”

  “Yes, master,” he said like a movie zombie.

  He took the shovel from her and started gently ladling mulch across the dirt she’d already turned over. She watched the way he carefully distributed the chips, smoothing them out and patting them down with the back of the shovel, his strong shoulder muscles straining and fanning out inside his white T-shirt like an idea taking shape on paper. My man. She’d always thought he’d never cared about her garden, that it was just another way for him to indulge her while keeping her at a distance, like the studio. But seeing him put serious work into it melted the ice jammed around her heart a little. This is us, doing something together. This is us, without the kids. This is us, without money. This is us, getting older.

  “I love a man with a good broad back,” she said.

  “Just trying to build up some sweat equity so you don’t let me starve out back this winter.”

  “Barry …”

  “What?”

  Great feeling welled up in her suddenly, unexpectedly. She thought of all the things she’d wanted to say to him over the years that always seemed to get lost in the maelstrom of days. Little bits of neighborhood gossip, unfiltered observations, funny things the children said, startling juxtapositions and connections that only he would appreciate. She realized she’d been missing that part of him, that private world they used to have, those lazy Sunday mornings before they had kids when they could spontaneously roll over and fuck on top of the Real Estate section.

  “What?” he repeated, staring at her.

  “Never mind,” she said. “Can you get me a little more mulch?”

  “Yes, milady.”

  He bowed and pushed the empty wheelbarrow past the side of the house and down the slope to where the chips were. As he disappeared among the barren trees and rotting stumps, she looked toward the horizon, hearing the distant wing beats of geese and glimpsing the gray train moving against the backdrop of the gray river.

  The siren sound was becoming louder and more distinct. A high screech that split the morning like an acetylene torch. Later she would tell herself that she remembered everything before and afterward as two distinct entities. She wiped her hands on the front of her sweatshirt and walked down into the front yard, thinking it might be headed their way. Maybe Harold had heard about Barry calling the state police in and wanted to make a grand reentrance to show who was really in charge.

  But then the wailing kept going right past them and on up into the hills, toward Jeff and Sandi’s house on Love Lane. Something else had happened. She could feel it, like a sudden drop in the temperature. A different siren swept up the hill, chasing the first one. A psychotic walloo walloo that scraped the sheathing right off her nerves. An ambulance. A tug in her gut made her want to call and make sure Dylan and Izzy were all right. But then what if Jeff answered?

  A squirrel scurried across the lawn. Two crows stood together on a rock, beak to beak, as if they were conspiring. The wind in the dogwoods made a hissing sound like the needle landing in the groove of an old scratched record. A stretch of yellow crime scene tape came tumbling across the lawn.

  From the bottom of the driveway on the right, she heard an engine revving and the squeak of a chassis humping up their hill. A chrome fender gleamed among the trees, giving fair warning. Then a red pickup truck roared into view, bouncing over a pothole and accelerating, as if it was about to come right up on the lawn. It stopped short, and Mike Fallon glared at her through the tinted windshield.

  He opened the door of the cab and slowly climbed out, looking like he’d been in an explosion. His eyes were glassy, his face was puffed out, and his hair had grayed in places, as if it had been sprinkled with plaster dust. The gauze around his thumb was a sodden dingy mustard color that seemed to signal that he no longer belonged to the segment of the human race that worried about consequences.

  “Michael,” she said, “I don’t think you should be here.”

  He kicked the door shut behind him, not caring about the dent he’d made, and then stood there staring at her, letting his silence spread across the lawn until it reached her.

  “Somebody got shot, Lynn,” he said finally.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Even the crows fell silent now.

  “Jeff Lanier got shot in the head. He’s not going to make it.”

  “How do you know?” A band tightened around her chest.

  “I was the one who shot him.”

  He opened the front gate and started walking toward her, the butt of a handgun riding casually in the front of his waistband. Just a friend stopping by to say hello.

  A third siren screamed past Grace Hill Road, entering and then leaving their zone of quiet. An acorn hit the ground behind his pickup like a spent shell casing.

  “Okay,” she said, stepping back, “let’s take it easy.”

  She cast a quick look toward the wooded area down the slope, wondering where Barry had gone. The red wheelbarrow stood alone in the shade of the elms and dogwoods.

  He’d been in the house, getting a glass of water, when Fallon’s truck pulled up. The gun was back in the Nike box on the bed, where he’d left it not ten minutes ago after showing it to Lynn. He went upstairs and got it and made a quick call to 911, knowing th
at most of the squad cars were busy up the hill and probably a good five minutes away. We’re on our own. He went to the window and saw Fallon cross the yard toward Lynn with a gun plainly visible in his waistband. He thought of throwing open the window and taking aim, but the Tree Guy had never come to trim the maple, and its branches were in the way.

  “Know what your problem is, Lynn?” Mike was close enough to put his arms around her neck. “You’re blind. You’ve got all these expensive lenses and foreign cameras, and you’re still blind as fucking Stevie Wonder. You don’t see what’s right in front of your face.”

  From the corner of her eye, she finally spotted Barry about sixty feet to the left of them, crouched down and creeping slowly along the fence behind the column of trees. He must have come out of the back door of the house and taken the long way around, to try to sneak up on them. She registered the black gun in his hand against the background of his white T-shirt. Mike needed only to turn his head a quarter-inch to see the same.

  “I know how hard these last few weeks have been,” she said.

  “You don’t know anything. Okay? Not a single thing. Because you don’t see anything. You don’t see things that go on every day. I mean, you think you’re up on top of this great big hill, but you’re just another ant in the fucking ant farm. You don’t see the ants who built the tunnels you’re living on top of. You don’t even know there are tunnels.”

  “Michael, what is it that you want from me?”

  “I want you to open your eyes. Is that asking too much? I want you to see the people that give a shit about this town and gave their whole lives to it. I want you to see me. I want you to take that great eye you’re supposed to have and see what’s right in front of you. I want you to take a picture of me and keep it in your head the rest of your life.”