by Carla Damron
“You always say that.” He was lucky to have Joe and not rely on some landscaping crew he could no longer afford. Mitch tucked the bill in the pocket of Joe’s pea coat. Joe stiffened at the contact.
“I’ll get them weeds around the birdbath, too,” Joe said.
“Thanks.” He watched Joe shuffle away, noting how his foot bulged over the side of his right shoe. Maybe he’d stop by Goodwill to get him a new pair.
Back inside, he opened his briefcase and removed the small, speckly stone Joe had left for him on a tombstone a few months before. Since then, the strange gift had found its way into Mitch’s pocket every morning. Not a good luck talisman—his luck had been atrocious lately—more like a worry stone.
He snapped shut the case and said, “I’m off.”
Lena tilted her head up and he bent to kiss her, noticing how her gaze moved from him to the door. Next came Becca, who gave him her most polished adolescent eye roll. He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “See you later, kitten.”
“What time will you be home?” Lena held the door open for him.
“I’ll call you later.”
Before climbing in the Lexus, he draped his jacket over the headrest and loosened his tie. He felt hot, like something was searing him from the inside. As he slid behind the wheel he noticed his hands tingling; pressure swelled like bellows in his chest. The inside of the car was starved for oxygen. This felt like more than indigestion. Should he call Dr. Burnside? He was often too quick to make that call.
He opened the window to let in some air. After a few deep breaths, the pain ebbed into a dull ache below his sternum. This was probably just the reflux. He backed out of the garage, careful to miss the leaf bags awaiting pick-up beside the driveway, and eased onto Lakeshore Drive. A few blocks later, he turned onto Forest heading downtown.
And then. “God!” Something hit him in the solar plexus, hit him with the force of a hundred mule kicks. He gasped, releasing the wheel to claw at his shirt like he could claw out the pain. Grayness fogged his eyes. He couldn’t breathe; air rejected his lungs. He should brake but his foot slipped.
He could see a dim outline of streets ahead and a smear of red from the traffic light. A silver van coming.
The impact sounded like a bomb. His car door screamed as it crumpled, and the van pushed him sideways across the intersection. Through the empty socket of his window he saw the other driver, a young woman, eyes wide in terror. His mind flashed to a memory of Lena giving birth to Sims, that last horrific moment when she cried that she couldn’t push anymore and please, please, God.
Off the pavement now. The rush of leaves covered the hood of his car before it crashed into the tree. The airbag knocked him backward, and he closed his eyes against its powdery assault. Pain exploded in his hand where it clutched his chest. He felt remote. Blurred. Why couldn’t he breathe? He thought he said Lena’s name, to ask her a question. Where was he?
CHAPTER 2
Tonya Ladson tasted blood. Plump red drops fell from her throbbing nose to something white and dusty in her lap. What happened? She could see a cloud, or was it smoke, outside the webby cracks in her windshield. Metal pressed against her side from where the door was bowed in. A car horn blared. She desperately wanted to silence the noise. That’s when she noticed her hand on the horn.
“Byron!” Tonya snatched back her hand and spun around to see her two-year-old’s car seat tilted sideways from the collision. Byron had almost escaped the contraption just moments before. “Byron?”
She tore at the release for her seatbelt. His corduroyed legs kicked and squirmed; his fingers clutched the strap that held him suspended over the seat. Alive. Her baby was alive.
The skin around her nose burned. Getting to her child took some maneuvering, but she twisted between seatbacks and wrestled Byron’s car seat until she had it righted. He whimpered, his tear-streaked face looking up at her like she knew something he didn’t. She skimmed a hand over his head to feel for lumps or cuts, wincing as tiny crystals of safety glass sprinkled down from his hair. “Oh baby.”
Smoke puffed from the crumpled heap that had been the other car, the Lexus that had run the red light—she was sure her light had been green. She had slammed the brakes but it was too late and she couldn’t veer out of the way and it kept coming and oh God.
“Mommy out.” Byron reached for her but she hesitated, worried she shouldn’t move him. She searched his tiny body for signs of bleeding.
“Shhh,” she said, her voice trembling. A buzzing sound erupted. Where? Her cell phone vibrated on the seat beside the driver’s.
“Out!” Byron bellowed, feet flailing, a sneaker smacking her in the breast.
“Stop that!” She grabbed his legs but a full-out Byron meltdown was imminent, so she unclicked the strap and let him tumble into her arms.
“You’re okay, little man.” She begged the words to be true. Byron pressed his face into her shoulder and she held him close, rocking a little, thinking how he almost wasn’t here on this earth for her to hold.
“You’re fine. Just fine.” Moisture warmed her skin from where he’d wet his pants.
The cell phone quieted. She had been calling work when the accident happened. She was explaining that she’d be five minutes (really fifteen) late, and her co-worker said her boss was asking for her. Behind her, Byron was yelling about going potty but she knew she couldn’t stop until she got him to daycare and that’s when . . . She shouldn’t have been on her cell. She knew better. What would her husband say? What if this was her fault? No, her light had been green, she was sure of it. She was.
A man tugged at the Lexus’s driver door, others emerging from nearby cars to watch. Tonya breathed in the sickly-sweet odor of gasoline. From her engine? What if it exploded? She scrambled to open the door. An elderly gentleman on the other side reached for her arm and asked if she was injured.
She tried to untwine Byron from her neck but he let out a squeaky cry, like the time he slammed his hand in a drawer and his thumbnail turned blue.
“What’s wrong?” Panic boiled up as she scanned his body. “Does your arm hurt?”
He held it awkwardly, elbow pushed into ribs, hand knotted in a fist. Was it broken? Had she made it worse?
The stranger handed her a tissue so she could dab at the blood dripping from her nose. “Did someone call for an ambulance? My little boy needs help.” She carried him to the sidewalk, wanting distance between them and the wreckage.
The man told her that help was on its way. They both turned their attention back to the other car. Someone yelled that the door wouldn’t open. Two others circled the sedan as a great plume of gray smoke belched out from under the hood. They had to get the driver out before his car burst into flames.
“Help him!” she yelled.
An onlooker smashed the window with a rock and squeezed his hand through to open the door. As they dragged the driver out, a brown shoe snagged on the door frame and slipped from his foot. Tonya fought a mad impulse to run after it like she did a hundred times a day for Byron. They had the man on the ground now. A guy in a gray sweatshirt started CPR. All stilled, no voices, no breeze, no rumble of traffic; everything held its breath as the man tried to revive the victim’s heart.
Overhead, a neon green gecko peered down from an insurance billboard. A siren howled in the distance. Tonya rested her head against her son’s blond curls as police cars and ambulances halted in front of them. Byron blinked up at the strobing lights. “Pretty,” he said.
“Yes they are,” she answered. Soon the road teemed with police and EMTs, the quiet replaced with shouts and the clatter of equipment being unloaded. They put the man on a gurney and secured an oxygen mask to his face, which had to mean he was still alive. One EMT made a few muffled comments into a radio as they hoisted him into the back of one of the ambulances.
The EMT who came over to Tonya was mannish, with the uneven cropped hair of someone who’d taken scissors to herself. John would call her a l
esbo, but John was not there, thank God.
“I understand your little boy was injured?” she said.
Tonya eased Byron to the ground. He whimpered, eyeing the woman with the skepticism of a terrified two year old. “His arm,” Tonya said.
“Was he in a car seat?”
“Yes.” But he hadn’t been just a moment before, when he’d twisted out of the straps and she had bribed him with the promise of a cookie to get him secured again. “The car seat fell over in the accident.”
The woman eyed the inside of the van. “That’s probably a good thing.”
Good because the Lexus had caved in Byron’s door and his fragile little bones stood no chance against the grill of that metal beast. Good because her son might not be alive right now. Tonya closed her eyes against the what-if’s swarming her mind.
When a police officer approached and asked for her license and registration, she returned to her car. Her purse was on the passenger seat, and the registration was buried in the repair invoices that stuffed her glove box, which John was always telling her she needed to clean out. As she squeezed back into the van, she noticed her cell phone trembling on the vinyl. She grabbed it with her purse and a fistful of crumpled papers from the glove compartment.
The EMT said, “Okay, buddy, can I take a peek at your tummy?” She lifted Byron’s sweater to reveal an angry red stripe bisecting his ribs. He screamed when she touched his shoulder.
“Shhh,” Tonya soothed, her hand on his head.
“Could be a collarbone fracture. Best to take him to the hospital and let the docs take a look at him,” the EMT said.
Hospital. The word echoed.
The officer held out a hand. Tonya pawed through her purse for her license, but lost her grip on the pile of clutter so that everything hit the sidewalk. The cell phone clacked against the concrete. “Damn it.”
The creased registration landed on top of a Jiffy Lube invoice, so she gave it to the officer. The EMT had a stethoscope pressed against Byron’s chest, which had him distracted. Tonya answered the phone.
“Tonya? Where the hell are you? Jamison’s furious,” Marion, her officemate, said.
“I’ve been in an accident. The car’s—the car’s a mess. And Byron got hurt and we have to take him to the hospital. And the other driver, I’m not even sure he’s going to make it and—” The words exploded from her mouth.
“Oh no,” Marion said softly. “Okay, take it easy. Is Byron hurt bad?”
“His arm—just his arm, we think.”
“Okay. Want me to meet you at the hospital?”
“No. I’ll call John.” She would, but not yet.
As she hung up the phone, she heard a tentative “Mommy?” A tearful Byron came to her and as she lifted him, he tucked his head under her chin. When he curved into her like this, when his little body nestled into her flesh, it was like he was secure again in her womb, like they were one creature, sharing blood and oxygen and life.
Nothing made her feel this complete. She wanted to stay in this moment, apart from the police and the crash and the waiting ambulance and the call she had to make to John.
“Ma’am?” the EMT startled her. “Can I take a look at your nose?” She let the woman check her, then answered her questions about the date, the president, and other meaningless stuff. Gentle hands probed her nose and cheekbones, as Byron’s head lolled against her breast.
“Okay, Mrs. Ladson, let’s get your boy into the ambulance.” She didn’t remember telling anyone her name. She imagined there might be a lot about this day she wouldn’t remember, but some things she’d never, ever forget.
She groped for the phone in her pocket, took a deep breath, and dialed her husband’s number.
BECCA HASTINGS HESITATED ON the stairs leading to her third floor English class so that her best friend Kayla could catch up. “Check out what Amanda Howard has on. Her pants are so tight I can see her butt crack!” Kayla said.
“Gross,” Becca answered.
“If I ever look like that, do the humane thing and shoot me.” Kayla swiped her lips with petal-pink lip balm.
As if on cue, Amanda Howard pushed past them, her hip-hugging capris riding the waves and valleys of cellulite. Becca slipped her hand down to her own behind, wondering how she might look from this angle.
“I mean it, Becca. Shoot me.”
“You don’t even have a butt.” It annoyed Becca that Kayla wore a size three without trying, that she ate a Snickers bar every single afternoon with her Diet Coke, and her stomach stayed flat as a tabletop.
“I need to make a stop,” Becca said.
“Be quick, or Mr. Brunson will write you up.”
Becca backed in through the door of the women’s room, waving Kayla on to class. She dropped her books on the counter and stood before the mirror, twisting around to take in her own backside view. Still too big, but maybe not as bad as Amanda’s. She frowned at the rest of her reflection. She had dieted for seven months. Did the Hip-Hop workout on DVD and ran three miles every single day, yet still so fat.
She lifted her shirt. Maybe a little progress? The ridges of her ribs made a ladder up her chest. Her pants had to be gathered and pinned. Once she lost ten pounds more, she’d pierce her navel and insert a gold ring, like Kayla had, and Dad would completely flip out. She smiled at the idea, seeing Dad’s face turn red as a stop sign, hearing Mom rant about the danger of infection. Her parents were so pathetic.
She rested a hand on the pitted, cold porcelain sink and caught a faint whiff of vomit, an odor that no longer bothered her. A bell signaled it was time for English where Mr. Brunson, the artist-in-residence, was making them do poetry. He had long hair and his arms and face had dark freckles like pixels in an out-of-focus picture. Mom’s friend Royce had freckles like that but his were reddish orange. Becca had only seen Royce twice but remembered every detail about him: how he was barely taller than Mom. How his two front teeth overlapped like crossed fingers. How his grip squished her knuckles when they met.
“He has an artist’s hands,” her mom had said.
Becca hoped she never laid eyes on Royce again.
She collected her things and opened the door right into Dylan Dreher, a collision that sent her purse and backpack crashing to the floor.
“Oh, Jeez. I’m sorry.” Dylan dropped to his knees to gather her stuff. “Didn’t mean to clobber you like that.”
“I think I’m the one who did the clobbering.” Becca wondered how the fates would pick this particular boy for her to slam into.
“You okay?” Dylan gave her that big dimpled grin she’d seen a thousand times from across the arc of desks in Mr. Brunson’s class.
“Yeah,” she muttered as she tried to think of what else to say.
He handed her the purse and toothpaste tube that had rolled across the floor. Great. He’d think she was some teeth-cleaning nerd. “I should do that, too,” he said. “After two years in braces, I should do better with my teeth.”
She remembered the braces. They had been blue, like his eyes.
“Looks like we’re both late for Brunson’s poetry fest. Wish I could cut it,” he said.
“I do, too.” She leaned against the wall to demonstrate how she was not in a hurry to get to class.
“You know, he smokes like a chimney. I caught him outside the cafeteria the other day, doing that chain smoking thing, lighting one cigarette with the burning nub of another.”
“You can smell it. And what’s with the long hair?” she asked.
Dylan looked away and Becca felt like a complete idiot: Dylan’s hair fell in thick curls to his collar. Horrified, she went on, “I mean, long hair is great on guys under thirty, but Brunson’s ancient. Maybe he’s one of those hippie types from the sixties or something.”
Dylan seemed to perk up. “I bet he smokes weed. Doesn’t he look like the type?”
“Definitely.” Becca didn’t know anyone who did weed, except maybe a few musician friends of Elliott’s. She’d trie
d it once and didn’t like it.
“There’s a teacher at the high school who deals to the students. My brother heard it from one of the ballplayers.”
“For real?” Becca couldn’t wait to start high school next year. At five foot-seven, Becca towered over half the guys in her grade, but not Dylan. Dylan had an inch on her. She loved his wide shoulders and narrow waist and hoped he didn’t plan to play football like his brother.
“Guess we’d better head to class,” he said. He started to move but hesitated. “Hey, wanna eat lunch some time?”
“What?” Her mouth dropped open. She probably looked like a guppy. He stepped back, his eyes downcast, and started to turn away.
What a moron she was. Her one chance and—“No, wait!” she yelled. “I’d like to. Sometime.”
“Okay, we’ll do it sometime.” He still wasn’t looking at her, and she had a feeling sometime might never happen.
“Tomorrow’s good for me,” she blurted out, a brave move, a risk, but this might be her only chance. “We could meet outside the cafeteria.”
He turned, his dimpled smile as warm as sunlight. “That would be good.”
They caught a break in English class because Mr. Brunson wasn’t there yet. They both scurried to their seats, Kayla staring wide-eyed at Becca when she saw who she was with. “How’d that happen?” she whispered.
“He wants to have lunch with me tomorrow.” She still couldn’t believe it. What would she wear? The right outfit would be crucial. Nothing too prim or nerdy, but nothing that made her look fat. If she could just get rid of those last ten pounds.
“Becca Hastings?” Mr. Brunson stepped in the room. “Can I see you for a second?”
“Damn,” she muttered, standing. She glanced over at Dylan, who shrugged back. Mr. Brunson held the door, beckoning her into the hall where the principal was standing. She was in trouble this time.
“Becca,” the principal said softly. “I’m afraid I have some bad news. It’s about your father.”
“My father?” She looked at him, wondering what he was talking about. Her dad was fine. She’d just seen him that morning.