by Wally Lamb
But it was Alphonse. He’d just heard about it on the radio. “I can’t get ahold of her!” I shouted. “I’ve been calling for over an hour! I get halfway through the number and the busy signal cuts in!”
“Okay, take it easy, Quirks. What do you need?”
“To hear her voice. To see her.”
He was at the farmhouse ten minutes later. He drove me to Bradley Airport, got me an emergency ticket to Denver with a connecting flight in Chicago, delivered me to the right gate, and waited with me. It was seven p.m.—five o’clock in Colorado. Six hours since they’d opened fire.
This was what I knew: there were dead bodies outside and inside the school; some of the injured were undergoing emergency surgery; bombs had gone off; the shooters—thought to be students—had fired back at the police from inside the library. I kept seeing what I’d seen on the news before we left for the airport: Columbine kids, a lot of them recognizable, streaming out of the building with their hands on their heads like captured criminals. Students had done this? I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
“Still no answer?” Alphonse asked. I shook my head and handed him back his cell phone. “The library’s upstairs,” I said. “And the clinic where she works is downstairs, in another part of the building. So she was probably nowhere near the gunfire. Right?”
“Right,” he said.
“Did I already say that?”
“Yeah. Hey, you know what, Caelum? How about I go get you a sandwich or something? Because at this hour, all’s they’re probably going to give you on the plane is a soda and one of those little things of peanuts.”
“Pretzels,” I said.
“What?”
“They don’t give you peanuts anymore. They give you pretzels.” I unfolded the paper where I’d jotted down the numbers for the hospitals: Littleton Adventist, Denver Health, St. Anthony’s, Lutheran Medical. Held out my hand for his cell phone again.
“Probably all that peanut allergy stuff that everyone’s so hopped up about now. Down at the bakery? We got about sixty different regulations from the state about product that has peanuts in it. Man, I make a batch of peanut butter cookies and I gotta fuckin’ sequester ’em.”
Most of the hospital lines were still busy, but when I dialed the number for Swedish Medical Center, it was silent for a few seconds and then, miraculously, I got a ring.
“It’s like a status thing, you know? ‘My kid’s special because he’s got a peanut allergy.’ I’m surprised they don’t have a bumper sticker for it.”
“Al, stop!” I said.
The operator passed me on to the crisis spokeswoman, who was polite at first, then less so. “Okay, look,” I said. “I can appreciate you’re not releasing any names yet. I understand that. But I’m giving you her name. All you have to do is look at your list, or your computer screen or whatever, and tell me she’s not there.” She gave me some line about following her protocols, and we went at it for a few more rounds, but she wasn’t going to budge. With my fingernail, I pushed the little end call button and handed the phone back to Alphonse.
He kept steepling his fingers, cracking his knuckles. “You sure you don’t want to eat something, Quirky? What about a hot dog?”
“What about the car I rented?” I said.
“What about it?”
“I didn’t return it.”
He stared at me in disbelief, then reached into his jacket pocket and produced the paperwork and the key I’d given him. “We worked that out. Remember? I’m going to drive it back up here midday tomorrow. Have one of my workers follow me up and give me a lift back.”
I nodded. “I already knew that, right?”
He nodded. “How about a couple of candy bars?”
“Alphonse, I can’t eat, okay?” I snapped. “My stomach’s in fucking knots.” As we sat there, across from each other, I suddenly realized he was still in his baker’s clothes: black-and-white checked pants, Mama Mia T-shirt, stained apron. He had flour in his eyebrows, bags under his eyes. “Thanks, man,” I said.
“For what?”
“Getting me here. Keeping me glued together.”
“What? You didn’t do the same thing for me, when my brother was down at Yale–New Haven?” I nodded. Flashed on Rocco in his hospital bed. In his coffin, Red Sox button pinned to his suit jacket lapel, rosary beads twisted around his hand. “Do you think I did the right thing?” I said.
“About what?”
“My aunt’s funeral. They said they could keep the body refrigerated. Postpone the service until I could get back here and—”
He shook his head. “Better this way, Quirky. The last thing you need is stuff hanging over your head at this end. Not with what’s going on out there. Don’t worry. Me and the old ladies’ll give her a good send-off.”
“What if she’s dead?” I said.
He cocked his head, gave me a slight smile. “She is dead, man.”
“I mean Maureen.”
He opened his mouth to answer me, then closed it again. When he finally spoke, it was to ask me what time my plane arrived in Denver.
“Ten fifty-five,” I said. “Provided I get the hell out of Hartford.”
“Ten fifty-five our time?”
“Colorado time,” I said.
He nodded. “How about some nuts? What do you like? Cashews? Peanuts? You like those smoked almonds if they have them?”
I held out my hand. He handed me his phone. “I don’t care if you want them or not,” he mumbled, rising from his chair. “I’m getting you some nuts. Just shut up and put ’em in your pocket.”
I dialed our number. Got what I’d gotten for hours: the four rings, the click of our machine, my voice, the beep.
THE FLIGHT TO CHICAGO WAS uneventfully torturous. The seat next to mine was empty—that was a relief—but it was hell to just sit there, strapped in, waiting for time and distance to pass. I thought about that other night: the worst night of our marriage, when I’d confronted her about Paul Hay, and then hurt her wrist, and she’d gone out on those icy roads and totaled her car. She could have died that night…. Steer toward the skid. She knew that, but she’d panicked, jerked the wheel the other way, and gone skidding toward that tree. “Almost in slow motion,” she’d said later. That’s what flying back felt like: being in the middle of a slow-motion skid, waiting for the crash.
The captain came over the intercom to tell us we’d reached cruising altitude. The flight attendants wheeled down the aisle with the beverage cart. The little TV screens descended. I left the earphones in the seat pocket and sat there, staring at Kramer and Jerry’s moving lips, penguins hopping into and out of icy blue water, a Belgian chocolatier decorating petits fours. “Hey,” I said to a passing flight attendant. “Do these things work?”
“The in-flight phones? Yes, sir.” She pushed the button and the receiver popped free from its holder. “Just follow the instructions.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” someone said. “They gouge you on those calls.” I looked across the aisle. Nodded to the guy who was talking.
“Yeah, well…” I said. I punched in my credit card number, waited. One ring, two, three, four. “Hey, how’s it going? You’ve reached the Quirks. We’re not home right now, but you can leave a message after the beep.”
“Mo, where are you?” I said. “I’m in a plane. I’m coming home.”
I ate Al’s almonds. Looked out the window at nothing. Cross-hatched over the faces in the complimentary magazine. I thought about how fucked-up this was: the person on the plane is the one whose life is supposed to be at risk, not the person who stayed home. I wrote her name, over and over, in the margins: Maureen, Maureen, Maureen…I had never realized how much I loved her. Needed her. How over my own life was going to be, if she was dead.
O’HARE OVERWHELMED ME. I KNEW I had to get to Concourse G, but I couldn’t figure out how, and when people tried to direct me, I watched their mouths move but couldn’t make sense of what they were saying. Finally, on the ve
rge of panic, I approached an airline employee—a black woman with copper-colored hair. “I’m lost…” I babbled. “My wife…a shooting at our school.”
“The one in Colorado that’s been on the news? Lemme see your boarding pass.” She took it from my shaking hand. “Okay, this is Terminal Two. You gots to get to Terminal Three. That’s where Concourse G’s at.”
I burst into tears.
She stared at me for a moment, then shouted over her shoulder.
“Hey, Reggie! I’m going on break now!” She took my hand; hers was rough and plump. “Come on, baby,” she said. “I’ll take you there.”
The waiting area for gate G–16 had a TV. Now CNN was saying the shootings may have been committed by students who belonged to a cult called the Trenchcoat Mafia. I shook my head. Those Trenchcoat Mafia kids had graduated the year before. And anyway, they were ironists, not killers. What the hell was going on? Eric Harris’s and Dylan Klebold’s yearbook photos filled the screen. “Once again, we want to emphasize that these are alleged suspects,” the anchor-woman said. “What we do know is that officers from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office have entered the boys’ homes with search warrants, and it is believed, although not yet verified by the authorities, that the bodies of Klebold and Harris were amongst those in the library. At the very least, they are persons of interest.”
My mind ricocheted. Blackjack Pizza, the after-prom party, Sieg heil!…
I sensed the people around me were staring at me before I knew why. Then I heard moaning and realized it was coming from me.
I DON’T REMEMBER MUCH ABOUT the flight from Chicago to Denver. We landed a little after eleven, and I ran through the airport, ran to my car. Floored it most of the way home.
The house was dark. When I pulled into the driveway, Sophie and Chet began barking frantically. I got the door open, and they jumped on me in lunatic greeting, then bounded past me to the outside. There was dog crap on the living room rug, a puddle of pee on the slate in the front hallway. They hadn’t been let out since morning.
“Maureen?” I called. “Mo?” I took the stairs two at a time. The bed was made. Her little suitcase was packed for the trip to Connecticut. I looked at her jeans, folded on the chair beside our bed, and a chill ran through me. Downstairs, Chet and Sophie were barking to be let back in.
There were eighteen phone messages, half of them from me. Her stepmother, Evelyn, had called, and later, her father. “We’re starting to worry about you, Maureen,” he said. “Give us a call.” As if, suddenly, her safety mattered to him. As if he had never put her at risk….
There was a message from Elise, the secretary at the school clinic. “I guess if you’re not answering, you’re probably still over at Leawood.”
Leawood Elementary School! The TV news had shown footage of evacuated students and staff reuniting with their families there. I threw some food into the dogs’ bowls and grabbed my keys. Elise’s message had come midway through the sequence, which meant she’d left it hours earlier. It was late. Most, if not all, of the kids would have been picked up by now. But maybe, for some reason, Maureen was still there. Or, if not, maybe someone knew where she was. I’d start at Leawood, then drive from hospital to hospital if I had to. Be there, I kept saying. Please be there, Mo. Please be all right.
The eight or nine cars leading up to the school were parked helter skelter, a few on the sidewalk, one abandoned in the middle of the street. Parents must have pulled up, thrown open their car doors, and run for their kids. A cop was posted at the entrance. “Yes, sir, can I help you?”
I blurted that I’d been away, that I was trying to find my wife.
“Are you a parent of one of the Columbine students, sir?”
“I teach there,” I said. “My wife’s one of the school nurses. Do you know if there were shots fired anywhere near the medical clinic?”
He said he’d heard all kinds of rumors about the boys’ movement inside the school, but that that was all they were: rumors. He took my driver’s license and wrote down my information on his clipboard. “It was bedlam here earlier,” he said. “It’s quiet now, though. Too quiet. Looks bad for the families still waiting. There’s eleven or twelve still unaccounted for, and there’s bodies inside the school, so it’s a matter of matching them up. ’Course, some of the kids may show up yet. If you’re sitting there waiting, you gotta hang onto some hope, I guess. You have kids?”
I shook my head.
“Me neither. The wife and I wanted kids, but it just never happened. You can go ahead in. They’re in the gym, all the way down past the showcase. There’s lists posted on the wall.”
“Lists?”
“Of the survivors.”
I walked warily down the hallway, my footsteps slowing as I neared the gym. Let her be here, let her be here. Let her be on that list….
She was seated by herself, cross-legged on a gym mat, a blanket around her shoulders, a pile of Styrofoam coffee cup spirals in front of her. “Hey,” I said. She looked up at me, emotionless for several seconds, as if she didn’t quite recognize me. Then her face contorted. I dropped to my knees and wrapped my arms around her. Rocked her back and forth, back and forth. She was here, not dead, not shot. Her hair smelled smoky, and faintly of gasoline. Her whole body sobbed. She cried herself limp.
“I wrote you a note,” she said. “On the wood inside the cabinet.”
“What cabinet, Mo? I don’t—”
“Velvet’s dead.”
At first, it didn’t register. “Velvet?” Then I remembered: she was going to meet Maureen at school that morning, to talk about reenrolling.
“I went to call you, to see how things were going, and then there was this explosion and the whole library—”
“Oh, Jesus! You were in the library?”
She flinched. Made fists. “The coroner was here earlier,” she said. “She passed out forms. She wanted names and addresses, descriptions of their clothing, distinguishing marks or features, whether or not they had drivers’ licenses. Because of the fingerprints, I guess.” Her crew cut, I thought. Her tattoo. “She said she might need dental records, too. Dental records: that’s when we knew.”
“Knew?”
“That they were dead. And I couldn’t even…I couldn’t…” She began to cry again. “She called me Mom, and I couldn’t even give them her address.”
“Come on,” I said. “Let me take you home.”
“I can’t go home!” she snapped. “I’m her mom!”
I opened my mouth to argue the point, then shut it again. I took her hands in mine and squeezed them. She didn’t squeeze back.
A short time later, a middle-aged man with a droopy mustache entered the gym. “That’s the district attorney,” Maureen said. “He was here before, when the coroner was here.” He mounted the stage, and the thirty or forty of us, scattered throughout the gym, approached.
He said he understood that waiting was pure hell—his heart went out to each and every one there because he had teenagers, too. But he wanted us to know that, for safety reasons, the building had been secured for the night and the exhausted investigation teams had been sent home to get a few hours’ sleep. “We’ve made the decision to resume at six thirty a.m.,” he said. “And at that point we’ll continue with the identification of—”
“The hell with that!” someone shouted. “Our kids are in there!”
“Sir, I know, but there are still live explosives inside the school. How many, and where, we just can’t say yet. A short while ago, a bomb detonated as the technicians were removing it from the building. Now, no one was hurt, but it’s been a very long, very difficult day for all of us. Nerves are frazzled, people are dog-tired. We just don’t want that fatigue to turn into more tragedy.”
“I need to get to my daughter,” a woman wailed. “Dead or alive, she needs to know she’s not alone in that place.”
“Ma’am, I understand what you’re saying, but the entire school is a crime scene,” the D.A. said. “E
vidence has to be gathered and labeled, procedures have to be followed. Victims have to be identified, bodies removed and autopsied before they can be released to their families. Those of you who’ve followed the JonBenet Ramsey case can appreciate that when evidence is compromised—”
“We don’t care about evidence!” a man retorted. “We care about getting our kids the hell out of there! And don’t give me that ‘I’ve got kids, too’ bullshit, because your kids are safe at home tonight, and ours…” His reprimand broke down into sobs that echoed through the cavernous gym.
A woman announced fiercely that until she saw her son’s body, she refused to give up hope. We should prepare ourselves for miracles, she advised. No one responded. Someone asked when the names of the dead would be released.
“As soon as the coroner feels she’s gotten absolutely positive IDs for the twelve that are still in the library,” the D.A. said.
“Does that number include the two little bastards that did this?”
The D.A. nodded. “I’m guessing midday tomorrow we’ll have the final list. We’ll release it to you folks first, of course, and then to the press. And while I’m on the subject of the press, I want to advise you that talking to them at this point in time might not be in your own or the children’s best interests. Now you’re welcome to stay the night here, and if you do, I’m sure the volunteers will make you as comfortable as possible. But if I could, I’d like to suggest—since nothing more’s going to be released until late morning at the earliest—that you all go home, say some prayers if you’re so inclined, and try to get some sleep. Let’s meet back here at noon, and I think I can promise you by then that I’ll have the names for you. And I also want to promise you…” He faltered, struggled to regain his composure. “I want to promise…promise you that…we are going to treat your children like they are our own.”
Maureen slumped against me. “Take me home,” she said.
IT WAS A BRUTAL NIGHT. She wandered from room to room, cried, cursed the killers. She couldn’t tell me about it yet, she said, but she kept seeing it, over and over. Seeing what, I wondered, but I didn’t push her. In bed, she needed the light on. She kept bolting upright. “What was that?”