Fatal Option

by Chris Beakey

  He dialed 911 and nervously tapped his fingers against the wheel.

  “911. What is your emergency?”

  Stephen told her about Sara’s call.

  And realized his voice was slurring.

  The pause that followed worried him; made him wonder if she had figured out what kind of condition he was in. As the silence lengthened he heard the voices of other dispatchers in the background, an undertone of tension among them.

  “Hello—you still there?”

  “Sir you need to call the non-emergency line at 445—”

  “This is an emergency! She’s stuck by the side of the road in a goddamn blizzard!”

  There was another pause; the sound of typing on a keyboard.

  “I’ll notify the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office, sir.” The woman’s voice was a monotone. “We’ll ask a deputy to respond.”

  “You have to…please.”

  The call ended.

  He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the wheel as he replayed the conversation. He considered the possibility of doing what he had been told and simply waiting until someone from the Sheriff’s office reached her, and then realized that the dispatcher had not even asked for a number where he could be contacted.

  He sat back, gripping the wheel with both hands as he thought about the panic in her voice, and about Rolling Road with its blind rises and sharp descents; the hairpin curves that led to Brighton Gorge—

  You can’t just sit here.

  Can’t leave her up there.

  “God help me,” he mumbled, and backed out of the driveway and into the street, the Explorer’s back-end sliding sideways over the icy pavement as he righted the wheel, a torrent of snowflakes blowing into the windshield as he drove into the night.

  The day began in the pre-dawn darkness as Stephen stared at the LED numbers on the alarm clock and counted the minutes until the verdict would be delivered.

  I’ll send you a text when the decision comes in, the insurance agent had told him, but we’ll need to talk it through on the phone.

  The agent had told him not to expect the text before 7:30 a.m. but he checked his cell the moment he got out of bed any way, and checked it again after he stepped out of the shower. He thought about making the call himself—catching the agent on her way into the office, but decided to focus instead on getting Kenneth and Sara off to school.

  They were at the breakfast bar when he stepped into the kitchen, arguing about some kind of special shampoo, purchased by Sara, appropriated by Kenneth, and now at the center of an argument that made him wonder if his two children were about to come to blows.

  “It cost me six dollars Kenneth.”

  Kenneth gave his sister a cool sideways look under the shaggy honey-brown hair that swept down to his eyebrows.

  “I told you I’d pay for some of it,” he said as he reached for the box of cereal.

  “Even though you used more than half the whole bottle. Which you took from my closet.”

  “The closet’s in the hall. It’s not all yours.”

  “Well you have your own closet, with your own stuff. Which is twice the size of mine.”

  “God, are you really fighting over closet space?” Stephen wrinkled his brow in mock anguish as he poured a cup of coffee and sat down between them. “If so I wish you’d stop.”

  Sara crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re going to take his side?”

  “No.” He kept his eyes on hers, but reached across the countertop, his palm up. “Kenneth, give me a dollar.”

  With a slight, knowing smile, his son reached into the pocket of his jeans and put a buck in his hand.

  Stephen squinted down at the money, and shrugged. “Well, maybe.”

  “Dad!” Sara’s eyes widened with indignation.

  He laughed. “What can I say? Money talks.”

  “And bullshit walks.”

  “Whoa…” Stephen sat back and frowned at the harsh language and the sour expression on his daughter’s face. “When did you start talking like that?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “It matters. I’m your father, and I don’t like it.”

  She said nothing. Her insolent look spoke for itself.

  “You’re going to apologize, right?”

  Her eyes turned glassy.

  “Sara?”

  “I’m sorry I said that to you. But sometimes I just hate him.”

  Kenneth, appearing unfazed, poured the cereal into his bowl.

  “You don’t hate your brother,” Stephen said.

  “Sometimes. He acts like such a queer.”

  Kenneth looked at her. “Which is better than being a bitch.”

  “Jesus, would you two stop?”

  His children went silent, but continued to radiate a smoldering anger at each other. Stephen was once again amazed at how the bumpy rhythms of stress and hormones could flip their moods in an instant. Even so he knew it was only a matter of time—minutes or even seconds—before they slipped back into the natural rapport that had bound them together from the earliest moments of childhood. They had been born one year and one day apart and he often found himself thinking of them as if they were twins, linked on some kind of emotional see-saw, their moods interdependent, with the happiness of one always balanced on that of the other.

  Sara picked up the milk carton, read the label, and set it back down.

  “What’s wrong with the milk, Sara?”

  “It’s whole milk. Which means it’s loaded with fat.”

  “You don’t need to worry about fat.”

  “Right, tell that to my butt.”

  Stephen smiled at her self-deprecating humor, then reached over and brushed her hair away from her cheek. Sara had her mother’s gray-green eyes and clear, pale skin, and a lovely, heart-shaped face that still projected a pensive innocence even under the heavy makeup she had been favoring.

  He glanced at his watch, knowing he needed to get a jump on the traffic, but decided he wanted to sit with his kids for a few minutes longer.

  “So, what kind of day are we going to have today?”

  “Terrible,” Kenneth said.

  “Horrific,” Sara added.

  “Well all righty.” He clasped his hands together, grinning as if all was well. For a fleeting moment the gesture made both of his kids smile. “Really, what’s happening?”

  Sara poured a dash of milk into her cereal bowl. “A test in physics and a stupid role-playing thing in Spanish, followed by various grossities in the cafeteria.” She picked up her spoon and tamped down the cereal. “Drama club this afternoon. I won’t be home till late.”

  “What about you, Kenny boy?”

  “Just the usual stuff. Classes. Studio art—”

  “Getting clobbered,” Sara interrupted.

  “Shut up!”

  “Well you know it’s going to happen.”

  Kenneth was glowering at his sister, his strawberry blond complexion blotchy with embarrassment.

  Stephen treaded carefully. “What’s going to happen?”

  Kenneth stared down at the table without responding.

  “Yo, Ken.” Stephen used his buck up voice. “Somebody giving you a hard time about something?”

  Kenneth pushed his cereal bowl aside and avoided Stephen’s eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  But you have to, Stephen thought. He wanted to get up and hug his son, but at fifteen, that was the last thing Kenneth would tolerate.

  So talk around it. But let him know you understand.

  “You know, high school basically sucks,” he said.

  “Now who’s cursing?” Sara countered.

  “It does!” Stephen laughed, and turned to Kenneth. “Tell her I’m right.”

  Kenneth gave hi
m a grudging smile. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “So, what the heck. Before you know it, it’ll be over. Then you’ll go to college, graduate and get a job. Get a big mortgage. Add a few lumps to the waistline. End up like your old man.”

  Kenneth met his eyes. “Oh. Great.”

  “I can’t believe you said it sucks,” Sara said. “Especially after giving me a hard time about my BS comment.”

  “Well, you know my approach to the whole parenting thing. Do as I say, not as I do. Besides, I’m the dad. I have special rules.”

  Sara sighed. “Whatever.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Stephen replied. “Who loves you?”

  Sara gave him a weary look. “You do.”

  “Kenny?”

  “You.”

  “God it’s so easy living with teenagers. I should write a book about how great I am at it.”

  Kenneth and Sara both managed a brief smile across the table, a moment of solidarity in acknowledging the absolute lameness of anyone over thirty. Stephen saw it and relaxed, hoping that enough had been said. His daughter was troubled but undoubtedly tough enough to withstand the pressures of boys and body image that her mother had always predicted. His son was a sensitive kid who was being forced to deal with bullies, but Stephen was almost certain that the smart-ass Porter attitude would carry him through.

  His cell phone chirped. He glanced over to the kitchen counter where he had set it down, and anxiously looked at the screen.

  It was an incoming call from his office, not the insurance agent.

  He put the phone back down.

  “Are you going to get that?” Sara asked.

  He shook his head, and tried to smile, feeling desperate to maintain the happy feeling the moment of humor had given him, like catching a ray of sunlight breaking through gray clouds.

  Focus on something to look forward to, he thought. Something to keep this connection going.

  He thought of his brother and his wife and their twin teenage daughters, who were lifelong friends of Kenny and Sara.

  “We should talk about this summer. Instead of going to the beach, I’ve been thinking about Uncle Frankie’s place in the Finger Lakes.”

  Another cell phone rang. Kenneth reached into his pocket. Sara gave him a don’t bother look, said “It’s mine,” and grabbed the purse slung across the back of her chair.

  “Can you answer it later?” Stephen asked.

  She retrieved her phone, and frowned at whatever she saw on the screen.

  “Sara, please?”

  She stared at the screen for a moment longer, and put the phone face-down on the table.

  Her posture was suddenly stiff. She looked past him, toward the window that offered a view of the backyards of the neighboring houses.

  Stephen sighed. “Frankie emailed me yesterday. He’s got a new boat—”

  The cell phone on the counter rang again.

  “Damn it!” Stephen snapped.

  The spell was broken. Sara and Kenneth both stood up and rinsed their bowls and put them in the dishwasher, and then trudged up the house’s second stairway, which led from the family room and kitchen to their bedrooms. Stephen stayed at the table, determined to finish the mug of coffee without interruption. A brief chime from the phone told him that a message was waiting. He glanced at the clock, thinking of another ten-hour day at the struggling public relations firm where he’d worked for more than a decade. Lately every block of time he had with his kids could be measured in minutes, and almost always with an underlying sense of fear they were slipping away from him completely.

  “Damn it,” he muttered as he stood up and then dumped the coffee into the sink and headed into the foyer and up the front stairway into his own wing of the house. He took the last few steps of the morning ritual: brushing and gargling, then tightening his tie and checking the slight jowl under his chin and the exhaustion and sadness that now seemed permanently ingrained in his face.

  “Okay, wheels up!” he called out.

  He went to Sara’s room and realized she had already gone downstairs as he stood at the threshold to what had recently become an “off-limits” space. For as long as he could remember his daughter had been fascinated by costume drama movies and historical fiction, and had decorated her walls with movie posters and artistic photography. He recognized the images that he had glimpsed on the rare occasions when her door had been left open, but noticed they were now interspersed with dark and disturbing images that didn’t seem to belong: Gargoyles, robed figures, strange shadows under arched doorways.

  Goth

  He felt a sense of unease. He was still trying to get used to the dark clothes she had come to favor, and to worry less about the great stretches of solitude that she seemed to crave behind her bedroom door. He wanted to believe that he was witnessing nothing more than a harmless phase of adjustment to the new realities of his family’s life.

  Yet the anxiety lingered as he stepped back and moved down the hall to Kenneth’s room, an airy haven built over the garage. He started to call out, but through the half-open door he caught a glimpse of his son in front of the mirror over the bathroom sink. Kenneth was tilting his head and gazing at the way the light struck his hair as he combed it. There were highlights that Stephen was fairly sure hadn’t been there a few days earlier, which explained the special shampoo, another one of his son’s experiments…

  He remembered the recent, nasty bruise that Kenneth had claimed to be from a fall. Thought of him being clobbered amid taunts as the high school mob mentality gained its inevitable momentum.

  Jesus

  He took another few steps back so Kenneth would not know what he had seen, his voice unsteady as he called out “Time’s a wastin’, Kenny boy.”

  There was another moment of silence, long enough to make him wonder what else his son was up to as he waited outside his bedroom door.

  “Kenny?”

  “Ready.” Kenneth stepped into the hall and shut the door behind him, as if sealing off his personal territory.

  Stephen followed him down to the foyer and opened the door to a blast of Arctic air under a light gray sky. He turned on the radio as he warmed up the Explorer. The weathercaster was going on and on about the incoming “weather situation” and its likely impact on traffic later in the day as he headed out of the subdivision, then heard the beep of an incoming text.

  Violating his rule to never text and drive, he looked down and saw the message from Denise Wong had finally come.

  He tapped it open.

  Stephen, the investigative committee has reached a decision. Please call me to discuss this.

  He set the phone down on the console and gripped the wheel with both hands. Denise Wong had been his insurance agent for more than twenty years and he knew that she too had anxiously awaited the “decision” that would be part of his family’s history for the rest of their lives.

  He was still thinking through the best and worst scenarios when the sharp blast of sirens filled the air.

  He froze, his arms and shoulders rigid as he looked in the rearview mirror and tried to see past the column of SUVs and trucks behind him. Three Frederick County Sheriff’s cars and an unmarked sedan streaked by on the shoulder and made sharp right turns into the garden apartment complex ahead.

  An ambulance came next, but it was moving slowly, the driver making only a marginal effort to get through the heavy traffic. Stephen pulled over to the shoulder, and waited for it to pass. Its ambling pace felt like an omen for the news that Denise Wong had to share. Ambulances raced to accidents to save lives, but they were also called to carry away the dead, when nothing else could be done.

  The thought was like an undertow, pulling him toward the darkness. He took a succession of deep breaths, and swiped the moisture from his eyes as he prepared for the day ahead.

  Madison Reidy
pulled her Range Rover diagonally across two spots at the inner edge of the Langford Secondary parking lot—a fairly bitchy thing to do since spaces were limited, but totally necessary given the probability of dents and scratches from juniors in crappy cars who were still learning how to drive. She was glad to be there fifteen minutes early, which gave her ample time to re-do her eyes and figure out the best way to get even with Sara Porter.

  She turned off the ignition and checked her phone. Sara had ignored her text message from twenty minutes before, which only made her angrier as she dialed Marco Niles.

  He answered after the first ring. “What?”

  The sharpness of his tone startled her. Her mind raced with worry that she might have done something to annoy him. “Are you okay?”

  “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You sound mad.”

  “I lost my wallet.”

  She exhaled, feeling relieved. His anger had nothing to do with her. “Oh no. Where?’

  “I don’t know. Somewhere.” He sounded short of breath, as if he had been running. But then she heard a rumble of an engine, and guessed that he was behind the wheel of one of his father’s Hummers, on his way to school. “Any way, what do you want Madison?”

  She paused, and brought a wounded sadness to her voice. “Sara Porter is such a bitch.”

  “What—why?”

  He sounded surprisingly anxious. She knew she had his full attention.

  She made a vague sniffling sound, as if she had been crying.

  “She called me a whore.”

  Silence on the other end. She had an uncomfortable sensation—a sense that he might be smirking, given the lengths she had gone to over the weekend to try and keep him happy.

  “Marco?”

  “Why did she do that?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “What are you gonna’ do about it?”

  The question set her back. In her mind, Marco would be the one doing something about it, not her. She tilted the rearview mirror down to look at her face. Her eyes were what her mother called Indigo Blue and they looked absolutely gorgeous in contrast to the dusty rose blush on her cheeks and the fresh, sunny highlights in her thick dark blonde hair. She would need more lip gloss before she saw Marco at lunchtime.