Long Drive Home

by Will Allison

  “Now just start at the beginning,” he said.

  I could feel my shirt grow damp as I told them more or less what I’d told them earlier, trying not to think about the fact that I was being recorded. I worried about contradicting myself. I worried about seeming worried. They were the police, after all; they dealt with liars every day. I finished up as quickly as I could, saying I didn’t know exactly what had happened after the Jaguar started rolling over because I’d turned around in my seat to reach for Sara.

  Rizzo referred to his notes. His tone was almost apologetic. “Mr. Bauer, earlier you indicated you didn’t know why the driver lost control. Is that correct?”

  I nodded, then remembered the recorder. “Yes.”

  “Could you venture a guess?”

  “Maybe he was drunk.”

  “How fast would you say you were going at the time of the accident?”

  “I was getting ready to turn into my driveway,” I said, “but then I saw him coming and stopped.”

  “A full stop?”

  “Yes.”

  Rizzo studied his notepad again, tapping his pen on the page, and then, in the same apologetic tone, he said, “Is it possible he might have thought you were going to turn left in front of him?”

  It felt as though they’d already pieced together what happened, even though I couldn’t for the life of me imagine how, without another witness. When I shrugged, it felt like there were cinder blocks on my shoulders. “I don’t know what he thought.”

  My face had gone hot, but Johnson didn’t even look up from his typing. Rizzo just nodded and moved along to the next question, as if the whole interview were nothing but a formality.

  “Did you have your turn signal on?”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t remember.”

  “Did you move your vehicle after the crash?”

  “No.”

  “Could you describe the road and weather conditions?”

  “Same as when you got there,” I said. “Clear day. The road was dry.”

  “Any other cars on the street?”

  “No.”

  “Any pedestrians in or near the roadway?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “All right,” he said, reaching for the recorder. “That should do it.”

  Johnson printed out the transcript and had me sign it. Just like that, it was over.

  On the way back to the break room, Rizzo asked how Sara was holding up. I said pretty well, considering.

  “Mind if I talk to her?”

  There was no way I was going to let that happen, but I was afraid he’d be suspicious if I said no.

  “She’s had a long day.”

  “Maybe some other time,” he said, “but while it’s still fresh.”

  I was glad to see Liz in the break room with Sara on her lap. She had on a black suit and the running shoes she carried in her bag, rubbing Sara’s back as she spoke with Carla. She lifted Sara onto her feet when I came in and put her arms around me.

  “Hey,” she said. “You all right?”

  For the first time since the accident, holding her tight, I didn’t feel utterly on my own. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Rizzo introduced himself to Liz and said he was sorry for keeping us so late. Then he asked if Sara would like to be a junior detective. She lit up when he pulled an official-looking silver badge from his pocket.

  “By the power vested in me,” he said, “I hereby thereby such and such do deputize you a junior detective.” He pinned on the badge. “Welcome to the force. We could use your help.”

  _______

  There was another reason I didn’t want you talking to Rizzo. They have to warn suspects about self-incrimination, but nobody was going to warn you about incriminating me. You would have done it without even realizing. And then you might have ended up blaming yourself for my getting caught. I didn’t want you to have to live with that.

  On the other hand, though, let’s say after you finish this letter, you feel compelled to tell someone what really happened. That would be different. That’s a risk I accept. Maybe you’ll feel like you have to. Maybe it’ll be the only way to clear your conscience.

  _______

  I was so glad to be out of the police station, I forgot about Juwan and his family just long enough for it to hit me all over again, walking to the car.

  “Want me to drive?” Liz said.

  “If you don’t mind.”

  She took my hand and then Sara’s, and we crossed the parking lot like that, the three of us holding hands.

  It was late to be making dinner, so I suggested we stop for pizza before heading home. On the way to the restaurant, I started telling Liz about the accident, but Sara said, “Let me tell it.” I sat back and held my breath as she launched into her own pell-mell account. I wanted to hear what she had to say. Better that she let something slip in front of Liz than in front of the police. I didn’t have to worry, though. She skipped over our first brush with Juwan, and most of what she said was repeated, stuff she’d overheard. It occurred to me that the accident might have unfolded so fast she hadn’t really had a chance to form her own impression. For all I knew, she’d been looking off in another direction and hadn’t even seen what happened.

  I waited until we got to the restaurant to tell my version, basically the same story I’d told the police. Somehow, with Liz, it felt like even more of a lie. She shut her eyes and pulled Sara close when I came to the part about the Jag almost landing on us.

  “I don’t know if I can hear this,” she said.

  “But we’re okay, Mom.”

  “That’s all that matters,” I said.

  Liz stared at the untouched slice of pizza on her plate. “But what if you weren’t?”

  With the gaslight down, our end of the block was dark, but that didn’t stop Sara from taking Liz over to see the tree as soon as we got home. The skeleton on Clarice’s door was gone. I rang the bell, explained the situation, and asked if we could bandage the tree. Clarice said of course and turned the porch light on. I went back to our house for a flashlight and the gauze Liz used when she and Sara played doll hospital. When I came out again, Sara was touching the raw places on the tree where the car had broken the bark. She aimed the flashlight and followed me around the trunk as I unspooled the gauze, trying to cover as much of the damage as possible. It got harder near the ground, where the trunk bulged with thick knots. Liz said they reminded her of skinned knees.

  Sara said she thought the tree was dying. “All the bark’s peeling off, even where the car didn’t hit.”

  “Come on,” Liz said, tucking the last of the gauze in on itself. “You’ve seen sycamores. That’s just how they are.”

  “I’m calling this one Sicky,” Sara said. “Sicky Sycamore.”

  That night, for the first time in her life, Sara asked for a night-light. She said she didn’t want to go to sleep because she was afraid she might stop breathing.

  “You won’t,” I said. “I promise.”

  “But everybody does sometime.”

  “Only when they’re old or hurt. You’re young, and I’m not going to let anything hurt you.”

  After she was in bed, Liz and I watched the local news to see if there was a story about the accident. I was hoping there wouldn’t be, but no such luck. A traffic fatality in Newark, just a few blocks away, might not have gotten much notice, but this was quiet, suburban South Orange. They showed footage of the police, the bystanders, the upside-down convertible. You could see our house in the background.

  Liz moved closer to me on the sofa. “Why’d it have to happen on our street?”

  The reporter—the same one who’d called out to me—said they hadn’t determined the cause of the crash but that alcohol was reportedly involved. That was a relief to hear, but as soon as she started talking about the victim—a high school student, his name wasn’t being released—I felt sick. I reached for the remote and turned off the TV.

  “And why do people drive li
ke such fucking fools?” I said.

  “Was he all bloody?”

  “Not really. His head was messed up. The car might have rolled over on him.”

  “Don’t think about it. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  We went upstairs to look in on Sara, who didn’t stir as we each kissed her good night again, and then Liz said she was going to bed; she had an early meeting. She’d been having a lot of early meetings since she became HR director that spring. Her bank was trying to buy another bank, just like it had bought her old bank in Cleveland. I remembered how excited we’d been when they’d promoted her to New York. A life on the East Coast had seemed bigger, more promising and exciting. Now I wished we’d never left.

  I had a glass of wine before bed, but I still couldn’t sleep. I kept going over my conversations with the police, kept worrying what else Sara might say to Liz when the two of them were alone, kept imagining how it must have been for Juwan—the surprise of seeing me come into his lane, the jolt of fear he must have felt as his car struck the curb. I hoped the mail carrier had been wrong about a pulse, that Juwan was dead before he ever could have known what happened.

  Around 1 a.m., Sara cried out. Liz and I hurried across the hall and found her sitting up in bed, holding her pillow and crying. She’d had a dream about the tree.

  “It got so weak it just fell over,” she said. “It landed right on top of the house.”

  After we got her calmed down, she asked if I’d stay until she fell asleep. Liz went back to bed. Sara rolled over and pulled my arm around her like a blanket. I must have lain there an hour, listening to her breathe and trying not to think of Juwan’s empty bed, the night his parents must be having, what it would be like to know your child was never coming home again.

  I tucked her in and went downstairs to see if there was anything about the accident online. I tried getting some work done—payroll taxes for a new client, a pharmacy in Short Hills—but I couldn’t concentrate. I started a load of laundry. I brushed the Chairman and clipped his claws. I checked online again and looked to see if the paper had come. I went back to the basement to put the laundry in the dryer and empty the dehumidifier. I cleaned the litter box. I made a grocery list, threw out some leftovers, and took out the trash. I sent an email to the mortgage company about an insurance bill that should have been paid out of escrow. I did push-ups and sit-ups on the rug in front of the fireplace.

  The paper finally came around five, landing with a faint pop on the sidewalk. It was still dark outside. The sycamore looked like it had been TP’d by someone who didn’t know the tissue was supposed to be up in the branches, not around the trunk. I brought the paper in and scanned the local section. Below a story about Seton Hall students getting mugged for their laptops was a brief item about the accident—nothing I didn’t already know, but I was glad to see it referred to as a one-car crash. I reread the story and then checked the obituaries, though it was too soon for that. As the words started getting fuzzy, I lay down on the sofa and was just drifting off when I heard Liz’s alarm.

  By the time I made coffee and got upstairs, Liz was already in the shower. She reached around the curtain for the mug and took a swallow. “You never came back.”

  I told her I couldn’t sleep.

  “How about Sara?”

  “No more dreams.”

  “Do you think we should take her to see Kim Lee?”

  I sat on the edge of the tub. Kim Lee was a counselor whose kids went to Sara’s school. We’d heard she was great, but I didn’t want her questioning Sara about the accident.

  “I think it’s possible to make too big a deal of it.”

  “But you know how she is,” Liz said. “How things can get to her.”

  I talked Liz into giving it a few days, and when she was done showering and putting her long, dark hair up in a towel, we went in to wake Sara. Every weekday, Liz got up half an hour earlier than she needed to so the two of them would have time to hang out in bed, reading and talking. Normally I’d leave them to themselves—“girl time,” Sara called it—but that day I stayed, holding Sara as she told us about her dream again, then opening the curtains so she could see the tree, how strong and sturdy it looked in the morning light.

  After Liz left to walk to the train station, I considered calling Sara in sick. I didn’t want her out of my sight. I even asked her if she’d like to take the day off, go to a movie or something, but she said her class was rehearsing the play.

  I took it easy on the way to school and ended up getting tailgated, honked at, and passed in a no-passing zone by a church van. We hit construction north of the highway, a road closure, but they hadn’t marked a detour, and nobody knew where to go. Eventually we came to the intersection where the Suburban guy had stopped us. By then I’d spilled coffee all over my jeans. Sara looked up from one of the kids magazines she kept in the seat-back pocket.

  “That man was mean,” she said. “I hope we don’t ever see him again.”

  “We won’t,” I said, remembering the self-satisfied way he’d unzipped his jacket. Who’d have imagined that things could have gotten so much worse, that being threatened with a gun would end up little more than a footnote to the afternoon? At least that’s how I thought of it then.

  As usual, the streets around Sara’s school were chaotic. Cars were double-parked, blocking driveways and hydrants. Parents were trolling for open spots. Kids were everywhere, not just from Sara’s school but from the public high school down the street. I walked her upstairs to her classroom. The backdrop I’d worked on the day before was spread out to dry, and I was so sleepy I accidentally stepped on it, leaving a footprint on the forest I’d painted.

  Now that we were there, Sara didn’t want me to leave. She clung to my arm. I told her she didn’t have to talk about yesterday and probably shouldn’t.

  “But I want to,” she said, pulling the detective badge from her pocket. “I brought this for show-and-tell.”

  I mentioned the accident to her teacher and asked her to call if Sara changed her mind about coming home. Then I hugged Sara, a long hug that embarrassed her, and said good-bye.

  On the way downstairs, I ran into Warren, head of the school, wearing an orange vest and carrying a stop sign.

  “Got a sec?” he said. The regular crossing guard had just quit, and Warren was looking for a fill-in until they could hire someone else. “Just a few weeks. It’d count as your parent job for the whole year.”

  Before the accident, I would have been happy to give up my job shelving books in the school library, but now, I had no interest in being responsible for other people’s kids. “Sorry,” I said. “I wish I could help, but work’s pretty crazy right now.”

  In fact, work was pretty slow. I killed some time in Montclair, taking the car for an oil change and hoping for a call to come get Sara. Instead, as I was on my way home, Liz called to say she’d made an appointment with Kim Lee.

  “I thought we were going to wait,” I said.

  She said she didn’t want to take any chances, and this was the only appointment she could get—a last-minute cancellation we should be grateful for.

  At that point, I didn’t see any way out of it. “Then good,” I said. “The sooner, the better.”

  I hung up as I was turning onto our block. In the time I’d been gone, things had gotten busy on Clarice’s side of the street. There was a PSE&G truck with a utility crew repairing the gaslight, plus two pickups and a trailer with rolls of sod. The yard guys had already taken up the grass damaged by the Jaguar and were going over the soil with rakes and rollers. I was glad to see things getting back to normal so fast—until I noticed the tree. Propped against the trunk were a wreath of flowers, a teddy bear, a skateboard. More flowers were piled around a framed portrait of Juwan that I made a point of not looking at too closely. The gauze had been replaced by a white ribbon.

  Sara wasn’t thrilled about seeing Kim Lee. Her practice was in Verona, in a suite of medical offices above a shopping plaza.
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  “Can’t I just talk to you and Mom?” Sara said as we climbed the stairs.

  “Sometimes it’s good to talk to someone else.”

  Sara relaxed a little when she recognized Kim from school, and after Kim and I compared notes on Sara’s teacher—Kim’s daughter had been in the same class two years earlier—Kim led Sara into a softly lit room with a leather sofa and big chairs. I asked if I could stay, but she said it would be better if she talked to Sara alone, so I stood in the waiting room, trying to listen through the door. There was a radio playing soft rock, just loud enough that I couldn’t make out what they were saying. A sign taped to the radio read, “Please do not touch.”

  At the end of their session, Kim invited me in. Sara was cross-legged on the sofa with crayons and a pad of paper, drawing what looked like an ambulance.

  “Do we have to leave right this second?” she said. “I’m not done.”

  Kim suggested she finish her picture in the waiting room. After Sara was gone, I mentioned her having thought we might have caused the accident. I was hoping to get a sense of what she’d told Kim.

  “Actually,” Kim said, “she said she was afraid the police might blame you, even though it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Really? She never told me that.”

  “I think she’s still trying to sort it all out.” Kim put on a pair of green reading glasses and opened her appointment book to schedule Sara’s next session. “Seeing what she saw, trying to understand what dying is—it’s a lot for a six-year-old.”

  By the time we got home, there were more flowers at the tree, another skateboard, a poster with laminated photographs.

  “What about the gauze?” Sara said.

  I told her we’d bandage the tree again later, when the memorial was gone. She asked if I’d take her over for a look.

  “Just for a minute,” I said, not wanting to be there when the next person showed up with flowers.