Long Drive Home

by Will Allison

  “So you’re saying the accident was your fault?”

  “Probably,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, I should have told you.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I was freaked out. I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Does Sara know?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Damn it, Glen.” She crossed her arms and stared down at the puddle she was standing in. “But he was driving like a maniac, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And if he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have crashed.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Definitely not,” she said. “He would have stopped, or just slowed down. So you can’t really say it was your fault. You might have been involved, but that’s not the same. You were just minding your own business. He was the one breaking the law. He caused the accident.”

  Hearing her say so almost made it sound true.

  “But it’s good you didn’t tell the police,” she went on, not waiting for me to agree. “We could still get sued.”

  I said regardless of whose fault it was, they’d have a hard time proving anything.

  “So? They don’t have to.”

  She was right, of course. Her father had been a lawyer, and he’d encouraged us to sue the guy who hit us in Cleveland. “You wouldn’t have to prove the guy ran the light,” he said, “just that he probably did.” It came down to standards of evidence. In a criminal suit, you had to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, whereas in a civil suit, all it took was a preponderance of evidence. He compared it to a football game—a criminal conviction would require getting the ball to the one-yard line; a civil conviction would only require getting it past the fifty. “And as far as a jury’s concerned,” he’d said, nodding at Liz’s taut belly, “you’re already there.”

  Liz didn’t feel like going out, so we canceled our plans with Lacy’s family and ordered Chinese instead.

  “No fair,” Sara said.

  “Sorry, honey,” Liz said.

  “Mom’s tired.”

  She didn’t have much to say at dinner, just sat there watching Sara eat her egg drop soup, probably wishing her dad were still around to offer some advice. Afterwards, I sent Sara up to brush her teeth and started to apologize again, but Liz cut me off.

  “Are you sure nobody saw what happened?”

  “They canvassed the street looking for witnesses.”

  “You should have told him there was a cat,” she said. “That would have been perfect: he swerved to miss a cat.”

  She went to bed early and slept with Sara again—just in case, she said. I arranged a row of empty soda cans next to the sofa to wake me if I sleepwalked, then lay there in the dark listening for Tawana’s car. I wondered if Liz really believed what she’d said about the accident being Juwan’s fault, or if that was just her way of circling the wagons. For that matter, had she really believed me? Surely the thought that I might still be lying had crossed her mind. Maybe it was a case of her not wanting to know more. Maybe we’d already entered into an unspoken agreement where she wouldn’t ask and I wouldn’t tell. Of course, the problem with an unspoken agreement is that you can never be sure it really exists.

  In the morning, to make amends, I told Liz I’d go to the funeral. I still thought it was a bizarre idea. And perverse on Liz’s part. She could talk all she wanted about how the funeral might help Sara, but it didn’t ring true, didn’t sound like the person who’d cover Sara’s eyes just to keep her from seeing a dead bird on the sidewalk. I thought again that she must be doing it to punish me, whether she realized it or not, and here I was, keeping up my end of our unspoken agreement, willing to accept.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Maybe it’ll do her some good.”

  “I know you don’t want to go. I don’t blame you.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  On the way to the cemetery, Sara started to get anxious. Would we see Juwan’s body? she asked. Was it okay if she cried? Was it okay if she didn’t? I was surprised, though, at how matter-of-fact she was about death. I figured she just didn’t get it. I kept waiting for the light to go on, for her to ask me what I’d asked my dad after my grandmother’s funeral: what was the point of anything if we were all just going to die? I had no answer beyond the one I’d been given—the people you love are the point.

  The cemetery was the one we passed driving to and from school, near the intersection where we’d seen the Suburban guy—a coincidence that didn’t really hit me until later. We followed a long line of cars to a grove shaded by evergreens among rows of pale headstones. There were folding chairs set up under a canopy next to the grave. I had worried we’d stick out, the white strangers at a black funeral, but it was a mixed crowd, and big enough that no one gave us a second look. Still, our being there felt all wrong. We were interlopers, gawkers, tourists. We should have been at the movies or carving a pumpkin, something to take our minds off the funeral.

  The ground was soft from rain. We stood at the edge of the gathering. Sara was whispering her questions now: Would Juwan go to heaven after the funeral? Was he already there? Was heaven in outer space? How long would it take a rocket to get there?

  “I don’t know, sweetie,” I said. “I wish I did.”

  Liz nudged me. I looked up. Rizzo was standing twenty feet away from us, alone in a dark suit, looking tired and solemn. He’d spotted us, too, and I was afraid he’d come over, but he just gave a nod. Sara asked if she could go say hello.

  “Not now,” I said. “It’s getting ready to start.”

  “Do you think he always goes to the funerals?” Liz said softly.

  The crowd got quiet as the pastor took his place beside the grave. He was a burly, white-haired man with a voice you didn’t have to strain to hear.

  “For men are not cast off by the Lord forever,” he began. “Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.” He looked up from his Bible. “Today we are gathered here to mourn the passing of one such child. Please join me in prayer.”

  Sara prayed. I pretended to pray but was watching Tawana over the bowed heads. She was seated under the canopy, her eyes hidden by the brim of her hat. There was a dignified-looking man next to her in a black suit—Juwan’s father, I assumed. They didn’t comfort one another. They just sat there shoulder to fallen shoulder, looking like the bleakest two people in the world.

  While I was watching Tawana, Liz was watching me. I could feel her sidelong glance, as surely as I’d been feeling Rizzo’s eyes on us. I wondered if she were seeing me in a new light, standing there surrounded by all the misery I’d caused. I could understand how that might change the way you felt about someone.

  I put my arm around her, and she let me keep it there. We stood that way as the pastor quoted more Scripture. He talked about Juwan, whom he’d known personally—what a faithful son he’d been, what a good student, what a cutup. A few of Juwan’s friends spoke too, telling funny stories that made people cry, and then there was singing. After a hymn called “My Faith Has Found a Resting Place” (“I trust the ever living One / His wounds for me shall plead”), the pastor closed by inviting people to place roses on top of the casket. There was a basket of them near the grave. Sara wanted to do it, so we got in line. Girls were hugging each other and crying. Boys in blue blazers shuffled along with their hands in their pockets, casting glances at the grave. I’ve never fainted in my life, but as we got closer, I felt my head getting light. Inside that box, laid out flat, was a boy who was never coming out.

  I lifted Sara to lay her flower on the casket. Juwan’s parents were just a few yards away. I avoided looking at Tawana until we were clear of the canopy. People were coming up to her now, offering condolences, but her eyes were like an empty stretch of road. She was no more there than Juwan was.

  The next morning, Sara asked me to take a different route to school, one th
at didn’t go past the cemetery. “So he just stays there under the ground forever, all by himself?”

  “It’s not really him,” I said. “Just his body. But we don’t ever have to drive by there again if you don’t want to.”

  I had to park three blocks away from school, near the train underpass. When we came up the hill, students were waiting to cross the street as a school bus tried to squeeze past the cars that were parked between the corner and the sign that read no parking from here to corner. Somebody honked. Standing in the crosswalk, Warren just smiled.

  “I’m learning the limits of my authority,” he said. Then he called after me, asking if I’d changed my mind.

  Sara wanted to know what he was talking about, so I told her.

  “Do it, Dad,” she said. “You know so much about traffic. You’d be the best crossing guard ever.”

  She lobbied me all the way across the school yard and up the stairs to her classroom.

  “All right,” I said finally, seduced, as I’d been so many times, by the prospect of her being proud of me. “Fine.”

  On the way out, I stopped by Warren’s office and said I’d take the morning shift. He gave me a crash course right there at his desk, then said he’d send a link to an online training video.

  “It’s not such a bad job if you can manage not to take things personally,” he said.

  * * *

  That night Liz was an hour late getting home, and when Sara and I met her at the station, she was beat.

  “Could we just go sit down somewhere?” she said.

  There was a chill in the air. We stopped for coffee and hot cocoa, then headed to the little park across from the train station. On the way, Sara told her I was going to be the new school crossing guard.

  “My husband, the Good Samaritan,” she said. “Can they sue a crossing guard if a kid gets hurt?”

  I think she was only half kidding. Seeing Rizzo at the funeral had her even more worried than before. “It’s like he’s taking Juwan’s side,” she’d said. “You know, you and Sara could have been killed, too.”

  We sat on a bench while Sara ran off to play with Kate, a girl she knew from summer day camp. In between sips of coffee, Liz asked what time I’d have to be at school. I put a finger to my head and pretended to shoot. I was supposed to be there at 8:45, which meant less morning time for her and Sara.

  “My mistake. I’ll switch to afternoons.”

  Sara and Kate were marching through a water fountain that had been turned off for the season. Sighing, Liz reached for my hand without taking her eyes off the girls. She said she’d been thinking about the funeral a lot, that if she were ever standing in Tawana’s shoes, the last thing she’d want was regrets about not spending enough time with Sara.

  “Look at her,” she said. “She’s not going to be like this forever, and I’m missing it.”

  “You’re the best mom I know,” I said. “And you’re not missing any more than any other mom who gets off that train.”

  “I don’t care. It’s not enough.”

  Before Sara was born, we’d decided that the path to a sane life was for one of us to stay at home, so I’d quit the accounting firm where I worked in the business tax division and gone into business for myself. Our intention was to trade places at some point, but Liz’s career took off, and by the time we got to New Jersey, what we had was an unfair, half-sane life: I got to work at home and spend afternoons with Sara; Liz got a full-time job and an hour-long commute, plus the pressure of being chief breadwinner. It’s true that she could have quit and done something else, part-time, or closer to home. I could have gotten a regular job again, with benefits. We could have moved somewhere cheaper, where we’d be able to get by on a tax accountant’s salary. So far, though, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to give up her job, and neither of us was in a hurry to make do with less.

  Now she was telling me she liked the idea of being an independent consultant. Of all the possibilities we’d considered, that was the one she kept coming back to.

  “Then quit,” I said. “We’ll make it work.”

  “You always make it sound so easy.”

  Over by the fountain, Sara and Kate had stopped to see Kate’s baby sister. Kate’s mom was pushing the stroller back and forth. Liz left me sitting there and walked over for a look.

  “You must like being a big sister,” she said to Kate.

  Kate smiled. She was letting the baby squeeze her finger. When her mom said it was okay for Sara to do the same, Sara reached into the stroller, but cautiously, like she was testing hot water.

  “Can you believe you used to be that small?” Liz said.

  As the baby’s hand closed around Sara’s finger, she shook her head.

  “I know,” Liz said. “Me, neither.”

  While I manned the intersection the next morning, Sara stood at the school yard’s wrought-iron fence, calling out to her friends as they arrived, “Hey, look, it’s my dad!” I couldn’t seem to get the hang of it, though. The training video, which I’d watched three times, said to use voice commands for pedestrians and hand signals for traffic. My impulse was to use both, all the time, and I kept forgetting to lower the stop sign. The kids from the high school didn’t help, crossing the streets everywhere except at the crosswalks.

  A little before nine, Sara was on her way into the building with her classmates, waving, when a black SUV started up the hill. At first, I didn’t even register the flared fenders. It wasn’t until I saw the four wheels in back that it dawned on me—another one of those unexpected second chances, like seeing Juwan again. This time I wouldn’t get carried away. I knew just what to do. I stepped into the street and held up the sign, hoping he wouldn’t recognize me. As he looked from side to side, trying to figure out why I’d stopped him, I memorized his license plate and the address of an auto body shop advertised on his door.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was on my way to Derek’s Custom Auto Body. The address was in Orange, along one of the routes we took to school. If that was where he worked, and if he’d been headed to work from his home, his commute overlapped part of ours, only in reverse. My plan was to call the police with an anonymous tip once I made sure he was there. I’d decided not to file a complaint; I didn’t want him finding out my name, and I didn’t want the police knowing I’d been involved in another traffic incident on the day Juwan was killed.

  The shop was just south of the cemetery, between a shuttered Delta station and a ragtag row of houses set close to the curb. I parked around the corner on the off chance he might recognize the station wagon. Several vehicles were out front, including the Suburban. Several more, in various states of repair, were visible inside the garage. There was also a small showroom with a plate glass window. A wall of wheel covers rose behind the counter where the Suburban guy stood talking to a customer.

  On the drive over, an idea had begun to take hold of me, slowly, like a drop of oil pooling in a puddle: My run-in with the Suburban guy was no more a mere footnote to the accident than the accident itself was an isolated, out-of-the-blue event. On the contrary, it had been the culmination of that whole afternoon, in which A led to B led to C. Things had started with me flipping off the cop and ended with me cutting the wheel. In between was this guy. If it hadn’t been for him, maybe I wouldn’t have overreacted to Juwan. Maybe everything would have turned out differently. In any case, it was preposterous that I had ended up being the only one in trouble with the police. Wasn’t threatening someone with a gun just as bad as threatening someone with a car? And didn’t it count for anything that his actions had been premeditated and mine had not?

  I was rehearsing what I’d say to the police when I noticed a pay phone on the corner where the gas station used to be. I decided to use it instead of my cell phone, so my number wouldn’t show up on caller ID. I got out and crossed the street. The customer was leaving the body shop. Lighting a cigar, the Suburban guy opened a newspaper on the counter. I dialed 911 and told the dispatcher I had a
n anonymous tip. When she realized I was talking about something that had happened the week before, she told me to call the department’s nonemergency number.

  “That or Crimestoppers,” she said.

  There was no phone book, so I dialed information and asked the operator to connect me. While I was waiting, the Suburban guy closed the paper and made his way into the garage.

  “Essex County Crimestoppers,” a voice said. “Sergeant Carrera speaking.”

  “I don’t have to give my name, right?”

  “No, sir. At no point will I ask your name.”

  The sergeant said I’d be assigned a code number, which I could then use to call back for updates on the case and to collect my reward if my information led to an arrest. I said I wasn’t after a reward, I just wanted to report someone, and proceeded to tell him what had happened, minus the part about flipping off the cop. I told him the reason I was calling anonymously was that I wanted to protect my family. He said he understood.

  “But a case like this,” he said, “where there’s no crime in progress, where it’s just going to be your word against his, I’m sorry—you’ve got to file a complaint before we can do anything.”

  “Then couldn’t you just leave me out of it altogether? Get him for an illegal handgun?”

  “You know it’s illegal?”

  I’d been hoping so, just as I’d been hoping they’d find drugs if they searched the Suburban. “Can’t you run a check?”

  “Sir, we don’t even have a name.”

  “I could get it.”

  “Look,” he said, “we can’t just show up and search the guy without probable cause. We’d still need a complaint.”

  I told him I’d think it over and hung up. The Suburban guy was talking to a mechanic in the garage. Possibly there was a business card with his name on it back at the register. But it still wasn’t worth filing a complaint. He hadn’t cared that there was a child in the car when he’d shown me his gun. It was hard to imagine him having any compunction about coming after me or my family. What was to stop him from driving by the house one night, shooting it up?