Long Drive Home

by Will Allison

  She closed the apartment finder and started reading. “And you’d go along with this?”

  “It would be easier,” I said, “and faster. And a million times less likely to completely ruin Sara’s life.”

  She didn’t look convinced. “What happened to a court order and all that?”

  I said I didn’t want us getting wiped out any more than she did, and I certainly didn’t want a divorce. “Do you want to try this or not?”

  _______

  Up until that day, I’d thought of myself as a man who would never leave his family, and yet that’s what I was proposing to do. It’s important to me that you understand why.

  First, as hard as it was for me to believe, your mom was apparently serious. She’s a willful person. And it was a complicated situation; despite what she said, I can’t believe the accident was the only thing she was reacting to. I think she must have been mad at me for a while, or disappointed at the way our marriage had turned out. Somehow all of that got tangled up in the decision she was making. So for me, it was come up with plan B or fight her all the way to court.

  Second, I felt like I owed her. I was the one who’d gotten us into trouble—or at least potential trouble—and then lied to her about it.

  And third, considering what Tawana was going through, who was I to complain about a few weeks apart from my family?

  Because that’s what I thought it would be—a few weeks. Once I was out of the house and she saw there was no lawsuit coming, she’d realize how foolish she was being, what a terrible mistake she’d made. I was sure it was only a matter of time. I swear to you, sweetie, if I’d thought there were even a chance I’d be gone longer, I never would have left.

  _______

  In the morning, Liz called Floyd Braun and told him we were considering a no-fault divorce but that she was concerned about potential legal trouble arising from my tax work. She didn’t actually say I had shady clients, but that’s what it sounded like. She asked if she’d be liable for any judgments against me during the separation period. Braun more or less confirmed what I’d told her. He said a divorce was the only foolproof way, but yes, for all intents and purposes, a separation was just as good in New Jersey.

  “But what if the judge decided we hadn’t been apart long enough?” she said.

  He said that was unlikely, so long as it was clear to the court that we intended to divorce.

  After she hung up, she stood at the sink with her hands on her hips, staring out the window at Sara, who was in the backyard waiting for me to drive her to school.

  “We can start looking for a place this weekend,” she said. “But you heard him. It has to look like we mean it.”

  We got a sitter for Sara and went to see Braun after work. His office was on the second floor of an old bank building. He was older than I expected, old enough to be in Florida doing nothing but playing golf. Before we sat down, he asked if my lawyer would be joining us. I said I didn’t have one because I wouldn’t be contesting anything. His thick eyebrows went up.

  “It’s a good idea to at least talk to someone,” he said, “but there’s no law that says you have to.”

  We told him we were leaning toward a no-fault divorce because we thought it would be easier on all of us, especially Sara. He made some notes in longhand on a yellow pad.

  “The required separation period is eighteen months,” he said, glancing over his glasses. “Basically that means no sleeping under the same roof.”

  We said we wanted to go ahead and separate our assets as soon as possible. He recommended something called a marital separation agreement, which would go into effect immediately and then be merged with the judicial decree once we filed for divorce. It would cover everything from visitation and child support to property and debt division, health insurance, disposition of the marital home, pension plans, tax issues.

  “An MSA is also a good way of demonstrating no reasonable expectation for reconciliation,” he said.

  On the way home, at Liz’s urging, I called Tawana’s lawyer and put off our meeting for a week, to buy more time.

  The next day was Halloween. Despite the Mets jersey, Sara stuck with her Indians cap, out of loyalty. She was also loaded down with plastic jewelry.

  “World Series rings,” she said, fanning her hands for us to admire.

  It was barely dusk, but the sidewalks were already busy with trick-or-treaters. Sara immediately fell in with twin princesses, sisters she’d met at a neighborhood cookout that summer. Across the street, some other kids had stopped to look at the memorial. I overheard one saying the tree was haunted now.

  Not wanting to ruin Halloween, Liz and I had decided to hold off telling Sara I was moving out. More to the point, we hadn’t figured out what to tell her. We talked it over that night, hanging back as Sara went door to door with her plastic pumpkin, Liz in her annual witch hat, me in my devil horns.

  Liz came home early the next night so the three of us would have time for a walk at the county park on South Mountain before dark.

  “What about dinner?” Sara said.

  “We’ll eat later,” I said.

  As we made our way along a trail to the waterfall, Liz and I began laying out the situation for Sara. We tried to keep it light. We told her I was going to start building up my business in case Liz quit her job, because we’d need the extra money. I’d be working all the time.

  “So I’ve decided to get an apartment,” I said. “Nana will stay with us, just like during tax season.”

  We both knew how lame this was, but it was the best we’d come up with.

  “Why do you need an apartment?” Sara said.

  “To do more work.”

  “Are you going to live there?”

  “For a while.”

  “But if it’s like tax season, why can’t you just work and live at home?”

  I said I’d be even busier.

  “Can’t you be busy at home?”

  “Not busy enough.”

  “But why do you need an apartment to do your work?”

  “Same reason Mom goes to an office,” I said. “You get more done.”

  “Then why don’t you get an office?”

  “That’s basically what it’ll be, an office I can sleep at.”

  Sara frowned—she knew double-talk when she heard it. “But I want you to sleep at home.”

  We were on a flight of stone steps that led to a lookout above the waterfall. We’d been up there before, right after we moved. The steps had been too much for Sara’s three-year-old legs, so I’d carried her most of the way. Now I was this close to saying that’s it, screw it, I can’t go through with this—except I was still convinced I’d be looking at papers for a real divorce the moment I gave up this pretend one. I reminded myself I’d be back home soon, and Sara would eventually forget the whole thing, just like she’d forgotten having ever been on those steps before.

  “Race you to the top,” I said.

  Sara didn’t feel like racing, but when we got to the terrace, she let me hold her hand as she balanced on a stone wall next to the path. On the other side, a sheet of rock sloped into a ravine that funneled the river toward the falls. That time of year, it wasn’t much of a river, narrow enough to step across in places.

  “What a view,” Liz said, brightly.

  The sun was low, lighting up the trees across the ravine, but Sara was staring at the ground. She asked when I was moving out.

  “I’m not moving out. Like I said, I’ll just be staying there for a while.”

  “For how long?”

  I said I didn’t know, but we’d see each other every day because I’d still be driving her to school. “And you can come over every afternoon. And we can have sleepovers.”

  She let go of my hand and hopped down onto the rock, poking at a patch of moss. “I thought you were going to be so busy.”

  “Not too busy to spend time with you.”

  “What about bedtime?”

  “We’ll figure
it out, sweetie,” I said. “Hey, listen to that.”

  She glanced up from the moss, seeming for the first time to notice the river, the hiss of the falls.

  “Let’s go see,” I said.

  “Not too close,” Liz said.

  The slope wasn’t steep. There were bits of broken glass, crushed cans, cigarette butts—a place where teenagers came to drink. Sara started reading the graffiti on the rocks: somebody plus somebody forever, somebody had been there, somebody RIP. Up ahead, the boulder with the most graffiti marked the top of the falls, the point at which the river disappeared in midair. Twenty-five feet below, ripples spread across a pool.

  “That’s far enough,” Liz said.

  “But I want to see the waterfall,” Sara said. “Isn’t that why we came up here?”

  I pulled her onto my lap. “We’ll see it on the way back, from down there.”

  “To see it from up here,” Liz said, “you’d have to go over it.”

  Three days after our meeting with Floyd Braun, the mail carrier showed up with a packet I had to sign for, paperwork for the separation agreement. It was the first time I’d talked to him since the accident. He scanned the bar code and tucked an electronic tablet back into his satchel. Then he cleared his throat.

  “When the medics got there?” he said. “When you were telling them the kid had had a pulse? I should have spoken up, told them you were right.”

  “I should have let them do their job.”

  He thumbed the bill of his cap. “Truth is, at that point, I thought I might have imagined it.”

  “Didn’t matter by then. If he was dead, he was dead.”

  “That was a bad feeling, not being able to do something.” He told me he’d gone out and signed up for a CPR course the very next day. “Next time, I’m going to be ready.”

  Liz and I hadn’t been apartment hunting since grad school, when she was at Weatherhead getting her MBA and I was at Cleveland State and it was just the two of us. Back then, we’d taken it as seriously as buying a house, inspecting every closet, every light fixture, every scratch on every hardwood floor. This time, we just wanted to get it over with. There would be no imagining ourselves studying together or throwing potlucks or sleeping in on weekends in these new places.

  We got an early start on Saturday. We looked at an apartment building near the university that catered to students; a newer, more expensive one near the train station; and a loft over a nail salon downtown. Sara hated them all. When she wasn’t crying, she was asking why we couldn’t clean out the attic so I could have an apartment there.

  On Sunday afternoon, we saw a furnished fourth-floor studio in a building that backed up to the railroad tracks. Sara stopped sulking long enough to watch a commuter train leave the station. The place was nothing special, but the fridge didn’t smell, and there was no ring in the tub. I told the building manager I’d take it, and he went to get the contract. Waiting for him, I tried to picture myself eating at the little dinette, telling Sara good night over the phone, sleeping alone on the sofa bed. Liz had to step out into the hallway to pull herself together. Whereas I figured we’d be apart for a few weeks, max, she was presumably bracing herself for the whole two years. Not that I had much sympathy.

  When the manager got back, I told him I wanted to go month to month. Liz took me aside and pointed out that a longer lease would be more convincing to a judge. I said I was planning to find a better place when we weren’t in such a rush. She was too wrung out to argue. I signed a check for the deposit and first month’s rent, the last one I’d write from our joint account.

  Things moved quickly after that. On Monday, we finished the paperwork for the separation agreement and sent it back to Braun, at which point my name was on its way to being off of anything that mattered. On Tuesday, I called the cable company about internet service, stopped by the post office to change my address, and finished packing. On Wednesday, while Sara was at school, Helen arrived from Philadelphia in her Volvo with two suitcases and a frozen meat loaf.

  “An apartment-warming gift,” she said, handing it over. Then she stared at the file boxes stacked in the mudroom. “You’re really going through with this?”

  “Between you and me, I don’t think it’ll last.”

  I loaded the car before I went to pick up Sara so we could go straight to the apartment after I finished my crossing-guard shift. She had told her friends I was moving—“for a while,” she was always careful to add—and by then most of the parents must have known, too. I was embarrassed to think they’d heard the ridiculous excuse Liz and I had given Sara, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to tell her our marriage was in trouble. I told Liz that would be an even worse lie.

  A few of the parents paused long enough in the crosswalk to say they were sorry to hear about Liz and me, or they hoped things worked out. It was awkward. Sara was about to become the only kid in her class whose parents weren’t together. I wanted to tell them what I’d told Helen, that it wouldn’t last, but they probably would have thought I was in denial, so I just said thanks. There wasn’t time for much else. The fact that I was busy doing my job made things easier for everyone.

  The apartment building’s elevator was out of order, so Sara glumly held the emergency exit open as I carried in boxes from the car, her voice echoing after me in the stairwell—“Do you really have to do this, Dad?”—every plea a pinprick in my heart. Then we went back to the house for more. My suitcase was still open on the bed, half packed. Chairman Meow was curled up inside.

  “Looks like you’ve got a stowaway,” Helen said.

  Sara lay down next to the suitcase. “He doesn’t want you to go. Or he wants to come with you. So you don’t get lonely.”

  I said I didn’t plan on getting lonely since I’d be seeing her every day. But she was suddenly fixated on having the Chairman become my roommate, so I packed up the cat food and litter box and put him into his carrier. He wasn’t mine to take—Liz and I had found him together, under the porch of our duplex in Cleveland Heights—but I could always bring him back if she wanted.

  Sara and I spent the rest of the afternoon at the apartment. The Chairman stayed in the carrier for a while before he worked up the nerve to explore, keeping low and close to the walls. I unpacked my clothes. Sara went through a bin of toys and games she was planning to keep there. We built a fort out of empty moving boxes. She heard a train coming and decided we were runaways. The people on the train were trying to put us in an orphanage, she said. We hid in the fort, then unfolded the sofa bed to make a bigger fort underneath. She said the runaways were starving and sent me out to find food. When I came back with a box of crackers, which was all I had, she said, “Are you and mom taking a time-out?”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  She said Lacy had said that sometimes when moms and dads weren’t getting along, they decided to take a break.

  “We’re not taking a break,” I said. “I just need a place to work.”

  “Well, when are you coming home?” she said, trying not to cry.

  The trying was what really got me. “Soon,” I said, hating myself for it. But Liz and I had agreed this would be our answer for as long as we could get away with it. She didn’t want to tell Sara it would be two years, and I couldn’t go behind her back and tell Sara otherwise.

  “A week?” she said.

  “Probably longer.”

  “A month?”

  “It’s hard to say.”

  She was holding a marker from her toy bin. She stabbed the back of my hand, hard, and crawled out of the fort. I went over to the window where she was standing and put my arms around her. Beyond the railroad tracks, next to a ball field, an ambulance was trying to get through traffic, but none of the cars were pulling over. The ambulance’s siren echoed back and forth across the field until it sounded like there were five or six of them. Sara looked at the red dot on my hand.

  “ ‘Soon’ isn’t a real answer,” she said. “ ‘Soon’ doesn’t mean anyt
hing.”

  Liz had said I shouldn’t meet her train anymore. She’d walk, or take the jitney, or drive herself. I’d said I had to bring Sara home anyway, so why wouldn’t I be a decent future ex and pick her up?

  On the ride home, she put on a brave face for Sara. She asked how the move went and nodded along, too enthusiastically, as Sara told her what a big help she’d been.

  “But the window is painted shut,” Sara said. “And the toilet doesn’t flush all the way. I don’t think Dad should move in until they fix everything.”

  I parked the station wagon in the garage, loaded a couple of boxes into my old hatchback, and came inside. Helen had a pot of chili going. I could feel Liz watching me as I got the sour cream out and started grating some cheddar. She put a hand on my arm.

  “You should go.”

  “Braun said no spending the night. He didn’t say anything about dinner.”

  “He said it has to be clear to the court that we intend to divorce.”

  “The court’s not here,” I said, and suggested a compromise: the minute there was a lawsuit, I wouldn’t so much as set foot in the house.

  In the end, she didn’t seem to want to kick me out any more than I wanted to leave. I stayed for dinner and helped with the dishes, then the four of us played Parcheesi in front of a fire. It wasn’t so different from any other time Helen had visited except that Sara kept looking at the clock and insisted on sitting on my lap for the whole game.

  When it was bedtime, I tucked her in and said I’d see her in the morning.

  “But you won’t be here.”

  “Not when you wake up.”

  She started crying, abject sadness and need, asking me in between sobs to rub her back until she fell asleep. It took her almost an hour to settle down, but I was in no hurry. I sat there on the edge of the bed, trying to make out her face in the moonlight, thinking of all the times she’d called me in the night to take her to the bathroom or rescue a stuffed animal that had fallen on the floor.