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Long Drive Home

Page 9

by Will Allison


  It wasn’t like we’d never spent a night apart, though. She’d spent weekends at Helen’s; I’d traveled for work. This is nothing, I told myself.

  But of course it didn’t feel like nothing.

  I was on my way out when Liz stopped me at the back door to ask how I was doing for money. She’d guessed how few hours I’d been billing since the accident.

  “I can give you cash,” she said, “but only under the table.”

  I told her no thanks, I was fine, and said I’d call in the morning, after I met with Tawana’s attorney.

  She shook her head. “You never called the lawyer I found, did you? You said you would.”

  “Our assets are being separated,” I said. “Just like you wanted. If I get sued now, it’s my business.”

  Helen cleared her throat. She was sitting on the patio with a cigarette and a glass of sherry. She said she didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but she didn’t see why we were so worried about getting sued. “It sounds like it was the guy’s own fault.”

  “It was,” I said, “which is why there won’t be a lawsuit.”

  “Not that we can take the chance,” Liz said.

  “How long you do you want me to stay?” Helen said.

  I told her the statute of limitations was two years.

  Liz wasn’t amused. “Just until I can find some help, Mom.”

  Helen lit another cigarette. She said she’d stay as long as we needed her.

  Five minutes later, I was parked in front of the apartment building, staring at the red dot on the back of my hand. It was almost ten o’clock. Ten and a half hours to go before I picked Sara up for school. There was still unpacking to do, and I was falling further behind in my work, but I couldn’t stand the idea of being alone in the apartment.

  I wouldn’t have minded a beer and some company, but most of my friends were back in Ohio and Kentucky. The people I knew in New Jersey were clients, neighbors, parents of kids in Sara’s class—no one I could really talk to. I thought about calling my parents to tell them what was going on, then decided to wait, hoping I’d be back home before they ever found out.

  I started the car again, thinking I might get some groceries, but eventually I found myself pulling up across the street from Derek’s Custom Auto Body. I was surprised to see lights on at that hour. The Suburban guy was in the showroom, restocking shelves from open boxes on the floor. The sign on the door read CLOSED. I realized the place must be his—only an owner works that late. The idea of him passing for a respectable citizen disgusted me.

  After a while, he put away the boxes, locked up, and drew a metal grate down over the window. The Suburban’s headlights swept across my windshield as he was pulling out, and it occurred to me that he wouldn’t recognize my car because I was driving the hatchback now.

  I gave him half a block and tried to keep that distance between us as I tailed him past the bus depot, past the cemetery, and up into Montclair, but at some point he realized he was being followed. Maybe he was on guard, headed to a night deposit box with the day’s receipts, or maybe I’d just been too obvious. He pulled over and waited for me to pass, then fell in behind me, his high beams filling the car’s interior with light. My heart was going hard. I turned onto a side street and watched with a sinking feeling as he did the same, but I continued to drive as if nothing were going on, taking it easy, and eventually he gave up.

  By the time he passed Sara’s school, I was waiting for him.

  * * *

  He lived one street over from the school in a narrow two-story house with vinyl siding that had started to come loose under the eaves. He parked in the driveway and stopped for the mail on his way in. The porch, listing to one side, had two plastic chairs but no toys or bikes, nothing to suggest kids.

  The lights came on downstairs, then upstairs. What the hell am I doing here? I thought. The answer was, nothing. It’s not like I was going to do anything. But there was a satisfaction in watching him, as if I were gathering information that would be valuable to me in ways I didn’t yet understand.

  He was in the house for only a few minutes. When he came back out, he’d changed from his jeans and T-shirt into a track suit, just like he’d been wearing when I first saw him. This one was Adidas, unzipped at the neck to show off a gold chain. He peeled the magnetic sign off the door of the Suburban and tossed it inside.

  I was more careful this time as I followed him to a nightclub on Bloomfield. There was a sandwich board on the sidewalk advertising a comedy open mic night. I gave him five minutes, then paid the cover, stood back by the bar, and ordered a beer. He was sitting with a baby-faced woman at a table up front. She had her hand on his neck and kept leaning her head against his when she spoke. They looked happy.

  The show had already started, emceed by a deejay from a radio station I’d never heard of. Each comic got five minutes on the small stage, but I was so intent on the Suburban guy that I hardly noticed them. At some point the bartender told me there was a two-drink minimum. I ordered another beer. When I turned back around, the Suburban guy was making his way toward the stage. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might be one of the comics, but it should have—who else goes to an open mic night? Seeing him up there smiling and waiting for the applause to die down, all I could think was, what an asshole.

  I wanted him to flop. Someone would heckle him, he’d lose his temper, the police would come. But he’d done this before, you could tell. After introducing himself—he was Derek Dye, owner of a custom body shop—he started in with some jokes about having a storeroom full of spinning wheel covers nobody wanted anymore.

  “Remember these?” He had one with him. He got it spinning and pretended to hypnotize somebody at a table up front. “You are getting very sleepy,” he said. “Your Escalade needs a shiny new set of chrome spinners.”

  People were laughing. They kept laughing until his five minutes were up, and then they applauded and high-fived him as he came off the stage. If he had hiked his jacket and shown them his pistol, they probably would have laughed at that too. It was eleven-thirty, about the time Liz and I normally would have checked in on Sara before we went to bed. Derek and his girlfriend were heading toward the bar. Somebody clapped him on the back. Somebody else handed him a beer. I slipped out the door.

  * * *

  Liz called at five the next morning. She said she’d been up half the night worrying about my meeting. “Just call and say you can’t do it until you get a lawyer.”

  I told her again that I thought showing up with a lawyer would only make it look like I had something to hide.

  “Hello?” she said. “You do.”

  The Chairman was on the kitchen counter when I hung up, sniffing Helen’s meat loaf, which I’d left out to thaw. I unwrapped the foil, put a little in his bowl with some cat food, and heated a slice for myself. Then I took a shower and tried to get some work done, but I was counting down the minutes until I saw Sara.

  I ended up leaving early and had to kill time driving around the neighborhood. It was the coldest morning so far that fall. I came to a school bus with its sign out and stopped, but the two cars behind me went right on around. The bus driver then angled the bus so that he was blocking the street. Three kids got on. Two boys in the back, not much older than Sara, stared me down.

  Helen had a cup of coffee waiting at the house. Liz gave me the lawyer’s number again and offered to call Braun for more references. Sara came running down the stairs with a mouthful of toothpaste, greeting me as if I’d been gone for months before remembering to pretend she didn’t care.

  “Miss me?” she said in an accusing tone.

  But we patched things up on the way to school, making plans to build a more elaborate fort, and we were still doing okay right up until I noticed the calendar on her classroom door. I was scheduled to be the parent helper that morning. It had completely slipped my mind. I was apologizing to Sara’s teacher, telling her I’d have to come after my appointment, when Sara realized what was going on.


  “You’re supposed to be here this morning,” she said.

  “I will be,” I said. “Just later.”

  “You’re supposed to be here now.”

  Not ten minutes after I left, as I was merging onto the parkway, the school nurse called to say Sara wasn’t feeling well. I had her put Sara on. She said her stomach hurt.

  “Why didn’t you say something before?”

  “It didn’t hurt before.”

  Liz was already on her way to work, so I suggested Sara have the nurse call Helen to come get her, but she began crying and said no, she wanted me. I turned around at the next exit.

  I called home to let Helen know I was bringing Sara back, but she didn’t answer the phone, and Sara started begging to go with me, promising she’d be good. I figured it couldn’t hurt for Tawana’s lawyer to meet her. Knowing his client’s son almost killed a little girl and actually seeing her face-to-face were two different things. Perhaps he had kids of his own.

  The practice was located in East Orange, in a big Victorian that had been converted into offices. On the way in, hurrying through the November chill, I started to ask Sara not to talk about the accident while we were there, then reconsidered; I didn’t want her telling anyone she wasn’t allowed to. We were ten minutes late, but it didn’t matter. The lawyer, Raymond Burris, was running behind schedule. When he came out of his office in a pinstriped suit, Sara was assuring me she wasn’t too sick for the class play that night. She fell silent and slid closer to me, and then I saw why: he was with Tawana Richards. I was tempted to get up and leave. Nobody had said anything about her being there. I felt like I’d walked into a trap.

  But Tawana seemed as surprised as I was. After an awkward moment, she put out her hand and introduced herself, saying she hadn’t properly done so before. She looked nothing like the last time I’d seen her. Her eyes were clear, her hair was pulled back, and she wore an expensive-looking dress and boots. She thanked me for coming.

  “I didn’t want Ray bothering you,” she said, “but seeing as you’re the only one who saw what happened—”

  I said it was no trouble. Behind his smile, Burris looked uncomfortable. I’m sure he didn’t want his client talking with a potential defendant.

  “Hey there, young lady,” he said to Sara. “No school today?”

  “I’m sick.”

  “Sick?” He turned to his receptionist. “Monica, did you hear that? We’ve got a sick little girl over here.” He touched Tawana’s elbow. “If you’ll excuse us, please, Mr. Bauer.”

  Burris helped Tawana with her jacket and led her to the door as the receptionist brought over a 7-Up and saltines for Sara. When he came back, he said if Sara was feeling up to it, he’d like for her to join us. I gave him the party line: she hadn’t seen anything, she was going to a therapist, she’d been through a lot. He seemed disappointed, but he said he understood and ushered me into a room with bay windows and a marble fireplace. We sat at a coffee table instead of at his desk. He started by saying Tawana had told him how I’d taken her into my home. He said he imagined the accident had been quite an ordeal for me and my family. As he was talking, I noticed what looked like a framed photo of Juwan on the table. Maybe he saw me staring at it, or maybe it was part of his plan all along.

  “That’s him,” he said, picking it up. “My sister’s boy. I still can’t believe it.”

  The family resemblance was suddenly clear. It was unnerving, like I was talking to an older, heavier version of Juwan himself. Burris held out the photo. I didn’t want a closer look, but there was no avoiding it. Juwan was leaning against the Jaguar, clowning, his hands arranged in a crisscross of signs. He looked like a kid who didn’t take himself too seriously.

  Burris went on to say he’d sponsored Juwan’s baseball teams for years. The team photos were in a row on the wall above a bookcase lined with trophies. He said Juwan had had a good arm for a skinny kid, and he’d been disappointed when he didn’t go out for varsity. “But by then, it was all skateboarding.”

  With every word he spoke, I imagined him gauging my reaction. Surely he could tell how uneasy I was. The more he said, the worse I felt. Up to a point—when I’d listened to Liz read the obituary, or to Juwan’s friends’ stories at the funeral—I’d felt like I was taking my medicine, fulfilling some obligation. Now I’d had enough. Maybe Liz had been right. My lawyer, if I’d had one, would have put a stop to this.

  But when Burris started pointing out Juwan in the photos, I couldn’t very well just sit there. We stood together in front of the bookcase. Juwan was easy to spot. As a kid, he’d had his mom’s hair, puffing out like hi-fi earphones from beneath his cap. Also the biggest, most disarming smile of any kid on the team, year after year.

  Finally Burris took a seat and got down to business. He assured me he wasn’t on a witch hunt. “Right now, I’m just trying to find out what happened.”

  He asked if I could start by telling him everything I remembered about the accident. I’d thought I wouldn’t be nervous, as many times as I’d been over it, but surrounded by all those photos of Juwan, it was hard to concentrate. I managed to tell him what I’d told the police. He took notes. When I was done, he asked me to draw a diagram of the accident. He had questions, too: Did the town do a good job of maintaining our street? Were there any potholes or other chronic road conditions? How quickly did the police and medics arrive? What was my impression of the job they did?

  Through it all, he addressed me as if I were on his side, a potential witness for the plaintiff. At no point did he give any indication that I was the only obvious defendant, and at no point did I acknowledge my awareness of this fact. I supposed he could have gone after the girlfriend’s parents, if that’s where the alcohol had come from, or the car dealer, if there turned out to have been some mechanical issue, or maybe the town itself, but those would have been long shots. I figured if he didn’t have a case against me, he didn’t have a case at all.

  When we came out of his office, Sara was on her fifth pack of saltines. Burris asked how she was feeling, and she said, “Better.” I didn’t want them getting into a conversation, so I got us out of there as quickly as I could.

  Outside, I took Sara’s hand, relieved. Liz would be waiting to hear how things went. No surprises, I’d tell her. No reason to think they’d actually sue. I was considering calling her right there in the parking lot, when I looked up and saw Tawana. She was waiting at our car in a long suede jacket with a fur collar, her arms folded against the cold.

  “Mr. Bauer?” she said, squaring her shoulders. “I won’t keep you. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for the other day. For imposing on you. Sara, I’m sorry if I frightened you.”

  I remembered the look on Sara’s face after Tawana had taken the axe to the tree. Now she was practically hiding behind me.

  “That’s okay,” she said.

  “I want you to know that’s not who I am, Mr. Bauer,” Tawana said. “And I’m not the kind of person who goes around suing people, either. My brother, he’s just doing what he has to.” She glanced at Burris’s window, where he stood watching us. “I realize that crash was my son’s fault. I don’t like it, but I accept it. This business where something bad happens, somebody automatically gets sued—” She shook her head, holding back tears. “That’s not going to bring my boy back.”

  I just stood there, at a loss. The idea of Tawana apologizing to me was almost too much. I wanted to cover my ears. At the same time, hearing her say the accident had been Juwan’s fault almost felt like she was forgiving me, though I knew how absurd that was. She didn’t know what I’d done and surely wouldn’t have forgiven me if she had. At any moment, I was certain she’d look into my eyes and see me for what I was.

  “Anyhow,” she said, “don’t take this wrong, but I hope this is the last time we meet. It’s just too hard.”

  I managed to nod and say I understood as I opened the door for Sara to get in. Tawana turned to her, blinking, as if she’d forgotten
she were there. Then her expression softened, and she put a hand to Sara’s cheek.

  “Poor baby,” she said. “You must have been so scared.”

  I knew how uncomfortable Sara was, but I remember hoping she’d at least be polite. And in fact I think that’s exactly what she was aiming for. I’m sure she didn’t mean for what she said to come out sounding like a boast.

  “Not really,” she said. “Not like the first time.”

  Looking back, I suppose it must seem like I wanted to get caught. Why else would I have been standing outside Burris’s office, letting Sara talk to Tawana? Why else would I have brought her along in the first place when I could have just taken her back to the apartment and rescheduled the meeting?

  Now it was out of my hands. There was nothing to do but hope Tawana didn’t understand what Sara was saying, that she’d just let it go. But she was too nice for that.

  “First time, baby?” She gave Sara a blank sort of smile. “First time what?”

  “That he almost hit us,” Sara said. “We stopped so fast, the seat belt hurt my shoulder.”

  I was already buckling her in, silently begging her to be quiet.

  “Who?” Tawana said. “Juwan?”

  Sara nodded. Tawana looked to me for help. I turned up my palms.

  “You mean that guy on Thomas Boulevard?” I said. “The one who stopped in the middle of the street?”

  “No, Daddy. I spilled my grapes, remember?”

  “That was the man in the SUV. I think you’re getting them confused.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Juwan was in a convertible,” I said, “not an SUV.”

  “I’m talking about the convertible.” She made a face and slapped her knee. I must have seemed like some stranger who’d taken over her dad’s body.

  “It’s okay, baby,” Tawana said. “I’m just glad you weren’t scared.”

  I realized Tawana was barely holding it together. All that talk about the accident must have taken a toll. That and possibly just seeing Sara, being in the presence of someone else’s living, breathing child. I closed Sara’s door and apologized for her.

 

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