by Will Allison
On the way to Montclair, I picked up a cold six-pack and was already cracking the first one as I parked across the street from Derek’s. I stashed the rest in the console, zipped my coat, and put the window down. Snowflakes drifted in. The upstairs lights were on in the house. After a few minutes, I caught a glimpse of Derek in boxers and an undershirt, getting dressed. I pictured his pistol on the dresser. I imagined how it would feel to turn the gun on him.
Ever since I’d followed him to the club, I’d had it in the back of my mind that I was going to do something about him. The problem was, I didn’t know what. I’d been telling myself I had time, that the longer I waited, the sweeter it would be, but I knew this was just a way of letting myself off the hook. Believing I’d do something had become more important than actually doing it.
Now that I was sitting there in the dark, though, watching him, I felt obliged to consider a course of action. I wasn’t going to shoot him or run him down, like I’d wanted to that first day, but none of my other ideas—slashing his tires, smashing his windshield, taking a bat to his precious Suburban—felt right either. I needed something more personal. I wanted him to know it was me.
After an hour or so, Derek left the house. I wasn’t able to make a U-turn in time to catch up. I considered going by the club to see if his car was there, but my shoulder was starting to hurt, the roads were getting bad, and I wanted to be back at the apartment in time for the eleven-o’clock news.
Ted and I ended up getting thirty seconds or so at the end of the weather report, the feel-good story in a local traffic roundup. The reporter described me as wanting to avoid the limelight. Ted said he never saw the pickup coming. Rachel said, “He saved my son’s life.” I was on the sofa with the Chairman, trying to ignore the stiffness in my shoulder. I raised my can to the TV as best I could.
The next morning, I was in pretty sad shape for sledding. I could barely brush my teeth, and my hip ached. I bundled up, slowly, and went for Sara. She was out front in her snowsuit with Liz, who was dressed for work. They were watching three men unload chain saws and coils of rope from a truck in front of Clarice’s. Behind the truck was a wood chipper.
“They’re cutting Sicky down!” Sara wailed, running across the snowy yard and throwing her arms around me. “Make them stop!”
The workers were watching. I managed to pick her up, afraid she might try to stop them herself, and sat on the front steps. She was crying so hard she was hiccupping. Liz sat down next to us to stroke her hair. Clarice came outside in a long down coat and rubber boots. She spoke with the worker in charge, then crossed the street to tell Sara she’d be getting a new tree in the spring, a sapling, and Sara could help look after it. Sara didn’t even acknowledge her.
“You said Sicky would be fine, Dad.”
I was telling her the accident must have done more damage than I realized when Clarice interrupted.
“Actually, sugar,” she said, “that tree was sick all along. I just didn’t find out until I had somebody look at it after the crash.”
Sara lifted her head from my shoulder. “You mean she isn’t getting killed? She just died?”
“I’m sorry,” Clarice said. “I wanted to wait until spring, but they’re telling me I could have a problem if there’s ice.”
Sara asked if she could have a piece of the tree, and Clarice had one of the men cut her a branch the length of a walking stick. By then Liz had missed her train. She said she’d better get going or she’d miss the next one, too. Sara took her eyes off the tree crew just long enough to hug her good-bye, then told me she didn’t feel like sledding anymore.
“I want to watch,” she said.
I didn’t think that was such a good idea: knowing what was happening and seeing it weren’t the same. I was also still afraid she’d try to stop them. With the chain saws going, they might not notice her until it was too late. But she stayed put, sitting on the steps with her mittens on and the branch across her knees. We ended up watching them all morning. One of the guys climbed the tree with a chain saw, cutting limbs, while the others used rope pulleys to lower them to the ground. Once all the limbs were gone, the climber started working his way back down, roping and cutting sections of the trunk as he went. Sara said it reminded her of a candle burning down. Maybe she was thinking of the vigil; the crew was piling branches on the grass where the mourners had stood. The cross and flowers were on Clarice’s front porch.
Despite what I’d told Tawana—that I couldn’t stand the sight of that tree—I was sorry to see it go. Sara and I might not have been sitting there, alive, if not for its stopping Juwan’s car. I put my good arm around her and asked if she was warm enough. She nodded and leaned into me. Later, when the men started feeding limbs into the chipper, she covered her ears and said she’d had enough.
Sara cheered up a little when a new bicycle decorated with a big pink bow arrived that afternoon, a present from Ted’s family, and when I got back to my building, a huge gift basket was waiting in the manager’s office.
“Call me if you need any help with the Cristal,” he said, handing it over.
There was also a cabernet, a chardonnay, caviar, cheese, olives, chocolates, cookies, a grilled artichoke antipasto, and a thank-you card from Ted’s parents that I stood on my dresser.
I was putting everything else back into the basket when Liz called, nearly hyperventilating. “I just saw Tawana.”
She’d been out shoveling when Tawana showed up to put the memorial back together.
“She wanted to know why we wouldn’t let Sara talk to the police. What was I supposed to say? I almost told her to call you.” Instead, she’d given her our line about not wanting to put Sara through any more than we already had. “She was like, ‘Any more what? All he wants to do is ask her some questions.’ It was awful.”
“Do you think he put her up to it?”
“No, I think she just wants the whole thing to be over. She said the autopsy report came back a few days ago. He was twice the legal limit. And still Rizzo won’t close the case. He tells her he hasn’t ruled out, quote unquote, further criminal wrongdoing. She said she dreads his calls. She was practically pleading.”
I told Liz I was sorry. I said the investigation was my problem, not hers. “Next time just tell her it was my decision. Tell her to come see me.”
“I hate this,” Liz said. “I hate being like this. Her son’s dead, and I’m standing there worrying about getting sued.”
* * *
Sitting across the street from Derek’s that night, I popped the cork on the Cristal—probably the most expensive champagne I’ll ever have—and gulped it warm, straight from the bottle. I didn’t deserve to savor it. More to the point, I wanted to blot Tawana from my thoughts as soon as possible. I couldn’t stop imagining what it must have been like when Rizzo called. Being forced, again and again, to contemplate the accident, to wonder how many seconds of terror or pain Juwan had endured, if he’d really been alive before the medics arrived, if he’d known he was dying, if he’d thought of her. And for what? I pictured her hanging up, standing alone in the kitchen of that big house, listening for sounds that weren’t there anymore—Juwan coming home from school, Juwan playing video games with his friends, Juwan on his skateboard in the empty swimming pool out back.
I took another swig of champagne and tried to concentrate on Derek. Him I could at least do something about. He was inside watching TV with the girl from the nightclub. They had a bowl of popcorn, cans of beer. After a while, he aimed the remote, and she got up for a couple more. I didn’t like her being there. Watching them together made me feel like a creep, but that wasn’t all. Seeing her stretch her legs across his, I longed for a similar night with Liz—a different life altogether—my real life—were it not for Derek. Maybe I couldn’t blame him for the accident, but if I’d been a bomb waiting to go off that day, he was the one who’d lit the fuse. He was the one who’d made me a bomb in the first place.
By the time I’d polished off
half the bottle, my hip was hurting. I had a bruise the size of a salad plate. Derek glanced up from the TV as I was shifting around, trying to get comfortable. He came and stood at the window. I thought he was looking right at me, and I looked right back. I hoped he recognized my car. I hoped I was making him uneasy. When he drew the curtains, it felt like a small victory. Driving home, one arm cradled in my lap, it occurred to me that maybe this was all I needed to be doing—getting inside his head, keeping him on guard. A few months of that would take a toll on anyone.
On Saturday, after my head cleared from too much champagne, Sara and I went to dinner and The Nutcracker. She brought along the branch, which she carried as tenderly as she would have a doll, and asked me to take her over to the memorial when we got home. Figuring Tawana wouldn’t be stopping by to tend the flowers that late, I held Sara’s hand and crossed the street. Clarice’s house looked naked without the sycamore out front. The flowers now ringed the cross, which stood in a patch of wood chips where the workers had ground the stump. It pleased me, the more I thought about it, that the accident hadn’t had anything to do with the tree coming down; I liked the idea that cause and effect wasn’t always as simple as it seemed. Sara picked up a handful of wood chips, breathed in their smell, let them fall through her fingers.
“I know it’s sad,” I said, “but look at all these.” Up and down the block, tall sycamores lined the street, their limbs forming a high canopy.
“They’re not Sicky,” she said.
By now Liz had come out onto the porch. I think she was still shaken from her conversation with Tawana—resenting me for it. She hardly spoke a word when I brought Sara to the door.
No lights were on at Derek’s. I parked and reached under my seat for what was left of the Cristal. When the bottle was done and he still wasn’t home, I began to worry he’d left town for the holidays.
The Suburban was back the next night, though. He had a Christmas tree up in the front window, and colored lights around his porch posts. Not long after I got there, he opened the front door and stepped out. I started the car and drove away, then returned ten minutes later. He came out again. This time he pulled the door shut behind him. He started toward me, cutting across the small yard. I waited until he was almost at the curb before I glided away. He turned and went for the Suburban, but I was gone before he ever got out of the driveway.
* * *
And then it was Christmas Eve. Sara brought over a box of ornaments and we decorated the tree, taking turns choosing Christmas songs on the computer. When we were done, she said it still looked bare, so we strung a bunch of popcorn. Then we opened presents. I’d gotten her a few books, some doll clothes, and pink roller skates. She’d made me a picture frame, hand-painted and decorated with fabric-and-button flowers. The photo was her on Santa’s lap. Liz had taken her to see him at the mall that weekend, something we did every year, only this time I hadn’t been there. When I told her how much I liked it, I had tears in my eyes. She said Liz had cried, too, when they’d had the picture taken.
“You’re just growing up so fast.”
We settled in with one of her new books, Guinness World Records—she was fascinated by the three-foot-long fingernails, as I’d known she would be—and proceeded to sample everything in the gift basket. No matter how hard we tried, though, there was no forgetting where we were.
“Can’t you come over tomorrow,” she said, “just for a little while? Please?”
_______
That wasn’t the only time I came close to telling you our being apart was all your mom’s idea. She claimed she was doing it for you, but I knew you wouldn’t have wanted her to. I knew you would have asked her to stop. But in telling you, I’d have been using you, pitting you against her, and that wasn’t something I was willing to do. I’ve wondered, though, if she might have listened to you. And if the ends would have justified the means.
_______
After Liz picked Sara up, the apartment felt emptier than ever. I put the Christmas music back on, opened a beer, and started gathering the wrapping paper strewn across the floor. I picked at what was left of the gift basket. I took a length of popcorn off the tree and dangled it for the Chairman to chase. I wrapped the necklace I’d bought for Liz—a delicate silver one from her favorite boutique in Maplewood. She’d said no presents, so I planned on giving it to her when we got back together. I wanted to have gifts for all the holidays we’d missed.
When it got dark, I thought about going to Derek’s, but all day I’d been worrying that I was getting carried away. This was a guy with a gun, after all. What if some night he were waiting for me in the Suburban, or snuck around from behind the house? For that matter, what if he called the police?
The pub seemed as good a place as any to think it over. And it turned out I wasn’t the only one with nowhere better to be. I ordered a pint and stood near the crowded bar, waiting for a stool. Dan was wearing a Santa hat. The Grinch was on TV. Now and then, someone in the crowd would boo him. I didn’t talk to anyone, but it was a comfort having people around. I was still waiting for a seat when somebody clapped me on the shoulder.
“Well, well,” Rizzo said. “If it isn’t the crosswalk hero.”
I felt as though a trapdoor had swung open at my feet. For all the time I’d spent anticipating this moment, seeing him was still a surprise. I could only assume he’d followed me, or been waiting for me, and now, finally, he was going to arrest me, having timed it so I could wake in jail on Christmas morning.
Then I got a look at him. His eyes were glassy. He took a clumsy step backwards as he held up two fingers for Dan. “One for me,” he said, “one for the hero.”
I turned to leave, but he grabbed my arm, the sore one, and smiled when he saw me wince.
“Everything okay there, Detective?” Dan said, glancing over from the tap.
“Old friends.” Releasing my arm, Rizzo nodded to a table in the corner where he’d been sitting. I considered walking out, but I figured he’d follow me. The last thing I wanted was to be alone with him. I sat down. A waitress brought two beers. Rizzo clinked his against mine.
“Look at us,” he said. “Christmas Eve, two divorced guys, all by our lonesomes. We could start a club.”
“I’m not divorced.” I handed him Linda Schwartz’s card. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“Finally lawyer up?” He tucked the card into his pocket without looking at it. “Well, I hate to disappoint, Mr. Bauer, but the prosecutor, in his infinite wisdom, feels we don’t have enough to bring charges. Especially now, with the autopsy.”
He clinked his glass against mine again, too hard, and took a long swallow. I stared at the beer he’d sloshed onto the table, feeling not as relieved as I might have expected and wondering if this was just another of his mind games. So they weren’t going to arrest me. That was something—supposing it was true. But what about closing the case?
Beer had begun dripping onto the floor. I tried to scoot back from the table, but the wall was in the way.
“I have to be somewhere,” I said.
“Running out on me? After I bring such good tidings?” He shook his head. “No, sir, no can do. Got something to show you first.” There was a basket of pretzels on the table. He took two and arranged them between us. “You,” he said, pointing at one, “and him. Beer glass is the tree.” He slowly moved the pretzels toward one another, reenacting the accident more or less as it had happened, including, of course, my cutting into and out of the other lane. I held my breath as he flipped Juwan’s pretzel, tapped it against the glass, then closed his hand on it.
“Pretty good, huh?” he said. “Only question is, did you do it on purpose? I got a theory on that too.”
He opened his hand and ate a piece of the broken pretzel. My stomach was tight as a fist.
“Long as I got the floor,” he said, “long as I’m talking out of school, here’s a little secret about confessions. Ever wonder why a guy owns up to something when it’s only going
to get him into trouble?” He held out a piece of the pretzel, shrugged when I didn’t take it, ate it himself. “No need to knock yourself out guessing, Mr. Bauer. I’ll just tell you. It’s stress. That’s what does it every time, good old-fashioned stress.”
As he began to catalogue the various sources of that stress—guilt, regret, shame, anxiety—and detail their psychological and physiological effects, I searched the bar for a familiar face, anybody I might latch onto. But Dan was busy with customers, the waitress had disappeared, and the closest tables were all college kids, oblivious to us.
“… and sooner or later,” he was saying, “for most people, it gets to be too much. Sooner or later they confess. But not you, Mr. Bauer. You apparently have no conscience! It’s like you’re broke inside. Which is interesting to me, as a student of human nature. Usually you only get that with your hardened criminals.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, like the answer to some important question might be faintly etched on my forehead. Then he leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Look, Glen—mind if I call you Glen?—I don’t think you’re a bad guy for what you did. A vehicular homicide, hey, that can happen to anyone. We’re all of us just a rough day or a wrong move away from fuck all.” He pushed his glass aside and leaned closer. “No, what makes you a bad guy is not owning up to it. Not letting those people get the justice they deserve, even if all that justice is, is you walk.”