by LS Hawker
What we have on our hands is a dead baby.
It took her a few moments to realize she’d been awakened from her dream by the front doorbell. Nessa rolled over and saw it was only eight-thirty A.M. She heard the dead bolt slide, the door open, and a male voice. She listened.
“No,” Isabeau said. “He’s not here.”
A muffled voice saying words she couldn’t make out.
“She’s asleep,” Isabeau said.
More words.
“Well, okay. Would you mind waiting out there?”
Nessa groaned. She suspected siding sales, The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, or some other equally irritating intrusion. A large No Soliciting sign hung by the doorbell, but the folks who were able to actually find this property eight miles south of Manhattan, Kansas, surrounded by dense woods always suddenly lost their ability to read when they finally made it.
She heard Isabeau take the steps two at a time and then knock on Nessa’s bedroom door.
“Nessa?”
“Yeah,” she called. She rolled out of bed and pulled on some shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt.
“There’s someone here to see you.”
Nessa opened the door and whispered, “Is it a salesman?”
“It’s a cop.”
This made Nessa’s heart pound. She stepped into her sandals and followed Isabeau down the stairs. As she descended, more of the stranger was revealed. Cowboy boots and jeans. Plaid shirt, sport coat. No tie. Dark, cropped hair, full eyebrows, large forehead.
“Mrs. Donati?” the man said through the screen door.
“Yes,” she said.
The man pulled a shiny gold badge from his pocket and held it up Iron Man–style, as if ready to blast a hole through her chest.
“I’m Detective Rob Treloar with the Riley County Police Department.”
Oh, shit. John must be in jail.
It was times like these when Nessa was grateful that nowadays she reminded people of a Mormon missionary. It typically made law enforcement relax, speak courteously, and look for a reason to apologize for one thing or another. Her childlike, high-register voice only added to the effect, causing people to pause and make a mental adjustment before continuing. But currently, she was speechless.
Nessa closed her mouth, staring at the badge, which confirmed his name and title, and added another piece of information: he was with the general investigations unit. Not vice. Which confused her. She turned to Isabeau, who stood right behind her looking concerned, and said, “Could you take Daltrey upstairs?”
Isabeau nodded and walked away.
Nessa unlocked and pushed open the screen door, then held out her hand so the detective could clasp the tips of her fingers. “I’m Nessa Donati,” she said, smiling brightly, trying to relax her jaw.
“Sorry to bother you at home so early,” the detective said. “May I come in?”
Again, missionary: gracious, hospitable, warm. That was Nessa Donati. “Of course.” She flung her arm wide as if welcoming him onto a cruise ship.
The detective stepped inside, then let his eyes wander to the crown molding and hammered tin ceiling tiles. “Wow. This place is great. How long you lived here?”
“Thank you, Mr.—Detective, uh—why did you say you were here?”
He finally smiled. “Oh, right, sorry. This is just a really nice—I’ve always wanted one of these old farm properties. You’ve done a great job on it.”
“Thanks,” she said cautiously.
“What year was it built?”
“Eighteen ninety-five,” she said, trying not to sound impatient.
“And no problems with plumbing or anything?”
“Not yet,” she said.
Nessa’s paranoia du police was probably more acute than most people’s, but she couldn’t think about that now, couldn’t let it show on her face. Somehow, the detective would know.
So she put on her shiniest hostess face as camouflage, ushered him in like a treasured guest, and pointed him to the couch in the living room. Isabeau scooped up Daltrey, who had been playing with Legos on the floor. He buried his face in her neck, shy of the stranger.
Isabeau raised her eyebrows at Nessa before mounting the stairs, carrying Daltrey.
“Can I offer you some coffee, lemonade, water?” Nessa said to Detective Treloar.
“No, thank you,” the detective said, unbuttoning his sport coat and seating himself.
Nessa sat at the other end of the couch.
“Is Mr. Donati at home?”
“No,” she said.
Detective Treloar had a nice face, but she could tell he didn’t brook any nonsense.
“Do you expect him soon?”
“No,” she said. “He doesn’t live here anymore. We’re divorcing.”
He cleared his throat into his fist. “Ah. Well.” He pulled a miniature notebook from his coat pocket, looked at a page, and said, “Does Mr. Donati drive a 1997 Chevy half-ton pickup, license plate IFL 157?”
“Yes,” she said, wary. DUI? Hit-and-run? With crackhead John, life was like felony bingo. “But it’s in both our names.” Then she added, “I think,” as if any misinformation, intentional or otherwise, would get her thrown in jail.
“The truck was reported to the Park Service,” he said. “Abandoned.”
“When?” Nessa said, annoyed. What was John up to? Was he living in his truck? But that didn’t make any sense, if he’d parked it on some street and left it there. Maybe in his stupor he’d forgotten where he left it.
“It was reported yesterday,” Detective Treloar said, looking at his notepad, then at her. “Do you have a phone number for Mr. Donati? Maybe an address where he’s living or staying, a post office box?”
You could try all the crack houses in Manhattan or Junction City. Chances are good he’s spending a lot of time in one or all of those. Keeping the economy going on three hundred dollars a day.
Under normal circumstances, Nessa would think he’d want to notify the owner of the truck’s impoundment. But because it was John, she suspected there was an outstanding warrant. “Is John in trouble, Detective?”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
His question and failure to answer hers irked Nessa. But she guessed it was really none of her business now whether John was in trouble. He wasn’t her problem anymore.
“A couple of weeks ago,” she said.
“And you haven’t heard from him at all during that time? Phone call? Text?”
“No,” she said. “We didn’t exactly part on friendly terms.”
“Oh?” the detective said, his pen poised above the paper, at the ready to take down the lurid details.
She considered. Why not tell him? “John’s a crack addict. I threw him out after I caught him using in the house.”
Treloar shook his head. “Ah,” he said.
Nessa couldn’t stop the humiliation from rising like heat through her body, which reacted as if the detective’s benign acknowledgment were actually an indictment of her and her failure to keep John clean. As if she wasn’t woman enough to keep his interest at home and away from drugs. Nessa shuddered at this pathetic impulse.
The detective fished a business card out of his inner jacket pocket, stood, and handed it to her. “If you hear from Mr. Donati,” he said, “please give me a call.”
“Wait,” Nessa said as she took the card. She didn’t want to let him go without getting a few answers of her own. “Where exactly was the truck abandoned?”
The detective straightened. “A half mile north of Tuttle Creek Lake in the parking area by the river slip off Yeti Drive.”
She frowned. The river slip? An image from her fishing dream floated before her mind’s eye, and another attached itself to it: drug-crazed John parking his
truck, walking down to the rain-swollen river, and wading into the water with no intention of coming out again.
Nessa gasped and her heart convulsed, her hands rising to her chest as if to catch it. “You said it was reported yesterday,” she said, breathless. “How long has the truck been there?”
“The caller said it had been there for over a week.”
“Over a week?” Nessa echoed stupidly. “But John was just here over the weekend.”
Now Treloar reseated himself and fixed her with a mock-confused gaze. “But you said you hadn’t seen him in a couple of weeks.”
Impatient, Nessa said, “I called the police the other night because John broke into the boathouse out back while my son and I were camping. He would have needed his truck to drive out here.” She plucked at her chin. How did John get here without his truck? Maybe the person who called in his abandoned truck was mistaken about the timeframe.
Or maybe whoever had broken into the boathouse wasn’t John.
Treloar’s eyes never left her face, and she couldn’t discern what he was thinking, but she was pretty sure he thought she was lying.
“You can look it up,” she said, her voice quavering. “The cops who came out here were—” What were their names again? “Watt and . . . I don’t remember the other’s name. But you can look it up.”
He nodded slowly. “All right,” he said. He stood again and pointed at his business card, which Nessa had placed on the coffee table. “Please call if he gets in touch.”
Nessa rose to walk him out. “I will,” she said.
Detective Treloar paused at the door. “When I mentioned the river slip,” he said, “it looked like you knew what I was talking about. Do you fish?”
“I don’t,” Nessa said. “But John does. Did. Whatever. He used to put his canoe in the water in that spot.”
“So he’s a fisherman,” Treloar said, nodding. He turned away from the door. “Is he a hunter too?”
“No,” she said.
He nodded again and opened the door. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.
6/2
I have to do this before I go to the radio station tonight, or I won’t be able to concentrate. It’s obviously more important than ever that I have a steady income.
Hi, my name is Nessa, and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for six years, four months and fourteen days.
Today I will concentrate on my Fear (“Wrong Believing” according to the AA Big Book), which are “feelings of anxiety, agitation, uneasiness, apprehension, etc.” Here are Fears that have been realized: Fear of abandonment, being alone, change, failure . . . the list is too long. I feel like Charlie Brown in the Christmas special when Lucy asks him if he has pantophobia, which is the fear of everything. That’s it!
My fear that I’ll never be loved (Daltrey doesn’t count because he doesn’t know enough not to love me) has come true because John didn’t love me enough to stay away from drugs. No one could love me enough. Only God can love me the way I want to be loved, unconditionally, no matter what I do.
I hate even writing this next part, because it shames me. Because it was my mother who taught me that love is always conditional. She knew something that not everyone does—the most effective punishment, the most effective way to keep kids in line, is to let them know you will stop loving them if they step out of line. Joyce knew that better than anyone I’ve ever met. Each time I did something she didn’t like, she let me know she loved me a little bit less. Just a little. But the message was clear: someday the sand in the top of the hourglass would run out, and there would be nothing left.
I learned Joyce’s lesson all too well. Each time John relapsed, a little more of my love for him drained away. Please forgive me for being such a good student. But not a perfect student, because my love for John will never completely disappear. Never. Even if he is dead.
At the same time, I know there isn’t enough love in the world to stop someone else from being an addict.
Before John, Brandon was the only one who always loved me. Sure, he got mad at me, but we’d fight, and then he’d get over it. He was so easygoing that way. Knew that nothing was so serious between us it was worth severing our relationship. The only thing that could come in between us was—surprise, surprise—Mom. If it was a choice between standing up for me and losing Mom’s love, Brandon would jump ship in a heartbeat. I didn’t blame him. I was the same way. It was every man for himself where Mom was concerned.
Because of his diabetes, Mom wouldn’t let him go out for sports, so he became a role-playing game freak, mostly Dungeons and Dragons. I made so much fun of him, but he loved it. I actually got kind of worried because he was so completely immersed in these fantasy scenarios that he’d talk about them as if they were more real than the real world.
One time he tried to explain the convoluted plots and intricate strategies he devised, but I gave up trying to understand, because the truth was it bored the shit out of me. At least he had excellent taste in music.
I hope he’s not still in that same head space. I really do.
God, I’m afraid. All my fears funnel into my biggest one: that I won’t stay sober. Because if I don’t, I might as well be at the bottom of Tuttle Creek Lake.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.
Chapter Seven
NESSA ARRIVED AT the station at eleven P.M. every Monday and Thursday night, armed with electronic music she’d chosen from her and John’s vast collection of more than 150,000 songs. Her oldest file was a tune from 1895, the same year her house was built, by a group called the Unique Quartette.
She made it a point to never play the same song twice, unlike the other “deep cut” shows on syndicated and satellite radio. She assumed the overplay elsewhere was intended to sell music, but luckily that wasn’t the focus of her show. At least, not yet.
KCMA operated out of a lonely building overlooking a field with a tall sign declaring WELCOME TO 98.6 KCMA COUNTRY! It was mostly computer-run with only two live jocks on the job, one for the morning drive (such as it was in a town of fifty-six thousand) and one for afternoon drive (ditto). The rest were syndicated shows from a satellite feed.
Now as she pulled into the dirt parking lot, she saw a Vespa scooter parked next to the car her producer, Kevin, drove.
She hoped she could hold it together tonight. She’d selected a slate of music that was aggressive, drum-heavy—nothing that reminded her of John. She could do this. It was just another Thursday.
The front of the building was glass with a foyer to trap the heat or chill, depending on the season. She went inside and saw Kevin sitting atop the reception desk stretching a rubber band compulsively.
“Oh, hey,” he said. “Didn’t expect you in so early.”
Sitting behind the desk with his feet propped up on it was a young guy in a narrow-brim fedora and skinny jeans with a knapsack on his chest. Ah. The Vespa rider.
“You Nessa?” the new guy asked, making no move to stand or even sit up.
“Yeah,” she said.
“I’m your new producer,” he said.
Nessa looked at Kevin in confusion. “I wasn’t aware I was getting a new producer.”
Kevin kept his eyes on the rubber band and said, “I can’t keep doing the overnights. My kids are . . . and my wife . . . well, anyway. So this is Otto Goss. He’s the guy who makes sure the satellite feed doesn’t cut out when no one else is here.”
“In other words,” Otto said, “I babysit the computer five nights a week. Might as well produce a show since I’m already here.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I’m gonna take off,” Kevin said.
“Good working with you, Kevin,” Nessa said, feeling knocked off her game. She wished he’d h
ave given her a little more notice, although what difference it would have made she couldn’t quite articulate. Too much crazy stuff going on this week.
“You too,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.” And he walked out the door.
Nessa turned to Otto, who was texting someone. She waited, but the thumbing went on and on.
“So, Otto,” she said.
He held up a finger without looking up and went on thumbing.
She started to feel superfluous and stupid standing there watching him, so she walked toward the break room. As soon as she was almost out of earshot, he said, “So, Nessa.”
She stopped and turned.
He didn’t look up from his phone as he said, “We need to go over some ground rules before we go live.”
“What do you—”
“Hold on,” he said, still not looking up.
It took every ounce of her self-control not to walk away. Instead, she waited politely.
“The end,” he said. “Just finished my novel.”
Nessa didn’t say anything to the anticipatory look on his face. The silence stretched until Otto’s expression dimmed and turned into a frown.
“Ground rules. One. I’m not your lackey. I’m not going to fetch water and snacks for you like Kevin did. Two. I will not be answering mail for you or anything like that. I’m not your secretary. And three. I need to have some input on the playlists.”
Wow. He was talking like he was the “talent.” Was he trying to be funny? “I don’t think you—”
“Let’s go in the studio,” he said, and led the way. Once inside, Otto tossed his leather flapped-and-goggled helmet and knapsack into the corner, then switched on the lights and board, hit some buttons and dials. He put his own headphones on upside down, like a beard—in order to not disturb that ridiculous hat.
Nessa felt rushed and jumbled by this guy’s dismissive attitude. His disregard for her was stunning.
“You don’t look like a malcontent,” he said. “You look like a suburban housewife. Which I guess is subversive-lite in its own sad little way.”