The Safety Expert

by Doug Richardson

  “There’s always talk. I just choose not to listen. And neither should you,” advised the teacher.

  But there it was, thought Gonzo. She simply had to talk to Ben. Straighten things out. But after a week’s worth of phone calls had gone unreturned, she had chosen to leave her boy with the sitter for an extra hour so she could politely rap on Ben’s door. That was more her style. Direct. The thought of waiting until she bumped into Ben at school or some fund-raising function didn’t so much as enter her mind.

  But first she would have to turn up the cul de sac. When at last she had screwed up the courage to end her cycle of endless circling, the rain had increased from a mist to a drizzle. Gonzo set the brake with her two front tires in the driveway and the butt of her white SUV stuck into the street. She thought if she left the headlamps on and engine running, it would give the appearance of a visit that was less planned, informal, and something more akin to dropping a child off from a play date...

  ...instead of dropping a bomb on a marriage.

  Gonzo stood momentarily in the rain, admiring the home. It was bigger than she had recalled from her one other visit. An inviting front yard, stone steps set neatly into perfectly mown grass curving to the arched front door. An arrangement of tropical plants framed a triad of vertical windows glowing with suburban warmth.

  It was 6:37 P.M.

  “Pasta mañana,” announced Ben, wiping his hands on an apron with I’m the Cook AND the Dishwasher embroidered in bright red thread.

  Thursday was leftovers night at the Kellers’. Since its inception, it had become one of Ben’s all-time favorite family gatherings. Besides the opportunity to put his own culinary spin on the previous evening’s meal, Ben so enjoyed the lightness that came with it. Thursday night was only a few hours sleep away from Friday and the relief that came with the weekend. And the kids could feel it, each energized with a look ahead to the future. Alex was simply happy that she wasn’t stuck with the cooking.

  When the doorbell rang, nobody thought it was the least bit strange. Solicitors often trolled the neighborhood at dinner hour. These were usually parents from down in the flats selling the likes of magazine subscriptions and Girl Scout cookies. Still, Ben had just set the last steaming plate of Pasta Mañana on the dining room’s table. All but Elyssa and her new braces were thrilled at the entree. So Ben had also heated up a helping of chicken tenders.

  “I’ll get the door!” announced Nina.

  “No, you won’t,” said Ben.

  It was dark outside; most likely it was a stranger at the door, and Nina was only nine years old. Ben didn’t have to be The Safety Expert to make that quick of a call.

  “I’ll get it,” said Alex.

  “Sit, eat,” said Ben.

  “Too slow.”

  Before Ben could argue Alex had pushed her chair away and left the room.

  “Better that way,” said Ben, after her exit.

  “Why?” asked Betsy.

  “Because your mom says, ‘no thanks and goodbye’ quicker than me.”

  Alex swiveled toward the front door without checking the video panel Ben had installed just inside the coat closet. A two-camera view: the front door and the rear gate. Alex rarely remembered to peek before unlatching and didn’t much care at six-thirty in the evening.

  She was mentally already rehearsing her all-bought-out speech when she first cracked the door.

  “Listen, it’s kind of a bad...”

  Gonzo stood out of the dripping rain, wearing new denim and a black t-shirt under an LAPD windbreaker. Her cowboy boots added at least two inches to her five-foot-ten-inch frame. Alex found herself looking up, momentarily stuck for a hello, and wondering if and when her anger would surface.

  “Hey, Alex,” said Gonzo.

  “It’s Lydia, right?”

  Alex knew Lydia’s name the moment she saw her. She didn’t mean it as an insult. She simply couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “I... I was just driving by... Kinda needed to talk to Ben,” said Gonzo. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine. Listen, it’s really not a good—”

  “I’m sorry. I shoulda called the house first.”

  Alex opened the door wider. But it was more a territorial gesture than an invitation.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  And in that moment, Gonzo knew. The scorn in Alex’s voice and posture spoke volumes. Gonzo’s feminine instincts said, walk away, don’t return, wait for time to pass. But the cop in her was more direct, to the point. Let’s get this the hell over with!

  “There’s been some talk at school I wanted to address.”

  “You could’ve called. Left a note. It’s our dinner time and you’re interrupting.”

  “Think Ben should be here when I say this. Is he home?”

  “I said it’s dinner time.”

  “Whatever you think happened—”

  “I don’t want to know what happened!” snapped Alex.

  When Alex heard her own voice rise she automatically stepped onto the welcome mat and closed the door behind her to mask her own volume. Gonzo eased backwards, one step down, thus leveling her eyes with Alex’s.

  “I’m sorry for whatever you assume—”

  “Whatever happened is over, okay? So go home. You live down there. Ben lives up here with me and my girls. And when we see each other we’ll be polite, but not friends. Is that so hard?”

  On-the-job training had turned Gonzo into a patient listener, letting distressed civilians vent their emotions until they were too spent to be a danger to anybody but themselves. Later, when Gonzo replayed the tape of the conversation with Alex in her head, she realized she should have interrupted.

  “What kind of stupid woman knocks at a married man’s door at family dinner time? What is your problem? You in love with him? You think he’s gonna leave us and take care of you?”

  “What I think is Ben should be here to hear this.”

  “Well, Ben’s with his family. This is about you and me.”

  “Alex. There’s been a misunderstanding.”

  “As long as you’re still standing here, there’s a helluva misunderstanding. Just please! Go!”

  “Lydia?”

  The door widened, revealing Ben in that silly, stitched apron. His face was a baffled mix of concern and wonder. He stiffened, his eyes swiveling between his wife and his confidante. Neither woman looked happy to see the other. Or him, for that matter.

  “Sorry,” said Ben. “I step in something?”

  It was in this moment that the pieces fell together in Gonzo’s mind. It was like somebody tossed a jigsaw puzzle into the air and it fell to the ground, perfectly assembled as something painfully simple and obvious. It was a recipe in three painful parts.

  Ben hadn’t informed his wife about Stew Raymo.

  Alex suspected Ben of having an affair with Gonzo, but had stuffed it.

  And Gonzo, more concerned about her reputation than her promise to protect Ben’s privacy, had driven circles for an hour, then lost the battle with her better self.

  Kept apart, the ingredients were relatively inert. Combined they were as combustible as a test tube full of nitroglycerine in the hands of a Parkinson’s patient.

  “I was just leaving,” said Gonzo.

  “You just got here.” Ben widened the door. “Really wet out. Do you want to come in?”

  “Better that she goes,” said Alex.

  “I agree,” said Gonzo. “We’ll talk some other time, okay?”

  Something in Ben made him wisely go along with it. As he watched Gonzo retreat to her car, pulling her hood up to defend against a sudden and pelting rain, guilt crept over him for not returning her calls. Self-preservation was his excuse. That and he had made certain assurances to Alex that he would put behind whatever the hell was going on with him.

  Ben was moving on.

  As Gonzo backed out of the driveway, her headlights washed across the front door, igniting Ben and Alex in x
enon white. Neither was speaking to the other as the door eased closed. Gonzo was both relieved and sickened. Her only consolation was that she had escaped the scene before it got ugly. The part that made her stomach sour was the marital fight that she was sure to have started.

  Leftover night. It turned out to be a mostly somber evening, with both Ben and Alex defensively peppering the girls with hardly interested questions in a team effort to keep the meal from devolving into complete silence. The girls weren’t fooled. They knew when things weren’t right between their mother and Ben. It was a pure kind of instinct that only children possess. Still, they gamely played along then made quick excuses to exit the dining room. For the next three hours, Elyssa buried herself with her books, Nina climbed into bed with her iPod, and Betsy requested that both mommy and daddy read to her. Ben chose a short book with big illustrations and little story. Alex crawled into bed next to Betsy with a longer, chapter book and read until the child fell asleep.

  Ben wondered if his wife would fall asleep too and whatever transpired between Gonzo and her would stay undiscussed until morning. But there was no such luck for Ben.

  “You said it was over!”

  “Said it was behind me.”

  “Then why the fuck was she showing up on our front stoop?”

  “Probably because I wasn’t returning her calls.”

  “She’s still calling you?”

  Alex’s voice tipped the safety scale. As far as they knew, the children were sleeping. Ben checked the clock. It was 11:18 P.M.

  “You could hold your voice down.”

  Alex leaned over the bathroom sink, wrung her freshly washed hair, then twisted it into a towel. The makeup mirror’s lights were on full blast. To look at her made Ben squint.

  “You said you didn’t want to know.”

  “I didn’t,” said Alex. “That, of course, was until I found out half the elementary school was talking.”

  The elementary school? Talking about what?

  Alex stole a glance at Ben, expecting, hoping even, to catch a crack of remorse in him. Instead, what she saw was utter bewilderment. Ben was many things, but thick wasn’t one of them. How in the name of Christ, at a moment such as this, could he believably feign looking so damn baffled?

  “Do you think...” Ben’s face split in an embarrassed smile. “You think I’m having an affair with her?”

  “Have? Had?” Alex spun around to face Ben, pushing up only inches from his face. “Does it really matter now that everyone knows?”

  “Everybody but me,” said Ben, who released a laugh, both amused and momentarily relieved at what he was fast realizing was a massive misunderstanding. What he didn’t calculate was the pain his wife was feeling.

  Alex pounded her fists into Ben’s chest.

  “You’re denying it?”

  “She’s a cop!”

  “Oh. So cops don’t screw married men?”

  “Not me, they don’t... Alex—”

  “Don’t Alex me!”

  Ben tried to reassuringly place his hands on her shoulders, only to have them violently shrugged off. Alex spun around, then sat on the toilet, head in her hands.

  “There’s no affair. There never was. She was only helping me with a personal matter.”

  “Personal matter? What kind of personal matter turns into... all this?”

  Ben squatted in front of Alex, his hands on her knees.

  “Look at me,” he said. “Please. Just look at me.”

  Alex looked at him, alright. Through a pair of teary, red-streaked eyes that he hadn’t seen since their early days in those Grief Relief group sessions.

  “Now please listen,” he said. “I was gonna tell you. I was acting weird and thought you deserved to know why. But then you said you didn’t want to know. And I said okay—”

  “So it’s my fault I’m feeling this way? Are you fucking serious?”

  “Not your fault. My fault for not telling you from the very beginning.”

  Alex focused through her tears, only to see Ben’s guilty face, his own eyes wet and scared. His hands were trembling.

  “Tell me what?”

  “About Sara... the twins...”

  Ben’s shaky hands turned into white knuckled fists. His head tilted, facing the floor tiles.

  “I know who did it,” said Ben, his adrenaline surging as he released what he had been keeping from his wife for weeks.

  The next words came with breathtaking excitement.

  “I know who killed them. Know his name and where the bastard lives!”

  Ben then recounted tale of his last month. From receiving the CD to his conversations with Woody Bell to how and when and why he had involved—then uninvolved—LAPD Detective Lydia Gonzalez. The only parts he failed to tell Alex about were his visit to the graves and his shaking hands with the devil himself.

  Ben then played Alex the recording. At her request he made the trip out to his rear office and dug up what he had promised himself and her to keep buried. It was a quarter past two in the morning by the time she had listened to every raspy second of it, all without saying a word. During the entire time, she was curled up in the rain-streaked window seat, her mother’s worn afghan wrapped around her shoulders, a saffron corduroy pillow clutched to her chest.

  “I need coffee,” said Alex, leaving the pillow, but keeping the blanket. She made zero eye contact with Ben as she crossed the bedroom, walked out the door, and thumped her way down the stairs. Ben wasn’t far behind. He found a chair at the kitchen table and watched as she silently loaded a double shot of coffee into the espresso machine, steamed a cup of milk, and poured the froth into a ceramic mug.

  Alex didn’t ask if Ben wanted coffee. She held the cup under her nose for a moment, but didn’t yet take a sip.

  “Stew Raymo,” she said flatly, as if speaking the name aloud would commit it to memory. Or once mentioned, it would be purged forever. Ben couldn’t tell.

  “Short for Stewart Raymond,” Ben found himself saying.

  “And you know where he lives?”

  “North Hollywood.”

  “Have you ever met him?” Alex sipped her brew.

  “No,” he lied.

  “Haven’t had any temptation to even get a look at him?”

  “And then what?” Ben looked her dead in the eye, brows raised in full emphasis.

  “I don’t know,” she said, a hint of suspicion breathed over the top of her latte. “You tell me.”

  “I’m putting it behind me. Why I saw the doc,” said Ben. “Why I didn’t call Lydia Gonzalez back.”

  “So this... Stew Raymo... he doesn’t know about you or where we live? Doesn’t know that you know. He’s just going to go on with his life while we go on with ours?”

  “The way it’s been.”

  “What if I don’t like the way it’s been?”

  “You didn’t like tonight? By that I mean the way it was tonight before the goddamn doorbell rang.”

  “Before the doorbell rang I thought you were a liar and a cheat.”

  “And you were wrong.”

  “Wrong about the cheating.”

  “Alex...”

  She sipped at her coffee, crossed her feet and leaned against the counter.

  “I’d be lying if I didn’t say this all made me extremely uncomfortable.”

  “Me, too,” said Ben, waiting for a glimmer of sympathy from her. She had been through her share of grief, done the hard work and moved on. As Ben read it, the difference between them was that Alex hadn’t been reinjected with about a billion CC’s of long lost anguish while she was daydreaming her life away.

  “It’s about trust, Ben.”

  “I was there, too. I was going to tell you and you said you didn’t want to know.”

  “And you said it was over!”

  “We’re going in circles.”

  “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “I want you to understand. Is that so difficult?”

  “
Understand that you’ve re-obsessed yourself with your dead wife? Understand that for a month you’ve been sneaking around like you’re screwing some other woman, but really haven’t been screwing her? Jesus!”

  “Would you be happier if I had?”

  “No!”

  “I said I’ve moved on and I have.”

  “Well, pardon me if I haven’t!”

  Alex jabbed a sharp index finger into her own chest, upsetting her mug and spilling her coffee onto the floor.

  “Shit.”

  “I got it.”

  Ben was on his feet, reaching for some paper towels. He tore off a couple of sheets, but when he turned he found Alex crouched over the spill, wiping it up with a dishrag. She deposited the cup into the sink.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said, intoning that it wasn’t exactly an invitation.

  “We’ll get through this,” reassured Ben.

  “Uh huh.”

  Whether Alex was being dismissive or just exhausted, she didn’t let on. She never did after a fight. Time, along with sleep, was her constant ally. Even after a double espresso. It was a good goddamned trick, Ben thought. Good for her.

  For Ben it would be a downstairs shower then a short night spent on the couch in the den. He would probably fall asleep to an ESPN rerun of some damned Texas Hold’em tournament. Televised poker. It was a narcotic for Ben. Guaranteed slumber. A steady mix of professional and amateur players, each managing the risk of losing a little or a lot on the simple turn of a card.

  Risk.

  Ben plumped a couple of pillows and curled up under a fleece blanket. He settled in with the TiVo remote, unconsciously dialing the channels until he had found his drug. Unlike for Alex, sleep for Ben would come when the poker gods decided and no sooner.

  There, under the high-definition blast of the big screen TV, he wondered.

  For a man as averse to risk as Ben was, had he risked a little or a lot by waiting so long to come clean with his wife? What had he wagered by not informing her of every disturbing detail? And what would be the consequences of his soft deceit?

  The answer came as a simple mantra.

  Move on.

  “Wise words,” Ben said aloud to nobody but himself. After that he added a simple, “thank-you” to whomever or wherever the answer came from.