by Mary Kubica
It must be a mistake; it has to be a mistake.
Drugs, restraining orders, affairs. This is not Nick.
I type in Nick’s password—proof, I tell myself as I do, that there were no secrets in our marriage, though my mind is starting to doubt this—and click on the call log to see who he was speaking to at the time of the crash. It’s a 206 area code, one that doesn’t strike a chord with me, and so I open a search engine and type in the number. I picture Nick on the phone, his large, capable hands pressing it to his ear, whispering to Maisie in the back seat reading her book to be quiet, Daddy is on the phone. Hello? I see him ask, and then a moment of confusion passes across his handsome face as the caller on the other end asks for Amy or Natalie or Renata. You have the wrong number, he says, as suddenly that brewing bend in the road is before him and he doesn’t have time to react, but rather takes the turn at a whirlwind fifty miles per hour, spiraling off the side of the road. This person on the phone must have heard him, I think; he or she must have heard the very last words my husband ever said, something irreverent, I’m sure, something profane, though Nick wasn’t one to be profane. But I’m thinking that’s exactly what he would have done as he lost control of the car and went soaring off the side of the road, said something like Jesus Christ or holy shit because that’s exactly what I would have done. That’s what I have to find out; that’s what suddenly I have to know. What are the last words Nick ever said, and did he or she—this person with the 206 phone number—hear over the phone the sound of the car striking the tree; Nick’s head impacting the tempered glass, making it smash; the metal of the car collapsing; Maisie calling out to her father, her desperate falsetto voice begging him to make the bad man go away?
Seattle, I discover, is home to area code 206. So, too, is Bainbridge Island, the city where Nick was born and raised. I’ve heard the stories about the humble little home not far from Puget Sound, less than a block from the harbor, so if he angled his head just right, he’d catch a glimpse of sailboat masts floating above sea. Until they retired, Nick’s mother served as a docent at one of the museums, and his father was an anesthesiologist who took the ferry over to Seattle nearly every day, spending his entire life on call. That’s what Nick has told me. But Nick left Seattle for college when he was eighteen and never returned. It wasn’t that he didn’t like it, but rather that by the time he’d received his dental degree and made the decision to launch his own practice, his parents were gone, retired to a humble little home in Cape Coral, not so unlike the one they left behind save for, of course, the winters and the rain. Their visits with us are limited and always brief, and now, with Nick gone, I’d dare say that the time between visits will continue to expand until they one day dwindle to nothing. Not that I mind. His mother always had someone else in mind for Nick’s wife; no one in particular, just someone other than me. She’s made that much clear.
I have two theories, then, two hypotheses: either the caller was a telemarketer, or someone who misdialed the phone. Nick doesn’t have family in Seattle anymore. Just a coincidence, I tell myself, thinking how Nick hasn’t uttered a word about Seattle in half a dozen years or more. I know nothing about Seattle, other than some tired fact about how it rains nine months out of the year. I fetch the phone and dial the number, waiting warily for someone to answer the call.
“Hello?” a woman says, and for whatever reason I’m discomfited by this, not quite sure what to say. Her voice is soft, delicate, ladylike. I should have prepared something ahead of time. I should have jotted down an idea on a scrap of paper so that I’d know what to say, if nothing other than my opening line. But as it is I can’t speak, so that the woman on the other end of the line must say it again, louder this time in case I’m hard of hearing or downright deaf. “Hello there?”
I clear my voice and try again, and this time words do emerge, but they are halting and inarticulate. “Hello. You don’t know me,” I say too quickly, so it all comes out as one concurrent thought. “I was given your phone number. By the police,” but the words are too quiet, too tremulous, so that she asks me to repeat what I’ve already said. I say it again, louder this time, trying hard to flatten my words and pronounce each syllable at a time. I hear the voice of SpongeBob penetrating the walls of our home, the remote likely in Maisie’s hand and Maisie pushing buttons at random so that SpongeBob and his pals now scream. I hear her giggle, nearly muted by the sound of the TV. It’s been a while since I’ve heard Maisie laugh. “I was given your phone number by the police,” I say again.
“By the police?” she asks abruptly, her voice riddled with confusion. And I say, “Yes,” though it isn’t exactly true.
“Do I know you?” the woman asks, and I can hear her voice transmitted through radio frequencies to me, where I sit at the breakfast nook, a single leg thrumming against the kitchen floor. There’s a sudden reservation to her tone, an immediate doubt. Why would the police possibly have given me her phone number? Who am I and why have I called? She’s nervous and filled with dread. Her mind scans through the people in her life, wondering whether or not everyone is okay. Have I called bearing bad news? Am I the personification of death, the Grim Reaper, coming to steal loved ones from her life?
“No,” I say. “You don’t know me. My husband, you see,” I tell her, my words emerging briskly, “he was in a car crash. An accident, they say. A car accident. But I don’t think it was. A crash, yes, but not an accident.” And then I find that I simply can’t stop myself, and that I’m muttering quickly, telling some woman on the other end of the phone about Nick and Maisie and Detective Kaufman and some black car trailing them down the bendy road, a bad man, or quite possibly a bad woman. I tell her about the horse properties and the white oak tree, somehow or other winding my words back to Detective Kaufman and how the detective told me Nick was on the phone at the time of the accident, at which I shake my head and say it again, less sure this time whether or not it was a crash or an accident.
And at this, she breathes in sharply and lets out a long, slow exhale before saying to me, “Clara,” and I feel the Earth’s axis shift as I lose balance, clinging to the edges of the breakfast nook so that I don’t fall.
She knows me.
Outside, thunder grumbles through the sky, the day’s dank air rising upward to collide with colder temperatures that hover in the atmosphere above. As expected, the rain starts coming down in sheets. The grass needs it, as do the trees, but for a little girl already traumatized by something, of which even she doesn’t know, it’s the last thing in the world she needs. Maisie, from the next room, cries out at the sound of thunder, abandoning SpongeBob to run to me, her hands pressed to her ears to muffle the harsh noise. A dog barks, and it takes some time for me to realize that it is poor Harriet, who I’ve sent outside, now getting pelted by hail and rain.
“I’m sorry,” I say into the phone as Maisie cries, putting my arms around Maisie and holding her tight. “There’s thunder. She’s scared.”
“They say it’s going to be quite a storm,” this woman says into the phone, and as she remarks on the muggy weather and the lack of rainfall, I come to realize that this woman isn’t in Seattle as I’d imagined her to be, watching the orcas swim out on the briny waters of Puget Sound, but rather somewhere close, watching the sun pass from sight as the rain comes down in sheets. Like me.
Again Harriet barks, and this time I rise from the nook as Maisie clings to my hand, begging, “Please, Mommy. Don’t go,” and together Maisie and I step toward the back door, letting a sopping wet Harriet inside. The wind shoves the door into me, and I nearly fall, pressing hard against the weight of it to get the door to close. I turn the dead bolt and follow the dog’s wet footprints inside where she stands before us, shaking her body dry, drenching Maisie and me at the same time.
“Who are you?” I beg breathlessly into the phone, and Maisie imitates me saying, “Who, Mommy, who?” so that I must press a finger to my lips and whisper a silent, Shhh. I move to the kitchen window and lowe
r the blinds, consumed again with that sense of being watched, the same sensation that preoccupied me out on Harvey Road. Is someone out there on my back lawn, standing in the rain, staring through the window at me?
The lights of the kitchen burn ablaze, a contrast to the darkness that is quickly falling outside. A stranger could see right in. They could see everything about this moment: me on the phone, Maisie clinging to my leg. Is this what they want, for us to be sad, confused, afraid? Is someone there, lurking in the backyard? I hesitate with the blinds only partly closed and scan the backyard quickly, fearing the trees. A dozen of them or more, big, tall oak and maple trees with much breadth, enough that a man or a woman could stand behind them and not be seen. The perfect hiding place.
I’m about to send Maisie to other rooms of the house to help lower the blinds, but then the thunder comes again, immediate and out of the blue, and like pent-up steam about to escape from a hot teakettle, Maisie screams. I press a hand to Maisie’s mouth, asking again, beside myself now with a need to know who this woman is on the other end of the phone. “Who are you?”
My heart is beating quickly; like Maisie, I feel like I could scream. I whisper to Maisie, shhh, and to be quiet, and slowly remove my hand. But before the woman on the other end of the phone can reply, an abrading sound like nails comes from the door, and I feel my blood run cold, my legs stiffen, as Maisie says softly, delicately, her little arms clenched tightly around my leg so that I can hardly walk, “There’s a man at the door, Mommy. A man.”
“A man?” I beg, knowing that from this distance Maisie could not see whether there was a man at the door. In the kitchen we’re out of sight, impossible to see from the beveled glass that lines the front door, but still, Maisie assures me with an inappreciable nod that there is a man at the front door, a man with a hat on his head and gloves on his hands. “A hat and gloves,” I implore, “in summer?” knowing it can’t possibly be true. Despite the storm, it’s much too hot outside, much too humid for a hat and gloves.
“Stay here,” I say to Maisie as I pry her fingers from my leg and move toward the front door, though what I want to do is climb under the breakfast nook and hide. But I can’t let Maisie see that I’m scared. I ask the woman on the phone to hold on. I move away from the kitchen, telling Maisie again to stay, slipping past a disabled home security system that has been unarmed now for three years, since Nick and I agreed it was silly to pay the rates to keep it activated for nothing, and stare through the glass at the world outside. I peer into the yard, trying to see whether or not someone is there, a man in a hat and gloves, as Maisie has said, one who pressed his face to the window while I was in the kitchen and peered in, making eyes at Maisie.
But so far as I can see, no one is there.
But then the noise comes again, a scraping noise right there at the door’s wooden panel, and I jump, crying out. From the kitchen, comes a whimper. I breathe in deeply and gather the courage to open the front door just a bit, my body weight behind the door so I can slam it closed if needed.
But I don’t need to.
I breathe a sigh of relief, grateful to discover that the noise is only the wind rattling a grapevine wreath so that it thumps again and again on the front door pane. No one is here, but then I think again of the wide-open expanse of our backyard, a man in a hat and gloves, and wonder if that’s true. Did Maisie see a man, or no? Was it a man on the TV, like Curious George’s dear friend, the Man with the Yellow Hat? Is that what Maisie means? I don’t know. Is someone here, skulking behind those trees, peering through binoculars at Maisie, Felix, Harriet and me? I find myself wishing and hoping that I could arm the home security system right now, feigning a false sense of security knowing our home is being monitored from someone afar.
“Who are you?” I beg again of the woman on the phone as a burst of thunder cracks. On the other end of the line is the distinct sound of something dropping and shattering glass. A gruff male voice interjects, startling me even from the distance. “Shit,” he says.
“Let me call you back,” the woman begs, but I say no. I say it more uproariously than I’d meant to, barking out the word so that even Harriet’s eyes rise up to mine, her tail getting lost somewhere in the confines of her rear legs in fear. “No!” Harriet’s ears tumble; she looks sad. She thinks that I’m yelling at her. Harriet is a rescue dog, the kind with a sketchy past, an easy startle reflex and a habit of always being underfoot lest we decide to ditch her. She was Nick’s dog before she was mine. Nick was the one who found her, suckered in by some sad ad on the TV for homeless and abandoned pets. He said he was running errands, and when he came home, at his feet was a dog, a sorry creature with patchy fur still healing from a mite infection and a ridge of bones that should have been hidden beneath fat and muscle but wasn’t. It appeared to me that this animal had been starved. I didn’t want to keep her. I said no. Chances were good that she wasn’t going to make it anyway. But it was winter and outside the weather was deplorable; snow had begun to fall fiercely from the sky. Tomorrow she goes back, I said, but by morning I’d changed my mind.
“Please,” I beg. “Please tell me who you are.”
“Tomorrow,” the woman replies, whispering quickly into the phone. The line crackles and I fear I’ll lose her, thanks to the storm. “Meet me,” she says. “There’s a park on 248th Street. Near 111th. Commissioners Park. I’ll be there.”
“I know the place,” I force out. I know it well. I’ve been there with Maisie many times before. To Maisie it is the hippo park. They’re all just nicknames to her, the hippo park, the whale park, depending on which structures catch her fancy. This one has a giant blue hippopotamus that children can climb through, in his backside and out the mouth. “What time?” I ask, saying it twice for good measure, “What time?” fearing she may not reply because quite possibly she’s already ended the call.
“Eleven o’clock,” she says and then, just like that, there’s silence on the other end until another thunderbolt thrashes the evening sky, making Harriet cower and Maisie scream.
I spend the first part of the night not sleeping, but rather staring through the window as the rain falls, scouring the backyard for a man in a hat and gloves. Certainly something triggered this sighting from Maisie. Or was it simply an illusion, a figment of a little girl’s imagination? I can’t say for sure, but as the night goes on and no man comes to call, I start to have doubts about the veracity of the words that emerge from Maisie’s mouth. I want to shake her as she sleeps, to shake her awake and demand to know if she really saw a man in a hat and gloves, or if that was only make-believe.
And then at two in the morning, after four restless hours in and out of bed, I decide that I can’t leave fate to chance. I have to know.
I make sure the kids are asleep. I slip down the stairs, ease my feet into a pair of Nick’s old work shoes and my arms into his coat, find a flashlight and step outside into the storm.
I have to know.
Harriet follows reluctantly, and for this reason I don’t feel quite so scared or alone. I close the front door and lock it, sliding the keys into the pocket of my coat. I stand by the door and listen for the faint sounds of a baby’s cry, but there are none. I pull the coat’s hood over my head, and immediately the wind rips it right back off again, the air whizzing past my head. As I step from the covered front porch, the rain pelts me from all directions. It doesn’t take more than a minute or two until I am soaking wet and cold.
I use the flashlight as a guide. Harriet follows closely behind, and I don’t know who’s more nervous, her or me.
With every step, I plunge deeply into the mud, the mire getting stuck to the soles of my shoes, making it hard to move. I sink as if it’s quicksand, my eyes sweeping the property for any signs of a man with a hat and gloves. Is he here? Was he here?
I don’t know what I’m looking for. I tremble inside and out, cold and wet and scared, praying I find nothing, that at the end of this expedition I can chalk the man in a hat and gloves
up to Maisie’s imagination and not let it obsess me. No one is here, I try hard to convince myself, wishing I had stayed in bed, that I was tucked beside Maisie and Felix, that I was safely inside and dry. But instead I’m outside as the thunder grumbles through the sky and an explosion of lightning lights up the night, and I cry out in fright, certain an evergreen arborvitae is him, the bad man, taking a minute to realize that it is only a tree, tall and thin like a man, motionless, watching me.
It’s not him, I tell myself.
No one is there.
The rain taps on rooftops, a marching band’s drum line. The water comes pouring out the gutter’s downspout, creating a flood in the flower beds, into which I sink, getting soaked halfway up my calf.
My heart throbs quickly as a noise from behind sends me spinning in a complete three-sixty, flashlight and eyes scanning my sight line, finding nothing.
“Is someone there?” I call anxiously over the sound of the wind and the rain, and then immediately after, “Who’s there?” finding myself scared stiff. Beside me, Harriet whines. She’s drenched like me, wondering why she followed me outside. The fur of her legs and the pads of her feet get coated in mud. She wonders what we’re doing. Even I don’t know for sure what we’re doing, but I have to know if someone has been here watching Maisie, Felix and me. For the children’s sake, I have to know.
For my safety and for the sake of my sanity, I have to know.
“Who’s there?” I call again, but no one replies. From across town, I hear the sound of the train’s wheels bustling down the tracks, oblivious to the wind and the rain that all but brings me to a standstill.
I walk the periphery of the house, staying close. I use the flashlight’s dull glow to examine the yard, Maisie’s play set, the trembling trees. I round the second corner of the home and, opening the fence, let myself into the backyard where the rain turns to penny-sized hail and I can hardly see, thanks to the precipitation in my eyes, my unrestrained hair, which thrashes around my head like a leather whip.