He spends a couple of seconds trying to see through the dark to find the quickest way to get down the rocks to the car. The spring tide and full moon has filled the harbor past its usual measure but now the tide is going out which means the flow of salt water through the channel to the ocean is greater than usual, too. The Corvette shudders as the great suck of the outgoing tide grabs it and pulls it from the rocky bank and toward the roll of the water which sluices underneath the bridge, passing some eight feet below. He can see Amy’s silhouette through the windshield, she’s slumped over the steering wheel, not moving. The partially submerged yellow car floats along to the rushing water and slams into the rocks on the passenger side of the car. With both doors crumpled it’s unlikely he’ll be able to get them open.
Should he stand here and watch her drown? That will solve the problem, certainly. But, she could also float along, under the bridge and out to the bay, and maybe find her way out of the car and swim back to some place along the shore. No, he can’t chance it.
He runs up to the GTO and opens the trunk. He’s looking for a tire iron, or anything to pry out the shattered windshield and get her out. The tire iron is under the spare, and the spare is bolted to the trunk floor. By the time he could get it all unfastened she’d either be sunk or halfway to Truro. He spots his utility knife and knows he can cut through the canvas convertible roof and pull her out that way. He sticks the knife in the jacket pocket holding the .22. He goes back to the bridge railing on the Little Harbor side. The water underneath the Vette is picking up speed. He can’t jump in on this side, too many rocks and the car is bouncing along helter-skelter. The car could easily push him into the rocks ahead of it.
He crosses the bridge and climbs over the railing on the ocean side and finds there is almost no footing. He turns around, puts his heels on the lower bar of the bridge rail, leans his back against the railing to face the sea, arms extended to the side, holding tight to the top rail, waiting for the Corvette to pass by in the channel underneath. If he jumps feet first onto the convertible top he would likely bounce off like some goofball on a trampoline, so when the time seems right, he lets go, falls forward and lands a belly flop on the canvas roof. He bangs his chin off the top of the windshield, and sees stars, but he shakes it off and manages to hang on by clutching to the roof on both sides of the car. The vehicle is picking up speed as the banks of the channel narrow and the flow of water quickens. The forward motion of his landing gives the Vette some extra momentum but his weight causes slightly more submersion. They are still going out with the tide. He inches forward and looks through the fragmented windshield to see Amy’s face registering confusion. Perhaps wondering about the thump of two hundred pounds of Grayson landing on the canvas roof. Then she sees him peering in, his face upside down.
“You!,” she screams, above the sound of the rushing water. “You did this to me.” Grayson is an old hand at waking up in surprising circumstances, so he can’t help feeling some sympathy. Worse for Amy is she has to deal with the added complication of Grayson on the roof, and he can tell she doesn’t much care for the prospect.
“No, no, no.” She sounds like a bitching blue jay.
“I’m going to cut the roof and get you out,” he bawls.
He gets up to his knees, grabs the box cutter from his pocket, slides the blade out and presses it into the convertible roof, cutting a two-foot slice.
The car is almost out beyond the mouth of the creek and starting to sink further down. He again slices the roof, this time perpendicular to the first cut and peels back a good-sized piece.
“Give me your hand so I can pull you out.”
She reaches up and he grabs her hand and begins to pull, but she’s stuck.
He looks down at her. “You have a seatbelt on? Who the fuck wears a seat belt? Unlatch it.” She tries to unbuckle the belt but the rising water is causing panic and she starts screaming. She finally gets the belt unlocked and she’s moving up toward the hole on her own.
“My bag,” she shouts. He sees her leather handbag on the dash in front of her, where it has wedged, probably after being thrown about in the crash. He’s dumbfounded: Her bag! But, it becomes clear why the bag is important when she reaches into it and pulls out the revolver and points it at him.
“Get me out,” she yells.
“I’m trying. Just give me your hand.”
He sticks his arm in, grabs her left arm above the elbow and begins to pull. He’s making progress, she’s standing on the driver’s seat, as he starts to push himself up to his knees.
“You’re not turning me in,” she says.
“Of course not. Hurry up!”
“Of course not!” she says. “Sap!”
Hearing that, he lunges to the side as she pulls the trigger, firing point blank into his upper chest. The shock is like being hit with a lead pipe swung by a gorilla. He falls forward onto the cut canvas and then through it, his weight driving her back down into the seat where he finds himself on top of her. He passes out from the shock of the bullet slamming into him. When he comes to, he sees his body has her pinned down. Unfortunately, his arm and shoulder and her torso are wedged in the space between the bottom of the steering wheel and front part of the driver’s seat. When he tries to pull his arm out, the grinding pain in his upper chest is like nothing he’s ever felt before. It has him panting. Underneath him, Amy’s wriggling and gasping are getting more frantic.
He lifts his face off the side of Amy’s head, she comes up for a gulp of air just before the rising water covers her head again. The water is coming in faster and the added weight of that water is coupled with his added weight, so it’s getting worse by the second. Her head is now completely under water and she’s struggling. Like a yellow submarine, the car continues to move forward while sinking. He’s trying to push himself off her but with each move he’s hit with blistering pain. His right arm is useless, and between the bleeding, panicky exertion and heavy breathing, his oxygen supply is going fast. With each movement he tries to make, his whole upper body is jolted with pain, pain that takes his breath away. He fights through the pain and finally gets his arm free, but the struggle exacts a great price and as the water keeps rising he’s all the way under it now and between the pain and not being able to breathe, he falls into the void.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
A few hours later Catherine is standing at the window taking small sips from a glass of water, trying to quell a bout of sudden onset morning sickness. Ron Kerr pulls up out front and Comes up the walk with an envelope in his hand. She hears him open the screen door just as she reaches to open the inside door.
“Hey, Catherine,” he says. “Grayson gave me this to get a stamp and mail it, maybe yesterday or the day before and I kinda forgot to do it. I just found it in my car. I saw it was for you so rather than mail it, I thought, it’d be quicker if I drop it off on my way to work.”
“Oh. Thanks, Ron.”
“Do me a favor, and don’t tell him I forgot. He’s been in a wicked bad mood.”
Kerr lets the door go and turns back to his car.
She sees her name on the envelope, written in Michael’s hand. She sits down and looks at it for a time before she opens it. Tucked in the envelope is a check wrapped in a handwritten note. Her name is on the check in raised letters and red ink. Printed under her name are raised numbers in blue. It looked formal, final, and it made her anxious.
C, - This is a bank check which means I don’t have the money anymore, meaning I already gave it to the bank. If you rip this up the bank will keep the $15,000 and not me. This amounts to the money I saved for us to get married. If you throw this check away you will only make the New England Merchants Bank very happy, which I don’t get why you’d want to do that. I’ve been thinking about when we took the train to NYC the June we graduated. When we went into that weird little restaurant and I ordered clam chowder and the hippie waiter brought me vegetable soup with celery, tomatoes and other stuff in it. I said I didn’t
order vegetable soup and the hippie asked if I was from Boston and then he said, “Man, you are a stranger in a strange land. Maybe it’s not what you wanted, but you got what you asked for. And I’m sorry but that is your problem if those are two different things.”
I don’t know what I can say to make things better, so far it seems like what I’ve said in trying to make things right has just made you mad. So, I’m going to say what I want. I love you more than anything. I can’t imagine living without you, although I wouldn’t kill myself or anything like that, so don’t worry. I say that because it looks like you decided you’ve had enough of me and my bull. For a long time I thought I loved to drink. When I realized love had nothing to do with it, I thought about quitting but I couldn’t see how I could manage myself without it. I felt like it kept me sane. If I had to live without drinking, I’d murder someone (Donny, Hugh) or have a nervous breakdown. For at least a year now I haven’t wanted to drink and tried to quit many times but I’d end up drinking anyway. It’s very hard to admit that. I couldn’t stop for long. I can’t explain what happens to me. But now something inside me has changed and I don’t know when it did exactly. Or what is different. When you said you were going to have a baby, I made up my mind in that moment that I was through drinking for good. And I really meant it. But I didn’t even get out the front door when I knew I was on my way to the liquor store. It was like I was trying to fight off a tornado with my fists. I talked to this guy who helps my father with the AA stuff. He’s kind of a jerk but he says he’s willing to help me, too. I’m going to go there and try again because the guy says I don’t have to drink anymore and it was weird but I kind of believed him. I hope I can talk to him while not drinking and without trying to strangle him. I see now that I have to do this for myself, and not you, and not my mother or father. I’m worried that you will think to yourself, “Oh sure, now that he doesn’t have to worry about supporting a wife and a baby he can get squared away.” If there was any way we could go back in time to when you still loved me, I guarantee I would be different. I know that’s no consolation and may even make you feel worse. If so, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about everything that happened to you because of me being who I am, or what I am, is a better way to say it. Maybe one day we can talk. But if I could see you happy with a happy baby that was ours, I would never need anything more in my life again. I have to do it mostly because of the memory of the baby that we lost because of me. If I don’t do it our baby’s little short life would be even more of a terrible ache and I am not tough enough to live with that. I’d much rather be dead.
EPILOGUE
About forty-five years after my father, Michael Grayson, wrote that letter to my mother Catherine, I tried to smooth the letter flat on the dining room table, but when I took my hand away the parched paper folded itself along the old seams that were as much a part of the whole now as the ink. I re-sealed it in the plastic freezer bag, cloudy with age, and put it back in the fireproof box that I’d found among my mother’s things.
I stood up to put the box in the corner with the other stuff going in the car, rather than the moving van.
I looked out to the backyard, where Daniel, my ten-year old, was playing ball in the same yard I played in at his age. I thought about how our lives, my sisters and brothers and I, would have been very different if the local police hadn’t been called to the area after various neighbors reported a woman screaming, cars racing around, and a crash. The first cop that got there saw my father jump off the bridge. The cop stopped his car and got out. He saw my father cut the roof and stick his arm in through the roof. The cop then went back to his car to get a flashlight. When he looked again, the car had wedged itself between a large rock in the water and the great rocks on the bank. Now, only my father’s lower legs were visible. The cop ran over, slid down the rocks to the water, and soon was joined by a second cop, and together they yanked my father out through the roof of the Corvette. They got him breathing again, and went back to the car but by the time they got Amanda Hawthorne out, she was beyond saving. The Cohasset police called my father a hero for trying to rescue her. Why she’d shot a guy trying to save her remained a mystery, although the consensus opinion was that she was knocked out in the accident, and woke up to a nightmare, in her terror became irrational and may have thought my father was trying to kill her.
In the back of our house my son Daniel trotted into view, coming from a section of the yard I couldn’t see. He passed by the old umbrella pine tree, threw a feint at an invisible defender, cut a sharp right turn and put on a burst of speed, arms pumping, elbows tucked, racing toward the house. He looked back, reached up, and as I watched, a football fell softly out of the sky and into his hands.
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