Long Drive Home (17 page)

I meant to hit him as he was turning around, but all I managed was a handful of velour and a shove. It was like trying to shove a refrigerator. He brushed my hand away and let me fall. This time being on the ground was all right. The snow felt good against my face. Derek pulled his foot back like he was going to kick me again, then laughed. I just lay there, wondering as I had so many times before if Juwan ever knew what hit him.

Riding in the ambulance, it began to sink in, what could have happened to me back at his house. Imagining Sara and Liz getting the news, I slammed my head against the gurney again and again until the medics strapped me down and threatened to give me a tranquilizer. In the emergency room, at St. Barnabas, they put me on painkillers, bandaged my knuckles, stanched the bleeding in my mouth, and gave me a towel to help with the drooling. I was in and out the whole time. The X-rays showed a broken hand, fractured lower jaw, cracked ribs. Even with the medicine, my chest felt like it was full of hot coals that flared with every breath.

They called Liz, though I had asked them not to. She got there a little after midnight. I was still in the ER, propped
up in bed. I looked away as she came in, not wanting to see the expression on her face when she saw mine.

“Jesus, Glen,” she said. “Are you okay?”

It was hard to speak without moving my jaw. “I’ll be fine. I got beat up.”

“Beat up? By who? I thought you were in a wreck.” She sat down next to the bed and pressed my hand between hers.

“Tell you later,” I said. “I’m okay. Go home.”

She wanted to know more, but I didn’t know where to start, and the medicine was making me drowsy. She went to find a doctor. I drifted off. A little later, she woke me to say they’d be transferring me to the ICU. They wanted to run more tests and keep me under observation. Internal injuries were a possibility. It was almost 2 a.m. She said she’d come back in a few hours, after Sara finished opening her presents.

“She’ll want to see you.”

“Not like this,” I said. “Not on Christmas.”

“Then what should I tell her?”

“Tell her the truth.” It came out sounding like
truce
. “Tell her I got beat up.”

“I’ll tell her you fell down the stairs.”

The orthopedist who fitted my splint later that morning said I had what was known as a boxer’s fracture, a break at
the base of the small finger, on my left hand. “But ‘brawler’s fracture’ is more like it,” he said. “Boxers take precautions.”

“Where’s my wedding band?”

“Your hand was too swollen. It was either cut the ring or lose the finger.”

The splint encased my pinkie and ring finger, leaving the others free. He told me my hand would be almost as good as new in twelve weeks. Same for my ribs, if not sooner, but in the meantime there was nothing he could do for them; they had to heal on their own. There was no orthodontist around to examine my jaw—not on Christmas—but my teeth still lined up, which he said was a good sign. Probably I could get by without screws and plates, though I might need my jaw wired shut for a few weeks, and then something called arch bars. He referred me to an oral surgeon. He wrote a prescription for more painkillers. He set my wedding band on the bedside table and said he hoped I liked soup and smoothies, because that’s what I’d be eating for the next month.

Liz arrived as he was leaving, bundled up, wearing a knotty red scarf Sara had knitted with Helen’s help. She looked worn out. She’d brought a sweatshirt and some old jeans of mine from the house so I wouldn’t have to wear the clothes I’d arrived in, which were caked with dirt and dried blood.

“How was Christmas?” I said.

“Sara cried when I wouldn’t let her come. She says you should use the elevator from now on. Did you know there’s a police officer here?”

He’d been waiting in the hall while I was with the doctor. Now he knocked and introduced himself as Sergeant Miller. I recognized him from Derek’s, not the officer I might have flipped off but the other one. He said he needed to get my side of things for the incident report. I didn’t want Liz knowing what had happened, but I couldn’t very well ask her to leave, so I told him it hurt to talk. “Call you tomorrow?”

He said he hadn’t come all that way for nothing. “So let’s get this over with.”

My jaw was so swollen, I could actually see it. I checked with my free fingers to make sure I wasn’t drooling, then proceeded to confirm what he already knew, that after they’d left, I had returned to the house and assaulted Derek.

“Wait a minute,” Liz said. “You assaulted
him
?”

Miller said I was lucky. Derek wasn’t pressing charges, provided I kept my distance. “He says you’ve been stalking him. Watching his house at night.”

Liz put a hand on my thigh. “Let’s stop right here and call your lawyer.”

“His girlfriend corroborated his statement,” Miller said.

“He threatened me with a gun,” I said, moving my mouth as little as possible. “He should be locked up.”

“All due respect,” Miller said, “so should you.” Having gotten what he needed, he stood to go. “The impound lot’s closed today, but you can pick your car up tomorrow.”

Liz waited until he was gone, then pulled a chair alongside
the bed. “A gun?” she said. “What is wrong with you, Glen? What are you doing?”

I looked over at my wedding band, which was now shaped like the letter
C
, and began to explain that I’d been involved in a road rage incident. The other guy—
this
guy—had flown off the handle, accosted me, flashed a pistol.

“I’d have told you,” I said, “but I didn’t want to upset you.”

“Too late for that.”

She got up and stood at the window with her arms crossed. The snow was coming down again. The scrape of a plow reached us from across the parking lot. I tried to sit up, but my ribs wouldn’t let me.

“Anyway, I was out for a drive last night and happened to see his truck. I called the police, but they didn’t do anything.”

“So naturally you attacked him.”

“He’s not going to sue me. I didn’t do enough damage.” There was fury in her eyes when she turned around. “You think I care about that?” She said I was lucky I wasn’t paralyzed, or brain damaged—lucky just to be alive. “You have a family, remember? Do you ever stop to think about us?”

I reached out to touch her, but she drew back. She said she felt like she only ever got half the story from me anymore. When and where, for instance, did all of this happen? Why exactly did the guy fly off the handle? What did I mean “flashed a pistol”? And what was I doing driving around Montclair on Christmas Eve?

“It’s the same with the accident,” she said. “Always dribs and drabs. After I saw Tawana the other day? Sara told me what happened outside the lawyer’s office. So as far as I can tell, you almost got into not one but
two
accidents with Juwan, but for some reason you didn’t want anybody to know.”

I stared at my chest and concentrated on taking shallow breaths. I couldn’t bring myself to call Sara a liar again. “I didn’t want the police to think I might have been trying to get back at him.”

She thought this over, biting her lip. “Okay. That makes sense. Don’t give them a motive. I can see that. But how am I supposed to be on your side if you won’t tell me these things in the first place?”

She was right. And sooner or later she was going to find out more.

“Also,” I said, “with the gun—Sara was in the car. It happened on the way home from school, on the day of the accident.”

In a few minutes, Liz would help me get dressed and drive me back to the apartment. On the way, I’d consider telling her that the prosecutor had decided not to charge me. But in the end, I wouldn’t bring it up. We’d ride in silence. Snow would blow across the road in gusts, covering the lane lines. She’d pull into the handicapped space at the back of the building so I wouldn’t have far to walk and tell me to call her if I needed anything. I’d lean over to kiss her, in spite of the pain, and then she’d reach across the seat and pull the door shut.

For now, though, we were still together in that hospital room, and I was still holding out hope that she’d take me back. But her expression had changed. She was looking at me like she didn’t know who I was anymore. I assume she was imagining what might have happened to Sara if that gun had gone off, and I assume she was thinking, correctly, that the whole thing must have somehow been my fault, or else why hadn’t I been more forthcoming to begin with? The problem, of course, was that every time I opened my mouth to tell her something, I only ended up revealing how much I’d been hiding.

“Should I come back?”

The attending physician was standing in the doorway with a clipboard to his chest. Liz turned to the window. I went ahead and invited him in, asking what exactly I had to do in order to go home.

Two days later, I was back at St. Barnabas, having my jaw wired shut. For five weeks I ate from a blender and talked through my teeth, all the while debating whether to go ahead and tell Liz everything once and for all. I didn’t think it would get me home any sooner, but I was afraid that if I didn’t come clean, we might be done for. Things hadn’t been the same between us since the hospital. She didn’t have to say anything; I could see it in her eyes every afternoon when I dropped Sara off, moving like a broken
old man.
You have a family, remember? Do you ever stop to think about us?

At the end of January, my splint came off just as the first W2s were rolling in. The next three months were a welcome blur of work, ten- and twelve- and then fourteen-hour days that left time for little else except sleep and afternoons with Sara. I wouldn’t say I was able to put my troubles out of mind, not even for a little while, but the nonstop emails and meetings and filings made it easier to get through the days.

By the time I came up for air, toward the end of April, I’d realized what a bad idea confessing to Liz would be. The moment for that had long since passed; honesty for honesty’s sake wasn’t going to win me any points at that late date. I could no more undo lying to her than I could undo the accident itself, and telling the truth now would only confirm her darkest suspicions—not just about how much I’d kept from her but also about my judgment. She’d never be able to forgive Juwan’s death, and in her eyes that wouldn’t even be the worst of it—it would always be secondary to the danger I’d put Sara in by cutting the wheel on purpose.

Another idea had occurred to me, though, one that seemed to have the potential to solve at least some of our problems: What if we went ahead with a divorce, and then I moved home? We’d live together as an unmarried couple. Since we’d officially be divorced, she wouldn’t have to worry about a lawsuit. It was that simple. And who would even
know? I didn’t see why we’d have to go into the details with Sara or anybody else; we’d just say we were getting back together.

The prospect of a divorce still turned my stomach, but it was nothing compared to the prospect of more time apart. That winter and spring, in addition to the distance between me and Liz, I’d started to feel Sara slipping away. We’d go out to a diner for a busted-jaw special, mashed potatoes and milkshakes, and she’d make it through the whole meal without any of the sadness she’d shown before Christmas. She no longer clung to me when I dropped her off each night. She’d stopped asking when I was coming home. Our arrangement was starting to seem normal to her.

I made my proposal to Liz at the beginning of May, when I stopped by the house to give her a check. We were standing on the front porch, which was where we had most of our conversations. The lilacs were just starting to bloom, and I wondered if she remembered all the times she’d taken my hand and led me to the bushes to bury our faces in the purple blooms, inhaling their fragrance.

“It’s not as crazy as it sounds,” I said. “I talked to Schwartz. There’s no law against divorced couples living together.” I said I was ready to sign the papers and move home anytime. I said I knew we had a lot to work out, but it wasn’t likely to happen with us separated, so why not give it a try under one roof?

At first she thought I was joking, or pretended to. She
said she wasn’t even going to run that one past Braun. “If we ever did get sued, don’t you think it would be a little transparent?”

“Liz, please,” I said, trying not to sound as frustrated as I felt. “The accident was six months ago. You know that’s not going to happen.”

“Don’t tell me what I know.”

I searched her eyes, but she was staring off across the street. A sapling now stood where the sycamore had been. The cross was still there, and flowers, though fewer than before.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t be with someone I can’t trust.”

Though I wasn’t entirely surprised to hear the words, still they hit me like a door slamming shut. Ten years of marriage, gone just like that, and I couldn’t even pinpoint when exactly I’d lost her for good. I took her hand and told her I loved her and couldn’t imagine living without her. I said we should stay together for Sara’s sake if nothing else. I asked if she’d at least consider counseling, which was something Schwartz had suggested.

“That would make it look like we’re trying to get back together,” she said.

“But what about our
real
marriage?”

Her hand was limp in mine. “This is the only marriage we’ve got.”

* * *

A few days later, Liz told me she’d asked Sara about Derek Dye. Apparently Sara remembered our encounter with him well. She told Liz he’d accused me of giving him the finger but that she hadn’t seen me do it. That was enough for Liz, though. Another secret I’d kept from her, another example of my recklessness. She informed me she was going ahead with a divorce.

“A real one,” she said.

We argued. I said quitting on our marriage was one thing, but how could she possibly justify trying to take Sara away from her father?

“You always said you’d do what’s best for her,” I said. “No matter what.”

She said that’s exactly what she was doing—that she could no longer trust me to exercise the most basic kind of parental good judgment, that if I’d put Sara in harm’s way once, I’d do it again. She said she had no intention of coming between us but that Sara was her life, and she wanted to be the one calling the shots now that she couldn’t count on me. I suggested slowing down—in less than a year, if she still wanted to, we’d be able to file for a no-fault divorce—but she said she wasn’t going to change her mind, and she wasn’t going to wait.