Long Drive Home (6 page)

“I think you’re being overprotective,” she said, fashioning a makeshift dam of old rags around some moving boxes we’d never unpacked.

“She doesn’t even know what she’s asking for.” I wanted to say,
Now you’re giving
me
the creeps.
First the vigil, now the funeral—it was as if she knew I hadn’t told her the whole truth about the accident and was messing with me, trying to torture it out of me.

“Can I help?” Sara said, coming down the stairs.

I found a mop for her to push around and was bringing in the shop vac when the doorbell rang. Sara ran back upstairs.

“It’s the detective!”

Liz shot me a look of confusion. I tried to seem unconcerned, but my first thought was that he’d come to arrest me. Why else show up unannounced at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning? I started for the door, panic rising in my throat. Rizzo was cupping his eyes to the glass. He straightened up as I came into the vestibule. He had on the same suit as before, as if he hadn’t stopped working since Thursday.

“Detective,” I said, opening the door, relieved to see he was alone. “I’d like to report a Peeping Tom.”

He thought that was funny, or pretended to at least. Then he apologized for disturbing us. “Just had a few follow-up questions and didn’t want to drag you down to the station again.”

As I was taking his umbrella, Sara came downstairs wearing her badge. She told him she’d decided to be a policeman when she grew up. “A girl can be a policeman, right? Like Carla.”

“You bet,” Rizzo said. “Police
officer.
”

Then she asked to see his gun.

“Why don’t you go play in your room?” Liz said. She sounded like she didn’t appreciate Rizzo’s being there. She brought him a cup of coffee but didn’t offer to leave, taking a seat between us at the dining room table. Rizzo didn’t seem to mind. He made small talk, complimenting the house and asking how long we’d been there. He said he lived in the village too, not five minutes away.

“I guess this whole thing has you working overtime,” Liz said.

He shrugged. “It’s not every day I get a red ball in my own back yard.”

I asked if the driver had been drinking. He said they wouldn’t know for sure until the autopsy report, which could take three to six months.

“Months?” Liz said.

The labs were slow, he explained, and the medical examiner’s office was understaffed and overworked. “It’s Newark,” he said. “Homicides. What are you going to do?” He blew on his coffee and took a sip. “Meanwhile, I’m just trying to rule out everything else besides alcohol. Not jump to
conclusions. I mean, at this point, for all we know, it could have been a bee sting. Seriously. One time we had this poor guy, rear-ends a squad car in the rotary down by the train station. Of all the luck, right? Claimed a bee stung him. We’re thinking, yeah, sure, buddy. But damned if the guy didn’t have a stinger right between his fingers.”

“Amazing.” Liz glanced at his notepad on the table, clearly wishing he’d get on with it.

“Let’s see,” he said, taking out a pen. “Meant to ask you Thursday night, Mr. Bauer—were you acquainted with the victim?”

“No.”

“Ever seen him before?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Recognize his car?”

“No.”

And before I had time to worry he’d found out about our first encounter with Juwan, he was on to the next question.

“Was he driving in an erratic fashion prior to the accident?”

“He was going fast.”

“But not weaving?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did he use his horn?”

“No.”

“Any debris in the street—tree limbs, garbage cans?”

“No.”

“What about cats or dogs?”

“No.”

Rizzo jotted a few notes and capped his pen. He said thanks, that was all he needed. Draining the last of his coffee, he stood to leave. “Oh,” he said. “Long as I’m here, would it be okay if I talked to Sara?”

Now it all made sense, why he’d stopped by instead of just calling. There was no way to put him off that wouldn’t have looked like I was hiding something. Speechless, I turned to Liz. She was the one who saved the day.

“I’m sorry, Detective,” she said, lowering her voice. “We feel like Sara’s been through enough. As it is, we’ve got her seeing a therapist.”

The detective nodded in an understanding way. He could appreciate how we felt, he said—he had a daughter too, lived with her mom down the shore. “But Sara might have seen something important, without even realizing it.”

Liz nodded back in her own understanding way, assuring him that of course we’d call if Sara mentioned anything. Then she handed him his umbrella. Seeing that he wasn’t getting anywhere, the detective forced a smile. “Good enough for me.” Then he glanced toward the top of the stairs. I turned to see that Sara had been spying on us. “Keep up the good work, Junior Detective,” he said.

“Why can’t I talk to him?” Sara said, after he was gone.

Liz and I looked at each other. Who knew how long she’d been up there or what she’d heard?

“Because,” Liz said, “he wants to ask you questions about the accident, and we don’t think that’s a six-year-old’s job.”

“But what if I want to?”

“Sorry, honey,” I said. “It’s not up to you.”

Rizzo’s car was still out front, an unmarked black sedan. He’d gone across the street to secure a corner of the tarp that had blown loose. Seeing him out there in the rain fussing over the memorial gave me a bad feeling. After he left, I went back down to the basement. I had the shop vac going when I noticed Liz standing there with a hand on her hip.

“Well?” she said, when I turned the vac off. “Want to tell me what really happened?”

Liz and I met playing buck-a-trick, buck-a-bump dorm Euchre during our freshman year at Case Western—a pilot’s son from Covington who liked to bluff, and a full partner’s daughter from the Main Line who would take a bluff—if it fooled her and she lost the trick—as a personal offense. By the end of the second semester, we were sleeping together and done with Euchre, which had gotten too cutthroat between us.

Now, facing her in the glare of the basement’s bare bulbs, I knew it was time to put at least some of my cards on the table. And so I told her a percentage of the truth, enough of it for her to understand why I didn’t want Sara talking
to the detective. I didn’t mention trying to scare Juwan, or having been scared
by
him. I just said I’d started to turn in front of him before I realized how fast he was going. Liz bit her lip, studying me, and I knew what a stranger I must have seemed to her then. We’d known each other for eighteen years and been married for ten. She shouldn’t have had to wonder whether she could trust me about something so important.

“So you’re saying the accident
was
your fault?”

“Probably,” I said.

“I’m sorry, I should have told you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I was freaked out. I didn’t want to believe it.”

“Does Sara know?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Damn it, Glen.” She crossed her arms and stared down at the puddle she was standing in. “But he was driving like a maniac, right?”

I nodded.

“And if he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have crashed.”

“Maybe not.”

“Definitely not,” she said. “He would have stopped, or just slowed down. So you can’t really say it was your fault. You might have been
involved,
but that’s not the same. You were just minding your own business. He was the one breaking the law. He caused the accident.”

Hearing her say so almost made it sound true.

“But it’s good you didn’t tell the police,” she went on, not waiting for me to agree. “We could still get sued.”

I said regardless of whose fault it was, they’d have a hard time proving anything.

“So? They don’t have to.”

She was right, of course. Her father had been a lawyer, and he’d encouraged us to sue the guy who hit us in Cleveland. “You wouldn’t have to prove the guy ran the light,” he said, “just that he probably did.” It came down to standards of evidence. In a criminal suit, you had to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, whereas in a civil suit, all it took was a preponderance of evidence. He compared it to a football game—a criminal conviction would require getting the ball to the one-yard line; a civil conviction would only require getting it past the fifty. “And as far as a jury’s concerned,” he’d said, nodding at Liz’s taut belly, “you’re already there.”

Liz didn’t feel like going out, so we canceled our plans with Lacy’s family and ordered Chinese instead.

“No fair,” Sara said.

“Sorry, honey,” Liz said.

“Mom’s tired.”

She didn’t have much to say at dinner, just sat there watching Sara eat her egg drop soup, probably wishing her dad were still around to offer some advice. Afterwards, I sent Sara up to brush her teeth and started to apologize again, but Liz cut me off.

“Are you sure nobody saw what happened?”

“They canvassed the street looking for witnesses.”

“You should have told him there was a cat,” she said. “That would have been perfect: he swerved to miss a cat.”

She went to bed early and slept with Sara again—just in case, she said. I arranged a row of empty soda cans next to the sofa to wake me if I sleepwalked, then lay there in the dark listening for Tawana’s car. I wondered if Liz really believed what she’d said about the accident being Juwan’s fault, or if that was just her way of circling the wagons. For that matter, had she really believed
me
? Surely the thought that I might still be lying had crossed her mind. Maybe it was a case of her not wanting to know more. Maybe we’d already entered into an unspoken agreement where she wouldn’t ask and I wouldn’t tell. Of course, the problem with an unspoken agreement is that you can never be sure it really exists.

In the morning, to make amends, I told Liz I’d go to the funeral. I still thought it was a bizarre idea. And perverse on Liz’s part. She could talk all she wanted about how the funeral might help Sara, but it didn’t ring true, didn’t sound like the person who’d cover Sara’s eyes just to keep her from seeing a dead bird on the sidewalk. I thought again that she must be doing it to punish me, whether she realized it or not, and here I was, keeping up my end of our unspoken agreement, willing to accept.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Maybe it’ll do her some good.”

“I know you don’t want to go. I don’t blame you.”

“I’ll be fine.”

On the way to the cemetery, Sara started to get anxious. Would we see Juwan’s body? she asked. Was it okay if she cried? Was it okay if she didn’t? I was surprised, though, at how matter-of-fact she was about death. I figured she just didn’t get it. I kept waiting for the light to go on, for her to ask me what I’d asked my dad after my grandmother’s funeral: what was the point of anything if we were all just going to die? I had no answer beyond the one I’d been given—the people you love are the point.

The cemetery was the one we passed driving to and from school, near the intersection where we’d seen the Suburban guy—a coincidence that didn’t really hit me until later. We followed a long line of cars to a grove shaded by evergreens among rows of pale headstones. There were folding chairs set up under a canopy next to the grave. I had worried we’d stick out, the white strangers at a black funeral, but it was a mixed crowd, and big enough that no one gave us a second look. Still, our being there felt all wrong. We were interlopers, gawkers, tourists. We should have been at the movies or carving a pumpkin, something to take our minds
off
the funeral.

The ground was soft from rain. We stood at the edge of the gathering. Sara was whispering her questions now: Would Juwan go to heaven after the funeral? Was he already there? Was heaven in outer space? How long would it take a rocket to get there?

“I don’t know, sweetie,” I said. “I wish I did.”

Liz nudged me. I looked up. Rizzo was standing twenty feet away from us, alone in a dark suit, looking tired and solemn. He’d spotted us, too, and I was afraid he’d come over, but he just gave a nod. Sara asked if she could go say hello.

“Not now,” I said. “It’s getting ready to start.”

“Do you think he always goes to the funerals?” Liz said softly.

The crowd got quiet as the pastor took his place beside the grave. He was a burly, white-haired man with a voice you didn’t have to strain to hear.

“For men are not cast off by the Lord forever,” he began. “Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.” He looked up from his Bible. “Today we are gathered here to mourn the passing of one such child. Please join me in prayer.”

Sara prayed. I pretended to pray but was watching Tawana over the bowed heads. She was seated under the canopy, her eyes hidden by the brim of her hat. There was a dignified-looking man next to her in a black suit—Juwan’s father, I assumed. They didn’t comfort one another. They just sat there shoulder to fallen shoulder, looking like the bleakest two people in the world.

While I was watching Tawana, Liz was watching me. I could feel her sidelong glance, as surely as I’d been feeling Rizzo’s eyes on us. I wondered if she were seeing me in a new light, standing there surrounded by all the misery I’d
caused. I could understand how that might change the way you felt about someone.

I put my arm around her, and she let me keep it there. We stood that way as the pastor quoted more Scripture. He talked about Juwan, whom he’d known personally—what a faithful son he’d been, what a good student, what a cutup. A few of Juwan’s friends spoke too, telling funny stories that made people cry, and then there was singing. After a hymn called “My Faith Has Found a Resting Place” (“I trust the ever living One / His wounds for me shall plead”), the pastor closed by inviting people to place roses on top of the casket. There was a basket of them near the grave. Sara wanted to do it, so we got in line. Girls were hugging each other and crying. Boys in blue blazers shuffled along with their hands in their pockets, casting glances at the grave. I’ve never fainted in my life, but as we got closer, I felt my head getting light. Inside that box, laid out flat, was a boy who was never coming out.