Angie, who wasn’t able to hear everything her mother was saying to me but knew from my expression that it wasn’t good, whispered, “You want me to ask the ambulance guys to come back in half an hour? You might need them after Mom gets home.”
I TOLD TRIXIE THAT WAS the end of my story. She had another cookie and looked at her watch. “I really should get going. I’ve got to get changed.”
“You look great,” I told her. I waved my hands in front of me, drawing attention to my own jeans and six- year-old souvenir T-shirt from a trip to Walt Disney World when the kids were much younger. “That’s the bonus of working from home. It doesn’t matter how you look.”
“But you don’t have clients coming to the house,” Trixie said. “I do.”
“Hey, thanks for those tax tips. I write off some of the kitchen now, too, in addition to my study, since I make my meals here. And my model kits. If I’m writing sci-fi, I should be able to deduct a model of the
“Absolutely.” She was on her feet now.
“So what should I do?” I asked her. “To make it right with Sarah?”
“You could start by not acting like such a jerk,” Trixie said. “It’s a wonder Sarah didn’t give you a spanking.”
I chuckled. “She’d probably be afraid it wouldn’t be an appropriate punishment, that I’d like it too much.”
And there was the tiniest twinkle in Trixie’s eye.
THERE WAS ONE SMALL PART of the story I didn’t tell Trixie. After The Backpack Incident, when Sarah got home and showed me her ticket (a fine plus points), we had to go to Mindy’s, a grocery store about five minutes from our place, to pick up some things for dinner. She was going to go alone-I think she actually wanted to go alone-but I thought it would be better if I tagged along and attempted to be helpful. Try to smooth things over a little bit. Maybe explain why I did what I did. That my motives were honorable, even if things didn’t quite work out the way I’d planned.
Sarah dropped some bananas in the cart’s child seat, next to her purse. “You do this kind of thing all the time,” she said. “You’re always telling us what to do. Don’t leave the stove on, check the batteries on the smoke alarm, don’t drink the milk after the expiration date, don’t leave the front door unlocked, make sure the car’s locked, make sure you put the steak knives in the dishwasher with the points down so no one slits their wrists when they reach in-”
“That’s a good rule,” I pointed out. “Remember that time you got cut?”
“Don’t overload the circuits, make sure-”
“Okay, okay, but that’s all good advice. It’s just commonsense safety stuff. I mean, I
“I think the kids are thinking the real tragedy is that you survived.”
I didn’t know what else to say, so I wandered over to look at the pastries. I felt like a chocolate cake. An entire one, just for me. I looked back over at Sarah, who had moved away from our cart to grab some pizzas in the frozen food aisle.
And she had left her purse sitting in the cart, unguarded, where anyone could walk off with it. Maybe she was only going to be a second. But then she looked at the frozen juice, and some frozen vegetables, the whole time with her back turned to her purse.
I returned to the cart and guarded her purse until she was done with the frozen foods.
“What?” she said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Your purse,” I said. “Anyone could have walked off with it. You shouldn’t leave the cart unattended like that. You’d lose your cash, credit cards, everything. Wasn’t there something on the radio, some woman had her purse stolen in the grocery store, lost all the pictures she’d just had developed of her sister’s wedding?”
“We carried the story on the Metro page.”
“There you go,” I said. “So you already know, and still you leave your purse unguarded.”
Sarah looked at me long and hard. “You need to learn to pick your moments better,” she said. “And another thing.”
“Yes?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
6
ONCE I’D THROWN THE CUPS INTO the dishwasher after Trixie’d gone back to her place, I put on my walking shoes. I was going to try something new today. Walk
I set a brisk pace for myself through the areas of the development where construction was in full swing. Some days, I was a six-year-old boy again, transfixed by oversized trucks unloading lumber, workers swinging prebuilt roof trusses into place, the rhythmic hammers as roofers put down shingles. I could stand and watch for an hour or more, until someone started wondering whether I was a building inspector.
But this day I longed for the restfulness that the creek offered. I wanted to meander along its bank, hear the sound of water trickling by as twigs cracked under my feet. Maybe think of a way to get back into Sarah’s good books. Maybe there was something I could get for her, like a gift certificate from a spa, or I could take her someplace nice for dinner, maybe back into the city to one of our favorite spots around the corner from our house on Crandall. No, maybe not. That would just lead to comments along the lines of “If only we had places like this where we live now.” I’d find something good in our new neighborhood. I’d ask around. Surely people in Oakwood appreciated fine dining, they could recommend something to me other than DQ or Red Lobster. Maybe if-
I spotted the hiking boots first.
The heels pointed skyward, the toes dug into the dirt. The soles, mud caked between the treads, faced me as I approached the bank of Willow Creek. It was an odd sight at first, given the angle from which I was strolling. The boots seemed planted into the ground there on their own, and it was only as I got close that I was able to see that they were laced onto an individual, who’d been hard to spot before, what with most of his body being underwater and all.
I said something out loud, like “Jesus Christ” or “Holy shit.” I’m not sure. When you find your first dead guy, it’s like that cliche about when you’re in a car accident, and everything seems to move in slow motion. Of course, the dead guy wasn’t moving at all. The only things moving were me and Willow Creek as it flowed around the body.
It was a man, in boots and jeans and a plaid shirt, and even though he was facedown in the shallow water, the crown of his head just barely above the surface, I had an inkling of who he was.
Part of me thought that maybe, just maybe, he might still be alive, even though he had a very visible gash in the back of his head that offered a view of what I could only assume was brain. So I stepped into the water, grabbed hold of him by his arms, up close to his shoulders, and rolled him over. It wasn’t that hard, the water giving him a bit of a weightless quality, and once I could see his face I knew that the Mississauga salamander had lost its greatest ally.
I pulled Samuel Spender up onto the bank, resting his body on its back. Lifeless eyes stared skyward. It was clear to me now that he was long gone. There would be no need, I thought, for any heroic mouth-to-mouth efforts at resuscitation.
I thought of my friend Jeff Conklin, where he might be three decades later. I finally caught up to you, Jeff.
I reached into my jacket pocket for the cell phone I carry around most everywhere. It wasn’t until then that I
