Not even “How does it feel to have a son who’s a murderer?”
I felt Ellen stiffen, and thought maybe she was going to stop and answer that, but I whispered to her, “Come on.”
We got to her Mazda, and once we were closeted inside, the photographers swarmed the car. They had the good sense to step out of the way as I eased it forward. Try not to run anyone down, I told myself. We had enough on our plate without adding a vehicular manslaughter charge. And engaging the services of a lawyer for just one case was likely to bankrupt us, not that financial worries were our primary concern at the moment.
Once we were away from the courthouse and back on the road out of town to our place, I thought we’d escaped them. But as our lane came into view, we could also see a couple of TV news vans and some other cars parked along the shoulder.
“Motherfuckers,” I said.
I hit the blinker and turned, slowly, into our lane, edging past more people shouting out questions to us. There was still yellow tape around the Langley property, and once we passed the cop who was babysitting the house, he got out of his cruiser and stood in the path of the reporters, preventing them from getting any closer to our home.
We’d bring him some lemonade later.
Once home, Ellen put on some coffee and took out some bread slices and peanut butter. As she began to spread the peanut butter onto the bread, she stopped and began to sob. Loud, wracking sobs that shook her entire body.
I took her in my arms, held on to her, thought if I held her tighter the shaking and the sobbing would stop. And I was right. Except it took half an hour.
Ellen stepped off the deck, where we’d both sat down for a few minutes, and walked out onto our gravel drive, near the shed. From there, you could see past the Langley home and get a pretty good view of the highway.
“It looks like they finally gave up,” she said, coming back onto the deck. “They’re gone. The reporters are gone.”
I was still in my chair, wondering if I had the energy to get up. We’d been home a couple of hours. Although the coast looked clear, I suspected a few hangers-on might be camped just down the road a ways, waiting to see if we’d show ourselves.
“We don’t have anywhere to go right now,” I said. “Let’s not reward any who might still be hiding.”
Ellen sat down, took a long breath, and looked at me. “I want to tell you something,” she said.
“Okay,” I said slowly.
“I couldn’t do this without you. There’s no way I could get through something like this if I didn’t have you by my side.”
It seemed dumb to say thank you. And I could have thrown the same kind of comment back at her, but given the timing, it might not have seemed genuine. So I nodded.
“I know, sometimes, I accuse you of not getting over it,” she said. “That it’s been ten years. That it’s time you forgave me for the mistake I made, time you buried the hatchet with Conrad. But the truth of the matter is, I still haven’t forgiven myself. I wasn’t thinking about anyone but me when I did what I did. I wasn’t thinking about you, or Derek. Not about us, as a family. And there’s not a day goes by when I don’t think about what I nearly threw away, and how lucky I am that you stayed by me, even though I wasn’t worthy.”
“Ellen.”
“When something as terrible as this-this thing with Derek-happens, I think, how would I ever be able to handle all of this on my own? I wouldn’t be able to. You’re my rock, Jim. You’re my rock. And I nearly let you slip out of my hands, right to the bottom of the ocean. I love you, you know.”
“I love you, too,” I said.
“It’s not the only mistake I’ve made,” she said. “Maybe more than you have the capacity to forgive.”
“Ellen, what-”
But she got up and went into the house. “I have stuff to do,” she said. “Like figure out how we’re going to pay for Derek’s lawyer.”
I wandered over to the shed.
I checked the gas levels in the lawn mowers and the tractor and the weed trimmer, oiled the hedge trimmer, which had been squeaking a bit last time we’d used it, cleaned out the truck, tidied the shed, stared at my stack of canvases and debated whether to cut them to shreds.
There were half a dozen properties that Derek and I would typically do this day of the week. I hadn’t exactly had a chance to call anyone and tell them we wouldn’t be making it. If they watched or listened to the news, they might be able to figure out we had more pressing matters than their overgrown lawns and dandelions.
My son was in jail. My son was in jail, charged with three murders.
I picked up the closest thing that was handy. A lawn edger, with a small semicircular blade at the end of a three-foot-long handle. I held it in my hand, then swung it, like an ax, into the shed wall. It whipped through the air and lodged itself in the wood. I pried it free, swung again wildly, took a chip out of the wall, swung again, and this time when the blade hit the wall it snapped off and flew back, right at me, right for my face. I spun out of the way, just in time, figured if I’d been a millisecond slower, I’d have lost an eye.
I needed to get a grip. I needed to work. I needed to do something with all this pent-up anger.
I leaned up against the workbench, took in the tools and lawn mower parts scattered about. It was time to clean the place up.
There was a cutting blade on the bench, an older one that came from the housing under the John Deere lawn tractor. It was so badly battered it wasn’t worth the effort to sharpen it, so I took it with me for reference as I went back to the house, thinking I could look up the part online and order a new one.
I thought I’d find Ellen at the kitchen table reviewing bank statements and retirement forms, figuring out what we’d have to cash in to pay Natalie Bondurant, but instead she was standing at the living room window, by the bookcase, looking up the lane. Just staring.
I came up behind her, set the blade on top of a row of books, and said, “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said as I rested my hands on her shoulders. “I just. . need some space.”
I took my hands away and said, “Sure, okay.” I could give her what she wanted, and get what I needed, at the same time. “You know what? I’m going to go to work,” I said, then slipped out of the house and got into my truck.
I started with the Fleming house. Normally, our first stop on a Wednesday. Average-sized yard, not a lot of fiddly tidying around flower beds, but you had to be sure not to leave any grass clippings on the driveway or Ned Fleming would have a shit fit. There usually was no one home when we came in the morning, and there was no one here in the afternoon, which was fine. The fewer people I had to talk to, the better.
The job took a lot longer than usual, of course. And not just because there was only one of us to do the work.
As a team, Derek and I could knock off a place like the Flemings’ in half an hour. One of us on the tractor doing the big, easy-to-reach areas, the other with the lawn mower doing the narrow spots. Then one of us would grab the weed whacker and trim up along the sides of the house and next to the driveway and along the sidewalk while the other got the blower and swept all the clippings to the street.
The gods, who’d already been fucking me over of late, decided to keep it up at the Flemings’. First, the belt that drives the three blades under the Deere slipped off, and it took me ten minutes of lying on my side to get it back onto the pulleys, and not without jamming my fingers in there twice.
Then, the weed whacker ran out of line, and when I had the sucker upended and the housing off to take out the old spool and put in a new spool, the little spring that sits under there fell out and disappeared into the uncut lawn. Lost another five minutes finding it.
If I’d had Derek with me, either one of us could have been dealing with these setbacks while the other kept on with the job.
The gods weren’t finished. I was using the mower in the backyard when the blade caught the edge of a piece
