A Bend in the Road (8 page)

On Thursday
night—one night until D-Day, as Miles had begun mentally referring to it—Miles
lay in bed with Jonah, trading a book back and forth so each could read a page.
They were propped against the pillows, the blankets pulled back.  Jonah’s hair was still wet from his bath,
and Miles could smell the shampoo he’d used. The odor was sweet and untainted,
as if more than dirt had been washed away.

In the middle of
a page that Miles was reading, Jonah suddenly looked up at him.

“Do you miss
Mommy?”

Miles set the
book down, then slipped an arm around Jonah. It had been a few months since
he’d last mentioned Missy without being asked first.  “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

Jonah tugged on
the material of his pajamas, making two fire trucks crash into one another. “Do
you think about her?”

“All the time,”
he said.

“I think about
her, too,” Jonah said softly. “Sometimes when I’m in bed . . .”

He frowned up at
Miles. “I get these pictures in my head. . . .” He trailed off.

“Kind of like a
movie?”

“Kinda. But not
really. It’s more like a picture, you know? But I can’t really see it all the
time.”

Miles pulled his
son closer. “Does that make you sad?”

“I don’t know.
Sometimes.”

“It’s okay to be
sad. Everyone gets sad now and then. Even me.”

“But you’re a
grown-up.”

“Grown-ups get
sad, too.”

Jonah seemed to
ponder this as he made the fire trucks crash again. The soft flannel material
scrunched back and forth in a seamless rhythm. 
“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to
marry Miss Andrews?”

Miles’s eyebrows
went up. “I hadn’t really thought about it,” he said honestly.

“But you’re going
on a date, right? Doesn’t that mean you’re getting married?”

Miles couldn’t
help but smile. “Who told you that?”

“Some of the
older kids at school. They say that you date first and then get married.”

“Well,” Miles
said, “they’re kind of right, but they’re kind of wrong, too. Just because I’m
having dinner with Miss Andrews doesn’t mean we’re getting married.  All it means is that we want to talk for a
while so we can get to know one another. Sometimes grown-ups like to do that.”

“Why?”

Believe me, son,
it’ll make sense in a couple of years.

“They just do.
It’s kind of like . . . well, do you know how you play with your friends? When
you joke around and laugh and have a good time? That’s all a date is.”

“Oh,” Jonah
said. He looked more serious than any seven-year-old should. “Will you talk
about me?”

“Probably a
little. But don’t worry. It’ll all be good stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Well, maybe
we’ll talk about the soccer game. Or maybe I’ll tell her how good you are at
fishing. And we’ll talk about how smart you are. . . .” Jonah suddenly shook
his head, his brows knit together. “I’m not smart.”

“Of course you
are. You’re very smart, and Miss Andrews thinks so, too.”

“But I’m the
only one in my class who has to stay after school.” “Yeah, well . . . that’s
okay. I had to stay after school when I was a kid, too.”

That seemed to
get his attention. “You did?”

“Yeah. Only I
didn’t have to do it for only a couple of months, I had to do it for two
years.”

“Two years?”

Miles nodded for
emphasis. “Every day.”

“Wow,” he said,
“you must really have been dumb if you had to stay for two years.”

That wasn’t my point,
but I guess if it makes you feel better, I’ll take it.

“You’re a smart
young man and don’t you ever forget it, okay?”

“Did Miss Andrews
really say that I was smart?”

“She tells me
every day.”

Jonah smiled.
“She’s a nice teacher.”

“I think so, but
I’m glad you think so, too.”

Jonah paused, and
those fire trucks started coming together again.

“Do you think
she’s pretty?” he asked innocently.

Oh my, where is
all of this coming from?

“Well . . .”

“I think she’s
pretty,” Jonah declared. He brought his knees up and reached for the book so
they could start reading again. “She kind of makes me think about Mom,
sometimes.”

For the life of
him, Miles had no idea what to say.

• • •

Nor did Sarah,
though in an entirely different context. She had to think for a moment before
she finally found her voice.

“I have no idea,
Mom. I’ve never asked him.”

“But he’s a
sheriff, right?”

“Yes . . . but
that’s not exactly the sort of thing that’s ever come up.”

Her mother had
wondered aloud whether Miles had ever shot someone.  “Well, I was just curious, you know? You see all those shows on
TV, and with the things you read in the papers these days, I wouldn’t be
surprised. That’s a dangerous job.”

Sarah closed
her eyes and held them that way. Ever since she’d casually mentioned the fact
that she would be going out with Miles, her mother had been calling a couple of
times a day, asking Sarah dozens of questions, hardly any of which Sarah could
answer.

“I’ll be sure
to ask him for you, okay?”

Her mother
inhaled sharply. “Now, don’t do that! I’d hate to ruin things right off the bat
for you.”

“There’s nothing
to ruin, Mom. We haven’t even gone out yet.”

“But you said he
was nice, right?”

Sarah rubbed her
eyes wearily. “Yes, Mom. He’s nice.”

“Well, then,
remember how important it is to make a good first impression.”

“I know, Mom.”

“And make sure
you dress well. I don’t care what some of those magazines say, it’s important
to look like a lady when you go out on a date. The things some women wear these
days . . .”

As her mother droned
on, Sarah imagined herself hanging up the phone, but instead she simply began
sorting through the mail. Bills, assorted mailers, an application for a Visa
card. Caught up in that, she didn’t realize that her mother had stopped talking
and was apparently waiting for her to respond. 
“Yes, Mom,” Sarah said automatically.

“Are you
listening to me?”

“Of course I’m
listening.”

“So you’ll be
coming by the house, then?”

I thought we were
talking about what I should wear. . . .Sarah scrambled to figure out what her
mother had been saying.

“You mean bring
him by?” she finally asked.

“I’m sure your
father would like to meet him.”

“Well . . . I
don’t know if we’ll have time.”

“But you just
said that you weren’t even sure of what you were going to do yet.” “We’ll see,
Mom. But don’t make any special plans, because I can’t guarantee it.”

There was a
long pause on the other end. “Oh,” she said. Then, trying another tack: “I was
just thinking that I’d like to at least have a chance to say hello.”

Sarah began
sorting through the mail again. “I can’t guarantee anything. Like you said, I’d
hate to ruin anything he might have planned. You can understand that, right?”

“Oh, I
suppose,” she said, obviously disappointed. “But even if you can’t make it,
you’ll call me to let me know how it went, right?”

“Yes, Mom, I’ll
call.”

“And I hope you
have a good time.”

“I will.”

“But nottoo good a
time—”

“I understand,”
Sarah said cutting her off.

“I mean, it is
yourfirst date—”

“I understand,
Mom,” Sarah said, more forcefully this time. 
“Well . . . all right, then.” She sounded almost relieved. “I guess I’ll
let you go, then. Unless there’s something else you’d like to talk about.” “No,
I think we’ve covered most everything.”

Somehow, even
after that, the conversation lasted for another ten minutes.

• • •

Later that
night, after Jonah had gone to sleep, Miles popped an old videotape into the
VCR and settled back, watching Missy and Jonah frolic in the surf near Fort
Macon. Jonah was still a toddler then, no older than three, and he loved
nothing more than to play with his trucks on the makeshift roads that Missy
smoothed with her hands. Missy was twenty-six years old—in her blue bikini, she
looked more like a college student than the mother she was.  In the film, she motioned for Miles to put
aside the videocamera and come play with them, but on that morning, he
remembered he was more interested in simply observing. He liked to watch them
together; he liked the way it made him feel, knowing that Missy loved Jonah in
a way that he had never experienced. His own parents hadn’t been so
affectionate. They weren’t bad people, they just weren’t comfortable expressing
emotion, even to their own child; and with his mother deceased and his father
off traveling, he felt almost as if he’d never known them at all. Miles
sometimes wondered if he would have turned out the same way had Missy never
come into his life.

Missy began
digging a hole with a small plastic shovel a few feet from the water’s edge,
then started using her hands to speed things up. On her knees, she was the same
height as Jonah, and when he saw what she was doing, he stood alongside her,
motioning and pointing, like an architect in the early stages of building.
Missy smiled and talked to him—the sound, however, was muffled by the endless
roar of the waves—and Miles couldn’t understand what they were saying to each
other. The sand came out in clumps, piled around her as she dug deeper, and
after a while she motioned for Jonah to get in the hole. With his knees pulled
up to his chest, he fit—just barely, but enough—and Missy started filling in
the sand, pushing and leveling it around Jonah’s small body. Within minutes he
was covered up to his neck: a sand turtle with a little boy’s head poking out
the top.

Missy added
more sand here and there, covering his arms and fingers. Jonah wiggled his
fingers, causing some sand to fall away, and Missy tried again. As she was
putting the final handfuls in place, Jonah did the same thing, and Missy
laughed. She put a clump of wet sand on his head and he stopped moving. She
leaned in and kissed him, and Miles watched his lips form the words: “I love
you, Mommy.”

“I love you,
too,” she mouthed in return. Knowing Jonah would sit quietly for a few minutes,
Missy turned her attention to Miles.

He’d said something
to her, and she smiled—again, the words were lost. In the background, over her
shoulder, there were only a few other people in view. It was only May, a week
before the crowds arrived in full force, and a weekday, if he remembered
correctly. Missy glanced from side to side and stood. She put one hand on her
hip, the other behind her head, looking at him through half-open eyes, sultry
and lascivious. Then she dropped the pose, laughed again as if embarrassed, and
came toward him. She kissed the camera lens. 
The tape ended there.

These tapes
were precious to Miles. He kept them in a fireproof box he’d bought after the
funeral; he’d watched them all a dozen times. In them, Missy was alive again;
he could see her moving, he could listen to the sound of her voice. He could
hear her laugh again.

Jonah didn’t
watch the tapes and never had. Miles doubted he even knew about them, since
he’d been so young when most of them were made. Miles had stopped filming after
Missy had died, for the same reason he’d stopped doing other things. The effort
was too much. He didn’t want to remember anything from the period of his life
immediately following her death.

He wasn’t sure
why he’d felt the urge to watch the tapes this evening. It might have been
because of Jonah’s comment earlier, it might have had to do with the fact that
tomorrow would bring something new into his life for the first time in what
seemed like forever. No matter what happened with Sarah in the future, things
were changing. He was changing.

Why, though,
did it seem so frightening?

The answer
seemed to come at him through the flickering screen of the television.

Maybe, it
seemed to be saying, it was because he’d never found out what had really
happened to Missy.

Missy Ryan’s
funeral was held on a Wednesday morning at the Episcopal church in downtown New
Bern. The church could seat nearly five hundred people, but it wasn’t large
enough. People were standing and some had crowded around the outside doors,
paying their respects from the nearest spot they could.  I remember that it had begun to rain that
morning. It wasn’t a hard rain, but it was steady, the kind of late summer rain
that cools the earth and breaks the humidity. Mist floated just above the ground,
ethereal and ghostlike; small puddles formed in the street. I watched as a
parade of black umbrellas, held by people dressed in black, slowly moved
forward, as if the mourners were walking in the snow.

I saw Miles
Ryan sitting erect in the front row of the church. He was holding Jonah’s hand.
Jonah was only five at the time, old enough to understand that his mother had
died, but not quite old enough to understand that he would never see her again.
He looked more confused than sad. His father sat tight-lipped and pale as one
person after another came up to him, offering a hand or a hug.  Though he seemed to have difficulty looking
directly at people, he neither cried nor shook. I turned away and made my way
to the back of the church. I said nothing to him.

I’ll never
forget the smell, the odor of old wood and burning candles, as I sat in the
back row. Someone played softly on a guitar near the altar. A lady sat beside
me, followed a moment later by her husband. In her hand she held a wad of
tissues, which she used to dab at the corners of her eyes. Her husband rested
his hand on her knee, his mouth set in a straight line. Unlike the vestibule,
where people were still coming in, in the church it was silent, except for the
sounds of people sniffling. No one spoke; no one seemed to know what to say.  It was then that I felt as if I were going
to vomit.

I fought back
my nausea, feeling the sweat bead on my forehead. My hands felt clammy and
useless. I didn’t want to be there. I hadn’t wanted to come. More than
anything, I wanted to get up and leave.

I stayed.

Once the
service started, I found it difficult to concentrate. If you ask me today what
the reverend said, or what Missy’s brother said in his eulogy, I couldn’t tell
you. I remember, however, that the words didn’t comfort me. All I could think
about was that Missy Ryan shouldn’t have died. 
After the service, there was a long procession to Cedar Grove Cemetery;
it was escorted by what I assumed was every sheriff and police officer in the
county. I waited until most everyone started their cars, then finally pulled
into the line, following the car directly in front of me. Headlights were
turned on. Like a robot, I turned mine on, too.

As we drove,
the rain began to fall harder. My wipers pushed the rain from side to side.

The cemetery
was only a few minutes away.

People parked,
umbrellas opened, people sloshed through puddles again, converging from every
direction. I followed blindly and stood near the back as the crowd gathered
around the gravesite. I saw Miles and Jonah again; they stood with their heads
bowed, the rain drenching them. The pallbearers brought the coffin to the
grave, surrounded by hundreds of bouquets. 
I thought again that I didn’t want to be there. I shouldn’t have come. I
don’t belong here.

But I did.

Driven by
compulsion, I’d had no choice. I needed to see Miles, needed to see Jonah.

Even then, I knew
that our lives would be forever intertwined.

I had to be
there, you see.

I was, after all,
the one who’d been driving the car.