Interstate (14 page)

splash his face. Is it the first time he's taken his glasses off since? No, lots. Also, pulling a paper towel out of the dispenser, drying the glasses and then another towel out for his face, but not the first time looking at himself in a mirror, though certainly this mirror or a bathroom mirror. Did that, just the mirror, when he was looking in the rearview at them on the highway when she was alive. Thinks he saw her, maybe he didn't. Right after he told them to duck. No, they were down then, so last time he saw her alive was in a mirror sometime before when it was all innocent, driving on a road, no worries about maniacs in nearby cars, and they were playing, he thinks: cards, smaller magnetic board versions of checkers and Clue, or a mind one with their own rules, or just into their books. Books are now in back of the car, probably a fucking red, unless the police took them away to inspect them. Some outdoor clothes, dolls and their clothes for the outdoors, car and bed, stuffed animals for tonight, those little things Julie always brings with her for the car trip, tiny dinosaurs, miniature rabbits and cats, markers and a memo pad to draw and write on and small balls from the Giant store vending machine for a dime each and her lucky polished stone and magic necklace, also a red mess on the seat and floor unless the police took most of these too. Pieces of her flesh, did he think of that? embedded in the car seat perhaps or just lying around or stuck to the car's walls. Oh dear, oh God, oh my darling, why you? why you? it's not so, it can't be true. If he found a piece would he cut it out of the seat with part of the cloth it's in or on, somehow get some substance to preserve it and seal it to the cloth, stain it with colorless shellac perhaps and put it in a plastic box and set it on his night table or desk? Doesn't think so. For some reason her blood on a cut-out piece of his sleeve doesn't seem so bad, but the other would be gruesome and too sad. And her little shoulder bag, he forgot, that holds all those little things she brings for the trip and which she empties out almost first thing on the seat between Margo and her. But all those firsts, each breath another first added to the next, every goddamn step, new rooms, familiar corridors and stalls, first piss after the last one and so on, first fart, belch, what'll be his first cup of coffee sometime when and no doubt pretty soon, first shot of scotch, beer, slice of toast, he's got to eat and drink, doesn't he? and certainly get drunk and sick and drunk until he stops, first glass of water and hangover, old and new people he'll see, friends, family, first piece of meat, first celery, carrot, aspirin, aspirins after that aspirin, will he still take his daily brewer's yeast tablets and vitamin C? first tranquilizer he's ever taken, also first sleeping pill and doctor's exam, first tooth worked on or just a simple cleaning and checkup, will he do it when the reminder card comes he addressed at the dentist's months ago? will he also do the funeral which'll be the first sharing of grief like that for his wife and him? first mail, first time he opens something from their mail, first time he listens to music again or will that be at the funeral if he has nothing to do with it or if he just mechanically turns on the car radio? first time again behind a wheel, seated at a typewriter, shopping in a supermarket, looking for a coffin and choosing a funeral home if there's to be one, there has to be to retrieve her from wherever she goes after here, first coffin he chose was for his father, first walk out of his house if there's to be one, no he means first walk out after he first comes back, first time he'll speak to his wife since, first time he'll see her since, first time both of them break down or crack up together like they're sure, at least the first one, to do, first time sleeping with her and so forth, no more good sleeps, no more sex, pleasure, amusement of any kind and so on, first time he sweeps the kitchen floor, does the family wash, on his knees cleaning the toilet pedestal, first time he squashes an ant with his thumb, gets enraged at seeing another one on the kitchen counter and smashes it with the side of his fist. Margo's birthday and their anniversary and so on. Days Julie's come up. Shouldn't they get away, maybe leave the country, take Margo with them but go if only for those times, but where can they? In a hole, on a transoceanic ship, but he'd probably feel like jumping off. First time he sharpens a pencil or fills a pen. And what if he comes across the safe scissors she told him yesterday she lost at home and needs tomorrow for school? School, what does he do, simply call or drop in and say she's not coming in anymore, she's dead? Same with her after-school ceramics class and what if the teacher wants to give him the things Julie made that were baked in a kiln last week and were supposed to be distributed this? But when will he stop thinking about it and let the subject rest? First things first but he thinks never. He'll look at Margo; they looked something alike. He'll look at his wife; Julie resembled her much more than she did him. Photos of his wife and her at four and five and six and you can't tell one from the other except for the setting and certain clothes. He'll look in the mirror and perhaps see the little there was of her in him, the narrow eyes, big lobes, somewhat pointed chin. First little girl tossing up a ball the way Julie did or learning to rollerskate, which he'd been helping her do with Margo. Piano. She just started to learn, so first kid's lesson-playing he'll hear out of someone's window or if he goes to a friend's house where there's a girl or even a boy around that age who plays that way or just uses the same series of lesson books. First time he sees their piano, even. First time after that time and every time after that and so on. Will he move the piano out? Then every time he sees a piano or space where the piano was in their house or hears one played even by a pro and even on radio, record or tape. It's possible. It could happen. Fathers who cross the street holding their kids' hands, every single one. Any kid, any age, either sex, mothers and nannies too. It's what he always liked but she didn't always like to do. “You're too young to cross the street by yourself,” and what would she say? He forgets. “I know what to do. I've watched how. I'm old enough. I'm five. I'm six.” “Okay, now that you're almost seven, and maybe I have been too protective, look both ways, then look again, then make sure nobody's in the parked cars and just about to pull out, and even if you hear a car coming but don't see it”—this just last week—“don't go, wait till it passes or till you don't hear it, even if that takes a few minutes, then look both ways again and at the parked cars, and only the not-too-traveled street in front of our house and when Mommy or I am looking, or the one by the school with the crossing guard.” Home, her room, all the rooms, bathroom where she washed up and brushed her teeth before going to sleep. He was thinking about firsts before but now he's talking about everything. His clothes which she's seen, every plate and cup and such in the house, all the furniture, carpeted floors, woodpile on the porch, streets she's been on with him and so forth. Jungle Jim he erected and put in with hundreds of pounds of cement, how's he going to take that out? Neighborhood trees they've passed and huge one in the backyard she's run around. Sky where he's often pointed out to her a cloud. What's he talking about? Wash your face, put soap in your mouth. Bang your head against the mirror till it breaks or you're knocked out. “By the way—excuse me, sir, Mr. Frey,” the policeman says. “But by the way, I never said it so far but I couldn't be sorrier over what happened to you and your family and I know I'm talking for every law officer in the county and state.” “Yeah, yeah,” looking in the sink. Somebody else's black hair there, he hates it, why didn't the guy pick it up and get rid of it or wash it away before he left? “If there was anything we could do, but what possibly could we? But we'd do it in a flash, without question, but even apprehending the rotten fuckers and executing them by injection, what's it in the end mean as help? Damn, it's the pits. There's no comeback from it. I put myself in your position each time.” “You mean,” not looking at him; turning the cold water on and with his finger pressed to the spout spraying the hair to the drain and then down it. “You're saying, killing a kid like this, it's happened with others and maybe in the same way?” Turns off the water, looks down the drain, doesn't see the hair but lets the water run some more to get it all the way to the sewer, or to the river and then the ocean or wherever it winds up but away from here. “Jesus,” to the man's reflection in the mirror, “just saying it I feel like I'm being killed myself right here. But I suppose I shouldn't think we're the first. She is. I am. We all are. Ah, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.” There are other hairs in the sink; just noticed them. How corne he didn't before and how'd they escape the spray? Gray, that's why, two of them, and one white, so they blended in, plus five or six little black nappy ones which probably have a way of sticking to the porcelain more than what might be the lighter straight ones, but he's not going to do anything about them. To get all the hairs in all the sinks he sees into the ocean or wherever they go from here, something he never thought of before, and all the sinks he sees into the seas he could see, the shining sinks and shrinking stinks and seas he could mean, though he doesn't know how, well—well what? He's lost his train. He's lost it all. Oh, don't get so self-pitying, please. And why not get that? And the objective, not the correlative—for he doesn't know what's a correlative, it's just a word he's heard in attachment to that—would be absurd, wouldn't it? sinking all the hairs in all the sinks, sort of like going around flushing all the toilets in the world that need to be flushed. Slobs don't. Absolute slobs. Who let their shit and stuff stay there to swim and stink so the next stiff can see it and wonder about seas and shifting sinks, though they don't do it for that reason he doesn't think. They do it because they're egotists. “I've actually seen only one child killed,” the policeman says, who's actually been talking about that or its correlative for a minute perhaps but he hasn't heard him till now or not words or not exact. “Oh yeah?” still to the mirror but the policeman to him. I want to get out of here, he thinks. I want to get home with my kids. That's absolutely what I want, out of this pool of siss, no small thing. “By a bullet, crossfire, druggies shooting up each other over some territory dispute from across a street.” “Druggies, that's what they were or could have been. Of course,” slapping his head. “What are you saying, something essential you only now remembered about them?” taking out a pen and pad. “No, I don't know. But who else could kill kids like that but them? They're out of it. Mind a freaking forest. They've lost consciousness or conscience or both or something like that. They're egotists, aren't they?—people who kill people like that. And kids, imagine. Even if you're aiming at me, to know kids are behind. Their lives over them. Meaning, that they think they can, it might even be their right, that someone else's life is so much shit to them and that they can go on, laughing, even joking about it. ‘Hey,'” nudging the policeman's arm with his elbow and looking directly at him, “‘we just blew those two halfpints away, what a gas.' ‘Halfpints.' That's from Wilder, once the older girl's favorite, never hers though she tried, always wanting to catch up. Or they're just not thinking of it anymore, those men. Imagine. Who else but egotists, drugged out or straight, that's who killed her.” “You'd be able to recognize them?” “I don't know. Men, around my age or younger. My dead kid—shouldn't I go to her?” “You've time. I don't think they're ready for you yet.” “What're they doing?” “Still examining, cleaning, other things, probably—I'm not a doc.” “What're they, pulling out pieces from her, putting them back? I didn't give permission.” “Nothing like that. That's for the medical examiner's office across the ridge.” “How could they, not the examiners, but those men? And the alive one, Margo—she must miss me now too.” “She'll be okay. We're taking real especial care of her, treating her royally. We're always prepared for something like this, if usually it's normal car accidents. But those men—around your age, you say?” “You got me. All I can see of their faces is laughing, and the only thing of that is wide grins.” “Laughing, huh—when they drove away? I got to hear this. This really makes me burn.” “Well, they could have, but I didn't see them do that when the guy in the passenger seat shot at us, for by then they were hundreds of feet ahead. But they laughed when they were alongside us. Druggies, who else but them—like the ones who killed the kid you saw. Maybe even the same ones. You should check on that. Did you catch those guys? You've pictures and a file on them?” “If we did you'd be able to identify them?” “Right now I can't even remember what color they were. Of course I'm not really trying. But white, black, a mix, maybe, but definitely not Oriental, but I shouldn't be so sure on that.” The policeman's writing this down. “See? it's a blur. Or maybe I'm all wrong and one was one and the other one of the others. But druggies I'm almost sure of, just by the crazy wildness in their eyes, or the one who aimed the gun, and the driver going on hysterically as if
this, this scaring the shit out of me and my kids, was the funniest thing there ever was.” “Actually, by calling my men druggies I'm possibly giving them a better name than they deserve. Sellers, who ought to have their eyes gouged through. Monsters, when one of them shot her, or maybe two of them did—right, two different-caliber bullets in her from both sides of the street. Though that they shoot up each other, great, for lowers all our tax rates.” “How do you mean?” “From execution, incarceration, hundreds of thousands of dollars per prisoner for the last one—it's the public that pays. But this poor kid got caught in, is how. Same age as yours around, though actually it was a boy. Yours was what, eight?” “Six.” “Six, my goodness. But the same, correct? Six, sixteen, twenty-six, even thirty-six—who cares, to the parents, if they're good kids and they're yours. If they're the sellers and gunmen though, you want them dead and I'm sure the parents do too, for they're just a plain nuisance, often stealing you blind, shaming your home. And I didn't see this other kid get hit, just after, which was bad enough. What a nice-looking boy. I don't have kids myself but what it must do to you. I'm, as you see, a police officer, no problem with that. I like my job and I've been doing it well for almost ten years. But I know what I'd do to the monsters who did it to my kid if I had one and one ever did. If we caught them. And I'd work my ass off at catching them. I'd, well, they wouldn't live long if it was up to me. Worst beasts there are. And I wouldn't care—I shouldn't be saying this and I'm not trying to give you ideas, but I'd ruin everything I've worked for, in fact ruin my whole life and throw away any chances of getting married soon, which in time I want to do—well, I'd be married, if I had a kid, I'm not one of that set, so that doesn't figure—but to get even and one above with them. I'd probably gun them down—both of them—that's getting ‘one above': two for one, the hyena who drove, as well as the actual killer. Though in something like this you can never get even, never—but right in the station house I'd even do it if they were, and I knew it down to my teeth, the killers of my kid and I felt this was the last or best chance I'd have of getting them anywhere. And in the head, both of them, smack in the gray matter—I'd see to that so they wouldn't live and if they did it'd be as all-out cripples. But with me—I target-shoot twice a week at our armory—there'd be slim chance they'd be anything but dead.” “I understand. I'd probably do that too, for my little one, if I had a gun and knew how to use it and had the chance to. But tell me. This has nothing to do with what you were saying, but you've been straight with me so maybe you know something about this. How would you phone your wife, if you had one, that your kid's just been killed? I haven't done it yet and it's killing me to know how and when and even what words to use and just what's the right thing.” “I'd have to think about it.” “It's okay, I shouldn't have asked.” “No, let me. We've been instructed on this so maybe I'll have for you some guidelines or an even better idea.” The man shuts his eyes, puts his head back and his hand on his forehead, seems to be thinking hard. “Really, it's okay, forget it, I said. I'll find a way how.” “No, it's coming to me. All right, I know,” opening his eyes. “They tell us”—Nat covers his eyes, doesn't want to hear—“to advise you one thing, which is to wait till morning if the murder or car accident where someone's killed is in the nighttime, and not to do it anytime when you're overcome. If you have to do it then, for some reason—like you got to reach her at the airport right away before she flies to Germany or France, and you're way too overcome—then to get someone to do it for you, but no total stranger. A police officer who's a stranger would be okay, but one who identifies himself to her as such. Or if there's a doctor around to do it, and again the identity—‘Hello, I'm Dr. So-and-So at such and such hospital'—this one—even better, because he can explain all the medical things involved in it and also why you're too overcome to tell her the news yourself, for you know she's going to ask why you're not there. Now if it's by phone you're telling her and you're reasonably together with your self and calm, to make sure, by calling close friends and relatives before, that she has a barrage of support like that around her when you call—and this is to mothers and fathers and husbands and wives, if let's say the husband dies, and the like. Well, I don't know what else there could be. Children, about their moms and dads getting killed. Or their sisters and brothers and so on. Fiancés. But I'll tell you also what I'd personally do. Of course my wife, the one I hope to get and will when I get her, might not be like yours. She might be stronger for something like this, maybe even a police officer herself, but then again, maybe yours is a rock.” Takes his hands from his face. “She isn't. She's normal, not hardened. Even if she was, it's her kid, so she'll suffer, just as I'm sure a police officer woman whose kid died and she suddenly learned of it, would suffer, whether she loves it or not.” “Maybe. No matter what, unless she falls apart at everything, which you're not saying she does, and by shaking your head now I don't think you're saying. So I'd say to call, and when she answers, and since she doesn't know how things are she's saying how are things and such with you and the kids, I'd say ‘Honey, hold on to yourself. I'm about to tell you the worst news you'll ever hear. Our daughter's been killed.' What's her name?” “No, that can't be the way.” “What's her name though?” “Who?” “Your daughter.” “Julie, I don't want to say it, but that.” “‘Julie's been shot, killed, murdered, it's a nightmare to me. I'm half insane over it, absolutely out of my mind, hurting like nobody, feeling I want to kill myself. I didn't know how to tell you but I knew you should know soon as I could tell you, so I'm telling you this way. Forgive me a hundred times for it. For telling you. Monsters did it. Monsters in another car on the highway. I'm with the police in the hospital now. I was told not to tell you this way, to sort of do it some way else for you to learn of it, not to tell you when I was so overcome, but I didn't think that the right way to do it.' And I'd do it now. I wouldn't wait. I'd let her know soon as I could as I said in that pitch so she'd start adjusting to it soon as she could too. And that's what I'd also tell her, my reasons for just shoving it onto her like a ton of bricks. Because whatever you're going to say to her and whenever you say it and no matter which way she's going to hear it from you or anyone else, it's going to hurt like hell, so sooner you do it, sooner it's done with. Is anyone there with her, or can there be?” “She's at her parents' place now.” “Even better. They'll take care of her, though they've got their own big loss now, since they probably loved their grandchild too. But she has people who looked after her when she was a girl and I'm sure they'll do their duty and put back their own sadness for the time being to see to her, since hers has got to be so much worse. You're lucky, I mean she is, for that piece of good fortune, though relative, relative, for it couldn't be one more horrible lousier day. So that's the way I'd do it; no other way. But if you think the way the professional crisis experts suggest you do it is better, go ahead. But all those people surrounding her, accumulating where she is, she'd know something was wrong before she was told. And that'd take lots of calls and time and you'd be a wreck by the end of it before you even got up the nerve to tell her. My way, it's rough and maybe even brutal but it's right out, done, and then you start the bandaging and healing process. Then I'd have her parents drive her here, if they still drive and have a car, or a sister or someone—she have a sister or brother around?” “Nowhere near.” “Then a good friend. Or her parents can hire a private car if they're too emotionally worked up over it themselves and have the money, or rent a rented one—for something like this, if it's the private car, you beg, borrow or steal for it, or you give them your credit card number and pay for it yourself. And then you two can go through what you have to, face to face at this hospital even if your little girl by then, Julie, is with the medical examiner ten miles from here. She's not that far away, is she?” “My wife? About three hours by car. Maybe longer because of the trouble in finding this place.” “So. There'd be doctors and nurses and medicines to help if it ever got that bad, which it probably will and should. I say tell it quick and get it out—here, from inside. And with those three to four hours in between your telling her and her getting here, a lot will already have been started in her getting to accept it, though the real crash won't come till she sees you and the deceased. And in it taking place here—in fact, they probably won't remove her to the examiner's till your wife gets here. They definitely want to determine the angle the bullet came in and caliber of it but I'm almost sure, if you ask, they'll hold out till your wife comes; it'd only be right. You don't want her seeing the little girl after she's been examined really bad, which they sometimes have to do. But I was saying that in that too, in it all taking place in the hospital with your wife, you're in, well, not luck but something like it. Just that you're here at the worst time of it, where people who can help, can help you.” “No, I don't think so but thank you.” “No to what?” “To a lot, and maybe yes to some of it too, but I don't want to go into it this moment.” “Boy is this tough. You poor guy,” and pats his shoulder and then leaves his hand there. “We're also told to do this, to make physical contact with pats and holding hands and looking in the eyes, when someone's really emotionally hurt, but that's not why I'm doing it I want you to know. When you do it that way, because you have to, it's bullshit. Am I being too frank?” “No. I'm not sure. Thank you. I think—you're all through with me, aren't you?” “Hey, I only came in here to pee and then we got caught in conversation. Sure, if you had said something important to the crime while we were talking about other things, like a vivid description of the hyenas who did it or you suddenly remembered their license plate number, naturally I would have been interested and reported it back to my superiors.” “Then I'll get out of here, see my older daughter, maybe also see the younger one all cleaned. I've got to sometime.” “Fine. I know what room the other cops took your older girl to, so I'll lead you,” and holds the door open for him, takes him by the arm and they leave.