Interstate (22 page)

that? And then driven off the shoulder—if they had gone on—and taken the next exit, reported the incident to the state police perhaps. Maybe I would have remembered better what they looked like if they hadn't shot at us and what happened to Julie from it. I would have looked for a trooper station, at least, or probably just stopped at a gas station to find out where one was and gone to it and then gone home another route to reduce the chances of coming up against them again on the same Interstate. There are a few alternative routes, though longer, but so what? They're probably more traveled, possibly because there are no tolls on them and there's cheaper gas because there are more gas stations, and a wider variety of restaurants, and probably also because of their greater activity they're more patrolled. And then, once home, done all the things I said. Fed the bird and cleaned his cage. Turned the water heater dial to Normal, house heat to sixty-eight. Got the mail, put out the garbage. Had a drink and started the kids' dinner. Opened the living room curtains if there was still daylight, maybe taken a shower. But by then, having come home the long way and stopping to report the incident to the state police or at least phoned them about it and so forth—probably driving slower and more cautiously after what happened with those men, and forced to drive more slowly because I'd be on slower roads and some of the alternative routes have stoplights—it would have been dark. Sat down with the kids at dinner, had a glass of wine while they had juice, read the mail or glanced at it and the front pages of the newspapers, and so on. The automatic light switch. Gathered laundry from around the house and out of the bag of dirty clothes they brought back from New York and started a wash. Called Lee to tell her what happened that afternoon—just to speak to her and maybe as part of that conversation, what happened, or maybe I wouldn't say anything till she got home, not wanting to alarm her or send her to sleep that night with bad thoughts. And maybe because of what happened on the road that day or because I was still keyed up from the long drive, or a combo of both, another scotch after dinner, maybe a third or just more wine. Cleared the table with the kids' help, washed the dishes, got the kids in pajamas and washed up for bed, the story, from a book or my head, kisses, hugs and final words before they went to sleep. Next day, school for them and work for me. I'd set the table for them the night before, make their school lunches the night before too, put the washed laundry in the dryer. Day after next we'd all go to the train station to pick Lee up. Maybe during the drive home I'd tell her. I certainly by then wouldn't have forgotten about it or thought it too small to talk about. In a few years Julie would be fifteen, he thought, five years after that, twenty, and so on. Twenty-five, thirty. Twenty-six, thirty-one, thirty-two, what's the difference? Life isn't divided by fives. They used to celebrate the kids' half birthdays but stopped when she was killed. Just, was never brought up again by Margo, who started it when she was around six. “What're you going to get me for my half birthday?” Margo and Julie would say and I'd say “I don't believe in half birthdays,” but would always get them something but nothing expensive or big. She would have done well in grade school, I bet, gone to a good college, probably on scholarship. She was that smart and there probably would have been a financial need. Like Margo, tops in her grade-school classes in reading and math—probably grad school after. Become a scientist of some sort as I predicted she would when she was four, or a doctor or scholar or done something with the piano—performing, composing. She was that good and precocious at it too, her piano teachers said. Married, worked, had kids, continued to work or even while she was having kids, all of that. She would have been a great daughter, I just know it, he thought, and I would have been a better father, though her dying so young and no doubt the way she died and that I was there and perhaps could have done something to prevent it, though if she'd died slowly or quickly of a disease, let's say, and at any age, it might have been the same, killed off a lot of it for me. I'd pass her room or go into it for something, suddenly go crazy. Go crazy sometimes when I was mowing the backyard grass, for instance, and looked up at what had been her bedroom window on the second floor; was tired, taking a break of a minute or so from mowing, looked around just to do something and happened to catch her window, one time remembered her looking out of it at me and waving and rapping the glass; depression, would just break down and cry. Sometimes in her room, fall across her old bed and bang the mattress and walls with my fists, burrow my face into the pillow, kick the head-or footboard, wouldn't speak to anyone for hours after that even when they pleaded for me to, would go to the linen closet for her old comforter to lie under, would get drunk that night, usually, and eventually pass out and maybe stay that way for days, drunk, depressed, out of it, doing odd things, and it still happens occasionally but doesn't stay for days. Anything reminding me of her can start it off. When I noticed a pimple on my nose in the bathroom mirror while I was shaving I suddenly heard her saying what she said once when I was in the bathroom brushing my hair: “I know I'm going to have ugly pimples and lots of scars from it when I grow up; it's in our blood,” for I had a row of acne scars on each cheek and at the corners of my jaw. Saw on TV her favorite actress on a kids' show from a few years back presenting an award—like that. Suddenly couldn't make it, would crash. Someone else had to turn the TV off; my wife took the shaving brush out of my hand. Became overprotective of Margo; that's one place where I meant I could have been a better father. When we crossed the street sometimes, even when she was twelve and thirteen: “Hold my hand, I said
hold my hand
, a car can come out of nowhere and knock you down. Do you know how I'd feel if that happened and you were really hurt, do you know what I'd go through? I'd kill myself; with Julie I almost did, but both of you, I'd be dead.” She'd be at his funeral most likely—odd how thoughts connect, unintentionally, subconsciously, whatever goes on down deep or just below the brim—but anyway, attend with her husband and kids and maybe her in-laws. We had her about twenty years after most men father their last child and her in-laws would probably be a lot younger than I. She'd cry, say we were very tight her entire life, were so much alike temperamentally, intellectually, physically, our long legs, slim frames, joined eyebrows, big lips and dimple in the chin. That I read or told her and Margo stories almost every night and how that gave her a love of literature or contributed to it, things like that or one would hope. Went out of my way for them on special holidays and their birthdays, even celebrated their half birthdays after Margo made the day up, and then might explain what they are. Was a wonderful grandfather, devoted, delighted, indulgent, extravagant to a fault, and so forth. Maybe mention the pimple incident and how it ended where she never got them or at most only a few and no scars. Nah, people don't speak about such things at funerals in front of guests, but it might be a lighter one than usual since she could preface her remarks by saying “He had a weird sense of humor and irreverent and idiosyncratic view of life and no feeling for religion or any particular philosophy or belief and a cavalier acceptance of his own death. ‘What will be will be be will be be be and so on,' he used to say. And ‘The only things I'll miss are your mom and an occasional hot H and H plain bagel from the Broadway place where they make it and you two kids, and maybe some other things.'” How overprotective I was of their doing things like crossing the street when they were kids: Maybe she could say “Maybe we weren't ever hit by cars because he had overprotected us so much, but who could ever know?” “Taught us to ride a bike, dive and swim and swing a bat and was always kissing and hugging us, our heads and hands. There were some bad things too, when I hated him for an hour or two to overnight or at least till I fell asleep, but these were outweighed by the good.” He looks at the car and passenger's smiling and making a motion with his hand for him to roll his window down. Why, he thinks, something wrong? Looks at his door and one by Margo right in back of him. Everything seems okay, both flush with the frame and locked. “Margo, yours I know, but Julie, your door closed tight and locked?—I can't see from here, the seat,” patting the one next to him and she says yes. Instrument panel hasn't lit up that anything's wrong. Maybe one of his tires is low—doesn't feel it or that he's got a flat. His seatbelt or some other thing could be hanging out of one of their doors—that's happened. No, both seatbelts on his side are all right, he sees by checking his and quickly swiveling around to Margo. Julie's he can't see and it'd be too complicated to get her to check, though it could still be something hanging outside—coat sleeve, doll leg—well, last one not out of his—but like that. Passenger's still looking at him and when he sees him looking back he motions to roll his window down. What is it, he mouths, something wrong? “No, nothing, I only want to say something to you.” Years later, but certainly not before the first or second year after it'd happened, since during that time he didn't speak to anyone about it, he said to someone “So why the fuck did I roll my window down? Guy had said nothing was wrong so why didn't I ignore him and go on or drop back or do anything to get away from them? I knew I didn't like their faces. They weren't nice faces. And this feeling about their faces didn't come from after what happened that day either. They were sort of hard-boiled almost mean and kind of sly faces, especially the passenger's. No, his was definitely mean and sly and much worse. It was disgusting, evil, thoroughly repulsive. Putrid. I didn't read into his face well then because I wasn't really looking at first and my feeling about people when I first met or saw them then was, well, everybody's all right till they prove or someone else has proven it otherwise, but I can see it now. Evil also because he was trying to pass off that mean, sly, repulsive, putrid face as kind and helpful and nice, your gentlemanly next-door car passenger, and for a few seconds, after I'd had this much better instinctive bad reaction to or at least was skeptical about his face, I fell for it. The driver's face was just go-along-with-anything-no-matter-how-evil-or-wrong, and look what that pig went along with. Die, you dirty bastard, die, die, and I hope by now he is dead from a knife or gun somehow and not just brain-damaged let's say from some guy's beating or clubbing, for what pain's that if you don't know it? But even better, some other evil bastard slowly and painfully clubbing his head and face at whatever prison he probably ended up in, till it killed him. The passenger was hopeless, bent or geared for the kill from the outset—something—for mayhem, rottenness, destruction, the game, intent upon it, which sounds fancy that ‘intent upon' and ‘mayhem' and ‘outset' and ‘geared' and ‘bent' and so forth, or maybe that's all of them, but that's what he was. But the driver could have stopped him or just stopped it. He had control over the wheel. Unless the passenger took the gun off me and put it on him, or first put it on him and then me, or had two guns, one for him and other for me, and ordered him to stay close to our car, which he never would have done. They were buddies, for Christ's sake, not that anything like friendship or that sort of thing would have had any hold on him. But he still wouldn't have pulled a gun on the driver, for to do it means he might have to use it and if he did where would that have left the car? Off the road, smashed into one of those median barriers or a bus or truck on the other side. But I'm losing it, I'm losing it here. What I was saying was that the driver could have gone on, dropped back, done anything to pull his pal away from alongside us. So to me—nah, what's in it to say that one was as bad as the other, et cetera. One killed, one could have dropped back or charged forward, either could have done something not to kill my kid, neither did. Life's slime, they can't be seen inside of or explained. But when the passenger asked me to roll my window down, to get back to before, I sensed something was wrong with his asking, for everything seemed okay with the car and us. Yet I still rolled it down—you figure it. Actually, I thought I'd maybe misinterpreted what he'd said that nothing was wrong and he only wanted to speak to me, and thought maybe he's saying something's wrong but nothing that important now but what I'd definitely want to know about for later. A brake light not working, for instance. Well, that I'd want to know about right now, though if one works maybe it's not so immediately bad if the other doesn't, but anyway it wouldn't be something you'd signal or want to speak to a guy on the road for, is it? or maybe I'm wrong. But something—I just don't know now what. Back directional signal not working or just that I didn't signal when I changed lanes. Or better, as an example, that my exhaust pipe was hanging by a thread or one of my hubcaps was ready to come off—those would be things to know about right away. My mistake was an honest one, I'm saying, though where's that get me today? Sly and slippery as they both looked, passenger more than driver, to be very honest I was thinking more of the safety of my kids and driveability of my car and also what it might cost if something like a hubcap flew off and got lost or the exhaust pipe hit the ground and smashed. And how else do you find out if your brake light and back directional signal light or one of those other things isn't working—forget that I wasn't signaling, for I always do—except through someone behind you on the road who sees it or when you take your car in for a tune-up or service and with the oil change they give you a twenty-point checkup as part of it as they often do. Or if you think to check the brake lights and so forth yourself because you're taking a long trip—halfway across the country to Des Moines or whatever's halfway across, which I of course wasn't doing—or up to Canada as we've done. For those trips, to Nova Scotia and so forth, I always give the car a thorough check-through if I haven't taken it in for a lube job recently, or even get a tune-up if it's around that time for one or a few thousand miles before, and they do it. So, I thought this guy might know something I didn't about my car and should find out, and rolled my window down. I never should have, I don't know what I should have, but that for sure isn't what I should have done. Which of course goes so much without saying, that it's one of the dumbest things to have said, even if the same thing that happened to us could have happened if I hadn't rolled the window down.” The passenger already has his window down and says “Hiya, Harry,” and he says “I'm not Harry, you must have the wrong person, is that all it was?” slowing down and looking at him and the road back and forth, and starts rolling the window up, thinking it was a mistake and this guy could mean trouble. Their car slowed down with his, maybe doing fifty now, and the guy's smiling and says “You're not Harry the hairy monster, or is it Hairy the harried monster? Is ‘harried' a word?—tell me, I'm a little thick,” and he says, window half rolled up, “I think it is and I'm neither of those guys.” The girls are laughing; must have heard some of it about Harry and hairy and thought it funny. “Quiet down, kids,” he says and the man yells to them “Yeah, kids, cool it, pipe down, do what your hairy Uncle Harry tells you to or you're in deep hot water with me.” “I'm their father, not their uncle, and if you don't mind, please don't threaten them. And really, it's dangerous talking to another car while driving and staying so close like this, so I'll see ya, okay?” and speeds up even if he thinks they'll speed up with him, but he has to try it, and maybe they won't or maybe they'll shoot past him, the guy giving him the bird as he passes, and be on their way. They stick with him and he has his hand on the handle about to roll the window rest of the way up when the guy yells out, their cars just a few inches apart, “Oh it is now, Harry, oh is it, dangerous you say, talking to not a person but to another car, right? Well, my fucking Harry or hairy, and you are hairy, very faggot-fucking hairy, it's as simple as all this, so