This Glittering World (8 page)

B
LUE
W
ORLD

B
en’s beard was starting to fill in. It had been two weeks since he’d tossed his razor into the wastebasket, and it was starting to look like a real beard instead of just a patchy mess on his face. He liked the way a beard made him feel. It was the same way his truck made him feel. Unbound. Untamed even.

“Ow,” Sara had said this morning when he’d kissed her. “You need to shave.”

“I’ve stopped,” he said.

“Stopped what?” she asked, pulling away and looking at him, at his sad beard.

“Shaving. I’ve stopped shaving.”

“Oh,” she said, and then, “How long do you plan to grow this beard?”

He hadn’t thought much beyond tossing the razor and its associated irritants (the time it took, the money spent on shaving cream and aftershave, the sore bumps that made his neck feel like a column of fire).

“I guess I’ll grow it until it stops,” he said, suddenly hellbent on a full, thick beard—like Grizzly Adams, like Santa Claus. In his mind, he aged forty years, grew a belly, sported a pair of suspenders and a bow tie. Years passed. His life neared an end.

“Well, I’m not going to kiss you like that,” she said. “It hurts.”

There she went again, ruining everything, holding him and his dreams hostage. And so he did what he always had to do with Sara: change the subject. “I’ve got to bring the truck into the shop for an oil change. Can you give me a ride to school?”

“Listen, Ben. I’ve been thinking we’re going to probably have to sell the truck.”

“What?” he asked.

“Daddy could get us a deal on a minivan, and you could have the Camry. You can’t put a car seat in the truck; it’s not safe.”

The baby.
God, when he thought about himself in his new beard and his truck, he never thought of the baby, the one that was, as they spoke, no bigger than a peapod in Sara’s belly.

“I hate that you do this,” Sara said.

“Do what?”

“Pretend that this isn’t happening.” She was sitting on the couch now, pulling off her winter boots, and she looked more sad and tired than pissed off.

“I’m not …” he started, but she beat him to the punch like she always did.

“Because it is,” she said, her eyes angry and wet. “Happening.”

He hadn’t said the word,
abortion,
but she must have known what he was thinking, because after he’d found her in the bathroom that morning two weeks ago, he’d left her there, gone to the living room, and said to no one in particular but loud enough for her to hear, “We shouldn’t do this.”

She’d come out of the bathroom, raging. “Where were you last night? Where the fuck did you go?”

She’d thrown herself at him, pounding her fists into his chest.

He could still smell the musky scent of Shadi on his hands.

“How did this happen?” he asked her.

She looked at him as if he were an idiot. “This happened because you slept with me. Because you
made love
to me. This happened because you
fucked
me, Ben,” she screamed.

“You’re on the pill,” he said. “You’ve been on the pill for years.”

“We’re
engaged,”
she said and backed away from him as though she were afraid of him. She laughed, the kind of laugh that is verging on hysteria. “We’re in love.”

“We can’t do this,” he said.

“That is not an option,” she had said, her hands on her hips.

“What?”

“I am not killing this baby.”

“Sara,” Ben had started, studying her face, which was bloated and red from crying.

“Where were you last night?” she cried, no longer angry, just broken.

And he thought about telling her the truth. He thought that if he told her the truth, she might actually let him go. Maybe if he told her about Shadi, then she might just set him free. He imagined himself getting in his truck and driving up the road to Shadi’s. He imagined hitching that Airstream to his truck and driving away with her. He could almost feel the air rushing through the open window. Hear the radio. Feel Shadi’s hand as she touched his leg.

And then he thought about cells dividing, about what was taking shape inside of Sara. About the fact that he had set into motion a
life,
and something fell in his chest. Something primitive and scary. He was going to be a father. This was his child. And so he did what he always did. He lied.

“I was at Hippo’s.”

Sara looked at him, waiting, giving him a chance to backtrack, to tell the truth. She waited, expectant.

He thought again of cells dividing; he felt himself dividing. He watched one self walk out the door, turn the key, roll the windows down to the frigid air, and drive. He watched this self disappear into the woods, into the dark canyons of Shadi’s hair and skin. And he watched the other self stay. He felt the baby in his arms, the weight and heft of it. He heard the cries.

“With Hippo?” Sara asked.

And he saw himself, fourteen years old, standing alone at the front door, watching his father leave. Dusty was gone. His mother had retreated into her own world. And now his father was leaving too. He was alone. Crying, as his father’s tires crushed the gravel in the driveway, and he pulled out of their lives, out of this life.
Stay.
How would his life have been different if his father had just stayed?

And so he said what he needed to say.

Yes. I was at Hippo’s.

But now, two weeks later, he thought about that other self, the one driving away, the bearded man in the truck, wondered where he had gone. Wondered if he’d made a terrible mistake. Thanksgiving was tomorrow. Sara’s parents were coming for dinner. They would tell them about the baby then. They had set a date for the wedding after the baby came. They had reserved Hart Prairie Lodge up on the mountain for the reception.

Sara handed him the grocery list. “And get some razors. It looks ridiculous.”

B
en would forget Shadi. He would unremember her. He would lose his memory, drop it like a coin into the snow. He would become an amnesiac. He would work backward, unraveling the moments woven together to make that other picture.

Because there could be only one end.

The day after Sara told him she was pregnant, he went to the trailer when he knew Shadi wouldn’t be there. He’d written his apologies on a fragile piece of paper.
I’m sorry,
the note said in careful cursive.
I have to stay. I have no choice. There’s going to be a baby.
He folded the paper in half and slipped it under the metal door.

Then he drove away from her house, back through the forest, imagining the days in reverse: warm coffee and the scent of her hair, a basket of unripe pears, Ricky’s lonely apartment. Spider Rock, her grandmother’s velvet dress. A turquoise sky. The truck with Ricky’s casket, barreling down a dusty road toward a waiting grave.
The first lie.
The smell of the hospital, the beeping and ticking, and Shadi’s paint-splattered overalls. The snow plow backing up, the snowbank restored. Ricky, still nameless. Bloodied and dying in the snow. Asleep, dreaming next to Sara, as snow falls upward from the ground into that starless sky. November becoming October. Halloween. A keg of beer, a Nixon costume, a silly argument. A girl with a guitar.

He could undo this. He could untangle these threads, the ones the color of sunset unraveling into evening. And then he would begin again.

Now he walked through the aisles at Bashas2019;, checking off everything on Sara’s list, pretending that he was just a man out shopping for dinner with his future in-laws. That all of this was good and right.

Sweet potatoes, russet potatoes, cranberries, green beans. Sour cream, whipped cream, heavy cream. Pumpkin pie filling. Evaporated milk. Stuffing and tangerines.
At the giant freezer, he picked up the largest turkey he could find. Twenty-two pounds, as heavy as a small child in his arms.

He waited in line behind a Navajo woman with her three children. One of them stared at him, clinging to his mother’s legs, his nose crusty with a cold. His cheeks pink and chafed. Ben smiled, the child scowled, and Ben felt scolded.

In the parking lot, he loaded the bags into the bed of his truck. Looking toward the Peaks, he could see clouds thickening, descending. He could smell snow in the air, feel the promise of it when he took a deep breath.

As he got in the cab of the truck, he realized he’d forgotten to get wine. The Shiraz Sara’s mother loved. He ran back into the store, went straight to the beer and wine section, and searched for the bottle with the kangaroo label. When he found it, he grabbed two bottles, went through the express lane, and trotted back to his truck.

He would go back to the house and start to get ready for her parents. He’d promised to clean the bathroom, the kitchen, scrub the floors. The smell of bleach made Sara sick. The smell of everything made her sick. He would do their laundry. He would make everything clean.

As the first flakes of snow tapped at his windshield, he turned the key, revved the engine, and started to back out. He looked in the rearview mirror to make sure there was no one walking behind him and his throat began to ache. Because there, parked in the row behind him, was a bright blue Mustang.

He looked at his watch. Sara would be home from work in twenty minutes. He imagined her finishing up with the last patient of the day, trying to keep her nausea at bay as she administered a measles shot or took a throat culture.

Ben waited for the guy to come out of the store. He couldn’t just drive away. Not when he was this close. He thought about getting out of the car and approaching him. Making up some story about needing a jump. About his battery being dead. He thought about asking him if he knew a kid named Ricky.

He sat in the truck with the engine running for five minutes, then ten, glancing into his rearview mirror every few seconds to make sure the Mustang hadn’t gone anywhere.

He scratched the tag number onto the grocery list with a stub of a pencil he found in the crack of his seat. There had to be a way to track down the owner of the car if he had the plate number. He was getting ready to pull out when he glanced into the mirror one more time and saw the trunk of the Mustang was lifted up. He watched in the rearview mirror. He was sweating, despite the chill. There was an empty shopping cart next to the car. When the trunk lid closed, he gripped the steering wheel tightly and craned his neck to see.

It was a girl, a brown-haired girl in a light blue parka and pink Ugg boots. She got into the Mustang and closed the door. And then the Mustang was pulling out of the lot and zooming down the steep drive onto Humphreys.

Sara would be home in ten minutes, so he called her from his cell phone and left a message on their answering machine.

“Hey, it’s me. The turkeys at Bashas’ were too small. I’m going over to Fry’s to find a bigger one.”

And then he was behind the Mustang, following the girl close behind, the frozen turkey rolling out of its bag and across the bed of the truck as he turned the corner.

T
he Mustang pulled into the parking lot of the video store.

Ben followed. While the girl parked, Ben kept driving slowly, circling, keeping the Mustang in sight. When the girl got out, he pulled into a spot and let the truck idle for a minute. When she disappeared through the electronic doors, he turned the truck off and followed her.

He pretended to peruse the glossy rows of movies. New releases had just been stocked, and he pretended to be absorbed in the description on the case of first one movie and then the next. He watched the girl out of the corner of his eye. She looked about the same age as his students, somewhere between eighteen and twenty-two. She was pretty, with rosy cheeks and wide-set blue eyes.

She finally settled on a romantic comedy, some schmaltzy holiday flick, and Ben grabbed a movie too, following not far behind her.

“It’s under my boyfriend’s name. Is that okay?” she asked the checker.

“Phone number?”

As she rattled off the number, Ben tried to burn the numbers into his mind.

The checker clicked the keys of the computer. “Mark Fitch?” the checker asked without looking at the girl.

“Yeah,” the girl said.

“On South Beaver Street?”

“Yep.” She smiled.

The checker scanned the DVD and placed it on the other side of the security gate. The girl pulled a crumpled five-dollar bill out of her back pocket and handed it to him. And then she was headed out the door.

Ben set the DVD case down and pulled out his keys with his rental card attached. He tapped his foot, repeating the phone number in his head like a song.

“Your credit card is expired on this account. Do you have your new card?”

Ben sighed, and pulled out his wallet.
928-555-0990.

By the time they were finally done and he was outside again, the Mustang was gone. And snow was starting to fall. He pulled out the same piece of paper where he’d scrawled the license plate number and wrote down
Mark Fitch. South Beaver Street. 928-555-0990.

He tried to think what houses were on South Beaver Street, what apartment complexes. If it was close to campus, he was probably some dumbass college kid. Though he might be local if he was staying in town for Thanksgiving. Most of the kids cleared out for the break, heading home to their parents’ for the holiday.

But he had a name and a phone number and part of an address. Now he would just need to be smart about this. He’d ask around first, see if anyone knew him. If the guy lived on South Beaver, he might hang out at the Brewery or at NiMarco’s, the pizza place. If he lived downtown, chances are people would know him. The baristas at Macy’s Coffeehouse, the waitresses at La Bellavia. If Ben knew one thing about people, it’s that they tend to stick to their routines.

Ben knew that Sara was probably starting to freak out. He looked at his phone and saw that she had texted him three times.
Where r u @? Don’t forget the Shiraz. U there?

He pulled into their driveway and felt his stomach knot up again. The pain was sharp. He clutched his side.
Jesus,
he thought.

He unloaded the grocery bags from the truck, leaving them on the porch. The snow was coming down now in huge fluffy flakes. If this kept up, he’d probably be spending most of Thanksgiving morning shoveling the driveway so Sara’s parents could have a place to park. Her father hadn’t wanted them to buy this house because it didn’t have a garage.

He opened the door, and Maude came running up to him.

“Hey, Maude,” he said. “Hey, girl! Sara?” he asked.

She must have decided to take a nap. She was so exhausted after work most days, she went straight to bed for a couple of hours before forcing down some dinner. Lately he’d been eating alone in front of the TV while she slept. She’d get up just as he was starting to get tired. After a handful of saltines and a glass of milk, she’d curl up next to him on the couch, and he’d wait until she was starting to fall asleep again before gently nudging her up off the couch and back into bed.

He poked his head into the bedroom, and she was, indeed, burrowed under the covers. Her face was mostly covered, her hair fanned out across the sheets like corn silk.

He quietly closed the door and went to the kitchen, unloading the groceries into the fridge and cupboards, making a spot on the bottom shelf of the fridge for the turkey. When everything was put away and all of the dirty dishes were loaded into the dishwasher, he pulled the scrap of paper from his back pocket. He figured it would be safer to use his cell phone than his home phone. The home phone would probably show up on caller ID.

He opened the back door to let Maude out and followed behind her. He stood underneath the awning and tapped out the numbers.

“Hello?” a man’s voice said.

“Hi, is this Mark Fitch?” Ben asked, realizing he probably should have come up with a plan first. Thinking maybe he should just hang up.

“Yeah, this is he.”

“Hi, I’m, uh, Detective Bailey from the Flagstaff Police Department.” Shit, what was he doing?

The man was silent on the other end of the line.

Shit, shit, shit.

“Do you drive a blue Ford Mustang?” Ben asked.

“Yeah?”

Ben’s mind raced. “Well, we got a call in with your tag numbers. Someone apparently saw you back into a red Chevy pickup in the Bashas’ parking lot this afternoon and then take off. Were you driving your vehicle this afternoon, sir?” Damn, why did he describe his own truck?

It sounded like the guy was covering the mouthpiece of the phone. He could hear his muffled voice saying “Jessie!” or “Betsy!”

“Who are you talking to?” Sara said. She was standing in the doorway, rubbing her eyes.

Ben clicked his cell phone shut. His head was pounding, his ears were hot. “Work,” he said.

“You don’t have to go in
tonight,
do you?” she whined.

“No. Ned’s covering for me.”

“Good, because my parents will be here at noon tomorrow, and the house is just awful. I tried to pick up, but I got really sick. I threw up twice already. I don’t know how I’m going to cook dinner tomorrow.”

“It’s okay,” Ben said, ushering her back into the house. “I can do it.”

Sara smiled and leaned into him. Then she took his hand and pressed it into her stomach. When she did, his own stomach twisted and he jerked with the pain of it.

Sara looked at him, her eyes narrowing.

“We’ll tell them right after dinner,” she said. “Mom is going to cry.”