He yawned. His face to her through the darkness in the car seemed stretched out and sagging. He was seventy-one. He’d been driving for two hours, since she’d acquiesced and they’d stopped for a burger. She hadn’t wanted to stop: she wanted to get there, to be there, to face whatever it was. To help, if she could. Nan was going to be there. She admired Nan, but Nan wasn’t the warmest person. Now it would be worse.

  “You want me to drive?” she asked.

  He nodded. The road held the dark, and there was no sign of an exit. He yawned again, loudly.

  “I guess you can pull over,” she said.

  Immediately he pulled the car to the side of the interstate. He was spent. She opened her door.

  “No, no,” he lied. “I’ll get out.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. She climbed from the car—it was a kind of recreation vehicle, a Montero they were leasing. It was white and rode high and you weren’t supposed to take the curves and turns too tightly. She shut the door while he struggled to slide over. The night air felt cold and still. Stars were out, pointing at her. There was no moon. It was alarming how big it all felt, those stars, the vast empty land that stretched out forever into darkness. The immensity seemed to crush against her. She caught her breath. It was all so big. This enormous present. She tried to breathe deeply in it, to be as big as it was, but it was crushing. She walked around the front of the car. He had tried to open the door for her but it hung there only ajar and she had to pull it open and climb in behind the wheel and pull it shut. She was sixty-three. God she was old.

  “You all right?” he said. His hand quivered as he patted her shoulder.

  “I’m fine.” She felt all the darkness spilling into the car. She pulled the door shut. Soon he’d be asleep, and she’d have only the glow of the dashboard for company. She reached back for the discarded lap desk and found her penlight. She clicked it on and put it in her mouth, shifted the car into drive and pulled from the side of the road.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  She pulled the pen from her mouth and held it between two fingers like a cigarette as she managed the wheel. “I’m driving,” she said.

  “We’re going to have to charge you,” the detective said. Between them was a telephone and a clock radio and a full pitcher of iced water. Each of their paper cups was empty. “I don’t see what choice we have.”

  Warner looked at him. It was nearly midnight, but his face remained crisp. They’d had a long talk, mostly about his anger—the detective had named it rage, but Warner was certain he’d made it clear that it wasn’t that—and a little bit about when and where and who with. It still hadn’t felt like an interrogation. It had seemed like a conversation.

  “Will there be bail?”

  The detective opened his hands to the question. He turned to the two-way mirror. “Henry,” he said. “What do you think you’ll ask for in bail?” He cupped his ear, as if sometimes he could hear Henry and sometimes he couldn’t. Warner thought he heard something. “He’ll come in in a minute,” the detective said. “Look.” He leaned back and put his hands behind his head like a pillow. “The facts are against you. If you want to confess and if your wife survives, you won’t be looking at too much. What do you say?”

  “I didn’t do it. I can’t and I won’t confess to what I didn’t do.”

  The detective shook his head. He smiled, almost imperceptibly. “You did it. Who the heck else would do it?” He sat up straight and poured himself a glass of water. His starched white collar was knotted by a paisley tie, against the pinstripes of his gray suit. “That place didn’t have a dime in it and there wasn’t anybody else in the vicinity,” he said. “And your alibi is you were driving around with the kids asleep in the back? Even if you can’t see it yet, this is a domestic.”

  Warner poured himself some of the icy water. “I’ll need a lawyer for the arraignment?”

  “That would be wise. You want to make the call now?”

  “I want my call. Yes.”

  The detective pushed him the telephone. For a moment, he couldn’t think of a phone number, then it came to him. They’d said he could call whenever he wanted. It had been a long time. He didn’t recognize the voice that answered the phone. “Mr. Lutz,” the next voice bubbled, oddly cheerful, “she’s still critical. Nothing’s changed. We expect to know more in the morning. I guess you know her mother brought the kids in. She tolerated that without incident.”

  “What?”

  “It went as well as could be expected.”

  “She brought the kids in?” Warner nearly roared.

  “People do that sometimes,” the nurse said calmly, “with head trauma. They think familiar voices will have an effect. That kind of thing. But Ms. Kendall has biomedical issues. It’s not just a question of her waking up.”

  “How’d the kids do?”

  “Like I said, it went as well as could be expected. Thank you for calling, Mr. Lutz. You can call again whenever you like.” She hung up. Evidently it had finally dawned on her that she’d said too much.

  His hand was shaking. His head hurt. Reluctantly he gave up the phone. There were spots in his eyes. Another guy stood before him, young, younger even than him. “Would you rise, please,” he said. From a weird distance the detective was watching. They all seemed suddenly leery of him, unsure of how’d he react. He just wanted to get it over with. He held out his hands, palms up, the wrists touching as if he were a supplicant. Wasn’t this how it was done? “Warner Nathan Lutz,” the attorney said. His ears felt filled with a kind of foam, and he could not quite hear everything. His face was flushed, his hands numb. He didn’t want to look at them. He kept nodding his head, trying to speed them on, trying to assure them that he heard what he was absolutely unable to discern. Was he imagining that they were smiling? He felt too dutiful, too obliging. The attorney opened the door, and the detective’s hand held an arm as they led him out into a carpeted corridor, back down the hall to where he’d come in. If only he could just step out. He had a million questions. Megan. The children. They only wanted him to snap, that’s why they were so damn professional. To reveal himself. He had nothing to reveal. His fingertips were pressed into ink and then filled white forms. A light flashed in his face. In nine hours they’d tell him how much it would cost to get out of here. He took the appointed attorney. He thanked them for it. He didn’t yet have to give up what he was wearing. They took the belt from his long coat.

  “You going to be okay?” the detective asked. “You look a little pale.”

  He nodded, his lips closed together.

  “Tomorrow,” the detective said.

  Down another corridor, doors buzzing shut behind him, their mesh windows glaring at the back of his head as he walked with a guy in dark blue on either arm. Cinder block painted thickly white. You could still see its pores. A Christmas calendar on the wall of an office where he gave up more of himself.

  “Motherfucker,” someone screamed across the concrete.

  TAKE CARE THAT NO ONE HATES YOU JUSTLY was one of the signs coming slowly to him in the office window, glued like bumper stickers against the wired glass. The gentleman handing out and taking in seemed to be grinning idiotically. He was an idiot.

  Inside, deep inside, shut in.

  Would they turn out the light?

  YOU WILL MEET GOD.

  FAITH DOESN’T PANIC.

  They wouldn’t turn out the light. The light wasn’t even on.

  At three—she was still awake, lying there in the living-room bed, the phone at her ear—there was a light, cautious knocking at the town-house door. She climbed from the bed and pulled on her robe. Through the peephole she could barely recognize them, their faces engulfed in shadow. She unchained the door, her heart shrinking. She hadn’t expected this. She supposed she should have, but she hadn’t known. He hadn’t told her.

  “Alan,” she said. “Ruth. Come on in.” She turned from them and reached for light switches along the hall and inside the kitchen, getting as many as she could. In the living room she couldn’t help but feel embarrassed by the bed.

  Ruth came in quickly, shivering. She stared at the bed, looked away. Alan was still coming in, shutting the door.

  “How’s Megan?” Ruth asked.

  “Oh. Well. They don’t know. I think she’s going to be fine, but with head injuries they have to wait.” She was clutching her thin gold necklace as she talked, strange that she’d forgotten to take it off before bed.

  “Warner’s at the hospital?”

  Now Alan stood huffing beside Ruth, catching his breath as if they’d walked the last few miles.

  “Well.” Nan felt for her necklace. “He’s…he’s answering some questions up at the police station.”

  “Oh,” Ruth said.

  “What?” Alan said.

  Nan remembered he had trouble hearing. “The police are asking him some questions,” she said more clearly. He nodded.

  Ruth stood there, looking about the living room.

  “Well.” Nan gripped at her necklace. “You all are welcome to stay here. I wouldn’t mind getting back to the hospital. The kids are asleep. Finally. They are so cute. I think they’ve changed even since Christmas.” She awkwardly patted the bed. “This has fresh sheets. Warner did them before he left. And I haven’t really slept in them. You must be tired from your drive. You drove, right?”

  Alan nodded. Ruth still stood there, her mouth hanging slightly open.

  “I’ll just get ready, then.” She gathered her clothes and fled to the powder room, shut the door quickly behind her. It was very small, and she tripped over the step stool planted at the sink. She closed the toilet seat and set her clothes on it, wrestled out of her robe and nightgown. She tried not to hear whether they were talking. She didn’t want to hear them stop when she pushed her way out from the tiny bathroom. She didn’t want to make the situation any more uncomfortable than it already was. She ran the water in the sink. She struggled into her slacks and pullover, glanced at the big mirror, shut off the water, and opened the door. They were standing just as she had left them, looking mutely at each other, their coats still on.

  “Okay,” she said gaily, as if calling to a waiting companion. “Okay.” She saw her keys and purse on the pass-through and snatched them up, reached into the hall closet and pulled out her overcoat and shouldered into it. Should she tell them she’d phone them or that she’d see them soon? They were looking at her. Ruth couldn’t even talk, and she was a talker. “Take care,” Nan said, and slid herself from the town house.

  Well, she thought, that was perfectly awful. Her head seemed to depressurize, and her jaw unclenched. She walked slowly to the rental car, breathing as deeply as she could.

  At the hospital, despite the thick carpeting and the newness, the blank halls had the sickly familiar hollow quality she recalled too well from her mother’s death. She’d died in the middle of the night. She’d died after being rescued by ambulance and operated on by skilled surgeons and riding smoothly into recovery. She’d died after Nan had sat with her for days and then finally flown back to Atlanta, assured by her mother’s doctor that she was through the worst, only to be called the next night and be told she was dead. She’d died, but she was in her eighties. Megan was in her thirties.

  The ICU nurse, chipper as ever, hailed her with a “good morning.” As Nan understood it, they worked twelves at this particular hospital, on the eights, they said. It must have been a cost-cutting measure, but she didn’t want to say anything. You weren’t supposed to aggravate the nurses. You were supposed to co-opt them. She hadn’t told them yet that she was the head of fiscal planning for a national HMO. She’d been checking up on Megan’s doctors. Everybody she’d called liked them, liked the facility.

  She stood at the foot of the bed and looked at her daughter. A long fluorescent tube above the headboard was lit, green curtains were drawn at the large windows. She couldn’t help but look a little green. Her eyes seemed to be blackening, although she’d been hit in the back of the head. The respirator was taped securely to her mouth. Her thin arms lay extended at her sides, two IV lines pumping into the back of one hand, a tube in her nose. Her heart rate seemed slow, steady, her blood pressure a bit low. Nan didn’t know much about medicine, but from experience she knew enough.

  “No change?” she said.

  “No, ma’am.”

  Her daughter was attached to so many monitors and lines that Nan was afraid to touch her, those soft always slightly flushed cheeks. Nan’s hand moved toward her face.

  “May I?” she asked.

  “Of course,” said the nurse.

  She’d first arrived at change of shift and hadn’t even been allowed into the room. When she came with the children she’d been occupied with holding them and letting them look. Now she stroked her girl’s cheek with the backs of two fingers, then touched her with two fingertips. That sweetness, the supple skin.

  “Mom’s here,” she said, touching her. “Get better, sweetie.”

  She reached and stroked the other cheek, so one side wouldn’t feel neglected.

  “Can she hear me yet?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so, ma’am. But you should still talk to her.”

  “The kids are asleep,” she said softly. “Ruth and Alan are down. You get some rest.” She bent and kissed her on one cheek, right above the tape, then walked around the bed and kissed the other cheek.

  A green chair sat in a corner. Maybe she shouldn’t have said that thing about Ruth and Alan. She didn’t want to upset her. Her signs stayed steady. Nan couldn’t bring herself to sit in the green chair.

  “I think I’ll get a cup of coffee,” she said.

  “We’ll be here,” said the nurse.

  Ruth had sensed someone waking, but when she opened her eyes it was still black. Daniel was squalling from behind his door upstairs. She thumped up the steps, opened the door, flicked on the light. He screamed at her. She took him up. He let her hold him, yowling but folding into her, clutching at her. She felt worn out. He shrieked, pushed away from her, looked beyond her through the bright light to the dark door, probably wondering where Mommy was, where Daddy was. She rocked him. Against her shoulder a knot lifted in his stomach. His mouth opened, letting it out over her shoulder onto the carpet. She didn’t stop holding him. Her nightgown when he clutched her again pressed damply against her back. When she tried to set him down, he screamed. She carried him from the room and down the dark stairs. In the kitchen the light was bright, and he let her set him on the white floor. She showed him his bowl, and he cooed at it. She showed him the orange box, and he cooed again. She poured, mixed, stirred, and took him to his chair, switching the lights on as she fought her way around furniture and luggage. She set him in his chair, buckled him, clicked in the tray. The bowl between them, she lifted the blue spoon. He swallowed. She handed him the spoon. He looked at her as he ate. He swiped at her face with the spoon. She said his name. She offered him her nose. He took it and squeezed. Ow, she said. But she kept giving it to him, taking it back, giving it to him. He finished the bowl. He held the spoon and bit on it hard. She wiped his face with a clean damp towel. The bed made sounds. He saw the huge mound the body under the covers made and turned back to her bewildered.

  By six-thirty Daniel was asleep and Sophie was beginning to stir. Ruth tried to count up the time she herself had slept, but it didn’t even add to one hour, and she had to be at the station by nine. Warner didn’t have any clothes, according to the officer she’d talked to, and he probably wanted a suit for the arraignment. Alan still slept. She wondered if it all might have been easier without him, yet she needed him to watch the kids while she was gone. He wouldn’t be up to it, but she had to.

  “Good morning, Sophie,” she said to the girl, her eyes not quite fully open. “It’s Grandma. We came for a visit.”

  “Where’s Mommy?” Sophie yawned, tried to open her eyes, kept them shut. “Where’s Granny Nan?”

  “Mommy’s still…” Ruth stopped. She didn’t know what Sophie knew.

  “At the hospital?” Sophie opened her eyes.

  “Yes. Granny Nan’s with her.”

  “Daddy’s answering questions?”

  “Yes.”

  She started to whimper. “I want to see Mommy.”

  Ruth held her. She was so thin, it was creepy. “Come on downstairs and I’ll make you breakfast,” she said.

  Sophie held her hand as they walked down the stairs. “Is today a school day?”

  It was Tuesday. It had to be. She felt a little behind the curve. She couldn’t remember their rourine. At least Sophie could talk! And she had to get Alan up. She had to get going.

  “We’ll see,” she said. “Is it still oatmeal? Do you want to help me fix it?”

  “Sure.” Sophie trailed her into the kitchen. Ruth found the long canister of oatmeal and placed it on the floor. Sophie scooped it into a bowl, Ruth added water, and then closed it in the microwave. In two minutes, it was done. It wasn’t quite seven. She had directions to the station, not twenty minutes away. She had time.

  “Can we watch television?” Sophie said. “I’m allowed to watch a hour a day and it’s always in the morning. See how the TV is pointed to the table.”

  Ruth peered through the pass-through. “I see,” she said. She set the table, following Sophie’s instructions for the sugar and cinnamon and a glass of milk. Sophie came and sat down, and Ruth switched the television on with the remote.

  “Do you know what channel?” she asked.

  “It’s on the sticker on the back. We want PBS.”

  She turned over the remote. The numbers and letters were so small she couldn’t make them out.

  “Daddy!” Sophie squealed.

  Ruth practically dropped the remote. When she looked up, she could see him quite clearly, stepping from a police car. “Ohhh,” she said. She rushed to the television and smacked at the power button. In the bed beside her, Alan gave a soft moan, then resumed snoring.

 

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