“I knew it,” she said, looking smug. She took a pack of cigarettes from the bedside drawer and lit one. “You care more about what the neighbors think than about what’s happening to me.”
“I know what’s happening to you. All I have to do is look at you.”
She tucked her hair behind her ears and tipped her chin up, as if she didn’t care. “What are you going to punish me with?” she asked. “No more birthdays? That’s super. Then Rowan gets punished, too.”
“She’s already being punished,” Webster argued.
“Was she embarrassed by her mommy today?”
“You bet she was. She knows when you’re drinking. She pulls away from you. I shudder to think what’s going on when I’m not here.”
“You ‘shudder to think.’ Jesus, Webster, when did you turn into such an asshole?”
“I think you should go into a rehab program.”
“Who made you king?” she asked, standing. “And not that AA shit again. The meetings make me sad. I have nothing in common with those people. Besides, you exaggerate my drinking, like you exaggerate everything. Does Rowan look hungry or unhappy or dirty to you? You think I don’t love her as much as you do?”
“I think you love Rowan as much as I do. You just love drinking more.”
“I don’t.”
“Sheila, stop. Just stop.”
The defeat in his voice made her bow her head.
“Can’t we just get through the night?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. “ ‘One day at a time,’ right?”
They had one good month followed by a bad month. Then they had three good weeks followed by a horrific week. During the bad weeks, Webster began repeating a single phrase over and over, like a tune he couldn’t get out of his head: My family needs to be rescued. It galled him that he could prevent heart attacks, minimize injuries, and reverse overdoses when he couldn’t suture the simple lacerations in his home life.
Just opening the door after work made Webster anxious. He might find Rowan, tired and sullen, on the sofa watching TV, with Sheila asleep in the bedroom. Webster had to fix it. Once he found Sheila cooking with a half-empty bottle of wine beside the stove. “One for the pot, one for the cook,” she said, smiling, as if she’d forgotten all that had gone before.
“Where’s Rowan?” he asked in a panic.
“I sent her outside. She’s making a snowman.”
Webster ran down the stairs. He had to fix it.
Webster made Sheila promise she would never drink and drive. Twice she forgot to pick Rowan up, and the owner of the day-care center had to call Webster at work, the message put through to his radio. Go get your daughter.
Webster searched the house, inside and out, again and again. One morning, he found a white plastic bag in the ice-cream shop’s trash that contained several dozen airplane-sized bottles of vodka and whiskey. He closed his eyes. To have gotten all those bottles would have required Sheila to make any number of stops at different liquor stores so as not to draw attention to herself. He wondered if Rowan had been along on those trips.
Webster did everything he knew how to do, followed every procedure in the book, but still he was afraid that his patient—their marriage—would flatline.
One night in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Webster arrived home from work and saw that Rowan was asleep in the crib they’d tucked under an eave. A Christmas tree took up all the remaining space. They’d had a good Christmas together, Webster taking pleasure in watching his daughter’s face when she woke to the sight of presents. Webster’s only difficulty had been finding a present for Sheila. In the beginning, all he wanted to do was give her presents. Now he felt worn out, his imagination dulled. Anything romantic or pretty felt false. He settled on a Crock-Pot, which Sheila had asked for. The present depressed Webster.
They needed a bigger apartment, and they couldn’t wait much longer. At least he didn’t have to worry about waking his daughter when he came in at night. Rowan had turned out to be an excellent sleeper.
Sheila, from the bedroom, called his name.
“Be right in,” he said.
She came to the door of the bedroom. She had on a pair of black thigh-high stockings with a matching lacy bra and panties. Her stomach was perfectly flat. How had she done that?
“Wow,” he said. “To what do I owe this?”
“Come on in and see,” she said in a coquettish voice.
He took off his clothes in front of the washer and dryer and had one of the fastest showers of his life. He dove into bed with his wife. No smell of cigarettes. No whiff of alcohol. Webster began to relax.
Sheila lay on top of him and stretched his arms wide. “I love you, Mr. Webster,” she said, “and I want you to always remember that.” She bent down for a kiss.
She released his hands, and he ran them up and down the back of her body, a wonderful sensation. She kissed him again and rose up while he admired the lacy purchases. He grabbed her and twisted her so that she was lying in the crook of his arm, and he was able to examine her face. Their eyes met, and he felt that each was saying a hundred words to the other, all the sorrys and double sorrys, but in a language unknown to either of them. He told her he loved her, and she kissed him hard, igniting the kind of competitive lovemaking they’d had in the old days. Webster felt anguish and lust in equal measure. Anguish for all that had been lost and lust for Sheila’s body, which had never failed to excite him. He knew that each was trying to break the other, and that in this contest neither of them would win. He wanted Sheila. He wanted her forever. Most of all, he wanted everything to be different from how it was.
Sheila held herself back, though he could see that it was taking all of her will. When the moment came, they looked nowhere but at each other. When they fell back, they were laughing.
Webster, for a week and another week, lived his life.
The tones came in at one forty-five in the afternoon. Webster took the call. Burrows glanced up from his winning hand.
“Ten-fifty,” Webster said. “Two vehicles. Route 222, north of town.”
“Four minutes, twenty seconds,” Burrows said without even needing to think about it. He bolted for the Bullet, Webster right behind him.
“Asleep at the wheel,” Burrows said when they were under way. “Wanna take the bet?”
Webster thought. One forty-five in the afternoon. No traffic. No weather. Could be a drunk, but unlikely. Could be a cardiac, more unlikely.
“Too easy,” Webster said as he set off all the bells and whistles. He stepped on the gas. “Could be a deer.”
“I was about to win seven bucks off you,” Burrows said. He smoothed the top of his crew cut.
“So you think.”
“You had nothing,” Burrows said.
“You actually have to play the hand to win,” Webster reminded him.
Burrows gave him the finger. “We it?” he asked. “Or are we backup?”
“We’re it for now. Their medics are at a fire.”
“A guy speeding to the scene? Volunteer firefighter?”
“Could be,” Webster said.
“Head on?” Burrows asked.
“Sounded like it.”
“Oh, jeez.”
They sped past the old jalousie porch. He took a sharp turn onto 222.
“How far up?” Burrows asked.
“Not sure.”
Webster hated 222. All hills and winding curves, the route was dangerous. It was hard to go fast when you couldn’t see more than fifty feet ahead of you.
He stood on the brakes when he spotted the flashing lights. A green and gold state police car, its doors open, blocked his view.
But not Burrows’s. “Shit,” the medic said, opening the door. He grabbed the med box and a backboard and ran.
It was then that Webster saw the Buick.
His chest ignited. He couldn’t get out of the rig fast enough.
He ran to the car, saw Sheila in the front seat, Burr
ows already treating her. Webster opened the door to the backseat. Where was Rowan? Day care? He tried to think. Had Sheila left her off with his mother? What was Sheila doing on 222 anyway?
A state cop stood in front of him. “Unconscious woman in driver’s seat of Buick,” he reported. “Toddler thrown thirty feet. Other driver, male, swerved at the last minute. Pinned in truck. We’re trying to get him out now.”
“I need someone over here,” a policewoman called, and Webster saw a bundle on the ground. He sprinted.
“Fastened into the car seat,” the policewoman said, “but not belted into the car. The toddler went through an open window. She’s alive.”
Webster got on all fours, covering Rowan. Under the blanket, his daughter was still inside her car seat.
“Rowan, baby,” Webster said.
The part of him that still worked as a medic noted the contusions, the facial lacerations, a possible broken wrist from the way it lay. He thought his daughter was in shock. He didn’t like the glassy stare. Blood covered her face.
“I need help here!” Webster cried.
“Must have hit at an angle that protected her head,” the female cop said. “Like a helmet.”
“It’s my daughter!” Webster yelled again.
The cop, who’d been squatting, stood and whistled. Another cop ran toward them.
“A second rig coming?” she asked.
“Less than a minute out,” the male cop said.
“Where’s the other medic?”
“Treating the victim in the Buick.”
“Critical?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Get him over here, then call for backup and more backup. This medic right here is out of service.”
Burrows pulled Webster up, his knees soaked from the wet mulch. “She’s my patient now,” Burrows said when he could see Webster’s eyes. “You let me do the care. You can hold her hand.”
Webster stepped back.
“Get the pediatric c-collar and splints,” he told a second medic, who ran as fast as he could to the rig and back. Webster saw a third rig pull in.
He watched as Burrows put a splint on Rowan’s arm. He heard his daughter wail, a beautiful sound, a beautiful sound. But the sight of his daughter on a shortboard made Webster want to vomit.
The what-ifs were punching the side of his head. What if the guy hadn’t swerved? What if Sheila had hit a tree? What if Rowan, flying, had hit a tree?
Burrows put a hand on his shoulder. “Your daughter’s going to be OK,” he said. “Broken wrist. Broken leg. She landed on her right side. I’ve got a firefighter to drive the rig. Sit in back with me. Once again, I’m treating.”
When Webster helped Burrows slide Rowan onto the stretcher in the rig, he thought that the earth had tilted on its axis.
“Your wife,” Burrows said when they were seated in the back.
“My wife.”
“She’s going to be OK.”
“Alcohol?”
“Two-six.”
Webster clenched his teeth and nodded. “She could have killed Rowan,” he said.
“But she didn’t. You want to know the injuries?”
Webster said nothing.
“Broken collarbone, lacerations on the forehead and chest. Multiple contusions. Maybe some damage to the spleen.”
In other words, thought Webster, she would be fine.
“She was sobbing,” Burrows said.
“Fuck her,” Webster said.
At the hospital, after being examined in the ER, Rowan was transferred to a double room in the pediatric wing. Webster stayed with his daughter every minute. He gently gave her a sponge bath to wipe the blood away. He fed her from the trays the nurses provided. He watched the monitors. He read to her when she was awake. During the forty-three hours Webster was in Rowan’s room, he slept for only six of them. He never went to visit Sheila.
On the morning of the third day, Webster’s mother came to collect Rowan and Webster. They would stay at her place for a few days. His mother never said a word about Sheila.
Webster’s mother had brought a newly purchased car seat and a blanket in which Webster wrapped his daughter. He sat in back and fastened them both in. Stuffed animals from the nurses filled the rest of the backseat, and Rowan giggled when Webster began to name them. Burrows followed in the cruiser. A probie would pick him up.
At the house, Webster gave Rowan to his mother. He knew there was a treat waiting for his daughter on the kitchen table. He waited on the porch.
“You’re out of service for a week,” Burrows said when he arrived.
“OK.”
“They’re going to release Sheila tomorrow morning. A cruiser will come to get her to take her to the station, where they’ll charge her.”
“The guy in the truck?”
“Fractured his hip and his knee. He might get out next week. But the knee is bad, and he’ll need surgery and months of rehab. Not a volunteer firefighter, by the way.”
“What are the charges?”
“Reckless endangerment, driving under the influence, vehicular assault, who knows.”
“She’ll do time?”
“For sure. Second accident. Now she’s hurt a guy.”
Webster looked away.
“The cops won’t show up for her until ten o’clock,” Burrows said carefully.
Webster nodded again.
“This is coming straight from Nye.”
Webster was surprised. “Who knew?”
“Who knew?” Burrows said.
The next morning, Webster entered Sheila’s room at eight o’clock. She was dressed in her old leather jacket. Burrows must have warned her. She looked grotesque, her lip split, forehead and cheeks bandaged. Rowan had a broken leg and wrist, unlike Sheila, who could walk.
“You almost killed three people,” he said. He stood ten feet from her, his fists in his pockets.
She bent her head. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“You almost killed Rowan.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“I’ll go to rehab,” she promised.
“You’ll go to jail.” He paused. “I’m supposed to take you to the police station now.”
She looked up. “But you’re not.”
“No.”
Voltage crossed the distance between Sheila and Webster. A current composed of anger and remorse and something else—the last flicker of attraction.
Webster pulled the cruiser around to the front of the hospital. Mary wheeled Sheila down. Nye, Burrows, and Mary making it happen. Webster would owe Nye forever.
In the cruiser, Webster asked Sheila what she had been doing on 222.
“I don’t remember,” she said.
His hands clenched and unclenched on the wheel. He couldn’t keep his jaw from jutting forward. He was furious with her for what she’d done, for making him do what he had to do now.
He stopped a mile short of his parents’ house. He faced Sheila, but she didn’t look up.
“I’m leaving the keys in the car,” he said. “There’s fifteen hundred dollars in the glove compartment. Keep driving until you’re past New York. Then ditch the cruiser at a twenty-four-hour convenience stop. Find a bus and get on it and go as far as you can. Don’t come back. You come back, you’ll be arrested.”
Sheila began to cry.
“And you’ll go to jail.”
He waited. He thought she might ask to see her daughter. He was prepared to refuse her. She never asked.
Webster stepped out of the cruiser onto the road. He shut the door, aware that he was shutting the door on a life. He walked forward, his shoulders hunched, as if waiting for a bullet.
He was a thousand feet away when he heard the cruiser start up. He listened as the engine moved toward him.
A wild hope flared, a skinny flame. He imagined Sheila stopping. He would tell her that he loved her. Something miraculous would happen, and the three
of them could be a family again.
Sheila drew abreast of him, hesitated, and then drove on.
He watched the back bumper of the cruiser until he could no longer see it.
Webster collapsed onto the dead grass at the side of the road. He wept, and he didn’t care who saw him.
2009
After Rowan leaves for school and Webster washes the birthday breakfast dishes, he climbs the narrow staircase, the house his own now since the death of his parents. Both had been under hospice care in the front room, Webster with his fully loaded belt, helpless in the face of the cancers that ravaged each of them. Prostate for his father; lung for his mother. She’d never smoked a day in her life. Even at the end, or especially at the end, watching his father take his last breaths, each followed by seconds of nothing, Webster, with his training, felt panic. It was all about the morphine and the hospice nurses and sitting in the dim light then, his father in the hospital bed in the front room, his hand light and cool in Webster’s. It was not Webster’s first experience with death by any means, but it rocked him nevertheless. Traveled inside and screwed around with his innards and his brain so that by the time he brought ten-year-old Rowan in to say good-bye to her grandfather, Webster felt the fear and responsibility of fatherhood stopping up his chest. He was it. Nothing between him and the morphine drip at the end. Sheila already gone eight years.
Rowan is seventeen now.
Webster lies down on his daughter’s bed.
Overhead, Rowan has painted a mural of all the New England ski areas she’s visited. The mountains are rendered with intricate trails, a dry blue sky behind them, the distances among the mountains shortened by curving roads dotted with Jeep Cherokees and Subarus and Rowan’s Toyota, all of them with ski racks on top. Sunday River, Stowe, Okemo, Loon, Killington, Stratton, Bromley, Bretton Woods, and even Wachusett Mountain to the southeast.
After his parents died, Webster renovated his old bedroom for Rowan, building a closet and bookshelves and a desk with drawers. Rowan still sleeps on the old oak bed Webster once had, but gone is the Bruins blanket, replaced now with a patchwork quilt Rowan’s grandmother made, the quilt and half the top sheet now on the floor. Webster, an inexpert bed maker himself, has never been able to teach Rowan the proper way to do hers. Webster sometimes finds the blanket drawn up to the pillows with what looks like one strong swipe.