Bird in Hand

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” Charlie said after a while. “Why didn’t you just pull off somewhere when you took that wrong turn? Why in the world would you just keep going?”

  She tried to remember why. Why? She had driven up the East Side of Manhattan and sliced through the park to the West Side, all the way over to the river, and then she had snaked up to the George Washington Bridge. She knew that she was not quite sober—but sober enough to be in control; she felt in control, if she thought about each movement carefully as she did it. Recently she had taken Noah and Annie to the Big Apple Circus, where they’d seen clowns spin plates in the air, keeping them balanced and steady at the end of long poles, and she thought of this image as she drove. Before she knew it, just over the bridge, she had to make a decision. She passed signs with too many letters and numbers; her brain was foggy, and she seemed to have forgotten which way to go, how to choose among all the options. Ordinarily, at night, on the way back from the city, Charlie would have been driving. Now the dashboard clock said 9:41, and she had no idea how to get home.

  In a panic, she veered right with the traffic. Instantly she knew she’d made a mistake. The road was unfamiliar; she was clearly driving away from her sleeping children and quiet town, toward points unknown. She kept driving because she didn’t know how to get off; there didn’t seem to be an exit. She kept driving because she had turned right instead of going straight, and she began to wonder, somewhere in a place that wasn’t rational or even fully conscious, whether this might have happened for a reason. Perhaps there was something out there that she might not otherwise have gotten a chance to see. She was driving at night with two and a half strong martinis in her, and suddenly she began to feel that an unplanned detour might be exactly what she needed.

  It was the first time in a long time she had done something unexpected, something that defied common sense. And maybe, in that brief moment between making a wrong turn and a critical miscalculation, it felt good.

  Not so many years ago, she had been a single girl living with friends from college in a small apartment in the city. Now it was as if that life had happened to someone else. Now she made grocery lists and tyrannosaurus-shaped pancakes and the children’s beds. She kept the house and car running smoothly; she ran the 5K race for a cure, which the Junior League sponsored every spring; she organized the fall harvest bazaar at Noah’s preschool. She hired people to clean the house twice a month, to tend the yard, clear the gutters, paint the sunroom. She took the kids to school, Charlie’s shirts to the dry cleaner, took care of all the myriad details that gave her life, in some vague, intangible way, direction and meaning. In her former life, she had seen herself as one small part of a large and complex organism. There was freedom in that view. She was not responsible for, or to, anyone. Now she was at the center of a complicated universe of her own; she kept the planets spinning.

  But sometimes a small piece of her rebelled against the way her life had evolved. She wondered if maybe she should have tried harder to work out a balance. She knew women who did, who stayed at the magazine and had full-time help and lived in two-bedroom apartments in the city. Sometimes she envied their choices and their freedom, their ability to slide in and out of identities, to be different people at different times of the day. But she hadn’t wanted that life, the stress and conflict of it. She didn’t want the feeling of being yanked in several directions at once. Sometimes she wished she could lead two lives at the same time, or perhaps consecutively—one with children and one without, one in the city and one in the suburbs, one married to Charlie and one … Alison pulled up short. No—Charlie wasn’t part of the dilemma. She would want to be married to him, wouldn’t she, no matter what?

  They arrived home in the yellow-gray light of early morning. Stepping out of the car onto the familiar driveway felt strange and wrong, the way it feels, Alison thought, when you know you are dreaming and imagine that you could wake yourself at any time. Her head was clear, now, and she had a faint ache behind her eyes. She hadn’t really drunk enough to be hungover. The officer they’d spoken with at the station said that from what he understood about the accident, Alison didn’t appear to have been at fault. “We don’t normally charge people for not getting out of the way quick enough,” he’d said, looking down at the report and stroking his black mustache. “If that is, in fact, what happened. We’ll have to wait for the full report to find out.”

  As Charlie and Alison reached the back door, Robin pushed it open. “I heard you drive up,” she said, ushering them inside. She gave Alison a quick, gingerly hug and exclaimed over the bandage on her wrist.

  “It’s nothing,” Alison said. “It’ll be fine in a few days.”

  “Well, thank goodness. I’m sure it could’ve been a lot worse.”

  The compassion in Robin’s voice made tears spring to Alison’s eyes. She bit her lip and turned away.

  “It’s been a long night. We need to get this girl to bed,” Charlie said in what struck Alison as an actor-y voice. “We appreciate your coming over, Robin.”

  “Of course. Anytime,” she said as she turned the door handle, stepped outside. “What are neighbors for?”

  The kitchen was gloomy and shadowed, but they didn’t turn on any lights. A hazy glow from the motion-sensor floodlight in the backyard washed over the countertops. On the fridge the day before, Alison had posted a drawing of Annie’s with a teacher’s prompt—“I am happy when”—above Annie’s response: “Mommy and Daddy are hugging me.” In the drawing Annie was a blond-ringleted smiley face wearing a triangular pink dress, with two jellyfishlike giants looming over her, misshapen red hearts rising from their skulls. Noah was out of the picture.

  As Alison gazed blankly at the drawing, Charlie came up behind her. “She wanted me to sing lullabies tonight,” he said. “ ‘Bye Baby Bunting’ and ‘Mockingbird.’ I couldn’t remember all the words, but she knew every one of them.”

  “It’s funny that she wanted baby songs.”

  “She was missing Mommy.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “No,” he said. “She didn’t want to hurt my feelings. But I could tell.”

  Alison knew what Charlie was doing—chiding her for being gone (though he’d encouraged it), suggesting that if she’d stayed home none of this would have happened, and letting her know that she was needed and loved, all at the same time. They often spoke in this kind of code, by way of discussing the children. Anecdotes were crafted with an instructive purpose, like Bible stories, and meant to be interpreted on several levels. At an elemental level, these stories were a way of connecting when they felt most alienated from each other. There was always something to say about Annie and Noah. And they both knew that they were the only two people in the world who could sustain this degree of minute interest in them.

  Alison nodded slowly. “Well, I’m going upstairs.”

  “I’ll lock up,” he said. “Be there in a minute.”

  When Charlie opened the bedroom door she pretended to be asleep. In the darkness she could hear every sound of his undressing: the muffled clink of his buckle and the whoosh of his belt as he pulled it off, the soft buzz as he unzipped his pants. He hopped on one foot to take off a sock. He drew in his breath and mumbled, “Fuck,” and she had to stop herself from sitting up to ask what was the matter. It might be something physical, like hitting his shin. Then again, it might be something else.

  The bed groaned slightly as he eased onto his side. He sat there for a moment, then glanced over at her. “Alison,” he said. It wasn’t quite a whisper. She stayed still. He pulled down the covers and slid in.

  Even from the other side of the bed, she could feel him. He emanated heat like some large animal, a dog or a bear. When he was asleep she thought of him like that: as a big slumbering mammal. But he wasn’t asleep now. She could hear his shallow breathing. “Al,” he said, and touched her arm.

  A marriage hinges on these moments. Does she answer, or does she lie still?
All Alison could feel was an overwhelming dread. She did not want to know what he had to say. She remained quiet; the moment passed, and she drifted into sleep.

  part two

  Confusion is perfect sight and perfect mystery at the same time.

  —JANE SMILEY, The Age of Grief

  Chapter One

  February 2009

  “Welcome back, Mr. Downing. Will you be paying in cash today?”

  Charlie was stunned: he’d only been to this small Midtown hotel four or five times in the past two months, but the desk clerk not only recognized him; but he also remembered his alias and preferred form of payment. “Uh—yes. Thanks.” He pulled out his wallet and extracted four fifties, laid them on the counter.

  The clerk took the crisp bills with a deep nod. “Room 1121, as usual?”

  It was the cheapest room in the hotel—as cramped and dark as a closet—but it suited their needs. “Yes.”

  The clerk handed Charlie two key cards. “Have a nice day, sir.”

  Slipping the cards in his back pocket, Charlie glanced toward the revolving door in the foyer. No sign of her yet. She’d said she might be a little late; she was meeting with her agent several blocks away to discuss details of her upcoming book party. He didn’t mind; he was happy enough to have a moment. To anticipate. He settled into a boxlike white leather chair and closed his eyes.

  Charlie didn’t know how, exactly, but for the time being he seemed to have figured out how to make it all work. The key was concentration. As long as he was fully engaged in the activity of the moment—working on an account, meeting Claire at the hotel, coming home to see his family—he was amazed to find that he could pull it off.

  He felt a strange kinship with those men you see on Dateline who have hidden lives that their families only learn about after they die. He’d always wondered how they did it, how they found the time and summoned the energy to deceive so many people. Now he knew. It didn’t take much energy, just sheer will. You had to compartmentalize each discrete part. It was surprising, when you thought about it, how little people really knew about one anothers’ lives anyway, and how easy it was to lie.

  Charlie had never thought of himself as a particularly good liar; his father had always told him he was terrible at it, transparent as glass. Now it occurred to him that this was psychological bullying, typical of the old man. His father told him he was a bad liar so he wouldn’t lie. But he wasn’t actually a bad liar. As it turned out, he seemed to have a knack for it.

  Of course, Charlie had always had a remarkable ability to shuffle his thoughts so as to avoid certain subjects altogether. It was a skill he’d acquired long ago, way back in his Kansas childhood, and it had served him well. It was what enabled him to excel in high school and then in college while his mother was undergoing treatment for cancer and his father was driving the family business into the ground. It was what propelled him to graduate magna cum laude and with a fellowship to Cambridge, as far away from the mess of his family as he could manage.

  Charlie thought about his parents’ bland insistence that his father’s company was fine, until the day they announced that it was going under. Of course he’d suspected there was trouble—they all did. But nobody had said anything about it. And then, when his mother got cancer for the second time, though Charlie knew about the chemo and the radiation and the lymph nodes, it was months before anyone acknowledged how serious it was. She was dying by the time Charlie’s sister called and urged him home.

  Charlie felt a hand on his shoulder and opened his eyes. Claire was leaning over him, her auburn hair brushing his face. She kissed him on the lips.

  “Were you dreaming about me?” she whispered.

  “Of course,” he said. “I only ever dream about you.”

  Chapter Two

  The morning after the book party, Ben was yanked into consciousness by the ringing of the phone.

  “You get it. Probably your mother,” Claire groaned, turning over into her pillow and pulling the covers over her head. His mother, it was true, had an irritating habit of calling early in the morning. “I just assumed you’d be up by now,” she’d chirp with surprise when they complained. “The morning’s half over.”

  “Hello,” Ben said flatly into the receiver, not bothering to check caller ID.

  “Ben, it’s Charlie.”

  “Oh, hey.” Ben shook his head to clear it. “What’s up?”

  “Well, I’m—I’m—aah … ”

  Something in his voice made Ben sit up. He pushed Claire’s shoulder, and she rolled over and looked at him, sleepy-eyed. “What is it?” he said into the phone.

  “Alison was in an accident last night coming home from the party,” Charlie said.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Ben said.

  “What? What?” Claire demanded.

  “Alison was in a car accident.”

  “Oh my God,” she gasped.

  “She’s all right,” Charlie said.

  “She’s okay,” Ben reported.

  “Is she … ?” Claire sat up, pressing against him. “Wait, I’ll get another phone.” She jumped up and ran into the living room. “Hi, Charlie, I’m here,” she said, her voice loud and breathless on the line.

  “She’s all right,” Charlie repeated. “It’s just … somebody—in the other car … there was a boy … ”

  “Oh, no,” Claire said, getting it before Ben did.

  “We just got a call. As it turned out … he didn’t make it,” Charlie said.

  “Oh my God.”

  “My God,” Ben said, thinking even in that moment how inadequate their words were—how inadequate any words would be.

  “Charlie,” Claire said, her voice strangely calm. “Oh my God. Charlie. What are we going to do?”

  Her response was odd—the “we” too familiar, Ben thought. Why did she always have to go inserting herself into the center of other people’s dramas? For a moment no one said a word. Ben could hear them all breathing, as if they were trying to figure out what to say next. There was so much to say—there were so many questions—but it seemed both too soon and vaguely prurient to ask.

  “We want to help,” Ben said finally. “Do you need—what do you need?”

  “I don’t know. Thank you. Nothing.”

  “Is—was—Alison at fault?” Claire asked suddenly.

  “Umm—no. Not exactly. She’s being charged with DWI. We hope that’s the extent of it. We’re waiting for the police report.”

  Ben lay back against his pillow, shaping it with his left hand into a hard pallet under his neck, holding the phone with his right. How many martinis had Alison had last night? One—or two—and was there another just before she left? “Does she need a lawyer?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “Yep.”

  “Hey. My college roommate,” Ben said, leaping into the idea with relief. “This is what he does. Practices in Ridgewood. Let me call him.”

  “Okay. I appreciate it.”

  “Good, good,” Ben said, glancing at the clock, calculating what time Paul Ryan might be in his office, trying to remember where he’d stashed his number.

  These things happened to people, Ben knew. They happened all the time. Every morning, over his cup of coffee, he read about scenarios far worse in the Metro section. Ex-husbands bent on revenge, half a dozen kids killed in a fire, construction workers plummeting to their deaths, carloads of teenagers in head-on collisions. But they didn’t happen to him or to anyone he knew. And now Alison had been in an accident, and a child was dead. It didn’t seem possible.

  “She’s at home now?”

  “She’s asleep. Took an Ambien. Two, in fact,” Charlie said. Then he blurted, “I should’ve gone to the party. I knew she didn’t want to go alone.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Claire said. “It was raining, wasn’t it,” as if the rain were to blame. “I’m. So. Sorry, Charlie,” she breathed.

  “We’re both sorry,” Ben said with annoyance, acutely aware in that instan
t that Claire’s empathy had shut him out.

  And with a jolt he realized that this feeling—separated from Claire, by her choice—wasn’t unfamiliar. An almost imperceptible rift had developed between them, he thought, since her miscarriage several months ago—he wanted to try again and she didn’t, he was sure and she wasn’t. Claire had always been, by nature, somewhat moody and unpredictable, but after she lost the baby she was alternately withdrawn and overly solicitous. She often seemed to have something on her mind, but when he asked, she said she was simply tired, or thinking about a scene in her book. Ben had let these vague denials suffice, afraid of confirming what he suspected: she was becoming emotionally detached. She was pulling away.

  But he told himself he was being silly. They were both caught up in their work; that was all. Truth be told, Ben had been so preoccupied with a project at his architectural design firm that he’d had little time to think about much else. Sloane Howard had gotten a new commission, a big one, in Boston, right on the harbor, and Ben was working hard to meet both the client’s mercurial needs and the arcane structural codes and limitations of downtown Boston. He wanted to create a structure that would put his small boutique firm on the map.

  Sloane Howard made most of its money designing second and third homes for the very rich—homes that the next owner would likely as not tear down in pursuit of his own grandiose vision, a “bash and build” trend that Sloane Howard benefited from as much as it decried. But Ben, wooed to Sloane Howard from a larger firm as a junior partner a year ago, had greater aspirations. So when the chance came to bid on this ambitious, high-budget arts complex, with its large and small performance spaces, restaurants, offices, and conference center, Ben didn’t hesitate.