5
the next morning, the morning of the day that I found my first dead guy, Trixie asked me, “So what, exactly, was The Backpack Incident?” She was sitting in our kitchen, taking a sip of her coffee.
Trixie lived two doors down and, like me, didn't head into an office every day. I try hard to be interested in what other people do for a living, but when Trixie first told me about running a home-based accounting firm, I kind of glazed over. Any occupation in which the majority of your time is spent filling in lots of forms and adding up columns of numbers is one I want to stay as far away from as possible.
We had regular curbside chats, like the ones I had with Earl, and we were dragging our garbage to the end of the drive two days after I'd decided to teach Sarah a lesson about leaving her keys in the door.
“Hey,” I said.
“How's things?” she said, dropping a recycling box full of newspapers by the edge of the street. She looked smart, even in a pair of ratty jeans and sweatshirt. Trixie's a good-looking woman, late thirties, petite, with dark hair and green eyes, and the first time we introduced ourselves I commented that I couldn't recall hearing the name Trixie since The Honeymooners. It conveyed to me a kind of wholesomeness from another era.
We got talking one day about what we each did for a living, and she asked whether I was taking advantage of all the possible tax deductions for a person who works from home. She gave me a couple of useful, and free, tips. As someone who ran a business from home herself, she seemed to know all the angles.
This day, when she asked me how things were, I guess I didn't respond positively enough. I merely shrugged, so she strolled over. “What's up?”
“I'm sort of in the doghouse,” I said. “Sarah's barely talking to me. It's been a day and a half now.”
“What did you do?” she asked.
“You feel like a coffee?” I asked. “I was just getting ready to work and put on a pot. Unless you're busy.”
Trixie glanced at her watch. “My first client isn't coming by till after lunch, which still gives me time to get into my workin' clothes, so sure, why not.”
While I got out cups for the coffee I told her about hiding Sarah's car, and how things had unraveled from there. Trixie didn't express any real shock. She wasn't a judgmental person. She was open-minded on social issues and tolerant of human frailties. Over earlier cups of coffee, she'd advocated same-sex marriages, defended Bill Clinton's personal behavior, refused to demonize welfare recipients. And she called things as she saw them.
“God, Zack,” she said, shaking her head and reaching for one of the Peek Freans cookies I'd set out on a plate. Sarah'd taught me never to serve right out of the bag. “You're a piece of work. And a control freak. Where do you get off, trying to control everyone else's behavior?”
“Sarah called me an asshole.”
Trixie nodded. “Big surprise there.” She had a bite of a jelly cream. “What do the kids think when you pull a stunt like that?”
That's when I told her about how both of them had suggested that this was a sequel to The Backpack Incident. That was when Trixie asked her question.
“It's kind of embarrassing,” I said. “It's like a sickness with me or something, that I have to take desperate measures to make my point. Usually matters related to personal safety and security. That's the whole reason why I hid Sarah's car. Not to make a fool of her, but to teach—”
“Yeah yeah, I heard all that. So what's up with the backpack thing?”
“When the kids come home from school,” I began, “they walk in the door and drop their stuff wherever they happen to be standing. Jackets, shoes, whatever. They haven't opened the front-hall closet door once since we moved in here. I don't even know if they know it's there. The concept of slipping a coat onto a hanger has eluded them right into their teens.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And their backpacks just get dumped wherever. You come in the front door after the kids come home and there's a good chance, if you're not watching where you're going, you're going to fall over them.”
“No one knows the hell that is your life.”
I smiled. “Gee, is Sarah home? That could be her talking. Anyway, I was yelling at them to take their backpacks upstairs, and for a while there it's like they were actually listening to me, but that just created another problem, because they'd lug their backpacks up to the top of the stairs—and I don't know whether you've ever lifted a high school kid's backpack these days but you'll throw your back out if you try—and they'd leave them there.”
“Where?”
“At the top of the stairs.”
“But that's where you wanted them, right? Upstairs?”
I nodded furiously. “Yes, yes, but not right at the top of the stairs. Okay, picture this. You're carrying a laundry basket or you've got something in your hand you're looking at, and you get to the top of the stairs and generally assume that the way is clear.”
“But it's not.”
“They've left their backpacks right there, in the way, so if you're not paying attention you'll trip on them and break your neck.”
“Okay, so you talked to them about this?”
“Oh yeah. Many times. And they'd always say the same thing. ‘Okay, Dad, we hear you.' In that really tired way kids have of talking. I know you probably told me this but I don't remember—you don't have any kids, right?”
Trixie shook her head.
“So anyway, the next day they'd come home and leave them in the same place again. Sarah nearly killed herself, grabbed onto the railing at the last second to keep from going headlong down the stairs.”
“She got mad.”
“She blew her stack. Took the backpacks and literally threw them down the stairs. I thought that would do it, better than anything I'd ever done. But a couple of weeks later, they both came in after school, ran upstairs, and dropped their backpacks in the same place.”
Trixie nodded slowly. “The last straw.”
“Yeah. I decided it was time to take action.”
Trixie smiled, rolled her eyes. I continued: “They'd both gone into Paul's room. They're not like a lot of brothers and sisters. They fight, but not all that much. They talk to each other, find out what's going on. There's things they talk about, Sarah and I have no idea. So Angie was in Paul's room, and they'd turned on some music in case I decided to put my ear up to the door and listen in.”
“Which you would never do.”
“So I take the two backpacks, and arrange them along the stairs on the way down, as though they'd been knocked by someone who hadn't seen them.” I paused. “And then I went down to the bottom of the stairs, and arranged myself across them.”
“What do you mean, arranged yourself?”
“Like, you know, I'd fallen. I worked my legs up the first four steps or so, lying on my stomach, then put my head down on the carpet at the bottom of the stairs, with my arms stretched out.”
Trixie didn't say anything for a moment. Finally: “You're kidding.”
“No.”
“You didn't spread some ketchup around? Like from the corner of your mouth, or out of your nose?”
“The broadloom is really new,” I said.
“You pretended to be dead.” Trixie wasn't asking a question, just making a statement.
“Well, wounded, anyway. I could have been knocked out. Not necessarily dead. A concussion or something. It's not like I wanted them to assume the worst thing right off the bat.”
“So they came out and found you?”
“Not right away. After about five minutes of lying there, I was getting a bad crick in my neck. I decided I needed to make a sound, a falling sound, so I slapped my hands on the floor as hard as I could. But when we were picking our upgrades for the house, we got the expensive underpad, so it hardly made any noise at all. So I got up, and jumped as hard as I could on the floor, then got back into position as fast as I could.”
I took a breath. “I guess Angie heard it, because
she showed up at the top of the stairs first, and I guess she took the scene in pretty fast, because she screamed, and then Paul showed up behind her, and Angie came down the stairs, and I was doing a pretty good job of not moving, and holding my breath—”
“So you were trying to look dead.”
“And Angie was calling out my name and asking if I was okay, and I guess I had my eyes open just a slit, to see what was going on, and I notice that Paul isn't there, and the first thing I think is, Doesn't he care? His father's broken his neck and he doesn't want to offer me an aspirin or something?”
“Let me guess. He'd gone to make a phone call.”
I nodded. “Two, actually.”
I told Trixie that when Paul reappeared at the top of the stairs, I opened my eyes all the way. Angie nearly screamed, and when she did, Paul almost slipped down the stairs himself. I pulled myself into a sitting position. Angie asked me what had happened, was I okay, and Paul was telling me not to move, an ambulance was on the way.
“An ambulance?” I said. “What the hell did you call an ambulance for?”
“I thought you were dead! Aren't you hurt?”
I shook my head violently. “No no no! I'm fine. Can't you see that I'm fine? I was just trying to teach you guys a lesson about leaving your goddamn backpacks at the top of the stairs. How many times have I told you not to do that?”
“I don't know, Dad,” said Paul. “How many times have we told you not to pretend you've killed yourself?”
“I can't believe you,” said Angie, who was pulling away from me. “You're totally whacked.”
Paul was shaking his head slowly, then stopped suddenly. “Oh, shit.”
“What?” I said.
“I guess I better call back Mom.”
“You called your mother?”
“When I saw you lying there dead, yeah, I thought she might want to know.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said. Who knew that my son was going to act so responsibly, calling 911, getting in touch with Sarah. Kids can let you down in the strangest of ways. “You have to call her back,” I said. “Tell her I'm okay.” And then it hit me. “The ambulance! Call back the ambulance! Tell them not to come.”
Paul started to move, then stopped. He looked very pissed. “I'm not calling the ambulance.”
“What?”
“You call them. You explain it. I've had enough of this bullshit.” He came down the stairs, grabbed his backpack as he went by, stepped over my outstretched legs, and went downstairs to play video games.
“Way to go, Dad,” Angie said, getting up to go into the kitchen.
In the distance I could hear a siren. I jumped up, ran into the kitchen, and dialed Sarah's number. I got one of the other editors on the desk.
“She just flew out of here,” he said. “Her husband was in an accident or something.”
“This is her husband.”
“It's Zack, right? It's Dan. We sat together at the Christmas party? Jeez, how are you? Are you okay? You at the hospital or something?”
“I'm fine. Do you think you could find Sarah, catch her in the parking lot before she heads home?”
“I don't know, she left here a couple of minutes ago and she was really moving, you know?”
I wondered whether Sarah had her cell phone with her. Of course, even if she did, there was no guarantee she had it turned on. I'd talked to her about this in the past. What good is having a cell phone with you if you don't have it on, I told her. If we need to reach you in an emergency, and your phone is down at the bottom of your purse, where you can't hear it even if it is on, well—
There was loud banging at the door. “Hang on, Dan,” I said. “I think that's the ambulance.”
“So somebody else got hurt? One of the kids?”
“Just hang on.” I set down the receiver and ran to the front door, where I saw two uniformed attendants, a man and a woman. They were carrying leather bags and had radios that crackled clipped to their chests. I put on my friendliest smile.
“Hey,” I said. Like maybe they'd dropped by to ask for a donation to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Where was my checkbook?
The woman said, “Hello, sir. We have a report that someone's fallen? Down the stairs?”
I laughed. “That was me. But I'm okay, really.”
The man said, “We should still have a look at you, just the same, make sure that you didn't suffer any injuries.”
What I didn't know until later was that Sarah did, in fact, have her cell phone with her, and was frantically trying to call the house from her car. She'd tried once in the parking lot at the paper, then again on Lakeshore as she headed for the ramp to the expressway. Trying to keep one eye on the road, one eye on the phone, pushing the “send” button, repeatedly getting busy signals, trying again. I'd left the phone off the hook, of course, expecting to get back on the line with Dan.
“No, no, really,” I protested to the ambulance attendants. “I'm okay. I wasn't hurt.”
“The dispatcher said a young man, your son, called to say his father had fallen down the stairs.”
“Not fallen, exactly. More like arranged, I guess you'd say.”
The attendants glanced at each other. The man said, “Perhaps we could have a word with your son.”
“He's downstairs playing video games,” I offered. They exchanged glances again. As if playing video games was not typical behavior from a boy who supposedly had just found his father dead at the bottom of the stairs. Maybe they didn't have kids, couldn't understand.
“You see, I was just goofing around,” I said. “It's about their backpacks. They leave them at the top of the stairs—”
“You tripped on a backpack?” the woman attendant asked.
“No, but I could have. That was the point I was trying to make.”
Angie was watching from the door to the kitchen, smiling while she ate a small bowl of ice cream. The ambulance attendants were finally persuaded that I had not been injured, nor had anyone else at this address. They returned to their vehicle, but not before warning me that if something like this ever happened again, they'd report it to the police and have me charged with mischief or making a fake call to 911 or something along those lines.
I went back to the kitchen and picked up the receiver. “Dan?”
“Yeah?”
“I guess it's too late to catch her. Listen, sorry, really, it's just a big mix-up.” The receiver was back in its cradle only a second before the phone rang. I snatched it up.
“Yeah?”
“Zack! Oh my God! Zack! I've called a hundred times. What's happened?”
“Sarah, everything's okay. Just calm down. Absolutely everything is okay. I'm fine, the kids are fine, everybody's fine.”
“But Paul called, said you'd fallen down the stairs, that you weren't moving—”
“I know, I know, but it was really just a misunderstanding. I was just lying there, that's all.”
“Just lying there?”
“Basically.”
Sarah was quiet at the other end of the line for a moment. “You're telling me there's no emergency whatsoever.”
“That's right!” I tried to be cheerful.
“So I'm getting written up right now for running a red light for no good reason.”
Angie, who wasn't able to hear everything her mother was saying to me but knew from my expression that it wasn't good, whispered, “You want me to ask the ambulance guys to come back in half an hour? You might need them after Mom gets home.”
i told trixie that was the end of my story. She had another cookie and looked at her watch. “I really should get going. I've got to get changed.”
“You look great,” I told her. I waved my hands in front of me, drawing attention to my own jeans and six-year-old souvenir T-shirt from a trip to Walt Disney World when the kids were much younger. “That's the bonus of working from home. It doesn't matter how you look.”
“But you don't have clients coming to the house,” Trixie sa
id. “I do.”
“Hey, thanks for those tax tips. I write off some of the kitchen now, too, in addition to my study, since I make my meals here. And my model kits. If I'm writing sci-fi, I should be able to deduct a model of the Jupiter 2 from Lost in Space, right?”
“Absolutely.” She was on her feet now.
“So what should I do?” I asked her. “To make it right with Sarah?”
“You could start by not acting like such a jerk,” Trixie said. “It's a wonder Sarah didn't give you a spanking.”
I chuckled. “She'd probably be afraid it wouldn't be an appropriate punishment, that I'd like it too much.”
And there was the tiniest twinkle in Trixie's eye.
there was one small part of the story I didn't tell Trixie. After The Backpack Incident, when Sarah got home and showed me her ticket (a fine plus points), we had to go to Mindy's, a grocery store about five minutes from our place, to pick up some things for dinner. She was going to go alone—I think she actually wanted to go alone—but I thought it would be better if I tagged along and attempted to be helpful. Try to smooth things over a little bit. Maybe explain why I did what I did. That my motives were honorable, even if things didn't quite work out the way I'd planned.
Sarah dropped some bananas in the cart's child seat, next to her purse. “You do this kind of thing all the time,” she said. “You're always telling us what to do. Don't leave the stove on, check the batteries on the smoke alarm, don't drink the milk after the expiration date, don't leave the front door unlocked, make sure the car's locked, make sure you put the steak knives in the dishwasher with the points down so no one slits their wrists when they reach in—”
“That's a good rule,” I pointed out. “Remember that time you got cut?”
“Don't overload the circuits, make sure—”
“Okay, okay, but that's all good advice. It's just commonsense safety stuff. I mean, I could have fallen down the stairs, and I could have broken my neck. The fact that I didn't, that's a good thing. It's really the happy ending to this whole mess, if you want to know the truth. Remember how mad you got one day, throwing their backpacks down the stairs? I think the kids learned a valuable lesson today without there having to be an actual tragedy.”