“Are you sure you didn’t dream that?” Katie said, rolling the tape tighter and tighter in her palm.
“You always think I dreamed things that were real. They came when we were at that meet after Halloween, the one far away. We didn’t get back in time to empty out my cubby. The Parthenon got ruined.”
“Oh, Drew, yes,” Katie said. “That was rotten.” Drew’s prizewinning sugar-cube Parthenon—the same kind she’d made when she was in fourth grade more than a quarter century ago. Like his sister, he did everything with precision, until his hands were hard with glue.
The entire drive home after the meet, she and Eric kept promising they’d make it back in time. We’ll rescue the Parthenon, kiddo! Eric said, pounding the gas.
But by the time they got home, the remediation workers had thrown it away, dumped it in a bin out behind the school.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she said now. “We all felt really bad about it.”
Drew didn’t say anything, just looked back up at the window, the sticky streak where the tape had been.
“Drew,” she said, looking at his digital clock, “where’s Devon?”
“School,” he said. “Mrs. Chu came and got her. She said you needed to sleep and to let you.”
“Drew,” she said, rolling the tape in her hand until it was fine as wire, “go watch TV. Watch anything you want. Mom has to work.”
It was as if her body were moving on its own, pure muscle memory.
Later, she would wonder why she didn’t even hesitate.
Standing over the sink, she tore every bit of the tape off her fingers, where it stuck, glue-thick, to her nails. The sound of her own breaths like an animal.
The garbage disposal hummed and grinded and then she wondered if it would be enough. Would the tape, like potato peels, celery string, grip and line the pipes, stay there forever?
Devon, you ok?
Yes, she texted back.
Have u heard from yr dad?
Dont want to talk abt dad
I’m coming to get you
Mom, no. I want to be here.
Everything will be ok, D
Ok mom
It was all adrenaline, blood. Breathe in, breathe out.
Back downstairs, turning on her laptop, nearly shaking it to life.
Eric had taken the car to the shop—which day had that been? Was it a tune-up? A cranking sound, the alternator again? There were always car problems, both their Fords gasping past a hundred thousand miles, countless out-of-state meets, the daily sojourns to and from gym, school, booster meetings.
She couldn’t recall seeing his car the day they learned about Ryan. Katie had driven them all to practice in her old warhorse, Eric decamping to a nearby diner with his laptop.
All she could remember was his car was in the shop the day of Ryan’s funeral, and when she came home after, she’d found Eric in the garage, the car returned.
And the garage—hadn’t it smelled of something? Solvent, or aerosol.
Or was it paint?
She tried to log on to their credit-card sites, but she didn’t know the passwords. Eric paid those bills.
She didn’t know anything.
Click-clicking, palm wet and sticky, she tried to open his e-mail.
Incorrect password.
It had been Elite-D, for years. The only password they ever used, but now it didn’t work.
One by one, she yanked open all the warping plywood drawers of the desk, paper wafting. Booster minutes, work orders, credit-card bills, mortgage statements, past-dues. One drawer glided free, landing on the floor, releasing something.
It fell to the carpet, tented there.
A creased Father’s Day card from years before, an illustration of a card deck on the cover:
I was dealt to be your daughter.
You were dealt to be my dad.
No matter how the game turns out,
You’re the best hand I ever had.
Bottom drawer, a fat stack of receipts—gym dues, meet fees, furnace maintenance, last week’s dinner at the Wooden Nickel.
She sat down at the swivel chair, breathing. Then she bent down to pick up the greeting card, her foot hitting something: the shredder bin under the desk.
She dragged the bin toward her and overturned it, knocking the cross-cut shredder onto the carpet. Over and over, she plunged her hands through the confettied shards, nicking her knuckles once, twice, until she found it: a pink paper corner, the staple trapped between the shredder blades: Briggins’ Collision.
It wasn’t a place she knew, not the Firestone they usually went to.
Briggins’ Collision.
Reardon.
Reardon, which was forty-seven miles away.
It took her a long time to free the pink paper from the keen blades of the shredder, but she did.
Quarter panel $400 +, another shard read. Cash.
She placed it in the center of the desk, bent her shoulders forward. As if her body had lost its bones, that’s how it felt. One too many shocks to her shocked system, she could no longer tense, no longer charge forward, no longer do anything. Her body was sinking back into itself like a slime-thick snail. Hiding.
Seventeen years of knowing him—the particular softness of the inside of his wrists, the way he whistled whenever he walked into a bank, the precise choreography of his fingers when he wanted her to turn over in bed.
Devon, do you think your father might have done something?
I don’t know what he did. Do you?
None of this, she said to herself, again and again, was Eric. This was not Eric.
Except there was this: He would always do anything for her, wouldn’t he? For Devon.
Trampolines, second mortgages, booster president, Gwen, the new equipment, the pit, the righteous e-mails he wrote to unfair judges but never sent, shouting down a heckler in the stands and again in the parking lot.
And yet sometimes he still seemed surprised by the power and weight of feelings she could stir in him, the anger when she was criticized, the awe when she performed.
I didn’t hear him, Lacey had said, but Devon kept saying, Dad, Dad, don’t cry, don’t.
And: What made that kid think he had any right?
So many things you never think you’ll do until you do them.
She stared into the shredder bin, the pink accordion snares of the receipt in her hands. If someone taped them together, they could still figure it all out, couldn’t they? And surely Briggins’ Collision had another copy, the original. And signs on the car, telltale clues, faint ridges that spoke of new paint. Patches, like the surface of an orange peel, like the time they’d had their bumper repaired.
Everything was there, if someone wanted to look.
She picked up the bin and thrust it under her arm, carried it to the sink and lit a kitchen match, watching the pink tatters burn. After, she turned on the faucet, the ashes sinking down the drain.
She thought about the piece of Scotch tape, the paint chips on it. She should have burned it too. There might be microscopic pieces left in the drain. You could never hide everything.
Lying on the bed, the lights off, the ceiling fan burring softly, she tried to make the pieces fit together.
(Could you recall the details of a random night in your family life? she wondered, as if there were a you to hear it.)
Time passed, hollowed out, and she tried to do something akin to meditation, self-hypnosis, a trance like at slumber parties as a kid. That night, the night Ryan died, everyone was tired and frantic. Everyone was always tired and frantic. Lacey’s birthday invitation had threatened Pedicures, pottery painting, and petits fours! and Katie remembered hunting for wrapping paper, worrying over the gift—a desk lamp that looked like a gummy bear, a pair of glitter bracelets—because Gwen’s daughter didn’t want for anything, as long as Gwen wanted it too.
Devon, exhausted from the Flip into Spring Invitational, her face with that kind of numb glaze, could barely tie her tenni
s shoes.
I’m gonna walk, she said. I don’t need a ride. It’s not that far.
Okay, but call us when you’re ready to leave. It’ll be dark.
And Eric, most of his sleep lost that week getting Devon to practice by six a.m., was hunched over his laptop, headphones on, dark pouches under his eyes, old coffee on one side of him and a warming liter of diet soda on the other.
Katie had taken Drew to the mall for rock salt, right? And run into Kirsten Siefert in the parking lot, on her way to Lacey’s.
In the backseat, barely visible behind the raffia and cellophane, her daughter Jordan held a colossal spa birthday basket suited for a Beverly Hills grand dame.
I hope the party goes long. Greg’s taking me to Randello’s for dinner, Kirsten had whispered in Katie’s ear, her hair stiff with spray, an energy on her. But you’ve seen the way he eats. We’ll be home by nine. Eight if he starts ordering Jack and Coke.
At home, she’d lost an hour or two helping Drew with his science project, the shrimp eggs and the salt, salvaging a two-liter from a neighbor’s recycling bin, slicing the top off to serve as a hatchery, filling it with salt water. Standing on a kitchen chair, Drew sprinkled the shrimp eggs—glossy little beads the size of pinheads—inside.
Did Devon call? Eric had asked, vague tang of beer on his breath.
Right. He’d had a beer at dinner, and another while he watched, standing at the kitchen counter, the Junior Olympics National Invitational on one of the ESPNs. He’d drunk it guiltily, greedily, looking tired, all the adrenaline from the meet, from Devon’s win, from everything.
Or was he thinking of Devon and Ryan? Was he thinking of them constantly since he’d found out?
I thought she’d want me to pick her up by now, he’d said, watching Katie mop the briny water from the counter, the kitchen floor, the dining-room table, even the back of Drew’s neck.
They have to sit for three days, Mom, Drew had said. To see how many die.
She told him to put the hatchery in the basement or the garage, or it’d get knocked over and she’d be cleaning up salt water for days.
Then she began gathering laundry, handwashing Devon’s competition leotard in the sink.
But where was Eric? The TV on, everyone’s computer humming. The blip of cell phones. Everyone in a different corner. He must have put Drew to bed. She didn’t remember that.
There was a whole pocket of the evening she couldn’t be sure Eric had been there at all.
The next time she looked at her watch it was nearly eleven, and she ran down the basement stairs to throw a clot of crusted dishrags in the washer, the final load.
And she’d finally heard the door from the garage slam, heard Devon pounding up the stairs, the shower turn on. She’d knocked on her bedroom door at one point. Said good night.
Night, Mom. Night.
She and Eric often didn’t go to bed at the same time. They almost never did.
Then, the part she remembered, two a.m., a tunnel of sleep and Eric reaching over, pressing against the small of her back, his fingers digging into the base of her spine, then climbing under her T-shirt, urgent and insistent.
Her demon lover.
What had he just done?
She felt her stomach turn.
I promise im ok. Really, mom.
Katie sat on the edge of her bed, phone in hand. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock in the morning and she was already so tired she couldn’t imagine standing, or putting on clothes.
I’ll get you after last period. DO NOT leave with anyone else.
Ok.
“This is Mrs. Knox. I’m calling to make a special request. Devon’s father—he’s on medication. Back pain.” It was so easy to lie. “He’s not supposed to be driving, but he’s very stubborn.”
“Sounds like my husband,” the school secretary said with a sigh.
“If he shows up, I don’t want him to leave with Devon.”
“Mr. Knox? Really?”
“He just doesn’t seem to be able to take it easy,” Katie said, forcing a wry tone. “It’s strong stuff he’s on. And he just can’t be trusted right now.”
“Of course, Mrs. Knox.”
“He’s not himself.”
IV
But I sometimes wonder, to this day, if courage is just another word for desperation.
—Nadia Comaneci, Letters to a Young Gymnast
Chapter Seventeen
She didn’t hear the car pull up the driveway.
She was on her hands and knees in the garage, looking for more paint chips, for glass.
All she could see was the long trail of rock salt from Drew’s first, failed science project.
The garage door was open only a foot when she spotted the cuffs of a man’s suit pants. A pair of scuffed wingtips.
The shoes paused a second, then kept walking.
A second later, the doorbell rang.
Katie looked down at herself, T-shirt, her bare legs, knees covered in garage-floor grime. Dirt- and dust-flecked.
Through the frosted panel on one side of the front door, she saw the car in the driveway. A black Dodge.
Moving to the other panel, she spotted the two men on the porch, both in suits. One had a phone clipped to his belt.
Had they heard her in the garage, seen her feet?
The buzzer became a knock.
She could hear the crackle of a two-way radio through the door.
“Ma’am” a voice came. “Ma’am, I’m Detective Renton. This is Detective Furey. Can we speak to you?”
Three minutes later, after throwing on a pair of Devon’s workout capris swiped from the laundry basket, streaking a dish towel up and down her arms, across her face even, she opened the door.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “My son is very sick.”
“We’re sorry to bother you at home, Mrs. Knox,” said the younger one, Detective Fury, or Furey—had that really been his name?
The detectives settled into the slow-sinking sofa across from Katie in the wing chair, which still seemed to bear the scent of Gwen from days before, tuberose and musk.
The chair she and Eric had once copulated on. That’s the word that came into her soiled brain. Copulated. Animals.
But she needed to focus. She needed to—
“Is Mr. Knox here?” Detective Renton asked.
And there it was.
“He’s at work.”
The way they were watching her, she wondered how tight the capris were, how her face looked. Her hands went to her forehead, the slick of sweat there. Had she even brushed her teeth?
“What can I help you with?” she said. “What is it you want?”
“Mrs. Knox, are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said. Breathing from the center, like Coach T. always told Devon to do. Breathe, focus, let go. Breathe, believe, and battle. “But my son has scarlet fever. You probably shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m sorry about your son, Mrs. Knox,” Renton said. “But don’t worry about us. We’re strong like bulls.” He tried to smile, or do something with his face.
“This won’t take long,” said the young one, Furey, with the freshly shaved neck, pink and angry. But his voice was gentle. “We just have a few follow-up questions.”
“Questions?”
“How’s your daughter doing?”
The hover of relief in her throat made it hard to talk. The locker-room fight, of course. “She’s fine,” Katie said, folding her hands, resting them on her thighs, the slippery spandex of Devon’s capris a half a foot too short for her. “As fine as can be expected.”
“That’s good news,” said Furey, very earnest. He was just a boy, really. The Adam’s apple, the razor marks on his neck. Officer Furey, Boy Detective
“I’m sure you heard,” Detective Renton said. “Miss Belfour has been under twenty-four-hour psychiatric care since the incident.”
“Yes. We were very glad.”
“Well, it looks like she’s going home toda
y,” he said, and then paused.
“Really?” she said. They both seemed to be watching her so closely, even leaning forward. Scrutinizing. Were there paint chips under her fingernails, maybe a ribbon of half-shredded evidence stuck to her foot bottom, pink slivers of the repair receipt clinging to her ankles? You could never hide it all.
“So we’ll be talking to Miss Belfour again about what happened,” Renton continued, watery eyes on her. “After the incident, she wasn’t too coherent, and after her attorney arrived, well, she wasn’t talking anymore.”
“Wait,” Katie said, her voice squeaking like the uneven bars, like Devon’s hands gripping the fiberglass, body swinging, chalk spraying. “Wait. I don’t understand. She’s a criminal. She attacked my little girl. You’re charging her, right?”
They both looked at her.
“There haven’t been any charges yet,” Renton said, voice even. “Before we submit our report to the DA, we need to follow up on a few things we’ve learned.”
“What things?” Katie said. Why had they come here, anyway, instead of calling her to the station? And wasn’t it odd that they’d just stopped by, unannounced? Renton with his gravelly voice and his worn skin like an old potato, right alongside Furey with his delicate boy face, and was one the good cop and one the bad?
The thought came to her. “What happened to Officer Crandall? He’s the one we spoke to after my daughter was attacked. Wasn’t this his case?”
The two men looked at her, Furey’s forehead crinkling gently.
Then: the squawk of her phone upstairs, those stroking first beats of “Assassin’s Tango.”
“Excuse me.” She leaped to her feet, moving quickly to the stairs.
“If that’s your husband, Mrs. Knox,” Renton called out, “we’d like to speak to him too. He works out of that studio over on Merricat Road, right?”
“Gwen,” she whispered, shutting the upstairs bathroom door behind her, making sure no one could hear. “I can’t talk now.”