AT THE BEGINNING, every car that passed before my eyes made my heart shudder. That’s the one! I kept thinking. And I would stop and rewind, and it would turn out to be a little pistachio-colored Chevrolet Spark, for example. I was looking for a rather large black Cadillac Escalade. But soon enough my eyes became adapted to the darkness of the vital moment, and in the end, I could even pass through the images at 4X speed.
Of the six journeys, both back and forth, I managed to find the SUV in five—two trips out and three back, including the moment of the accident. They didn’t always coincide with the days Chris left or came home. So it occurred to me that on his trips, Chris would take care of his obligations, but that he could wrap them up in a day or two before running off to who knows where for who knows what reason. Following that highway, US 6, to come and go somewhere. Was it always the same place? Did it matter? He had already shown that he’d lied to me, and that lie apparently always led him to the same place. Fine. Enough. Your dead husband was doing something bad. Did it have to be bad, necessarily? He had his big little secret he didn’t want to share with you. Can’t you live with that, Alice? Is it really so impossible to bear? Didn’t he treat you well? Love you? Didn’t he show it? Didn’t he respect you? Want you? Make love to you? No, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.
Someone knocked at the door to my studio—it was locked from the inside, something I had never done before. It was my mother.
“Honey, what are you doing in there?”
“The same as you when you’re in the garden, Mom.”
“You have rosebushes in there?”
“No, I have my things, the things I like to do by myself, for myself, without anyone bothering me.”
“It doesn’t bother me if you look at me or keep me company while I care for my roses.”
“Well, it bothers me.”
“But you don’t even have rosebushes . . .”
Silence, I sucked in and held my breath.
“Oh, you mean whatever it is you’re doing in there. Well, you could have told me, dear; you know I’m very respectful . . .”
I continued holding my breath.
“So why don’t you plant some rosebushes? It would do you good to get some fresh air now and then instead of being shut up in there all day.”
After she left, I held my breath for another fifteen seconds.
I traveled along US 6 from the scene of the accident toward the beginning or endpoint, depending on how you looked at it. To trace out the route Chris had followed. I had reserved the red marker for him. What should I call that route? I had to give it a name. The route of death? The route of the secret? Of the lie? And why was he on a secondary road, instead of I-195, which would have taken him much less time?
I passed in front of the gas station. I was about to stop and say hi to Sam and give him a gift by way of thanks. Here, Sam, it’s a new calculator, so you can go on calculating your pointless life . . . Poor guy, don’t take it out on him, he even helped you out. But maybe that was the thing that bothered me. If he had told me no, he wasn’t going to give me the recordings, what would I have done? Would I have let it all go? Would I have given up my quest, unconsciously thankful to him for stopping me in time?
When I got to Wareham, I stopped at the main intersection. I’d already been driving a long time, hypnotized, going up US 6 slowly, like a zombie, afraid to look to either side, totally overwhelmed, ignoring all the houses that lined the road. The infinity of possibilities, of alleys, of turnoffs, of origins and of destinations. I was about to give up. Go home, Alice. Forget all this. Until a bird landed on the branch of a cherry tree at the same height as my red Jeep Cherokee. It was a cuckoo. It leaned its head to one side and looked at me. Chris always leaned his head to look at me when he noticed I was irritated and wouldn’t say what it was that had made me angry. It was a little gesture to say, Come on, A. You’re angry, you know that I know, don’t make me ask you why a thousand times, and don’t say a thousand times that you’re not, because in the end you’ll tell me, and by then we’ll both be angry after playing this goddamn game. And what would I do? The same thing I was doing just then. I would stay there quiet, avoiding any eye contact with him. Finally, Chris would get tired of waiting, get up and go. What if the spirit of Chris had taken up residence in that cuckoo. Aren’t those the birds that lay their eggs in others’ nests? Is that some kind of subliminal message? Is he trying to tell me something?
The cuckoo took flight just as this thought flitted through my head. It was Chris, no doubt about it. Where was he going? I followed him with my gaze. He left in the very direction I’d come from. Aha, you’re going home, coward. You want to lead me away from the scene of the crime. I went pale. The scene of the crime? I hadn’t thought about it. What if now . . .
A horn honked loudly behind me, startling me. When I said I had stopped at the intersection, I mean I was literally in the middle of the road blocking the flow of traffic. An impatient driver was making a fuss, as if to say, Woman driver! I moved forward a few feet and parked on the shoulder of the road. Pay attention to the cuckoo; go home . . . Left or right . . . ? He was warning you. Don’t go poking around in other people’s nests . . . Left or right? Where do I go . . . ? Backward, back home. You still have time to make it to your water aerobics class for pregnant women . . . Look, the guy who honked at you stopped in front of a bank . . . A bank, so what? What do I need with a bank right now? Alice, banks have security cameras. I’d had these kinds of internal dialogues all my life. They weren’t the result of some trauma. I’m an only child; I had no choice but to get along with myself.
It was called Pilgrims’ Bank and it was almost a toy. There were security cameras installed outside. And who was behind the counter? Yes, the man who had honked at me impatiently at the intersection. He had greasy hair slicked down on one side, probably covering up an incipient bald spot. He was fat and had a stain on his tie. It was either going to be very easy or very difficult to get him on my side. How far would you be willing to go to get what you want, Alice? Would you pay for it, for instance? Would you jerk him off in the bathroom?
“I beg your pardon.”
He looked at me without understanding.
He doesn’t recognize you, Alice. Don’t say anything. Change the subject. “I was blocking the intersection before.”
Great, Alice.
“Oh, don’t worry. No problem.” He smiled affably. “I apologize for honking. It’s just that right before then some coffee spilled on my tie. I’m a disaster with things like that, eating in the car, you know, and I always end up spilling something on myself. But I can’t help it. Anyway, so I made you pay for it, honking my horn like a jerk.” He extended his hand. “My name’s Karl. Yours?”
“Angela.”
“Nice name. How can I help you, Angela?”
Suddenly, the fat horn honker with the stain on his tie and an urge to get jerked off by a pregnant woman in the bathroom became Karl, an employee at a humble bank who liked his job and really wanted his clients to get the most out of their savings.
“Look, Karl, the thing is, I’m a little desperate. I need your help.”
“No problem, take out your pistol, I’ll give you what’s in the safe, it’s not much, things being what they are, and that’s that.” He raised his hands and laughed, a little high-pitched, considering his corpulent body.
I told him my brother had died not long ago in a traffic accident. They had done an autopsy on him, and he had tested positive for meth (I’m a big Breaking Bad fan). They found traces of the drug in his car. He had just gotten high. The meth had been cut with something bad, and he had a stroke, which made him run off the road. The police had closed the case because for them, my brother was just another drug addict who deserved what he had gotten, but I needed to know where it had come from. I was certain I’d just seen his dealer, and I needed to find the person responsible for my brother’s death. What I’d just told him was the plot from a dreadful TV movie I’d seen one afternoon a few months back, one of those you start watching and can’t take your eyes off of till the end, no matter how bad it is. It was called Avenging Angela. Who would have thought it would end up being useful?
There were tears in Karl’s eyes as I told the story; they started just after I said I was going to name my baby Derek, after my brother. And that was how I discovered prior footage of Chris heading east on US 6. I realize it probably wasn’t necessary to lie about all that. I guess I was training myself for all the lies to come. Chris’s and mine. Mainly mine.