I can’t ignore the ringing telephone on the wall, because I’m sitting right here in the kitchen next to it. I missed a call on my cell phone from Adrian when I was in the bathroom; when I called him back, he didn’t answer. So I’m thinking this is him and pick it up without looking at the display to see who’s calling.
“Danielle?”
One day I will answer the telephone and it won’t be Doris Raskin. But today is not that day.
“I’m calling to urge you, to strongly urge you, to go before the county council next month when they take up the question of Quarry Road improvements.”
And how are you, Mrs. Raskin?
She goes on (and on and on). She understands I may still have been feeling too “traumatized” to speak at the community hall meeting last month. Fortunately, as a result of that meeting, the Franklin Grove Board passed a recommendation in favor of the safety improvements that are needed to prevent another tragedy. But the board doesn’t have the power of the purse, and action by the county council is required to make things happen, and the county council has many other priorities, but we must make this a top priority for them, and the way to do that is with a strong showing, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I am a key figure in the accident. And I have experienced firsthand the tragic consequences of etc., etc. And I can surely make a compelling statement about blah, blah, blah, blah.
“I’ll think about it, Mrs. Raskin,” I say when she takes a breath.
By which I mean no.
“I hope you will, Danielle. You’re a young person. But I know you’re mature enough to understand the obligation you have to the community and especially to Clarice and Tom Danker to try to make something good come out of this tragedy. I’m sure your parents would agree with me.”
Could she lay it on any heavier?
“After what the Dankers have gone through,” she adds. So yes, she could lay it on heavier. “What Clarice risked …”
My cell buzzes itself awake on the kitchen table. A quick glance tells me it’s Adrian.
“Mrs. Raskin, I’m sorry, I have another call,” I say.
“I urge you to think—”
“I will,” I say, and hang up.
“How’s it going?” he asks.
“Tip-top-terrific,” I say.
Don’t even ask who introduced that line into our family vocabulary.
“So glad about that,” he says.
“How are you? I miss you.” He hasn’t been around much lately.
“Miss you, too, Danny-boy. I’ll come by this weekend, I promise.”
“Is something going on, or is this a purely social call?”
“Both,” he says. “What’s going on is that we’ve almost reached the level of funding we need to make the restaurant thing happen.”
“Wow,” I say. “That’s great!”
He tells me about who the new investors are, and about plans for how the place will look and what kind of food it will have, and how other local businesses in the neighborhood are supportive and helpful, happy to have a decent place open in a desert of fast-food chains. He sounds so excited.
“And I’m taking cooking classes at night,” he says.
“You could teach people how to cook,” I say.
“Restaurant-quality cooking classes,” he says. “Like—how to be a chef. Not how to make dinner at home.”
And, yes, he’s still plumber-ing during the day.
I am wondering about whether the cooking school he’s in cares that he didn’t finish high school. I mean, I know he’s brilliant, and he’s no less brilliant for dropping out four months before graduation, but I wonder what the world out there thinks about it. I hate to ask. It’s a Mom-ish thing to press him about. But—I do.
“Danny, I got my diploma. And I don’t mean a GED. I was so far ahead in my credits. Mr. Farley”—that would be Adrian’s guidance counselor, and a huge fan of Adrian’s—“helped me work it out. I even took my APs.”
“Get out!”
He laughs.
“So—it only looked like you dropped out when you moved out of the house,” I say, slightly incredulous.
“Yup. It only looked like it.”
Should I even ask— “Do Mom and Dad know?”
“No,” Adrian says. “They’re on a need-to-know basis with me. I decided they didn’t need to know.”
“Jeez, Adrian.” I can’t help it. “Why would you not tell them something that they’ll think is a good thing?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. I hope he’s not mad at me for asking.
“Not really sure,” he says. “And of course, you’re sworn to secrecy.”
“As if you have to tell me that,” I say.
“It’s like—if I tell them I actually did graduate,” Adrian says, “and with an above-4.0 average, they’ll say, ‘So, why aren’t you applying to Yale?’”
“Maybe,” I say.
“And if they know I’m in cooking school, they’ll say, ‘Why don’t you apply to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris? Or the Culinary Institute in New York?’”
I actually can’t imagine Dad saying that. But Mom—sure. And she’d come to the conversation prepared with websites and brochures. And Adrian knows that Dad, her loyal soldier, would back her up.
We talk a little bit more. Adrian doesn’t really ask about me, which is fine. I just love hearing him so energized.
After we hang up, I hear the mail drop through the slot.
Is Doris Raskin clairvoyant? There’s a formal letter addressed to me from the chairman of the Meigs County Council requesting my “testimony” at a council hearing in November regarding improvements on Quarry Road. The letter gives me the date, time, place, directions—and, oh look, someone to call with any questions. I don’t have any questions. But I call anyway. I want to make sure I’m not going to be arrested when I don’t show up.
The phone number belongs to an aide to the council chairman.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” she says lightly. She explains that the council just wants to understand what problems with the street might have led to the tragedy. They already have all the information gathered at the Franklin Grove community meeting. And, of course, the police report.
Of course, the police report. This chills me. I am in a police report.
“It won’t be a grilling,” the aide, who is nice and whose name is Jen, says. “No one thinks you’re at fault.”
Unless you count Humphrey’s parents, Mrs. Joseph, Mrs. Raskin, everyone at school, and, I would guess, undocumented immigrants everywhere.
I think about that hint Mrs. Raskin dropped last month—the vague possibility that Mr. Danker might use his powerful lawyering skills to sue me for what happened. I haven’t mentioned this to my parents. I think Dad would freak and Mom would … Mom would froth. I wonder if Jen might know something about this. For half a second I think of asking. Then I drop the idea.
I gather from what Jen tells me that the council can’t make me testify—or maybe she’s saying they can but they won’t.
“But, Danielle, you should. Really.”
“I just don’t think I have anything”—I pause to gather my thoughts—“anything useful to say. So much of it was a blur, like I told the police.”
“That’s okay. You can tell the council that.”
“What’s the point, then?”
“Sometimes,” Jen says, “when you tell your story again, little details come back to you.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“You’ll feel better….”
How in the world does this Jen know how I’m feeling when I don’t even know how I’m feeling?
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t.”