Friday, February 11, 2005
I don’t think I slept more than an hour that night. The mattress was maybe an inch thick, and I couldn’t shake this sensation that bugs were crawling over me. I know they weren’t, that I was just feeling itchy from the cheap polyester sheets and even cheaper wool blanket, but I couldn’t get that thought out of my head. Maybe I was in too weird a state of mind after breaking things off with Bambi; even if I’d been back in my own bed I would’ve been too restless to sleep. Somewhere around three in the morning I gave up the pretense of trying and rolled out of bed. I thought I’d take advantage of being at the Y—lift some weights, jog around the track, maybe use the sauna—but when I went to the gym I found that it was closed until six AM. I tried talking the security guard manning the front desk to open the gym up for me, but he wouldn’t. I ended up going back to my room and doing thirty push-ups, struggling badly with the last three. I thought of doing some sit-ups, decided against it, and got up and took a lukewarm shower using the communal bathroom down the hall. After that I dressed and headed back to Manhattan. As it was I was at my desk by four in the morning.
I spent the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon tracking down leads for Willie Howard that had come in from informants and the tip hotline, and none of them went anywhere. At ten minutes to four in the afternoon I got a call from the city morgue to let me know they had Willie Howard as a resident.
“Since when?” I asked.
“Since a week ago last Wednesday. His body was found in Central Park. Heroin overdose.”
The papers were going to have fun with this—us launching a citywide manhunt for a guy who’d been dead and in our morgue for more than a week. I thanked the attendant for the call, then got on the phone to Hennison to give him the news.
“We’ve been chasing our fucking tails the last two days,” he complained. “I told you before we’ve got the same psycho sonofabitch at work.”
“As long as you can convince Phillips of it.”
“I’ll convince him of it. Don’t you worry. You coming back to the precinct?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve been on the job since four this morning. I’m calling it a day.”
“Fucking lightweight,” he muttered under his breath before hanging up, not bothering to hide his disgust.
With this most recent development I knew Hennison wanted me back at the precinct to put in more overtime, but I wasn’t going to. We had no leads worth a damn and I’d just be spinning cycles. Besides, early that morning I’d made up my mind how I needed to spend the weekend. I’d brought my suitcase with me so I didn’t need to head back to Brooklyn and the Y to gather up my stuff. Instead, I got in the car and headed to Rhode Island.
I waited until I was on I-95 North to call Cheryl and let her know I was on my way to Cumberland to see the kids. She hesitated for a long moment before telling me I could stay in their guest room if I wanted to. That threw me. When I could find my voice again I thanked her for the offer and told her I’d like that.
I wasn’t sure I really did. In a way I was glad I wasn’t going to be alone in a motel room that weekend, but I felt funny about staying in their house, and wasn’t sure I was up to seeing Cheryl and Carl together as a married couple all weekend. The thing was, Cheryl and I were starting to turn the corner in our post-marriage relationship, and if I refused her offer it would only set us back. I’d been keeping my promise to myself about calling my kids each day, and also had been routinely sending them long letters and additional packages of books and other personal items of mine. It felt good doing that; it made me feel more connected with Stevie and Emma, and I guess it also had the side benefit of loosening up Cheryl’s attitude toward me. As anxious as I was feeling about staying in Cheryl’s house, I was also excited about being able to squeeze in some extra hours with my kids.
Traffic was mostly light and I was able to get to Cheryl’s house in time to take the kids out to dinner. Things were mostly good with Emma and me, and were better with Stevie than they had been. He was still aloof at times, but only gave brief hints of the hostility he’d had before. Later that evening when I had them back at their home, Cheryl played videotapes of Stevie’s hockey games. Even though Carl had left the room, I had a heaviness fill my chest knowing that he’d be there at future games and not me.
The next two days went by fast. By Saturday afternoon, Emma was either in my arms or on my lap whenever she had the chance, and it was like the way it had always been with us. With Stevie, we were closer to the old days—not quite there, but closer. I had them out of the house as much as I could, and in the evening Carl had the decency to find things to do in other rooms so I didn’t have to see him much other than in passing.
My plan was to leave at four AM Monday morning and drive straight to the precinct. Sunday night I was having trouble sleeping and ended up wandering into the kitchen around one in the morning. I was in the middle of making a grilled cheese sandwich when Cheryl walked in wearing a robe over her pajamas.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked.
I nodded. “Must be my guilty conscience,” I said.
She peered over my shoulder to see what I was making. “You want to make me one also?”
“Sure.”
I gave her the first grilled cheese sandwich when it was ready, then joined her at the kitchen table when the second was done. It was the first time we’d been alone together, not only that weekend but since she told me she was leaving me. We ate quietly at first but it was a comfortable quiet. When I looked at her she seemed relaxed in a way I hadn’t seen her be for several years. I’d forgotten how pretty she could be, especially when she was just out of bed with her hair down past her shoulders and no makeup on.
“You still make a mean grilled cheese sandwich,” she said.
“Yeah, I’ve had a lot of practice.”
She put down what was left of her sandwich and gave me a sympathetic smile. “Stan, I am sorry about how things ended up between us,” she said. “And I’m so sorry to hear about your mom.”
I nodded, a lump forming in my throat. I hadn’t told her about my mom’s series of strokes, but she still had friends in Brooklyn. Someone must’ve filled her in.
“How have you been, Cheryl?” I asked.
“Mostly good.”
“You don’t miss Brooklyn?”
She shook her head, her smile turning more wistful. “I’m glad to be out of there,” she said. “I’ve grown to appreciate the quiet and calm I’ve got here. I needed the slower pace of life, you know, Stan?”
I nodded again, in a way understanding the allure of her new life, although I think I’d go nuts living in the cow pasture of a town she had chosen. I didn’t want to upset this new-found peace we had slipped into, but a question was nagging on the back of my mind about whether she regretted giving up her dream of acting. Throughout our marriage she always had this frustration burning inside her about never getting her big break, and it was hard to believe that she was no longer auditioning for roles. Ever since I’d known her she’d been running to every audition she could, barely slowing down even when she was pregnant with Stevie and Emma. I couldn’t help myself. I had to ask her about it.
“I’m okay with it,” she said. “At some point you have to get realistic about things. If it didn’t happened after fifteen years of busting my ass, it wasn’t ever going to. But I’m doing community theater now, and I’m content with that. In fact, guess who’s going to be starring in our local production of Cabaret?”
“No idea.”
She stuck her tongue out at me, then broke into a self-conscious grin. “The play’s running the first week of April. Any interest in coming?”
“I’ll be there. You can count on it.”
If this had been four months ago she would’ve rolled her eyes, or made some snide comment about how much she counts on any of my promises. Now, though, she nodded as if she believed me. There was something else nagging at the back of my mind, something I had picked up on earlier over the weekend. I asked her how things were with Carl. She hesitated for a slight moment before telling me that they were good.
“You’d tell me if they weren’t?”
“Of course,” she said, but from the way her face hesitated for a second, I wasn’t so sure she would. “How about you, Stan?” she said. “You haven’t told me how you’ve been.”
I swallowed back the trite answer that I had planned earlier in case she asked me something like that and shrugged instead. I wasn’t going to tell her about Bambi, about us breaking up, but I mostly leveled with her.
“It’s been tough,” I said. “With you and the kids gone, and with my mom, and what Mike’s been going through.” I looked away from her, then added, “I don’t know. For the last couple of years I’ve been feeling like I’m only drifting along in life. I can’t quite get a handle on where I fit in or what I should be doing next.”
I could feel her staring at me, and when I looked back at her there was only genuine concern in her eyes. We just sat like that for several minutes, neither of us talking, but feeling a comfort with each other that we hadn’t felt in a long time. Cheryl broke the quiet first.
“Things will get better for you, Stan,” she said, a moistness clouding her eyes. “I know they will. And I’m glad you came this weekend. And I’m proud of you for the effort you’ve been making with Stevie and Emma since October.”
I heard some rustling behind me and turned to see Carl stumbling into the room, his eyes squinting badly against the kitchen light. “There you are,” he said to Cheryl, his voice raspy as if he had something stuck in his throat. He smiled awkwardly at me before turning back to his wife. “You coming back to bed?”
She nodded, mouthed the word sure, then followed him out of the room. I sat for several minutes collecting my thoughts. There didn’t seem to be any point in waiting until four in the morning; now seemed as good a time as any to drive back to Manhattan. I pushed myself to my feet and spent a few minutes looking in on Emma and Stevie. After that I packed up my suitcase and left.