14

Government employees must manage natural resources according to the principle of “maximum sustainable yield.” Would a similar perspective be productive for parenting? Why would Malthus agree or disagree with your answer?

It’s four in the morning and I can’t sleep, so I pull on a windbreaker and shorts, grab my bike, and roll out of the garage. The momentum of the hill pulls me down the same path. I feel like a ball on an unleveled billiard table, always rolling toward the same corner.

It was my father who suggested the bike rides, back when I was an anxious kid. It started with the paper route, but over time it morphed into a kind of ritual, an almost-spiritual practice, a way to settle my mind. In the years since—in California, Florida, Arkansas, New York City—I’ve logged tens of thousands of miles, maybe hundreds of thousands. I once calculated that I had biked the six-mile loop around Central Park nearly four thousand times.

I don’t have fancy gear or a racing helmet. I don’t wear a ridiculously tight onesie bearing the name of an Italian coffee company. I do, however, own a top-of-the-line bike. It’s orange, with yellow tires, a fine leather saddle, handmade by a highly sought-after craftsman in Vermont, whose signature graces the crossbar. It arrived via FedEx nine days after Fred died, at our fourth-floor walk-up at Ninety-Second between Columbus and Central Park West. The delivery guy buzzed up: “You’ll have to sign for this one.” I pushed and wrangled the huge box up all sixty-five stairs. I had no clue what could be inside. No card, no invoice. Just this sleek, beautiful bike, smelling of rubber and leather.

Fred and I had admired a similar bike in the craftsman’s shop in Burlington more than a year earlier. Rolling it around the living room, I knew this purchase had been months in the planning, and I also knew it was the finest thing I owned—more expensive than my engagement ring, possibly even our car. Fred must have worked feats of financial magic in order to purchase it. One day, if I ever dig myself out of this mess, I’ll balance the checkbook, organize the credit card statements, and discover exactly how much he paid. But for now, it remains a mystery: a beautiful, bittersweet mystery and the final reminder of a wonderful, imperfect marriage.

Inside the Royal Donut Shop, the guy at the counter recognizes me.

“Hey,” he says. “It’s the FBI lady. What can I get you?”

“One old-fashioned, please, and two raised chocolates.” The old-fashioned is for me, the raised for Rory. I fish around in my pocket for the twenty-dollar bill I always keep there, but I can’t find it. I glance over at the ATM, but of course I don’t have my card. I start to apologize and say I’ll come back later, but he hands me a bag—it feels like four or five doughnuts—and interrupts my apology.

“Don’t worry about it.”

On the ride back up the hill, I pass the Shirley Jackson house on Forestview, the one she memorialized in The Road Through the Wall—a novel about a seemingly perfect town full of dark secrets. I never even realized she’d lived here until long after I moved away. At some point in high school or college, most students read Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” a classic horror tale about the evil committed by ordinary citizens in an ordinary town. Perhaps you remember it: each time the lottery comes up, a citizen is randomly selected and stoned to death by his or her friends, neighbors, and children.

Minutes later I’m in Greenfield, pedaling toward the cul-de-sac where Gray Stafford lives, my bike tires gripping the smooth asphalt. There are five houses on the cul-de-sac. As I roll past each home, telltale blue lights illuminate the lawns and driveways, motion sensors bringing the security cameras to life. I imagine the lenses following me from house to house, street to street. I don’t even recognize the Stafford home from the photograph; a tall wooden fence has been erected around the property. I think about Nicole’s story of the day she found Gray Stafford on the beach. I turn the story over in my mind.

I roll back along Eucalyptus beside the golf course. From here, I can see the back of the Delacroix place. It stands out among the neighboring houses, with its concrete fence, glass walls, and oversized sculptures holding court over the expansive green lawn. I pedal the mile uphill to my father’s house, leaning into the pain, legs burning.