14

The last time Josie called in sick to work, the very act of dialing a number on her phone made her right arm ache so badly she thought a blood vessel was going to burst. She had the flu, a nasty strain that put her in such all-encompassing, sweaty pain that she realized she’d probably never actually had the flu before—just bad colds, which, compared to this, weren’t that bad at all. Travis had compared it to those people who say they have OCD when they’re actually just more organized than the average person. Josie told him the comparison wasn’t helpful and to get her another jug of Pedialyte from the bodega down the block while she phoned the principal. “You sound like you’re dying,” her boss told her with more revulsion than sympathy. “Do you need to go to the hospital?” She told him no, that she would just sweat it out at home and take as much Tamiflu as the box said was safe. Six days later, she returned to work and found a large WELCOME BACK, MRS. KERR card on her desk. She teared up as she thanked the class, and felt wracked with guilt despite the complete and total justification of her absence. The finest penmanship on the finest parchment can’t compare to the emotional slaughter of crayon on construction paper.

But today’s sick day was different; she was in perfect health. In the bathroom, after Travis went down to make breakfast for Henry, she checked her temperature, hoping for a slight fever—anything over 99 would be enough to assuage her guilt for skipping out on the morning classes—but the screen read 97.7, as it always did. She couldn’t call the school from home, where Henry or Travis could hear, so she decided she would take the long way to work and call from a corner somewhere south of the highway, in front of one of those houses where the oldest of old-timers lived out their twilight years.

Downstairs she peered over Henry’s shoulder and examined the remnants of the scrambled eggs he’d spread around his plate. “Looks like you’ve got a few more bites left,” she said.

“No,” he said, a hint of worry somewhere in the back of his throat. “I’m all done.”

“You sure you’re all done, or did you just spread the eggs around to make it look like you’re all done?” Henry sighed and began collecting the dregs into the center of his plate. Josie wondered how he, at four years old, even thought of a scheme like that, whether he’d seen it in a movie or one of those awful shows he loved on YouTube. If he’d come up with it himself, should she be impressed by the creativity? Isn’t part of being a person in society these days finding creative ways to avoid things? And wasn’t that exactly what she was doing right now? “Actually, I think he’s eaten enough,” she said, pulling the plate out from under him.

Travis turned his head from the sink and raised an eyebrow with a smile. “Well then,” he said. “You off?”

“I’m off.” She loved watching him clean up the kitchen. And because he loved doing it, she loved watching it even more. The one who cooks isn’t supposed to clean, but she let him finish the work without protest; this was always part of their routine. Nothing about their household roles had changed since moving to Texas; there was just more time and space to complete them. Texas was a place that let you stretch out, for better or worse, and she had every intention of focusing on the better. She would spend more time with family. She would spend more time watching, enjoying, appreciating. But not this morning. This morning she had plans.

“Have a good day,” he said, leaning in for a kiss. She held it longer than a normal peck goodbye, long enough that she was worried he’d notice something was off. But he didn’t say a thing, just went back to the dishes. Part of her hoped he was lying about something today, too, so that they’d be even.

On the corner of Culebra and Seco, idling beside a drooping chain-link fence, Josie called Principal Ortiz. “Hi, Judy,” she said to his assistant, who’d been there since the first Bush administration, suddenly realizing she needed to sound less chipper. “Is Principal Ortiz in?”

Judy picked up on the worried tone and adjusted hers to match. Yes, she said, someone’s in his office but she’d connect them straightaway.

“I’m so sorry to do this,” Josie said when Principal Ortiz jumped on. “And I know it’s tricky still being the first week of school and all, but I’m feeling really off and have to run to Trevino for a quick doctor’s appointment. I’ll be back by noon, but I do have to take care of this.”

“Aw, well, that’s going to be tricky, because we’ve got Laurie in for Mr. Gonzalez this morning,” he said, doing his best to obscure his frustration. “But hey, you know what, we’ll be fine. We’ll be fine, for sure. I bet we could maybe make this work. Worst case, I’ll fill in. I hope nothing’s the matter.”

Of course something’s the matter, Josie thought. Why else would a woman call in for a sudden doctor’s appointment? Probably because she was lying. But he didn’t know that. “Thank you so much, Principal Ortiz. I won’t let this happen again. Today’s an anomaly.”

“Don’t give it a second thought,” he said. “Enjoy. Or feel better. Just hope you’re well. Be well. See you this afternoon.”

After ending the call, she dropped the phone into her center console and let out a sigh. The conversation had been so surprisingly simple that she wondered why people didn’t call in sick to work more often. What were their bosses going to do, check? Well, maybe, she thought. If it started happening too often. The point, she realized, was finding just the right line between not enough and too much. But isn’t that what they say about everything? Moderation? What a joke. After her mind slowed down, she started the car back up and noticed an old man staring at her from his front room window. He was hunched over and looked older than her own grandfather had looked on his deathbed, but there was nothing sinister in his gaze. She had no sense that he was angry about two of her wheels being on his lawn. He was just looking, so she looked back and waved, feeling a strange sense of generosity for giving him something to see.

The morning buzzed with possibility. It was 7:45, which would put her in Trevino by a little after 8:00. If she could get into the Herald by 8:05, she’d have well over three hours to riffle through the records. More than enough time, she thought. Back in college, she loved spending an afternoon in the stacks or scrolling through roll after roll of microfilm. She had come of age just as analog archives were making their way out the door in order to make room for their instantly accessible replacements, and had just enough of a connection with the old ways to long for the tactility of it all. Even now, she’d prefer hours of riffling with her hands—squinting at indexes and call numbers—to a quick search in an address bar. But this was a small-town paper, and she didn’t know whether to expect a complete mess that would take double the time she’d allotted, or a set of archives so small and well taken care of that she’d strike gold in an instant. Maybe her biggest problem would be having to kill time somewhere while she waited out the plausible length of a doctor’s appointment. But that was a worry for later. After she found Michael Roth’s obituary.

She pulled into the Trevino Herald’s parking lot at 8:24, later than she’d hoped, but instead of bolting inside, she was distracted by the courthouse across the street. This was her first time on this side of the Trevino train tracks, and she found herself in something resembling awe of the town’s grandest building. It was limestone, perhaps, although not white, but a pale red. So, no, maybe it was granite? Was there really a big difference between them besides a whole lot of time? She wasn’t sure but hopped across the street to get a better look. To her right, she saw a big black metallic plaque on a pole about her height and recognized it as the same kind of landmark sign in the center of Billington, the one describing the old train station.

This one told the story of the Trevino County courthouse, built in 1892 out of granite (she smiled at her guess). It took five years, the sign read, and at the time it was the largest town hall outside of San Antonio. Josie looked back up at the building and tried to imagine it back then, when it was more impressive. How it must have felt to watch something like that be constructed, to watch your town grow into something bigger. She’d never lived in a place that was anything but big, and over her three decades in New York witnessed only changes in aesthetics, not actual size. Manhattan, to her, had always just been a metropolis, and probably always would, as long as they figured out the seawall. She thought of Henry and wondered if he’d remember New York when he was her age, or if, for him, childhood would always begin at four. Looking up at the pink granite in the morning light, she hoped that it would. Maybe he’d have a greater respect for size if he started somewhere small.

A six-wheeled truck’s thundering honk thrust her out of her morning daze. So she waved apologetically and ran back to the Herald’s diminutive building across the street. Inside, she expected a bustling office yanked out of another era, the sort of wide-open, smoky room filled with men in ties and women in dresses, all of them clacking away on their electric typewriters with cigarettes between their fingers. The reality was less glamorous, more dusty than smoky, and not a tie in sight. Not anyone, actually, until she knocked on the reception desk and let out a timid “Hello?”

A woman with tight white curls and bright-red cheeks rolled her chair out from behind a shelf and under the desk. “Sorry, ma’am. Don’t usually have visitors this early. How can I help you?”

“My name is Josie Kerr, I’m a teacher down in Billington,” she said, a wave of nerves rushing over her. “I was wondering if I could thumb through your archives for something I’m working on for a class. Do you even keep them in this building? Sorry, I’m new to town. Still getting to know the area.”

“Well, we don’t got more’n one building, first off.” The silence that followed was impossible for Josie to decipher. Was this a good sign or a bad one? Would she be allowed in or laughed right out in a cloud of aging dust? “But, yep, you can follow me. Been a while since we had someone in here digging through the old stuff. Usually picks up once a semester, when the kids come in to do a report on something they can’t just type in on Google. Hardly few adults, I gotta say.” She twisted the squeaking doorknob of a room marked RECORDS, and gestured for Josie to step in first. “You say you’re new in town? Well, I’m sure most people who’ve lived here for seventy-five years ain’t never stepped foot in this building, let alone asked to see the, what’d you call ’em?” she said with something between a scoff and a guffaw. “The archives? This ain’t the Library of Congress, I’ll tell you that much.”

Josie couldn’t decide if she was alarmed by or enraptured with this woman.

“Should have anything you’re looking for, as long as it ain’t before 1952. The old building caught fire in ’51. Lost everything.”

“Oh, that’s a shame. But what I’m looking for is more recent.”

“Well, have at it. Should be easy to make sense of. Recent stuff starts here, then sorta zigs and zags through the rows until you get to that corner. Make copies if you want to. We usually charge ten cents a page, but feel free to copy as much as you want, no charge.”

“Wow, thank you so much.”

“To tell you the truth, I just don’t feel like digging around for the key to the change box.” The receptionist waved Josie goodbye and shut the door behind her. After turning to the stacks, a smile filled her face. She understood how gauche it was to feel such delight when hunting for an obituary, but the thrill of an archive was impossible for her to deny. It made her feel like she was in a detective novel, looking for the final clue that would solve everything, usually tucked away in the private files of an eccentric, wealthy academic. She fingered the stacks of boxes, seeking May 2002, the month of Kenny’s death. If she remembered correctly, Michael died only a few weeks later. For a place that was not disorganized per se but not the most well maintained, it only took Josie a minute or two to find the right box: 2002, MAY–AUGUST. She pulled it off the shelf with a huff and dropped it on the table in the center of the room.

Each paper was a single section, about twenty-eight pages long. Obituaries were always on page six, but she kept flipping through each even after confirming Michael’s wasn’t inside. She thumbed through stories about restaurant openings and family reunions, teacher retirements and chamber of commerce meetings. She read a story about a grocery store chain and a Trevino girl who received fifty thousand dollars in college scholarships. And then, after five weeks of misses, there it was in the issue from July 8, 2002. There were seven printed that week, and his was the last one listed, and the shortest by far. While the grandparents above him had multiple paragraphs of memories and condolences, Michael’s was only a short, single column, just over fifty words, creating an uncomfortable asymmetry on the page.

Michael Samuel Roth

Michael Samuel Roth, formerly of Billington, passed away on Friday, June 28, in New York City, NY, at the age of 18. He is survived by his mother, Mary Alice Roth, who suggests Michael be remembered with a donation to PFLAG.

Josie narrowed her eyes and set the paper down for a moment. She squinted into the distance, as though trying to see through the frosted glass on the door, then lifted the paper back up to read the obituary a second time, then a third. After making a copy on the ancient Xerox machine behind her, she closed the binder and coughed at the dust that erupted after its thud.

“Find what you needed?” the receptionist asked her.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Well, good. Glad someone’s getting some use out of this place. Have a good one now.”

Josie smiled and waved, then walked back to her car. In the driver’s seat she read the photocopied obituary one more time and shook her head. She couldn’t articulate what exactly she didn’t believe—the location or cause of death or maybe even both—but something was off. Maybe it was anxiety steering her brain toward conspiratorial thinking, or maybe it was the thousands of obituaries she’d read in the New York Times since childhood, but this didn’t seem like it was written by someone in the throes of grief. No, she thought. That wasn’t an obituary at all. It was a message.