Chapter Eight #2
I start the car. The mirrors are still positioned for Emily, so as I pull out into traffic, I get a blast from someone’s horn.
Look again to make sure it’s clear, then hit the gas and drive off in the opposite direction from home.
If I don’t turn around, I might miss the meeting at the funeral home.
It isn’t right; I’m his father. But Emily will probably prefer to go with her mother.
I’m not sure I could handle it anyway: bringing them his clothes, choosing a casket, deciding about calling hours, a service, cremation or burial.
I drive south without any destination in mind.…
Maisie will be up by now, missing her brother.
She’ll be confused, in need of reassurance, and where am I?
Her daddy is missing, too—driving away from her because I’m a coward.
They’ll probably be better off without me.
Maybe I should put the pedal to the metal and aim for some tree. But I’m too weak to do that, too.
I’m eight or nine miles past Three Rivers when the traffic begins to slow down near the exit for the Wequonnoc Moon Casino. Spur of the moment, I put on my blinker and follow the line of cars to the entrance, then to the massive parking lot. I have no idea why I’m doing this.
But the answer comes to me once I’m inside and have joined the stream of morning gamblers.
As I walk past the craps tables, the clamoring slot machine halls and off-track betting parlors, I’m not the father who backed over his kid; I’m just some anonymous guy hoping, like everyone else, to score with Lady Luck.
The problem is: even if nobody else knows who I am, I know.
That calls for a drink. I go into one of the bars and sit down at a table for two.
The cocktail waitress who comes toward me is wearing a fringed buckskin top and matching short shorts.
“What can I get you?” she asks. I order a Jack and Coke.
Waiting for my drink, I look around. Two old duffers at the end of the bar are talking Red Sox—their hopes that Rajai Davis’s base-stealing will do for Boston what he did for Cleveland last year.
A trio of older ladies are sharing laughs and cocktails at a table halfway across the floor from me.
Two of them are silver-haired, the third is wearing one of those cancer-victim headscarves.
A couple closer to my age sits on the other side of the bar.
They’re drinking Bloody Marys and his hands are all over her.
Honeymooners, I figure, or cheating on their spouses.
Everyone in here is clueless. What does baseball matter?
Or fucking someone else’s wife? Do those other two women think their friend is the only one whose days are numbered?
Why should we all still be alive when my little boy is dead?
I look up at the four soundless TVs above the bar, each tuned to something different: Fox News, CNN, a rerun of a Sox game on NESN, and one of the local stations—the morning news.
I watch the anchor’s lips move. Read the crawl at the bottom of the screen: “Tragedy in Three Rivers.” The picture changes to a reporter holding a microphone—the one who arrived as I was leaving for the hospital in the back of that cruiser yesterday.
She’s standing across the road from our house.
Over her shoulder, I see my SUV, a perimeter of yellow crime tape, a huddle of neighbors.
“Run a tab, sir?” the waitress asks. She’s already placed my drink on the table.
Looking at it, not at her, I say, “Sure. Why not?” Taking a sip, I glance back at the TV screen.
There’s Emily’s Facebook profile picture of the four of us.
When the camera zooms in on me, I’m confronted with the smiling face of the son of a bitch who killed his son.
I look away, gulp down my drink, slap a twenty on the table, and get the fuck out of there.
Out in the parking lot, I break into a run.
Back in Emily’s car, I check my phone. She’s texted: You still at the lawyer’s? Sorry I shut you out last nite. Couldn’t deal. Funeral home appt is @ 1:00. Plz be back in time. I can’t do this by myself.
I shake my head no. Pull out of the lot and turn right, heading farther south.
It’s like that thing they say before the plane takes off?
Put on your own mask before you help anyone else.
She’ll have to call her mother, have Betsy take her to the funeral parlor.
Ignoring the highway entrance toward New London, I take the back road that runs parallel with the Wequonnoc river.
I think again about what that lawyer— my lawyer—implied: if I lie about why I went back in the house, those test results might get tossed.
Can I out-and-out lie like that? Why the hell not?
Everyone lies to cover their asses. The cops who claimed self-defense when they shot that black guy in the back.
The politicians: “We have credible intelligence that Saddam has stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.” “I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” Trump lies every time he opens his mouth and we all just shake our heads and let him get away with it.
But can I pull it off? Lie to Detective Sparks or some prosecutor, some judge?
Maybe. Since my drinking has ticked up, I’ve become a pretty good sneak.
Hiding my bottles until recycling day, lying about how I’m still looking for work.
Keeping my Ativan prescription at the back of my nightstand drawer so she won’t question why my supply is nearly gone.
Even throwing that rum bottle into the woods on my way to Dixon’s office.
Disposing of the proof that I had a few yesterday morning so that Emily won’t assume I was impaired when I started the car.
I mean yeah, I have been overdoing the booze and the benzos a little, and sure, I need to cut back.
But I was in control when I put the car in reverse.
It happened because the McNallys distracted me. How could I live with myself otherwise?
It’s after ten now. The river is playing peekaboo, sparkling in the sun one minute, hiding behind thickets of trees and brambles the next. I roll down the window so I can hear it move. I let that sound steer me to the river’s edge. Why have I come here? What am I looking for?