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On the large TV in the corner, a sports channel plays. Two commentators argue in a manner that strikes me as unbelievable. The screen flashes to a pitcher walking off the field, and that’s when the unsettled feeling comes back. I look away. I hate baseball. Always have, always will.
The server delivers my drink and asks me about food. I have no appetite, but not wanting to seem pathetic or cheap, I place an order anyway. Eventually, I power on my phone and check for messages. It makes me feel sick, the weight of it in my hand, not to mention on my shoulders. I’m not a member of the generation who checks their phone every five seconds. In fact, I abhor the damned thing. If it weren’t for Eve’s illness, I wouldn’t carry it at all.
There are seven missed calls from home and three texts from Liam.
I text back saying I’m writing and I’ll be home later. This is obviously a lie, but not an implausible one. I have been known to disappear from time to time when trying to make a deadline. Of course, that was mostly in the early years when I had a bustling family life and more on my plate.
These days I’m just lazy.
Horns blare outside.
The businessmen speak in hushed tones.
Baseball goes on forever.
I wonder what it would take to get that TV shut off?
Seeing that baseball is at least half of the reason my kids are dead, I have good reason to hate it. Not that it ever stopped me before.
It wasn’t just the sport that killed them. It was a freak accident.
Well, not so freaky, if you consider the person driving the car was at least two times past the legal limit. Although those were the words my wife used if she ever had to talk about it, which she rarely did. A freak accident.
They were on their way back from a baseball tournament when the car they were riding in ran off the road and crashed into a tree. Eve was supposed to drive them, but she was sick that weekend, and I was supposed to be the back-up.
I claimed I was sick too. Which I wasn’t. I was, however, massively behind on my writing, with a deadline barreling toward me, and the last thing I wante
d to do was to drive a hundred miles, round trip, and sit out in the Texas heat to watch a game I cared nothing about. I wasn’t the one who signed them up. I’m pretty sure I even said that. It wouldn’t kill them to miss one game. I said that too.
So when Eve mentioned that one of the other dad’s said he wouldn’t mind driving them, I didn’t question it. It wasn’t like we weren’t owed the favor. Eve was constantly shuttling other people’s kids here and there. She fed off of having them around. Those were the normal years. The best years of my life, although I couldn’t know it at the time. And then instantly, everything was different. Everything that mattered before, those things ceased to be. Things that once seemed so pressing, turned out not to matter all that much. There will always be another deadline. And another, and one after that. Dreams don’t have deadlines.
But kids die. They grow up. You grow up. You die. Bad decisions are written in permanent ink. Life cannot be reversed.
I don’t realize that I’m weeping in the middle of a restaurant on a weekday. Not until the server brings me another drink, telling me it’s on the house, does it occur to me that anything is amiss. People stare. Taking the glass from her hand, I salute. Liquor killed everything I’ve ever loved. So why shouldn’t it kill me?
Chapter Eleven
‘The Book Doctor’
Journal Entry
Everyone makes mistakes. Some big, some small. Depends on who you ask. Hers were big. Her biggest one would turn out to be leaving a window unlocked. Not surprising, really. Let's consider the typical American female: she can't balance a checkbook, knows all the Kardashians but not her kid's middle school teachers, can't find Iraq on a map, can't name the past six presidents, thinks the U.S. won the Vietnam War. She pays someone to mow her lawn so she can free up time to walk on a treadmill at the gym, then spends twenty minutes looking for a parking space. She waits in two lines to pay six dollars for a sixty-nine cent cup of coffee just so she can enter her office with a sixteen ounce "symbol of conformity" in her hand. She can't name her state's senators, doesn't know what a mutual fund is, has never heard of Douglas MacArthur. She spends more money on her hair and nails than retirement savings and has been brainwashed to think a man on a white horse is coming to save her.
Carefully sliding the window upward, I contemplate how a person could be so irresponsible and the many questions left to be answered. Did she not think something seemingly so small as an unlocked window could ultimately prove fatal? Was she in a hurry? How can she not see the world for what it is? Opportunistic. Evil. Every man for himself. Where was the blind spot in her thinking? How could she not see that her naiveté would put her at risk for predators like me?
In that sense, she was lucky. At least I wouldn’t make her suffer. I’d make sure her death was quick and painless, even if that hardly makes for a good story.
I thought about this a lot as I waited for her to come home. Had I made the right choice? How was this story going to end? What would her face look like as she died? What was in the contents of her stomach? Did she enjoy her last meal? Or had she rushed through it, as is so often the case, mindlessly scrolling her phone?
What would be her final words? Would it be an emoji sent via text? Was that how she wanted to be remembered by the people who love her?
How many strings would she have left untied?
One thing is for sure: she was late. Her shift ended thirty-seven minutes prior. For two weeks I’d watched her, followed her, studied her. I even spoke to her once. For fourteen days, she’d come home on time. Right after work, on account of the dog. What was the hold-up I wondered? A sixth sense? Did she get caught in traffic? Had she been in an accident herself? Did she stop over for a drink with a friend?
So many possibilities. Any number of scenarios could have caused a variation in her routine. I was curious to find out how close I could come to the truth. I suppose I should’ve been bitter about sitting in a cramped laundry room next to the dog bowl.
On top of the washer was a basket, overflowing with dirty laundry. Clothing that would become artifacts to a loved one. Most people put them in Ziploc bags. So the smell keeps. I had a good laugh thinking of this. Grief does funny things to people. I guess I get it, but not really, I’ve never lost anything I really cared about. But I suppose once a scent is gone, it’s gone. Who will keep hers? Her mother or father? A lover perhaps? Lucky them, her clothes stunk. A stench not soon forgotten.
