Schroder: A Novel (19 page)

Is it appropriate to tell a three-year-old child that everything that is alive will die and decompose, including the human body?

Yes or no?

If no, why?

a) Because that is a lie. A dead body does not decompose, but rather is borne off completely intact on the shoulders of a bevy of celestial heartthrobs.

b) Because the question is irrelevant. The teacher has been discredited, for reasons that have multiplied exponentially since then, and therefore whatever he said, whatever factoids he once offered his exceptionally intelligent child, were spurious.

c) Because a guy in his position really should have deferred to his wife, and if he had a brain in his head, he would have known that his wife wasn’t going to like it, and the fact that he went ahead and desecrated a dead fox is proof that he probably didn’t love
her
anymore anyway, or had given up on
her
, or had given up on her ability to accept him for who he was, and the fact that they were fighting so viciously over a science experiment was probably a red herring, and underneath it they were probably asking each other the standard late-stage question: Why don’t you love me? / Why don’t
you
love
me
?

Circle your answer and return to:

Erik Schroder RN # 331890

CCI ALBANY

COUNTY CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION

P.O. BOX 3404

ALBANY, NY 12227

ANOTHER SURPRISE

The frog was still alive. When Meadow settled the bucket into the pond water and removed the chicken wire, he startled to life and began to rapidly stroke away from us, deep into the murk. We turned around and traced our steps toward the dirt road.

Just as we reached the road, we heard a car approaching. The car came rapidly over the rise and sped past us, only to come to a dusty halt farther on. Taillights flicked on; the driver turned around and backed up, rolling down the passenger-side window. It was April.

“Well, hello again,” she said.

I couldn’t help but smile. I leaned over and put my hand on the roof of her car. Her arm was hooked over the seat back. Since I’d last seen her, she’d changed into a long, angel-sleeved sheath of yellow, green, and red. In the backseat, I saw her belongings: several crates, a sleeping mat, a duffel bag, a bunch of celebrity magazines.

“I was trying to get used to the idea that I’d never see you again,” I said.

“Not necessary,” she said. “Get on in. I can move all that junk.”

I shook my head. “Thanks. But we were just about to head back and clear out ourselves. You know, head home. Time’s up.”

April leaned forward and gave Meadow a warm smile. “Hey, Chrissy.”

“Hi,” said Meadow, hanging back but smiling a little.

April waved me around the car. “Com’ere,” she said. “I should tell you something.”

I walked to the driver’s side, and leaned forward.

She spoke into my ear. “So. If you head back now, you will be greeted by three Vermont State troopers. Three squad cars. The one came first, and the others came with their sirens off. They’ve already been inside your cabin. I’d say whatever you had in there is now property of the state. Cheese singles and all. There will be more coming soon, is my guess. That poor lady is in a state. She kept saying she had a bad feeling about you.”

I raised my head. The top of the dirt road ended in sky. Everything was quiet.

April leaned forward to peer at Meadow, who was toying with her bucket. “Find any butterflies, baby?”

“No.” Meadow inched closer to the car. “But we freed the frog.”

“Good. That’s good. That’s
right
.” She looked up at me. “So, Sir John. What will you do? You’ve got about sixty seconds before I take off. I can’t believe I’m even talking to you.”

I opened my mouth, but I could not speak. My mind jammed. All I could think of was—the old lady had a bad
feeling about me? April sighed and got out of the car. She moved the duffel into the trunk. Then she gestured to the open door.

“You should see your face,” she said to me.

“I have some things—,” I said. “Some things in the cabin—”

“So what?” April said. “They’re gone. They’re not yours anymore.”

Meadow was staring at me. Her face must have mirrored mine, if only because mine frightened her so much. That’s when I thought of it, of what I had left to do.

“Get in, sweetheart,” I said.

“And don’t slam the door,” added April.

“Be quiet.”

“Why, Daddy? What’s wrong?”

“Get
in
.”

And there they were—male voices, down by the water, amplified by the lake, sounding closer than they were. They sounded as if they were right beside us on the road, invisible men. The dogs were barking out of their minds.

I couldn’t buckle my seat belt. I couldn’t feel my fingers. I tried and tried. We were already moving very fast by then.

FALLING ROCK

The road for all seasons and reasons,” Route 2 sweeps you through Vermont’s niche industries, a series of diverse, minor attractions like the winery at Calais or the “cornfusing” corn maze at Danville. And if the traveler doesn’t have time to stop, if he is, in fact, desperately trying to cross state lines, he may just gaze out the car window at the legendary Vermont woodland, through which, if he lives that long, the traveler may return on a charter bus from his retirement home in some distant leaf-peeping season. And if he closes his eyes, he can see it already, although it is only June: autumn’s mosaic of yellow and copper and red, the sad magic of it.

Meadow had not spoken a word to me since the outskirts of Burlington. She sat steely eyed in the backseat, her hands clutched in her lap, looking small and unfamiliar without the added height of her booster seat. I had tried to speak to her several times, but at the sound of my voice she snapped her head to the side. She’d been upset to abandon her backpack (“and my
tooth
brush and my new bi
ki
ni”). All she now possessed, in fact, was an empty bucket. As for me, I carried only my wallet and keys and the clothes I’d been wearing for four
days—a pair of flat-fronted khakis, still rolled to the knee and wet with pond water, and a blue-checkered collared shirt with a wilted buttercup in the breast pocket. Everything else in our cabin was currently being turned inside out by some square-jawed woodhick with a CB radio. (
Found something, Dawson
.) Of course, at the core of this, there was an image that made my stomach tighten. (
What is it, Peterson? Looks like a passport.
) I saw him coming toward me—not the cop, the boy—in his knee-high athletic socks, his knockoff Bruins jersey, circling me like some hungry fish.

Erik Schroder, it says. Who the hell is Erik Schroder?

“What’s that sign mean?” Meadow said suddenly, pointing out the window.

We were driving through a mountain pass of blasted granite.

I cleared my throat, trying to summon a steady voice. “Falling rock.”

“Oh great,” Meadow said. “Now rocks are going to fall on us, too?”

The wind was high, swabbing the clouds back and forth across the sun. Whenever we plunged into shadow, Meadow’s eyeglasses became reflective, giving her face a cold, mechanical look.

“April’s driving too fast,” she muttered. “She’s driving too fast to miss the falling rocks.”

“Hey,” April said into the rearview mirror. “As my mother used to say, don’t should on me, and I won’t should on you.”

Meadow crossed her arms and snapped her head to the side again. “I don’t care what your mother used to say.”

We plunged back into silence. Probably none of us, in our whole lives, had ever gone so long without talking. I glanced
over at April, who was holding on to the steering wheel with a high two-handed grip like an old lady. Was I
that
bad, was I
that
desperate, to become the goodwill case of a woman like her?

“Hey, April,” Meadow said darkly.

“Yeah, hon?”

“Chrissy’s not my real name.”

April laughed. “I didn’t think it was, honey.”

I didn’t turn around.

“My name is Meadow. Meadow Kennedy.”

“Well,” said April, “my name
really is
April Almond. Even though it sounds made up.” She laughed again, this time a little uncomfortably. “Funny how people are always trying to tell me the truth, even when they shouldn’t.”

“My daddy doesn’t always tell the truth. He tried to shut me in the trunk of a car once.”

I swung around. “What?”

“You
did
.”

“But I
didn’t
. I mean, I didn’t shut you in it. And besides, I’ve apologized for that several times.” I looked at April. “I apologized for that.”

“Don’t tell
me
about it,” said April.

“And Mommy said you lied sometimes.”

“When?”

“When I was little. And you took me all sorts of places.”

“Like the
library
? When I was taking
care
of you? And she was at
work
?”

“No. Like the church where everybody was crying? Mommy said that was
not
for kids.”

Again I turned to April. “An AA meeting. I went to support a friend.”

“You took her to an AA meeting?”

“A mistake.”

“Well, I told Mommy
all
about it,” Meadow declared.

“You can’t tell Mommy things like that, Meadow. She doesn’t understand them out of context.”

“Still!” Meadow shrieked. “You’re not supposed to lie. If it was good you would have told!”

“All right, all right,” April said. “You know what? I really don’t want to know any more about all this. I’m sure you are both very important people. You deserve a ticker-tape parade for living, OK? Anyway, cheer up. We’re heading to New Hampshire, a great state. We’ll drive over the Kancamagus. Gorgeous. You won’t believe it. Much better than this. The White Mountains blow the Green Mountains out of the water. Who wants to listen to the radio?”

She screwed irritably at the dials. In the distance, mountains tumbled into mountains. The nearest ranges were dark and green, the farther ranges fainter and higher, echoed by fainter mountains farther still, the jagged horizon a series of studies for a mountain.

“I want to thank you,” I said to April, my voice thick and wounded. “You’ve been—you’ve been—”

“No problem. You’re welcome.”

“I’m not a bad person.”

April sighed. “You may or may not be a bad person. You’re just a lot less bad than the other people I know.”

“Well, thanks.”

“Like I said.”

“I mean, thanks for taking us to your place. I just need a quiet place to stay. To collect my thoughts.”

“You won’t be staying anywhere, John.” April turned and
looked at me hard. Then she glanced backwards at Meadow, who was scrutinizing us from behind. Finally, Meadow rolled her head away and pretended to stare at the landscape. April turned up the volume on the radio. “And I didn’t say the place was mine. The place is my cousin’s. A camp near Ragged Mountain.”

“No, listen. I don’t want to involve anyone else.”

“My cousin’s not there. It’s a long story, but let’s just say he’s in Georgia. I check in on his place now and again.”

“Better to stay at a motel. You can drop us off at any motel.”

“Slow down. At my cousin’s place, you’ll have privacy. You can give her a home-cooked meal, and you can think about where to go next. But you won’t be able to
stay
anywhere, is all I’m saying. I mean, if your idea is that you’re going to keep running. With or without her. There are lots of people out there living like that.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Jesus. I’m not going to force your hand. But
she
will. Look at her.”

I looked. My daughter’s arms were wrapped around her orange bucket. Her mouth was set in a wry smile, and I could almost hear her making wild promises to herself. Her white hair was being sucked in ribbons out the window, giving her a bizarre, mythical look. This, I thought,
this
is what I wanted? This rumpled, sandy child with an abnormally high tolerance for upsetting turns of fate? With a sick twisting in my conscience I saw that I had been waiting to see if she could do it, if she had the capacity to tolerate the world as it was according to me—a mess, a random and catastrophic mess—and if she could stand it. And there she was in the backseat, standing it, the third in a trio of missing persons, and there she would be, in some ways, forever, wouldn’t she? Because when she was
older, might her familiarity with people like me or April consign her to their company, so that she would be drawn to them and would travel with them in their VW vans or the sidecars of their motorcycles, forever along the edges of things, until she would be, in the end, more comfortable with freaks and eccentrics than with the main army? I shuddered inwardly, experiencing the first cold pall of regret, a sense that this victory was the wrong victory, a sense that
you had been right.