Smoke (28 page)

It had been an effective tack to use on Deputy Clark, who was nearing the end of the graveyard shift and looking tired and annoyed. Mindy didn’t want to wait until visiting hours; she wanted, no, she needed, to see Angus immediately. So she’d sat in the chair she’d hauled kitty-corner to his desk and asked to see Angus, and before he’d even gotten the “I’m going to have to check with the boss” out of his mouth, the tears were spilling from her. A second later, he was up and leading her down the stairs while making soothing sounds to calm her down.

The basement was dusky and stale. Two of the other cells were occupied by loudly snoring men who reeked of alcohol, sweating it through their pores.

It was still mostly dark out, and the half windows installed near the ceiling didn’t let much light in. The bare lightbulbs hanging ten feet apart didn’t do much to help. There was just enough light to ensure that Angus wouldn’t have gotten a wink of sleep—even in the best of circumstances he always needed complete darkness—but not enough for her to really see things by. Like whether the mattress he was lying on was as thin as it looked. Or whether that was a cockroach scurrying across the floor. Or whether Angus could possibly have grown thinner overnight, or if that was simply another thing she hadn’t noticed properly about him recently.

“Angus?” she said, her voice a wave.

“Mom?”

Mindy turned to Deputy Clark. “Thank you,” she said, hoping he’d catch the hint and leave them alone for a while. Which he did, after warning her that they had ten minutes, or less if someone came in early. He wasn’t going to get into trouble over this, no matter how heavy the tears.

When Mindy turned back to Angus, he was sitting on the edge of his cot with his feet planted on the floor. He was wearing his own running shoes, but the laces had been removed, as had his belt. His pants sagged at the back away from his black T-shirt.

He was staring straight ahead at the wall, and Mindy tried unsuccessfully to figure out what it was that held his attention. What happened to you when you spent the night in jail at sixteen? Did you just shake it off? And, oh my God, what if it wasn’t only one night? What if it was months, years? What if—

“I didn’t do it.” Angus turned toward her, his skin pale in the low light. “But you don’t believe me, do you?”

Mindy moved forward and gripped the cold bars that separated them. “I want to.”

“Then why don’t you?”

Mindy looked at her hands, the way her fingers circled the metal, how soft they looked compared to the rough environment. She wished she could small herself up, slip through the bars, take him in her arms the way she used to when he was little and skinned his knee or failed to make the hockey team. Back then, a kiss would make it all better.

But they were way past that now.

“I know you tried to change the alarm records. And that was you on the tape. So that’s why I’m struggling.”

Angus started. She didn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t the unvarnished truth.

“No, Mom,” he said, spinning his body so he was facing her and his legs splayed out in front of him on the bed. “You have it all wrong. I know it looks bad, I know that, but I swear to you, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t.”

“Then tell me what happened.”

“I can’t.”

“How am I supposed to believe you if you don’t?”

Angus stood up and came toward her. He was so much taller than she was now, as tall as Peter. He was standing right in front of her, his hands covering hers through the bars, and she couldn’t remember the last time they’d stood this close. He smelled of sweat and the same shampoo she used. So familiar, and yet alien, separated.

“When have I ever lied to you,” Angus asked. “About something important?”

“Oh, Angus.”

He gave her a sheepish smile. “But that was so long ago. I stopped all that.”

“No, honey. You’ve been lying to us this whole time. This whole year, maybe longer. Haven’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“So, just tell me.”

“I can’t. I really can’t. If it was just me . . . but it isn’t.”

“Those kids aren’t your friends. Please don’t tell me you’re protecting them.”

“I wouldn’t do anything for those jerks.”

“Is it something to do with Willow?”

He looked at Mindy, his face quieter than she’d ever seen it.

“How about if I ask you, just this one time, to believe me no matter what?” Angus said. “Could you do that? Could you do that for me?”

Angus’s voice was quavering, and Mindy’s whole body was shaking. She could feel them both trembling so hard she was sure they’d set the bars ringing.

She wanted to believe him. She wanted to make this right. She didn’t know what to do.

“Time!” Deputy Clark called from the end of the hall, breaking them apart. “The sheriff’s car just pulled into the lot. You need to scatter.”

Angus’s fingers were laced through hers the way they used to be when she breast-fed him late at night. His eyes were giving her that same direct-on stare too. A look of complete trust, like they were the only two people in the world, though Deputy Clark’s boots were ringing ever closer on the concrete.

“Will you do it, Mom?” he asked.

“Yes,” Mindy said. “Yes.”

CHAPTER 32

Way Over Yonder in a Minor Key

Elizabeth

“Ben! Ben! Will you wait for me, please?”

He is rushing away from me, out of the kitchen, the back door, the house. I don’t have time to stop to put on my shoes. I just tighten my robe around me and follow him out onto the gravel path. He’s headed for his car, but he doesn’t have the keys. He stands there, trying to figure out what to do, for long enough to let me catch up.

I stand next to him in the heated morning air. I’m out of breath, and there’s a charred taste in my mouth.

“Please, Ben, can we talk?”

He slams his hand on the roof of the car. “Goddammit, Elizabeth. Can’t you just let me be?”

I should let him alone, I should, but I can’t.

“We have to discuss this.”

He gives me an incredulous look and turns on his heel. He’s not walking toward the house, but away from it, out onto the lawn. I stand there watching him, exhaling smoke like I’ve got a cigarette clamped in my teeth, the gravel digging into the soft pads of my feet.

Ben’s already halfway to the long grass. If I keep standing here, I’m going to lose track of him entirely, and so I start to walk at first, and then in a moment, I’m running.

I’m on his heels when we reach where the field turns to woods, and now I have an idea where he might be going—his old hideout, his tree fort. Where he went his whole childhood when he wanted to escape his siblings, his friends, or think out what colors he should use in his next painting, what words he should use in his next story. He’d come out here, he told me, and lie on his back, staring through the Plexiglas ceiling at the trees or the stars. His place, he told me. One he’d managed to keep secret from his brother and sister, that he’d never showed to another soul. His place he shared only with me.

He’d discovered it when he was ten, built by the previous generation, and he’d scavenged nails and cast-off wood from one of the barns to rebuild it, make it safe. Patiently. Slowly. So no one would know what he was doing. So no one would discover him.

I push through the trees, and I can see him up ahead. He’s standing at the base of the ladder now, his shoulders hunched forward inside his sweatshirt. He looks like a defeated man.

This is what I’ve done to my husband.

I have defeated him.

Perhaps I should turn around, give him the solitude he wants, set him free permanently. But for so many reasons, including the beginnings of the life inside me, I have to try to repair us, even if it’s one board at a time.

“Ben.”

He bows his head, resting the crown against the ladder. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“I can’t. You know I can’t.”

This time he doesn’t answer, just lifts his head and starts to climb, swiftly, with assurance.

I don’t know if it’s an invitation to follow him, but I take it as such anyway, my hands and feet less sure on the splintered rungs than his. He doesn’t help me up the last bit like he usually does, and a piece of wood lodges itself in my thumb as I haul myself up and over onto my butt. This should be an easy task, but my arms are leaden from the work in the woods yesterday.

Ben’s sitting with his back against the tree this house was built around. There’s a worn place in the bark, a smoothed-down seat. I turn and scootch myself over until I’m facing him, cross-legged.

His eyes are closed. He looks as tired as I feel, worn out. Over.

“Ben?”

“Is it mine?”

“What?”

“The baby. Is it mine?”

The force of his doubt brings me up onto my knees. The wood is hard and uncomfortable, and I want to suck the splinter out of my thumb like a baby, but I have bigger hurts to mend.

“Oh, sweetheart. Of course it is.”

“Not Andy’s?”

“No, no, no. Nothing, nothing,
nothing
ever happened between us.”

He opens his eyes. They’re not full of trust. They are not full of relief. Only questions reside there, and anger.

“So that’s what the other night was, then? Some last-ditch attempt to get what you wanted before you leave?”

“Of course not. It’d be too early to know if I was pregnant from the other night. To be honest, I don’t know how far along I am, probably longer than I should be because I’ve been, we’ve been . . . Anyway, I’m pretty sure it was
that
night, you know?”

That night
. Our last good night.

The Fourth of July.

We’d attended the annual outdoor concert on the lawn at the base of Nelson Peak. Augustana was playing—it always amazed me that “big” bands come to our little town, but then again, sometimes it felt like the whole world passed through here. We’re big fans of theirs. I had their song “Boston” on repeat for what seemed like months when it first came out. We’d crank it up in the kitchen sometimes and sing it at the top of our lungs. About how we wanted to start a new life and we were tired of the weather. We sang that line with particular emphasis when the winter was at its worst, snow upon snow, cold upon cold.

Anyway. Two months ago. July 4. A hot, hot night. I was wearing as few clothes as I felt comfortable in in public—my shortest shorts (not that short) and a tank top. I was wearing an old baseball hat of Ben’s from when he played in high school, and my ponytail poked out the back of it. He was dressed in cargo shorts and a T-shirt. We both wore sandals. I felt like we looked very young. We were certainly acting young. Like our younger selves. Yelling out the lyrics. Drinking beers from Solo cups, me biting down on the plastic rim so I could raise my arms up in the air.

They saved “Boston” for the encore. Our voices were hoarse by that point, but we sang it out anyway, stealing glances at each other, like this was our private song, our private moment. A more thinking person might’ve wondered at a couple who’d adopt a song about leaving, starting a new life in anonymity, as their own. But I just felt happy for the first time in I-didn’t-know-when, and when the song was over we found a spot in the grass and lay on our backs while the fireworks burst overhead, obscuring the stars.

When the last sparkler fizzled, Ben, drunk and frisky, chased me up the hill to our house, grabbing my ass. I swatted his hand away, saying the neighbors might see.

“Who cares about the neighbors, baby?” he said, pushing me up against our front door.

What followed was rough and tender and frantic and slow. A contradiction that was all us. Afterward, we didn’t say much, just stared up at the ceiling while Ben’s hands wove through my hair. I went to sleep with a smile on my face and slept heavily through the night.

The next morning, as I picked up our clothes from where we’d left them on the living-room floor, I made a joke about the restorative powers of alcohol, which Ben took the wrong way, and instead of letting it lie, I picked up our last fight right where we’d left it off two days before, and we were back at square one.

And the morning after that, I called the divorce lawyer for the first time.

“That was a good night,” Ben says.

“It was. The best.”

“But that wasn’t real life. Real life is what happened the next day.”

I rock back on my heels. “You mean, the fight?”

“That fight. The fight the day before. All the fights. Aren’t you sick of it?”

“I am. You know I am.”

“Maybe it’s better this way, then.”

“You mean apart?”

“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“What I wanted was for things to change.”

“Careful what you wish for.”

“I know, right?”

He shakes his head. “Maybe we just should call it.”

“But what about the baby?”

He can’t help the smile that spreads across his face briefly at the thought of the baby—the baby we’ve tried so hard to make for so long—finally on its way.

“You’re really pregnant?” he asks.

“I am.”

“That’s . . . I couldn’t believe it when Mom told me.” He shakes his head. “You know, I came into the kitchen this morning whistling, and she thought it was because you’d told me.”

“I’m so sorry, Ben. I should have. I only found out for sure right before the town meeting, and then with everything that happened . . . I was looking for you to tell you this morning . . . I know that’s probably hard to believe.”

“It is.”

“Does it change anything?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m going to need more than that.”

He looks up at the Plexiglas roof. It’s covered in yellowed needles being shed by the aspens surrounding us. Wafts of smoke slip through the cracks in the joints, the door, everywhere. If there was magic here, the smoke would thicken and obscure us, and when it cleared we’d be in a new place, or maybe a different time. But the fire isn’t magic. It’s a threat, one that doesn’t care what it takes, or from whom.

“Do you want to be one of those couples?” Ben asks.