The Guilty One (3 page)

She'd expected ambulances, backups, bystanders out of their cars with their hands over their eyes blocking the sun. Instead there was nothing; nothing but the usual summer weekday traffic, the jockeying at the toll lanes and metering lights. She drove in the slow lane, glancing left and right, seeing nothing but the breathtaking views. On the other side she had to exit and crawl through the jam before she could get back on. And then the same thing, driving the other direction: only a few tourists walking along, enjoying the view.

At the other end she pulled over, into the tiny parking lot next to the gift shop and cafe. A bicycle cop was just strapping his helmet on while his partner tossed a paper cup into the trash.

She had to shout to be heard. “My friend—he said he was going to jump.”

The cop, a dusky-skinned man with a thick beard, shook his head and frowned. The traffic noise was deafening. She tried again, jabbing a finger past the gift shop at the traffic moving slowly onto the bridge.

“I am afraid my friend might try to jump off!”

This time the cop understood. He nodded and ushered her around the corner of the building, which was sheltered from the wind and quieter. Maris followed him there, keeping her eyes on the badge pinned to his windbreaker, the holster on his belt.

“Your friend, he's a man? Adult man?”

“Yes—”

“He didn't jump. He came here during the earlier shift, they waited with him until his wife—” The man stopped and looked at her carefully. Maris was conscious of her stricken expression, her lack of makeup and lank, greasy hair. “Until a woman came to pick him up. You know who this might be?”

Relief flooded Maris. “No one jumped today?” she said.

“No. There was just this one man who went over the edge midspan, but he talked to the officers and came back.”

“And they let him go home?” With Deb. Of course Deb would come immediately. She was a good wife, one who stayed by her man no matter what.

“Yes. I can have the officers call you if you want—”

“No. No. Thank you, I don't need to, I just needed to know that—that he's, that he's all right.”

Already Maris was backing away. She knew her thanks were inadequate, that she had misrepresented herself. She hurried back into the noise and wind, practically ran for her car. When she started the engine, she was trembling. She drove slowly, carefully, the way one drives after being stopped for speeding.

The air in the car was chilly and stale; she'd driven all the way here with the air-conditioning on high. The weather today was Maris's least favorite kind, hot and windless, the sky a hazy steel blue. Back in Kansas, where Maris had lived with her mother and sister until high school, such a sky would lord itself over August wheat until lightning ripped through, announcing splattering storms. But here in California, there was no lightning, no storms, just endless talk of drought and ruin, the hills burned brown and fields left unplanted. Inside the house where Maris retreated, there had been nothing but the hum of the air conditioner, the clink of ice shifting in the freezer. Jeff's departure had galvanized her to ask Alana if she could come stay, but Maris hadn't been sure she would be able to pull it off, actually putting her things in the car. Actually driving away.

She might have chickened out about going to Alana's, chosen to stay numb, to simply give up and die in the house rather than venturing out into the world again. And then Ron had called, and what he threatened to do had ripped her from her self-imposed exile. And maybe she ought to thank him for that. Except—how dare he?

Maris gripped the steering wheel hard, claustrophobic in the slow-moving traffic through the Presidio. How could he have possibly thought that his life could be worth anything to her? Even if he could die a thousand times, it would never make up for Calla, for the fact that his son had killed her daughter. Maybe she should have told him to go ahead and jump—if only as punishment for his audacity, his selfishness. No, his self-
indulgence
. Because wasn't that really what his call was all about?
Poor me,
she imagined him thinking, drawing out the exquisite luxury of self-pity. A truly repentant man would have simply jumped—he wouldn't have given himself a lifeline in the guise of that damn phone call.

Do it,
she should have said.
Jump!
And then she could have gone to his funeral and savored Deb's loss, her pain. Not that the loss of a husband could ever compare to the loss of a child. But it would have been something.

A horn honked, then another. A cacophony of them as traffic struggled around a truck stalled on an exit ramp. Ridiculous, to attempt this at this time of day, with no way to get around the city crush and the Bay Bridge approach, the rush-hour commuters all heading out. There, at least, was one advantage of being homebound by grief: no traffic.

As she edged the car forward in the snarl before the tunnel, merging with the traffic from Berkeley, her phone rang. Maris glanced at the screen: her sister. She deliberated for a moment before answering, but she couldn't put Alana off all night.

“Hey.”

“Hi, Mar.” Caution in her voice, the gentling that was so unnatural for Alana. “I was just checking in to see if you got on the road when you thought you would.”

“Oh, Alana, listen.” For a moment Maris considered telling her what happened—Ron's call, the sounds of cars rushing by, the cop in the black windbreaker. The sense of relief followed by rage. “I don't—I think I'll just wait and come in the morning. It's taking me a little longer than I thought to figure out what to pack.”

“Just throw some things in a bag! We can drive back on Saturday and get more, if you want. I'll help.”

Maris was exhausted just thinking about her sister going through her dresser, choosing what to take and what to leave behind. “Yes, I just—I know, Alana. I'm grateful. Really. But at this point I'll have to wait until after six to miss the worst of the traffic and I wouldn't get down there until seven thirty, at least.”

“Oh, Mar.” Alana's exhale was audible even over the phone. “You sure? I hate to think of you there by yourself. Besides, I picked up some wine. A nice one, a pinot gris. We can sit outside after it cools off.”

“I'm sure.” Maris relaxed fractionally; her sister had relented. “We can figure all of this out tomorrow. I just want to take a shower and go to bed early.”

But at nine o'clock, when she climbed into the bed she'd shared with Jeff, she still hadn't showered. Not today, and she wasn't sure if she'd had one yesterday, either. That would have to change now. Alana couldn't see her like this, with her hair greasy and stringy, her nails ragged and bitten. She had to make her sister think she was managing, if just barely.

Starting tomorrow, she would get back into a strict grooming regimen. Exercise too—she'd pack her sneakers and gym clothes and use her sister's treadmill every day. She'd make an appointment with a hairdresser, get her roots done, a manicure.

It wasn't like Maris expected sleep to come easily. She'd accepted the middle-of-the-night wakefulness, the long march of empty hours toward dawn, as part of her penance. But tonight she couldn't seem to slow her thoughts at all, even after she'd gone through all the breathing exercises Nina had taught her.

Would sleep have come more easily if he had jumped?

Would Maris have felt something—anything—when the news cameras turned their inexhaustibly greedy lenses on Ron's funeral, panning over the mourners as they had a year ago when nearly a thousand people came to Calla's service? Would Maris feel better when, some future day, she passed Deb Isherwood on the street and saw the familiar ravages of loss in her eyes?

DEB WAS CRYING.
Ron knew she was trying not to, trying so hard he could practically feel the effort she was making, the way her teeth ground together and her fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly.

She'd held it together while talking to the cops. Ron had stood slightly off to the side, chastened, as though he had been caught pulling the fire alarm in middle school and his mother had come to pick him up. Already the enormity of what he had almost done had dissipated, the decision he had reached a distant and hazy memory. It seemed almost silly, a misunderstanding, and yet there was his wife in her sleeveless blouse, her white sandals with her red-painted toenails peeking out, looking fresh and pretty and appropriately concerned, twisting a lock of her blond hair around her finger.

They held hands as they walked back to the car, after finally convincing the officers that Ron didn't need to go to the hospital for an emergency evaluation. Deb had said, “I'll drive,” and Ron had almost argued, out of habit—Deb was a slow and cautious driver, and he got impatient in the passenger seat—before closing his mouth tightly. This was only the first of the concessions he would undoubtedly have to make, now that he had done this thing, and he felt his mood changing to grim penitence.

What made the most sense would be for each of them to drive their own cars home, but he knew that wasn't going to happen. Deb had nodded along with the promises he'd made to the cops: not to be alone, to let someone else pick up his car, to make an appointment immediately with a mental health professional.

Still, Ron knew he wasn't crazy. And he wasn't ever going to kill himself, he saw that now. Which hadn't made him wrong, exactly; he'd needed to go to the brink to see where he stood, what he was willing to trade. He still didn't have much worth living for, Deb notwithstanding, and he still had a debt he couldn't possibly repay, a net negative balance on this earth.

But he'd dutifully consulted Maris, and Maris had turned him down, and that was that. They were members of a very select group now, the two of them. Maybe it was unforgivable of him to put himself in the same category as her—her child was dead and his was not, but Karl's life had been altered so completely that it felt like he had lost his son. The person sitting in Panamint Correctional Institution for Men, two and a half hours away, was not Karl, not as he had been, at any rate. (Which didn't excuse Ron from going to see him, he knew that. He had other reasons, other excuses.)

But he and Maris both woke up each day to experience the horror of loss all over again. In some way, it was always new, it was always shocking. Deb suffered too, of course, but she had her belief—fantastical and pitiable though it was—in Karl's innocence. That belief was her first thought in the morning and her last at night, and it seemed to give her what she needed to sustain her each day. And she had all the rituals of homemaking, the comfort of which had been incomprehensible to Ron even before last year: finding her life's meaning through him, their son, their home; counting her own value in how meticulously she took care of all of them.

Deb's devotion to him had never flagged, and she drew strength from their marriage. Ron wished he could do the same—if there was some elixir he could take that would render him as dependent on Deb as she was on him, he would do it. Just so he wouldn't have to be so
alone
. But it wasn't possible. He loved Deb now as much as ever, perhaps more, but he didn't
need
her. He faced all the terrible moments alone and knew that it wasn't in him to do different.

Not that it mattered in the end. The guilty verdict was inevitable, that was obvious after jury selection, the first time Karl was led into the courtroom and the jury got a look at him. Karl had engineered his own sentence with his behavior, his impenetrable mien, his palpable indifference, the hint of scorn that attended every gesture and sigh and proclamation of innocence.

Maris and Ron had never spoken, all those long hours in the county courthouse. They settled wordlessly into a pattern, the Vacantis and Isherwoods, of staggering their arrivals and departures: the Vacantis coming early so they could have their seats close to the front, and him and Deb coming as late as possible, glad—though they never discussed it—when they could squeeze in somewhere at the last minute so they didn't have to endure any more attention than necessary. It was reversed at the end of the day when Deb insisted that they try to catch Karl's attention, offer a word of encouragement, gestures that were rarely returned or even acknowledged.

But Ron stole glances at Maris whenever he could. He knew her back by heart, the way her highlighted hair curved under itself an inch or two past her collarbones. Her shoulder blades, sharp and angular under her clothes. Her soft-looking sweaters in dull colors like gray and steel blue.

At least she must know by now he wasn't dead, so any responsibility she had (arguably, none) to ensure he didn't kill himself was over. He was still the parent of her daughter's killer. Maybe she'd like to kill him herself.

The thing was, he had something new to apologize to her for. Causing her more pain, reminding her of his very existence by threatening to snuff it out—he didn't have the right. Hell, he'd apologize to her for existing, if he could figure out the words.

“We could call Azalea Pearce,” Deb said in a brittle approximation of cheer as they drove through the hills toward the eastern suburbs of San Francisco. “Just for ideas.”

“Deb, sweetheart,” Ron said. He was impressed by his own calm. “I don't think that's a good idea.”

“She's a therapist. She could give us names, she probably knows just the right person—”

“Let's not bring anyone from the neighborhood into this, though, okay? I'm not saying anything about Azalea, I think she's great, but still.”

People would talk. Azalea would tell Ernie, and he'd let it slip to someone. Never on purpose. The last year had taught them that: people really didn't mean to squander the confidences they received. It just happened—human nature.

“Well. Then let's call Sam.” Deb's voice quivered a bit, on the brink of tears, but Ron could tell she wasn't going to give up.