The Turnout(96)

Dara felt something stir in her chest, against her heart. She moved quickly past and heard a sound in her throat that felt like a scream.

In the stairwell, in the parking lot, in the car, she tried to let it out, the scream, the cry, the breath. It never came.





THRESHOLD


She was pulling into their driveway when she saw the car out front, a weathered minivan, rust-dimpled and sputtering exhaust.

Dara could make out two girls’ heads in the backseat, both swathed in winter hats, one plain purple pom-pom and the other shaped like a unicorn, a silvery horn bopping to and fro.

It was only then that she saw the figure on the front porch bouncing on her feet to keep warm. Sunglasses, a hood, but the same faded parka from the night before. Was it only the night before?

Exiting the car, Dara approached the woman without knowing what she was going to do, with no idea what was inside her.

The woman, her face weather-beaten, looked tired, frightened, her head darting from her minivan to Dara and back again.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked.

“I guess so,” Dara said. A curtain twitched in the bay window. Marie, Dara thought, watching. Hiding.

The woman shook her head, pressing her mittens over her ears.

“The detectives called,” she said. “They told me about Char—your husband.”

“Why did they tell you?” Dara snapped.

“They were asking questions. About my husband mentioning any trouble at work,” she said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Dara said nothing, staring into the woman’s sunglasses—oversize, bottomless—and seeing only the dark flutter of her own eyes reflected there.

“I don’t know what Charlie told you. Or if he told you anything.”

“I know more than he did,” Dara said coolly. “I know you used him.”

“No,” the woman said, shaking her head again, the vast abyss of her sunglasses. “No.”

“Charlie could never do anything like that. Not on his own. He had trouble doing anything at all,” Dara said, her eyes pinching suddenly, upsettingly. “So it had to be you. You wanted out. You wanted the money—”

“Is your sister inside?” the woman said suddenly.

“You’re not talking to my sister,” Dara said, stepping forward, a feeling in her chest, a ferocity, something she hadn’t felt in years, since they were small and their father sometimes sent them both to the deli to buy beer for him, three ragged blocks, and sometimes the cashier who leaned down far too close to her sister and once asked her if she had polka dots on her panties.

“Okay,” the woman said. “But maybe she wants to talk to me. Maybe I can help her. About Derek.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Dara said.

They both looked at each other a long time. It reminded her of playing board games with her sister, the few soggy ones her father kept in the basement. How it was impossible to play with Marie because she never cared about losing—paper money, game pieces, pride. It only worked if you both cared. If you both had the power to wipe out the board.

“So are you going to tell them?” the woman asked finally. “The police. Are you going to tell them about Charlie and me?”

Dara peered into her sunglasses, one lens smeared. This woman, this woman. With a hunch to her posture and a spray of gray at both temples. This woman. Who was she.

“No,” Dara said. “I’m not. But not for you.”

The woman nodded, breathing softly now, her shoulders sinking. “Would you believe me,” she said, “if I said I didn’t know Charlie was going to do it? That night. Would you believe me?”

“I wouldn’t,” Dara said, “believe anything you said at all.” Looking past her toward her minivan, sludge-colored. The two girls in the backseat, the sway of their winter hats listening to some song on the radio as the car fogged up.

“Those are your girls,” Dara said, her voice small and strange.

“Yes,” the woman said, a stitch of caution on her face. “The boys are away at school.”

They were both looking now, at their winter hats bopping through the window, purple and plush, the unicorn horn slightly bent, pressed against the roof of the car as the girls played.

The woman’s body twitched suddenly, as if remembering something, and she covered her mouth with a stiff mitten. Dara knew what it was. She’d felt it a dozen times that day already. The body remembering, contorting. He’s gone, he’s gone.

For a moment, only a moment, Dara felt sorry for her.

As if sensing it, the woman looked at her and reached for her sunglasses, removing them at last. Her eyes heavy, swollen.

“I wish I could explain,” she said. “You build this family. And it’s perfect. It’s everything you wanted. And then something goes wrong. Slowly or all at once. It was good and now it’s so bad, and it’s his fault. Or he started it. All the ripples from his bad behavior.”

Dara didn’t say anything. The woman kept going.

“So, in some private part of your head, you start thinking up fantasies of escape. You tell yourself: If only he were gone, if only a heart attack, a lightning bolt, a car crash . . .”

“I have to go,” Dara said, turning.