We Are Not Ourselves(131)

“You wouldn’t like the places I go,” he said. “Diners. Pizzeria Uno. I went to the Hard Rock Café once. Ed Debevic’s. You’d hate that place.”

“Just drive. I’ll tell you where.”

The snow was heavier than she’d expected. The roads had iced over. Connell drove carefully, gripping the wheel with both hands. At one point he slid a couple of car lengths and stopped just before he hit a hedgerow-lined stone wall.

“We’d better not risk it,” he said. “We can go out in the neighborhood. The Tap. Town Tavern.”

“Keep driving,” she said. “You’ll be fine.”

“Tumbledown Dick’s.”

“We’re going downtown,” she said firmly.

“Buckle up, please,” he said.

She saw him glancing in the rearview mirror. “You just worry about the road,” she said. When he looked away, she fastened the buckle.

He crawled for another block before he lost control of the Caprice again. They slid a good distance and bounced, hard, off a BMW parked in the street.

The seat belt was squeezing her ribs; she got it unbuckled. Adrenaline made her feel as if she’d touched an electric outlet. “Everyone all right?” Ed looked shocked, but he wasn’t hurt. Connell was fine. So was she.

When she got out, she saw the other car’s rear end had been demolished, along with most of the front of the Caprice.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Connell said.

“Watch that low-class language,” she snarled, and then she softened her tone. “Oh, hell. ‘Shit’ is right.”

She picked her way carefully around the car, holding on as she walked from passenger-side door to the front fender, which was smashed into the wheel well. The frame on the chassis had buckled where it met the door. Ed sat shivering in the car, his hand fishing for the door handle.

“I knew I shouldn’t have driven,” Connell said.

“It’s not going to open, Ed!” she yelled, and shook her head at him. She turned to Connell. “Do you think it’s drivable?”

“It looks pretty bad,” he said. The right front wheel was bent sideways as if kneeling toward the snowy ground. Connell scratched his ear. “I don’t know how the wheel got so bent. I wasn’t going fast.”

“I’d say it’s done, wouldn’t you? A car this old?”

“Probably.”

“Go up there, tell them what happened. Ask them to call the police.” She pointed toward a house, atop a mound and recessed from the street, that looked like a mansion.

She slid into the driver’s seat and reached across Ed—who was slapping at the top of his head with the grim determination of a mortifier of the flesh—into the glove compartment. She pulled out the envelope they’d used for years. It said “Insurance and Registration” in Ed’s old handwriting. It was hard to imagine the man who now communicated in thunderous block letters writing in this fluent script.

She watched Connell disappear with the paperwork up the sloping stairs and started the car. The light from the one working headlamp diffused into the snow and reflected off the mangled BMW. She blasted the heat. When Ed reached to turn it off—it had to be unconscious, the force of habit, because no one, not even him, could be that absurd—she smacked his hand away and turned it up again.

? ? ?

She and the boy stood in the snow waiting for the tow truck to arrive. Ed was in the car.

“What a disaster,” Connell said. “This is going to be expensive.”

She’d fought endlessly with Ed over keeping collision on the Caprice. Time and again she’d said it was a waste of money on a ten-year-old car, but Ed had insisted.

“Maybe not as expensive as it looks. Anyway, that’s what insurance is for.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Nobody got hurt,” she said. “Nobody died. Cars can be replaced.” Or not, she thought. She felt a hint of a smile cross her lips but stifled it. “Well,” she said under her breath. “That’s one way to get rid of a car.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said, ‘That’s one way to ring in the New Year.’?”

“Happy New Year,” he said glumly.

“Happy New Year.”



The AAA guy offered to drop them off at home before taking the car in. She sat on Ed’s lap in the seat, Connell between them and the driver.

When they pulled into the driveway, Connell asked the driver if he’d mind giving him a lift to the train.

She was flabbergasted. “You’re not still planning on going out?” He must have known that once inside, he wouldn’t be able to leave. The driver and Connell both looked to her for approval. “Go,” she said, annoyed, waving him off.

She climbed off Ed and helped him out of the truck. The snow was now a few inches thick. She held his hand as he navigated the fluffy terrain. She punched in the code for the garage door and watched the truck pull out.

Upstairs, she took off her string of pearls and changed out of her evening gown into a sweat suit. She got him ready for bed, in case he wanted to go up early.

She pulled a half gallon of ice cream out of the freezer and took two spoons from the drawer, though the second spoon was a fig leaf for her own guilt. Ed would have two spoonfuls, tops.