THE THEFT LEFT ME RATTLED. At first I thought maybe I’d been mistaken, that I hadn’t seen the candlestick only moments before in the bathroom. But I knew it had been there. It wasn’t as though someone had broken in and made off with all our appliances. The candlestick was a small thing, something Sarah had picked up at a flea market for under twenty bucks, but that didn’t make me feel any less angry. It was the gall, the nerve, that shook me. That Rick the Grout Flinger, that useless son of a bitch, would think he could just pick up something of ours and walk out of the house with it, it seemed unthinkable.
I wanted to get on the phone, get Don Greenway on the line, and tell him he better send Rick right back here, not just to fix our fucking shower, but to return our fucking candlestick. But I knew how that would go. The last part, anyway. Assuming Greenway even bothered to ask Rick about it, Rick would deny it. And then where would I be? Would Detective Flint put aside his murder investigation to find the notorious Walker residence candlestick thief?
So this was life in the middle of the boring burbs. Our developer was sending thieves to deal with our leaky shower, there was a basement marijuana farm across the street, and I’d found a murdered environmentalist in the creek.
Maybe that lovely house on Driftwood Drive with the fountain out front was the new headquarters for the Mob? Were the Hells Angels opening their latest chapter on Lilac Lane? Were Al Qaeda terrorists planning their next attack from that new house on Coventry Garden Circle where sod was being laid yesterday?
When Paul came home from school, and later Angie, I told them I wanted to talk to them, with their mother, that evening. When Sarah arrived, I told her there was something I’d been waiting to discuss with the entire family. I gathered everyone in the kitchen. Sarah took a seat, Paul leaned up against the fridge, Angie stood in the doorway so she could make a fast getaway. I took up a position by the dishwasher.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ve tried to ease up a bit lately on the safety stuff. Not hound people about keys and locking doors and all that kind of thing, but I’m just a bit worried that people are going to become complacent without some friendly reminders.”
No one said anything.
“There are bad things going on in this neighborhood. Just because this isn’t the city doesn’t mean people out here can’t be up to no good. I mean, it was good, moving out here, and while there’ve been the odd rough spots, that you”-I spoke to Angie-“don’t care much for your school, and I know there’s a bit of a commute for your mom”-Sarah just stared at me-“and if anyone seems to be adjusting out here, it’s Paul, but the point I’m trying to make is, we have to be on guard, we have to be watching over our shoulder, we have to keep our eyes peeled for anything unusual.”
Still no one said anything, although I noticed the three of them exchanging glances.
“So we’re agreed? We remain on alert, we watch ourselves, we don’t do anything foolish? No purses left on the front seat of the car, no keys in the front door, no leaving the door unlocked when we go to bed at night. Just general commonsense rules is all I’m asking for here.”
Angie cleared her throat. It appeared that she was going to be the first to weigh in with some useful suggestions as to how we could live our lives more safely.
“Is anyone else concerned about the fact that Dad has turned into this paranoid freakout crazy person?”
10
THIS MIGHT BE A GOOD TIME to revisit what I would call the Asshole Issue.
Maybe you’ve already reached a conclusion. Let’s say you’ve voted in the yes column. Zack Walker is an asshole. No doubt about it. Made up your mind during The Backpack Incident, haven’t looked back. If that’s how you feel now, I don’t see you changing your mind anytime soon.
But maybe you’ve been less quick to judge. Maybe you’re on the fence. You understand how a man’s concern for his family could lead him to behave a bit irrationally at times. You’ve been there. Well, we’re coming to the part that will reinforce your convictions, one way or the other.
A day or so after my safety lecture, Sarah and I had gone over to Mindy’s Market to pick up a few items. Despite my rant, I was trying to be less fanatical in my approach to family safety, and part of that included being more relaxed generally about things. So when Sarah arrived home and said she wanted to go and pick up some groceries, I offered to come along. I’d been in my office, making pencil notations on some pages I’d just printed out, and met her at the front door after she changed into a pair of jeans and a sweater. We each grabbed light jackets because, even though we were well into spring, there was a cool wind blowing in from the north.
There was lots to talk about. At least lots for Sarah to talk about. It had been a busy day at The Metropolitan.
“So I tell Leanne, you know Leanne?”
I said yes.
“I want her to go down to the waterfront, where there’s a press conference being called by Alderman Winsted, about all this garbage that’s piling up by the yacht club, but it’s raining out, and she says she can’t go because the ground’s going to be soft and mushy, and she’s wearing this new Donna Karan thing, and these nice shoes, because she thought she was going up to cover the Wang trial-”
“The which?”
“Wang. The guy who cut up his girlfriend and dropped her body parts all over five counties.”
“Okay.”
I was struggling to release a cart, which was jammed into the next one.
“Except the Wang thing has been put off a day, and Walters called in sick-”
“Again?”
“I know, this is like the fourth time in two months, and it’s always his first day back after a couple off, and he always calls from Ottawa, where he’s boffing this chick from the Citizen, and the way I figure it, he just wants a long weekend, right? And then the M.E. wants to know why some fucking moron copy editor rewrote Owen’s story about the guy who was charged with possessing all this kiddie porn, and his defense is artistic freedom, and I say, maybe it’s because Owen wouldn’t know an interesting opening sentence if it came along and bit him on his nose, and he says that may be true, but maybe next time, the copy editor could rewrite it in such a way that she doesn’t switch the names of the accused and the defense lawyer. Anyway, what happened with you today?”
“Nothing.” I had the cart free now and we were trolling past a display of fresh fruit.
“Did you hear from the kids today?” Sarah asked.
Paul had phoned on his cell around noon to ask whether I could check in his room and see whether he’d left a science assignment on top of his dresser. I was on the cordless. “Okay, I’m in your room now, looking at the top of your dresser, and I see no science assignment,” I said.
He paused at the other end of the line. “Pull back my covers and see if it’s in my bed.”
I tried that. “No luck,” I said. “But I have found a Penthouse.”
“Never mind.”
I hadn’t heard anything from Angie, although before leaving in the morning she informed me that I owed her $127. Had I borrowed $127 from her, I asked, because if I had, my memory had been wiped clean of the incident. She sighed and reminded me that we had agreed to reimburse her for half of the cost of her new pants and top, an arrangement about which I knew nothing.
“I told her that,” Sarah said.
“Well then, you owe her $127.”
Sarah said we needed romaine, maybe a couple of steaks, and we were totally out of fabric softener. I expressed concern about how often we were using the barbecue, which, by the way, I still had to get fixed.
“There was a story, in your paper, about how when meat cooks over hot coals, it turns into pure cancer.”