I know. I know it was my fault.
I got no insurance. The damn cops’ll pull my license because I don’t have liability. Even with you running the stop sign and all, it’ll still be my fault.
There didn’t seem to be any cops around. Even any onlookers. It might have been a midnight collision in trackless desert.
She got out, and they looked at the damage. The van didn’t have a mark on it, but the fender of her station wagon was folded against the wheel.
Never mind the police, she said. We won’t call them. Your van’s not hurt, and I have insurance. I’ll think of something to tell them.
He got a galvanized pipe out of the back of the van. ATKINS PLUMBING, she read from the van’s side. He inserted the pipe into the fender well and, grunting, pried the crumpled fender away from the tire.
I really am sorry, she said.
Forget it, the plumber said. He tossed the pipe into the van and climbed behind the wheel.
She got in the station wagon and put it in gear and drove cautiously away.
If Daddy’s there, don’t run in telling him about the accident the first thing, she said. I’ll tell him after supper.
Can I tell him?
You can even tell him you were driving if you want to, she said.
She was hoping it wouldn’t be, but Charles’s pickup was in the driveway loaded down with tents and camp stoves and fishing gear. He was in the living room drinking a beer and reading through the daily copies of the Tennessean she had saved for him. He laid the papers aside and grasped Stephen and tossed him into the air and caught him. Stephen came down laughing and yelling to be thrown again.
Don’t do that, Charles. I’m always afraid you’ll hurt him.
You’re next, Charles said. He set down Stephen and grinned at her. While you’re getting supper, I aim to take a bath, he said. Haven’t seen you in a week, and you might appreciate me more tonight if I smelled a little better.
She sat on the couch and closed her eves. He hadn’t said anything about her mouth. But the cut was inside her lip, and he hadn’t kissed her. Her head hurt. Maybe she’d slammed it harder than she’d thought. She could hear Charles clattering around in the bathroom. Stephen turned the TV on and put a cartridge into his video game console. She could hear the music from his Mario Brothers game.
For a moment terrible in its intensity, she thought of leaving them both. Just for an instant. Slipping into the night and leaving them sleeping, shoes in her hand like that midnight rambler, just another hard traveler down the line and gone. She knew it was going to be a long night, and she didn’t know if she could take it: shouting, cursing, crying, perhaps he’d beat her, she hoped he’d beat her, that might make going easier. All she knew for certain was that she and Stephen were leaving.
You could save me, Robert had said a long time ago, if you could call five months a long time. By then she was attuned to nuances in his voice, and he’d said it in the self-mocking tone he used when he wanted you to think he didn’t mean it. He had been drinking whiskey then, but he was not drunk.
It seemed a terribly presumptuous thing to say, laid out like that. You can save me, you can let me slide. Having someone lay their life in your hands was oddly embarrassing, like accidentally walking in on someone naked. She did not want this weight on her, and she brushed all these implications lightly aside.
I can’t even save myself, she smiled.
You could save two birds with one stone, Robert said and smiled at that to show her it had all been a jest to see what her response would be. And that it hadn’t been the one he wanted to hear, but he’d have to settle for it.
She rested her head against the upholstery, and after a few moments she dozed. She must have slept for only a moment, but the dream she had seemed to encompass an enormous amount of time.
In the dream she was swinging somehow far above the earth, so high she could see the hazy ellipse of its curvature, the azure blue of the oceans. She was descending, arcing back and forth, the distance of the arc controlled by whatever suspended her by the left ankle. She looked up. A thin silver strand led up and up, tended away to nothingness in the high, cold air. When she looked down again, the earth was closer. The countryside was covered with snow, detail was rushing at her, fences, a pasture, a tarnished brass river snaking through cedar and cypress.
She was still swinging out, and she felt the moment of pause when her body strained against its tether. Then the pull of momentum back. She had no control over it. She was just arcing on the silver strand of cord. There was a snow-covered beech tree on the side of a wet black bluff, its branches reaching earthward as a beech’s will. It was in her path. She was going to slam into it hard, it was physics, it was gravity, it was fate. At the speed she was moving the impact would kill her, impale her on broken branches.
When she struck the tree, she felt only a rush of cold air, but the tree exploded into broken crystal glass that went glittering away in the light of a sun she couldn’t see and dimpled the snowy earth for miles when they fell.
Are you going to get that or not? Charles yelled.
The phone was in the kitchen. She answered it leaning against the counter. She turned on the tap and began to fill a glass with cold water. It was someone from the sheriff’s department, she didn’t get the name. Someone wanted to know her name, and she told them. There seemed to be too much noise. Water was running in the bathroom, water was running in the sink, Mario and Luigi were bouncing around the living room.
Do you know a man named Robert Vandaveer?
Yes.
Why is there no soap in here? Charles yelled from the bathroom. How about bringing me a bar of soap?
… Meter reader found him. Of course, it could be an accident, but it’s under investigation. The thing of it is, there was a sealed letter with your name on it in his pocket. I don’t actually have to have your permission, considering the circumstances, but I thought as a courtesy …
Cold water was running in the glass, running out of the glass.
No, she said viciously into the phone. If it’s sealed and it has my name on it, it’s mine. It’s mine, and you leave it alone.
She slammed the phone down. Stephen had come into the room, and he was staring at her. He seemed to be rising into the air, floating, growing as tall as she was. Then she felt the cold linoleum against the calves of her legs, the handle of a cabinet door against her back, and realized she was sitting on the floor. The phone began to ring.
Are you getting the goddamned soap or not? Charles had come into the room. She looked up. Charles looked ludicrous with water streaming off him and a towel clutched in front of his loins. She saw that Charles was getting fat.
I leave for a week and this place just … Charles’s face was altering, anger that had been rushing toward rage shifted to uncertainty, confusion, finally to consternation.
She folded Stephen into her arms so hard he cried out arid tried to twist away. He couldn’t, she was holding him so tightly. She thrust her face against the hollow of his throat. She could smell him, feel his hair, the poreless texture of his skin.
I’m getting your goddamned soap, she cried against the coarse fabric of Stephen’s sweater. I’m looking for it, I’m looking for it, Fm looking for it.
The Lightpainter
JENNY’S MOTHER once shot her husband in the thigh with a small-caliber pistol. She had been aiming higher but she was angry and the target was in desperate motion so she missed. She told it about the town with a kind of grim humor. If it had been anything like normal size I would have brought it down with one shot, she said. Who could hit a teensy old thing like that?