The Last Good Day (24 page)

The place smelled like Murphy Oil Soap and cedar chips from the hamster’s cage. Piles of laundry sat neatly folded on the stairs. Down the short hallway, he saw Marie in the kitchen, still in her work clothes, making a pot of tea for herself. He closed the door behind him and heard the sound of water about to boil.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “Doesn’t the new girl put the laundry away?”

“She doesn’t know where anything goes.” The pot started to whistle. “I haven’t had time to show her.”

His shoulders brushed the walls as he came in to talk to her. Was the hall always this small? After being reminded of how big Lynn’s place was from the outside, he found himself noticing the lowness of the ceilings here, the age of the wallpaper, the narrowness of the kitchen, the way the two of them could barely fit between the stove and the refrigerator.

“How’s life among the deadbeats?” he asked, putting his briefcase down on the counter and seeing where caulk had worn away around the sink.

“Unbelievable.” Her eyes registered the ink stain under his pocket. “These people have driver’s licenses and bank loans. And zero sense of personal responsibility.”

He tried to flash her the old Burt Reynolds smile. “You get a lot of those second and third notices out tonight?”

“Yes, but it’s all at the point of diminishing returns. Every time we send out a notice, the percentage of people who pay goes down. We’re going to end up sending half of them out for collection anyway, so I don’t even know why we bother giving them another chance.”

“Hmm …” He moved around her to wash his hands and saw a pile of sawdust on the windowsill over the sink.

Diminishing returns. Zero responsibility. Why bother giving them another chance?
Not exactly encouraging words for a man to come home to. What happened to the devoted girl who used to rub his shoulders every night? He missed her gratitude. The way he could see himself grow bigger in her eyes instead of smaller, the way he did today with Lynn. He missed how the whole family used to climb over one another to get at him when he came home. And most of all, he missed the man he used to be around here.

He thought they were together on this story when they got married. He was a gift to her. He’d rescued her. She was living in a cruddy little two-bedroom above the garden supply store on Evergreen with her mother, two sisters, and her brother the schizo. He was taking her away from all that. He was going to be the hero, making up for her fuckhead father abandoning the family without a single support check. He was going to be the one who made up for all the failures and disappointments of other men.

But somehow that story got balled up. Yes, he’d screwed up monumentally. And yes, he’d had to beg her to take him back and give him another chance. But what was truly galling was that she’d decided that
she
was going to be the hero, going back to school, buying a couple of business suits from Talbots, getting a brusque little pixie cut, and landing herself a job in delinquent accounts at the hospital. She seemed to be saying that she didn’t need him that much anymore. She could pay off their loans, cover half the monthly expenses, and still have time to wreak vengeance on all the other deadbeats in the world.

“How’s the case?” she said.

“You know. Just trying to pull the threads together one by one.”

“Still doesn’t seem right, having you work on it. I mean you
did
know her.”

His eye stayed on the pile of sawdust as he dried his hands. She hadn’t found the diary he had hidden downstairs, had she?

“I know everybody,” he said. “If I let that stop me, I couldn’t even write a traffic summons.”

“We have to talk.” She turned the heat down under her kettle.

He tried to gather himself in as he watched the blue flames stop licking the underside of the pot.

“Timmy,” she said. “I got another call from school.”

He heard water still bubbling in the pot. “What happened?”

“Ms. Wagner said he’s being aggressive in the yard with Lanny Taylor again.”

“Shit.” He heard the hot water hiss as she lifted the pot. “Well, what’s he supposed to do if that other kid keeps picking on him?”

“Two weeks ago, you were supposed to spend the morning in school and help him settle down.”

“Excuse me, but have you noticed what’s come up in the meantime?”

“They want us to come in Friday afternoon for another conference about this impulse control problem.”

He watched the steam rise as she poured the water into her cup.

“Great. I’m in the middle of a major homicide investigation. I need this like I need a fucking hole in my head.”

“Well, I’m sorry Timmy didn’t check with you before he decided to go berserk again.”

“Why do you call it ‘going berserk’? This other kid keeps stealing his lunch money. What’s he supposed to do? Turn into a Maytag?”

He watched her get the honey down from the crowded cabinet shelf she’d spent forty-five minutes organizing. “So, what’ve you been telling him to do?”

“I tell him to work it out, but don’t let anyone push you around. You don’t know what it’s like with guys. You can’t accept disrespect. First they take your comb, next day it’s your radio. Sometimes you gotta put a man on his ass and let him know what goes where.”

“Yeah, that’s brilliant, Mike.” She ran the honey jar lid under the hot water, not even bothering to ask him to open it for her. “Is that another one of your father’s pearls of wisdom?”

“The man survived thirty-one years in Owenoke. He must’ve been doing something right.”

“Excuse me, but did it ever occur to you that what works on a cell block doesn’t work in a schoolyard?”

“Sure, but did it ever occur to
you
that maybe this is about you going back to work?” he came back at her. “Maybe he thinks you’re abandoning him.”

“Well, maybe if you didn’t spend twenty thousand on a new Toyota pickup when we’re already fifteen hundred in the hole every month for
your
alimony payments, I wouldn’t be working this hard in the first place.”

“Thanks a lot, Marie. That really helps.”

“Hey, I wasn’t the one who let customers pay me in stock options for putting up their fences. It’s not my fault you lost money on those jobs. I told you not to do it.”

He turned away from her and caught sight of the little sawdust pile again. Carpenter ants. Wouldn’t that just be perfect if they had an army of dark little carpenters gnawing away at the insides of their house. He already felt like he had a mass of them working their way through his head.

He yanked open the refrigerator door to look for a beer and saw the milk and orange juice cartons standing sentry on the top shelf, the labeled Tupperware containers on the second shelf, the jars lined up by size on the door shelves, the fruits and vegetables sensibly segregated in the crisper.
Impulse control.
One of those social-work phrases that made you feel like somebody was boring holes in your brain. Control all those nasty impulses. Don’t look at another woman. Don’t spend all that money. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t fall behind. Don’t lose your temper. Don’t raise your voice. Don’t raise your hand. Don’t think about things going back to the way they used to be.

“So, what do you want from me?” he said.

“I want you to be where you say you’re going to be. I want you not to humiliate me or the children anymore.”

“When have I…”

“You know damn well what I’m talking about. I want you to make up your mind about whether you’re going to be part of this family.”

He stayed bent by the open door, trying to let the cool air roll over him.
Eggshell country,
he thought.
Ever since she took me back, I’m living on a continent made out of eggshells. Any wrong little movement can break off a state.

“I think they want to talk about putting him on Ritalin,” she said in a muted voice.

“Fuck.” He grabbed a Coors and slammed the door harder than he meant to, jarring the tubes and bottles inside.

“I’m starting to think it’s not such a bad idea.” She looked at him.

“Yeah, yeah, great. Keep him doped-up all the time and turn him into a goddamn robot.” The dewy silver label crinkled against his palm. “Where’s my bottle opener?”

“Drawer next to the oven.”

He pulled it open, noticing the handle was loose. One of these days he’d have to get the Phillips and tighten it. He used to be so good at fixing things around the house. She used to love that about him. If there was a shelf that needed to be put up above the washing machine, or a leak in the sink, they never needed to call anybody. And in those days, she had a way of showing a man he was appreciated. Thinking back, he realized that some of the best sex they ever had was after he’d just put in the fiberglass insulation or replaced a rusty pipe.

But lately he’d begun to notice drill bits and Molly bolts lying around when he got home, because she was doing the work herself.

“We’ve always known he had a temper,” she said.

“At least we know he comes by it honestly.”

“You’re telling me.”

He pried the cap off the Coors and heard the greedy little suck-gasp of air.

“How many times do you need me to say I’m sorry, Marie? You want to give me a number one of these days? Three thousand five hundred and twenty-seven? You want me to spend a week saying nothing but I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry …”

“Keep your voice down. The children are sleeping.”

He took a long hit off the bottle, trying to cool his gut. Christ, how long was she going to keep him dangling on this hook? He felt like he was on parole with stringent conditions.
No fraternizing with undesirable elements. No fraternizing with desirable elements. No more fucking around with other women. No more choir practice. No more unnecessary roughness with the wife and kids. No giving in to uncontrollable impulses. No Shit.
He knew he couldn’t afford another divorce, financially or mentally. And she’d already made it clear this was his last chance.

He thought again of the passage he’d read in the diary yesterday (
Starting to think there’s something the matter with M.
), and more of the carpenter ants fanned out in his head.

Half of what made it truly terrifying was how much he had to lose. Not just the kids and the marriage, but the respect of his fellow officers, the smiles of the moms on the soccer sidelines, the teachers and ladies at Saint Stephen’s all knowing him by his first name, the Christmas cards from the town trustees, the Planning Board people coming up and thanking him for cleaning up downtown, the nod of recognition from the bartenders at the Gate who’d filled his father’s and grandfather’s glasses and still waved off his money.

“I’m really worried about him,” Marie said, getting back to the main subject, her words too much like the ones in the diary.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve seen how he is. He’ll just be playing and wrestling with one of his friends on the ground, and then all of a sudden a switch will go off in his head.”

“I never saw that,” he said, holding the beer in front of his chest.

“Yes, you have. He becomes a different person right before your eyes. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

He turned away from her and took another swig, cold fingers encircling his heart.

The other kids were fine. Mike Jr., his ten-year-old, was a fearless knucklehead like his dead uncle. Cheryl, his eleven-year-old, was more like her mother, always with her head inside a Harry Potter book. But Timmy, his youngest by a year, was the one most like him. They even looked alike: the same long groove between his nose and his lip, same big jaw, and same deep-set eyes. But there was also a dark spot in him that up until now he’d thought no one else had noticed. Something fizzing under the surface. He’d recognized it one afternoon at soccer last year when Timmy was pretending to fence with another kid on the sidelines. Almost in slow motion, he saw his son pick up a stick and jab it at the other kid’s eye. Mike had managed to get between them before the damage was done, but he was scared shitless for weeks afterward. Because he knew what it was. He knew because he struggled with it every day himself. That fist that could never quite unclench. That red mist that seemed to fall over him sometimes, that shout always at the back of his throat.

“You know what this is really about?” he said. “It’s about real estate.”

“How do you figure that?” She tapped the lid of her honey jar against the side of the counter.

“They just want all the kids sitting there like little corporate drones so the reading and math scores go up and people will pay more for their houses. There’s nothing wrong with Timmy.”

“That’s right, Mike. Just keep saying it. You don’t have to come to the meeting. You don’t even have to come home at all.”

He had a sudden urge to strike her. The idea of a punch forming in his shoulder and working its way down his arm. Or maybe he’d just smash her over the bridge of the nose with the half-full Coors bottle, see if that shut her up. But then she twisted the top off the honey jar and gave him a look of girlish pride for not having asked him to help. He let the fist drop back at his side. See?
Impulse control.

“There’s nothing wrong with the kid,” he repeated.

She dipped her teaspoon into the open jar and dandled a clear golden line into her cup.

“Three-fifteen, Friday,” she said, licking the spoon when she was done. “I’m going to bed. I left some chicken in the refrigerator. You can heat it up in the microwave.”

“Yeah, nice seeing you too.” He gave her a limp salute as she took her tea and started to walk out.

“What happened to your shirt?” She stopped in the doorway and stared at his pocket. “Looks like you bled all over yourself.”

“Leaky pen. I didn’t have another shirt in my locker.”

“Give it here.” She sighed, holding her hand out. “Though what the hell you expect me to do about it I don’t know.”

23

BARRY DROPPED LYNN
off early the next morning to get the Explorer back from Riverside Motors on Front Street and then continued on down to the train station in the Saab. As he parked in the lot, he saw Harold Baltimore get out of his navy Buick LeSabre across the street and amble toward the Starbucks around the corner. Almost immediately, Barry decided that he needed a third cup of coffee to really get the day on its feet.