The Last Good Day (53 page)

Good work there, Schulman. Helluva world you’re bringing the kids up in.

The mobilized yawping of the dog seemed to goad him.

That’s right, kids. It’s true. Your worst fear doesn’t quite go far enough. Daddy blew the college tuition. Mommy once carried another man’s baby.

The dog barked louder and closer to the house.

The police can pull you over and fuck with you for absolutely no good reason. And by the way, our neighbor whose kids you once took care of decapitated his wife.

Each little bark was a hacksaw lightly scraping his nerves.

But don’t you worry, uh-uh. Because except for the unpredictable and unpreventable acts of terrorism in the future, everything is A-OK.

A part of his mind couldn’t accept that all he could do at this point was put on a suit and try to find another job quickly. Shouldn’t he be doing something more primal? Sharpening his spear. Building high stone walls around the house. Gathering animal skins for the long winter months. Loading up the catapult. Re-doing his résumé seemed so …
reasonable.

But then Hannah plunged her hand into the communal bowl and slipped him a sideways half-smile. And for a fleeting instant, he felt restored to his place in the family. Okay, we’re broke and shit-scared and at one another’s throats, but at least we’re not apart.

From the yard, he heard Stieglitz give a sharp little seagull yelp and then a low-down mangy growl.

“Think he’s ready to come back in?” Barry asked.

“Second time he’s been out since dinner.” Clay got up again. “He better be.”

“Take a flashlight,” Lynn called after him. “Don’t let him track mud back in the house again.”

They all heard the revving of an engine and gravel spewing in the driveway at the same time.

“What the hell was that?” Barry got up and brushed past Clay.

“Is that Dennis’s car?” asked Lynn.

Hannah looked mildly offended. “His engine’s much noisier.”

Forgetting his shoes, Barry yanked open the door and peered out into the darkness. A pair of red taillights flared through the light fog and veinery of branches at the end of the driveway. Closer to the house, where the garage was attached, small pieces of orange light glowed and drifted away, turning blue at the edges before they extinguished in midair.

A strong chemical odor seeped through the familiar smells of autumn and started a faint burning at the back of his throat.

“Oh, shit, the garage is on fire!” He started running. “Lynn, get the fire extinguisher!”

The fire was just starting to graze on a corner of the garage, but he could already hear its hunger panting. The dog was at his heels, chasing and yapping, catching his eye once in the dark, as if to ask,
Are you sure this is what’s supposed to happen?
The two of them stopped short in the driveway, watching the flames organize their game plan, gnawing on the trim of the open garage doorway, right next to the stacks of bundled newspapers.

“
Hose!
” he shouted, racing back to the front lawn. “
Where’s the fucking hose?
”

He tripped over it in the dark and wasted precious seconds trying to find the spray gun at its head, while the dog kept trying to stick its nose in his crotch.

“HANNAH, TURN THE SPIGOT ON!” he yelled as he ran back toward the driveway, praying the snagged coil would stretch that far.

The fire had matured while he was away. He felt everything on him—clothes, hair, and skin—reversing as he approached it. The flames had turned into an agile tiger, feasting along the inner wall, taking great greedy gulps of breath and searching for flammables. He heard the crackle of boiling paint and saw orange pieces dripping from the trim like food spilling out of a mouth.

He aimed the spray gun at the stack of burning newspapers, but when he pulled the trigger, only a dainty spring mist came out, falling well short of the target.

“ALL THE WAY ON, HANNAH,” he shouted, envisioning the whole garage flashing over and setting the main house ablaze.

He heard the dog at his side give a discouraged whimper as a loud pop came from deep within the garage. And in the half-second before he registered it as a small explosion, three things came into his mind.
Dog. Aerosol can. Newark.
An expanding basketball of flame came shooting out at him—the bug spray must’ve ignited.
I’m going to die.
He turned and pitched himself out of the way, feeling the hot cloud pass, threatening to scorch his face and liquefy his eyeball. He hit the ground and skittered down the gravel driveway, dimly aware of the rest of the family screaming his name from the yard.

The abrasion of gravel on his chest and upper arms told him he was all right, though. Slowly he got up, brushing his hands, sensing someone else was hurt instead. He felt it tangibly as a wrenching, a thing being pulled away from him. Then he turned toward a sound like an old wheel spinning on a rusted axle. By the fire’s light, he saw Stieglitz on the ground, writhing and twisting his head, trying to get at the shred of burning newspaper that had wrapped itself around his tail.

“Oh my God!” he heard Hannah shriek from the yard.

“Hannah, don’t get near him!” Barry started to back away, realizing he’d lost the spray gun in the fall. “Somebody help me find the hose again!”

Hearing the sound of his master’s voice, the dog jumped up, revivified, chasing Barry up the steps and across the lawn, a soft blue-orange glow spreading along his hindquarters. The animal stopped for a second to roll on the dry grass, giving himself momentary surcease but leaving a tiny fire in his wake.

“LYNN, CALL NINE-ONE-ONE!” Barry hollered.

“I DID!” she screamed, standing in the doorway with the phone to her ear. “BUT I CAN’T FIND THE FIRE EXTINGUISHER! IT’S NOT UNDER THE SINK! SOMEBODY MOVED IT!”

The dog started to follow the sound of her voice, thinking he was still welcome in the house.

“NO, STIEGLITZ. BAD BOY! COME BACK HERE!” Barry clapped his hands, realizing the dog would set the living room on fire if he got inside. “Go find the ball! Where is it?
Where is it?
”

The dog came tearing back at him in a blazing blue stink, squealing in pain with his tongue hanging out, ready for the nightly routine of jumping up and humping Barry’s leg.

“No baby! No kiss!” He backpedaled again, waving his arms. “Daddy doesn’t want a kiss!”

“Over here!” Hannah called from a far corner of the yard, trying to distract Stieglitz.

“No, over here!” Clay cried out from closer to the pool.

The fire had grown into a hairy red mammoth, goring the side of the garage and spewing black smoke at the moon.

“WILL SOMEBODY HELP ME FIND THE GODDAMN HOSE AGAIN?” Barry shouted, feeling around for it in the dark even as the dog kept after him. “THE HOUSE IS GOING TO GO UP!”

A lone siren sounded in the far distance, trying to rouse the local volunteer firemen from their family dinners. He wondered if the response would be just a bit slower once they realized whose place was burning.

“LYNN, GET AWAY FROM THE HOUSE!” he called back toward the front door.

The dog followed the sound of his voice to the apple tree. Now the two of them stood facing each other, with only a few feet between them, no longer master and pet. Blue-orange flakes peeled off the dog, and the stench of burning fur cut through the fog. Stieglitz gazed at Barry with glistening dark eyes, making anguished squeaks deep in his throat. A single fire engine wailed from the bottom of the hill, offering a remote promise of help on the way.

“Easy there, boy.” Barry peeled off his bathrobe, as he saw the dog about to rear back on his hind legs. “SIT! SIT!”

The dog just stared at him, baring its teeth, the high whimpering giving way to a vicious growl. Barry edged forward slowly, holding the robe out before him like a matador’s cape, not entirely certain his reflexes would be fast enough to smother the flames.

“Just take it easy, baby. No one else is gonna hurt you.”

But then the slap of chubby hands and a high boyish whistle cut him off.

“Hey, Stieglitz, come here! Come on, boy.
I’ll
play with you.”

Somehow Clay had pulled back a third of the pool covering and was standing on the far side of it.

“Come for a swim, buddy. Here we go. The water’s fine.”

With its remaining instinct, the dog turned and scampered toward the sound of unconditional love. And with one last leap, he dove straight into the pool where Clay had coaxed him to go swimming over Lynn’s protests at least twice this past summer. There was a loud splash, a rain of drops, a hoarse despairing cry from Clay, and then a crisp sizzle of scorched hair and chlorine.

58

“IT’S ALL A PACK
of lies, ya know.”

“What is?”

“All of it. Every last goddamn word. The Old Testament. The New Testament. The Code of Hammurabi. The Magna Carta. Book of Mormon. The Geneva Convention. The
Boy Scout Handbook. Das Kapital. Mein Kampf.
The I Ching. Even the so-called Bill of Rights. They’re all just meant to keep you in your place.”

Mike was spending the night at his father’s trailer in the RV park just past the abandoned map factory at the far end of River Road. The place smelled like an old rabbit cage because Dad never threw anything out. Everywhere you looked there were yellowing copies of
Reader’s Digest,
rusty door hinges, insecticides made by companies that no longer existed, and jars of peanut butter three years past the expiration date. Just to add to the clutter effect, Dad always left his radio and television on at the same time, a call-in show playing softly in the background while he sat in his easy chair watching
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
On his lap were two library books about his latest obsession: debunking all major world religions.

It took Mike awhile to understand that the purpose of all the noise was to fill a gap. After thirty-one years working on a cell block, Dad could no longer handle quiet. It unnerved him, made him snappish and prone to trivial arguments. He needed constant distraction of some kind to stay calm.

“They say Moses wrote the Five Books of Moses, but how can that be?” The old man fidgeted before the old Zenith twelve-inch with one of its antennae wrapped in tinfoil. “Those books say he was the humblest man who ever walked the face of the earth. But how could the humblest man have written
that
about himself? See what I’m getting at?”

“I didn’t know you were supposed to take it literally.” Mike stretched on the foldout couch, trying to see the set from behind his father’s chair.

“And don’t go thinking the Christians are any better. Nobody even mentions the Crucifixion until Mark.”

“You want a beer?” Mike sighed.

“There was a cross in every church your mother and I ever set foot in. If it’s just a symbol then the hell with it.” Dad looked over the back of his chair. “Bottles are on the side door in the refrigerator. Get me a glass, will you?”

Mike lurched to his feet, queasy and bloated. The combination of Vicodin and amoxicillin was turning his stomach into a free-fire zone. Full price he had to pay at CVS Pharmacy, now that his Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association card wouldn’t go through the system anymore. A dollar a pill, and it still felt like he had poison pumping through his bloodstream. The stiffness went all the way from his thumb into his shoulder, and every few hours the fever would start to burn him up and then abruptly fade.

He was riding the rims, ready to come apart at the joints. Especially after this afternoon. Marie home from work early and meeting him at the front door with the address of the new Y in White Plains. Telling him she’d already packed his bags and stuffed them into the truck because it was better for the kids not to see him stomping around with bulging suitcases. Sure, he could’ve put up a fight and insisted on staying, but what would that prove? That she’d been right all along. That he only took care of himself. He’d show her. At least there was no screaming and yelling. She gave him as much time as he wanted to explain things to the kids. Cheryl and Mike Jr. listened with polite blank expressions, as if there was a TV program they’d rather watch. But Timmy grabbed his good hand and wouldn’t let go.

But who’s going to take care of us?

What are you talking about?
He’d rested his chin on top of the boy’s head.
Your mommy’s not going anywhere.

But she’s not a police officer.

Of course, neither was he anymore. He was nothing. A disgrace. His heart had been ripped out. His entire life had been a waste. No, worse than a failure. He’d brought shame to a family that had been here since before the Civil War. Every decent thing he’d ever done would be forgotten, and mistakes he didn’t make would forever be linked with his name. It didn’t matter that Larry Quinn had called last night and said that Harold and Paco were looking seriously at the husband again. Or that Harold himself had left a few messages. He’d still be called a criminal for the rest of his days. His children would deny him; his grandchildren would never hear of him.

But for some crazy reason, what his mind kept going back to was Sandi Lanier. He’d told himself that he’d never really fallen for her; she didn’t matter, she was just a substitute, a way to get back at Lynn after all these years. She’d hooked him, though, that fucking Sandi. Especially now that she was gone and he knew what was inside her. He remembered the way she’d looked up at him that day she thought Jeff had come home early. How she’d sat bolt upright and looked around, like a deer hearing a hunter’s footsteps in the woods. After a few seconds, realizing it was nothing, she’d sunk down and curled against him again.
You’ll watch over me, won’t you?
She might as well have taken a pin and stuck it right through his heart, because he’d never be rid of those words. Thinking about them now comforted him a little. At least once he’d made somebody feel safe.

“Would you like a Lifeline?” asked a voice from the television.