Cause of Death

3

I awake thinking not of Pax, but of the man in the black car. The Man in Gray.

Hiding, not hiding. Staring at me.

I’m looking to my left, to Pax’s side of the bed. Her pillow was indented with the vague shape of her side-sleeping head. I threw it out the morning after she died.

Bathroom, getting dressed. Casual today: Blue jeans. A short-sleeved, collared shirt, which happens to be mostly black, but that’s a coincidence. It’s one of the last clean ones, not mourning garb.

I feel soft. I haven’t been following my “workout” routine; that is, the house and yard. Pax and I mountain biked occasionally but the bulk of my exercise is maintaining and renovating the rambling, three-story cornflower-blue Victorian (I will finish the backyard shed, I tell myself and then think, no, I’m going to rip out the studs and burn them).

I think of how different it’d be if we had had children, which Pax did not want. As a professor of history, I frequently consider what-ifs, and challenge my students to do so too. General Meade pursuing Lee’s retreating troops after Gettysburg — the early end of the Civil War. Kennedy getting the flu on November 21, 1963 — we’re out of Vietnam in fourteen months.

With children in the family, yes, Pax would be alive now.

Of course, meditation on the butterfly effect can drive you crazy.

A knock on the door. The silhouette through the curtain tells me it’s Brooke Hartford. The height, the hips would do it, but the true tell is the cowgirl hat.

“Morning,” I say.

“Hey.” Her customary greeting. She’s back in El Paso attire and is toting two things: an envelope that will contain chapters of my book she’s edited and a large Tupperware container.

“You really didn’t need to.” I have food enough to last for a month and am nearly out of freezer space.

“You’re not eating, Jon. It’s turkey tetrazzini.”

Anxiety and memory have killed my appetite. In the past few days, despite my lax workout routine, I’ve lost seven pounds, which is obvious on my six-foot, two-inch frame.

I hand her the next batch of chapters and she hugs me, whispering, “Eat.”

Seeing her to the door, I notice a car pull up, a dark sedan. I think of the Man in Gray, but this is not his. Extra antennae bristle. An unmarked law enforcement car.

A large man climbs out of the driver’s seat. His suit is dark, his shirt white, his tie striped red and blue. He’s fit and his belly rolls only slightly over a belt that holds a gold badge, slightly smaller than, though of the same shade as, an elaborate buckle. The mustache is bushy.

His head turns and he watches Brooke stride down the front walk.

He approaches the house and affects a faint smile. “Professor Talbot?”

“Yes?”

He flashes an ID. The picture is five years younger than the living face. “Detective Roland Bragg, County Public Safety.”

I nod and we shake hands.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. Come on in.”

He steps into the entryway, eyes taking in the house. Before leaving for their respective homes around the country, the family and other funeral houseguests had left the place more immaculate than when they arrived.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, Professor. Every accident investigation, we have to do a report for the state. There’re just a couple questions I have left. You okay to talk to me about it? I can come back.”

I stare out the window at a robin jotting nervously around the yard. “No, rather get stuff like this over with.”

“I understand. We’re almost done with the paperwork. Do you know if your wife was on the phone at the time of the crash?”

Considering this. “Why?”

“The state compiles stats on distracted driving. Same with speeding, DUI.”

“She didn’t drink and drive.”

“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that, sir. The blood results showed that.” His voice is kind, though a different type of kind from that of the grief counselor. “Not at all. But... any reason to think she might’ve been on the phone?”

“I doubt it. She was a good driver.”

“She was going pretty fast.”

“I know. But...” I shrug.

“So she wasn’t talking to you?”

“No.”

“Any chance I could take a look at her phone?”

There might be a reason to object to this but I can’t think of any. Then I reflect that I could easily gin up some excuse or another. I just don’t feel like objecting.

“It’d be in here.”

I lead him into the living room. On the floor is a large cardboard box that contains the items in the car when it crashed. I heft it to the coffee table, which Pax and I refinished, stripping off the ugly green paint to reveal beautiful, rich walnut. The job took nearly a year. The box isn’t taped, but the top flaps are interleaved to make a seal of sorts. I tug them apart.

I rummage. There’s a small fire extinguisher, probably expired, some novels, a TomTom GPS, a bottle of Dasani water, an empty Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup, an add-on backup camera from a prior car, unnecessary as the Altima came with one built in. The Nissan tools and manuals are here. The insurance company owns the car now but those accessories aren’t of any interest to a potential buyer, who will strip the usable parts and turn the car into a block of metal and plastic and ship it off to China.

I frown. “Hm. Don’t see it.”

I try her purse. Not there either.

Pax’s volunteer job for Heart-in-Hand took her to Cooper, some distance from Dover Hills, and if she worked late, as she sometimes did, she would stay at a motel, and she’d take a change of clothes with her. I open her gym bag and, after a moment’s hesitation, dig through the clothes. A fragrance of GIVENCHY spirals up. What draws a person to a particular scent? Eau de cologne flowed in pre-revolutionary France — not a bad practice, given that the populace bathed at most once or twice a year. The excitement of 1789, and the following years of turmoil, ended the bourgeois practice of self-scenting but Napoleon brought back its popularity. He hated only musk, which is what Joséphine flooded Versailles with after he left her for Marie-Louise. I’ve been to the palace and believe I can still detect the scent.

I filter much through the lens of history.

“It’s not here,” I tell the detective.

Bragg looks over my shoulder and seems content that I haven’t missed the device.

“That’s fine, sir. I can put in the paperwork there’s no evidence of distracted driving. They’ll be fine with that.”

We shake hands once more. “Again, truly sorry for the loss.”

I nod. “Anything else? You said you had a couple of questions.”

“Did I? Just the one, really. About the phone. Take care, Professor.”

The solid man tugs at his belt, resulting in a flare of sun off both badge and buckle. He leaves and I close the door after him.

I return to the living room, fold carefully each piece of clothing, and replace them one by one.

And I think: Do detectives usually fill out accident reports?