The Accident

SIXTEEN

I felt shaken as I went back into the house following Darren Slocum’s visit. I dialed Kelly’s cell the moment I was in the kitchen.

“Hi, Dad,” she said.

“Hi, sweetheart. Where are you?”

“Getting some ice cream at the mall.”

“Which mall?”

“Stamford.”

“Could you put Grandma on?”

“Just a second. She’s at the table.”

I could hear mall background noises-people talking, bland music-and then Kelly saying, “My dad wants to talk to you.”

“Yes, Glen?” Fiona’s voice was as warm as the ice cream Kelly was eating.

“Fiona, you up to taking Kelly for overnight?” I knew Kelly already had pajamas and a toothbrush and several days’ worth of clothes at Fiona’s house.

A pause, then she whispered, “Isn’t it a bit soon, Glen?” It occurred to me that she was trying to keep Kelly from hearing.

“Excuse me?”

“For you to have someone over? Is it that woman who lives next door? The Mueller woman? Sheila told me about her. I saw her hanging out the door, watching as we drove off. My daughter hasn’t even been dead three weeks, you know.”

I felt the anger welling up inside me. “Ann Slocum’s husband came over here after you left, very distraught.” I closed my eyes a moment, counted to three.

“What?”

“He was being, I don’t know, pretty unreasonable. He wanted to talk to Kelly, and I can’t see any good coming out of that. Just in case he decides to come back here later and try again, I think it’d be better if Kelly stayed with you.”

“What do you mean, unreasonable?”

“It’s a long story, Fiona. What would really help me, at this moment, would be if you could keep Kelly until tomorrow. Until I know this has all blown over.”

“What’s going on?” I heard Marcus ask.

“In a sec,” Fiona told him. To me, she said, “Yes, of course, she’ll stay with us. That’s fine.”

“Thank you,” I said, and waited to see whether she might offer up even the slightest apology for what she’d first assumed my motives were.

Instead, she said, “Kelly wants to talk to you.”

“Dad? What’s going on?”

“You’re going to spend the night at your grandmother’s. Just the one night.”

“Okay,” she said, not excited, but not disappointed, either. “Is something wrong?”

“Everything’s fine, sweetheart.”

“Did you find out what happened to Emily’s mom?”

“It was an accident, honey,” I said. “She got hurt when she got out to check a flat tire.”

Kelly paused a moment to take it in, then said, “So now Emily and me really have something in common.”

While Darren Slocum had claimed to be satisfied that I’d told him the extent of what Kelly had heard his late wife say on the phone, some instinct told me he was lying. As I’d told Fiona, I was worried he might come back, and keeping Kelly at a distance for another day seemed like a good idea. And I had no idea what he was talking about when he’d suggested I’d come into a windfall recently. The grass wasn’t even growing yet on Sheila’s grave, and he was intimating I’d had some kind of good fortune because of her fatal accident?

I didn’t know what else to do but chalk it up to the distressed ramblings of a man who’d just lost a wife himself.

I did end up going to the offices of Garber Contracting after lunch. The business was off Cherry, just before you get to the Just Inn Time hotel and about half a mile down the road from the Connecticut Post Mall. While I was able to do some general tidying, I wasn’t able to concentrate when I started checking the voicemails. I’d had every intention of calling these people back, but suddenly I couldn’t face talking to any of them or going by their houses to listen to their complaints about why things weren’t done. But I made notes of the messages so Sally could get back to everyone on Monday. While her choice in boyfriends was, to my mind, suspect, Sally was always on the ball at work. We called her our multitasker, who could keep the details of countless projects in her head at once. I’d seen her carry on a complicated phone conversation with a tile supplier about what we needed at one job while making notes about plumbing supplies we required at another. She liked to say she had several programs running in her head at once, adding that she’d earned the right to have a total system meltdown one day.

After the office was locked up, I went to the nearby ShopRite to pick up a few things. A steak for myself for dinner, some salami and tins of tuna and carrot sticks for lunches for Kelly and me through the week. I wasn’t big on the carrot sticks, but Sheila would have wanted to see them not only in Kelly’s lunch, but mine. It was odd. I was mightily pissed with my late wife, but still wanted to honor her wishes.

When Kelly was attending first grade, the first time she’d had to take a lunch with her every day, she begged Sheila and me to include a bag of potato chips. Her friend Kristen got potato chips every day, so why couldn’t she have them? Well, if Kristen’s mom wants to give her that kind of crap every day, that’s her business, we said. But we’re not doing it.

Kelly asked if Rice Krispie squares would be okay. Even if they had melted marshmallow in them, the cereal was healthy, right? So Sheila had helped her make up a batch. Melted the butter and marshmallow, mixed everything up in an enormous bowl, flattened them out in a pan. The two of them had made a huge mess in the kitchen. Kelly happily took a square to school with her every day.

About a month later, when Kristen was over playing with Kelly, she happened to ask if we could put chocolate chips in the Rice Krispie squares. She really liked them that way. She’d been trading her potato chips for Kelly’s squares every day.

As I was passing through the cereal aisle, the recollection made me smile. It seemed like a long time ago. It would be fun to make some one night with Kelly. Sometime around the start of third grade, she’d actually developed a liking for them herself.

I reached for a box just as someone else-a woman in her late thirties, early forties-decided to do the same. Shopping alongside her was a boy. Dark hair, jeans, and a jean jacket and running shoes with stripes and swirls all over them. I put his age at sixteen or seventeen.

“Excuse me,” I said to the woman when we bumped elbows. “Go ahead.”

Then I looked at her and did a double take. It didn’t take more than half a second to realize who this woman, and the boy with her, were.

Bonnie Wilkinson. Mother of Brandon and husband of Connor.

The two people who died when they crashed into Sheila’s car.

The teenage boy with her had to be her son Corey. His eyes looked dead, as though they’d cried out every tear he’d ever have.

Her blouse and slacks seemed to hang off her, and her face was drawn and gray. Her mouth opened and stayed that way when she realized who I was.

I backed up my cart to wheel it around them. I didn’t need Rice Krispies. Not right now. “Let me get out of your way here,” I said.

Finally, she could speak, although only just barely. “You just wait,” she said.

I stopped. “Excuse me?”

“You’re going to get yours,” she said. “You’re going to get it good.” Her son’s dead eyes bored into me.

I left my half-full cart and walked out of the store.

I picked up what I needed at the Super Stop amp; Shop. And instead of buying Rice Krispies, I bought all the ingredients I thought I’d need to make lasagna. I knew I couldn’t make it as well as Sheila did, but I was going to give it a try.

I took the long way home so I could visit Doug Pinder.

My father had hired him to work at Garber Contracting about the same time I graduated from Bates. At twenty-three, Doug had been a year older. We worked side by side for years, but it was always understood I’d eventually be the guy in charge, even though no one expected it to happen quite so soon.

Dad, overseeing the construction of a ranch house in Bridgeport, had just unloaded two dozen four-by-eight sheets of plywood from a truck when he clutched his chest and dropped to the ground. The paramedics said he was dead before his head landed in the soft grass. I rode in the ambulance with him to the hospital, picking the blades out of his thinning gray hair.

Dad had been sixty-four. I was thirty. I made Doug Pinder my assistant manager.

Doug was a good right-hand man. His area of expertise was carpentry, but he knew enough about all the other aspects of construction to supervise the rest of the trades, and pitch in when needed. And where I was reserved, Doug was outgoing and jovial. When things got tense on a job, Doug knew just what to say and do to keep everyone’s spirits up, better than I could. For years, I don’t know what I would have done without him.

But things hadn’t been right with Doug the last few months. He wasn’t the life of the party anymore, or at least when he tried, it seemed forced. I knew he was under pressure at home, and it didn’t take long to figure out it was financial. When Doug and his wife, Betsy, moved in to a new house four years ago, they’d gotten one of those too-good-to-be-true, subprime mortgages with almost nothing down, and when it had come up for renewal last year their monthly payments had more than doubled.

Betsy had been working in the accounting department of a local GM dealer that had closed its doors. She’d found a part-time job at a furniture store in Bridgeport, but had to be bringing in half of what she used to, if that.

The salary I paid Doug had remained constant through all this, but at best, he had to be treading water. More likely, he was drowning. While the construction and renovation business had slowed, I had, up to now, resisted cutting the pay of anyone who worked for me. At least those on staff, like Doug, Sally, Ken Wang, and our kid from north of the border, Stewart.

The Pinders had a wood-sided two-story off Roses Mill Road, near Indian Lake. Both their cars-Doug’s decade-old Toyota pickup with a cargo cover and Betsy’s leased Infiniti-were in the drive when I pulled up out front.

I could hear loud voices inside as I raised my hand to rap on the front door. I held it there a moment and listened, and while I could determine the mood inside that house-“ugly” was the word that came to mind-I couldn’t make out any actual conversation.

I rapped hard, knowing I might not be heard over the commotion.

The shouting stopped almost immediately, like a switch had been flipped. A moment later, Doug opened the door. His face was red and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. He smiled and pushed open the aluminum screen.

“Hey! Whoa! Will you look who’s here! Hey, Bets, it’s Glenny!”

From upstairs somewhere, “Hi, Glen!” Cheerful, like they hadn’t been tearing into each other five seconds earlier.

“Hi, Betsy,” I called out.

“Can I get you a beer?” Doug asked, leading me into the kitchen.

“No, that’s-”

“Come on, have a beer.”

“Sure,” I said. “Why not.”

As I came into the kitchen my eye caught a pile of unopened envelopes sitting by the phone. They all looked like bills. There were bank and credit card logos in the upper left corners of several of them.

“What’ll it be?” Doug asked, reaching into the fridge.

“Whatever you’ve got is fine.”

He took out two cans of Coors, handed me one, and popped his. He extended it toward me so we could clink cans. “To the weekend,” he said. “Whoever invented the weekend, there’s a guy whose hand I’d like to shake.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Good of you to drop by. This is terrific. You want to watch a game or something? There must be something on. I haven’t even looked. Gotta be some golf, at least. Some people, they don’t like watching golf, think it’s too slow, but I like it, you know? So long as you got enough people playing, camera can go hole to hole, so you don’t waste a whole lot of time watching people walk up the fairway.”

“I can’t stay long,” I said. “I’ve got groceries in the car. Some stuff that has to go into the fridge.”

“You could put it in ours for the time being,” Doug offered enthusiastically. “Want me to go out and get them? It’s no problem.”

“No. Look, Doug, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Shit, there a problem at one of the sites?”

“No, nothing like that.”

Doug’s face went dark. “Goddamn, Glen, you’re not laying me off, are you?”

“Hell, no,” I said.

A nervous smile crossed his lips. “Well, that’s a relief. Christ, you gave me a start there.”

Betsy popped into the kitchen, came over and kissed my cheek.

“How’s my big strong man?” she said, but in her heels, she was nearly as tall as I was.

“Bets,” I said.

Betsy was a tiny thing, barely an inch over five feet, but often wore killer heels to compensate. With them, she wore a super-short black skirt, tight white blouse, and jacket. She had a handbag hooked over her elbow, the word PRADA emblazoned on the side. I figured she got it the night Ann Slocum used our house to hawk her fake designer bags. If I were Doug, I wouldn’t feel good, my wife heading out of the house looking like, if not quite a hooker, at least like someone who was on the prowl.

“How long you gonna be?” Doug asked her.

“I’ll be back when I’m back,” she said.

“Just don’t…” Doug’s voice trailed off. Then, “Just take it easy.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t do anything crazy,” she said. She flashed me a smile. “Doug thinks I’m a shopaholic.” She shook her head. “An alcoholic, maybe. ” She laughed and then, just as quickly, adopted a look of horror. “Oh my God, Glen, I’m so sorry I said that!”

“It’s okay.”

“I just didn’t think.” She reached out and touched my arm.

“That’s your whole problem,” Doug said.

“Fuck you,” she said to him, her tone no different than as if she’d blessed him after a sneeze. Her hand still on my arm, she asked, “How you holding up, anyway? How’s poor Kelly?”

“We’re managing.”

She gave my arm a squeeze. “If we had a dollar for every time I put my foot in my mouth, we’d be living at the Hilton. Give that little girl of yours a hug from me. I gotta go.”

“Glenny and me are gonna chill out a bit,” Doug said, even though I thought I’d made it clear I didn’t have a lot of time. I was relieved Betsy was leaving. I didn’t want to say the things I had to say to Doug in front of his wife.

I didn’t expect Betsy to give her husband a kiss goodbye, and I was right. She just turned on her killer heels and left. When the front door closed, Doug grinned nervously and said, “Storm front’s moving out.”

“Everything okay?”

“Oh yeah, sure! Everything’s peachy.”

“Betsy’s looking good,” I said.

“Oh, she’s not one to let herself go, you can take that to the bank.” He didn’t say it proudly. “If there was anything in the bank.” Now it was his turn to force a laugh. “I swear, sometimes, the way that woman shops, you’d think she had a printing press in the basement. She must have a secret stash someplace.”

His eyes landed on the stack of unopened bills by the phone. He stood in front of them, opened a drawer and swept them into it. There were more envelopes already in there.

“Need to keep the place tidy,” he said.

“Let’s go sit outside,” I said.

We took our beers out onto the deck. Beyond the trees, I could hear traffic rushing by on 95. Doug brought a pack of smokes with him, tapped one out, and stuck it between his lips. He was a heavy smoker when he joined the company, but quit a few years later. He’d picked up the habit again in the last six months. He lit up, drew in smoke, blew it out through his nostrils. “Gorgeous day,” he said.

“Beautiful.”

“Cool, but they’re still out there golfing.”

“Sally dropped by today,” I said.

He shot me a look. “Yeah?”

“With Theo.”

“Jesus, Theo. You think she’s really going to marry him? It’s not that I don’t like the guy, but I think she could do better, you know what I mean?”

“Theo wanted to know why I haven’t been using him.”

“Whadja tell him?”

“The truth. That his work isn’t up to par, and that electrical panel he wired in’s probably why the Wilson house burned down.”

“Ouch.” A drink of beer, another puff. “So, that was it?”

“Sally ratted you out, Doug.”

“Huh?”

“She’s sorry she had to do it, but you didn’t leave her any choice.”

“I’m not sure I get where you’re going, Glenny.”

“Don’t play dumb. We’ve known each other too long.”

His eyes met mine, then he looked down. “I’m sorry.”

“If you need an advance, you ask me. ”

“I did, and you said no. This last time.”

“Then that should have been it. If I can do it, I will. If I can’t, I won’t. And we’re going through some tough times now. The jobs are drying up, and if the Wilson place isn’t covered by insurance we’re really gonna be behind the eight ball. So don’t ever, ever, do an end run around me and ask Sally to do it for you.”

“I was in kind of a bind,” he said.

“I don’t like to tell people what to do, Doug. I figure how other people live their lives is none of my business. But in your case I’m going to make an exception. I see what’s going on. The requests for pay advances. The unopened bills. Betsy off to the mall when you’re up to your eyeballs in debt.”

He wouldn’t look at me. Suddenly his shoes were of tremendous interest.

“You need to get a handle on things, and you need to do it now. You’ll probably have to lose the house, get rid of a car, sell off some things. You may have to start over. But you’re going to have to do it. The one thing you can count on is your job with me. Just so long as you don’t pull any fast ones.”

He put down his beer, tossed the cigarette, and put his hands over his eyes. He didn’t want me to see him crying.

“I’m so fucked,” he said. “I am so totally, totally fucked. They sold us this bill of goods, you know.”

“They?”

“Everyone. Said we could have it all. The house, the cars, the Blu-ray players, big flat-screen TVs, anything we wanted. Even while we were sinking, we’d get more credit cards in the mail. Betsy, she grabs them like they’re lifesavers, but they’re just more anchors dragging us down to the bottom.”

He sniffed, rubbed his eyes, finally looked at me. “She won’t listen. I keep telling her we have to change things, and she says not to worry, we’ll be okay. She doesn’t get it.”

“Neither do you,” I said. “Because you’re letting it go on.”

“You know what we’re doing? We’ve got, like, twenty credit cards now. We use one to pay off the balance on another. I can’t even keep track of it anymore. I can’t bring myself to open the bills. I don’t want to know.”

“There are people,” I said. “People who can help you get through these things.”

“Sometimes I think it’d be easier to just blow my brains out.”

“Doug, don’t think that way. But you need to get hold of the problem. It’s going to take you a long time to dig yourself out of this hole, but if you start now, you’ll be coming out sooner. You can’t count on me for money every time you’re short, but you can talk to me. I’ll help you where I can.” I stood up. “Thanks for the beer.”

He couldn’t stand. He was back to looking at the ground.

“Yeah, thanks,” he said, but his tone lacked sincerity. “I guess with some people, gratitude only lasts so long.”

I weighed whether to respond or walk out. After a few seconds, I said, “I know I owe my life to you, Doug. I might never have found my way out of that smoke-filled basement. But you can’t play that card every time. That’s separate from this.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, looking out over his yard. “And I guess, I guess you wouldn’t want me making any calls.”

That stopped me. “Calls about what?”

“I’ve known you a long time, Glenny. Long enough to know that not every job’s on the books. Long enough to know you’ve got a secret or two yourself.”

I stared at him.

“Tell me you don’t have something tucked away for a rainy day.” His voice was gaining confidence.

“Don’t do this, Doug. It’s beneath you.”

“One anonymous phone call and you’d have the IRS so far up your ass they could count your cavities. But no-you can’t help out a guy when he’s having a few problems. Think about that, why don’t ya, Glenny.”