Julie and I hadn’t revealed the full scope of my own colossal flop at being a ministering angel to the survivors of Roman’s victim. I hadn’t asked Julie to lie, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell the whole truth. I thought of myself, hands on my knees, heaving in the weeds. Still, it more or less all worked out in the end, hadn’t it? I’d offered my help in sorting through the mail, but Stefan gently refused. Good for him, I thought.
More in the spirit of hopefulness than sage counsel, I said, “You’ll do fine. Just trust your instincts. You have good instincts.”
“Let the people figure out their own goals. You just be the listener and the facilitator,” Jep said. “You don’t have to influence. They know what they need. They’ll tell you if you give them room and just listen.”
I left them making coffee and went upstairs for my things.
By the time I came back downstairs with my overnight bag, Stefan was carrying his files into the den to spread them out on the big library table in there. He apologized again that he couldn’t go with me. Jep kissed me like I was his best girl, and then slipped something into the pocket of my coat. When I reached for my gloves later on, I almost laughed. It was one of his big silver coaching whistles, the kind that lets out a blast that could stop a train.
* * *
Coming into Black Creek that afternoon after so long was probably akin to the experience of people returning to a place of their youth, to find everything a little smaller and more begrimed than the way they were remembered by their smaller and more begrimed selves. As if my turning onto that very exit road animated a tableau of that night, the steely sky closed in and the snow threw down. I didn’t remember that the drive from the highway to the hospital parking lot was literally seconds: The storm-gauzed lights from the hospital building, glimpsed from the top of the ridge road, were as terrifying to me as if I’d come upon an alien installation. I drove down there and parked for a moment in the lot. After seeing Stefan in the locked ward that night, I’d come back out here, and, laying my hand against the hot hood of the still-running car, I threw up in the snow.
There were things I hadn’t thought about for years; how was that possible?
I remembered again the sticky red leather seat of the booth in the Denny’s, where, that following morning, Jep and I sat across from Stefan’s lawyer located quickly for us by a coach friend of Jep’s. He sketched in the potential outcomes of our son’s case. Some were bad; some were worse. “We don’t want a trial. The best hope is a judge who’ll see Stefan as a kind of victim too, of drugs, not a longtime user but a first-time offender; a judge who’ll give him less than ten years, for manslaughter, maybe a spin in a mental health facility, even though those places are hellholes.”
“And the worst hope?”
“Murder can mean a life sentence,” he said. “Parole after twelve years maybe.”
Worlds we never knew existed were smashing fists to our ribs. I didn’t want to remember that sensation. There was no profit in such recollections. It was getting late now so I slowly steered the car out of the hospital lot and headed toward the town.
Even though it was Thursday, and barely dinnertime, the main street had a frowsy feeling, as if the performance had already happened, and somebody had forgotten to tear down the tattered posters. The place would not have looked sinister to anyone but me; it was just an ersatz hippie little college street of no particular distinction. Cuddly single-story abodes of the cottage type sat a little back from the street, surrounded by patches of scrappy lawn, and the retail establishments that flanked them followed a nonconformist conformity—bagels, juicery, head shop, bookstore, repeat. The signs on the stores reminded me of the precious way some people name their cats: Gypsy Threads, The Exuberant Alternative, Mrs. Pennyroyal’s Papers, Bagel Bountiful. Not in any particular hurry to get to the Glory Be Bed-and-Breakfast Inn, I decided to find myself a quick dinner first, then maybe do some scouting around.
The restaurant was called Mack The Cheese. It served only variations on macaroni and cheese. In a town filled with homesick college kids, I thought, this idea was a stroke of genius. Beside Mom’s Traditional, there was Spinach and Artichoke Macaroni and Cheese, Macaroni and Cheese with Andouille Sausage, and Taco Pizza Macaroni and Cheese. As I ate my Macaroni-and-Gruyère with green peppers and sun-dried tomatoes, I thought helplessly of Jep and me, more than twenty years ago, before Stefan, “cooking dinner” in our wretched studio apartment, believing that Kraft Spaghetti Classics in a box was a real gourmet triumph, especially with a healthy side of iceberg lettuce. We had been so sweet and earnest: How could this foul luck have come snuffling its dark way through time until it found us? Only a fool believes that people who do good must then derive good from fate; but we’re helpless in that belief. Why else do good? Why not teach our kids just to smash and grab in life?