 |
Study no. 1
Two weeks on the road now and I thought I was having fun.
Tonight I'm in Delaware. Somewhere. I don't remember where. Or maybe I didn't know in the first place. There's a carnival on the other side of the freeway from the hotel I'm staying at. The lights are burning through the thin drapes and keeping me up. I can handle that, I guess. I'm not sleeping much anyway. I've got Nona's phone call in my head still.
Do I call her back? There's probably a law against spouses calling each other after they've been divorced a year. Fuck it. She called me first. I'll call.
Phone rings a dozen times before it's picked up. Nona doesn't say anything. "Nona," I say, aware that I'm speaking too quickly, like I'm trying to spit something out before I'm cut off, but before I can say another word a rough voice, a man's voice, says, "Who is this?" This catches me off guard. I hang up. I'm breathing hard for no good reason. I feel like I've just run the hundred. I haven't felt like this, scared, pumped, since I was a boy calling convenience stores to ask if they carried Playboy -- too young to buy, getting off on saying the name of the magazine to a stranger.
The phone rings.
I lay on the bed until it stops.
It rings again. I think it's getting louder with each unanswered jangle.
Eventually it stops for good. Ten minutes later I'm thinking of calling Nona again and there's a knock on the door. I pull it open and there's the creepy front desk guy who gave me the room. He says, "Sorry to bother you, sir, but there's an urgent phone call for you. They say you're not answering."
I tell him I don't want to talk to whoever it is, and he says, "But it's the police, sir."
I close the door and he runs down the hall -- I hear his anxious footsteps pounding on the first floor's ceiling -- and a moment later he's transferred the call to me.
"Hello," I say, as if I can't be bothered. The policeman on the other end of the phone is smooth. "Mr. Madison?" he asks me, and I say, "Yeah, what is it?" I'm wondering how the cops got my number in a hotel in Delaware and then, before he can say, "I'm sorry to break this to you, sir," it all comes together and I know very clearly that Nona's been robbed, that's why she was frantic when she called me earlier tonight, and the police were in her home when I called. Before he can say, "Sir, are you sitting down?" I say, "How much did they get? We're divorced, but if they took the widescreen -- well, that's mine, and she shouldn't get the --"
"Mr. Madison," he says to me in a voice that cements my jaw closed. "I'm afraid there wasn't a robbery, sir. I'm calling because your wife -- I'm sorry, your ex-wife -- took her life tonight."
All the cement in my mouth has sludged its way into my windpipe. I can't inhale. "Nona," I say thickly.
"Mr. Madison," the policeman repeats. "Are you okay, sir?"
"I, uh..." I can't seem to put together a sentence. I start again, and it doesn't work. "Did...oh..."
"Mr. Madison," he begins again. "Did your former wife have any family whom we should notify? Her neighbors don't seem to know if Ms. Franklin has any surviving relatives."
The use of Nona's maiden name startles me. Even now, a year after the disaster, I haven't entertained thoughts of Nona dropping my name. Had she? She never told me. She must have.
"Mr. Madison."
"She, uh," I say, "she had a sister. Caroline. And her mother is still alive. Bonnie." This will kill Caroline. Bonnie never did care much for her daughter.
"Where does her mother live, Mr. Madison?"
"Portland, same as us."
"You live in Portland, sir?"
"I...I'm on a sort of vacation. I'm a sportswriter for the Beavers. Triple-A ball. Uh...it's the off-season. I, uh...I'm just driving around."
"When will you be returning to Portland, Mr. Madison?"
I haven't really thought about this. "I have enough money to last another four or five weeks on the road."
The policeman seems to think this over, and then he exhales slowly. "Maybe you should think about coming back, sir."
I knew he was going to say this. "It might take me a little while," I answer, and he says that will be fine. They'd simply like to talk to me when I get back. I realize how much work a person's death puts upon the survivors. I'll have to clean out the house, put it on the market. I don't want to do this.
"Officer," I say slowly. He corrects me, tells me his name is Detective Snow. I begin again. "Detective...I've never...what do I do now?"
His voice is cautious. He is expecting me to cry. It surprises me when I realize that I am already. "If I understand you," he says, "then when you return to Portland, you take possession of the home again and mail your wife's personal belongings to her surviving family. I assume the home is in your name. Look, I apologize -- I really have to get back to...things. Come see me when you return. I can give you the name of a grief counselor and of someone who can help you prepare things."
I thank him and he hangs up. The carnival lights seem to burn brighter, and abruptly they fade. I get up and stare out the window as people pull down tents in the dark and the billion-watt bulbs dim. In the parking lot someone rolls over an aluminum can and rumbles off into the darkness. Upstairs I hear the sounds of a couple making love. I should get a good night's sleep, but I know already it's not going to happen.
The front desk guy is worried and asks me if everything is okay. I can tell he sees me as a walking wounded, and reaches a hand across the counter to steady me. He suggests I reconsider, says maybe I shouldn't drive.
I stop at a gas station at some other town in Delaware and for a moment I forget that in every other state they don't pump your gas for you like they do in Oregon. People don't set fire to fuel pumps in Delaware. Ex-wives don't kill themselves in the rest of the world. I lay my cheek on the steering wheel and wake up an hour later as the attendant is closing up the station. He says I can pump gas quickly and he'll take me, but it's got to be fast, because he's got to get home to his kids. I almost laugh at this. I think about setting fire to a fuel pump. Instead I buy a beer to wake me up, punch the odometer to zero, and shift into first.
| |
