Girl in the Rearview Mirror Read online

  When I woke again, the apartment was bright. Bryant was beside me, deeply asleep. His clothes were folded just where he’d left them.

  I was uncertain, unsettled. A dream? But the bottle of Advil was out, lid uncapped. I poured another two into my palm, and shook them like dice as I watched Bryant. The sunlight fell over him, and he rolled away from it, to the edge of the bed, like a man chased. I’d been dreaming, I thought, or half dreaming, that’s all. I swallowed the pills, whose coppery shells had melted in my hand. When I went to the bathroom, I saw the chain lock was fastened as usual.

  In the closet, I automatically reached for shorts and a T-shirt, realizing with a dull pain that I was dressing to be with Amabel. I didn’t have the energy to take the clothes back off, to make some decision about what outfit my new routine required.

  I made coffee, my machine noisily churning and releasing puffs of steam. Bryant stirred. He rubbed his face. Sitting up, he seemed lost, as if he had no memory of being here. He lifted the sheet from his legs and tossed it away from him. He buried his face in his hands and scrubbed it furiously.

  “I made coffee,” I said.

  He looked up. His face was stiff, as if a mask had dried over his features.

  “It’s not good coffee,” I said, nervous. “We could go out and grab some.”

  He shook his head. His lips twitched into a passable smile, fleeting, apologetic. “I can’t.” He grabbed his clothes and began to dress in jerky movements, pulling his pant legs on while seated and jumping to stand, tugging them up. “I’ve got to get home. Shower, change. It’s going to be another long day.”

  Even when he turned, he didn’t look at me. He ran a hand over his hair, pressing it flat. “But I’ll call you later. We’ll do something tonight.”

  He retrieved his shoes and stuffed his feet into them impatiently, crushing the leather backs. He knelt to tie them.

  “I thought you might have gone home last night,” I said.

  He paused, glanced over his shoulder at me. “Huh?”

  “I woke up in the middle of the night and you were gone.”

  His head dropped back down, and he slowly tugged the knots tight, twice. “I had to make a call. I went out to my car so I wouldn’t wake you.”

  “I was worried,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d notice.” He came forward and kissed my cheek, his jawbone hitting mine. His eyes darted away, locked on his wallet on the counter. He opened it and fished out a $20. “You get yourself that coffee.”

  I followed him out. He took the stairs at a run. His car was parked in the first row. There was no way I could have missed it last night. Maybe he’d gone for a drive, while he made his phone call. Rolled the windows down. It might have helped him stay awake.

  He pulled out without waving goodbye.

  If there was no chance the Martins would be blamed for Ammy, what was there to work on? For me, the election was about important but impersonal concerns. Immigration, taxes. Then I remembered Bryant’s just Latino remark, and the Senator’s charter flights, and Marina’s manicured fund-raiser, and Philip’s land deal. Bryant must be thinking about Amabel’s death in those terms. No wonder he couldn’t meet my eyes.

  His crisp bill was still in my hand.

  23

  Nothing to do, get in the car, drive. I traveled on autopilot, staring at people I passed—women waiting for the bus laden with tote bags, a jogger with a stroller, a man and his Chihuahuas—both envying and disgusted by their ignorance.

  Muscle memory took me north on the highway. I passed our familiar haunts, camp, stables, the bookstore with story time, the Froyo place with the tiny candy toppings.

  At The Grove, a sign taped to the door read, closed, sorry for inconvenience. Not Philip’s handwriting. No light illuminated his office window. I went back through the trellised arches, where flowers dropped dry, crumpled petals.

  While I sat in the parking lot, Bryant called. He asked how I was doing, and I told him I was still in bed.

  “You’re lucky,” he said. “I could sleep for a day.”

  “How long were you out last night?”

  There was a silence. I dropped open the glove compartment to check the envelope. I’d been too nervous to leave it in my apartment. I didn’t live in the best neighborhood, and a break-in wasn’t unheard of, even in the daytime. I felt better when I could see it.

  “Bryant?”

  “Sorry. Just looking at my email. Listen, I won’t keep you. Go back to sleep. Get some rest.” He hung up.

  I drove north, into a ritzy residential area. I got out of my car and crossed a parking lot into the long, triangular shadow of a church.

  The Martins attended service here. I’d gone along once, when Ammy’s friend’s baby sister was baptized. Amabel stood to watch, and when the minister dripped water onto the baby’s forehead, she let out an affronted shriek.

  At this hour, the church was mostly deserted. A few women in cardigans came and went from a meeting room, chatting seriously. The chapel doors were closed.

  The event schedule was posted on the wall by the bathrooms. It was a slow week, weddings not being popular in the Arizona summer. Along with services and prayer groups, there was an hour blocked off, discreetly labeled Private Service. Tomorrow afternoon.

  I copied down the time, not that I would forget.

  Feeling like a thief, I drove into Ocotillo Heights. I expected helicopters overhead, lines of news vans, curious neighbors stalking the sidewalks. But the neighborhood was quiet. Not even a landscaping crew.

  I drove up the hill and stopped at the hem of the Martins’ yard. It was Eva’s day to clean but her car wasn’t there. The white brick house had never resembled a bunker so strongly.

  I pulled up the road until my car was obscured by the overgrowth. I stepped out. The sky was chalk white, so bright it stung my eyes. Nothing seemed to cast a shadow, not even my legs as I strode up to the peak. The ground was red-brown dirt, tamped down in places and shaggy and loose in others, studded with clumps of rocks that were sharp under my flimsy sneakers.

  I’d hiked up here once with Amabel. Her little legs had struggled up the slope, and she’d dropped to her palms and clambered like a goat until I shouted for her to stop. I was afraid she’d smash her hand into a black widow’s nest. They were common out here, the spiders with their bellies like swollen blisters. Actually quite shy, afraid of humans, but in the bad habit of nesting in mailboxes and doorframes.

  Spiders, scorpions, snakes. Coyotes. The Martins had built their house so close to so many dangers.

  I reached the peak. The mountain at the horizon seemed flat as a stage prop. In the valley, the quilt of roads and buildings was dreamy and distant, beige and brown, without a speck of green.

  I stood long enough that the birds resumed scrabbling and singing. My forehead and cheeks were tight and stinging from the sun. Shielding my face with a hand, I made my way down the ledge into the narrow ribbon of land behind the Martins’ yard. The house loomed above. Its huge windows reflected the anemic sky. Perversely, I wanted to trip, sprain an ankle or a wrist, cry out weakly until someone emerged—or no one did, and darkness fell, and I’d be alone, the coyote moving toward me.

  I came to the pool gate. The pool had been emptied. The concrete bowl was naked and white. Of course, I thought, they’d drained the bad water out. I gripped the iron bars. The metal scorched; I wanted to clutch it, punish myself, but my fingers reflexively snapped back.

  I walked on. The ground was overgrown with sharp grass and prickling weeds that sliced my ankles. I stepped over cacti, big sections of them rotted out, new green growth bulging out of the brown. Ants swarmed over the ground, a living puddle.

  Rounding a bend, I faced a line of trees a few yards ahead. They were thin and wispy, but their branches formed a natural barrier. Beyond them was the next yard, another private wilderness, another view unsullied by fellow human habitation.

  Just before the trees, there wa
s a disturbance in the air, a thickening and swirling. As I got closer, I realized it was a swarm of flies, hovering in a frenzy over a mound on the dirt. A smell hit me, slimy, putrid.

  Some dead animal. A carcass, I thought, left by the coyote. But it was so large.

  I edged forward, drawn toward it even as I was repelled. It blended in with the ground, tan and brown and yellow. It was him. Collapsed on his flank, snout fixed in a tight sneer, teeth digging into his lip. His eye was gone. His ear flared open like a shell. His legs jutted stiffly, paw pads worn white and cracked.

  My shadow fell over his shoulder, and a mass of flies rose up, circling, exposing a dark patch of brown at his neck. Blood. The ripped fur around it was perversely downy and light, like dandelion fluff.

  I backed away. I didn’t breathe until I was past the house. Still, the rotten tang lingered in my nose even when I got back to my car, even as I drove down the hill.

  The bloodied shoulder hadn’t looked ripped, as if another animal had attacked it. It looked small, almost neat.

  I was so preoccupied I didn’t notice my flat tire until my car had sunk to one side and dragged over the ground, resisting the forward motion. I pulled over. The back tire was nearly flat. A long, straight slit ran through it. I must have driven over a sharp rock or glass when I pulled into the brush.

  Sweating, I dug the spare tire from my trunk. I wished I smoked, since a cigarette might ease the carrion smell, which coated the inside of my mouth.

  24

  Bryant came by my apartment late again, found me lying in bed, sober this time. I hadn’t wanted to lend any ammunition to his argument that I should go home. He said, “Let’s go,” taking me by the arm, and I felt the relief of being led.

  At his place, he fixed me a whiskey with honey and asked what I’d done all day. I invented a long nap, grabbing coffee, going for a run. I told him about the bee I’d seen yesterday, wounded and crawling on the ground, thinking the detail made me seem honest. But he wasn’t interested in the bee.

  “The Martins are staying with Jim,” he announced. “They can’t stand being in the house.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I thought they were there. The pool was empty.”

  “How did you know?” His eyes were sharp.

  “The news,” I said. “They showed the house.”

  “Right.” He watched me carefully, cupping his hand around his own untouched drink. Why didn’t I want to tell him? It wasn’t a crime, walking around the Heights, outside the Martins’ yard. But I dreaded the look he’d give me, and what he’d say, a blunter version of Marina’s warning to stay away.

  “Could I have another?” I pushed my glass over. Honey pooled at the base.

  He sliced another wedge of lemon. I ran my fingertips over the marble bar. Amabel, holding a lemon peel over her mouth, bending it into a smile . . .

  “How are they?” I said. “Marina looked so calm.”

  “She has a thick shell.” He stirred my drink with a long spoon.

  “And Philip?” He glanced at me, and I pretended to be absorbed in the gray veins of the marble.

  “They’re going on a cruise.” He slid my drink over.

  I blinked. “Philip and Marina?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why?”

  “It was Jim’s idea. It will be restful for them. The same reason I thought you should go home. Think,” he corrected. “I think you should go home.”

  I tipped back the drink. “Where are they going?”

  “The Mediterranean. Greece, Spain. I can’t remember. It’ll be good for them to get away for a while. Over a third of marriages end after the loss of a child. They want to stay together.”

  “You looked up a statistic?” I was shrill. My glass struck the countertop. “Is that what they care about? Whether the Martin brand will survive?”

  “Stop.”

  “You stop! You’re acting like you didn’t even know Ammy. You’re acting like . . . a machine.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is,” I said. “Have you even cried? Do you feel sad at all?” I was so angry I felt shaky. Or maybe it was the whiskey. It sloshed in my empty stomach.

  Bryant pushed back his hair, flushed. “I have to care. It’s my job to care. We all can’t just fall to pieces, can we? Can’t just wander around the city all day, pretending like nothing’s changed.”

  I threw my glass at the wall. It didn’t shatter satisfyingly, but broke tidily in half. We both stared at it.

  “Maybe it hasn’t hit me yet.” Bryant blinked at the wall. His eyes were bloodshot and hooded with tiredness. “I wasn’t there. I only heard, and then everything moved quickly—maybe I wanted it to. I wanted not to think about it.” He didn’t look at me, and I thought he was embarrassed by his emotion. “Of course I’m sad. It’s, it’s—” He paused. Don’t say tragic, I prayed. “Terrible,” he said finally. “I’m sorry.”

  He came over and kissed the top of my head. My hair was flat and filmy from too much washing. I’d scrubbed it earlier, convinced the smell of the coyote had soaked in.

  Bryant didn’t even own a broom; he rolled out his slim vacuum cleaner. Waving him off, I swept the glass up with a piece of cardboard. I shook the pieces into his garbage can. Mixed in with spent espresso beans and energy bar wrappers was a tangle of shredded papers.

  I envied his work. His access to the Martins. How easily he still spoke of them. Marina’s shell. Their restful cruise. While I’d been cast out.

  Upstairs, Bryant worked on his laptop in bed, fingers flying, while I brushed my teeth. When I got in beside him, he closed it.

  “I don’t mind if you work,” I said.

  “That’s okay.” He got up and put the computer in his bag. He came back carrying a prescription bottle.

  “I got you these. To help you sleep.” Bryant pressed the bottle at me, until I had to accept it.

  It was a dose of the blue pills the driver had given me. The orange plastic case was unlabeled.

  “Whose are these?” I said.

  “I got them for you.”

  “I don’t need them.”

  “You said you were having trouble sleeping. You need rest right now.”

  I tilted the bottle back and forth. I remembered the sick, lurching feeling of waking up in the morning after taking one, Marina’s concern about my empty stomach. Were they all talking about my sleep together?

  I put them in the nightstand drawer without commenting.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” Bryant asked.

  I shrugged. The funeral was in the afternoon. “I’ll figure something out.”

  “I’m going up to Flagstaff. Want to come along?”

  I bit my lip, wishing I’d come up with a better reply. “I’ll only be in your way.”

  “It’s a pretty drive,” he said. “You can be my chauffeur. I’m staying in a nice hotel. I’ll be out all day, but you could enjoy it. Get room service. Watch movies.”

  “That’s so sweet,” I said. “But I’m going to stay. I’ll keep myself out of trouble, I promise.”

  Dissatisfied, he shifted beside me. But our fight downstairs, and his apology, were working in my favor. He didn’t want to start another argument. “If that’s what you want.”

  As if he’d jinxed me, I couldn’t sleep.

  The Martins had parked in a forbidding row in front of the church. I slipped past Marina’s car. She’d removed Amabel’s booster seat, but the DVD player was still strapped to the back of the driver’s seat. Had she lost heart halfway through her cleanout?

  I stumbled, though the pavement was smooth. I was terrified to be here, my heart a stone longing for a sea to sink into. I’d spent the morning in my closet, trying on and taking off the dark dresses I had. They were all wrong: too short, too skimpy, too polyester. None of them was serious enough. I still had Marina’s dress, the one I’d borrowed for the gala. I ran a lint brush over it and slid it on. In it, I looked dignified, grieving, stricken, not just som
eone crashing a funeral in a cocktail dress. I’d added a long black cardigan to disguise it.

  I tugged the sweater around me as I walked to the church.

  A pair of Snoops flanked the entrance. As I approached, one stepped forward. He wasn’t the driver, but looked like a doll from the same box. He was tan, with narrow eyes and a soft, hairless hand that lifted into the air to stop me.

  “I’m late.” I made myself tearful, angry. “Don’t you recognize me? We’ve seen each other at the gala, a hundred times.”

  He looked to his partner, and after a wordless exchange, a tough shrug, they let me pass.

  The church foyer was cave-cool and empty. The sound of a piano playing seeped out the chapel doors. I stepped through.

  A jewel box of stained glass opened around me. Polished pews fanned out from the dais, seating for hundreds, empty. A wooden cross, large enough to serve its ancient purpose, hung on the far wall. Below it was a coffin. So small. Amabel was mostly hidden. Only the lacy white puff of her dress showed, and a pile of roses. I couldn’t bear the idea of having to walk past her, see her dear familiar face still with artificial calm. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I was in danger of letting out a loud honking sob, when I wanted to be invisible.

  The Martins sat in the front row. Intimately familiar and dramatically changed. Marina had chopped her hair into a sleek bob. She wore a charcoal gray suit I’d never seen before. Beside her was a small old man who wiped his face with a handkerchief. Her father, I guessed.

  Philip sat on her other side, on the aisle. His elbow rested on the back of the pew; his body twisted away from the casket. He seemed ready to run for the exit.

  I forced myself forward. Under my arm, I felt the edge of the envelope through the flimsy leather of my purse.

  Sensing a disturbance, Marina turned. Seeing me, she drew back, in surprise or anger. She wore more makeup than usual, lipstick overpowering her pale clenched face. She began to rise.

  The Senator turned. He wore navy blue, held his military posture. After nodding courteously at me, he faced forward again. He touched Marina on the elbow. She scowled. But she turned back to the front, hair swinging.