Accidents of Marriage (7 page)

Son of a bitch.

He’d be late for certain.

Son of a goddamn bitch.

The moment she closed the car door, he sped back home.

Forty-five long minutes later, holding the
Boston Globe
over his head, Ben ran into the house and up the stairs, leaving the door open, letting in the flies, the mosquitoes, and the jungle heat. Rain and sweat slicked his face. The bedroom was stuffy and hot; he’d closed all the windows when he’d left.

Stacks of papers and folders were scattered over, next to, and under the bed. He spread piles over the wrinkled bedcovers, throwing files one on top of another until he found what he needed. He opened the yellow folder and flipped through the pages. Yellow for administration, red for current cases, beige for closed, blue for fiscal, green for research, purple for political stuff, and brown for general crap that didn’t
go anywhere else. Maybe he’d tell Elizabeth to start a new category: black for nobody gives a shit.

There. He found the file. One small victory.

•  •  •

Three minutes later Ben barely looked in his rearview mirror as he once again slammed out of the driveway.

As he pulled onto the Jamaicaway, he turned on the radio, punching buttons until he hit “The Enemy” by Anthrax. Pounding music calmed him, something Maddy didn’t understand. Rock knocked out the garbage he dealt with all day.

He passed the tired Plymouth in front of him. This traffic could make you blow your brains out. No one knew how to drive the Jamaica-way, an insane winding back road of a parkway that people drove as though it were a speedway. Ben wove in and out to get ahead, another thing that made Maddy crazy.

Some days he felt like there was just too much about him that Maddy wanted to change.

The curving road turned bumper to bumper. Ben crawled fifteen minutes to go half a mile with no way out, another reason for hating the piece of road from the dark ages.

Keeping an eye on the cars in front of him as he inched toward the rotary, Ben hit the CD button. “Jump” blasted out. Piece-of-shit song. He needed to jump this damn road. Only half an hour until the meeting started. Heavy rain slowed it all more. Moses could part the traffic like the Red Sea and he’d probably still be late.

This Elizabeth thing was playing closer to the fire than it should. After drinking two vodka tonics last night, she’d practically offered herself up in a prep school sort of way.

Cars spilled into the four-way from every direction. Some Buick Regal moron sitting like a lump of mashed potatoes blocked him. Ben tapped the horn. Regal got in first position and stopped.
You got an opening, idiot. GO.

He could tell Lissie was interested. Not like she wanted to marry him, but the hunger of a young woman seeking a frisson of danger.
Safe danger. At her age, he seemed like power. Give her a few years and she’d consider him a hack. She’d have moved on to those in line for real power: the men who’d run for office, who’d be in line for running the biggest firms in town. Or men from New York.

Regal sat as though driving the Buddha car. In the lane to Ben’s right, cars merged into the rotary on a regular basis.

Ben blasted the horn this time, joined by the growing line waiting.

Move, motherfucker!

He squeezed hard, passing in front of the Regal and cutting off a car from behind. Cars streamed around the circle. Ben forced his way in, watching the Regal in the rearview, still stuck there, the wallflower of cars, when his cell phone rang. Lissie? He glanced at the screen, where
Maddy
flashed.

For the briefest moment he considered not answering. But that was an uncrossable line. Marriage meant always answering. Marriage meant being tied by the possibility of missing a deadline.

“Maddy?”

“Ben, you have to come pick me up.”

“What happened? Where are you?”

“The cops pulled me over—”

“What for?”

“Having an unregistered car. They towed away the car and left me standing on a deserted stretch of Dot Ave.”

“Unregistered?” Ben drove forward three inches. “The renewal application came months ago. Are you fucking kidding me? How could you forget to do that?”

“What’s the difference? Just come—this isn’t a place I want to be a minute longer. Where are you?”

“On the Jamaicaway. On my way to a meeting. Late. Jesus, take a cab. You got yourself into this jam.”

“No cabs will pick me up here—you know that. There’s no way to walk anywhere. You’re barely ten minutes away.”

“Jesus, if you’d just taken care of the renewal when it came, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Ben, please. I need you. Just come and drop me off at work, okay? Then I’ll get my mother to help me get the car back.”

He pushed out an impatient sigh and counted to three. “Give me the exact intersection. I’ll be right there.”

•  •  •

Ben barely said hello when she got in the car. He’d already called Elizabeth to cancel everything. His hands clenched the wheel so hard he thought he might be able to snap the fucking plastic in half. He couldn’t even look at her.

“For God’s sake, how the hell could you forget to do something so simple and so important?” He spit the words out the side of his mouth as he headed back in the same direction from which he’d come. His Groundhog Day—driving back and forth on the Jamaicaway in some version of the road to hell.

“How many times are you going to say the same thing?” Maddy stared straight ahead as she spoke.

“Until you get it through your head that you need to keep up with basic life tasks like this. I can’t remind you of everything. Don’t you have any type of organizational system?”

She didn’t answer. Her chin jutted out. He imagined her chanting
don’t engage
in her head. Just like she taught her clients.

Fuck her.

They stayed silent until he pulled past Blue Hill Avenue.

“Can we use at least this time to talk about last night and about Emma?” Maddy asked.

He glanced at her. “Seriously?”

“Is there a reason not to? We’re alone and together. Pretty rare, right?”

“I’m in a crappy mood. Right now that’s the last thing I want to talk about.”

“We lost that privilege the day we became parents.”

“What privilege?”

“The right to be in too crappy a mood to talk about our kids’ problems,” Maddy said. “That luxury is gone.”

Ben shook his head. “I think having a teenager means you’ll lose your mind if you analyze every single interaction. Face it, much as you wish for it, I am never going to turn into an angel of patience.”

“I’d be glad if we could simply be people who use kindness and understanding as our first choices—angelic wasn’t on my wish list.”

“We? You mean me, not you. I’m the one who needs adjusting, right?”

He sensed her actions. Biting her lip. Digging her nails into her skirt.

“We need awareness of what we’re doing. Both of us.” He could hear her coating every word with caution. “You were too harsh last night.”

“Harsh is called for when our daughter sneaks out of the house. Should I have given her a five-minute time-out? She’s not a little kid anymore.”

“You were practically dragging her by the scruff. You can’t do that. She’s fourteen. Fifteen before we know it. You can’t treat her like you did, Ben,” Maddy said. “Emma’s at a critical stage.”

“Can you stop criticizing me for one minute? Is everything wrong in your life my fault? Am I some sort of monster to you?”

“I’m worried. About Emma. About us.” Tears trickled down her cheeks.

“Oh, Christ, not now. I came to get you. I’m here.” He pounded on the dashboard. “Isn’t that enough?”

Now she began crying in earnest. She reached over to the backseat of the car, trying to grab something.

“What do you want?” Pangs of guilt fought with irritation. He took one of those damn deep breaths she was always forcing on him. “Look. I’m sorry for yelling. Can I help you?”

She ignored him, unbuckling her seat belt and then getting on her knees to rummage around in the back of the car. The disconnected seat belt began beeping.

“Maddy, get back in your seat. That noise is driving me crazy.”

“Just one second! Here, okay?” She connected the belt and went back to trying to reach for whatever it was that she wanted. Finally she hoisted up the huge suitcase of a briefcase she dragged everywhere
and pulled it onto her lap. She took out a pad. “I wrote a list of all the things I’m worried about. With Emma. Things I want to prevent.”

Drugs? Pregnancy? Tattoos?
Did his wife have a magic social work formula to keep it all at bay? Did she think he didn’t care, didn’t worry? “Is this all brought on because I made the huge error of bringing our daughter home? Should I have left her on the street corner and then given her a little lecture when she snuck back in? Talked it out?”

“Please don’t be sarcastic. I’m so worried about her.”

“And I’m not? You haven’t cornered the market on parental concern, you know.”

“I don’t want to fight about this. I want to be partners.”

“Then stop making lists about my faults, for Christ’s sake.”

“It’s not about you!”

A Ford Expedition barreled down the road behind them, trying to push their car out of the left lane. Humongous piece of crap. Ben sped up. A blinding force of rain pelted the windows. The rear view on this car was awful in the best weather; with sheets of water sluicing along the glass, he could barely see out the back. He set the wipers on the highest setting and then opened the window to clear the side mirror. The Expedition tailed him closer, pushing him to go faster or move over. Ben hit the accelerator, but the Expedition stayed right with him. Ben threw up his middle finger—aware the idiot probably couldn’t see it but needing the satisfaction.

The air inside him expanded, pushing rational judgment out of the way and turning his moves to sheer instinct. He tapped the Camaro’s traction-control button twice to turn on competitive drive control, and then sped up, pushing an Accord in front of him to move to the right lane. The Expedition stayed on top of him.

All caution gone, he rocketed. Competitive driving let him be in charge. No car computer slowed him from his fast moves. Ben might not be the athlete of the century, but he knew how to drive like a motherfucker. What did the kids say? Oh, yeah.
I got mad skills.

The Expedition got closer, almost kissing his bumper, both of them going 45 on a road posted at 25 mph. The road opened up, and
the speedometer climbed over 50, then 55, and finally hit 60, but he couldn’t lose the Expedition.

“Ben, move over!” Maddy said.

“
Shut up!
”

Just at the moment the guy seemed ready to ram into him, Ben suddenly pulled into the right lane.

At the same moment the Expedition moved right to pass him.

Metal scraped metal as the oversized SVU hit them hard. As Ben tried to straighten out, he hit a slick spot, hydroplaned, and the car spun out of control.

Cars ahead and to the right squealed, maneuvering away on the twisting road, as the Camaro careened toward the tree in the curve.

Maddy screamed.

He gripped the wheel as though death chased them.

•  •  •

He coughed.

Where was he? His rapid breaths jabbed his left side as he tried to open the jammed door. Sharp odors from the deflated air bag burned his eyes. Someone knocked on the window and peered through the glass. An old guy stood there, grizzled, his white short-sleeved shirt soaked with rain.

Sweat and salty blood trickled. He’d bitten his lower lip. Any movement brought a stab in his chest, sharp enough to make him gasp. When he turned to look at Maddy, the searing pain worsened. Shards of jagged glass marked where the passenger window had been.

She was gone. The windshield was smashed out.

“
Maddy!
” he screamed. “
Maddy!
”

All he saw as he peered out was the rain.

He lowered his jammed window as far as he could, holding his breath each time he pressed the button.

“My wife. Help me out. I gotta find her,” Ben said.

The man shook his head. “Sorry, son. Best to stay put and wait for the medics.” In his peripheral vision Ben saw hazard lights
flashing. “I called 911 as soon as I saw you duking it out with that other car.”

“Reach in and unlock the door, okay?” Ben tried to turn his head, but a stab of pain held him still. Rain blew in from the open window.

“I don’t know.” The man slowly stood from his crouch. A woman leaned in.

“Don’t move. You might have internal injuries.” She pushed back wet hair on her forehead. As though offering a condolence prize, she held up a phone. “Do you want me to call someone for you? Do you want to make a call?”

Ben’s thoughts blurred. He studied the phone and the wet woman.

Nauseated and dizzy, he hung his pounding head. Raw skin on his cheeks stung where the air bag had scraped him.

He closed his eyes. Confused.

Maddy.

Sirens sounded.

The woman was still there when he opened his eyes. Earnest. Concerned. He could see her telling the story at dinner as she served the salad:
And then I asked if I could call someone for him.

Everything spun.

It seemed he’d just tried closing his eyes again when a husky young voice urged him to open them. A smoker’s voice. Was it fashionable for young women to smoke? He’d better keep an eye on Emma.

“Sir. My name is Evanne. I’m an emergency medical worker. Can you hear me?” The light-skinned woman’s beaded braids were pulled back into a thick blue elastic band.

“My wife,” he said. “I need to get out of here.”

“Soon. I promise. Are you allergic to latex?” When he shook his head no, she reached in and took his wrist with rubber-gloved fingers. “Can you feel that?”

Everything got hazy again.

“Yes,” he whispered. “My wife?”

“Don’t worry.” As she questioned him, a fireman wedged a bar into the door and popped it open. By the time she’d asked what Ben
weighed and what day it was, he felt faint. His legs shook so violently he worried they’d hit the steering wheel.