Imperfect Spiral (10 page)

Isn't that helpful. I know the points of a compass—but I don't think about north, south, east, or west when I'm going somewhere. I was on Quarry Road, heading home.

“She doesn't drive yet, detectives,” offers Dad by way of an excuse as I sit there mutely. Mom and Dad are in the living room with us.

I have an idea: “I was on the same side of Quarry Road as the playground.”

“Okay. You were on the north side of Quarry Road,” the woman says. “Which puts you along the westbound lane. You were walking east along the westbound lane.”

If they say so. I would say I was walking
up
Quarry Road, because there's a hill that you have to go up when you walk home from the park. When I walk from home to the park, or farther on toward the street that then takes you either to the mall or to the highway, I would say I'm walking
down
Quarry Road.

But I'll go with walking east along the westbound lane.

“To clarify, when you say you were walking on the side of the road, you mean on the shoulder?” the man asks.

Um—I look at my parents. They don't give me any clues.

“Well, I was on the side there,” I offer, “where you're supposed to walk. To the left of the yellow line. Is that technically the shoulder?”

“No driver's education yet,” Mom notes.

This is what you learn in driver's ed? The official parts of a road?

“Okay. And then what happened?” the man prompts.

“I dropped the ball and Humphrey ran after it into the street.”

They pause. Appropriately, I think. It's like it's out of respect for Humphrey.

“When you say you dropped the ball,” the woman says after our moment, “how did that happen? It slipped out of your fingers?”

I don't want to cast blame on a dead five-year-old, but they are making me.

“Humphrey tried to tackle me and the ball popped out,” I explain.

“And then.”

“And then the ball bounced into the street. You know how a football doesn't bounce neatly or predictably—it goes all over the place. That's what it did. It hit a couple of cars.”

“So Humphrey ran into the street,” the woman continues. “Did you run after him?”

Is this a trick question? I know better than to run into traffic. I'm alive.

I say: “No.”

“Now, Humphrey ended up in the eastbound lane of Quarry Road. You say you were walking along the side of the westbound lane,” the man says.

This eastbound and westbound thing again. It makes my brain hurt. Concentrate, Danielle. He ended up across the street.
In the lane with cars headed
up
Quarry. Which meant he first crossed the lane with cars headed
down
Quarry. Okay, we're on the same page. I wait for the question.

Which apparently they asked while I was mapping things out in my head.

“I'm sorry. What was the question?”

“Did you see any vehicle hit Humphrey as he was crossing the westbound lane?”

“No, I didn't.”

I didn't see any vehicle hit Humphrey in any lane. Somehow, I was there, I was an eyewitness, and missed the whole thing.

“So you saw Humphrey cross the westbound lane and make it to the eastbound lane,” the man says. “Did you see a vehicle hit him there?”

I shake my head. “I'm sorry. It was all a blur.”

“Do you remember seeing a blue minivan on the scene after the accident, when emergency and rescue personnel were there?” This is the woman.

“Yes. I saw it. It was near Humphrey, at the head of the line of cars backed up to go up”—I want to be helpful—“to go
eastward
on Quarry Road.”

“Had you noticed that car before?” she asks.

I shake my head again. “I'm sorry.”

“You didn't see that car as it drove
up
”—the man detective trying to be helpful—“Quarry Road. Didn't see whether it was driving fast or slow, carefully or not carefully.”

“No. I'm sorry.” I pause, trying to remember anything. “I think I saw the football hitting a couple of cars. I noticed a white car, and a pickup. They were on the other side of the street—so driving, uh, driving east, in the eastbound lane. You know, it was still rush hour, and that's where most of the cars are in rush hour, I guess—heading east, toward Montgomery Heights. By then, Humphrey had run after the ball.”

I try to re-create the awful scene.

“On our side of the street—in the westbound lane—I don't remember many cars. You know, because Quarry Road isn't so crowded going in that direction that time of day. And I remember some kind of silver car coming down the—um, westbound lane, but I don't remember the ball hitting it or anything.”

I don't remember a thud or a thump or anything to indicate that Humphrey had been hit. I don't remember anything until the screech of brakes. Just—silence. Like a break in the sound spectrum.

“The silver car was where?”

“Coming toward us, on our side of the street. Driving in the westbound lane.”

“Not in the same lane as the blue minivan.”

“No.”

“The silver car wasn't speeding away after possibly hitting Humphrey.”

“No.”

“Anything else about the silver car, or the white one, or the pickup?” the woman asks.

I push my brain to retrieve a memory. It lets me down.

“Can't the police tell how Humphrey was hit?” I ask. “By looking at his, you know, his body?”

“Forensic evidence is very helpful,” the man says. “But so is eyewitness evidence.”

Okay. But if we're going to be using words like “forensic,” then, if this were a
Law & Order
rerun, wouldn't the cops be matching up the deceased's injuries to a particular type of car bumper or hood or something? Wouldn't they be taking paint samples and examining skid marks? Wouldn't the detectives be exchanging significant looks when I said something significant? These detectives haven't exchanged any looks, but it is possible that I haven't said anything significant.

They shift gears.

“What color was the pickup?” the woman asks.

“It was … I don't know,” I say, surprised at myself.

Isn't that weird? You'd think color would be the first thing I would remember. It is what I remember about the white car, and the silver one. But all I can retrieve is: pickup truck. No color. Or some color. Just not white.

“Getting back to the blue minivan,” the man says, “at what point in the chain of events did you first notice it?”

“When I was sitting in the road with Humphrey after he was hit.”

“Really think hard, Danielle,” the man presses. “We're trying to determine if the blue minivan was speeding or driving recklessly.”

I shake my head for the millionth time. I only saw it stopped, afterward.

“What does the driver of the blue minivan say?” I ask.

“That he was driving normally—even slower than normal, because of the traffic—and never saw Humphrey coming,” says the man.

“Did someone else see the accident?” I ask.

“We're not sure,” the woman says. “There have been some reports from other drivers, but often people think they saw things that they really didn't in these situations.”

There are more questions. Finally they're done. They leave me their cards in case I remember anything.

When the detectives are gone, Mom tells me I did as well as I could have. She means to be supportive. But when it mattered, out there walking east along the westbound lane of Quarry Road, clearly I did not do as well as I could have. As well as I should have.

“Comment ça va?”

Camp is over, Becca's back, and we're at the bakery we like because it feels French and is not a chain.

“Really,” Becca says. “Tell me how you're doing.”

I take a sip of my café au lait. “I'm doing.”

“Danielle, I'm sorry I couldn't be here for you.”

“You were at camp.”

“True, but now that I think about it, I could have gotten permission to come home for a day. That's what I should have done.”

“You texted every day. That's being here for me. And you called after the funeral.”

She did, that night, after Adrian went home. I've removed
those quotation marks I put around our “friendship.” Becca's been a loyal friend.

“Texting, calling—they're not really being there. But you are
très gentille
for not being mad at me.” She bites into her
pain au chocolat
. “Oh my God. This is to die for.”

Her face freezes.

“I didn't mean to say that,” she whispers.

I have to laugh.

“Becca, you can use the word ‘die' in my presence.”

“What I meant,” Becca says, “was that camp food is definitely nothing like this.”

“No,” I say. “I seem to remember that.”

“Bug juice,” she says.

That would be watered-down fruit punch.

“Turds.”

Translated: hamburgers. I know, disgusting, but true. Very hard hamburgers.

“Sticks and stones.”

That's easy: fish sticks and overbaked macaroni.

“But really, Danielle, I can't imagine how you must have felt. And still feel.”

There is too much to say. I feel like my head will crack open if I start talking about it. Which is an awful and stupid thing to say, given what happened, and it obviously would be worse to say out loud. So it's fortunate that I've temporarily lost the ability to speak.

“I want to know,” Becca says. “That is, I want to know if you want to tell me.”

I regain control of my voice. “I don't want to talk—I mean, about it. I'd love to hear about your summer. Being a CIT, being away for the entire eight weeks. Will you go back as a counselor?”

Becca peers at me. “Danielle, really? That's what you want to talk about?
Vraiment
?”

I assure her that it is.
Vraiment, vraiment
.

She rolls her eyes slightly.

“It was great,” she says. “Really great. I had the youngest girls, the seven-year-olds. The counselors I was assigned to were really nice, and didn't just give me the grunt work.”

“What would be the grunt work?” I ask.

“You know, if a kid needs bathroom help. Or like serving food.”

“Okay.”

“I was also assigned to arts and crafts—I told you that, right?—which was my first choice. Which I loved. So—clay, and beads, and collage, and leather work. Fun,
n'est-ce pas
?”

“Yeah. It's fun,” I agree. “Did you have those beads you iron so they melt together into pretty little doodads?”

Becca nodded. “The girls love that! Which is funny, because they all have the bead kits at home, so they ended up doing the same thing at camp arts and crafts that they could do at home. I kept trying to push leather working—you know, because it's more camp-ish—and they were totally not interested. They
just kept wanting to do beads. Making useless little trinkets—
les bibelots
! I think one girl made twenty-five of them.”

Somehow I've become transfixed. I know I'm supposed to laugh or nod or somehow react to the girl who made twenty-five useless little
bibelots
, but all I can think of is Humphrey. He knew about the bead kits, and he wanted one.

“Danielle. Did I say something?”

I shake my head, which feels like it weighs about a hundred pounds.

“See, I knew I shouldn't be talking about this. We should be talking about
you
.”

I shake my head again. “It's not your fault. I asked about the beads—”

But I can't go on. Suddenly, I am conscious of the fact that words that begin with
b
are particularly prone to leading a person to tears. Seriously. Maybe because what you do with your mouth to say
b
is so close to what you do with your mouth when you burst out blubbering. I am not just trying to change the subject, to get away from thinking about Humphrey. In fact, I can't help but think of Humphrey, because I am sure he would have enjoyed experimenting with
b
words to test out my theory.

“These macaroons,” I say, “really are to die for.”

I was on my knees next to Humphrey, in the field, in the park. This was a post-dinner, pre-dark outing, Saturday night, two days after Opposite Day.

“Okay. You want to sort of—tee it up. Tee it up here in your hand. Then launch it away from you.”

“I can do it,” Humphrey said. “I know I can.”

I walked about ten paces away. “Launch me that spiral!”

It rolled out of his hand, dribbled on the ground. He pounced on it, readied it in his hand, attempted launch, and it rolled again. And again, five more times.

“Look, forget about teeing it up. Forget about launch,” I said. “Let's see what you do when you just throw the football any old way.”

It didn't go any old place. At all.

“I know you can teach me, Danielle,” Humphrey said sweetly.

I wasn't so sure. Still, he was a good sport and I wanted to encourage his good attitude. “One way I can teach you to throw is to throw to you, Humphrey,” I said. “That way, you get practice catching—”

“Oh, I can already catch.”

“—and you get to watch how I throw.” I told Humphrey to catch the ball, then run it to me. “As if you're running the ball down the field and I'm the goalpost.”

I threw spiral after spiral. I threw as softly as I could, but he couldn't hang on to a single catch. He stood there waiting for the ball, or, if the throw wasn't right on target, he moved to get into its path—and then, basically, he tried to clap it. That's what it looked like to me, like Humphrey had been told to clap the ball. I studied him more closely. Maybe it wasn't so much that he was trying to clap the ball, as he was trying to grab hold of it with a pair of tongs, or tweezers.