Kiss of the Wolf (5 page)

“We shouldn't drive with the light on like this,” Todd said.

Joanie made a face at the road ahead and snapped off the overhead light. They were quiet for a few miles.

As usual, what she wanted to say would make her sound like someone she didn't want to sound like. So she kept her mouth shut. This was the way she usually felt when he was acting up: reasonable and trampled.

She turned on the radio and cranked it. “Everybody awake, pal, let's go,” she said. She felt reckless, the irresponsible mother.

It was a “classic rock” station. They were halfway through The Who's “Won't Get Fooled Again.” Roger Daltrey screamed.

It charged her up further. She'd been a big Who fan.

“Aw, jeez,” Todd said, sinking in his seat.

Lately, up-tempo rock acted on her accelerator, she noticed. “Won't Get Fooled Again” segued into The Yardbirds' “Train Kept a-Rollin',” another all-time favorite. She touched the dial out of reflex, in appreciation, but didn't take the volume any higher. The rhythm line galloped her into the song.

She could see the bridge up ahead and the entrance to the parkway, black water, power lines, little yellow lights doubled off docks on the Milford side.

A man, a face showing teeth, was there in front of her and took her breath. Wide eyes, a black jacket. She felt an electric spasm of shock. Todd screamed.

The body seemed to hurl itself out, lunged at her and thudded. The bumper turned him, and he cart-wheeled and hit the roof of the car. She felt the sound in her heart. She heard him carried down the length of the roof, like someone running in heavy boots, and then he was off. Their car careened right and then left and skidded into bushes that splintered and snapped along one side, like gunfire. Todd was bounced into her and she was slung across Todd. The hood flew up. They stopped.

She was aware that the noise of their shrieks and the braking had died away. The Yardbirds were louder, and into the next chorus. She turned the radio off. There was a whimpering, like someone else was in the car. She turned the engine off, but it continued, shaking and then ticking.

“Ma, what'd we do?” Todd whispered. She could see his eyes in the darkness. She checked to see if he was all right. She checked to see if she was. They both shook. The car's ticking wound down.

She tried to get the courage to open her door. She looked back. The body was off the side of the road. One leg was crossed over the other, like someone had flopped down for a nap near the white line.

She had to get out. Someone else could come along. The guy could still be alive. She had to help. She had the feeling her life was a movie that just tore—a whole set of concerns, a world, cut away and flapping. She was looking at the whiteness of the screen.

She had to get up. She had to function. She held the wheel and could feel herself trying to shudder the fear out. It worked a little. She opened the door. Her movements occurred without her full cooperation.

She crossed the pavement to the body. “Stay there,” she called hoarsely back to the car. Todd hadn't moved.

They'd skidded a hundred feet past it. She could see the long helixes of skid marks. She got closer and stopped ten feet or so away. This was cowardice, she knew. She willed him up. If she gave him another second, he'd stir, shake his head like someone surfacing from a dive in the pool. He'd turn to her with a look that would let her know he appreciated what a tight squeak
that'd
been.

There was a finger-sized area of blood, discreet, near his head.

This broke her paralysis. She crossed to him and crouched.

He was facedown. A hand and at least a leg were broken; she could see that much already. She didn't want to turn him over. She placed a palm on his back. This seemed to her the best moment for the miracle.

“Is he all right?” Todd called from the car in a small, terrified voice.

“I don't know yet,” she said. She moved her hand from the back and put it along the side of the neck, below an ear. She didn't know how to tell if someone was alive. She didn't feel anything. She couldn't hear anything. He didn't look that hurt, but there was the blood from his head. It was very dark. She couldn't see where the blood was coming from.

She leaned back in her crouch, her forehead cooling in panic. She shouldn't move him, but she shouldn't leave him here. The car: she'd have to bring the car around, block the road, put her emergency blinkers on.

She looked closer at his head and neck. It welled up inside her like a confirmation of her worst sense of herself: he was dead. There was more blood, under his chest. She could see the edge of the jacket soaking it up like a spill.

Something cracked in the forest off the side of the road. She got up and walked fast, the little girl turning her back to the haunted house, walked back to the car. Todd was crouched inside, his head low and his knees up. One of the presents, the board game, had flown onto his lap. He clawed it away from him with some alarm.

She moved along the front of the car. The hood was sprung, but otherwise looked no worse than it usually did. She shut it and it stayed down. The bumper had a gentle dent under the right headlight. It did not stand out. The body was pushed in a little, too. She imagined people in the woods. She got in the car. She started it. She was in a new world.

She edged the gas, and they pulled free of the bushes with a bump and rocked onto the road. Leaves were caught under the windshield wipers. She turned right. She was thinking, I can go for help instead of waiting here. She was thinking the first gas station or cop car. Todd didn't say anything.

Something scraped and dragged beneath the car and then fell away. In slow motion, she pulled onto the ramp for the Merritt Parkway. She thumped up onto the shoulder and straightened the car out.

Todd shifted around in his seat. He peered over the side of his door. “Where're we going?” he asked.

Where were they going? “We're gonna call,” she said. She didn't know where.

They were going too slow. They were crossing the bridge. She could hear the whine of the bridge metal beneath them. A car rushed by her, swerved, and honked. She turned on her lights.

“That was a phone booth down there,” Todd said, meaning farther along 110. “There's no phone booths up here.”

“We could call from home,” she said, and knew it was wrong when she said it. She looked over at Todd. He was looking at her piercingly.

Was she crazy? This was possible. She saw exit signs ahead. She slowed down and took the exit.

“Now where're we going?” Todd said. “What're you
do
ing?” He sounded a little hysterical.

At the stop sign, she looked both ways. She turned left. She turtled forward under the highway, and stopped, and looked both ways again. The road, whatever it was, was dark and quiet. She turned left again.

“I'm going back,” she said.

He didn't say anything.

Heading back toward the body, she thought of her life changed: she saw newspapers, flashbulbs, and jury trials, all images from movies. The triviality and theatricality of her imagination were appalling. You killed someone, she thought. But even that was theatrical and lacked weight, as if she were a scold.

The tires drummed back onto the bridge. A police car appeared from behind them and surged by, and its siren bolted on as it passed. As she came over the crest of the arc she saw the lights, yellow and blue, flashing around the scene of the accident. There were red taillights glowing, too: two or three cars. Her heart seized up. The police car that had passed her slowed as much as it could and careened off onto 110. She sailed frozenly by the exit.

“What're we doin'?” Todd cried. “What're you
do
in'?”

“
Shut up,
” she said, and he gave off a wail, and put his head in his hands, and left it at that.

God forgive me, God forgive me, she said to herself.

That meant she had to turn around again and go back. The car handled like a truck. The wheel lurched and jerked at her hands. Once again: under the highway, up the entrance ramp. It was nightmarish. She was becoming something comic. They could see the scene yet again. Various people were illuminated in red, posed kneeling and crouching around the central figure of the body. It reminded her of a Christmas crèche, and she was amazed at her blasphemy and detachment. She couldn't conceive of herself as part of that group now: driving up, approaching the cops standing around their cars, and saying, I did this.

They were back on the bridge. Todd looked out the window at the river, his head against the headrest in despair.

You can call from home, she thought. She had to go back, she understood. But leaving had made it impossible to return: she was twice as criminal. Three times as criminal.

“I'm trying to think,” she said. Todd didn't answer.

The car was making ominous, rhythmic scraping noises, and she thought, not even sure what she meant, Not this, too.

She passed the exit where she'd turned around the first time. She had the feeling she was coming to moral turning points, one after the other, and failing each one. She kept putting a hand to her cheek, as if to cool it.

When she slowed for their exit, Todd said, “It's hit-and-run. It's hit-and-run if you leave him and don't say anything.”

Joanie took an audibly deep breath and let it out, as if she were blowing smoke. She recognized it as what she did to signal Todd during debates that things were a lot more complicated in the adult world than he realized; that sometimes she wished he only knew how patient she could be. She let the fraudulence of her response stand. Todd didn't seem much affected by it, anyway.

“If you leave him—” Todd said.

“I
know,
” she said, trying to control her voice. She swung into a turn so that he slid into the door on his side. “I
know
all of this,” she said.

From that point to the turn into their street, she ran through variations on Why me? and Why does this have to happen now?

The garage door was open, though the light was out. She sailed right up the driveway and braked only at the last minute. Lucky he had put his bike away this time, she thought grimly. The front bumper clanked the junk against the wall. She turned the engine off and hung forward on the wheel.

Nested bicycle fenders and a hubcab Gary'd hung on a nail were still making noise. The streetlight penetrated only as far as the back bumper, so she could just about see her hands.

“You were going too fast,” Todd said.

“Was it my fault?” Joanie said. “Did he just come out of nowhere at us, or not?”

“You were going too fast,” Todd said.

“I was
not
going too fast,” Joanie said. “I was not going that fast.”

Todd shifted around on the seat next to her. It was possible he'd refuse to get out of the car. Decide to go next door and call the police.

“How could I have seen him in time?” she said. “What could anybody have done?”

Her ears were ringing, like she'd been shouting. She sat back against the seat and closed her eyes. She'd been going too fast.

The engine was ticking as it cooled, the way it did after the accident. Todd noticed it, too, and got out of the car and slammed the door. When she got to the front door, he was standing there with his head down, like a dog waiting to be let in.

“I'm going to call,” she said as she wrestled with the key. She swung the door inward, and he slipped by her and through the front hall.

“How 'bout some lights?” she said. He went directly to the back door.

She hit the lights and put her bag down and stood near the phone. Her chest felt the way she did at the beach when she'd breathed in too much water, too much mist.

“Audrey's back,” Todd said. He opened the door, and the dog pitter-pattered in across the tile.

He closed it behind her and relocked it and crossed to the kitchen table. He sat in one of the chairs. Audrey checked her dish and then walked over to him and put her head beside his knee. He played with her ears. He was waiting for Joanie to call.

She had her hand on the phone. It was a wall phone, white. It reminded her of hours ago at her mother's. She let it go and pulled open the junk drawer beneath it. She pulled out the phone book and searched the municipal section at the front. Pages slapped back and forth.

“You could just dial nine-one-one,” Todd said.

She ignored him.

She found the precinct number and dialed. Todd was looking at the dog. She had her hand on the phone, for support. It was ringing at the other end. Her index finger swung over into the cradle and pressed the switch hook. She took her hand away before he could see. Look what you're doing, she thought, as horrified as she'd been at any other point that night. She pressed the earpiece tighter to her head. He'd hear the dial tone, she thought.

“Hello,” she said. “I'd like to report—Yes,” she said. “Yes.” She stopped. The dial tone was deafening. She thought of the story she'd read in junior high, the murdered man's heart you could hear under the floor.

She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “They got me on hold,” she said.

Todd was still contemplating Audrey, testing the floppiness of her ears.

Minutes went by. Joanie didn't know what to do. Her mashed ear was sore. She wanted Todd to leave, to take some pressure off the second part of her performance.

“Get ready for bed,” she said. “I'll be right up.”

He looked up at her with surprise, and she had the terrified premonition she'd blown it. “They're gonna want to interview us and stuff,” he said. “I can't go to bed.”

“They're gonna want to interview
me
,” she said. “They're not gonna want to interview you. Why would they want to interview you?”

“I'm going with you,” he said stubbornly. “They'd want to interview
me
.”