The Fragile World (31 page)

curtis

Suddenly, I knew exactly what I was going to do.

There was an unsettling disconnect between my mind and my body; my body kept moving forward as if preprogrammed, and my mind was watching the whole thing from a distance, where it could safely call the shots.

I sped through the streets. It was past seven now; my detour through the Ohio countryside and back had cost me precious time. The day had fully arrived, ushered in with a golden sunlight that glinted off the asphalt.

I said it, hummed it, sang the three syllables:
Rob-ert Saenz.

The Explorer fishtailed for a wild moment as I took a hard turn onto Morgan. It didn’t matter who saw me, what anyone said or thought. Saenz was in my sights, and everything else had disappeared. For all I knew, the rest of the world had fallen into a sinkhole, and this little plot of land was the only thing left standing.

This time I didn’t circle the block and park at a distance, or slow down to stare out the window and consider my options. Instead, I swung the Explorer into the driveway and jerked to a stop in the space that had recently been vacated by Jerry Saenz in the Saenz & Co truck. I waited a moment, watching. There was no movement inside the house, no face peering at me from behind a curtain. I fixed my eyes on the apartment above the garage. He was there, hungover, still in bed—I was sure. I heard the words in my head, as if I’d actually spoken them:
Do you know who I am? Does the name Daniel Kaufman ring any bells?

I stepped out of the car, the Colt tucked into my waistband. Maybe even the sight of it would give Robert Saenz a massive coronary. That was fine, too. It was
when,
not
if.
It was
when,
not
how.

My shoes crunched against the gravel where the driveway ended and a stone pathway began. The area around the bottom of the steps was filthy with cigarette butts, smoked to nubs. Add this to Robert Saenz’s list of crimes—littering, abuse of the environment. The stairs leading along the side of the garage up to the unit seemed to be an afterthought and not entirely up to code. Saenz & Co. was in the hauling business, not in construction. The entire staircase creaked under my weight, and the railing was less than stable. Left alone, Robert Saenz might just take a header down these stairs one night, without any help from me—but I wasn’t going to wait for that.

The time to consider my actions had been before. Minutes before, driving back into town. An hour before, loading a single bullet in the parking lot of the truck stop. Two days ago, when I was in Omaha with Kathleen and Olivia, when I could have taken one last stab at making things right. Almost a month before, when I’d received the letter, and things had started to spiral out of control. Years ago, when I’d made the decision—consciously? unconsciously?—that what had happened to Daniel was going to define my life.

Now there was nothing to do but raise my fist and pound on the door, a sound so loud against the crisp quiet of the morning that it might have been a gunshot itself. I was about to try the handle, then force myself in if needed, shoulder to the door, when the doorknob turned, and the door opened inward.

Robert Saenz, wearing a stained white T-shirt and a pair of gray sweats, was standing in front of me. He ran a hand over his face roughly, as if he were rubbing himself awake. It was the same face I’d seen in the Oberlin newspaper, the same face on the booking jacket that the police officer had pushed across the conference table at me. It was hard to see him in real life and not remember that mug shot—his face bloated and large in the foreground, a height chart climbing the wall behind him. Now he was older, hair shorter and graying around the temples, his eyes bloodshot. His stomach was a hard ledge beneath his T-shirt.

I said his name—not a question, just a recitation of his name out loud as I’d been reciting it inwardly.

What surprised me more than anything was the expression on his face. This man had killed two people, I had to remind myself. He had done time in prison—scenes from an episode of
Lock-Up!
flashed in my mind—but he didn’t look hard-bitten or criminalized. He didn’t reach out and push me down the stairs—which he could have done without much difficulty—or slam the door in my face or reach out to throttle me with his bare hands. Instead, he looked resigned. He looked horribly tired.

I said, “You don’t know me, but I know you. I’ve been waiting for this moment.”

He took a step backward and raised a hand, chest-high, as if to stop me. “Okay. Now hold on.”

“Daniel Kaufman was my son,” I said, my voice breaking on his name.

Saenz ran a tongue over cracked lips, his dead eyes sparking with life. “What do you want from me?”

All the language had been sucked out of my brain. Where words had been, carefully rehearsed, was only a raw jumble of feeling. My hand went to my waistband, to the Colt, and his eyes tracked my movement.

“I want you to say his name.”

“Look, I don’t know—”

“His name was Daniel Owen Kaufman.”

“Okay. So I’ll say his name, and then you’ll leave?”

This was the moment—my one shot. I tugged at my sweatshirt, bringing the Colt into view. “I’m here to make things right,” I said.

Robert Saenz’s eyes locked on the handle of the gun, but then his gaze shifted ever so subtly to something over my shoulder.

Behind me, at the foot of the rickety stairs, someone said, “Uncle Bobby? What’s going on?”

olivia

We sped through Oberlin, craning our necks out open windows, scanning the horizon frantically for a green Ford Explorer with California plates, for any sign of Dad. We passed brick buildings, open green spaces with towering pieces of public art and signs for pizza and twenty-four-hour Laundromats.

Daniel lived here,
I reminded myself. As much as I fought it, I couldn’t stop the next thought:
Daniel died here.

And then:
I can’t let Dad die here, too.

“He’s not here. We’re never going to find him,” I moaned.

“We haven’t been up and down every street yet.”

“Maybe he’s not even here, because maybe Robert Saenz isn’t even here.”

Mom brushed this aside. It was still too early to contact anyone on the phone, to learn anything about a release from prison, terms of parole. “Plan B,” she said, pulling into a gas station. Before I could protest, she left me in the car, the engine running. Madness—it was all madness. Maybe I could slide across the center console, plunk myself in the driver’s seat and leave my parents and all this lunacy behind. Angling my neck out the window, I saw Mom inside the store, gesturing with one hand to the clerk behind the counter.

A few seconds later, she was back, clutching a scrap of paper with a few crudely drawn lines. “His brother lives here in town.” She tossed the map into my lap, and I picked it up, trying to determine the orientation.

“You don’t need the map,” Mom said. “Just look for Morgan Street.”

curtis

“Uncle Bobby?” the voice repeated uncertainly.

I turned slowly, the gun still tucked in my waistband. The voice belonged to a girl in jeans and sneakers and an oversize Oberlin High School sweatshirt that dwarfed her body. She had one foot on the first step, one hand on the unsteady railing. She was young—fifteen? Sixteen?
Olivia’s
age.
I forced the thought away.

“Tell her everything’s okay,” I ordered, my voice low.

“Everything’s okay, Katie,” Robert Saenz called. “Why don’t you go back inside?” He was cool, much cooler than I would have been if the roles were reversed, if it were Olivia standing at the foot of the stairs.

“Who are you?” Katie asked, not moving. “Do we know you?”

I looked again at Robert, who called down, “Don’t worry, Katie. Everything’s okay. Don’t you need to leave for school soon?”

She squinted up at us, assessing the situation. “I’m coming up there.”

“Don’t come up here, Katie,” Robert said.

“You don’t need to come up here,” I repeated. It was my Mr. K voice, coming from deep within me. It was the tone I used with my students—friendly but firm. “I’m just here to talk to your uncle.”

“Then I’m going to talk to him, too,” she said, reminding me more and more of Olivia with each second. She took a few steps and stopped again, watching me. Closer, I could see that her hair was still wet from a morning shower, combed flat but with the ends beginning to curl up as they dried. The sunlight glinted off some metal in her mouth: braces, the colored bands alternating purple and blue.

I couldn’t let this girl be involved. In all the thousands of times I’d played this scene in my mind, it hadn’t included anyone other than him and me.

That was how it had to be now.

I surprised Robert Saenz with a one-handed shove against his chest, and he took a staggering step back into the apartment. All I needed was to get him inside, the door locked behind us. There would be only a few minutes. Oberlin was a small town, after all. I remembered the police sergeant telling me that a paramedic from Lorain County had been on the scene of Daniel’s accident in less than three minutes.

But then, two things happened.

Katie, frozen on the step below, screamed.

And in the driveway, a car screeched to a sudden stop. I only vaguely registered this out of the corner of my eye; Robert Saenz had regained his footing and was launching himself in my direction.

“Say his name, Saenz,” I sputtered. “Say his name before you die.”

But then a car door slammed, and someone yelled, “Dad! No!”

olivia

The Explorer was in the driveway, and Dad was standing at the top of a flight steps over a garage, his eyes wild.

There was no time to be afraid. Even though I was shaking and bawling and breathing through my own snot, I pushed fear away and bolted out of the car.

Mom was right behind me, her car door slamming. “Curtis! No! Get down here!”

At the bottom of the steps a girl was screaming. She stepped back to let us pass, probably believing we had control over Dad, as if he was a psych patient on the lam and we had been charged with bringing him back.

When I reached the middle of the stairs, I had a clearer view of Dad, who had stepped inside the apartment. The gun that Sam and I hadn’t been able to find was in his hands. It wasn’t a large thing, but somehow that made it even more terrifying. He held the gun out before him, aiming into the dark, gaping hole of the apartment. For a split second he shifted his gaze down the steps, to where I stood.

I flinched, as if he’d shot me with that look. I wanted to know, to believe deep down, that my dad couldn’t kill anyone. He wouldn’t, I was absolutely sure, kill
me.

“Curtis,” Mom called, her voice oddly calm, as if she were negotiating a hostage release. “Why don’t you come down here, so we can talk?”

Dad didn’t say anything, but I’d lived with him long enough to know that his silence was itself an answer. Aiming a gun at the man who killed his son might not have been right, but I could see that it was his only answer at that moment, and he believed it was right.

I wiped my sleeves over my eyes to get rid of the tears. “Dad! Please. You have to come with us now.”

“Get them away from here, Kathleen,” Dad called, gesturing with his free hand.

“What’s going on?” the girl at the bottom of the steps called, her voice strained with panic.

Mom turned. “Call 9-1-1! Right now!”

The girl hesitated, then dashed off in the direction of the house, looking back over her shoulder.

“Curtis,” Mom tried again.

“Dad! Please! Put the gun down!”

Dad looked down at us, like for just a moment he was considering it. And then another man was visible, hooking an arm around Dad’s neck.

In that split second between seeing and reacting, between realizing what was happening and being able to voice a scream, the man dragged Dad into the apartment.

“It’s not loaded!” I screamed, although I wasn’t sure this was true. It had seemed such a simple thing at the time, such a clever solution: switch the bullets for batteries. Attention, America: We have solved the issue of gun control. Now, I knew that Dad could have bought more ammunition, and that a police officer charging up these stairs wouldn’t care if the gun was loaded or not. Sam and I hadn’t solved anything.

Mom was right behind me as we raced up the steps. The screams coming from my own mouth were unintelligible, like speaking in tongues with the spirit inside you. Except that what was inside me was my whole life, spilling out in an animal’s yell. The staircase rocked beneath our feet—
death by falling off a wobbly staircase—
but I figured that the collapse of the stairs might even be a blessing right then. It was the least of our worries.

I reached the top first, elbowing my mom out of the way, a feat that surprised me as much as it would have surprised my P.E. teacher in my former life. It was dark inside the apartment, and there were heaps of clothes and shoes and food wrappers on the floor. Dad and the man who must have been Robert Saenz had fallen to the ground, where they writhed on the carpet like a two-headed, eight-limbed beast. Dad still had hold of the gun and was ramming it against Robert’s ribs, but it seemed like a shaky hold at best.

“Don’t! Don’t—” I screamed, but Dad pulled the trigger. The gun clicked, but nothing happened.

Robert freed his hands and got them both around Dad’s neck in a choke hold.

“It’s not loaded!” I screamed again, this time at Robert. “Let him go! He was just trying to scare you!” More than anything, I wanted this to be true. I
believed
it. I lunged for that thick arm, trying to pull it off Dad’s neck. The hold was way too tight, and I couldn’t budge his grip even slightly. Dad’s face was turning a violent reddish color, his eyes bulging. If I didn’t know who he was, I wouldn’t have known him at all.

Mom was on top of Robert’s legs, trying to pin him into place. Her hands were struggling to get the gun from Dad’s grasp, and all of a sudden the gun was pointed directly at her.

I heard myself scream
OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod,
screaming and screaming because I could see how this was going to end, with the gun loaded and discharging, the way guns did, and the bullet entering my mother’s chest, splintering through skin and bone to organs, to the spongy insides that make us everything we are.

But as it turned out, that’s not what happened.

Mom wrestled the gun away, and she leaned back on her haunches and aimed at Robert Saenz, who was still choking my dad, and said, “Let him go. Let him go, and we’ll put an end to all of this.”

“Please,
please,
” I begged, grabbing on to Robert Saenz’s legs, as if I could distract him. He kicked me, his foot connecting with my shoulder, and I tried again. I knew only the barest of facts about Robert Saenz at that point, but I would learn more later, when the newspaper published a giant feature that was fascinating and horrible at the same time, spilling the guts of our family for the entire world to read if they wanted. Robert Saenz, the article would claim, had been the family’s bad seed, the one who always needed bailing out. He had fathered a child, a boy who was about my age, but never visited the kid or paid a cent of child support, so the term
father
could be used only as a technicality. He had taken drugs for more than half his life, beginning when he was younger than me.

But I didn’t know any of that then.

At that moment, he was the man who had killed my brother, the man who was going to kill my father.
Asphyxiation, broken windpipe, broken neck.
“Shoot him!” I cried. Would I have said this if I had time to think and plan and be rational?

Maybe.

His hands still on Dad’s neck, Robert Saenz turned to look at Mom.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her shaking, the gun in her hands wavering.

I had wasted years of my life being scared of little things when I should have been saving all my energy for this moment. My screams felt like a prayer, like a reckoning with God—
Don’t don’t don’t let Dad die.

And then Dad’s head hit the floor with a sickening thud. He didn’t move. I could hear sirens now, and realized I had been hearing them for the past minute, only now they were closer, surrounding us.

Robert Saenz was reaching for the gun when Mom pulled the trigger.

And then the whole world went black.