And now, as I walk into the office and watch Nancy at the front desk, Nancy the receptionist, reprinting a receipt because she’s managed to drip her cocoa on it so that blotches of brown sully the words on the receipt, I wonder how much the additional sheet of paper is costing me, how much for the toner and the electricity that keeps the printer functional, how much I pay Nancy, kind, affable Nancy whom every patient likes, to sip her cocoa and answer the phones and spill her drink on the receipts.
There was a time when I didn’t think about any of it, but now I can’t help but think of it all, every last penny I no longer have to my name. The truth of the matter is, I’m in dire straits and I don’t want Clara to know. I’ve tried to think of ways to turn a quick and easy profit before having to admit to her that the practice is crumbling, our life savings nearly gone. I’ve looked into everything I can think of to make extra cash: dog walking on my lunch break, taking a second job in the evenings and telling Clara that I’ve expanded my hours again, selling my own plasma, selling my sperm. Selling drugs. I could get my hands on all sorts of pharmaceuticals—the perks of being a dentist—and then sell them on the street to middle-class moms. Heck, I have even considered heading to Vegas and betting everything I have on roulette, but the cost of a hotel and an airplane ticket quickly sapped that idea, as well as the need to explain to Clara where I’d been.
And then, in these moments of total desperation, when my self-pity gets the best of me and I can barely see beyond the past due notices to think logically, my mind drifts to the notion of Russian roulette—one round in the chamber of a revolver—wondering if Clara might be better off without me around. It is morbid, which really isn’t me. I like to think of myself as a glass-half-full kind of guy. And yet it is natural, human nature, when the stress gets the best of me, to think to myself, I wish I was dead.
CLARA
“He’s losing weight,” the pediatrician says to me. Her name is Dr. Paul, and I can’t help but wonder if some male ancestor ever had the misfortune of being named Paul. Paul Paul. The room is happy, and there is a panorama of farm life painted on the otherwise white walls: a horse, a pig, a spotted cow.
“Mrs. Solberg,” she says to me, and I force my thoughts to the baby on the baby scale, Felix, who cries from the sudden coldness of the hard plastic tray on which he lies.
“He’s losing weight.”
Dr. Paul asks how the nursing has been going, and I lie and say fine. Just fine. I’ve nursed a baby before. I’m an old pro. And yet I’ve never been a widow before. This is wherein the fault lies, the reason why Felix is not eating well, why he is losing weight. Widowhood is all new to me, and it’s here that I struggle, though I don’t tell the doctor this, but I don’t need to because everyone in the whole entire world now knows that I am a widow, that my husband is the one who took the turn out on Harvey Road too fast, that he crashed the car into a tree, that he did it with our four-year-old daughter in the back seat, that he’s dead.
“Some weight loss after birth is normal,” she tells me, “but Felix has continued to lose weight since we visited him in the hospital. He’s lost over fourteen ounces since he was born. This is of concern,” she says, though her eyes lack judgment. I’m not being criticized. Dr. Paul is simply concerned. She lays a hand on my arm and asks again, “How has the nursing been going?” and this time I tell her.
I’m decidedly opposed to roadside memorials. It seems a silly way to honor a beloved family member who’s now dead. And yet I find myself purchasing a white wooden cross at the local craft store, and a spray of flowers, burgundy and pink, because it’s premade and on display at the florist shop. I don’t have time to special order; I want it now. The cross itself seems glib. It’s not as if we go to church, not often, though we had Maisie baptized because Nick’s mother said Maisie was bound for perdition if we didn’t. The only times we’ve been to church since are when Mrs. Solberg is in town, when we dress up in our Sunday best and slide into the spartan pew, pretending this is something we do.
But still, I buy the cross to go along with the floral bouquet. It seems the thing to do.
I drive to the scene of the accident, where a red-winged blackbird sits on a thin telephone wire watching me, like a tightrope walker, its gnarled black claws clinging tightly to the cord. Its black feathers shimmer in the late-morning sun, a single patch of red and yellow blazoned upon its side. It sings a brassy, emphatic song, and from somewhere in the distance, perched in the cattails of a roadside ditch, a female returns its call, quieter and less emphatic than the male. They parley back and forth, back and forth again, making plans to meet, and as I stand there on the side of the road, the sun bearing down on me and making me sweat, the car parked less than ten feet away, Felix inside with the window rolled down, the male red-winged blackbird leaves his perch and swoops down into the cattails to find his mate.
The houses in the area reside in one of those green housing developments with their energy-efficient designs, a neighborhood composting program, a community garden. The homes are all faux farmhouses, too clean and modern to be real farmhouses. There are horses in their enormous backyards, beautiful light bay and dapple gray horses enclosed in pointed picket fences, their snouts rising from the grass to see what it is that I’m doing as I return to the car and retrieve a small treasure from the trunk: the spray of funeral flowers, the white wooden cross.
I’m opposed to roadside memorials, but without it, I’d have no reason to be here, to see if what Maisie says is true, that there was another car on the road with her and Nick, one that made them crash.
I lay the flowers on the roadside; I dig away at the earth to make room for the cross. Cars pass by and wonder what it is that I’m doing, but then they see the cross, the flowers, and they know. They drive slower, more thoughtfully. They take the turn with deliberation. They stay in their lane, never allowing their cars’ tires to crisscross the double yellow line and into mine. This roadside memorial serves as a reminder and also a warning: this is what happens if you don’t slow down. You die like Nick has died, losing control of the car along that hairpin curve and slamming into the tree at breakneck speed.
But what if this is not the way it happened? What if what Maisie says is true, that there was another car on the road that fateful afternoon? Everyone loved Nick. He had no enemies, none at all. Whatever transpired on this street had to be the worst kind of luck, a simple act of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. A case of road rage, a drunken driver.
There’s no way that someone set out to intentionally harm Nick.