The other woman tugged at her fingers for a minute as if to loosen the joints—she worked hard and had the calluses to prove it—then gave a smile so fleeting it was dead on arrival. “I’m not getting laid, if that’s what you mean.” She picked up her glass, rattled the ice cubes, drained what was left in the bottom. “So things could be better, yeah. A whole lot better.”
Carolee was puzzled. And maybe a bit offended too—she’d never been a fan of that kind of talk—but she forged on because she had no choice and if this woman with the flaring eyes and low habits and mad theories was going to wind up with Adam she needed to be understanding, needed to give her the benefit of the doubt, needed, above all else, to pump her for information. “But what about Adam? How’s he doing? Is he helping out, is he okay?”
“Adam? I haven’t seen Adam since that night, that time, I mean—at the house?”
This information came down on Carolee like a rockslide, just buried her, the way she told it. They’d both assumed he was with her, and the news came down hard on him too—if he thought he’d washed his hands of his son he was fooling himself. Adam was there, always there, as persistent as a drumbeat in the back of your mind, the rhythm you can’t shake, the tune you can’t stop humming—he was his father, still and forever, and he’d tried to be as good a father as he could through all these years no matter how hard he rubbed up against Adam’s will and his delusions and his pranks, if you could call them that. He was Adam’s father. He loved him. And here he’d been entertaining his own delusion of Adam living in a kind of half-cracked (which meant half-sane) parity with this woman, Sara, who at least dwelled on Mother Earth and had a job and could cook for him and feed him and be his mother and lover rolled in one. I fucked her. Isn’t that right, Sara? Didn’t I fuck you? It was like throwing coins in a wishing well. He’d made his silent wish, the wish he couldn’t say aloud because then it wouldn’t come true. And what was it? That Adam was somebody else’s problem now.
Carolee had been stunned silent, sitting there with her mouth open. “You mean,” she said, “he isn’t with you?”
Sara, piggy Sara, Sara with her flaccid cheeks and fat thighs, too-old Sara, slutty Sara—no suitable lover for her son, not even close—had shaken her head emphatically and her eyes had moistened. “And I want to apologize—for that night, I mean. I stayed there till like ten or eleven, waiting for him? And when he came back I tried to stop him smashing things up, but he wouldn’t listen.” A catch in her voice, and in that moment, just for an instant, Carolee softened again. “And he wouldn’t come. Believe me, I tried”—and here was Cindy with the teapot nestled in its cozy—“I tried so hard I had bruises up and down my arm for a week after. But he wouldn’t listen. And he wouldn’t come.”
Now, in the kitchen, with the birds at the feeder and the newspaper folded down flat on the table, Sten felt nothing but anger. Carey was dead, the gangs had taken over, there’d be beheadings next, corpses hanging from the bridges like in Tijuana, the forests lost and all hope of peace and tranquility flown out the window, and all she did was tack up a checklist of questions, as if she cared, and then went back to her crossword. “Annelid,” he said, snapping out the syllables as if each one had a flail attached to it. “Seven letters for earthworm.”
“Oh, Sten,” she said, shaking her head side to side. “I know, I know. I’m just worried, that’s all. Where is he, that’s what I want to know—”
“He’s at the funeral home. Or the morgue.”
“Maybe we should call Cody’s parents—maybe he’s with Cody.”
“I’m talking about Carey. Carey Bachman. He’s at the morgue. Can’t you get that through your head?”
It was a pointless conversation and it ended, as if at the bell between rounds in a prizefight, with the ringing of the telephone, which happened to coincide with the feverish buzz of the cell in his pocket. He was the ex-principal, the ex-Marine. He was the hero. The one they gave the thumbs-up to and bought unwanted drinks for. And now they were calling to see what they should do, everybody, the whole town buzzing and stirred-up and scared, and they would keep on calling through the rest of the morning and on into the afternoon.
22.