The air smelled of exhaust, of snowfall, of woodfire stoves. Julie held herself stiff, breath appended in her lungs, as she raced into the swirl of snowfall, the shavings sharp and virgin as diamonds, the shavings lashing the air, as the old Ford spat and chugged, coughed and spat and bucked.
It was an old and pathetic car they’d bought from a purple-faced man in the time before the kids were born, and she’d been talking about trading it in because some money had come along from an old relative of Pete’s. Sometimes nothing happened for so long a while, it was like they were the last people on earth. Then one day a few months ago, Pete came in shaking his head, holding an attorney’s letter that said ten thousand dollars from a deceased cousin was being sent to them. Julie said why don’t they get the car replaced. Pete went out to look at it. He checked the whole thing, enjoying himself, showing Cammy this and that. Then he came in holding Cammy and said getting rid of the car wasn’t so smart, but what was, was them taking a big trip down to Florida or Mexico. Maybe summertime, they’d decided.
Julie sat up as high as she could behind the wheel, keeping her eyes focused on the road. As they were spinning around the sharp corner where the China Pot restaurant sat, a little man wandered into the street. He went easy-going-like, his head tugged to one side. It was so sudden she could’ve killed him easily enough. But she braked at the last moment, and jerked the wheel, so abruptly, so frightened and belligerent at seeing the man appear, that the car almost curbed into a fire hydrant. Resting there, Julie cussed into her jacket collar. The man wasn’t paying any attention. He dawdled, arms spread, his head jittering, eyes on the inky sky. Partway through the road, he stopped and lit a cigarette. Julie took a long breath. She jumped the car back onto the street and took Main’s straightway all the way to the station.
“Let me come with you,” Cara whispered sleepily. “I’m up.”
“Go back to sleep,” Julie said, clearing her throat as she pulled the car neatly into the lot. “We’ll be home soon.”
Cara wiggled her body around and stretched her arms. “Let me come.”
Cammy had awoken. “Let me too.”
“Try to go back to sleep. We’ll be home in a flash.” Julie coughed and held the back of her hand to her mouth. “It’s almost morning, isn’t it? The stars are fading.” From far away, the smoke chuffed from the paper mills. “We’ll get ourselves a good breakfast once we get home.” Her breaths were rigid and lacking. “What do you want for breakfast?”
“Nothing.” Cara’s breathing persisted, heavy and wheezy, like she’d caught a cold. “I want to come with you.”
“You watch your brother. I’m trusting you.” Julie softened her voice. “I’m leaving it up to you to do it. It’s a big job.”
“If she gets to come, then I get to too,” Cammy said.
“Neither of you will come with me. Because there’s nothing to see.” She tried to smile. “Don’t worry about anything,” she continued. “We’ll be back home soon. So, just lie there and try to sleep. We’ll be home soon. And we’ll have a good breakfast too– but only if you do good looking after your brother. And you, Cammy, you must look after your sister. Isn’t that right? Right? Right.”
It’d happened in too big a rush. How much told to her had she even understood? She’d been lost in never-neverland – then roused by the telephone’s piercing rings. The house phone never rang. Eventually she rose, stumbling down the narrow hall to the kitchen. Across the line, the police officer was stolid and polite. He’d said everything she needed to know in only a few compact sentences. She’d listened. She’d jumped for her jacket and hat, for the children, and their winter things. Together, the three of them had hurried out into the cold black morning.
“Let me come with you,” Cara said suddenly. She’d almost begun to cry.
“Let me come too.” Cammy stretched his arms. “If she can, I can too.”
Julie patted their shoulders and the tops of their heads. “I’m trusting you to watch each other. It’s very important.”
“If she can go, I want too.”
“If he can go, then I can.”
“I need to go now,” Julie told them. “Sit and do nothing until I get back. I’m serious.” She took up Cara by her shoulders and shook her, trying to make her laugh. Cara tried her best to get out of the grip. She wasn’t amused and it seemed more like a struggle than a game. “I’m trusting you,” she said, releasing her. “You sit here and try to sleep. We’ll be home in a jiff.”
“Where are we?” Cammy asked suddenly.
“The police station.”
“I’ve never been before,” Cara choked. “I’ve never been inside. Remember? I missed the field trip because –”
“There’s nothing to see,” Julie said. “Go to sleep like you should. Just lie back and close your eyes. We’ll be home in a blink.”
Cara started to wail, but then she got slapped and was hushed. Julie froze, wondering how she could’ve done such a thing. She hadn’t known she had done it until her hands were back tucked against her stomach. A long moment passed, her head blank, all the apologetic words stuck in her throat. When she reached out for them they burrowed themselves deep in the seat, trying to get away from her.
“I’ll be back soon,” she whispered, and stood from the car. “Look after each other now.”
The station was brightly lit and quiet, smelling of peroxide and steel. Some officers stood together, talking by a long elbow-shaped desk. One of the officers was laughing a little, mumbling with half his mouth broken and the other grimly fastened, but they levelled and tidied themselves when she came up to them. A short, fat-faced officer walked her to a little chair by a desk lined with stacks of papers and reiterated what she’d been told over the telephone. She couldn’t look at him and kept her face stolid but polite.
“Please read this,” an officer said, approaching her with the report.
As she read, the paragraphs impeccably procedural and terse, two officers brought Pete from the cells in the back of the building. His hands were cuffed, and the officers gripped his shoulders. Julie remained sitting. She crooked her head from him and read over the document twice more, now more eyeballing the symbols rather than comprehending them, and she read as long as she could, until she began to hear the jagged clicking sound of a turned locked. When she looked up again, he was being given back the things from his pockets.
“Good night, Mr. Reynolds,” the officers said. “Good night, Mrs. Reynolds.”
“Am I allowed to go?” Pete clutched at his neck and spoke in a quiet voice. His cheeks were bruised by gravel, and there was a purple mark under his left eye from when he’d fallen. “Can I go?”
“You’re allowed to go.”
“Thank you,” Julie said and stood.
He didn’t seem tough enough to stand on his own and she quickly went to bolster him. She looped her arm inside his, and gripped the thin layer of muscle and swollen fat that layered his stomach. “Thank you. We both appreciate this very much. Thank you. Thank you.” She could feel his figure tighten within hers and she held him closer, afraid that he might fall.
“Good night, Mr. Reynolds,” the officer said again. Their words were slowly articulated. “Good night, Mrs. Reynolds.”
“I’m dead-tired,” he told her as they stumbled together across the lot to the car. He was stable, but his feel plodded and sometimes he would stumble and lean his entire weight on her. He didn’t appear drunk. “I need to sleep. Just let me.”
“The car’s up ahead – come on now. We’ll go right home. Don’t worry.”
“I’m sorry. I thought it was – I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” He paused, and looked starkly at her. He made a sluggish pious cross-sign in the air. “I’m so tired I can’t see straight. I know I must’ve slept in there.That jail. I know so. But I don’t remember if I did. I was on the floor. That’s where I woke up. Then some time passed and you were here. Can’t place why and what went on.”
“You drank too much alcohol and were found on Powell’s Lane,” she told him after a moment. They were stopped, and he kept making the cross-sign. “The police found you, and took you in.”
“I was in the street. I remember running, I remember walking somewhere.”
“You were asleep on Powell’s Lane,” she said again, her voice quiet. “They found you and brought you in.”
“I don’t remember. I only remember walking and – that cell. Waking up on the ground.”
“It doesn’t make any difference now that it’s over with. We’ll get home, and we can all get back to sleep.” She looked up, noting the tough ball of red in the horizon, the morning indigo lightning the sky. “We’ll sleep late and then have breakfast and maybe go out to the river. That would be a fun day, wouldn’t it? We could even give the kids an early start.”
“It must be morning soon,” Pete said vaguely. “Going into work soon.”
“There’s not going to be any work today,” she said, her voice rising. “It’s been too long a night for that. And you need your rest.” She waited for him to respond, but he didn’t. “It doesn’t matter,” she told him quietly and started them walking again. “We’ll go right home and to bed. Maybe you could eat a little breakfast. But then we’ll need to rest. There’s no point in trying to think about work and all that now. That’s for tomorrow after we get some rest in. Isn’t it?”
The children had gone back to sleep. Julie paused as they came up to the car, instinctively setting one hand on her stomach, the other around her throat, as she stared at them through the window. Cammy was cuddled up in his sister’s arms like he was a little stuffed animal and Cara sat up, her shoulders back, and her head proudly raised, as if she had been trying to stay awake for them. Julie stood and stared, her weight shifting like a plume from one foot to another. From beside her, Pete cleared his throat.
“I didn’t think you would bring them,” Pete whispered through clenched teeth. He was trying to settle himself.
“I couldn’t leave them home. But they were asleep the whole time. They don’t know what happened.”
“I wish –” He swallowed and bowed his head. “I’m too tired to talk well. I can’t think.”
“That can wait for later.” She opened the door and helped him into the door. “I’m only worried and sorry.”
“Why’re you sorry? I’m the one that’s sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
She smiled too. “It’s all over anyway, so nobody should be sorry.”
Her hand stayed on her throat as she pulled the car onto the main street. The trembling hadn’t wholly ceased, and she slowly exhaled, over, and over, her in-and-exhalations long and deliberate, and she waited, sometimes gripping her throat until the tendons hurt, wary and frightened of their persistent reoccurrence. Gradually, she placed both hands on the steering wheel. She sometimes reached back for the children.
“You sure they were sleeping?” Pete asked.
“Of course,” she said. “They don’t know anything.”
“They probably were up when you got them –”
“They were up a little,” Julie said quickly. “But don’t worry. They don’t know anything.”
“I’ll need to tell them.”
She thought. “We’ll tell them that you got hurt, but that you’re all better now.”
Town had awoken some though it was not quite morning. She drove them slowly through the streets, feeling a little better in the quaintness and romanticism of the near-dawn break. It’d been a long time since she’d seen such a thing, probably not since Cammy had been little and they had to stay up with him, comforting his crying and howling. Even the rotten people looked alright. An old woman was pushing a shopping car full of her things by them and some soiled old men sat on the curb with their feet in the street. And when they passed Powell’s Lane, a dishwasher in a dirty white coat was pouring a bucket of something into the sewer grate.
“Of course,” she said without hesitation. “They don’t know anything. They wanted to come in with me – Cara did and she was whining a little.” She tried to laugh a little. “She was only worried. And then Cammy wanted to come too.”
“The kids shouldn’t have been taken,” he muttered. “I wished you left them home.”
“There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t have left them in their beds, not know what –”
“I know. I know.”
“I mean, I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”
“I know you didn’t.” His voice was low and muffled. “I’m only saying –”
“I didn’t know how long it would take,” she continued. “I could’ve been there all morning, for all I knew.”
He nodded. “How was last night?”
“We had hamburgers at the King’s Head.”
“Were they well-behaved?”
She tried to grin. “They were acting tired because of the cold.”
The sun rose above the bare crab-apple trees, the thin splits coated with frost, as she pulled the car into the drive and stopped. For a moment, they sat there. The sunrise was slow and beautiful and the children slept peacefully and there would be little point to her start up a whole long baggy speech on what he’d done. It was still. Then the only sound was the dirty and muffled tick of Pete pulling back on each finger until the joints popped. It was an old habit of his that he’d promised to stop. He’d done a good job of keeping the promise, but sometimes he didn’t know what to do with his hands.
“Are there charges?” he asked. “I don’t remember what they said.”
“No, they only brought you in. You didn’t do anything wrong. You only were hurt.”
“Drunken and disorderliness,” he repeated.
“No, they’re not going to charge you with it. They only brought you in. It’s over.”
“My head feels like a whole brass band is playing in it.” He rubbed his temples and scraped his soft hair away, so it stuck askew. “They’re dead asleep. Look at them.” He pressed himself up. “Don’t wake them. I’ll take Cammy and you take Cara. Don’t wake them.”
She took Cara up, her little daughter soft and warm in her arms. There wasn’t a mark where she’d been smacked, and it hadn’t even been so hard, but Julie lifted her high and nuzzled the spot with her nose. A backwash of resentment overcame her, but that didn’t matter now. They’d all been run ragged, acting ridiculous. It could be forgotten, like the time Cammy had broken a glass bottle of milk on the kitchen floor. Pete held him securely over his shoulder and gripped him tightly with one arm. They went up the walk, their shadows made long, narrow shapes ahead of them, and into the house, down the hall towards the back bedrooms.
“How small they are,” Pete said. In the sunshine, the bruises on his chin and under his eyes were clean. “Drunk in the streets.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, as they put the children down on their beds, pulling their covers up to their chins. “They won’t remember –”
“It doesn’t matter if they remember.”
“They won’t remember. I don’t remember anything from when I was their age.”
“I don’t either, but –”
“Nobody remembers any of that.”
“They will. They could, even if they don’t know what it was. Maybe that I was in the hospital, that I had some sort of accident or – I don’t know what to say. Will you lie to them?”
“Of course,” she answered. “You go onto bed.”
“Will you lie with me for a while?” He said low and beseeching. “Aren’t you tired?”
“Not at all.” She hopped a little and smiled. “It must be adrenalin or something. But I’m awake. They’ll wake soon, and I’ll make them breakfast and – it’ll turn out alright in the end. But you need to get some sleep.”
“I hate myself.” Stumbling into their bedroom, he leaned down to undo his shoes. “I remember those pathetic kids.”
“It’s alright. You go to sleep.”
“You don’t understand. Those kids. You couldn’t get a straight answer out of them.” He rambled almost as if he was still drunk. When he was removing his shirt and pants, he almost toppled over. “They smelled. Everyone felt sorry for them.”
She went for his plaid pajamas that she’d ordered special for Christmas two years ago, but he told her he was too hot, and would sleep in his underclothes. She put everything neatly back in the drawer and then stood in the center of the bedroom watching him.
“I’ll only sleep an hour,” he said, lying there with his arm crossed over his face. A long time had passed without them saying anything. “I’ll be up soon, to help with breakfast.”
“No, you need much more than that.”
“Will you call work?”
“Yes. I’ll say that you’re sick.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s alright. You make sure to sleep now.”
“Thank you, Julie.”
Sitting in the kitchen alone, the silence in the room was deeper than the black of midnight. She sat at the table, thinking that she should make the coffee but not being able to move. She wanted badly to feel sorry for herself like most people did when such a thing happened. Suddenly, she heard the clock chime and she smacked her temples a few times, the bashes measured, with the back of her hand. She rose and became serious.
Yes, she would keep shut the bedroom door and tell them Dad was sick and would need quiet. They were respectful and upright children and would understand. Perhaps they would make him a get-well card like they had when he caught the flu last winter. It would make them all feel better to take care of him. For the moment, she would need to make a pot of coffee. And get the cereal from the cabinet, and the waffles from the freezer. That was something she needed to do. As she went to work, the sleepy yelps of them awakening stormed from their bedrooms to where she stood. And she turned to face them, roused and grinning.
Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash
