CLARA
I sit in the back seat with Felix pressed to my chest, the both of us draped in a black-and-white houndstooth blanket so that passersby can’t see as he tries in vain to siphon milk from my breast. I do it as a force of habit, though I couldn’t care less what bystanders see. My eyes are focused on the black car, which has sat inactively in the parking lot now for eighteen minutes since I watched Emily, Teddy and Maisie climb into Emily’s own sedan and drive away.
Aluminum wheels, black with chrome accents, a three bar grille. Illinois license plates, though not the standard Illinois plates but rather specialty plates, the H and the I embossed on the aluminum plate for the hearing impaired. The hubcap is missing on one of the wheels, the left rear tire, which I convince myself over the next ten minutes—as Felix and I begin to bake in the unventilated car—is from where that car sideswiped Nick, elbowing the car from the road and into a tree. I reach for my phone from the diaper bag and start snapping photos of the vehicle from where I roost: the color of the car, a close-up of the license plate, the missing hubcap.
There’s something about this car that frightened Maisie, and I have to know what it is. Does this car belong to the bad man? I’d ruled the idea out already—Maisie’s suggestion that someone intentionally killed Nick—but now I wasn’t so sure.
My smartphone can’t zoom in closely enough to capture the license plate number, and so I draw Felix from me and burp him briefly before replacing him in the infant seat. He protests quietly, but soon he will be asleep. I have the wherewithal to grab an extra burp rag from the bag before springing from the car with Felix by my side, plonking his carrier back into a shopping cart and taking off across the parking lot for that black vehicle.
I try to be discreet about it but also wary, for whoever owns the car could be anywhere, watching me. Perhaps the owner was sitting at his own perch, watching as I fed Felix, as I snapped a photo of the car to give to the police. Watching as Maisie tore through the parking lot, zigzagging between cars. Watching as I hollered for her; watching as Maisie cried. Perhaps there was some sort of ecstasy in it, some sort of rapture or bliss. Perhaps he got off on our palpable fear, made apparent to everyone who viewed the scene, my screaming to accompany Maisie’s tireless no, no, no, no, no.
I edge across the parking lot, with my phone in hand. I warble quietly to Felix to make believe I’m just a mother with a child, off on a shopping expedition. That there is no ulterior motive here.
I silence my cell phone and move insidiously across the asphalt, snapping photos of the car on burst mode, capturing twenty pictures with a single click, in an effort to increase the odds that one will display the license plate number, proof for the police that this is the car that took my husband’s life.
I don’t look at the car but keep my eyes on Felix the entire time.
And that’s when I see a man making his way toward me.
He’s a middle-aged man, late forties or early fifties with hair everywhere—a mustache and beard, tufted eyebrows, unshorn sideburns, messy hair. Black curls slink through the neckline of a black T-shirt that sports a Harley-Davidson and a single word: Shovelhead. I have no idea what it means. His arms are thick, lined with muscle. There are sweat marks on the pits of the shirt. His eyes are a fierce blue.
The man carries a shopping bag in one hand, and in the other a case of beer. Budweiser. I have never been a beer drinker, but Nick always was. His Labatt Blues still line the refrigerator door. I haven’t had the strength to part with them; I wonder if I ever will.
The man looks at me and says, “Afternoon, ma’am,” and my legs turn to paste, hardly able to sustain my own weight.
Is this the man who’s taken my husband’s life?
The external portion of his hearing aid rests behind an ear as verification that this car, with its hearing impaired designation, is his car. On his arm is a tribal tattoo that runs the entire length of the skin, from his wrist to the sleeve of the black T-shirt, a tattoo with sinuous lines and intricate patterns, which I try to burn into memory so later I can discover what it means. I nod my head, but I don’t reply, as Felix and I pick up the pace, scurrying across the parking lot more quickly now, quite certain that as I run, the bad man’s penetrating eyes follow me.
I buy infant formula and baby bottles. I dart through the self-checkout line and pay cash. I don’t pay any attention to the kind of formula that I buy, nor the bottles.
Back inside the car I call Emily, letting her know that our one stop has now transformed into two. “The bananas,” I tell her, “were unripe. Too green. Maisie won’t eat the ones that are green,” and so we need to go to another store to find ripe bananas for Maisie to eat. “Do you mind?” I ask, but Emily says no, of course not, that I should take my time.
“Get some coffee, too,” she says, telling me how the kids are playing so well. She tells me about a new coffee shop that has just opened up in town. “You should try it,” she says. I thank her for the tip and assure her I’ll go.
Of course it’s not true. None of it is true. Maisie won’t eat bananas whether they’re yellow or green or something in between. Apples are the only fruit she’ll eat, diced up bits of Gala apples with the peel completely removed, though right now it doesn’t matter a thing about apples or bananas. I’m not going to another grocery store or the coffee shop. I’m going to the police.
The police station in town is new. Constructed just in the last few years, it’s a large redbrick building with an American flag that hangs outside at half-staff, tucked away on an industrial road beside an indoor sports facility and a bottling manufacturer that employs hundreds of people in town. There is also a fire station and the railroad track, one whose trains are constantly stopping on the tracks and interrupting the flow of traffic. It’s more than a headache for commuters but also a safety concern, those frequent times the locomotive splits the town in two, separating diabetics from the local hospital, the police from foul play.
I park in the lot and walk inside.
I stand before a large counter as if I’m at a doctor’s office or a bank, and when a quasi-receptionist in uniform asks how she can help me, I tell her I need to speak with a detective. She says that someone will be with me shortly. There are chairs to wait in, black padded chairs with a heavy-duty steel frame. They aren’t in the least bit comfortable.
I wait for nearly fifteen minutes for a Detective Kaufman to arrive, hearing the sound of his footsteps before he appears. By comparison, he’s a short man, five foot nine or five foot ten, enough that as I stand from the chair, I meet him eye to eye. His hair is raven, mottled with flecks of gray. Though the hair on his head is sheared quite short, there is a curl to it, an obdurate wave combed backward, away from the tan eyes. His mustache and beard are well groomed, trimmed and brushed, also flecked with gray. There is a swarthiness to his complexion and on his face, a sad, somber expression.
I’ve never seen this man before. There was no detective at the hospital when the officers in uniform informed me that my husband was dead, or dying, because there was nothing to investigate then. It was an open-and-shut case. Man drove too fast, flew off the road and into a tree. Case closed.
But now it might be something more.
Detective Kaufman leads me to a small room and invites me to sit down on a hard plastic chair. I follow behind as he leads the way, trailing the single squeak of a pair of leather shoes. The room reminds me of a workplace lunchroom, with a round table that seats four, and four hard plastic chairs. Blue. The walls, too, are painted blue, cinder block walls painted blue like lapis lazuli. Metal grids and drop tiles line the ceiling, interspersed every now and again with plastic light panels, which make the room artificially bright. There is no window. There is a counter lined with an unwashed Keurig machine, a microwave, a forgotten paper plate and, on the floor, a watercooler sans water. The bottle is bone-dry.
“I’m Clara Solberg,” I say, and he says to me, “I know who you are,” as I slide sideways into the blue plastic chair.
This could make me blush, and yet it doesn’t. I’m beyond that point in my life when being embarrassed comes with ease. My husband is dead. I feel nothing anymore but grief.
“My husband,” I go on, as if I didn’t hear him at all, “is the one who was killed out on Harvey Road. Seven days ago.”
“I know.”
We’re a town of nearly forty thousand people, not the kind of town where everyone knows everyone. But in the age of social media, news spreads quickly. The newspaper had asked for a photo of Nick to include with their report: Crash on Harvey Road leaves one dead. I tried unavailingly to find a photo of Nick alone, but all I could dig up was Nick and me. Nick and me standing on the limestone bluffs of Peninsula State Park, overlooking a frigid Green Bay; at the top of Eagle Tower, enjoying the view; kayaking. The newspaper had asked for family photographs, the kind of image that would trigger sympathy and boost ratings and sales, but I wasn’t too keen on having Maisie’s face splayed across the black-and-white newsprint to make someone else feel sad. I wasn’t too keen on having Maisie’s image made public for any reason, but especially not to trumpet the fact that her father was dead.
I chose a photo of Nick and me. The next day it appeared in the local paper and online. By afternoon, it had been spread around the internet a bazillion times. It appeared at random on friends’ Facebook feeds—my tragedy quickly becoming theirs, people I didn’t know leaving commentary on friends of friends’ status updates about how they were so sorry for so-and-so’s loss, as if my high school pal Amanda and Jill, the woman I spoke to at the gym on occasion, had lost a spouse and not me. So very sorry for your loss, Jill, said one Facebook friend to Jill. What a horrible tragedy, followed by the obnoxious inclusion of a cyber hug. Jill had never once met Nick. She didn’t need a hug, and I found I was appalled by this cyber hug, truly and utterly aghast by the left and right curly keyboard brackets coming together in a warm embrace on my laptop screen, an anger that spiraled into the decision never again to speak to Jill.
And then that evening Nick’s and my blithe faces aired on the news, and I watched in awe and disgust as Nick’s story spread far and wide.
It doesn’t surprise me that Detective Kaufman knows who I am.
“I wanted to talk to you about my husband’s case,” I say, and at this his mouth parts in questioning. There is no case.
“You mean his accident?” he asks, and I shrug my shoulders, but I don’t say yes or no. Accident implies that something has happened unintentionally and without deliberate cause. I’m no longer sure that’s the case.
“I have reason to believe that foul play was to blame.”
I watch the expression on his face. A single eyebrow elevates, the other droops. He doesn’t smile. For a long time, he doesn’t say a thing.
And then, after a while he asks, “And why is that, Mrs. Solberg?” His eyes never once wander from mine, as he sips lingeringly from a mug of coffee, taking his time. The room is cold, the air conditioner working overtime to counter the temperature outside. I feel suddenly awkward in the detective’s eyes, repulsive and fat, the extra baby weight stuffed into the elastic panel of a pair of maternity pants. The dried sweat clings to my skin; my underarms begin to reek.
“My daughter has been having nightmares,” I say, trying to return his sustained stare. It’s not so hard to do. “She’s been having nightmares about the accident. Flashbacks. Except that in these flashbacks there’s a bad man following her and Nick. A bad man in a black car,” I say, taking the liberty of consolidating the stories and filling in the missing details. “Perhaps there was another car out on Harvey Road that day, one that pushed Nick and Maisie off the road. Perhaps this car,” I say as I set my smartphone on the table between us and find the image of the car and a close-up of its license plate. Detective Kaufman narrows his eyes at the images on the screen, but they don’t look for long.
“Your daughter told you there was a car following her and Mr. Solberg on Harvey Road?” he asks, and I nod my head and easily commit perjury.
“Yes,” I say, believing in her own way that Maisie did say these words to me. I asked point-blank if the man was in a car, and she said yes. When I asked if the car was black, Maisie let out a howl and ran, unlike when I asked if it was red or blue, to which she shook her head and said no.
“Why do you think this is the car?” he asks, and so I tell him about the scene in the grocery store parking lot this afternoon, my Maisie running helter-skelter through the cars in fright. I tell him how she wet her pants, how she screamed over and over again no, no, no, no, no. The detective seems disinterested in this. He doesn’t write any of it down, nor does the expression of his face change.
Only when I stop talking does he speak.
I’m informed of things I never knew. How when Nick died, a crash reconstructionist was called to the scene. A crash reconstructionist, Detective Kaufman explains—as he brings me my own Styrofoam cup of coffee and a box of tissues—provides an in-depth analysis of a crash site, particularly those involving fatalities such as Nick’s. This analysis includes how fast a driver was going at the time of impact, the road and weather conditions, whether or not homicide is to blame for the death, or manslaughter, or just bad luck. At the scene, measurements and photographs are taken, and the vehicle and roadway are analyzed. “These days,” he tells me, “most vehicles even come with their own black box, which may soon eliminate the need for crash reconstructionists. Event data recorders, they’re called. They tell us things the deceased cannot, like how long it took for the air bags to deploy, whether or not the driver was wearing a seat belt, or if he stepped on the accelerator in the moments before impact, or the brake.”
My eyes move to him in question, wondering just exactly which Nick stepped on: the accelerator or the brake. I envision Maisie and Nick in the car together, riding down Harvey Road. In my vision, the windows are closed, the air conditioner is on. It was hot that day, and though Maisie likes to ride with the windows all the way down, the sun in her eyes, the wind in her hair, Nick would have objected. Nick has patience for many things but never humidity or heat. I see him with his sunglasses on, though my mind knows better than this; Nick’s sunglasses now lie on top of his bedroom dresser, forgotten that day at home. He was in a hurry. Nick didn’t have his sunglasses, but in my visions there they are, perched on the bridge of his nose, and he turns to Maisie and chants a few lyrics of a song he doesn’t know. On the radio is the soundtrack to Frozen, while Maisie kicks her feet against the leather back of the passenger’s seat, keeping rhythm with the music. In her hands, a book. A board book she chose from the basket of them that sat in the center of the back seat, Goodnight Moon, because this is how the paramedics found her, with a book in hand.
Detective Kaufman excuses himself from the room, and returns seconds later with a folder in hand. He pulls photographs from the folder and slides them toward me. “I’m not sure if this is something you want to see,” he says, and I survey them indecisively. I, too, am not sure this is something I want to see. The rich red car folded around the oak tree. The side of the car crinkled into a ball like an old sheet of notebook paper, flattened and creased. Car parts scattered at random across the concrete: a side mirror, a headlight, a wedge of bumper, a hubcap. A hubcap, like the missing hubcap on the black car from the grocery store lot.
I’ve been told time and again what happened, how it was that Nick actually died. I’ve been told because I asked repeatedly, wearing on those around me. I needed someone to explain it to me, how a family car with five-star safety ratings could take my husband’s life. The air bags did deploy, I’ve been told, but it somehow failed to protect Nick’s head from the blow. It happened quickly, they said. In an instant. Nick and the air bag, they missed each other somehow.
In the image the detective shows me, black lines mark the road, skid marks, evidence of a car’s tires braking quickly and leaving rubber along the surface of the road. As a girl, I used to have races with neighborhood friends—who could create the longest skid mark. We’d line our bikes up in the cul-de-sac and rev our imaginary engines. We’d bike as fast as we could for twenty feet or more, and then squeeze tightly on the hand brake, seeing who could create the longest and darkest skid mark, just like a pink eraser leaving gummy residue along a sheet of paper.
I run my fingers across the blackened lines and say to the detective, “Skid marks. Nick slammed on the brakes. He tried to slow down.”
But Detective Kaufman responds, “Funny how these little black lines can tell us so much about what happened at the site of an accident, leaving trace evidence behind on the concrete. We call these lines here yaw marks. They’re a bit different than skid marks, which start light and get darker. Acceleration marks are just the opposite. They start dark and get lighter as the vehicle picks up speed. But yaw marks are different still. They’re curved, for one, which tells us that the car was sliding sideways at the time of impact, that the driver took a turn too quickly and slid laterally. There are striations,” he says, running a single finger along the linear lines of what the detective has termed yaw marks. “These tell us which direction the car was sliding,” he adds as he reaches out for another image where he can make clear the direction the car was sliding: right toward the burly white oak tree.
The other thing the detective elucidates with the point of his finger and a patronizing stare: the yaw marks present on the photograph are not in Nick’s lane. They’re to the left of center, on the wrong side of the solid yellow line in a no-passing zone.
“There were no skid marks at the scene,” he says quite plainly. “Your husband never stepped foot on the brake, which we were able to authenticate when we pulled the vehicle’s event data recorder. He hit that turn at the same speed as the half mile of linear road before it, which, suffice to say, was too fast. He wasn’t paying attention; he didn’t have time to anticipate the turn and slow down. The yaw marks reveal the way the car slid across the solid yellow line and into the base of the tree. The evidence puts Nick’s speed around fifty miles per hour. Harvey Road is forty-five, but drops to twenty at the bend. We surveyed the surrounding street, well before and after the crash. Acceleration marks but no skid marks. Your husband sped up before the turn. But after, there was nothing.
“You know what happens when a car flees the scene of a crime quickly?” he asks, and I shake my head and say no. And he says it then like I’m dumb, dense, empty-headed. “Acceleration marks,” he says, as if this is something I should know. He starts collecting the photographs before him, an indication that our conversation will soon be through.
“If someone ran your husband off the side of the road, they weren’t going to stick around waiting for the police to arrive. They would have picked up speed and gotten the hell out of Dodge. You know what I think happened?” Detective Kaufman asks then, staring me straight in the eye. I return the stare, though baby Felix beside me has begun to grumble. “I think your husband was driving too fast and took the turn too quickly. Maybe the sun was in his eyes and he didn’t see the turn in time. Maybe he was distracted.”
It’s then that I hear little Maisie’s sweet voice in the back seat of the car, her hot-pink Crocs kicking the back of the passenger’s seat inattentively, as if she doesn’t even know she’s doing it.
Faster, Mommy, faster, she says.
I force this notion from my mind. Nick knows better than to give in to the capricious whim of a four-year-old.
I remember the hubcap. The one missing from the black car, and also the one at the scene of the crash. I pull up the image on my phone, the black car with its missing hubcap. I set it beside the detective’s own glossy eight-by-ten. I make it clear that this could be more than a coincidence, and he exhales heavily. His patience with me is wearing thin.
“How do you know that isn’t your own hubcap?” he asks, but without waiting for my reply, “Would it lessen your concern if I spoke to the owner of the vehicle?” he asks, and I say it would. It would help immensely. Detective Kaufman finds the closeup of the license plate number on my phone’s photo album, and jots it down on a sheet of scrap paper. He tells me he’ll contact the owner and let me know what he finds.
“One more thing,” he tells me before I can rise from my chair and leave. “It came to my attention that Mr. Solberg had an Order of Protection filed against him,” he says, words that I find utterly farcical and so I laugh. It isn’t a lighthearted laugh, but an unsettled laugh, one that gets the detective’s attention.
“A restraining order?” I gasp, knowing how impossible this is. There’s no way in the world that someone would file a restraining order against Nick. Nick is gentle, kind, a pacifist. He can’t even raise his voice to me when he’s mad. The detective is wrong. This can’t be.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, staring at me in a way that suggests he isn’t wrong. “A restraining order. You didn’t know?” he asks, and it’s mockery the way he says it. He’s mocking me. I shake my head; I didn’t know. “An Emergency Order of Protection was filed against Mr. Solberg. He and the accuser were awaiting a date for the hearing for a plenary order, which would decide whether or not the Order of Protection was going to stick.”
“The accuser,” I say, more to myself than to the detective, a loaded word in and of itself, accuser, which would make Nick the accused. This can’t be. “This has to be a mistake,” I tell the detective. “This is simply ludicrous. Nick couldn’t hurt a fly,” I say.
“Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t,” says the detective, “but that was up to a judge to decide,” explaining to me that in three days’ time Nick and this accuser were to attend a hearing to decide whether or not the emergency order had any merit or if it was a frivolous claim.
“I suppose we’ll never know now,” he says, though in my mind I’ve already decided.
Nick would never hurt a fly.
“Who did this to Nick?” I ask, needing to know. When I think of restraining orders, I imagine maniac men with violent tendencies threatening their wives and children. I envision battered women in shelters, and scared kids who cling to their mother’s gaunt legs, crying. I don’t see Nick. My mind is reeling as I ask again, more preemptory this time, less polite, “Who did this to Nick?”
It isn’t a question this time. I demand to know.
The order is public record. I could go to the courthouse and request a copy of the filing if I wanted to, which is maybe the only reason why Detective Kaufman gives me the name. It’s one I’ve never heard before, a woman who I soon plan to know anything and everything about. At the mention of her name, I feel a stabbing sensation in my chest because it is a woman. My mind recalls the receipt for the pendant necklace. Was the necklace for this woman?
Was Nick having an affair?
All the air suddenly leaves the room, and I find it hard to breathe.
I gather Felix and begin to leave, but not before the detective stops me one last time. “There’s something else,” he says, and I pause with my hand on the doorknob and turn. “It’s standard protocol to check the cell phone records in the case of a vehicle collision. See if the driver was on the phone at the time of a crash. Browsing the internet. Texting. Illinois is now a hands-free state, which I’m sure you know,” he says, and I know what he’s getting at well before he says it.
“Your husband was on the phone at the time of the crash,” and though I want to quibble with him and claim that it’s not possible, I see the expression on the detective’s face and know that he’s telling the truth. Nick, who never speaks on the phone while driving, was on the phone. And he wasn’t speaking to me because before he left the ballet studio, we’d already spoken.
I’ll pick up something for dinner. Chinese or Mexican?
Chinese.
Who was Nick speaking to at the time of the crash? I wonder. I ask the detective about this. “He was on the phone,” I say, “with who?”
The detective stares at me for an extended minute or two before shrugging his shoulders and saying, “I believe you were given Mr. Solberg’s personal effects already. The items we were able to gather from the car. His phone should be there,” though already I’m telling myself that whoever it is, was simply a wrong number. It was a wrong number, and Nick, ever obliging and gracious, took the time to answer the call, to tell the caller politely that he or she had misdialed. And for this he died.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Detective Kaufman says prosaically, rising from the table and collecting my abandoned Styrofoam cup in his hand as I leave, bound and determined to figure this paradox out. Who was Nick speaking to at the time of the crash? Who filed an Order of Protection against him and, perhaps more important, why?
What secrets has Nick been keeping from me for all this time?