Chapter Thirty-one
Jake found himself stopped at a red light, sitting at the wheel of the rental Toyota, without even remembering getting in. He came into the moment as if he’d been pulled into the present from his own subconscious, a black void that matched the darkness around him. He didn’t have his coat on but was still in his shirt and tie from work. He was stopped at an intersection, and there were no other cars on the street. The dashboard clock read 9:28 P.M. He’d been driving for two hours.
He checked the street sign on the corner to his right, but he couldn’t read it. His eyes were blurry and his nose leaking; he realized he’d been crying. He wiped his nose on his shirt-sleeve, looked around, and saw only the spiky black trunks and branches of trees, silhouetted in the light from the windows and front-door fixtures of the large houses, whose peaked roofs and massive entrances hulked shadowy in the night.
He didn’t recognize the neighborhood. He felt dislocated, disoriented, generally out of place. He glanced at the dashboard and determined that the car had a no-frills GPS, but he didn’t bother to turn it on. He didn’t know where he wanted to go. He had no destination, so he didn’t need a route.
When the light turned green, he was in no hurry to hit the gas, but he did anyway, proceeding straight through the intersection without knowing whether he was heading north or south, toward home or away. It didn’t matter. It was all uncharted terrain. He didn’t know how he had gotten here, not only literally, but to the point where he’d become a suburban husband and father who was driving around aimlessly, in a car that wasn’t even his own. He’d worked hard his whole life and followed all the rules. He had risen out of the ashes. He was a self-made man; he had made himself and his business. But the other things he had made were a son who was self-destructing and a wife who had fallen in love with a better suit.
Jake cruised down the dark street, hollow and aching inside, thinking of Pam. He wanted to know when her affair had started, and why. He wanted to know where they did it, how they did it, how many times they did it. Where they did it, which house, which car. If she liked it better with him, if he was a better lover. Who started it, and exactly how it ended. If it ended, why he was still calling her.
The darkness seemed to envelop Jake, swallowing him whole, but still he drove forward into the void. He didn’t know what Pam saw in Dr. Dave, other than the fact that he was so frigging helpful with Ryan. Jake kicked himself for not guessing that something was going on between them. There were too many phone calls, too many times she quoted Dr. Dave. Jake began to doubt the whole shooting-coach thing, questioning whether Dr. Dave became Ryan’s shooting coach in order to get close to Pam, in the first place.
Jake had never felt so stupid in his life, ashamed that he hadn’t realized she was cheating. He’d never cheated on her and had never really been tempted. His sin had been that he worked too hard, not that he ever dreamed of straying. He saw himself in her; they were so much alike that he never imagined she’d break the rules, or break her word, ever. That was why he’d been so surprised tonight, when she’d agreed to keep the secret about Pike Road. He always thought of Pam as the good girl to his good boy, and it was more her style to do what she had eventually done—nag him until he finally went to a marriage counselor. He didn’t want to think about her sleeping with another man, underneath another man, with her legs wrapped around him.
Jake spotted another car on the road, driving toward him in the oncoming lane, its high beams on. It was the kind of thing that usually made him nuts, and he would normally blink his lights to signal the other driver to lower his high beams. If that didn’t work, he’d been known to turn on his own high beams out of spite. But tonight he didn’t do either of these things. On the contrary, he fed his car some gas, and a different idea popped into his head:
He considered crossing the yellow line and driving straight into the lights.
He drove forward and so did the oncoming car, about a hundred yards apart, then ninety, then eighty. He thought of how easy it could be, just to jerk the steering wheel to the left at the last moment. He wouldn’t have to think about it, time it, or work very hard to make it happen. It would be just like when he hit the Dumpster. Easy, peasy.
He looked directly into the high beams, and they seared into his eyes. The cars were seventy feet apart, then sixty, then fifty. He hit the gas and stared into the light, forcing himself not to squint or look away, flooding his brain with a brightness that obliterated the houses, driveways, and recycling bins, like the white-hot blast of an atomic bomb.
The other car raced toward him, its unseen driver unaware of what he was thinking, and Jake knew all he had to do to achieve the desired result was to aim his left bumper at the left bumper of the oncoming car and the impact would do the rest.
The oncoming car barreled toward him, its headlamps double-barreled beams of light, and he wondered what the driver’s face would look like, just before they crashed. Shock. Horror. Surprise.
The cars were thirty feet apart, then twenty. He gritted his teeth, squinting against the high beams. The cars were ten feet apart, and he squeezed his eyes shut, grimacing, waiting to see what would happen, and when the other car was almost upon him, he realized he couldn’t do it.
He opened his eyes and drove straight. He couldn’t kill another human being. He couldn’t be responsible for the death of anyone else, ever, in the time he had left on earth.
The other car whooshed past him, the driver not knowing what could have happened, and Jake exhaled loudly, emitting a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. It struck him that he hadn’t driven into the other car not only because he didn’t want to kill anyone else, but also because he didn’t want to die. He wanted to live. He wanted to redeem himself. For Kathleen Lindstrom’s tragic death. For Pam’s infidelity. For Ryan’s depression.
Jake steered down the darkened street, past the windows that looked into family rooms containing happier families. He didn’t have a plan, any longer. The time for plans was over. He didn’t believe in them anymore, anyway. Pam didn’t plan on cheating on him. Ryan didn’t plan on killing Kathleen Lindstrom. Nobody planned on the worst, but they got it just the same and had to deal. He knew the saying that “Man plans and God laughs,” but he’d learned the truth was exactly the opposite—Man plans and God cries.
His thoughts returned to Pam, without pain. He knew in his heart why she had strayed, but he loved her still. He didn’t want to give up on their marriage, no matter what. He didn’t know how she felt; he didn’t know if he was ready to find out. He hoped they could put back the pieces of their new life, one that they would make together, with Ryan. Their son needed the both of them now, more than ever, and the three of them had to go forward and hang together in a way they hadn’t before.
He pulled over to the side of the street, braked, and plugged his home address in the GPS, then pressed START. Calibrating Route, said the GPS, with an arrow pointing behind him. He hit the gas, pulled away from the curb, and started to head home, his mind running free. He wanted to go home, talk to Pam, and work everything out, even if it took all night. He wanted her to know that he was sorry she felt abandoned by him; that he hadn’t realized it had gotten so bad. He would tell her that he was sorry, and he flashed-forward to a heart-to-heart in their bedroom, that ended with her coming into his arms, crying and asking him to forgive her.
He wound his way through the quiet suburban streets; the GPS had been set on the shortest route, not the fastest, but he didn’t bother to reset it. The lighted blue GPS screen showed a right turn, but he’d been too preoccupied and missed it, so he went straight and the GPS screen switched to Recalibrating Route. Jake read the screen, realizing that’s exactly what he was doing too, in his life. He would be recalibrating a new route, for himself, Pam, and Ryan, too.
He stopped at a traffic light, which bathed the car’s interior in a blood-red glow. He flashed on Friday night after the crash, wiping the blood from his hands, then finding it etched in the lines of his palm. He tried to push it from his mind, to recalibrate again. He reminded himself that he was going to go home and try to move forward, with Pam and him putting their marriage back together for their own sakes, and for Ryan’s. They wouldn’t be able to get through this together unless they acted as a family. Their house, divided, could not stand. He hoped she’d be happy that he still loved her and was willing to forgive her.
So it came as a shock to Jake when he finally got home and pulled into the garage, only to find that Pam’s car was gone. Pasted on the garage door was a sheet of legal pad that read:
I will not be back tonight. Don’t call or text me. Ryan is asleep. Tomorrow, go to work your usual time. I will come home and take him to school. Leave me alone. Goodnight.