Every Little Thing (14 page)

DRIVE-BY

COHEN WAS GAINING weight in prison. The sedentary lifestyle and the lack of sleep made it easy. Outdoors, in the recreation area, there was a cluster of tubular exercise equipment that looked like a child's playground. The equipment was bright blue, and the paint looked like it should have been chipped more, to be in a prison yard. It sat outside in a town that rained and rained but the equipment looked brand new and free of rust. The machines were all one piece,with no detachable parts that inmates could use as weapons. If no one was using one of the stations, Cohen would.

There was something called a hack squat, and it took watching someone else use it, to figure out how it worked. It was a flat platform, at forty-five degrees to the ground, with weights on a sliding mechanism. He had to scrunch down, get under those weights, then thrust upward, over and over, until his abs turned to steel, threatening to buckle, or until his legs turned to water. He liked the motion of it, up and down, with a relaxed sense of purpose. And because it was at a forty-five degree angle to the ground, he saw nothing but sky. Calm birds, content clouds. Up and down,up and down, like the whole world was moving with him. The routine thrusting motion forced him to breathe the same way that psychiatrists tell their patients to breathe when they're having an anxiety attack. It was a calming push and lift, push and lift.

All the men around him would grunt and spit, almost getting off on torturing themselves with the equipment. Plunked there among criminals, hard men jailed for theft and violence or some other broken law—DUIs or cheating the taxman—Cohen thought more than once on how betrayal ranked so lowly in the eyes of the law. No one went to prison for adultery. And you could lie to someone so long

as it wasn't to defraud them of money. Yet nothing in his life had burned Cohen more than Matt's betrayal. And eventually,Allie's. Betrayal was a mental wound; it had no clean way of closing over and healing well. Betrayal was a fire, burning, stoked by questions that had no answers. There was a daily need for a
why
that he'd never get, but always need.

“We'll go to this nice cabin B&B I know, just west of Grayton,”Matt had said. “Just me and you and Allie.”

“And why will we do that?”

“Me and you, kid, we need a nice weekend, to put all this arguing behind us. Plus, I want a weekend with my daughter. I never see the girl anymore, for any longer than a quick meal like tonight. I see you more than her, I'm sure of it.”

It was a Sunday night and they were barbecuing at Cohen's place, waiting for Allie to get back from a deli with salads and dessert and wine.

“We've been arguing, going on two weeks now, and I'm tired of it. And I'm sorry.” He grabbed Cohen, putting his hands on each of Cohen's shoulders to steady him and demand eye contact. Matt had a tong in his right hand, and it had clapped together with a metal ting. “You were right to talk me out of it. What I was going to do. And I owe you for that. For talking some sense into me. I'll pay. The weekend's on me. Food, booze...cabin rentals.” He let go of Cohen's arms. Flipped the chicken breasts on the grill. Slathered on more honey. “And nothing settles tension like a weekend away.”

The B&B that Matt had oversold them on was a dingy little place in the woods with hokey charm and poor water pressure. You could blare music and not worry about the neighbours. There were owls at night, hooting as they slept. They laughed and drank expensive wine, and when that ran out, they drank cheap rum. He remembers the weekend in isolated flashes and actions. In before and after.

They'd gotten to the bottom of the rum, and Cohen was drunk enough to be waltzing around a kitchenette with Matt to “After the Gold Rush.”He remembers Matt twirling him around, and he caught a look at Allie laughing so hard that rum and Coke were shooting out of her nostrils. The fizzy burn had tears streaming out of her eyes.

Dabbing her eyes with her knuckles, “You can't waltz to that song. It's not a waltzing song!”SoMatt pulled him closer, to defy her logic. He was a wild drunk, in an endearing way.

They kept on waltzing, to put on a show for her. Intoxicated and uncoordinated, with their knees knocking together, they were stepping on each other's toes and laughing about it. They were trying to sing over each other, in terrible channellings of Neil Young.
I was thinking about what a friend had said, I was hoping it was a lie.

And when “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” came on, Matt pushed Cohen away. Hard, in an exaggerated way, for fun. He stuck his hand out and said, “Can I have this dance with my daughter?” as if they were in a formal setting. She stood up, and he said, “Isn't she a pretty one?”and Cohen said he was going out for some air anyway. To cool down. And he'd made it outside just in time. His ribs tingling, his belly going in and out. He plunked down on the patio steps and dried his eyes with the bottom of his T-shirt. His belly exposed to sharp blades of air. He could hear Allie's laughter blending with Matt's, and he'd miss that. The sound of them together. The purity of Allie's laugh that Matt's death would steal or mar somehow. They were singing, belting it out,
Yes only love can break your heart,What if your world should fall apart?

Matt had wanted this one last hurrah before the bad news broke his daughter's heart and changed the way she'd look at him.
Sit down, Allie. It's cancer. Too far gone.
They'd decided they'd both be there—for her, with her—when Matt told her he was dying. But they hadn't nailed down the date yet.
After the weekend getaway
, he'd promised Cohen.
Some night that week.

As Cohen sat outside, listening to them sing and laugh and pour another drink, he thought that maybe the next half a year could go like this night was going, until Matt got too sick to sing and dance like they were doing now. It could've been a beautiful, prolonged goodbye. The three of them celebrating every day, that wasn't his last, until it was.

More cackles of laughter broke through the window. Each successive echo through the trees sounded gentler. They'd forgotten a line, in a verse, or one of them did, or they were arguing about who was right. Cohen cracked his throbbing jaw. Every day, since Matt had told him about the cancer, had felt like walking through sniper-filled streets. He was talking suicide, and they were talking about Allie never being the same again. Death, coming one way or the other, had strapped him with a free-floating anxiety that put firecrackers under his feet, every step he took, and it distracted him at work. He'd left a dissection kit out on a table: a bloody scalpel in reach of children. The kids would have to say
Mr. Davies
two or three time to get his attention and snap him out of a daydream: picturing Allie at the wake. ALL NIGHT LONG it had been
drink up, drink up
, so that the hangover, the fatigue, kept Cohen and Allie in bed that Sunday morning. And waking up next to Allie, in her underwear,with an arm around her gym-disciplined body, in a bed that wasn't their own, made him see Allie in a different way than he did when waking up next to her in their own bed. It set off an instinctual lust for the half-naked woman beside him. They fucked, quietly, laughing, like
Don't wake him
, and,
This is wrong
. They'd gotten down on the ground because the bed was too noisy. It was fast and hard and to the point; her teeth sunk into her own fist to keep herself quiet.

They snuck out of their room, quietly, the giddy afterglow on their flush faces, hoping Matt was still asleep. Or down at the pond catching a trout. The night before, Matt had promised to catch them all some trout for breakfast, and they'd laughed it off as drunken promises. “I'm dead serious,” he said. “You've never had anything like my bacon-wrapped, herb-stuffed trout for breakfast! Breakfast of the champions.” He'd pointed to the counter. “What do you think I bought those lemons for?”

Cohen and Allie rounded the corner to the kitchen that morning, and saw that Matt had lived up to the promise. They came out, and there was a casserole dish, and in it: one big trout, slit down the middle, lemons and rosemary inside, the outside wrapped in bacon. A yellow sticky note,
Just re-heat! You're welcome. I'm outta here, left bright and early, to give you two the place for the day.

“Jesus,”Cohen said, concerned. “You don't suppose he heard us in there and took off?”

“Relax, tiger. That was hardly a marathon, no offense.” She touched the fish with two fingers like she was taking its pulse. “Besides, the fish is cold. Not warm at all. He left a good hour ago, and like I said, that high-school shaggin' you just gave was five minutes, tops.”She laughed, grabbed two plates. “I've got shit to do before work tomorrow. Wanna just eat and run?”

“Well, no, actually. But, fine. We can leave right after I eat and shower.”

She set the table, kissed him, said,
thanks
, and grabbed his dick, squeezed it once to get his attention. “Whatever got into you this morning, let it happen more.” She let it go. Winked. Grabbed the orange juice and two glasses.

On the drive back home, he watched Allie, half napping, half taking in Grayton. The town she grew up in. The closed-down diner she used to work in as a teenager. The place where Lee usually set up his vendor table. “That's weird, that he's not at it today. He's getting too old for it I guess?”

“Maybe.”

They rounded the mountain that took them to the highway, but had to slow down. An ambulance, two cop cars, a transport truck pulled over; its engine still running. There was some kind of red emergency vehicle with its lights still going.

Cohen knew. It was right where Matt had told him he planned to kill himself. His whole body felt like a struck gong. His stomach tied into pulsating knots, and his vision gone to TV static. Allie had just opened a pack of M&Ms and offered him some. He didn't answer. She looked up, and started patting his leg,
Pull over, pull over!

Cohen's heart was beating too slow; he was too aware of his own heartbeat and heard it in his ears. A vibration throughout his body. He was rolling to a stop on the shoulder of the road, and Allie was panicking like somehow she knew too, “Stop!
Fucking
stop!”

She was too frantic to get her seatbelt off. When she opened her door, to run to the guardrail, it wasn't completely off and the blue seatbelt tugged against her, cutting a sob in half. Her squeal interrupted. He watched her, from the car, before getting out. His body feeling like a thousand pounds he couldn't lift. Allie's eyes went over the cliff, and he knew it was Matt's truck she saw down there. Cohen got out of the car as an officer approached her.

She fell into Cohen's arms, wailing. Her screams sounded so far away. “It's Dad! It's a black truck, Cohen, it's Dad!” and she went back to the cliff 's edge, to watch two men being lowered down to the ocean; to the beach where Matt's truck lay upside down. An officer got to asking Cohen to leave the scene, but he switched gears when he heard Allie screaming,
It's Dad!

The officer was asking Cohen questions, but Cohen was watching Allie and still feeling like a thousand pounds or a struck gong or like he had something to do with shoving Matt down over that cliff.

Allie was too close to the edge. Roaring, ripping her throat sore.
Dad!
Pause.
Dad!
Pause.
Da-had!
like maybe he was shouting back, but she couldn't hear him. The tips of her shoes were poking out over the edge, resting on nothing. Cohen went to her, leaving the officer's questions unanswered. He got to her and the look on her face was a knife in the guts. Desperation had ripped her face into a mask Cohen didn't recognize. There were lines everywhere, a topography of pain, and her whole body was shaking and red, especially her hands. She turned back to the cliff, took another step, and now half a shoe dangled over the cliff 's edge.

Dad! Da-had!

He grabbed her by the elbow to haul her back to safety, but she fought against him, and he worried that if she broke free, with him pulling her back, she'd slingshot herself out of his grip and over the cliff.

“Allie, stop, if you break free—”

And she turned and grabbed his neck, nails like knives. She fell dead into him, all of her weight, and she weighed twice as much as the 130-pound body he'd held so many times before.

Her body was ricocheting off his with breaths so fast no oxygen was getting in. Her hands were sliding all over him like she was swimming and he was a pond. Her howling into his ear felt like sticks thrust into his brain.

He wanted her pain. All of it. A thousand knives worth of it, sinking into him, so that she could at least cry slower and breathe right. Cohen peered over her shoulder at Matt's truck, eviscerated and struck dumb by the lie he'd bought.
We'll tell her, right after the weekend getaway.
He looked down at Matt's truck, and it was upside down with the ocean lapping its hood and windshield. From that height, the truck looked like a toy. The men, who'd been dangling from those bungee cords, had gotten to the truck now.

Allie couldn't talk to the emergency response unit. She went back to their car. She didn't get in front. She crawled into the backseat and lay there, in the fetal position, face down in the seat. Cohen wanted to curl into her, spoon her, but there was no room. He checked with the officers, and they needed nothing more from him or Allie, and Matt was confirmed dead on the scene. A necessary statement of the obvious.
Closure.
Just like Matt had wanted. His very word.
Allie will need closure. I've scoped out that section of the road. I can get in around that guardrail.

She'd made no attempt to see his body. Or be the one to identify it. Cohen had to do that. He'd said
I'm the son-in-law, and she's his only blood family, and she doesn't need to see this.
He'd spared Allie that much, and he'd been living with the image of Matt's bashed-in chin: the splayed flesh dangling like icicles. The colour of fresh human bone nothing like he'd imagined. Dull, dirty. The sickest detail: Matt's left nostril was torn open, exposing a deep, cavernous hole.