The Mourning Hours (7 page)

Johnny hopped to his feet, the victor. Plinker rolled himself into a standing position, and they took the circle again, one with his shoulders back, the other with his shoulders forward. The ref seized Johnny’s hand, showing it first to one corner, then to the other. Mom, jostled by the crowd in the stands, snapped a quick photo that would come out too blurry months later, when she finally developed the roll.

I turned again to spot Stacy in the top row of the bleachers. While the rest of her schoolmates screamed and jumped, Stacy stood perfectly still, a smile spread across her glossy lips.

We didn’t get back to the car until after ten o’clock, and there was still a drive ahead of us. As excited as we’d been in the gym with all the cheering and congratulating and snapping pictures, that feeling seemed to disappear the second we were back in the station wagon. Dad and Mom talked to each other, replaying the action. They deliberately ignored Stacy.

At one point, realizing this, Stacy leaned forward. “I just want to say I’m sorry. I didn’t know—”

“Could have been the end for Johnny right there,” Dad responded immediately, as if he’d been waiting for the opening to rebuke her. “All those years of practice, and that would have been it.”

“I’m sorry,” Stacy said again, her voice small in the interior of the car.

Mom said, “It’s still cold in here, John,” and Dad cranked up the heat until the windows were fogged up on the inside. Emilie took off her coat and bunched it up to use as a pillow. She fell into a noisy, mouth-breathing sleep, but the rest of us sat quietly, staring at the same dark countryside, mile after mile.

Once I caught Dad glancing in the rearview mirror—not checking up on me or Emilie, or the dark road behind us, but staring directly at Stacy.

And although she didn’t say a word, Stacy was looking right back.

twelve

W
e came home from Wausau to a sign on the Stop ’N’ Go marquee:
Go Dirk B! Go Johnny H! Make us proud!

On Sunday afternoon, Aunt Julia and Uncle Paul stopped by to congratulate Johnny. Aunt Julia brought a chocolate cake that said CONGRATS in white icing, and we ate it like gluttons, picking directly at the cake with our forks.

Grandpa came over, too. He might not have understood the rules of wrestling or why sports were important, period, but even he could understand that Johnny had done something well. “All right, Johnny, all right,” he kept repeating, clapping Johnny roughly on the back.

Jerry came over to shake hands with Johnny, too. “What’s it gonna be, you think—University of Iowa?”

“It’s looking that way,” Johnny said, grinning. His picture made the front page of the afternoon paper, and Dad drove into town to pick up a stack of copies. Stacy didn’t stop by, which seemed a little weird to me—she was usually the first person to point out Johnny’s name on the local sports page.

On Monday, the boys at school who usually ignored me now included me in their conversations. “Hey, Kirsten—is your brother going to win state? What’s he wrestling at?” I was only too happy to oblige with the details. If Johnny Hammarstrom was on his way to being the best thing to come out of Watankee, I saw no problem in going right along with it.

That Tuesday, the last day in February, Kevin Coulie and I won the class spell-off and were asked to stay after school to practice for the annual county spelling bee. We would be representing all the fourth graders at Watankee Elementary. In the next round we would face older kids—fifth and sixth graders—from much bigger schools in Manitowoc, and from smaller schools all over the county. This was rather intimidating news for someone who went down on
scissors
the year before.

Miss Swanson had copied about twenty pages of practice words for each of us, then placed them in crisp manila folders labeled smartly with our names. She thrust them into our hands at the end of the review session. “Study hard, okay? We’re down to the last week.”

Kevin’s dad had agreed to give me a ride home, and his truck was idling in the parking lot when we stepped outside. Kevin climbed in first and settled into the middle, his knees banging into the stick shift. Mr. Coulie grunted a hello and was pulling out of the parking lot almost before I had the passenger door closed. I spent a fruitless minute digging for my seat belt, but its clasp was wedged deep beneath the seat cushions. I had to hold on to the door with both hands, or else bump knees with Kevin at each turn.

We rode through the dusk in an uneasy silence. I stared out the half-fogged windows at the frozen piles of snow that lined the streets of Watankee and sat heaped around the edges of parking lots.

We weren’t far from my driveway, maybe a half mile or so, when I saw two vehicles pulled to one side of the road near a ditch—Johnny’s hulking Green Machine, looking less and less green as more and more of its paint flaked off, and Stacy’s Camaro, red and shiny as Christmas. It was strange to see their cars parked there, so close to our house.

I sat up, straining to see. Was something wrong? Had something happened?

I’ve gone back to the moment a thousand times, a million maybe, over the years, trying to see it from every angle, to read facial expressions or lips, to interject myself into the scene, not only as a witness but as the person who could put things right.

Nothing screamed
wrong,
exactly. They were standing between the tail of his car and the front bumper of hers, close enough to lean in for a kiss. The air between their faces was fogged with breath.

Kevin’s dad slowed for the turn, and I put up my hand, ready to wave.

It happened in about a second, in about the time it would take to let out a laugh or blink or glance at the radio dial.

Just as we passed, Stacy put her gloved hands on Johnny’s chest. I’d seen her touch him like this before—her hands reaching for his shoulders, inching around his neck. It looked like that now, too—the start of an embrace, one of her sweet “Come here, baby” moments—but instead she gave him a hard push. I gasped. Johnny took a rough step backward, off balance, righting himself with his hand on the tailgate. I had seen that look on Stacy’s face before—her mouth tight, chin raised. It reminded me of the way she had squeezed my hand during Johnny’s wrestling match, so hard that I’d felt as if all those little bones might snap.

Suddenly I was aware that I’d blundered yet again into a private moment, something I wasn’t supposed to see or know. I ducked down in the seat, not sure what I’d seen, not wanting to be seen myself. I could feel Kevin watching me all the way down our driveway. Mr. Coulie, if he had noticed, said nothing.

My face felt hot, as if I’d been called on to read out loud but had lost the passage and even the page number.

When Mr. Coulie shifted his truck into Park, I was out the door instantly, slamming it behind me. Kennel came running around the side of the house, and I grabbed him by his collar. “Thanks. Bye!” I called over my shoulder, not meeting Kevin’s eyes. I released Kennel at the back door and stepped inside, surprised to find that I was almost out of breath.

I replayed the scene in my mind, the way they stood, bodies tense, angry even, I saw now. Johnny at his breaking point, Stacy at her most intense. I tried to make her push into something playful, some kind of inside joke or rough sign of affection, but I couldn’t. Maybe she had told him, finally, that she was pregnant. And he had said he couldn’t be tied down right now.

“What’s wrong with you?” Emilie said, coming down the stairs. I was still in my coat and scarf, snow melting off my boots, my backpack hanging from one shoulder.

“Nothing,” I said. But I wasn’t sure.

When Johnny came in about ten minutes later, I was still lurking in the kitchen, pretending to dig for something in my backpack. I needed to see him, to read anger or hurt or betrayal across his face. Maybe he would even make some kind of announcement, like he was done with Stacy or she was done with him or they were done with each other. I was poised to ask him something—anything—but when he opened the door, my mouth went dry.

Johnny’s face was completely blank, as if he was numb. He didn’t look up at me or Emilie, just kicked off his boots, dumped his jacket on the floor, and went upstairs. His bedroom door clicked shut, and I trailed after him, putting an ear to the door. I wanted to say something, to let him know that whatever it was, it would all be okay.

But then I remembered Stacy’s hands on his shoulders, her chin thrust forward—and I knew it wasn’t okay.

thirteen

O
n Wednesday night, Mom came home from Holy Cross with a stack of T-shirts that read
Johnny H. is our man! State Wrestling Champ 1995
. “From the other nurses,” she gushed, passing them around the table. There was one for me, too, large enough to sleep in. “Isn’t that thoughtful? We all have to wear them to Madison.”

“Cool,” Emilie said. She had stopped making comments about how wrestling was stupid. Maybe she felt, like I did, that it was pretty great to have a star for a brother.

Johnny shook his head, refusing to touch the shirt Mom was handing him. “What are you trying to do, jinx me?” he demanded. “It’s a bit early for this.”

“Oh, come on,” Mom said, beaming. “We’re just so excited. Everyone’s so proud of you.”

I watched Johnny over spoonfuls of baked potato that I’d smothered with sour cream. He had a plain potato in front of him, and rather than eating, he was concentrating hard on separating the skin from the rest of the potato. Since yesterday, since
the push,
I had been watching him closely, trying to figure it out. He hadn’t called Stacy yesterday night after dinner for the nightly phone call that had been a staple of their relationship. Instead he’d spent the evening in his bedroom, grunting a tally of push-ups, collapsing every now and then for a breather and then starting back up.

But if something was wrong, I was apparently the only one who noticed.

I cleared my throat. “Is Stacy coming with us to Madison next week?”

Mom looked quickly at Dad, who was looking down. Maybe he was remembering the way he’d charged down the bleachers, looking for Johnny, or how Stacy’s face had been flushed, a loose barrette dangling in her hair.

Mom said, “We’ll see about that,” at the same time Johnny asked, “Why wouldn’t she?”

They stared at each other, and Dad repeated, “We’ll see.”

Johnny grunted and went back to picking at his potato.

“Just wondering,” I mumbled.

Mom leaned over and tousled my hair affectionately. “What’s wrong?” she asked, and I shook my head, not knowing how to tell her.

That weekend, with the break between regionals and state, Johnny had his first free Saturday in months. “I’m taking Stacy out later,” he announced that morning while Mom and I were in the kitchen, putting away groceries.

“Where are you headed?”

“Movie and then dinner in Sheboygan.”

“And you’ll be home...?”

“I don’t know. Eight. Eight-thirty.”

“It might snow tonight,” Mom said. “You make sure you drive careful, okay?”

“All right,” Johnny said, rolling his eyes. He gave me a grin that I tried to return, not convincingly enough. “What’s wrong?”

Mom was looking at me, too.

I didn’t say,
Be careful, Johnny.
I didn’t ask if he’d pushed her right back, once Kevin’s dad had rounded the corner and we were out of sight. Instead, I only shrugged.

When Johnny left that afternoon, he looked the same as always. I watched out the window as he walked to his truck, tossing his keys into the air and catching them with a little flourish. It had started to snow, but only barely, not enough to cover some of the ragged melted patches on the lawn. He circled the truck with an ice scraper, his breath coming out in puffs as thick as summer clouds.

It was a normal evening. If I’d had the sense that our lives were about to change, that God was about to topple our little world like we were indeed bugs in a Mason jar, I would have paid closer attention to every little thing. Instead, it was the most normal evening in the world. We watched
Wheel of Fortune
with the TV muted while Dad talked on the phone with Coach Zajac.
Iowa—
he said, as if the whole state had been reduced to a single school. I listened while I lay upside down on the couch, with my head where my feet should be and my feet waving in the air, letting the blood pool in my head until it must have weighed a thousand pounds. When Mom finished working in the kitchen, she quizzed me on my spelling list:
Dexterous, immaculate, oscilloscope, millennium.
Words I’d barely heard before and couldn’t define.
Upstairs, Emilie ran through “Stars and Stripes Forever” until Dad hollered, “Enough, already,” and she joined us in front of the TV to paint her toenails.

“Time to get ready for bed,” Mom said at eight, and I slumped upstairs for my evening routine—measuring my height against the mark on the door frame, brushing my teeth, selling an imaginary audience in the mirror a tube of Crest, and finally settling under the covers with a flashlight. I was halfway into
The Clue of the Dancing Puppet
when Emilie came in. Through the open door I could hear Dad and Mom’s voices, arguing. Emilie shut the door and plopped on my bed.

I sat up. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s almost ten and Johnny’s not back yet. He said they’d be home by eight-thirty. Mom called the Lemkes and they’re not there.” She pulled up her knees to her chest and hugged her legs.

“They’re probably on their way back right now,” I said, but my heart thumped in my chest. Something was wrong.

Emilie bit her lip. “It’s snowing really hard, though.”

I climbed out of bed and went to the window. She was right—the snow that had been a few friendly flakes in the afternoon was now coming down sideways, like millions of little polka dots against the night sky. “Let’s keep the door open,” I said, quietly twisting the knob.

Emilie stayed on my bed, knees tucked under her chin.

There were a few minutes of silence, and then, straining, we heard Mom say, “I think you should go look for them.”

Dad said, “Let’s give it another ten minutes.”

“Aren’t you worried?”

“Johnny can handle himself in a little bit of snow.”

Ten-fifteen came and went. Then ten-thirty. Upstairs, I clutched on to the sleeve of Emilie’s sweater, and she didn’t push my hand away.

The Lemkes called, and we heard Mom’s side of the conversation, “No, we haven’t heard... Right. Well, we’ll call you if we hear anything.” And then to Dad: “Bill Lemke’s been to Sheboygan and back and didn’t see them, John. You have to go out there.”

I could hear Dad grumbling under his breath, but he put on his coat and reached for his keys. His old truck grumbled to life, and I watched his headlights sweep across our house, across Grandpa’s dark house, and then out of sight.

“He’ll find them,” I whispered, more confident than I felt. They’d been gone for hours. They could be anywhere. I pictured them driving through the night, the Green Machine navigating the country roads through Watankee, Manitowoc, Green Bay, up north, farther and farther away, with Stacy in the middle of the bench seat, urging Johnny forward.
Let’s not go back,
she might be saying right at that moment.

“Yeah,” Emilie said, but she stayed on my bed, chewing on her lower lip.

We waited.

Dad hadn’t been gone five minutes when we heard footsteps on the front porch, and the door banged open. It was Johnny.

“The truck slid off the road,” he was saying, by the time Emilie and I had raced downstairs to see him. His face was red with cold and his hat and coat were covered with snow. He tried to kick off his boots and ended up working his feet back and forth until he was free of them. “It’s freezing outside.”

Mom started to peel off his wet coat and saw us. “Put the kettle on,” she barked to Emilie, who scuttled into action.

“Where’s Stacy?” I asked.

“She’s home,” Johnny said. “We weren’t far from her house when it happened, so she walked the rest of the way.”

“She wasn’t home ten minutes ago,” Mom said.

“Really? She should be home by now,” Johnny said. I would try to remember later how he said this, whether he was worried or certain, guilty or innocent, but everything happened so fast.
She should be home by now,
he’d said, and I’d let out my breath. Mom tugged on his sleeves and Johnny’s coat came off. At the same time we saw the cut on the back of his hand, three inches long and gaping wide.

“Oh, my God,” Mom said. “Let me see that.”

“From the truck—I was trying to push it out of the ditch, but I just couldn’t get it to move,” he said. “Dad’s gonna be mad—”

“He’s out looking for you now,” Mom said, examining Johnny’s hand. “This might need stitches. Kirsten, get me the first-aid kit.”

I jumped into action, running to the hall closet and back. When I came back, Johnny was saying, “I’m so sorry about the truck.”

“Forget about the truck. I’m just glad you’re safe.” Mom ripped open a packet and began swabbing Johnny’s hand. He winced, shutting his eyes against the pain.

On the stove, the kettle began to steam and whistle, a thin cry that escalated to a shriek by the time Emilie reached it. “What about the Lemkes?” Emilie asked. “Shouldn’t we call them?”

“Yes,” Mom said and reached for the phone. But before she dialed, we heard Dad’s truck pulling in. He left it, lights blazing and engine running, and was up the steps in only seconds. Mom replaced the receiver.

“I found Johnny’s truck— Oh, thank God,” Dad said, spotting Johnny. His chest was heaving, and he knelt over to catch his breath. I felt out of breath, too, even though I’d done nothing more than watch Johnny’s cut be cleaned.
Now we’re all here,
I thought.
We’re safe.

“What happened?” Dad demanded.

And then Johnny said what I would hear over and over, repeated to my parents, Stacy’s parents, the police, the newspaper, the district attorney: they were almost home when the truck fishtailed. “I must have hit a patch of ice or something,” he said, “and we ended up in the ditch.” Johnny said he tried to push them out while Stacy steered, and when that didn’t work they waited to see if anyone came. “It was snowing harder and we were so cold. I thought we should keep waiting, but Stacy said she would walk to her house and get her dad. I guess—I mean—she was pretty mad at me. And then she didn’t come back after a bit, so I just started walking home.”

“Oh, my God. She might still be out there,” Mom said, reaching for the phone. She punched in the numbers for the Lemkes. “Bill? It’s Alicia. Is Stacy back yet?”

There was a silence that stretched just a second too long, and in that moment, all the relief I’d felt seeped out of me. As the five of us held our breath, waiting, it was as if we already knew. I choked that breath down my throat, as if I sensed that it might have to last me for the rest of my life.

Mom shook her head at us. With her index finger she depressed the switch hook and dialed again, this time to the police.