The headaches were stymieing at first, enough that I almost caved after the first two days. Like some sort of alcoholic on a drinking binge, I sneaked into the closest chain coffee shop twice a day and stood in line, standing there with no intent to buy, inhaling the aroma of freshly brewed coffee to see if it was enough to jump-start my day. One time I even ordered a double espresso, but before the barista could hand it to me, I changed my mind. Trust is one of the pillars of a good marriage, the foundation a marriage is built upon. I had made a promise to Clara, and I intended to keep it.
Now, as I hold open the door for Stacy and she and her two cups of coffee pass through, I tell myself only two more months to go. Two more months until I can drink caffeine, too. “Your perseverance is quite impressive, my friend,” says Stacy as I follow her into the dental practice that bears my name on the front door, Solberg & Associates Family Dental. It’s a space that’s entirely chic—and not at all my style—Clara’s design because it was the only way she’d say yes to my idea of starting my own practice. To me, it just made sense. There were more start-up costs initially, but in the long run we, Clara and me, would see the financial benefits of owning our own practice, as well as being blessed with financial independence that working for another practice would curtail. That’s the way I explained it to Clara anyway, a few years ago as we sat at the breakfast nook of the fixer-upper we’d just bought for a steal, well below asking price because my negotiation skills weren’t half bad, Clara’s disinterested eyes glazing over as I went on and on about the costs of a tenant upfit to an existing commercial structure, dental lenders, malpractice insurance and operating fees—employee salaries, office equipment, the pricey drip coffee maker I’d go nine months without being able to use.
As it was, I had an undergrad in business administration plus a DMD. It seemed the logical next step for me. I was in the know, a businessman with a doctor of dental medicine degree. And Clara, with full decorating authority and a liberal budget, agreed. In time. My credit was good enough, and so even though we had a house and cars to pay for, my hefty student loans, securing a loan wasn’t a big deal, even one in excess of four hundred grand, though I had to get life and disability insurance to go with it, money set aside to cover my debt should I die. It was a formidable proposition, and yet, at twenty-six, death wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon. I also put our house on the line as collateral. Though the medical and dental industries weren’t hit by the same recession that hampered other businesses at the time, I had to prove to the lender I wasn’t going to default on the loan.
The space Clara and I picked out for the practice was close to home, less than nine miles, so that my commute was a mere thirteen minutes each way. We paid more to find space on a four-lane highway, on one of the main arteries in town, so that the thousands of cars that drove past each day would see us, Solberg & Associates Family Dental, and that we weren’t tucked off on some country road that no one ever used. Clara agreed. Not right away, no, but in time she agreed, and eventually set to work ordering furniture to fill the waiting room, a wide-screen TV and expensive diversions for the kids: a sand maze and a play cube and a top-of-the-line roller-coaster table, because at the time she was newly pregnant with Maisie and could think of nothing but catering to kids. She subscribed to magazines and got a wire wall rack to hold them all. She insisted we line the floor with hardwood or tile, and I readily agreed, knowing that winter in Chicagoland is replete with slush and snow, and hardwood would be easier to keep clean. Of course it cost more than carpeting, but at a time when we were putting so much into the practice, it seemed so easy just to throw a little more in. And a little more, and a little more. Clara and I were both consumed with this false sense of free money, forgetting somehow that sooner or later we’d need to pay it all back, convincing ourselves that defrayment would come in the form of small payments, and by then business would be booming anyway and money wouldn’t be a concern at all.
Clearly we were wrong.
And now, as I walk into the office and watch Nancy at the front desk, Nancy the receptionist, reprinting a receipt because she’s managed to drip her cocoa on it so that blotches of brown sully the words on the receipt, I wonder how much the additional sheet of paper is costing me, how much for the toner and the electricity that keeps the printer functional, how much I pay Nancy, kind, affable Nancy whom every patient likes, to sip her cocoa and answer the phones and spill her drink on the receipts.
There was a time when I didn’t think about any of it, but now I can’t help but think of it all, every last penny I no longer have to my name. The truth of the matter is, I’m in dire straits and I don’t want Clara to know. I’ve tried to think of ways to turn a quick and easy profit before having to admit to her that the practice is crumbling, our life savings nearly gone. I’ve looked into everything I can think of to make extra cash: dog walking on my lunch break, taking a second job in the evenings and telling Clara that I’ve expanded my hours again, selling my own plasma, selling my sperm. Selling drugs. I could get my hands on all sorts of pharmaceuticals—the perks of being a dentist—and then sell them on the street to middle-class moms. Heck, I have even considered heading to Vegas and betting everything I have on roulette, but the cost of a hotel and an airplane ticket quickly sapped that idea, as well as the need to explain to Clara where I’d been.
And then, in these moments of total desperation, when my self-pity gets the best of me and I can barely see beyond thepast duenotices to think logically, my mind drifts to the notion ofRussianroulette—one round in the chamber of a revolver—wondering if Clara might be better off without me around. It is morbid, which really isn’t me. I like to think of myself as a glass-half-full kind of guy. And yet it is natural, human nature, when the stress gets the best of me, to think to myself,I wish I was dead.
CLARA
“He’s losing weight,” the pediatrician says to me. Her name is Dr. Paul, and I can’t help but wonder if some male ancestor ever had the misfortune of being named Paul. Paul Paul. The room is happy, and there is a panorama of farm life painted on the otherwise white walls: a horse, a pig, a spotted cow.
“Mrs. Solberg,” she says to me, and I force my thoughts to the baby on the baby scale, Felix, who cries from the sudden coldness of the hard plastic tray on which he lies.
“He’s losing weight.”
Dr. Paul asks how the nursing has been going, and I lie and say fine. Just fine. I’ve nursed a baby before. I’m an old pro. And yet I’ve never been a widow before. This is wherein the fault lies, the reason why Felix is not eating well, why he is losing weight. Widowhood is all new to me, and it’s here that I struggle, though I don’t tell the doctor this, but I don’t need to because everyone in the whole entire world now knows that I am a widow, that my husband is the one who took the turn out on Harvey Road too fast, that he crashed the car into a tree, that he did it with our four-year-old daughter in the back seat, that he’s dead.
“Some weight loss after birth is normal,” she tells me, “but Felix has continued to lose weight since we visited him in the hospital. He’s lost over fourteen ounces since he was born. This is of concern,” she says, though her eyes lack judgment. I’m not being criticized. Dr. Paul is simply concerned. She lays a hand on my arm and asks again, “How has the nursing been going?” and this time I tell her.
I’m decidedly opposed to roadside memorials. It seems a silly way to honor a beloved family member who’s now dead. And yet I find myself purchasing a white wooden cross at the local craft store, and a spray of flowers, burgundy and pink, because it’s premade and on display at the florist shop. I don’t have time to special order; I want it now. The cross itself seems glib. It’s not as if we go to church, not often, though we had Maisie baptized because Nick’s mother said Maisie was bound for perdition if we didn’t. The only times we’ve been to church since are when Mrs. Solberg is in town, when we dress up in our Sunday best and slide into the spartan pew, pretending this is something we do.
But still, I buy the cross to go along with the floral bouquet. It seems the thing to do.
I drive to the scene of the accident, where a red-winged blackbird sits on a thin telephone wire watching me, like a tightrope walker, its gnarled black claws clinging tightly to the cord. Its black feathers shimmer in the late-morning sun, a single patch of red and yellow blazoned upon its side. It sings a brassy, emphatic song, and from somewhere in the distance, perched in the cattails of a roadside ditch, a female returns its call, quieter and less emphatic than the male. They parley back and forth, back and forth again, making plans to meet, and as I stand there on the side of the road, the sun bearing down on me and making me sweat, the car parked less than ten feet away, Felix inside with the window rolled down, the male red-winged blackbird leaves his perch and swoops down into the cattails to find his mate.
The houses in the area reside in one of those green housing developments with their energy-efficient designs, a neighborhood composting program, a community garden. The homes are all faux farmhouses, too clean and modern to be real farmhouses. There are horses in their enormous backyards, beautiful light bay and dapple gray horses enclosed in pointed picket fences, their snouts rising from the grass to see what it is that I’m doing as I return to the car and retrieve a small treasure from the trunk: the spray of funeral flowers, the white wooden cross.
I’m opposed to roadside memorials, but without it, I’d have no reason to be here, to see if what Maisie says is true, that there was another car on the road with her and Nick, one that made them crash.
I lay the flowers on the roadside; I dig away at the earth to make room for the cross. Cars pass by and wonder what it is that I’m doing, but then they see the cross, the flowers, and they know. They drive slower, more thoughtfully. They take the turn with deliberation. They stay in their lane, never allowing their cars’ tires to crisscross the double yellow line and into mine. This roadside memorial serves as a reminder and also a warning: this is what happens if you don’t slow down. You die like Nick has died, losing control of the car along that hairpin curve and slamming into the tree at breakneck speed.
But what if this is not the way it happened? What if what Maisie says is true, that there was another car on the road that fateful afternoon? Everyone loved Nick. He had no enemies, none at all. Whatever transpired on this street had to be the worst kind of luck, a simple act of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. A case of road rage, a drunken driver.
There’s no way that someone set out to intentionally harm Nick.
The tree itself shows signs of abuse. I kneel before the tree, pressing the pointed edge of the white wooden cross into the ground. This isn’t an easy thing to do. The earth is arid and shows no signs of giving in. It’s stubborn like me, as I step on the crossbar with the sole of a shoe and force it into the ground. Another car comes soaring down the road too quickly, sees me, and steps on the brakes so that tiny pebbles come skittering across the street toward my feet.
It’s a tall tree, a firm tree, one with much girth. But still, there is a wound. Bits of bark hang loosely from the tree trunk, the innards of the tree exposed. I run my hands along the rugged bark, feeling suddenly sorry for the tree. Will the tree die?
Behind the tree there is nothing, only cattails and open fields and grass. Wildflowers line the gravel of the street. There is only one tree and the absence of a guardrail where a guardrail should be. The only thing around for Nick to hit was the tree. What are the odds of this?
The homes with their horses stand over a hundred feet away or more, their inhabitants likely not seeing a thing until the ambulance arrived, and then the fire trucks and police cruisers to lug Nick and Maisie from the shattered car. It was only then that the noise and the chaos lured them from their homes to see what the fuss was about. The police didn’t bother speaking to the residents because there were no open-ended questions that needed clarification. Nick was speeding; he took the turn too quickly and died.
But what if that’s not the way it happened? What if Nick was killed?
It’s deserted around here, and though there are homes nearby, I feel strangely alone. Or not alone, but rather like I’m being watched. I turn quickly, but there is no one there. Not that I can see. My eyes rove the surroundings on the other side of Harvey Road, the haggard trees, the mounds of grass. But I see nothing. And yet I can’t shake the feeling, as if I’m the target on the other end of a sniper scope.
Is somebody here?
Was someone here, watching Nick as he crashed?
