Step-Father
As he tried to reconstruct it later he couldn’t be sure whether it was the horrifying sound of metal grinding metal with considerable force, or his head ricocheting off the truck’s side window that had wakened him.
Probably only in a video of the thing, vastly slowed down, could such a fine distinction be made. And even he hadn’t such an exaggerated view of his own importance to think the NTSB would reconstruct the moment. It struck him as odd that he even wondered. But that wondering fit neatly in with what was oddest about the whole event – how tiny, seemingly insignificant details that would have seemed irrelevant had someone else been describing it all happening to them – were etched sharply in his mind. The big issues, like death staring him down, didn’t sink in until days later.
The weekend had begun on Thursday, when Andrew drove the 2 1/2 hours to Boston to meet Leslie, his wife, who had been in Connecticut visiting her sister whose 70th birthday they celebrated, soberly, since her sister had not shaken the depression into which she had sunk sometime before her husband died. Leslie had driven the Pathfinder, so Andrew drove the red Ford pickup – his conceit that he was a Vermont farmer.
Leslie’s energy was legendary among their friends, who wondered, as Leslie and Andrew did too, how a would be monastic contemplative like Andrew could manage life at her pace. Mostly he took to his cave, a writing retreat above the barn, where he wrote and read – and cat-napped – until Leslie’s activism would not be denied and she would swing open the door leading to his studio, shouting, “There’s work to be done around this place!”
Somehow it worked. Andrew would put aside whatever he was doing. He knew she had been hustling the past two hours – weeding, planting, harvesting, making jelly – all the while running her bi-coastal design business by fax, phone, and email while he had been quietly closeted.
When they met in Boston they were on Leslie’s schedule; no time or place for retreat. In the course of the first day the drove to the Design Center in the morning where Leslie raced between floors and show rooms at her usual gallop, while Andrew pretended to read in the café. In reality he hardly ever turned the page, so distracted was he by the handsome middle-aged women, dressed for power, traveling with the speed and authority that still attracted and intimidated Andrew in Leslie.
After an hour at the Design Center, Leslie came through the café, slowing only slightly to allow Andrew to gather his book and rush after her, and set out on a series of visits to Leslie’s friends and colleagues, with a business lunch in the middle. Andrew tried to make himself invisible while Leslie and the Schumacher rep worked to solve some problem with a flawed fabric that had been used to cover a client’s sofa at considerable expense.
In the first of the two after lunch visits, Andrew became aware of being exhausted. He exercised every ounce of his will to keep from disgracing himself pitching off his chair in a dead sleep.
The onto a family party and an overnight at his sister’s. They were close, but Andrew couldn’t shake the feeling that she always wanted just a little more of him than he either could or cared to give. But, being sensitive to that, he stayed up an hour later than he would have otherwise, while they talked.
The following morning Leslie and Andrew had breakfast at a café in a town a half hour’s drive, with their daughter and son-in-law and granddaughter, who hadn’t been at the party the night before. After breakfast they all embraced and said good-bye, getting soaked in the now steady downpour, and got into their vehicles, Leslie in the Pathfinder and Andrew in the pickup, heading for Rt. 2 and the 3 hour drive home.
Later Andrew couldn’t remember passing the place where Rt. 2 narrows from a divided four lane highway to 2 lanes with no center barrier.
“But there are those raised dots in the road,” Leslie protested, “that make a big noise and vibrate the car when you drive over them; you must remember that.”
When he woke, suddenly, startled by the sharp jolt that knocked his head sideways into the window, and the sound of crunching metal, he couldn’t, for a split second, figure out where he was or what was happening.
His head snapped back lifting his chin off his chest and he saw that he was in the breakdown lane on the eastbound side of the road, his left wheels bouncing on the uneven shoulder, and he was heading west. He guessed later he must have been going 50 mph. A line of cars, their headlights diffused by the rain on his windshield - maybe 8 or 10 cars he figured – were headed right at him.
Oddly, or it seemed odd to him later – he wasn’t sure he had any thoughts at all while it was happening – he felt no panic. He remembered thinking it likely that, in just a millisecond, he and one of those oncoming cars were going to hit on at a combined speed of over 100 mph. He though he remembered this was probably his final conscious thought. It all seemed a realistic appraisal of the situation.
He thought he remembered, as the first two cars passed without a collision, regretting that he was going to kill someone else, maybe several others – people who had no fault but who would die because of his falling asleep. He knew he might have injected that noble thought later – he was suspicious of himself when he became noble.
He steered as straight as he could, hoping the collision with the guard rail hadn’t compromised his ability to steer. He felt the truck bouncing beneath him, the left wheels slightly off the pavement, somehow managing to thread his way through the narrow space between the guard rail and the oncoming traffic. Good thing, he thought – another odd thought – this is the smallest pickup Ford makes. He hoped the oncoming drivers, windshield wipers at fast speed for the heavy rain, wouldn’t panic. He wondered later that he hadn’t.
And suddenly he realized all the cars had gotten past him without hitting him. As he saw the tail light of the last one in his rear view mirror, he checked the side mirror hoping the lane going his direction might be free of traffic. He saw no one and, though knowing there was a blind spot, he steered back onto the road and across to the other side, now driving in the westbound lane from which he had drifted.
For what? Maybe 15, 20 seconds? No more. Now driving at 50 mph in the proper direction, he waited for the shaking he knew would follow. It never did. For the flood of tears as the realization hit him that he had survived what looked to be a sure disaster. The relief. They never came. He focused his attention on the truck – how was it driving? Fine. He turned the wheel a little left, then right. It responded just as it should.
Andrew felt with his left hand for the cell phone on his belt. He should call Leslie who would be a few minutes behind him. But why? It would be stupid to do yet another dangerous move, only to alarm her as she was driving through the miserable conditions. And he really didn’t want to talk with her – or anyone.
When he arrived home and hour later – he never stopped – he pulled into the driveway, turned off the ignition and sat for a long moment in silence. He sighed, still wondering when the panic would give him an adrenalin rush.
As he opened the truck door and got out, Leslie pulled into the driveway. He stood quite still, taking a quick look at the side of the truck that had hit the rail. He wondered if, when he started to tell her, he might cry.
“Were you listening to that great interview Terry Gross was doing?” she called as she opened her car door.
“I had an adventure on the way here, “ Andrew said, consciously avoiding calling it a “little adventure.” He was determined to curb his tendency to drain the moment of its stature.
Leslie stood completely still while he described what had happened. “And you’re all right?” she said, emphasis on “right” as if she couldn’t quite believe it. When he assured her he was, she went straight into the house and dialed her daughter, Andrew’s step-daughter, in California. As she was telling her, Leslie burst into tears and handed the phone to Andrew.
“I’m so glad you’re alive,” she said, “we aren’t quite ready to give you up yet. I hope Mom doesn’t beat you up for falling asleep. It scared the shit out of her, I can tell. Me, too. I love you.”
She didn’t beat up on him. She was more tender and present than usual. Andrew had moments of feeling out of his body, detached from life, from everything.
Two days later there was a burial in the cemetery across the road from their house. Andrew always watched these things from their kitchen window, curious, looking to see how close the burial was to the plot that he and Leslie had given to each other as Christmas presents a few years before.
That afternoon Andrew walked across to see who had been buried, if he might have known them. The mound of fresh dirt was piled high with a dying bouquet of flowers. On the white ribbon wrapped around the flowers was w white satin ribbon. On the ribbon in gold appliqué, “Step-father.”
