It was survival.
Something had to change or I wouldn’t last another month.
“Jim …” I had to try him one more time. I had to try anything.
“Hil …?” His voice was cool and reserved, clearly not delighted to hear from me. “Hil, we’re out in Vail. Can’t this wait until we get back?”
“No, Jim, I’m sorry, it can’t wait. Not any longer.”
I heard him whisper to someone, an exasperated tone, like his hysterical ex-wife was on the phone and can you believe he had to deal with this out here, with ten inches of fresh powder on the slopes and an Irish coffee in his hand?
Maybe I was starting to grow hysterical.
“Jim, I’ve only got a month’s cushion to my name. I don’t know how I’m going to pay the mortgage. Not to mention Brandon’s school. You said you’d think it over and get back to me, but all that’s past. I need your help, Jim. Now. Not for me, but for your son. I don’t care where you are right now …”
“Hil, hang on,” he said. I heard him excuse himself and there were a few seconds of silence. When he got back on, he was probably outside. “Listen, Hil, I thought I told you we’re pretty much in the same pickle.”
“I don’t care about your fucking pickle, Jim. You’re out in Vail. Your pickle is keeping your wife’s name in Greenwich magazine and holding on to your Porsche. I’m doing what I can to protect our son.”
He was silent.
“Jim, look, through everything we’ve always dealt with things pretty reasonably. But I don’t have the luxury of being nice anymore. You owe me for over a year of child support. You bailed out of Brandon’s school. I can’t sell the house. I won’t get a fucking nickel from it even if I could. And I can’t even sue you—it would take too long, even if there was something I could get from it. Jimmy, please … you know I don’t beg easily, but I’m begging. I’m trying to save ourselves …”
I was also begging for him to save me from doing the one thing I didn’t want to do.
“Look, I shouldn’t even say this …” He cleared his throat. “Maybe there is something I’ve kept aside. But we’re not talking much, Hil.”
“How much is something, Jim?”
“I don’t know.” He paused. “Maybe five or ten thousand. Max …”
“Five or ten grand?” The blood pretty much stopped in my veins. The math ran over me like a train had plowed into my car. Ten thousand would barely get me past March. No more.
“I had to pay off some obligations with the company. Otherwise, I was headed to Chapter Eleven, Hil. Anything else is Janice’s. And you know, that gets complicated.”
“Jim, that’s only a month, maybe two, of Brandon’s school. I’m not asking for anything for me, but—”
“Anyway, it’s going to have to wait until I come back. This isn’t exactly sitting in my 401(k). And, Hil, all I can say is that this isn’t going to get any easier. I know you don’t want to hear this, but we really are going to have to consider putting Brandon in public school. I’m told the programs are really good up in Chappaqua and Bedford.”
“Chappaqua and Bedford …?” The words fell off my lips like heavy weights.
“I checked. Bedford has a separate special ed school. And Ridgefield, I know that’s in Connecticut, but it’s good too and it’s tons cheaper to live up there as well.”
“Screw off, Jim.” Tears flooded my eyes. I couldn’t hold it back. I’d never said those words to him before.
“Hil, please …”
The phone in my ear, I flashed back to the day we were married. Me, in my white lace dress, my hair in braids. Jim, nervous, clumsy, a big, cushy walrus, fumbling for the ring. I knew he wasn’t the safest of bets, even back then. Just a big, overgrown boy with his toys. But what I did think was at least I had a partner. Someone who loved me for me, whether it worked out in our marriage or not. Someone who would always be there for Brandon if I ever got sick or was in need.
“Why don’t you just keep it, Jim? I’ll find another way.”
“Hil, c’mon. I’m trying my best to—”
“Just keep it!” I hung up on him, and with it the hope that anything was coming to my rescue.
“There’s this,” Robin had said, “and then there’s the other side of the road.”
I threw on a jacket and asked Elena if she could stay another hour.
Then I drove back out to the accident site that night.
The night was clear, the roads mostly empty. Every stop sign, I told myself I could always turn around. You don’t have to do this, Hil. There has to be some other plan.
I never turned.
On the Bedford–Greenwich road, the landmarks grew familiar. A stone barn I’d passed ten days before. The apple and vegetable farm. I remembered following that Honda, my life in a shambles, watching him swerve, seeing him spin off the road. I slowed, passing a bend in the road that looked familiar. Was it here? That curve? Or farther along?
The police tape was gone now. Everything looked back to normal.
It wasn’t until I passed the election poster that I realized I’d driven right by.
I turned at the first chance about a quarter mile past it and headed back around. There was a hole in the dense brush about the width of a car where Kelty’s car had gone through. I drove on about a hundred yards and found a turnoff with a chain blocking the drive and a NO ACCESS sign. Maybe for a property someone was hoping to develop.
I pulled my Acura in maybe twenty yards from the road. There was a long time between cars going by. I turned off the engine. I made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to use a penny of it for my own needs. Only for Brandon. And keeping a roof over our heads.
For a while I just sat there, telling myself that there was this one last chance to drive away. I looked at my face in the mirror. It wasn’t my current face I saw, but strangely, the eyes of a child. Remembering the uncertainty I’d gone through as a nine-year-old, everything I loved and counted on ripped away in an instant.
It had taken me years to learn to trust life again.
I wouldn’t let that happen to my son.
I took my flashlight, and this time my face was filled with resolve.
Welcome to the other side of the road.
A car sped by in front of me and I ran across the road. I found the break in the bushes and shined my light and still saw the tire marks on the pavement, fresh as if it had happened yesterday.
I made my way down the slope.
I slipped this time as well, sliding a few feet down. The brush had been flattened by the path of Kelty’s car as well as all the emergency vehicles and personnel that had been down there. I made it down, casting my light