Is This a Daily Habit?

Neither of them said a word on the way home, until Brian turned in the driveway and Gwen let out a single, abrupt sound like a stifled laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’m sorry, nothing,” Gwen said.

“Getting arrested is a big joke?”

“I’m just happy to be home.”

He’d been composed and helpful until now—through the arrest and police station and huddle with their lawyer, Roger Fitzgerald, Marlene’s husband. Yet all along he’d been working on his position: What blend of sympathy and anger should he present to her? He wasn’t sure. He was so relieved that Gwen was okay, and so pissed she’d gotten stoned before driving to pick up the kids. They’d never been through anything like this.

Once inside, he pressed her. “What were you doing with an ounce of pot?”

“It wasn’t all for me, half was for Marlene.”

“You mean you’re dealing it?”

“No, I’m not dealing it.”

“Yet half the drugs you got busted for are going to our lawyer’s wife?”

“And Roger, too. He smokes with her.”

Brian sighed. “I’m having a drink. You want anything?”

She shook her head.

He got vodka and ice from the freezer, poured himself three fingers, took a stool next to her at the kitchen island. He leaned his elbows on the granite countertop.

“Where did you even get an ounce of pot?”

Gwen met Brian’s eyes and looked away.

“From Jude again? He’s your dealer?”

“He’s not a dealer—he just did me a favor.” Using the language Jude had: a favor between old friends.

“He likes to do you favors it seems.”

“I can’t just run to the store and buy it like you can a bottle of vodka.”

“This morning you didn’t tell me that scoring a bag of weed was on your list of errands for today.”

“Am I supposed to tell you?”

“You told me you were going to the dry cleaner’s. You told me you had to pick up the farm share.”

Gwen said nothing.

“Did you get high with him?”

“Who?”

“Jude.”

“No. What are you accusing me of?”

“You’ve shown an incredible lack of judgment. Don’t you find that troubling?”

“I told you—Marlene was supposed to pick up the kids, but then she got delayed at the doctor’s. It was an accident, Brian. There was no time to react, the other car was just there. I at least turned the wheel. If I hadn’t done that, it could have been a lot worse.”

“How many people were in the other car?”

“I don’t know, it happened so fast.”

“So we don’t know who else is hurt or how badly?”

“Didn’t Roger say he’d find out?”

They still hadn’t heard about that. But crashing through a guardrail and down a ravine, that can’t be a joyride.

“How often do you do this?” Brian asked.

“What?”

“Get high during the day, when you’re with the kids. Is this a daily habit?”

“I’d never do anything to put them in danger. You know that.”

Brian let it go. If anything, Gwen was overprotective of their children. She even kept a close eye when they played in the backyard. They weren’t allowed to cross the street without her—and they lived on a quiet residential road. She was careful about what they ate, she limited junk food, made them wear helmets on their bikes. He couldn’t question her devotion to their safety.

Gwen said, “It could have happened to you after having a few drinks when we go out.”

Her mouth tightened and she swallowed. For the first time, she looked ugly to him, her face puffy and discolored, the gash over her eye a violent track of red crossed with black sutures, the rest of her thin and drained like a battered, hopeless woman from a trailer park, a druggie from the school of hard knocks. All she needed was a cigarette hanging from her lip.

Gwen moved to the couch with a cold pack they’d given her at the hospital. She opened and massaged the bag to activate it, then leaned back and rested the pack over the bridge of her nose and eyes, careful near her stitches.

“So what’s Marlene going to the doctor for this time?” Brian said.

“Don’t pick on her.”

“I’m just asking.”

“She wants to make sure she’s ovulating okay. You know she’s trying to get pregnant again.”

“Roger said they were done.”

“There are two sides to that story.”

Brian nodded in agreement. “I spoke to Marlene and she’s going to feed the kids dinner and drop them off later. I didn’t get a chance to tell her that the drug score didn’t come through.”

Gwen moaned and said nothing for a minute. When Brian didn’t continue, she said, “At least come hold my hand.”

That’s what he had done when he first saw her in the hospital: held her hand. A nurse had pointed to the curtain, the one with the uniformed police officer standing outside it, and Brian rushed in to find Gwen sitting upright in the bed, holding her forearm in the air. People loitered about the bed. He paid them no attention. He nuzzled her raised hand in both of his, then held her fingers against his cheek. He bent down and tenderly kissed her lips.

He’d battled a sick feeling in his stomach the entire way to the hospital. Gwen’s voice on the phone—she was hurt more than she’d let on. The way she said “please hurry.” The way she said she was scared. Something more was wrong, she was hiding the severity of her injuries. Adding to his anxiety were his own circumstances: getting pulled from a tense moment in the executive meeting he’d been planning for weeks. Gwen knew how important that meeting was to him; she wouldn’t have called him out for a fender bender.

He ran a red light on his way to the hospital. She might be dead when he got there. Hadn’t he let that thought cross his mind recently, just last week, when the wife of someone he knew in the lab at Pherogenix drowned in Lake George—what would life be like if Gwen died? It was only natural to ponder what could happen, how he would react, what he would do next. Contingency planning, they called it at work. Succession planning. What if the worst happened? Impossible to grasp the horror of it—the burden of caring solo for the children, his wife and soul mate gone forever, the future lonely and bleak. This is how his mind spun and plunged as he pushed the ticket button at the hospital parking lot gate, hurried through the automatic doors, approached the nurses’ station.

Yet there she was, alive and beautiful and valiant. Beautiful in a wounded way. God, the surge of love and relief that flooded him. She was not dead, not about to die. The redness and swelling in her face gave her a full, flushed look, with the gash along her eyebrow a wound she’d taken in battle. Gwen had brushed against death and escaped.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you so much.” He held her and held back his sobs.

And then the story unfolded.

Gwen’s arm was raised not to reach for him but to hold a gauze against her vein where a med tech from the police department had just sucked her blood. And that officer he’d hardly registered on his way in? She was waiting to escort his wife to the police station because Gwen was under arrest.

Hearing this turn of events, Brian delayed registering shock or anger. He simply switched modes, leaving behind the life-and-death love drama for practical detail.

You let them take your blood? Did you admit to anything?

They told me I had to.

I’m calling Roger right now.

Upon release from the hospital, Gwen rode in the back of the police cruiser. At least they didn’t handcuff her. Brian took her purse and was following in his own car when Roger returned his call. Brian briefly explained that Gwen had smoked a little pot and was in a car accident. They were on the way to the police station now from the hospital.

He could see the shape of her head outlined against the back window of the police car in front of him. You see that view and wonder what murky fiend sits back there. Hard to believe that shape was his wife.

“Tell her not to say a word or submit to any tests,” Roger said.

“They already took her blood before I got there.”

Roger’s voice stayed even. “Don’t say or do anything else. Not one word. I’ll meet you at the station in twenty minutes. They won’t let you into the booking area so you might as well stop and get five hundred dollars in cash for bail. I’ll have her out in an hour.”

Roger was Brian’s friend because Gwen was close friends with Marlene, and Nora was friends with the Fitzgeralds’ daughter, Abby. Roger was a partner in a downtown law firm and had advised Brian and Gwen with the contract on their lake house. When Gwen was taken into police custody, Brian had no one else to call and didn’t know if Roger handled this type of situation, but so far he seemed pretty sure of himself.

“Anyone injured?” Roger asked.

“Gwen banged up her face, I think on the air bag. Took a few stitches in the eyebrow.”

“Single car accident?”

“No, she said someone crossed the double yellow and hit her, but I don’t know what happened after that. The other car might have gone through a guardrail.”

“I’ll find out.”

Brian turned off at the next intersection and circled back home. He kept one thousand dollars in cash in an envelope taped to the back of his dresser. Gwen knew about it, although she didn’t know about the other three thousand stashed in his metal toolbox in the basement. Brian wasn’t exactly sure what the money was for, other than emergency purposes. It would buy food and gas for a while if for some reason the banks shut down. It would get them across the country or out of the country. It wouldn’t last long, but knowing he had the cash on hand provided comfort.

He kept the car running in the driveway while he ran upstairs. Laid across the bed in neat piles were the clothes Gwen had put out to pack for the lake, plus toiletries, books, toys for the kids. They should be on their way to the lake house right now, sharing a family sing-along in the car, goofy rhyming songs the kids liked, Brian chilled and easy because he’d slam-dunked his presentation, cleared his plate for the long weekend, and was ready for Gwen.

Brian moved the dresser to reach the envelope. He counted out five of the hundred-dollar bills, then decided to take the other five. He pushed the dresser back in place and drove to the police station.

It was late afternoon near the change of shift and the arresting officer, Sergeant Marcia Hendricks, hustled them along. She was the only woman police officer in Morrissey. Now Gwen remembered why she looked familiar. There had been a profile of her in the town’s newspaper, the Morrissey Bee, a few months ago. The same paper that carried the town’s weekly police blotter of arrests and incidents. Gwen’s name could appear in next week’s edition. That would be a disaster. It may not be the most widely read publication in America, but the people Gwen knew at least glanced at the Bee to see goings-on about town. And Gwen being arrested would qualify as a going-on in Morrissey. Mostly a progressive town, there were still rules. Morrissey might not be cultivating our next generation’s leaders, but it occupied a place on the social ladder, perhaps raising the second in commands, and the town feverishly wanted to defend its place. Mothers who served as PTA vice presidents but got arrested on drug charges didn’t belong in the mix.

Gwen would have to visit the editor to see what she could do to keep her name out of the paper.

She was charged with DUI and possession, fingerprinted and released on bail—a thousand dollars, not the five hundred Roger had said, due to the double charges—and told to return for court arraignment the next day at 11:00 A.M.

“On a Saturday?” Gwen asked.

“Friday’s a big night for arrests,” Roger explained. “There’s usually a Saturday court session to prevent a backlog. But the judge tomorrow is Robert Donovan. His son plays Little League with Josh. I’ll give him a call and see if I can move it to next week. It’s better that way, anyway, if we have a little more time to prepare.”

“We were planning on going up to the lake this weekend.”

Roger looked at her. “I’ll see what I can do, but I won’t know until tomorrow.”

So their family getaway that her husband had slaved at work to carve out time for was postponed, and now Brian sat on the couch next to Gwen, holding her hand as she had asked him to, finally breaking a long silence between them.

“I shouldn’t have been so angry with you,” Brian said. “It was just bad luck, it could happen to anyone, and you’re right, it could have happened to me after a few drinks on a night out.” He took her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

“We’ll take care of this and put it behind us.”

“I just feel so humiliated.”

The doorbell rang and seconds later the kids ran in ahead of Roger.

“Mommy!” Nate said. “Can I see your black eye?”

Brian got up and met Roger in the hallway. He’d changed out of his suit into jeans and a T-shirt. Brian was still wearing his clothes from work, except for the tie.

“We told them their mom got a little cut on her face,” Roger said. “Marlene sends her best. Says the kids ate macaroni and cheese and watched Wallace and Gromit.”

“Thanks, I appreciate this. You want a drink?”

“Maybe a beer.”

Brian went to the refrigerator and got out two beers, opening both and handing one to Roger. They walked out to the back patio. The sun had dipped below the trees and long shadows hung over them. Goldenrod bloomed in a long patch where the lawn ended.

“I’ve got some other news.” Roger stepped closer to Brian and lowered his voice. They could hear Gwen talking to the kids inside, explaining she’d been in a car accident but was perfectly fine.

“The other driver—eighty-two-year-old guy with severe dementia. James Anderson. Lives in Niskayuna, God knows where he was going in Morrissey. Tore through the guardrail and plunged down the ravine. Died in the hospital about an hour ago.”

“Jesus,” Brian said.

“I know it’s terrible, but I talked to the investigator and it does appear he crossed the line and hit Gwen. It’s not final, the report won’t be complete for a few days or a week, but it was pretty obvious just from the pattern of the glass spattering and the tire marks on the road. The blood tests aren’t back yet, either, but the fact that Gwen had marijuana in her system and in her possession might complicate things.”

“You mean she’ll be responsible—”

“I don’t mean anything yet, and we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions,” Roger said. “I’m just sharing with you information that I have. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Gwen’s going to be very upset.”

“I know—we’re all upset.” Roger finished the last swallows of his beer. “I’d better go. I’ll call you in the morning and let you know what I find out about the arraignment.”

“Roger, wait a minute. Is this the right thing?” Brian asked. “I mean you representing us—not because we’re friends, but … You know that ounce Gwen had? She said half of it was for Marlene and you.”

Roger nodded. “I know, it’s like being a fucking teenager again. Except it’s not. The stakes always get higher. I can recommend someone else if you prefer. A colleague of mine is good with these kinds of cases.”

“No, I just wanted to get that out in the open,” Brian said. “I don’t want you to feel obligated to do this and don’t want you to get exposed if it comes to that.”

“Don’t worry about that. If you want me as your attorney, I’m there all the way for you.”

“It’s up to Gwen, but I’m sure she does.”

“I think this whole thing can be cleared up quickly,” Roger said. “Gwen’s a model citizen, you know that. It was just a wrong place at the wrong time kind of thing. I can see this just going away.”

After Roger left, Brian went back inside. He had to break the news about the other driver to Gwen. But she had gone upstairs with the kids and fallen asleep on her bed with the cold pack over her eyes. The kids sat on either side of her, silent and staring.

“Is Mommy dead?” Nate asked.

“Just sleeping, honey,” Brian reassured him.

“Yes, she’s just sleeping,” Nora repeated, echoing her father. “She’s not going to die, is she, Dad?”

“Of course not. Mom’s just tired. So let’s try to be quiet.”

“Be quiet, Nate,” Nora said.

“I am quiet,” he said too loudly.

“Shhhh,” said Brian.

“When will she wake up?” Nora asked.

“In the morning, probably.”

“She’s just sleeping.”

“That’s right.”

“Will we go to the lake tomorrow?”

“We’ll see,” said Brian. “Come on, let’s take a bath.”

He ran water in the whirlpool tub in the master bathroom. The tub was big enough to fit them both. Brian let Nate pour the bubble powder, which meant the kids were buried in mountains of suds. He didn’t bother with the soap and shampoo. They sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and then Brian pretended to be a troll under the bridge while Nate and Nora played billy goats he wanted to eat.

As the tub drained, Nate started in with the numbers. “4-3-9-4-9-6-1, 4-3-9-4-9-6-1, 4-3-9-4-9-6-1, 4-3-9-4-9-6-1 …” He’d learned their phone number the other day and now had to repeat it a thousand times.

Brian helped the kids with their pajamas and they sat together on Nora’s bed while Brian read them each a book, Franklin Rides a Bike for Nate and a chapter in Nora’s American Girl book.

He had missed too many bedtimes recently due to late work nights and was happy tonight to perform the routine with the kids by himself. Against their fragrant hair and clean, warm bodies his stress eased like a muscle cramp fading. He shuttled back and forth between Nate’s and Nora’s rooms, stroking their faces, tucking them in an extra time, stealing kisses from their foreheads. Okay, Nate, you can repeat our phone number ten more times and then you have to go to sleep. Nora, I’ll sing the “Nina, Nina” lullaby one more time before saying good night.

And then they were asleep, and the house quiet. Brian went downstairs to the den to log on to work and check his messages, and the comfort and love that had filled him while putting the kids to bed vanished in the time it took to download his e-mail. He scanned his new messages until he saw the one from Teresa Mascetti. He opened it.

He wrote this reply:

He was reading through his other e-mails when the reply came back. What was she doing working on a Friday night? Brian was surprised she didn’t have other plans.