Читать книгу Ironic Witness - Diane Glancy - Страница 13

Sometimes it came back all over again, floating like an island through the sea of our years.

The police had trouble rousing us. I heard the knocking long before I realized what it was, and that I had to do something about it. I knew Frank could not be roused. It was up to me. I couldn’t remember if Winnie and Warren had left to start out on their own, or if maybe one of them wanted back in, maybe forgetting their keys. Daniel had not come around in a while, and my first dread was that it was him.

We had gone to bed early, as we always did. When I could sit up in bed, I looked at the clock. It was 10:30 pm. It was hardest to wake when I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours. If it was later in the night, it would have been easier.

I sat up and fumbled with the covers. The room was unfamiliar in its darkness. Frank’s clothes rested in a chair. Shoes were scattered on the floor. Shadows from the hall light made a path from the bed. I found my robe and crept down the stairs, holding onto the railing so I wouldn’t fall. I realized the knob on the bannister was still loose, though Frank said he had tightened it.

I turned on the front light and opened the door. Two policemen were there.

“The headlights of a passing car struck metal on a curve north of Fenton,” they said. Daniel had been found. He had been dead several days. Whose car? I asked. Someone they didn’t know. It had been stolen. Could we identify the body?

I told the officers it was impossible to wake my husband once he was asleep. He’d had a long day of translating, and I remember him being overly tired at supper.

One of the officers went with me into the kitchen and sat with me at the table. The other officer went upstairs to wake Frank. I realized how cluttered and overgrown the kitchen seemed as I saw the officer’s eyes go over the room.

—

At the morgue, I saw Frank talking to one of the officers. It was decided that only Frank would see the body. I would have to wait for him to return. I protested, but an officer said he would wait with me.

Frank returned, ashen faced. He told me the body was Daniel.

—

Daniel was dead. Daniel was dead. All the frustration. All the anger. The fear. The buzzing I always heard from the engine that ran the world. Cruelly. Cruelly. Daniel was the channel. Now, Daniel, our son, was dead. He was our grief. Finally, his death was our relief. After expecting the news for years. After all the shame that still burned. Daniel’s thievery. His attempt to accost Helen Harsler. His failures. Daniel was dead. After all my years slapping clay—all my years working with ziggurats, which were my translations in the space between rage and ragged forgiveness. Daniel was dead. Hope and despair were over. Daniel was dead. We would go on now without him. Frank took my arm and pulled me from the chair. I stood beside him as he signed the coroner’s paper—and we left the morgue.

We drove home in our separate worlds, each thinking our own thoughts, each wondering what happened to our lives. I slept in Winnie’s room that night, as I had done before. For some reason, I didn’t want to be with Frank.