There was hardly another car on the road. I tailed Mr. Schell at a safe distance for about ten minutes, most of which was spent following his lead of fairly quick accelerations succeeded by bouts of reductive coasting. Eventually he turned onto Seventy-third Street and approached the stop light at University. There was no avoiding pulling up right behind him. It was dark, but I was certain Mr. Schell recognized me when he peered into the rearview mirror, his face lit by the blue glow of the driver’s display. Even after the light turned green he sat there, glancing back and forth from the rearview mirror to his hands on the steering wheel. (The incident was queerly reminiscent of the pinnacle scene in
The Bridges of Madison County
, when Francesca had to decide if she’d leave her husband and jump into the truck with Robert Kincaid. Except in this version of the story it was only the two men, and they would either go for a drink and reason it out, or brawl right there in the street.) I sat waiting for Mr. Schell to decide, thinking it was better to set the record straight now than to suffer a lifetime of silent judgment. I considered my options, sounding out the decision with Smitty, my parents, anyone I trusted who I thought might still be awake and listening. I guessed Mr. Schell was doing the same, only talking to his wife instead of his best friend and parents. He made a right turn toward home, finally, like nothing at all had passed.
I turned left, disappointed that our standoff ended so quickly, even though I didn’t know my purpose when I started following him in the first place. But then a few minutes later, while driving along Westin Parkway composing a belated funeral speech, my attention was drawn to the rearview mirror, where a black Beemer was fast approaching, flashing its high beams and yellow emergency lights. My first reaction was to ditch Mr. Schell, despite the absurdity of attempting to escape now that our roles were reversed. I pulled onto the shoulder and flipped the lights off. Mr. Schell did the same. We’d parked on the only dark block on the street, adjacent to a cut cornfield (owned by an infamously stubborn farmer who would eventually lose to the city’s claim of imminent domain). There was no traffic whatsoever when Mr. Schell stepped out onto the pavement. I stepped out, too, wanting to face him, but trying to reduce the confrontational appearance of the movement by throwing my arm over the top of the open door the way a person might do if they expected to be asked directions to an all-night service station. Mr. Schell was wound up and skittish, appearing a righteous juror who’d set himself to the task of raw justice, if only as a midlife personal challenge. His tongue swam around in his left cheek. His right hand pumped up and down in his jacket pocket (thus marking my initial inkling that Mr. Schell would one day shoot me).
“I know you were waiting for me,” he said, almost stuttering, shifting from one foot to the other and back again. “You left your parking lights on. You trying to scare me?”
“No, sir,” I said, trying to sound as unthreatened as possible, but perhaps overdoing it and coming off aggressively unscared.
“How do you think it would look, George? How would it sound if I called the police and told them you were following me around town?”
I let my eyes fall to the pavement. Eventually my sight line made its way toward the grass and cornfield. I hadn’t planned to fight the guys on the golf course and I didn’t want to fight Mr. Schell, either.
“I asked you a question,” he said.
“I was only waiting outside the bar because I wanted to talk to you. But then when I saw you, I didn’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say. There’s nothing at all to talk about. Emily’s lost her little sister, and she’s broken up enough without you calling all the time.”
“I haven’t been calling,” I said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Ha,” he said, giving me a little grin, like it was so pathetic of me to lie. “A customer of mine told me he was up at McGirk’s the other night where your brother had an argument with an off-duty cop. Apparently your brother went out into the parking lot, smashed the guy’s car windows, then went back inside and bought him a drink, like he’d just gone to the bathroom. Is that true, George?”
I knew what Mr. Schell was saying was true, though I thought Zach had gotten away scot-free. Farther down the road a sequence of traffic lights all changed from red to green.
“Is what I heard true?” he pressed.
“How do I know what you heard?” I said. Judging by Mr. Schell’s smirk, it was exactly the sort of response he was fishing for. The dome light in his car turned off. His face went dark, allowing him to study me without revealing nearly as much of his own countenance. He shook his head, making me feel like some stupid kid whose own guilt would catch up to him worse than any punishment he could ever serve up.
“I’ll admit, you had me fooled for a while, but it turns out you’re just as big of a menace as that goofed-up brother of yours.”
“I’m sorry, but my brother’s got nothing to do with it.”
“You have no idea. You don’t know the meaning of
sorry
.”
“But I
am
sorry. I know it’s not good enough, but I’m as sorry as anyone’s ever been. I shouldn’t have left her alone like that.”
“That’s right,” he said, throwing his hands in the air and turning to the cornfield. His bangs blew from one side of his head to the other. As he shouted, spittle sprayed the hood of his car. “
Sorry sorry sorry!
Poor George Flynn! He’s so
sorry
!”
He turned back to me with his fists clenched. I was certain he’d charge me with one of his old boxing ring uppercuts. I felt my shoulders turning inward and my neck muscles tightening. My toes curled up in my shoes.
“Stop following me!” he shouted, desperately, like I’d been hounding him for years, day and night, driving him to the absolute edge. In the course of shouting this he stepped onto the road and halved the space between us. I practically fell into my car seat. I locked the door and fumbled for the gear shift. When I hit the gas I was too fearful to look back at whether Mr. Schell had jumped at me or hurried back to his car or pulled a handgun from his jacket pocket. I took the first possible turn and sped down one side street after another, staring into my mirrors, zigzagging my way home, praying Mr. Schell didn’t know which house was mine.
Twenty-seven
The way I see it now, those of us who were close to Katie were like fallen leaves discarded to the wind, by no great coincidence swirling across the same streets, bound to find ourselves raked up in the same piles. My mind was never far from my next run-in with a member of the Schell family, though after that night I hoped it would be with Mrs. Schell, or one of Emily’s aunts or uncles, if only for the sake of variety. (The recent advent of online movie rentals came as a major relief, knowing the regularity with which the Schells used to frequent Mr. Movies, whose vast selection of classroom and concert videos, over the past decade, was no small sacrifice.) Smitty did his best to keep me busy. We went to I-Cubs games and motocross races, even a few dive bars on the South Side for such un-Smitty-like activities as pocketball at happy hour. Smitty was there for me, as the saying goes, even if he seized the opportunity to convert me into an upstanding Catholic. For a short spell I was as devout as the most disenfranchised of troubled, truth-seeking souls, wandering various parishes throughout the city like a bohemian altar boy on tour. I studied my First Communion catechism and rehearsed Old Testament parables until I’d practically memorized them. I even prayed the rosary each night on my knees at the foot of the bed. I bartered a life of devotion in exchange for Emily’s love and her parents’ forgiveness, beginning with a holistic and filthy confession, my first since the St. Collette days when it was a school requirement and we used to subvert the whole process via brainstorm sessions where we’d come up with “safe sins,” then argue over who would claim to have committed them. I needed to begin with a clean slate (which is not only possible for Roman Catholics, but one of the great bonuses, however underappreciated). It must’ve been my mom who informed me that Mr. Schell had begun attending the short Mass at Mercy Frederick, likely out of shame for his wife, who decided she’d sat through enough Sunday services for one lifetime, no matter the denomination.
Drawing to the point, on my fourth or fifth Sunday at Smitty’s side, I spotted Emily parting her way through the exiting swarm of St. Anthony’s parishioners who’d spent the majority of the previous hour practically on the edge of their seats anticipating the collapse of their octogenarian pastor. She was wearing a lemon sundress and cork sandals, a trendy combination much more to Ashley’s taste than her own. I might not have noticed her if she hadn’t been stopped by a pair of towering Sudanese men in marbled long-sleeved shirts. (I figured at least one of them was an actor, and it turned out I was right.) They took turns questioning her, piquing my curiosity when she abruptly cut them off and headed for the prayer niche on the far front left of the church. At the final notes of the choir’s go-in-peace performance, Smitty patted my shoulder and made his exit, leaving me to decide on my own if I would approach her. For the moment I waited and watched, dropping down to the kneeler, partially hidden behind a wooden pillar, improving my inconspicuousness with an open copy of that week’s hymnal. Emily slipped a folded dollar into the donation box, lit a candle, and knelt. Bowing beneath a gilt-framed icon of the Virgin Mary, silhouetted in visible beams of sunlight through stained glass, she was the epitome of holy melancholic innocence. But instead of feeling blessed by the sight, I submitted to an old sex dream involving Emily as a nun, lifting her black habit to proudly show me that she was wearing nothing underneath. I slipped out the double doors to the vestibule, where I found Smitty looking lost among a hearty group of parishioners chatting and kissing cheeks.
“Looks like your prayers have been answered,” he said. “And I thought you were just closing your eyes, trying to decide what to order at Perkins.”
“I think I should go to confession again.”
“Christ. What is it this time?”
I walked him to the parking lot. Smitty wished me luck and drove off. Ten minutes later I found myself wandering toward Emily’s car, casually circling it, then checking her tires, then cupping my hands against the windows to search the seats and floors for hints of her life without me. It was all ordinary clutter: unmarked CDs, loose change, a faded beach towel, a balled-up B-Bop’s sack.
“Planning to steal my stereo?” a voice shouted from a ways off. I looked up, blocking the sunlight as Emily slipped her sunglasses on and stepped from the curb. “I’ve heard of people stealing from cars in church parking lots, but I didn’t think you were the type.”
I held my hands in the air, hoping she’d assume I was expecting her at any minute, which by some lapse of consciousness I wasn’t. The parking lot was mostly empty now. Soon Emily was standing in front of me, shining fresh freckles that caused me an abrupt and unbearable sadness, as though each one represented a bold new experience she might not be willing to share. I stood there sweating like a goon. All of my imagined scenarios of our reunion involved two people who’d already overcome the disaster. Emily stepped forward to inspect the thick stubble on my cheeks and beneath my chin. She scratched along the right side of my face. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I wanted to hug her, but I didn’t.
“Saint Anthony’s, huh?”
“Smitty said there’d be free doughnuts in the parish center.”
“I come for the candles,” she said. “They burn good and slow. More for your money. So what’d you do with Smitty?” She bent down to check under the car.
“He left. I asked him to go on without me.”
“I see,” she said, pulling suspiciously at her chin as she walked around the car. She stepped inside and closed the door. I leaned down by the driver’s-side window to find her fanning herself with her tongue hanging out. The windows all rolled down. “You coming or what?” she asked.
“Where to?”
“You know me better than to ask questions like that.”
I opened the door, immediately pressed by the trapped heat as I stepped inside. We set off east down Ingersoll Avenue, cruising along, mostly hitting green lights. I was still trying to come up with a conversation a few silent minutes later when a pager started beeping and vibrating in the cup holder. Emily clicked it off and tossed it in the backseat.
“Anything you want to tell me about your summer job?” I said, as though there weren’t a film canister of pot in my front pocket. “I mean, should I be worried if we get pulled over?”
“That’s just Maureen Schell probably wanting me to pick her up some lip balm or avocados, maybe a fresh deck of cards, just in case she feels like a game of solitaire. Last time it was a Lotto ticket. Can you believe that? Maureen Schell playing the Lotto?”
“Maybe it’s a good sign,” I said, relieved we’d finally found a topic. “Maybe she’s raising money to take the old band on tour.”
“What old band?”
“Whatever band she played in when she was rocking her acoustic guitar back in Bolivar.”
“Right,” she said, after pulling up next to a phone booth at the Kum & Go station. “I believe she was a member of the tabernacle choir. Wait a minute while I buy us some time.”
She shifted into park, grabbed a few quarters from the dash, and hopped out. I flipped through her CDs, struck by an uneasy desire upon sighting the two or three albums I could only associate with our make-out sessions before school. I couldn’t figure out if Emily was content to see me, or just playing it cool to avoid a conversation about why she hadn’t called in so long. I played Bob Dylan’s
Blood on the Tracks
. Emily stepped inside and turned the volume up. When we reached the river she followed the signs to I-235 and then I-80 heading back west. I had a feeling she’d already decided on our destination and was having a good time leaving me guessing. I didn’t say anything, even when we were well west of the city, passing exits for Van Meter and Earlham. Again I found myself digging deep for a conversation, which seemed silly once I realized it was her birthday the next day.