Strange but True (29 page)

Finally he forces himself to stop thinking about the last chapter in Anne Sexton's story and all the related tangents to his own. Philip reaches up and presses his thumb against the button of the remote control. Above him, the belted contraption lets out a cough then a low rumbling begins. The door lifts and sunlight streams inside. It comes gradually, like a time-lapse of daybreak, until the entire garage is filled with light.

He starts the engine, shifts the car into reverse, and backs into the driveway. He pulls onto Turnber Lane, adjusting and readjusting his position in the seat as he tries to get used to working the pedals with his left foot. It is not unlike attempting to write with his opposite hand. Things go relatively smoothly until he encounters the first stop sign on the corner. Philip presses down on the brake with much more force than he intends to, and the Mercedes bucks and skids to a sudden stop. His body jerks forward into the steering wheel, then slams back into his seat. He looks around to be sure no one is watching. As usual, the lawns and sidewalks in front of the large houses in this neighborhood are deserted. For a fleeting moment, he considers simply turning around and going home. Making another pot of coffee. Switching on the TV. Opening his book to the very beginning, since that's just about the only section he has left. But he has come this far, and there is still the prospect of his mother unleashing one of her trademark tirades on Melissa right now. So, however clumsily, Philip puts his foot to the gas pedal and keeps going.

As he heads across town, moving well below the speed limit, the steering wheel feels too large in his hands. The tires seem to sway the slightest bit beneath him. The Mercedes is only a 1979 model, but it feels like a relic, especially compared to his mother's Lexus. He has ridden in her car quite a bit these last four weeks as she begrudgingly shuttled him back and forth to Doctor Kulvilkin's office, repeating ad nauseam that she didn't like him, all because his name sounded like you know who's.

At the intersection of Matson Ford and Unkman Avenue, Philip makes the same mistake and puts too much pressure on the brakes. The car bucks to a quick stop again, and after he flies forward into the steering wheel then back in his seat, he decides to put on his seat belt. As he does, Philip looks in the rearview mirror to make sure the driver in the car behind him isn't suffering from whiplash or giving him the finger. That's when he notices a police car, two vehicles back, behind a station wagon and a minivan.

“Shit,” he says as all that coffee he consumed splashes around his stomach.

The light turns green. If Philip wants to take the most direct route, he should hang a right onto Unkman. But the sight of the police car has him nervous about messing up the turn, so he keeps going straight. This proves to be a mistake. The station wagon and minivan quickly weed themselves out, turning off one after another, until the cop car is directly behind him. Philip stares ahead and keeps going well past any direct route to Melissa's house. When he finally reaches the intersection of Matson Ford and King of Prussia Road, he works up the courage and signals, then presses his foot to the brake as gently as possible. He is so careful not to apply too much pressure that he ends up taking the turn too fast. The police officer turns too.

“Shit,” Philip says again.

No lights come on and there is no signal for Philip to pull over, so he keeps driving. He cuts onto Blatts Farm Hill, doing his absolute best to navigate the hills and curves of this windy road. As he passes the stretch where his brother's accident occurred, Philip doesn't even glance out the window to see if that stump is still there or if the town finally had it ripped from the ground and taken away. Instead, he keeps his eyes focused straight ahead. When he arrives at Monk's Hill Road, Melissa's Corolla is parked up ahead; his mother's Lexus is nowhere. Since the only driveway has a red truck parked in it, Philip signals and pulls to one side behind Melissa's car, hoping the police officer will keep going. No such luck. The lights begin flashing. The car comes to a stop directly behind him.

“Shit,” he says a third time.

As he waits for the officer to get out and come to his window, Philip releases a breath and glances over at Melissa's small house with the number 32 on the door. Beside her place is a slightly bigger house. And there in the back, at the edge of the woods, Philip notices a third. Together, they remind him of those roadside motel cabins he remembers seeing on their trip to Cape Cod with his grandparents so many years ago. He and Ronnie had begged to stay in one of those cabins instead of the inn, but his grandmother argued that they were too depressing. At the time they couldn't understand what she meant, but now he gets it. When Philip looks in the side-view mirror, he sees the officer—a stocky black woman with aviator sunglasses—coming toward him. He rolls down the window and turns his head so that he is eye level with her swollen belly when she reaches the car. She's pregnant, Philip realizes.

“Did I do something wrong, officer?” he asks, mustering his most innocent voice.

She lowers her sunglasses to the tip of her nose and tilts her long neck to one side in order to look at his crutch in the backseat. Then she leans forward to get a view of his broken leg stretched to passenger-side floor. “Driver's license and registration, please.”

Philip hands her his license immediately. But it takes some serious stretching to get into the glove compartment. When he finally manages it, he pulls out an envelope and flips through the forms inside. “I'm not sure which one it is,” he says.

“The yellow one,” she tells him in a brusque, all-business tone.

Philip hands her the paper. As she stares down at it, he puts on that innocent, friendly voice again and says, “Just like
Fargo
, huh?”

The officer looks up at him over her sunglasses. “Excuse me?”

“You're pregnant. Just like that movie with the pregnant cop. It was on cable this morning. I watched some of it.”

Her brown eyes stay fixed on him an extended moment. Finally, she says, “We've got a number of problems here, sir. First, you've been driving erratically ever since I spotted you back on Matson Ford. Second, your license expired two years ago. And third, probably your biggest offense of all, I'm not pregnant.”

Philip's eyes drop to her belly again. “Shit,” he says for the final time today.

“That's right. Now, why don't you tell me what someone in your condition is doing operating a vehicle when it looks to me like you should be convalescing in bed?”

He knows it is completely shameless of him, but Philip decides to play the pity card in a last-ditch effort to dig himself out of this mess. “I'm sorry,” he tells her. “It's just that this is my brother's old car. He died about five years ago in an accident back on Blatts Farm Hill.” Philip watches her face for some sign of recognition or softening but it stays as cold and blank as ever. He continues, “I'm home for the first time in years because I fell from a fourth-floor fire escape in New York City.” Still no reaction. “Anyway, I guess I found myself missing my brother. I thought being in this car again would make me feel closer to him.”

“And you couldn't feel closer to him parked in your driveway?”

Philip doesn't know what to say to that, and since she doesn't seem willing to join his pity party, he tells her, “No. I couldn't”

“Why did you pull over just now?”

He glances at Melissa's motel cabin of a house and the two others clustered nearby, then at the cop's stern face again. “My brother's old girlfriend lives here. She was in the accident with him. I was coming by to see her.”

The officer lifts her neck and squints at the three houses. Philip finds himself peeking over at her large stomach, wondering how he could have possibly made such a stupid mistake, when she asks, “Isn't this Bill Erwin's place?”

“Who?”

“Bill Erwin.”

“I don't think so.”

She is quiet as she continues squinting at the cottages.

“Unless he lives in one of those others,” Philip adds.

He waits for her to look back at him, but she keeps her eyes on those ramshackle houses, so different from the others here in Radnor. Finally, she stops staring and turns her attention to Philip once more. “Look. I can't let you drive like this. Do you think whoever you said you're coming to visit can give you a ride home afterward?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“You answered that question awfully fast. I just hope you are telling me the truth, because if I catch you driving, I'm not going to be so nice next time.”

Philip isn't aware that she is being so nice
this
time. “I promise,” he says, wondering where his mother could possibly be if her car is not here. “I'll be sure to get a ride.”

When she sticks out his license and the registration, he lifts his hand through the window to retrieve them. But she doesn't let go right away. Once she has his attention, the officer looks him squarely in the eyes and says, “Let me give you two pieces of advice, Mr. Chase. Number one: get your license renewed. Number two: never, as long as you live, ask or imply that a woman is pregnant. I don't care if she's in labor and you can see the baby's head peeking out between her legs, the rule is: Do. Not. Ask. Get it?”

“Got it.”

“Good.”

With that, she releases the license and registration and walks back to her car. Philip returns the yellow paper to the envelope and tosses it on the seat. Before making another move, he waits for her to drive away, but she sits inside her car a while, looking as though she is doing some sort of paperwork as those lights on her roof continue flashing. He glances over at the houses again, surprised that neither Melissa nor her neighbors have come to their doors to see what it going on. At long last, the officer turns off her lights and drives away down the road. Philip gives a friendly wave as she goes, but she does not wave back.

Once her car is out of sight, he runs his hand along the rim of his turtleneck, feeling the wound beneath. According to Dr. Kulvilkin's orders, Philip is supposed to put the bandages back on every morning after letting the wound breathe all night. But he is so tired of dealing with ointments and gauze and medical tape that he didn't bother today. As best he can, Philip tries to put his faux pas with the police officer out of his mind so he can concentrate on what to do next. If his mother isn't here, he doesn't particularly want to go to the door. But he can't drive home, now that old Jelly Belly is likely to be waiting around every turn. He takes out his cell and calls his mother's number again. It goes straight to voice mail. He tries her at home too. The machine picks up. Since there doesn't seem to be any other alternative, Philip surrenders to the moment and makes up his mind to knock on Melissa's door. Who knows? Maybe she will tell him that his mother has already come and gone. After all, it has been almost an hour since she called, and it's not like they would have passed each other on the roads, seeing as he traveled the most indirect route possible.

Outside the car, the air smells of burning wood. A squawking sound comes from the trees. When Philip gets a firm footing on the ground, he looks up to see a flock of large black birds perched in the bare branches above him. Over the years, while cleaning that nasty mynah bird's cage in New York, Philip had been pecked in the face no less than six times—so much for facing his fears as Donnelly advised. If Philip had a slight phobia of birds to begin with, those experiences leave him filled with terror whenever he comes remotely close to the creatures. This time is no exception.

Philip looks away from those demons in the trees and retrieves his crutch from the backseat. He maneuvers up the shoveled walkway as quickly as possible while paying careful attention not to slip. When he reaches the cement stoop, he knocks on the metal storm door and waits for Melissa to open up. The birds stop squawking, and the yard grows silent except for a steady snapping sound that Philip can't identify. He stares over at the neighboring house, just forty or fifty feet away. On the front door, there is a quilted decoration with pinecones and ribbons below the word
Welcome
. The place doesn't appear the least bit welcoming, though. All the curtains are drawn, and the only sign of life is a trail of white smoke rising out of the stone chimney. Philip looks more closely at the third house by the edge of woods. The roof is sagging so much that he would not be surprised if it collapsed from the weight of the snow before his eyes. Every one of the windows is covered with plastic, which rustles in the wind—the source of the snapping, he realizes.

Not a single sound has come from inside Melissa's house. Philip knocks again, harder this time. He figures he'll give it another minute then try her neighbor and ask if anyone has seen a green Lexus pull up in the last hour. But then he hears footsteps and the creak of floorboards behind the door. Melissa's muffled voice says, “Just a second.”

A moment later, she opens up. Philip peers through the smudged glass of the storm door at her scar-ridden face and long, greasy hair. She is wearing an oversize, wrinkled white button-down and has removed the silver studs and hoops from her ears so that there is nothing but a cluster of small holes dotting her lobes. Her eyes look red from crying. Before he can even get out a hello, Melissa says, “I knew you would come. I knew you would change your mind.”

He is about to tell her that he has not changed his mind at all when he looks at the odd, close-lipped smile on her face and realizes what sort of response that is likely to bring about. The fact is, he is just too fatigued to handle that sort of discussion right now. So he allows her to believe whatever she wants for the time being, as he skips over her comment and asks, “Missy, by any chance has my mother come by here?”

Melissa opens her mouth to answer but is distracted by something behind him. Her gaze shifts over his shoulder. Philip turns, expecting that he might see his mother's Lexus pulling up, but nothing is there. Only those birds watching from the trees.