No Hiding in Boise Read online

“He’s in a coma,” I say, purposefully blunt, the way I was with that girl, that bartender, Tessa. It’s like I want to hurt people with this news, shock them into pitying me. Then I remember how I hate pity and regret my tone.

  “Wow,” he says. “I’m sorry. Wow.”

  That’s all he says. I wait for more but get impatient.

  “So he won’t be at work,” I say. “Obviously.”

  “Of course, right, of course,” he says. “I’ll have Nancy give you a call. She’s our HR person. Short-term disability benefits, all that.”

  Disability benefits—something else I hadn’t thought of. I am strangely grateful to Nathan in this moment, appreciative of his lack of emotion, his ability to focus on logistics.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  Evie clings to me like a koala to a eucalyptus tree when we get to day care. She’s been going to day care since she was a few months old, when my maternity leave ended. She likes it, generally, which alleviates my maternal guilt. It’s only recently that she’s developed separation anxiety, clinging to me at drop-off time, crying when I pry her off me and sit her on the floor of the playroom.

  “Mama will miss you too,” I say as she begins her dramatic display of despair.

  I give her a hug.

  “I’ll pick you up after work,” I tell her.

  “Evie, did you hear that? Mama is picking you up today,” the teacher, Ms. Janie, says to her, exaggerated excitement all over her face.

  Usually, Cale picks up Evie, my attempt at equity—I drop off, he picks up. So much of the caretaking has been lopsided, me doing most of everything, though Cale frequently denied this. “I’d say we’re fifty-fifty parents,” he said a few months ago, a statement that floored me. I couldn’t understand how he would believe this, given the objective list of tasks with my name next to them. Then it occurred to me that his small parenting role felt huge to him, huge enough for him to see our efforts as equal.

  “Is Dad out of town?” Ms. Janie asks me. She is not prying; she is just making conversation.

  “Um, kind of,” I say.

  Ms. Janie gives me a curious look, but then she turns her attention to one of the kids throwing a wood train against the wall. Evie, also distracted by this show of disobedience, abruptly leaves my side, with just a flick of the wrist to say “bye.”

  I slip out of the room and then out of the school, thinking about how I’ll need to tell Ms. Janie about Cale. She will have to know. I can keep this to myself for only so long.

  WHEN I GET to work, my first stop is the company kitchen to get a cup of coffee. Two of the art directors are at the machine and just happen to be talking about the shooting.

  “I’ve been to that bar,” one of them, Scott, says. “It was one of our stops at my buddy’s bachelor party a few years back.”

  Scott and I have both worked at Madison & Brightly for nearly ten years, but all I know about him on a personal level is that he plays in an adult soccer league that requires him to leave work early on Thursdays.

  “Me too, man,” the other one says. I can’t remember his name; he just started a few weeks ago.

  I decide to try out my truth.

  “My husband was there,” I say.

  They don’t seem to realize I am talking to them, contributing to their conversation.

  “My husband was there,” I say again, a bit louder.

  They both turn to look now.

  “At the bar?” Scott says.

  “Yes. He was shot,” I say.

  Their jaws literally drop.

  “Holy shit,” the not-Scott guy says. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s in the hospital,” I say.

  They wait for me to say more, but I don’t want to get into the details of the coma, the unlikelihood of Cale being okay.

  I go about getting my coffee, feeling their eyes boring into me.

  “I hope he gets better soon,” Scott says.

  “Thanks,” I mutter.

  I can still feel their eyes on me, even as I turn around and walk away.

  Because ad agencies are like high school campuses, everyone will know about Cale within the next hour. I close the door to my office and await the knocks.

  My boss, Raquel—an all-business woman who is constantly on the brink of divorce with her husband because she refuses to work fewer than eighty hours a week—is the first to knock. She doesn’t really knock, though; she taps the door a couple times, like as a warning, then barges in.

  “Ang, are you kidding me? I just heard. What the hell are you doing here?”

  Raquel is what I call a hard blinker; she has this nervous tic that involves blinking so hard and fast that her nose scrunches. She has lines across the bridge of her nose from all the scrunching—bunny lines, they call them, something I know from years of working on the Dermatica Skincare account.

  “I wanted to come in,” I say. “Keep up some kind of normalcy.”

  “And I thought I was a workaholic,” she says.

  You are, I want to say.

  “I just don’t want to spend all day sitting at the hospital or at home, feeling helpless. That seems like torture,” I tell her.

  She blinks.

  “I guess I understand,” she says. “Well, just know I want you to take it easy. Only participate in projects as you see fit. You got it?”

  “Understood,” I tell her. “Thank you.”

  She turns to leave, then turns back, abruptly, as if her central processing unit has set off an alarm.

  “And I hope he’s okay,” she says, stiff and unnatural. This is her attempt to “be human.” One of my coworkers, Dave, has a theory that Raquel is a robot programmed by aliens wanting to learn about human behavior. It’s a valid theory.

  “Thanks, Raquel,” I say. “I hope so too.”

  “It’s just terrible, what happened.”

  The furrow of her brows that accompanies her words translates to the most emotion I’ve ever seen from this woman.

  She closes the door behind her, but that doesn’t stop the parade of well-wishers. They are mostly women; men, I’ve learned, are not that interested in people’s personal lives.

  When I tell the story, about how Cale was at the bar that night, nearly everyone says, “You weren’t with him?” And when I say no, they say some version of “Thank god,” but I can see the questioning in their eyes. I know they will convene in someone’s office and gossip. They will consider how I’ve come to work, just days after this tragedy, and conclude that my marriage was in trouble. They will ask the same thing Sahana did—was he having an affair? All of this makes me the center of attention I don’t want. I’ve never liked having all eyes on me, which is why Cale and I didn’t have an aisle for me to walk down when we got married; we just stood together, holding hands, promising for better or worse, having no idea what “worse” could entail.

  I try to ignore the buzz of the office and just sit at my desk, with my door closed, reading through emails. I’m a director of copy, meaning I write brochures and websites and whatever else for our various clients and I supervise a team of writers beneath me. Most of my energy is spent on the Dermatica account. They are about to launch a new product for hyperpigmentation (a fancy name for sunspots). I figure writing headlines like “It’s Glow Time!” is a good way to get my mind off everything else. It’s simple enough, or it should be. But as I sit, staring at my computer screen, I can’t even bring myself to review a single job brief.

  By lunchtime, I haven’t done any actual work, but I figure that’s fine. Raquel said to take it easy. I take my brown-bag lunch from the kitchen fridge, keeping my head down to avoid any eye contact, then head to my car to drive to the hospital. This is my routine now. I have no idea how long this will be my routine. I have no idea what my routine will be when this one is obsolete.

  WHEN I GET to Cale’s room, Nurse Nicole is there.

  “Hi,” she says with her warm, sympathetic smile. I wonder if she also thinks Dr. Harris is an asshole.

>   “How’s he doing?” I ask.

  He looks the same—his head bandaged, his face swollen, tubes everywhere.

  “He’s stable. His ICP spiked a bit overnight, but it’s back down around ten now,” she says.

  I don’t know what this means, exactly, but I can tell it’s good. Or, at least, not bad.

  “I was just going to remove his gauze to adjust his brain wave monitors,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say, “okay.”

  I watch as she removes the gauze carefully. There are so many layers of it. When she is done, Cale’s head is revealed. It’s cartoonishly large, swollen, and partially shaved in a haphazard pattern. I wonder why they didn’t just shave the whole thing. Then I remember that aesthetics is not their concern.

  My eyes well up looking at him there, with his head exposed. I don’t know what it is; he just looks so vulnerable, so bare.

  Nurse Nicole puts her hand on my shoulder.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I tell her.

  “You don’t? Your husband is in a coma,” she says. I appreciate her attempt at a light joke. It means she thinks I’m capable of hearing such a thing.

  “It’s just weird seeing his head,” I say.

  “I know. Lots of loved ones say that.”

  She seems too young to have encountered “lots of loved ones” in situations similar to mine.

  As she starts adjusting the monitors, Dr. Asshole walks in with his arrogant swagger.

  “Oh, hello,” he says when he sees me.

  I keep my eyes on Nurse Nicole as she adjusts the wires.

  “Well, as you can see, his brain is active,” he says, nodding toward the wires.

  I don’t want to admit that, actually, I can’t see that. I have no idea what anything means.

  “He’s showing brain activity,” Nurse Nicole translates. “That’s a good thing.”

  She gives me a wink.

  “If his ICP continues to lower, we’ll see about turning off the sedation medications in a few days.”

  “And then he’ll wake up?”

  He looks at me like Haven’t we been over this?

  “We will have to see,” he says.

  He looks down at the pager affixed to the waistband of his pants. Then he mutters something under his breath and leaves.

  “He’s not exactly warm and fuzzy,” I say to Nurse Nicole.

  She laughs. “He’s not. But he’s an amazing doctor.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “Between you and me,” I say, “what should I expect? With Cale?”

  She takes a roll of gauze and starts rewrapping Cale’s head.

  “It’s so hard to say. I know you want answers …”

  I go to Cale, touch his hand. I don’t know why, but it’s something I need to do whenever I see him, to confirm its warmth, to confirm his life.

  “I know you can’t give me answers,” I tell her. “I’ll settle for information.”

  She exhales, as if preparing for a long speech.

  “Well, the hope is that the pressure in his brain lowers and we can take him off the sedation medications, like Dr. Harris said,” Nurse Nicole says. “Then we wait and see. Brain injuries are like that. Sometimes it’s impossible to know the real damage until the patient wakes up. It’s all kind of a mystery, even to us.”

  This is not what anyone visiting a loved one in a hospital wants to hear.

  “Okay,” I say. “Thank you for that.”

  She smiles. “I have to make some rounds, but I’ll be back in a bit if you have more questions.”

  I just nod, not wanting to tell her I have to get back to work, not wanting to feel her judgment.

  As she’s walking out, she turns.

  “Oh!” she says, one finger in the air. “I keep forgetting. We have some of his things here if you want them.”

  She walks to a small table near his bed and retrieves a clear plastic bag, gives it to me. It contains Cale’s keys, his phone, his wallet. It’s strange to see them there—these familiar possessions of my husband’s.

  “Oh, right, of course,” I say, feeling stupid for not asking about them sooner. Most wives probably ask. “Thank you.”

  She leaves, and I open the bag and take out his wallet. There are his credit cards, a couple twenty-dollar bills, a few one-dollar bills. This wallet has changed so many hands and nobody has touched his money; there may be hope for humanity yet.

  There is nothing else of note in his wallet—his driver’s license, a health insurance card, the “In case of emergency” card they used to contact me. I take out his phone. I press the “home” button to turn it on, but nothing happens. I figure it’s dead, out of battery. I fish around in my purse for the spare charging cord I take with me everywhere, affix it to the phone, and plug the other end into the wall. The phone comes to life and, within a few minutes, it has enough power to turn on.

  The photo on the screen is from a backpacking trip in the Sawtooth Mountains, a trip we took before Evie, before we even moved in together. I remember Cale taking the picture, kneeling down to get the crystal-blue water of the lake with the snowcapped mountains behind it.

  I touch the home screen to open the phone. I’m holding my breath. I know the truth of Cale could be on this phone. Everything about everyone is on their phones. I prepare myself to see texts with the woman he was seeing, or a dating app recently used, or a Google search history revealing someone completely different from the man I married.

  The phone doesn’t open though. It’s locked. Of course.

  I’m prompted to enter a six-digit passcode.

  I don’t know Cale’s passcode. He’s never shared it with me. We’ve never had reason to share passcodes with each other. But if I know Cale—and I have to wonder at this point if I do—I know his passcode would be simple, easy to remember.

  I try his birthday.

  031574.

  And it opens right up.

  TESSA

  I’VE CHANGED OUTFITS THREE times, finally settling on a maxi dress I bought when Ryan and I went to San Diego last summer. It’s black with embroidered pink flowers. Ryan catches me analyzing myself in the mirror.

  “You look nice,” he says.

  As if we’re going on a date.

  “I don’t know what to wear to a vigil,” I tell him.

  Not that it really matters, of course. I am obsessing about my outfit in lieu of obsessing about being in public with hundreds of unpredictable human beings.

  “You sure you don’t want me to go?” he asks.

  “I’m sure,” I tell him.

  If I get there and freak out, I don’t want him to see it. He’s already worried about me, I can tell. I didn’t tell him about visiting the hospital the other day, about how jittery I was, about talking with Angie. I met him for lunch after, got there early so I could choose a booth in a back that felt safe, and I had every intention of telling him. But I just … didn’t.

  I wonder if Angie will be at the vigil. I was tempted to text her, but I didn’t. We are not friends. I have to remember this. We are people whose association is based upon this horrible, strange tragedy.

  “Where is it?” he asks.

  “In front of the capitol building,” I tell him.

  He wraps his arms around my middle. “I love you,” he says.

  I turn around, look in his eyes. “Thank you for that.”

  “We’ll get through this,” he says. “You’re strong.”

  I don’t feel strong though. I feel anything but.

  I GET THERE around seven forty-five. I anticipated needing time to find a place to park, but I didn’t anticipate the crowd to be as big as it is. My heart races as I drive through the downtown streets. I find a spot on Sixth Street and sit in my car a moment, eyes closed, taking deep breaths.

  When I start my walk, I feel like I’m at a rally or a music festival; the energy is more electric than somber. Some people are carrying signs that read Disarm Hate and Protect People
, Not Guns. A few posters-on-sticks have photos of victims, faces I’ve come to know.

  It’s loud. I feel a little dizzy. I wonder if I should go back to my car.

  “Tess?” a man’s voice shouts.

  I flinch, stop, look around.

  “Tess!” he shouts again.

  That’s when I spot him—Ray, the Ray. Of Ray’s Bar. He’s sixty-something but has the life story of someone who’s lived a few hundred years. Monica, the woman he hired to manage the bar (he retired from official management a few years ago, though he still comes in frequently), calls him the Most Interesting Man in the World. He played professional baseball (minor leagues, but still), served in Vietnam, lost a thumb and two fingers, got involved with the Guadalajara drug cartel in the ’80s (supposedly), was friends with James Hetfield (lead singer of Metallica), and supposedly had a brief relationship with a Playboy bunny in the ’90s (though “relationship” may be an embellishment). These days, it’s hard to believe any of that is true. He’s a grandfather, and looks like one. The only remnant of his past is a straggly gray ponytail at the nape of his neck.

  “Ray,” I say.

  Ray wasn’t at the bar the night of the shooting. Monica was managing that night, though she’d been out front, having a smoke, when the shooting began. Because she’d sent me all those texts while I was in the storage closet, she was the first person I texted when my fingers stopped shaking.

  Ray is with a group of people, but he tells them to go on ahead.

  “I was just asking Monica about you,” he says.

  Monica has been texting every day, just to check in. I don’t think I even responded to her last “How are you?” text. It’s not like Monica and I were close before the shooting. I realize we now share this thing between us, and we always will, but the fact remains that I haven’t even talked to my mom about what happened yet.

  “Yeah, it’s been a strange few days,” I say.

  “To say the least.”

  He tilts his head, attempting to make eye contact, but I keep staring at my feet, at the polish chipping on my toenails. I close my eyes to try to stop the dizziness, but that just makes it worse.

  “I’m guessing you heard about Dan,” he says.

  I nod.