Tough Cookie

Julian opened his backpack and pulled out a foil-wrapped package of his trademark fudge dotted with sun-dried tart cherries. I declined any, but Tom took two pieces before clearing the plates. With a mischievous smile, Julian offered a chunk to Arch. “Hey, buddy, how about a second dessert? Better yet, how’bout I fix a batch of this Christmas fudge for Lettie? I can put in crushed peppermint drops instead of cherries.”

Arch shot him a dark look. “No, thanks.” Lettie was Arch’s girlfriend, or at least he had been “going out with” this lovely, long-legged blond fourteen-year-old—the two never actually went anywhere—at the end of summer. To me, of course, Arch provided no updates on the status of the relationship. My only indications that he had any social life at all at Elk Park Prep were the carefully folded notes I found in his pants pockets when I was emptying them in the laundry room. Fearful that these papers were homework assignments that he would later accuse me of tossing—this had happened—I always unfolded them enough to read the first line. If Arch’s small, vertical handwriting began, This class sucks! then I knew to toss the paper. He was communicating with somebody, anyway. Still, if we needed to plan for an additional Christmas present—Arch was notoriously lastminute on these things—I needed to know.

“So, is Lettie still in the picture?” I asked, noncom-mittally.

“Don’t worry about it, Mom.” Arch’s eyes gleamed behind his glasses as he informed Julian, who now seemed repentant that he’d brought Lettie into the conversation, that he had something to show him. The boys disappeared. I swallowed three aspirin and wondered if there was any chance they could be contemplating Arch’s ninth-grade reading assignment in Elizabethan poetry, or the homemade quantum mechanics experiment he was supposed to devise for his physics class. Probably not.

“Are you all right?” Tom said quietly, once he’d filled the bathtub with soapy water and the dishes were soaking. “You hardly ate a bite.”

The aspirins weren’t kicking in. “No, I’m not all right. But I will be soon. Thanks for asking.” I wiggled my unfeeling fingers, rubbed my rapidly-blackening elbow, then tried and failed to move my neck from side to side. If I hadn’t broken anything, how come everything hurt so much? Tom came over and gave me a healing kiss.

Just before eight o’clock, a state patrolman knocked on our door. Into our kitchen Tom ushered a tall, corpulent man with black hair so short and thin it looked like someone had ground pepper over his scalp. His name was Vance, and he wanted me to write down all I remembered about the accident. I scribbled what I remembered of the blur of events: cars skidding every which way, my inability to see what happened, being hit from behind, skidding, being smacked again and again and again. I’d hit another vehicle, crashed through the guardrail, and sailed down the hill. I begged for information about the truck’s driver. The cop announced glumly that he’d died. My heart ached.

Officer Vance read what I’d written, put down the pad, and tapped the tabletop. “Tell me again what happened on the way up to the tunnel. Before the accident.”

Patiently, I tried to visualize, then articulate, the happenings of those few minutes. The snow had been falling in sheets. Visibility had been wretched. What vehicles I could see were sliding haplessly on the ice. Then something had hit my van. All around me, cars were honking, thudding, spinning out of control. I’d careened down the hill, crashed into the truck, sunk into deep snow. I’d truly believed, I told the officer, that I was going to be buried alive in the white stuff.

As I related my story, neither Tom nor Officer Vance interrupted me. When I’d concluded, Officer Vance mused, “As far as you could see, then, there was a white pickup truck about ten yards in front of you. There was also a vehicle behind you.”

“And one behind that, and one behind that.” I waved my hand in a gesture of ad infinitum. The movement made my elbow howl with pain. “The noise of the crash was like books falling on your head. Thud, thud, thud, thud.”

“But you couldn’t see the cars behind you very well,” the policeman asked, “because of the poor visibility, right? Are you sure you didn’t hear that thud, thud, thud, and then your mind just supplied the image of books falling?”

I frowned and thought back. I knew this cop was trying to get at something. There had been a vehicle directly behind me. And yes, one behind that. That was all I could remember seeing. When I announced this, Tom pursed his lips. Officer Vance didn’t blink.