The Fragile World Read online

  There were dozens of small details to figure out, and several major ones. It was almost thrilling to have a plan, to have a specific goal that was further than a day or two ahead, the way we’d been existing since Kathleen left. I had installed a massive whiteboard in the front entryway, and each night Olivia and I had crossed off our completed chores and added new ones. Buy cereal, take the trash out, pay phone and cable, run sprinkler in backyard. Now I was thinking beyond today, beyond this week.

  I didn’t find a chance to break away until Sunday night. Olivia had insisted on coming along on all the errands I devised—an oil change, a trip to Target for a few travel necessities, a stop at the ATM. This wasn’t that unusual—Olivia didn’t typically like to be left at home, where she was convinced that all sorts of things could go wrong, like a burglar who assumed the house was empty if there wasn’t a car in the driveway, or a carbon monoxide leak that she couldn’t smell. So I had to wait until she started a load of laundry to say “Why don’t I just grab dinner?”

  “Can’t you wait a bit? Twenty minutes?”

  “Well, I was thinking In-and-Out. You know how that drive-thru line always takes forever.”

  Olivia frowned. “I could stop the washer.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said, grabbing my keys before she could jump into action. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  I did go to In-and-Out, and the line was wrapped around the restaurant and through the parking lot, so at least that wasn’t a lie. But while I waited, I made the phone call Olivia absolutely couldn’t overhear. “Pick up, pick up,” I pleaded. It was a long shot; it was Plan A, but there wasn’t a Plan B yet.

  “Yeah?” The voice on the other end was suspicious. One of those conspiracy nuts, Kathleen had always said, back when we’d known him, back when Zach Gaffaney had lived a few blocks away and been married to Marcia, half of a couple we bumped into regularly over the years. Privately, I’d suspected that Kathleen was right.

  “I’m looking for the Zach Gaffaney that used to live in Sacramento?”

  “Who is this?”

  “This is Curtis Kaufman. We used to be part of that neighborhood beautification group, painting over graffiti, that kind of thing.”

  “Okay. I remember you.” There was a long pause. “I don’t live in Sacramento anymore, though. I’m not even married anymore. So I think—I’m probably not the guy you’re looking for.”

  “No, don’t hang up.” I almost dropped the phone, my palm was so slick with sweat. “I remember how we used to have those talks about the government, about our rights—that kind of thing. You’re the guy I’m looking for.”

  “How’d you get this number?” He seemed less suspicious than curious now. This was why I’d remembered Zach Gaffaney, why I’d thought of him almost immediately, when Bill Meyers was still talking to me about how he’d rediscovered his own purpose. I’d stopped listening—all that was required of me was a sporadic nod—and instead remembered a morning I’d spent pulling weeds at a neighborhood park with Zach Gaffaney, who had gone on and on about his gun collection, how he was prepared for just about anything—not just the threat of home invasion or small scale self-defense, but the inevitable failure of a government that was basically controlled by special interests and our streets being overrun by criminals because the government couldn’t afford to keep them locked up. I hadn’t taken him seriously, but Kathleen had. “She seems like such a normal person. He’s a walking time bomb,” she’d said, mimicking some of his rants as soon as we were home.

  Now I told him, “I heard you were living in Winnemucca, working in a casino.” This was true—a few weeks ago, I’d bumped into Marcia at the grocery store, and we’d exchanged casual information about our exes. I’d told her about Kathleen going to Omaha, and she’d been sympathetic. “Oh, Zach?” She’d laughed. “That was all a million years ago. He’s back in Nevada, working at a dumpy casino, living in some shit-hole trailer with only his guns for company.” I didn’t tell this to Zach, nor did I mention that just about anyone was traceable on the internet.

  “Okay,” he said again, guarded. “I’m listening.”

  “Well, I need something, and I figure you could maybe help me out with that.”

  “You need what, exactly?”

  I’d rehearsed this, too, trying for the right balance of vagueness and specificity. Zach Gaffaney was probably the kind of guy who doubted everyone, who suspected the government had wiretapped his trailer.

  So I told him: I was looking for some protection. I know I could find that through other means, but I’d become concerned about the way the government was prying into the lives of average citizens, people like Zach and me. What business was it of theirs how I spent my money, what I had in my home? Didn’t a person have a right to protect himself and his family?

  “I hear you,” Zach said, relaxing. “You have an idea what you want?” He rattled off a short list of options, makes and models and prices, deciding I could be trusted. Truthfully, I wasn’t worried about the government at all—I was worried about keeping my plans secret from a very paranoid sixteen-year-old and her mother. And I had no intention of letting Robert Saenz live for an extra ten days during the mandatory wait period.

  Obviously I wouldn’t be a natural with a gun, and I knew that I could very easily screw the whole thing up if I tried to go with something too advanced. But I’d spent the past two nights researching and was pretty clear on the basics. I told him I wanted a revolver, something snub-nosed—easy to conceal, easy to load and shoot, no serious kickback.

  “It’s never going to get back to you,” I promised him.

  Zach snorted. “It’s not going to be traceable.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  There was a honk behind me, bringing me back to my present reality in the drive-thru line. I’d let a couple car lengths lapse and lurched forward to make up the difference.

  Zach gave me the details, told me not to call again until I was ready, and we hung up. I kept his number in my contacts but deleted it from my outgoing calls, in case Olivia looked.

  And then it was my turn to order. A voice crackled from the intercom, and I replied, “Two cheeseburgers, two fries, two Cokes.”

  I was surprised how normal I sounded, and that the man staring back at me in the rearview mirror looked normal, too.

  olivia

  Dad talked to Mom before me—the first time they’d talked in months, I was pretty sure. Mostly, they used me as a middleman to relay only the most necessary information—reminders of property tax payments, my dental checkups—and left it up to me to decide what else was important. Mostly, I didn’t find it necessary to tell either of them anything; they were adults, I figured, and they could start acting like it at any time.

  Dad opened the door to his office, where he’d been talking in a low voice, and passed me the phone. “Your mom,” he said.

  I took the phone into the kitchen, where I’d been trying to figure out what food might spoil before we got back. Mom was more puzzled than enthusiastic. I didn’t know what to say, especially with Dad pretending not to eavesdrop from the next room. How could I give her the news about Dad and the incident on the roof over the phone? She would freak out—summon a small army of Sacramento connections to pop in on us, maybe, or start driving from Omaha now and meet us somewhere in the middle.

  It was easier to pretend to be hurt than to tell her the truth. “You don’t want to see me?”

  “No, of course I want to see you. Haven’t I been begging you to fly out here for the summer? I just don’t think that now, while you’re still in school...” She didn’t mention Dad, who would obviously be arriving on her doorstep, too. Not once, in all her pestering about how much I would love Omaha had she suggested, Why don’t you and Dad just hop in the car and drive out here? His name hadn’t come up in connection with the idea, pe
riod.

  “Mom, come on. You know I can’t get on a plane, right?”

  “Liv, of course you can.” Mom sighed, but let it go. “Look, you understand. I’m just worried. I mean, what about school? It’s your junior year. Don’t you have a million projects and things to finish?”

  “Yeah, but it’s okay. We’re basically done, and I can finish the rest on independent study.”

  “Please, Liv,” Mom said, her voice low. She probably didn’t want any of her colleagues to overhear. “Tell me what’s really going on.”

  But I didn’t have a name for what was going on. I was worried in general, but until Kara had found me in the girls’ bathroom, and until I’d seen Dad on the roof, looking vacant and dazed, I hadn’t focused my worries on anything specific. My fears had been as random as nuclear attacks one minute and power tools the next, things I’d dutifully listed in my Fear Journal.

  Mom wasn’t stupid—even from a thousand miles away, she could probably sense the tightening in my throat, the strange breathing sounds that signaled I was about to start bawling uncontrollably. “Liv,” she pleaded.

  I snorted back my tears and forced myself to sound normal. “We’ll be there soon, and then I’ll tell you everything.”

  Now she was crying, or close to it. “I’m going to worry about you every second until you’re here.”

  I was grateful for the chance to make her laugh, even if it didn’t do much to cheer me up. “You leave the worrying to me, Mom. That’s my job.”

  Dad raised an eyebrow curiously when I returned his phone, but didn’t ask any questions. I stood in the doorway of his office and wondered if I had made a big mistake, or if the big mistake was still to come. He’d been organizing his desk, and his trash can was overflowing with papers. I looked closer and saw lesson plans, handouts and student tests, as if he’d just swept the whole mess into the can.

  “You owe me,” I said.

  “I know,” he replied, not meeting my eyes.

  In a few days the remaining Kaufmans were going to be together again, but I couldn’t sort out exactly how I felt about that. When Mom visited every summer, it had been beyond strange to have her ring our doorbell and wait politely to be let in, like a guest, like a person who’d never lived in our house at all. Before she arrived, Dad and I spent some serious time cleaning. Without discussing it, we made sure to rearrange anything we’d moved while she was gone, so that it looked like the exact same house she’d left, the same stacks of magazines we didn’t read on the coffee table, the uncomfortable throw pillows back on the couch. It was as if we’d been preserving the house in her honor, just like we’d done with Daniel’s room, still intact behind his closed door. During her visit, Mom tiptoed around our lives, barely leaving a trace of her existence—no smear of toothpaste in the bathroom sink, no plate with crumbs on the kitchen counter. She and Dad had been polite with each other, like houseguests at a B and B. Dad slept on the couch while she was there, waking with strange fabric impressions on his skin and a sore back, but he cleared out during the day, always with an excuse that felt contrived, like he just had to go look for a new set of solar lights at that exact moment. After she left, no matter how good it had felt to just be with her, the whole house let out a sigh of relief. The couch inched its way closer to the TV, the mail stacked up and a pile of laundry grew in the middle of the upstairs hallway.

  In Omaha, Dad and I would be the guests. It would be our turn to tiptoe around Mom’s life, around her creations, her wood shavings and cans of paint and varnish. She was living in the house she’d grown up in, renovating it room by room in whatever spare time she had when she wasn’t at the store. In Omaha, she would have the advantage; we would be the ones afraid to leave a mess lying around.

  Or maybe it would be different. Maybe I could open up to her the way I hadn’t done on her visits or in our dozens of phone conversations. I’d have to tell her what happened with Dad, but there were secrets of my own I’d been keeping, too.

  The few people at school who knew about my mom leaving couldn’t understand how I didn’t absolutely hate her. You mean you still talk to her? Even after she walked out of your life? That’s messed up!

  No, I didn’t hate her—but at the same time, I did. I’d never really been able to sort out my feelings for Mom. I’d been shocked when she actually left, and felt guilty as hell that I hadn’t left with her. I really, honestly hoped she was happier where she was, but I was afraid of that, too—it proved that she didn’t need Dad or me.

  That whole weekend—one of the longest weekends of my life, it seemed—I packed and unpacked and repacked and watched Dad do the same. I scribbled frantically in my journal. I watched Dad as if he were a two-year-old playing with matches. When he ran out to pick up dinner, I sorted through the papers on his desk, not sure what I was looking for.

  And I realized I couldn’t wait for us all to be together—good, bad or ugly.

  Four more days.

  curtis

  On Monday, I gave up the pretense of sleep at four, switched on the light, and took inventory. This would be the last time I was ever in this bed, the last time I walked past Daniel’s bedroom door, stopping to peek inside in case...in case. My last shower in our quirky claw-footed tub with its complicated system of curtains; my last cup of coffee in the kitchen, sipped while staring out the window.

  Olivia and I had each packed a single suitcase, but in the end we started tossing other things into the backseat. Pillows, winter coats, CDs, random snacks from the pantry.

  “You want to check all the windows?” I asked. As soon as I heard Olivia’s feet on the stairs, I took the box from the top of the mantel and carried it to the car. Daniel’s cremains. It didn’t feel right to shove the box into my suitcase, where it bulged like a rectangular tumor, but it didn’t feel right to leave him behind, either.

  Olivia was waiting on the porch, scribbling in her Fear Journal.

  I could stop this right now, I thought. We could unpack the car and go back to our lives—a staycation in our own home. Or we could head south, find a sandy beach. Or north, to the sort of tall trees that made a person realize he was really nothing, just a speck in the world.

  But I wouldn’t stop it now. I couldn’t. Robert Saenz was out there. He was a free man who didn’t deserve his freedom, and it was my duty—my right—to take that away from him.

  Olivia stood, tucking a pen into her journal. “Let’s take a picture,” she said, pulling out her cell phone. “You know, photographic evidence of our journey.”

  We leaned against the Explorer, and I rested my arm on Olivia’s bony shoulders. She angled her phone and tapped the screen. “You blinked,” she accused, snapping a second shot. I tried to smile, but I was remembering our other family pictures, back when there were four of us. Or the picture Daniel had been carrying in his wallet: The Fam.

  It was hard to look at our house as we pulled out of the driveway. This was our life, I thought. Was.

  Now I was eager to leave it behind.

  Since the night Daniel died, it was as if I’d been in a fog, one of those thick Central Valley fogs that descended without warning, making it difficult to see the house across the street, or the stop sign on the corner. By the time we left the congestion of Sacramento, easing our way onto I-80, mountain-bound, I felt the fog lifting. I kept this thought to myself; Olivia loved to mock clichés, and surely she would have seen that statement as sentiment, as a maxim for something so conventional it might not even be true.

  But that’s what I felt, giving the Explorer a bit more gas. In the foothills, the road opened up, the trees became taller and more closely, naturally spaced. With the fog lifted, I was Curtis Kaufman again.

  There had been mistakes, but I had a chance to set things right.

  That night, after we checked into the hotel in Winnemucca, I would be meeting Zach
Gaffaney. In a few days, I would be leaving Olivia in Omaha. By next weekend, I would be in Oberlin.

  And soon after that, Robert Saenz would be dead.

  olivia

  Once we were actually on the road, I could hardly sit still. I’d never looked so carefully at my own city before—the city I was born in and had lived in my entire life. I craned my neck as we passed through town, the skyline in the distance, the businesses and buildings and billboards and street signs, the leafy trees wavering in a slight breeze. When we passed homes, I wondered who lived there and what they were doing right at this very second. Probably they were at work or school, doing the normal things that normal people did. I dared myself not to close my eyes as we passed over one of the smaller tributaries of the Sacramento River.

  Goodbye, river. Goodbye, city.

  Dad asked, “You’re not going to fidget around like that for two thousand miles, are you?”

  “That’s how far it is?”

  “Sacramento to Omaha is one thousand, five hundred eighty-two miles.”

  “So, barely nothing.”

  Dad grinned, flipped the dial on the radio and found Aerosmith, a band that proved strangely generation-bending. “How are you doing so far? Everything’s okay?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Sure. What in the world do I have to be afraid of?”

  Only everything.

  But as the traffic thinned and I sat with my Fear Journal open on my lap, I found that I wasn’t that afraid, after all. Sure, the road through the foothills was curvy, with long climbs and sudden descents, lined with the sort of trees that looked as if they could take out a small village when they finally went, and I couldn’t see myself through to our destination—but somehow, what we were doing was liberating. Instead of sitting through the daily tedium of American History/Statistics/PE/Spanish/Chemistry/English, I was doing something brave and unexpected. I might have been a character in a movie, minus the expansive “open road” music that usually accompanied such scenes. Maybe my lack of fear was related to our spontaneous (poor) planning—if I didn’t know what was ahead of us, I could only form very general fears: large stretches of uninhabited spaces, winding roads, mountains.