The Hour I First Believed

“My aunt’s funeral. They said they could keep the body refrigerated. Postpone the service until I could get back here and—”

He shook his head. “Better this way, Quirky. The last thing you need is stuff hanging over your head at this end. Not with what’s going on out there. Don’t worry. Me and the old ladies’ll give her a good send-off.”

“What if she’s dead?” I said.

He cocked his head, gave me a slight smile. “She is dead, man.”

“I mean Maureen.”

He opened his mouth to answer me, then closed it again. When he finally spoke, it was to ask me what time my plane arrived in Denver.

“Ten fifty-five,” I said. “Provided I get the hell out of Hartford.”

“Ten fifty-five our time?”

“Colorado time,” I said.

He nodded. “How about some nuts? What do you like? Cashews? Peanuts? You like those smoked almonds if they have them?”

I held out my hand. He handed me his phone. “I don’t care if you want them or not,” he mumbled, rising from his chair. “I’m getting you some nuts. Just shut up and put ’em in your pocket.”

I dialed our number. Got what I’d gotten for hours: the four rings, the click of our machine, my voice, the beep.

THE FLIGHT TO CHICAGO WAS uneventfully torturous. The seat next to mine was empty—that was a relief—but it was hell to just sit there, strapped in, waiting for time and distance to pass. I thought about that other night: the worst night of our marriage, when I’d confronted her about Paul Hay, and then hurt her wrist, and she’d gone out on those icy roads and totaled her car. She could have died that night…. Steer toward the skid. She knew that, but she’d panicked, jerked the wheel the other way, and gone skidding toward that tree. “Almost in slow motion,” she’d said later. That’s what flying back felt like: being in the middle of a slow-motion skid, waiting for the crash.

The captain came over the intercom to tell us we’d reached cruising altitude. The flight attendants wheeled down the aisle with the beverage cart. The little TV screens descended. I left the earphones in the seat pocket and sat there, staring at Kramer and Jerry’s moving lips, penguins hopping into and out of icy blue water, a Belgian chocolatier decorating petits fours. “Hey,” I said to a passing flight attendant. “Do these things work?”

“The in-flight phones? Yes, sir.” She pushed the button and the receiver popped free from its holder. “Just follow the instructions.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” someone said. “They gouge you on those calls.” I looked across the aisle. Nodded to the guy who was talking.

“Yeah, well…” I said. I punched in my credit card number, waited. One ring, two, three, four. “Hey, how’s it going? You’ve reached the Quirks. We’re not home right now, but you can leave a message after the beep.”

“Mo, where are you?” I said. “I’m in a plane. I’m coming home.”

I ate Al’s almonds. Looked out the window at nothing. Cross-hatched over the faces in the complimentary magazine. I thought about how fucked-up this was: the person on the plane is the one whose life is supposed to be at risk, not the person who stayed home. I wrote her name, over and over, in the margins: Maureen, Maureen, Maureen…I had never realized how much I loved her. Needed her. How over my own life was going to be, if she was dead.

O’HARE OVERWHELMED ME. I KNEW I had to get to Concourse G, but I couldn’t figure out how, and when people tried to direct me, I watched their mouths move but couldn’t make sense of what they were saying. Finally, on the verge of panic, I approached an airline employee—a black woman with copper-colored hair. “I’m lost…” I babbled. “My wife…a shooting at our school.”

“The one in Colorado that’s been on the news? Lemme see your boarding pass.” She took it from my shaking hand. “Okay, this is Terminal Two. You gots to get to Terminal Three. That’s where Concourse G’s at.”

I burst into tears.

She stared at me for a moment, then shouted over her shoulder.

“Hey, Reggie! I’m going on break now!” She took my hand; hers was rough and plump. “Come on, baby,” she said. “I’ll take you there.”

The waiting area for gate G–16 had a TV. Now CNN was saying the shootings may have been committed by students who belonged to a cult called the Trenchcoat Mafia. I shook my head. Those Trenchcoat Mafia kids had graduated the year before. And anyway, they were ironists, not killers. What the hell was going on? Eric Harris’s and Dylan Klebold’s yearbook photos filled the screen. “Once again, we want to emphasize that these are alleged suspects,” the anchorwoman said. “What we do know is that officers from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office have entered the boys’ homes with search warrants, and it is believed, although not yet verified by the authorities, that the bodies of Klebold and Harris were amongst those in the library. At the very least, they are persons of interest.”

My mind ricocheted. Blackjack Pizza, the after-prom party, Sieg heil!…

I sensed the people around me were staring at me before I knew why. Then I heard moaning and realized it was coming from me.

I DON’T REMEMBER MUCH ABOUT the flight from Chicago to Denver. We landed a little after eleven, and I ran through the airport, ran to my car. Floored it most of the way home.

The house was dark. When I pulled into the driveway, Sophie and Chet began barking frantically. I got the door open, and they jumped on me in lunatic greeting, then bounded past me to the outside. There was dog crap on the living room rug, a puddle of pee on the slate in the front hallway. They hadn’t been let out since morning.

“Maureen?” I called. “Mo?” I took the stairs two at a time. The bed was made. Her little suitcase was packed for the trip to Connecticut. I looked at her jeans, folded on the chair beside our bed, and a chill ran through me. Downstairs, Chet and Sophie were barking to be let back in.

There were eighteen phone messages, half of them from me. Her stepmother, Evelyn, had called, and later, her father. “We’re starting to worry about you, Maureen,” he said. “Give us a call.” As if, suddenly, her safety mattered to him. As if he had never put her at risk….

There was a message from Elise, the secretary at the school clinic. “I guess if you’re not answering, you’re probably still over at Leawood.”

Leawood Elementary School! The TV news had shown footage of evacuated students and staff reuniting with their families there. I threw some food into the dogs’ bowls and grabbed my keys. Elise’s message had come midway through the sequence, which meant she’d left it hours earlier. It was late. Most, if not all, of the kids would have been picked up by now. But maybe, for some reason, Maureen was still there. Or, if not, maybe someone knew where she was. I’d start at Leawood, then drive from hospital to hospital if I had to. Be there, I kept saying. Please be there, Mo. Please be all right.

The eight or nine cars leading up to the school were parked helter skelter, a few on the sidewalk, one abandoned in the middle of the street. Parents must have pulled up, thrown open their car doors, and run for their kids. A cop was posted at the entrance. “Yes, sir, can I help you?”

I blurted that I’d been away, that I was trying to find my wife.

“Are you a parent of one of the Columbine students, sir?”

“I teach there,” I said. “My wife’s one of the school nurses. Do you know if there were shots fired anywhere near the medical clinic?”

He said he’d heard all kinds of rumors about the boys’ movement inside the school, but that that was all they were: rumors. He took my driver’s license and wrote down my information on his clipboard. “It was bedlam here earlier,” he said. “It’s quiet now, though. Too quiet. Looks bad for the families still waiting. There’s eleven or twelve still unaccounted for, and there’s bodies inside the school, so it’s a matter of matching them up. ’Course, some of the kids may show up yet. If you’re sitting there waiting, you gotta hang onto some hope, I guess. You have kids?”

I shook my head.

“Me neither. The wife and I wanted kids, but it just never happened. You can go ahead in. They’re in the gym, all the way down past the showcase. There’s lists posted on the wall.”

“Lists?”

“Of the survivors.”

I walked warily down the hallway, my footsteps slowing as I neared the gym. Let her be here, let her be here. Let her be on that list….

She was seated by herself, cross-legged on a gym mat, a blanket around her shoulders, a pile of Styrofoam coffee cup spirals in front of her. “Hey,” I said. She looked up at me, emotionless for several seconds, as if she didn’t quite recognize me. Then her face contorted. I dropped to my knees and wrapped my arms around her. Rocked her back and forth, back and forth. She was here, not dead, not shot. Her hair smelled smoky, and faintly of gasoline. Her whole body sobbed. She cried herself limp.

“I wrote you a note,” she said. “On the wood inside the cabinet.”

“What cabinet, Mo? I don’t—”

“Velvet’s dead.”

At first, it didn’t register. “Velvet?” Then I remembered: she was going to meet Maureen at school that morning, to talk about reenrolling.

“I went to call you, to see how things were going, and then there was this explosion and the whole library—”

“Oh, Jesus! You were in the library?”