Peter Leonard - Quiver

Kate was standing at the island counter, eyes swollen from crying, makeup smeared across one of her cheeks, staring at the food: platters of cold cuts and bowls of potato salad, plates of cookies, assorted cheeses and fresh fruit. Owen’s obituary, half a page in the Detroit Free Press, was folded open next to the sink. A line under his photograph said, “Owen McCall, age 49, October 11, 2006.”

Everybody had paid their respects and taken off, and now she felt exhausted, drained. She poured a glass of chardonnay and lit a cigarette. She was numb, her mind a blur, still trying to come to grips with what had happened.

Luke entered the kitchen, walked past her, detached, expressionless, the same zombie trance he’d been in since the accident. He opened the refrigerator and grabbed a Gatorade, purple liquid in a plastic bottle called Riptide Rush.

Kate said, “Come here.” She took a couple steps and wrapped her arms around him. “I know you’re hurting. I am, too.” She could feel Luke, rigid in her embrace.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She could see tears in his eyes before he looked down, staring at the floor.

“You can’t blame yourself. It was an accident.”

Luke pushed away from her. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He moved across the kitchen into the breakfast room and disappeared.

It was dark when she went upstairs, leaning against the banister, right hand on the smooth polished oak as she scaled the winding staircase. A light in the foyer was on, but she was too tired to go down and turn it off.

At the top of the stairs, she went left to Luke’s room. The door was closed, she knocked and opened it and saw him on his bed staring up at the ceiling. She said good night.

He didn’t move, didn’t look at her. Leon, their chocolate lab, was lying next to Luke. He got up, shook his tail and yelped.

Luke said, “Chill, Leon.”

The dog sat down.

Kate closed the door and went to her room, walked through into the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror hanging over the sink. She looked tired. She pulled her hair back behind her ears and turned the faucet on. Cupped water in her hands and washed her face. She glanced over, saw Owen’s blue terry cloth robe hanging on the back of the door, went over and lifted it off the hook and hugged it. Now she sat on the side of the tub and wept, letting go.

Kate walked into the bedroom, pulled the spread down and stretched out on the king-size bed-Owen’s side-and smelled his pillow, with its hint of Old Spice.

There were family photographs on the night table in gold and silver frames. She picked up a sepia-tone picture of Owen with short hair, age seven, wearing a white shirt and a bow tie, a smile on his little face, proud because he’d just made his First Communion. She put it back and picked up another, this one shot on their wedding day, Kate thinking it was one of the few pictures in sixteen years that showed Owen with his eyes open. She held it and remembered the day they met. Ran into him coming around a corner at Farmer Jack’s, the store at Lahser and Maple. Their carts hitting head-on with impact and it was so unexpected, it was funny.

He said, “You okay?”

“I think so,” Kate said, “except for the whiplash.”

He held her in his gaze, maybe wondering if she was serious. “I’m Owen,” he said. “And you?”

“Kate,” she said, offering her hand.

He took it in his, looked her in the eye and said, “Kate, you doing anything tonight?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can I take you out to dinner? Make up for your injury.”

“Is this how you get dates?” Kate said. “Run into someone with your grocery cart?”

He grinned. He had a grocery list in his hand, a five-by-seven-inch lined yellow sheet and his cart was filled with cans of soup and tuna fish. He obviously wasn’t much of a cook.

Kate said, “I don’t even know you.”

Owen said, “We just met, didn’t we?”

Kate said, “You could be a rapist.”

“I could even be a Republican.” He grinned.

“That was going to be my next question.”

They went to a little place called Oliverio’s that night-a dark, loud Italian restaurant with white tablecloths and waiters in black suits-had veal chops with cognac cream sauce, drank Brunello and told their life stories to each other.

Owen was a stock car driver.

“I knew I wanted to race from the time I was about eight years old,” he said. “I’d go with my dad to his Chevy dealership in Dearborn and help the mechanics. All I wanted to do was work on cars. And when I turned sixteen, all I wanted to do was race them. My dad, on the other hand, wanted me at the store. His plan was to teach me the business, sell me the dealership and retire.”

Owen looked down at his plate and cut into his veal chop and took a bite.

“This is good isn’t it? I started racing for real right after high school. Teamed up with a friend, big easygoing guy named Charley Degener. He was a few years older and had been an over-the-wall tire changer for a single car team, but his real specialty was horsepower.”

He picked up his wineglass and took a gulp, drank it like a soft drink.

“In the early days it was just me and Charley. He built the motors. I did the cars. We started on the dirt tracks, but our goal from day one was Winston Cup. We weren’t going to settle for anything less. We pulled the racecar behind a converted bread truck. You looked close, you could see the faint outline of Wonder Bread on the side. It was loaded with tools, parts and tires. Charley and I even slept in it on occasion. The deal was, we had to make enough on the track to come back the next week.”

Kate said, “Did you win?”

“You want to know about my checkered past, huh?” He grinned big.

He was corny but appealing, had a nice easy way about him-big hands and shoulders and a good face, handsome in a rugged way.

“First year we made ten races, including one pole, three top fives, and five top tens. But to answer your question, no checkered flags.”

“How about since then?”

“We’ve done okay.”

He was the master of understatement, Kate discovered when she got to know him better. He never boasted or lost his cool, played everything low-key.

“When you see it on TV, it looks like they’re really moving,” Kate said. “How fast do you go?”

“Two hundred and change, flat-footing it down the straights.”

“I went a hundred and ten one time in my father’s Audi and it felt like warp speed.”

“Once you get used to it, it’s like driving on the freeway-you almost feel like you’re in slow motion-only there are twenty-five cars trying to blow your doors off.”

Kate cut a piece of veal, dipped it in the sauce, and took a bite.

“You look as far ahead as you can and rely on peripheral vision,” Owen said. He took a big gulp of wine. “And always be aware of where everyone is. That’s basically it. After awhile, you do it without thinking.”

“If it’s that easy,” Kate said, “maybe I should sign up. I’m looking for a new career.”

“My dad took pity on us, I guess, and donated fifteen grand a year in sponsorship money. The rub was, I had to spend time at the dealership, learn the business. That was the tradeoff.”

“It looks dangerous,” Kate said. “My dad took me to a NASCAR race at Michigan International Speedway and there were three crashes.”

“I had her buried down one of the straights at Martinsville, passed a slower car on the right, nicked the wall, spun off and flipped three times. It felt like it happened in slo-mo. I remember being airborne, seeing sky. I came down, blew out all the glass. Amazing thing was, the car was totaled- every panel damaged-and I walked away without a scratch. Watched a forklift pick the car up and put it on a flatbed and decided right then to break up with this girl I was living with. All of a sudden it hit me, I didn’t love her and we were talking about getting married.”