Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

Now, though, the imbalance was… himself.

He was his own cold case and didn’t have clue one. He wondered if the solution to the crime of Mr. Wylde lay in the idea that hope itself hadn’t died—yet—and laughed at the brilliant idiocy of that new notion. True dat: it was a glorious mystery that he still awakened with the buoyancy of Hope. It gave him a spring in his step as he strolled from building to building in the infernal square dance of punishing heat. He wasn’t even sure what Hope meant anymore, just another bogus word but there it was, his lifelong companion, a big friendly dog, a shaggy dog story that he recognized for better or for worse as his soul mate. When the dog died, where and who would the bereft Willow be?

He strung together the grimy beads of all those tropes—Order! Balance! Justice! Closure! Hope!—like a necklace of cheap pearls. They still made him feel pretty.

Such is the travesty of the broken cop—

As he soaked in the tub of his dorm room, sobbing, his good hand instinctively washing the wounded one as if neither belonged to him (a van drove him to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale yesterday to finally have the pin and cast removed), an idea haunted him: that one morning he’d awaken to find the big dog dead in a field, the soul mate gone maggoty and swollen to near bursting in the heat. Hope abandoned— He’d seen the blessed illusion of Order and Balance disappear in those in whom they burned brightest. He saw what happened when the landlord Hope departed—

—its tenants became ghosts.

Another thing should have haunted him but didn’t. Instead, it captivated and puzzled, holding him an intrigued, almost genteel hostage. It wasn’t yet fully formed yet rather was a mirage of what was soon to come.

A persistent vision.

The vision started on the plane, on his way to the Meadows. He was crammed into coach, still drinking but no longer able to get drunk. Like him, the vision too was a complicated, ruined thing, though not of this world. It was a thing that was coming, a thing that lately had begun to intrude on waking life—like it did the other day when he passed the “talking pipe” to his neighbor at the big Saturday men’s stag share—a hallucination he’d refrained from sharing with the Meadows’ counselors. Though he did mention it to Renata, who was gracious enough to call it “weird and sort of gorgeous” ( gorgeous being her favorite word).

The vision, more a visitation, of a train whose stained-blue passengers were phantoms.

Not of those he once knew, nor those that Hope had abandoned, but a vision of another world. What world? The bluish whoosh of cabin cars came like a comfort—Willow felt the wind as they roared past—a horror yet a new kind of hope.

Somewhere in him, he knew it was the last hope.

Cul-de-sac bustle.

Independence Day festivities, chez Rummer: Elaine, Ronnie and the kids.

Exurbia unbound.

The mise-en-scène unfolds about thirty miles north-northeast of Detroit, in the leafy, semirural village of Saggerty Falls, a 2.5-square-mile community in Lenox Township, Macomb County, in the “lower thumb” of Michigan.

They used to make engine blocks there but the foundry’s defunct…

Pop: 3,073.

Number of families: 783.

Median family income: $45,489.

The Salt River runs through it…

A Fourth of July afternoon—

—and the little ones run amok on sugar highs, starbursts of growing bones and neurons. Elaine and her galfriend Penny are baking cookies in the kitchen. Elaine uses that word, galfriend , having inherited it from her mother, who’d say about a movie or whatnot, “Why don’t you take a galfriend?”

“I want to fix you up with someone,” says the lady of the house. (Her mother used to say that too: fix you up .)

“Not interested, unless it’s Richard Gere.”

Penny the newbie divorcée moves on to spinning salad, the foundation of her new aerobics empire. She wryly says, My salad-spinning workout video’s gonna make me shit-rich.

“Well, he ain’t Richard Gere but he’s close ,” says Elaine, nodding toward the window overlooking the backyard, where the men hover by the barbecue.

Penny takes a gander and says, “Your husband?” Galfriend Elaine guffaws. “You know,” says Penny, contemplative, “I might not be comfortable with that—I’m not saying I couldn’t get comfortable. Don’t think I haven’t had my fantasies…”

“I’ll bet you have, Miss Horndog. Miss Horndog Divorcée.” Elaine gets more specific and points Roy out. “ That’s your man.”

“Roy Eakins?” says Penny, in that sly way of hers that makes you wonder whether she’s completely repulsed or thinks the idea may be worthy of her consideration. “I don’t think so. Though I might be interested if he looked a little more like Demi Moore.”

“The hair’s close,” says Elaine lightheartedly. “Oh come on, Penny. He’s smart . And funny , in that off-way you like . ”

“Not my type,” she says, returning to her spinning.

“He teaches history .”

“Teaches history? Like, that’s all you got? Teaches history ?”

“History teachers are supposed to be seriously well-endowed,” says Elaine, in licentious good cheer.

“Oh right, that’s totally their rap.” She squints her eyes at the man, saying, “Kind of an odd duck, no? With that super-weird kid?”

“Grundy? He’s sweet.”

“As in retarded, potentially violent sweet?”

“You are so mean!”

“He isn’t sweet, Ellie, he’s like friggin’ Lennie from Of Mice and Men .” The girls howl at that; they’ve been drinking and are feeling no pain. “How old is that kid, anyway?”

“Thirteen?”

“Are you serious? He looks like he’s in his—forties!”

Again they howl. Funniest thing ever.

“ Grundy’s ‘special needs,’” said Elaine. “And so?”

“Look who’s being politically correct.”

“He’s probably some kind of genius. He’s on the spectrum.”

“Just like me, milady.”

“Exactly. That’s why I think y’all’d be perfect together. Though you’re actually more on the spectrum… of growing cobwebs on your vagina.”

They lose control again and take the opportunity to finish what’s left in their wineglasses.

“Look, history nerds and their mutant offspring aren’t really my thing,” says Penny. “I like the tall, dark, childless type.”

“Oh come on, honey, Roy Eakins is a friggin’ action hero. He’s a great dad and that says a lot. He’s single and quirky and brilliant—which means your kids would be single and quirky and brilliant.”

“Ha!”

“Plus he’s friggin’ funny . He’s very dry.”

“Just like my pussy.”

“We can remedy that!”

“We’d make pretty spectrum babies. You know, all scary and autistic.”

“You’d be cute together . And whatever—you could do it one time , to break the ice. You know, that’s formed between your legs.”

“Can you leave my pussy alone, please?”

“I’ll join the club! Know what I heard Roy say? ‘History doesn’t repeat itself but it sure does rhyme.’ Don’t you love that?”

“That’s Mark Twain, brainiac. Now Twain, I’d fuck.”

“I’m serious, Pen, we have got to hook you up. With someone .”

“The ink on the divorce papers isn’t dry, Ellie.”

“Oh, bullshit. Use it or lose it, girl. How long has it been?”