Alix Ohlin - Signs and Wonders

On Doug and Carol’s wedding day, murder was committed in their small town, which they steadfastly refused to take as a bad sign. They were that much in love. They spent their first married night in the Newport hotel wrapped in each other’s arms, gazing into each other’s eyes, and so on, but after they’d had sex twice there was only so much more gazing that could be done, and Carol turned on CNN while Doug took a shower.

“Oh, my God,” he heard her say as he toweled off. She was sitting at the foot of the king-sized bed, the coverlet loosely bunched around her skinny frame, exposing the delicate bumps of her spine. She was transfixed. A young man had killed his wife and child and was now on the run; cameras were holding steady on a blue SUV going down a strangely empty freeway, headed for the coast.

“I don’t know why you watch this stuff,” Doug said. He sat down beside her and kissed her bare shoulder. She smelled like candy.

“She went to my high school,” Carol said, her eyes wide. “Younger though. So young. And the baby. Did you know them?”

“I don’t think so.”

On the screen now was a photograph of the young couple on their own wedding day, red-eyed from camera flash and booze.

Carol was a preschool teacher and spent all day long singing songs about bunnies and cows. Sometimes they bumped into her students in the grocery store, and the kids were so freaked-out to see her outside of school that they ran away. Other times, to be fair, they got excited and seemed like they were going to pee in their pants. In any case, she came home from being with the kids all day, from playing with their brightly colored blocks and vocabulary-building cards, and she liked, by contrast, to watch violent crime dramas or breaking news about murders, kidnappings, disappearances. An expert on bullets and DNA evidence, she supported the death penalty and often, just before falling asleep, would shake her head and say things like, “He should rot in hell for what he’s done.”

In Jamaica, he’d booked the “Serenity Suite,” which didn’t have a TV and was more expensive than a standard room. Once the honeymoon began, as he’d hoped, she mellowed. For three days they ate conch fritters and took naps on the beach, their skin burnishing. They held hands as they walked on the sand at sunset and were lulled to sleep by the sound of waves crashing on the beach, a gentle soundtrack piping through the suite’s wall-mounted speakers. But Carol hadn’t forgotten the story.

“We probably saw them at the mall,” she said one day over lunch. “Or at the movie theater. Do you think they got married at the same church?”

All day long she kept this up, and her fascination started to get on Doug’s nerves. When she asked if they could find a TV that night, he snapped at her, she pouted, and they ate dinner separately — he on the beach, she in their room — until he came back and they made up and had sex again and gazed into each other’s eyes. By the sixth day of conches and tanning, he’d gone over to her side. At a bar they persuaded some people from Chicago to let go of the Cubs game they were watching by buying them drinks. As they sat there, CNN cycled through world disasters and weather forecasts before turning to the case they were waiting for. And in fact, the young woman and her baby were being memorialized in the very church where Doug and Carol’s wedding had taken place. “Oh, my God,” she said.

The camera lingered on the familiar steps of St. Anthony’s as the mourners emerged sadly, single file, hunched in their black suits and dresses.

“That’s where we had our pictures taken,” Carol said. “That’s where I tripped on my hem and almost fell. That’s where the car pulled up.”

The young man had been apprehended. His parents gave a press conference in which they expressed their sympathy for the wife’s family and, of course, the loss of the baby. It seemed as if they’d already given up on him.

“Let’s stop watching this,” Doug said, but Carol didn’t hear him, and he didn’t bother to repeat it, because they were showing the main street of town; they were interviewing the guy who worked at the hardware store, where Doug himself bought nails and plywood, about the murders.

“They were just like any other couple,” the hardware guy said. “They had grout issues in their bathroom.”

Doug wrapped his arms around Carol and told her that he loved her.

· · ·

On the plane back to Rhode Island, burnt skin peeling off their noses and backs, they held hands. They landed in a dense, chilly New England downpour. Debbie, Carol’s best friend and maid of honor, met them at the airport. Doug could tell just by looking at her that she was dying to share the news about the murders, and she did a poor job of hiding her disappointment when Carol brought it up first. As Debbie drove them home, erratically, in her SUV — she had adult ADD, Carol had always said — they chattered back and forth about it, not discussing the honeymoon at all. Debbie wasn’t so much a bad driver as a bad multitasker; she’d light cigarettes or rummage around the front seat for stuff and only look up at the last second, swerving or braking with sudden jerks.

“And my little brother’s ex-girlfriend’s sister was in the Girl Scouts with her,” she said.

“ Really, ” Carol said.

“She said she was just the sweetest person. I mean like seriously the sweetest person you ever met in your life.”

“Oh, my God,” Carol said.

In the backseat, Doug, having had two Jack and Cokes on the plane, dozed as the women’s bright, excited voices filled the air. He was glad for the rain; there was such a thing as too much sun. Debbie’s voice squeaked higher, and suddenly was joined by an extra squeak and the squeal of tires, and he jolted awake in time to see the road rise up, like a wave, to meet the side windows, and the last thing he heard before impact was Carol’s voice screaming his name.

In the hospital he woke up alone, and that was the scariest thing. There was only the sound of machines beeping, not a single voice. The door to his room was closed. After a while, Debbie came in. She was wearing a hospital gown and had bandages on her face and arms and hands. “Oh, Douggie,” she said, as if he were her child, then tried to stroke his arm with one of her bandaged, pawlike hands. She was an animal, and he hated her. He tried to scream, but nothing came out. Then he went under again. This happened over and over, it felt like. A week passed, maybe more; he was never sure. They waited until he was out of the hospital to have the funeral, again at St. Anthony’s.

The year that followed held pain like he’d never known existed. He didn’t have words to describe it, not to other people, not even inside his own head. It was a lot more like physical pain than he ever would have expected, the ache and stab of it. It was like a broken leg, but no medicine or cast could mend it. Sometimes he drank a lot and that helped, but only barely and for a couple of hours at a time, and he’d wake up in the middle of the night, sobbing.

He had this house full of wedding gifts. Appliances. Wineglasses. Monogrammed napkin holders, with their initials intertwined.

For a year he went to work and came home, went to work and came home. As he began to come out of his haze he understood what a totally crappy job he’d been doing for months and apologized to his boss, Victor.

“It’s okay, man,” Victor said, wincing, the expression he used to convey understanding. “What you’ve been through, nobody should have to survive.”