‘Mom’s going to look after the kids this weekend, so we can get a break. Isn’t that sweet of her?’
‘Really? Wow. That is fantastic. Thank you! You’re wonderful.’
‘I friggin know that,’ she said over the children’s heads.
‘Did you call her?’ he whispered when his mother-in-law left the room for a minute.
‘No. Well, I kinda did. I wrote her.’
‘You sure your mother can cope?’
‘My mom could cope with Al Capone.’
He smiled and gave her shoulders a squeeze.
They packed small bags, and the next morning off they went. Billie and Jacko, their first trip alone in four years. They took the MG and headed south-west, towards highway 101, retracing their honeymoon drive. The weather was good, for the time of year. Clear, but not warm enough to take the top down. The sky remained a solid blue all day, and the Pacific was also blue, only darker. In the end, they found a small hotel outside Gold Beach. It looked idyllic, but the woman who answered the door was sharp-tongued and the room smelled of mildew. Still, they were alone.
He opened the champagne her mother had given them, and poured it into the glasses she’d insisted they take.
‘Here’s to your coarse-mouthed mother.’
‘Here’s to my darling mom. Who swears too much.’
Jacko sat on the bed, while Billie sat in a chair.
‘We can make as much noise as we want! Come here, you.’ He wanted sex of course, right away, before dinner, and she had hoped this would happen, yet she found herself assenting tiredly.
The drive home the next day was quiet, but they told each other it had been a great break.
‘Just what the doctor ordered. Tell your mother to come more often.’ They took their time, stopped at a beach, then a restaurant for a late lunch. There was very little traffic on the road. About an hour from home, the red sports car ahead of them tried to pass a truck, and was hit by an oncoming station wagon. Before Jacko even had time to brake, they watched the much higher station wagon flick the sports car into the air like a Dinky toy. Jacko finally stopped, about the same time the station wagon screeched to a stop down the road. The driver, a man in his fifties, jumped out of his car and ran up towards them, saying:
‘Jesus fuck, I never saw it coming. Out of the fucking blue…’
‘Stay here,’ said Jacko firmly to Billie, as he got out of the car.
She was making disapproving noises with her mouth shut. The kind of noise she made when the children injured themselves, half anxious, half angry that they’d been so careless with their bodies. The noise from the accident had been horrific; there was still an occasional metallic clanging. The truck had stopped up ahead too, and the driver was running down the highway to the accident. A few other cars had slowed to a stop, and people were running and shouting. Jacko ran back and Billie asked:
‘What did you see?’
‘The driver’s unconscious. Went through the windscreen. Don’t think anyone else was in the car.’
He frowned and started the car, not looking at her.
‘Unconscious? But will he be all right, do you think?’
‘Uh, maybe. Tell you the truth, Billie, probably not.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Got to find a phone.’
His voice sounded odd. Billie saw the driver of the sports car, flung on the tarmac like a rag doll. He was a young man, thin, maybe a teenager, his features invisible, too bloody. He was on his back, arms flopped out, motionless. Jacko had to slow down here, to get around the upside-down car, and she noted that the boy was wearing a suit. A nice suit. The white shirt was a mess, but the jacket seemed fine. A nice blazer, probably wool. There were three or four people, the drivers of other stopped cars, leaning towards him, talking to each other. One looked up and gave Jacko some kind of signal with his hand, and Jacko nodded. A woman, middle-aged, was crouching down next to the boy, her head bowed, crossing herself. Jacko shifted up a gear.
‘Maybe he was on his way somewhere fancy. His suit.’
‘Uh-huh.’
The first lit-up house they came to, Jacko slammed on the brakes, ran up to the door, and without knocking, pushed it open and shouted:
‘Need to use your phone. Been an accident down the road. A bad one.’
Billie had followed, but stayed behind him, silent. She felt her old respect for him ebb back. Men really were wonderful at times like this. Jacko was wonderful. The old couple in the house acted unfriendly at first, wary, then suddenly changed. They switched off their television and offered coffee, whisky, anything at all. But Jacko and Billie got back in the car and headed north again, and outwardly it was as if nothing had changed.
‘Don’t we need to be witnesses or something?’
‘They have our number and address. The others are witnesses too. An ambulance is on the way now.’
‘Oh.’
Time passed.
‘How much longer, Jacko?’
‘Don’t know. Half an hour?’
Pause. Billie fiddled with the radio dial and tuned into half a dozen stations, static-ridden snatches of song, news, weather, a talk show about crop diseases, and then an interview with Elizabeth Taylor. She clicked the radio off and sighed.
‘Hey, remember that time I had Elisabeth, and you brought Sam to the hospital to visit us?’
