No Hiding In Boise

Angie

My ringtone is the theme song from Sesame Street. We just started letting Evie watch Sesame Street even though the American Academy of Pediatrics has strict rules about screen time for children under the age of two (Evie will be two in a few months). The American Academy of Pediatrics must not understand the daily lives of families, the need for distraction during chaotic mornings. The only way I can get ready for work is by putting Evie in her high chair and letting her watch Elmo while eating oatmeal by the fistfuls. Cale hates the oatmeal because she gets it all over herself. He suggests I buy toaster waffles, and I suggest he make breakfast; it’s the same boring dance we do. Anyway, Evie loves the oatmeal, and it’s healthy. The American Academy of Pediatrics would approve.

Last week, while assembling dinner—I do not cook, I assemble premade items from the refrigerated section of Trader Joe’s—I’d started humming the “Letter of the Day” song that Elmo sings in every episode. Cale laughed. He was in one of his rare chipper moods, and I thought, Maybe this will work out after all. “This” being our marriage, our existence together as parents. When I went to the bathroom, he set the Sesame Street theme song as my ringtone. He probably assumed I’d change it back, but I kept it, as a reminder that he still has good days. 

The phone rings in the middle of a recurring dream in which I cannot remember the combination to my high school locker. By the time I realize the ringing is not part of the dream, by the time I reach over to the nightstand, fumbling around for the phone, the ringing has stopped. The missed call is from a number I don’t recognize. It’s just after midnight, a cruel time for a robocall. Must be a wrong number. I close my eyes, tell myself to go back to sleep, but then it rings again. 

I answer this time so I can curse at the caller. There’s something empowering about cursing at a stranger. I know I shouldn’t think this, but life has been stressful and releasing a good “fuck you” takes the edge off.

“Who is this?” I whisper, not wanting to wake Cale. He’s been taking something called Trazodone at night lately, for sleep. This means I’m the one who has to be ready to tend to Evie if she cries. It’s a role I resent because I’ve had it since she was born. She’s been sleeping through the night for a while now, but she still has bad nights—usually due to teething or to pee somehow escaping her diaper and soaking her pajamas.

“Is this Mrs. Matthews?”

It’s a man. He sounds stern. This is not a robocall or a wrong number.

“Yes,” I whisper, now more concerned than angry.

“Ma’am, this is Officer Stokes with the Boise Police Department,” he says. 

My first thought is Evie, though I know she’s just down the hall, in her crib. I can hear the white noise machine whirring over the monitor.

“I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, but we think your husband was involved in a shooting at Ray’s Bar. He’s been transferred to Saint Al’s.”

I’m quite confident this man has his facts wrong. Cale isn’t at a bar; he’s in bed next to me.

I turn in bed to wake Cale so he can tell this officer himself that there has been a misunderstanding.

But he’s not there. 

“Ma’am?” the man on the phone says.

I get out of bed and walk to the bathroom, sure I’ll find Cale there, sitting on the toilet looking at me like I’m a mad woman. He’s not there though.

“Just a minute,” I tell the officer.

I walk upstairs, hoping Cale is getting a midnight snack, though I’ve never seen him do such a thing. Cale doesn’t believe in snacking; he takes joy in fasting as long as he can and then eating an entire pizza.

“Ma’am?” the officer says again.

I can hear sirens in the background.

“I . . . I don’t understand,” I tell him.

“You can call the hospital for updates,” he says. The sirens are louder. 

“You said you think it’s him? So you’re not sure?” 

This woman at work, a fellow copywriter, told me that the phrase “grasping at straws” is from a proverb about a drowning man reaching desperately at the surrounding grasses as he goes under. This is what I feel like right now—like I’m drowning.

“We retrieved his ID and your contact information from his wallet,” he says.

The contact information. I know what he means. When I moved in with Cale and realized how often he went biking in the foothills alone, I insisted he carry certain things with him—his ID, his phone, his health insurance card, and my contact information. I’d written my name and number on a note card, under the words “In case of emergency,” and folded it in half. He rolled his eyes at me, but he complied. I’d watched him slip it into his wallet.

“I’m sorry to give you this news,” the officer says.

He ends the call before I can think to ask the obvious questions:

What happened?

Was he shot?

Is he going to be okay?

I know I should be focused on that, on Cale being okay, but I can’t help but fixate on another question: What was he doing at Ray’s Bar in the middle of the night? I know that place. I’ve driven by it. It’s a dive, on a quiet side street on the outskirts of downtown. From the street, there’s just a brick wall, a single black door, and a sign above it that says Ray’s. 

If Cale wanted a beer at midnight (which would be strange), why not get one from our kitchen? We always have a few half-full six-packs in the fridge. Or, if he had to go to a bar (which would be even stranger), why not just walk five minutes up Thirteenth Street? Why get in the car and drive across town?

Plain and simple, it doesn’t make sense that he was doing anything at midnight, let alone sitting at a bar. Since we’ve had Evie, we go to bed by eight. Both of us are exhausted. When I put her to sleep at seven, my shoulders relax away from my ears just slightly and I take pleasure in a glass of wine and whatever I’ve assembled for dinner. We barely make it through one episode of a show everyone says we “have to watch”—Stranger Things being the latest—then claim fatigue in a defeatist way and trudge to our bedroom. Cale’s been having trouble with waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall asleep again—hence, the pills. I’ve known about that. I’ve known he’s been “off.” But I never would have guessed he’d be going to a bar at midnight.

I try to call him, hoping he’ll defy what the police officer told me and pick up his phone. It goes straight to voice mail though, Cale’s voice deep and strong, telling me to leave a message. I do, because it means I’m doing something.

“It’s me. I hope you’re okay. Please call me. I love you.”

We haven’t said those three words to each other in a while—I love you. We’ve said “love you” in a slapdash way when saying goodbye in the morning. We let the words run together, thoughtlessly—“loveyou.” Our sex life is just as slapdash—a once-every-few-weeks item on a mental checklist. I haven’t been trying hard enough, I decide. 

I call my sister, Aria, because I need someone to be at the house with Evie while I drive to the hospital. And I know she’ll be up because she doesn’t usually go to bed before one. She’s a decade younger than me, single and childless.

“A shooting? What do you mean?” she says.

“I don’t know anything yet,” I tell her.

“Okay, I’ll be there in a few.”

Aria lives a few blocks away, in one of the North End’s few apartment buildings. It’s purposeful, her closeness to me. I’ve always been like a mother to her.

I turn on the TV while I wait. There it is—breaking news on channel 7. The words across the bottom of the screen read Deadly Shooting at Ray’s Bar.

Deadly.

I taste bile in my throat.

The reporter on screen, a woman with frizzy hair and bags under her eyes, is standing in a parking lot, the sign for Ray’s and police tape behind her, on the other side of the street.

“Details are still coming in, but we know there are at least three people dead,” she says. 

I turn off the TV, feeling like I’m going to vomit. 

Then I see Aria pull into the driveway.

NO HIDING IN BOISE. Copyright 2021 by Kim Hooper. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Keylight Books.