And it happened at midnight that the Lord struck down every firstborn in the land of Egypt
Bo Exodus 10:1
No one in L.A. knows how to drive in the rain, and this Sunday was a killer rain. Martin gripped the steering wheel with stiff arms and aching fingers, driving down the 101 Freeway, stealing brief glimpses of the road and the traffic as his wipers smacked up and down. A flash of clear windshield was overtaken by smears of rain and then wiped clean, only to be obliterated by more smears. There were no cars that could be seen on the freeway, only their rear lights that turned into liquid blisters of red through the smears. If he were driving alone, he thought that he might be able to relax a little, but Evelyn was sitting next to him, and his three-year-old son Joshua was in the baby carrier in the rear seat, mercifully asleep after dinner with his grandparents. Martin was grateful that Jessica, his nine-month-old daughter, had caught a cold, and so she was safe at home with Evelyn’s sister, Helen.
“Are you okay?” Evelyn asked. What could he say? He had two more miles to the Tujunga exit, and from there, he could slow down along the city streets. He was fine. He just had to concentrate and not answer questions. Turning the radio on would maybe relax him, but he dared not take a hand off the steering wheel, and he didn’t want to negotiate with Evelyn either. He tried to let the rhythm of the wipers calm him, but they were smacking rapidly, and his heart was racing against them. He had pulled into the right lane to get away from the cars that were changing lanes too rapidly and passing him. It was a mistake. There was roadwork being done and barely any shoulder, little margin of error.
And then BAM! a car to his left swerved right into his door. He put all his focus into managing the car, now heading for the right-hand barrier. It made a teeth-splitting scrape into the barrier; he twisted the wheel to get away and then BAM! the car to his left again now pushed into his corner and the car was spinning. It was all over. He had no control.
OH MY GOD THIS IS THE DAY THAT I DIE. THIS IS THE DAY THAT EVELYN DIES WITH ME. JOSHUA WILL NEVER SEE A LIFE. WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO JESSICA SHE WILL GROW UP WITHOUT HER PARENTS AND HELEN WILL LEARN OF OUR DEATH SHE WILL TELL STORIES TO DARLING JESSICA OF HOW SOMEONE ON THE 101 DESTROYED HER ENTIRE FAMILY AND HER FUTURE AND HER CHANCE AT HAPPINESS.
And it was true. He was dead. He saw himself coming to the light, only it wasn’t the light of a single masterful supreme God, it was a hundred small angelic lights, and he was not coming to them, but they were coming to him. They were shrieking and then they were all passing him by because he was unworthy of being taken along to heaven.
Then the shrieking of the disparaging angels was overtaken by a higher pitched howling; a punishing angel was coming up behind him. And then came a woman’s voice.
“Marty, are you okay? I’m okay, Marty. Joshua is okay, Marty. Are you okay? Say something.”
And Marty realized that he was okay. He was in the car, facing the oncoming traffic from the slim highway shoulder he’d landed in. He looked at Evelyn and saw that she had a dark blue bruise on her forehead, but there was no blood. He leaned back toward the high wailing sound, and it was just Joshua, secure in his seat but screaming mercilessly.
He looked in his rear-view mirror and saw the taillights of another car, pulled over, a hundred feet further down.
“Whatever you do, Marty, don’t turn off the headlights!”
Through the smears of rain on his rear window he could make out another man, walking toward his car, walking into the wind and into the rain to get to him. Marty began to get out of his car but then he reached at the pain on his own forehead, and his hand came out with a streak of blood. He could see on the doorpost of the car a bloody smear where he had made contact. But there was no time to nurse his injuries. He got out of his car and ran back to meet the man. It didn’t take more than a few seconds before Marty felt his entire shirt soaked, and he was battling the dark and the rain through his own shivers.
Marty ran toward the man and toward his car, and he could see in the rear window the image of a boy, maybe six years older than his own Joshua, watching the events as if it were some wonderful adventure movie.
The man was in a white, short-sleeved golf shirt that stuck to his body, revealing his muscular profile that Marty immediately envied. He reached out and shook Marty’s hands with both of his own, with a salesman’s instincts.
“I am very sorry for what happened tonight. Let’s exchange information and both of us go home.” The man reached into his pocket and, with some struggle, revealed his driver’s license.
Marty reached into his pocket and found a pen and his own wallet. He found a business card to write on. And then as he wrote down the man’s name, the rain turned it all into smears of blue blood, and the card itself became as fragile as toilet paper. He pulled out another card and tried hunching over, his back to the rain, but now the pen would no longer write.
“Why don’t you get your phone and take a picture of my license and my plate?”
Marty reached into his pants again and realized that he’d left the phone back in his car.
“Wait here!” he told the man.
“I’ll take a picture of your license, and I’ll take one of mine, and I’ll send it to you in an email, if you trust me.”
“Just let me get my own phone.”
He ran back to his car, only now seeing how his door had buckled in, streaked with dents and black paint. He opened his door, hoping that leaning in would give him some comfort away from the rain, and he immediately re-entered that other hell. Joshua was screaming from the back seat. Evelyn had relocated to try to comfort him, but he was now clawing at his mother’s clothing and then reaching forward to Martin desperately “I want to go I want to go!”
“What’s taking so long?” Evelyn asked him.
“We’re exchanging information and my pen won’t write in the rain, so I came back to get my camera.”
“Well, we need to get home right away.”
After unclipping his phone from the dashboard, he struggled back to where the man was waiting for him, and then captured the image of his driver’s license.
“I recommend you try backing up your car to where I am. There’s more shoulder for you to get your car turned around. I know this has been a terrible evening. Are you alright?”
Are you alright.
“AM I ALRIGHT? YES, I’M ALIVE. YES, MY WIFE IS ALIVE. MY SON IS ALIVE. BUT WE WERE THIS CLOSE TO DEATH! DO YOU KNOW WHAT A FUCKING BLIND SPOT IS? DO YOU KNOW TO LOOK BEFORE YOU START TURNING INTO THE NEXT LANE? I HAVE A NINE-MONTH-OLD DAUGHTER WHO I THOUGHT WAS GOING TO BE ORPHANED BECAUSE SOME FUCKING IDIOT ON THE FREEWAY DOESN’T LOOK WHERE HE’S GOING ON THE DEADLIEST NIGHT TO BE ON A FREEWAY IN FIVE YEARS. DO YOU KNOW THAT I REALLY THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE? I THOUGHT I WAS DEAD AND THAT MY WIFE AND MY SON WAS DEAD. DID YOU FEEL THAT TONIGHT? DID YOU FOR ONE SECOND THINK YOU WERE GOING TO DIE? WELL MAYBE YOU SHOULD. YOU SHOULD KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE. YOU SHOULD KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO THINK YOUR SON IS DEAD. I HOPE YOU HAVE THAT FEELING TONIGHT AND THEN YOU’LL KNOW IF I’M ALRIGHT.”
Marty turned back to his own car and the words of his anger seemed to merge with the rain. He looked at the torrents of water spilling off the shoulder and imagined his own words turning into blood, mixing with the rain like the blood in the shower scene of the movie “Psycho”, swirling down the drain into a distant world.
When he got back into the car, Joshua was asleep in his mother’s lap.
“You need to lock him in his seat” Martin told her.
“You don’t know what it’s been like. I don’t want to wake him up.”
“It’s not a choice.”
Evelyn gave him a dirty look in the rear-view mirror, but she was able to get Joshua secure with no incident. She sidled over in the back and Marty heard her buckle in. His headlights were still pointed into the oncoming cars, but he took the man’s advice. He backed up until the shoulder widened. He pulled further into the shoulder, waited for a break, and then gave the wheel a vigorous turn and managed to get into the right-hand lane safely. He saw the other car was still there. The man was behind the wheel, maybe waiting for Marty to pass, and the man’s son was following everything, changing his gaze from the rear window to the left as Marty’s car continued past.
“The damn father doesn’t even make his kid wear a seat belt,” Marty thought.
Marty was finally thirty yards away, as he saw the other car left behind in his rear view.
Then BAM. Thunder and lightning seemed to strike simultaneously. Sparks flew from where that other car was waiting in the shoulder and its rear flew up and up until it was higher than anything Marty could see in his mirrors. A squeal and then two more claps of thunder as the rear of the man’s car slammed back to the ground and hit the cement, first one corner of the car, and then a violent roll until the second corner of the car landed and scraped. Marty could see second car, behind the man’s car, twist and skitter, part into the shoulder, part into the lane of traffic.
Joshua woke and began screaming again.
“Oh my God,” Evelyn said. “Do you know what that was?”
Marty drove on and exited early at Laurel Canyon until he could pull over and call 9-1-1.
“I just passed a bad accident on the eastbound 101, just before Laurel Canyon. Then, he turned to Evelyn. “I know exactly what it was,” Marty admitted.
He briefly remembered himself saying “It was me. I did that.” But like in a déjà vu, he realized that this never really happened. He had said nothing. He had put his car back into gear and drove home.
When I returned to the classroom the following Monday, I was looking forward to a new week that might wipe away the awful events of last night. The rain had cleared the skies of all clouds. Last Sunday night might well have been the worst day of my life.
I was wrong. Today would be. I passed the principal’s office, and Carol was standing in the door frame as she called me in.
“Marty, I got a terrible call this morning. Your student Nathan Chodorosky apparently was caught in a very bad car accident last night.
“How bad?”
“He’s gone.”
“His parents. Are they alright?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Chodorosky were released from the hospital this morning, so I have to believe they’re well, but Nathan was their only child.”
YOU SHOULD KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO THINK YOUR SON IS DEAD. I HOPE YOU HAVE THAT FEELING TONIGHT…
I wanted to get out of the classroom the entire day. I wanted to run home to Evelyn and to Jessica and to Joshua and confess my hateful crime to all of them, but I was afraid that they’d never love me again. The entire day, I felt myself directing every word toward Nathan’s empty chair, hoping that something there would respond.
When I returned home, I could say nothing.
“Are you alright?” Evelyn asked me.
“Am I alright? Yes, I’m alive.”
“You’re spooked by last night. That was a terrible accident. Why did you say it was you who did that?”
I told her that I was very angry at the man who cut us off. I couldn’t tell her what I had said. She’d never believe that my words had such an effect. But I was thinking that at some point I’d have to tell her that their child had died in the accident, and that he was my student.
The next day, the principal was waiting for me again. When she pulled me into her office, I felt the power of a huge magnet resisting, tearing me up, but I made it inside.
“Well, I have a little good news for you, Marty. I’ve spoken with both of Nathan’s parents and their injuries were not bad. But they had very kind words for you. They wanted to let me know that Nathan had many difficulties before he joined your class, and they believe that you’ve been one of the best things to have happened to him.”
“Do you realize I murdered him?”
I did not actually say that.
“I saw that he had a lot of potential”, is what I said.
Potential.
“I’m sure he did. Next week, if it’s alright with you, they’d like to come to your classroom to say a few things about Nathan to his class, and to thank you for all the things you’ve done for him.”
“I really don’t think that would be appropriate.”
“Well, I’ve spoken with them, and they are very sensitive people. I’ve already told them that I thought this would be alright, and I thought it would be alright with you. Marty, I think this could be helpful for the class. Have you told them yet?”
“I think it would be best if maybe just Nathan’s mother came in.”
“Marty, I’m going to do whatever they think is best. This is about two parents who have lost their child, and I’m going to honor their wishes. But if you’d like me to bring the news to your class…”
I told her I would take care of it.
When I did finish telling my class that we would no longer have Nathan, that he had been in a car accident, I waited for a reaction or for a question. They were all frozen, staring at me for something else to say. We stared at each other, each waiting for a way to move on. Finally, Ethan raised his hand.
“Do they know what happened to the person who killed him?”
”He’s alright.” And then a second later I realized he was referring to the driver of the other car, and that I had no idea how they were. There may have been collateral damage. Perhaps an entire family had also been wiped out in the incident. But it was too late for me to correct myself. And I decided that it didn’t matter. How many highway deaths are there in a year? A number. We accept them. But no, they probably were alright.
Driving back home that afternoon, I decided that I would need to find some time to tell Evelyn about my role in the accident.
I knew that dinner time would be inappropriate to bring up the subject of death, especially with Joshua in the room. But I realized I was controlled by the matter when Evelyn criticized me for ignoring Joshua as he was making a mess with his spaghetti.
“I’m trying to deal with Jessica and I wish you would take care of your son!”
I realized that indeed, Joshua had knocked over his bowl onto the table and floor, and I hadn’t even noticed it until Evelyn woke me up. I silently began to scrape it all up with my hand, trying to devote as little thought to the task as possible so that I could continue to work on the more important story that needed to be told that night. A story of death, of a strange coincidence, and of moral failing.
In penance for ignoring Joshua’s mess, I volunteered to put him to bed, read him his story, and spend more time with him that night. But as The Very Hungry Caterpillar went on his journey through food, and into his cocoon, I pictured Nathan gradually working his way into his own doom. Joshua fell asleep before the caterpillar turned into a butterfly. The cocoon was now a coffin. It would fall prematurely from its tree onto the ground, and the caterpillar would never learn what it’s potential was.
With Joshua and Jessica finally safe away from the world, I forced myself to pull Evelyn into the living room.
“I learned something incredible today. Come with me.”
She asked to pour some wine for us together. It seems so infrequent that we just sit in each other’s’ presence with no distractions, and it hurt me to turn down the opportunity to mellow out. I could see it hurt her too, and she knew there was trouble as she sat down.
“The principal pulled me in this morning to tell me that one of my kids, Nathan, died this weekend.”
“Oh my God…” and she reached over to put her hand on mine. “Do you know…”
“It was a car accident. I think it was the car that ran us off the road last night. When that other car plowed into it, I expected the worst, and the worst really happened this time. His parents are apparently alright. Remember that terror of a kid I told you about at the beginning of the year? His parents want to meet me because of the work I did with him.”
“I remember. That was the boy? You did great work with him.”
“I think I killed him.” I pushed myself back into the sofa to see her reaction. Her reaction was a bit of confusion, and some tender concern which I valued, but which I knew I was going to lose.
“What are you talking about?” She reached her hand over mine, and I wondered at what point she’d pull it back.
“That boy was in the car that ran us off the road last night” I explained. Then she pulled her chin in and looked out the tops of her eyes as if to say “…and?” “He died when that other car rammed into it. When that other driver and I exchanged licenses, I got angry. In our accident, I thought that you and Joshua had died. For a while I even thought I had died. And I told him that I wish he’d feel what it was like to lose his child.”
As I predicted, she withdrew her hand.
“You told him you wished his child would die? You really said that?
“I told him I wish he would have that feeling. The same feeling I had. Did you have that feeling when our car was spinning, that we were going to die?”
“If you think your words have such power, then why did you say that?”
Couldn’t she understand that I had no idea my words had such power. At the time they were just words. Anger expressed in the pouring rain against someone who could have killed me. Now it seemed as though my wife believed I had killed the boy too. Now it seemed as though she believed I killed him deliberately.
“All things happen for a reason,” she said.
The day I had to meet the Chodoroskys, I had arranged with Carol to wait in her office a half hour before I was due in the classroom. The office has a giant white-faced clock where the seconds tick down on a big red needle of a hand. I followed its rhythm around the face until I realized I’d been doing it for exactly eight minutes. I had arrived five minutes early; they were three minutes late so far, and maybe they would call to say they couldn’t make it.
But Carol entered followed by a slim elegantly dressed woman.
“I hope you didn’t dress so nicely just for me,” I tried joking.
“Oh, no, we have a meeting with the funeral director after this. Mister Kalman?”
As I rose to shake her hand, I was relieved to see that her husband was not with her.
“Mister Kalman, I want to thank you. You were a great influence in Nathan’s life. I know he can be quite a handful. The change we saw this past year. If I have to lose him, I at least lose him with a final picture of what was possible. If this had happened a year ago, I would have been… adrift.”
“I am very certain that Nathan would have been fine without me.”
“I raised him. I know. He needed you to be his teacher. All things happen for a reason.”
It was the second time in a row I’d heard that expression. Was Nathan’s mother somehow conspiring with Evelyn, here now to mock me? Tying the knot of conspiracy, now I saw a man entering the office. Yes, it was the man in the rain. He walked with that salesman’s determination to extend and take my hand.
“Mister Kalman…”
He looked in my eyes. We knew who each other was, and we both knew that we recognized each other.
“Mister Kalman. My god.” He clasped both of his hands around mine. “Mister Kalman… I am unspeakably sorry for what I did to you this weekend.”
The world was upside down.
“I don’t understand why you would say that” I confessed to him.
“Well of course you know. It was my carelessness that caused all of this. I ran you off the road. I nearly killed you.”
“I’m fine. I lost nothing. I lost my car, but my car is nothing. But the things I said to you…”
“You were angry. It was raining. We were both miserable. Had I pulled off the road safely, it still would have been one of the worst nights of my life.”
He then looked at me as though he understood.
“Mr. Kalman, you had no part in Nathan’s passing. You brought our son back from the dead. Don’t you understand that? Of course not, you knew him less than a year. No, I am responsible. Let me thank you, Mr. Kalman. Please, let me take responsibility for everything that happened, even your anger.” He turned to his confused wife. “Sonya, this is the man whose car I drove into on Sunday. I’m thankful he’s alive. Crazy coincidence.”
“Mister Kalman, Sonya and I will need some time. But we discussed this, and, if it’s not too much of an imposition, we would like to have you and your wife, and perhaps your children, over to our home for dinner some time. I associate you with my boy, with his future. This would be the closest way we could touch that future.”
There is something I am now certain of. All things happen for a reason. But there is another thing I am even more certain of. That I will never, ever know what those reasons are.
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