Bird in Hand by Christina Baker Kline Read Free Book Online Page A

against the small windows set high in the wall. She rubbed the arm of the swivel chair and felt the rough wood, worn down to ribbons of grain. Her head was pounding, a low, throbbing pulse that had started at her temples and was spreading down her scalp, and she pressed her fingers against her skull to push it away. All of a sudden she felt a different kind of pressure on her shoulder, and it took a moment to realize that it was a hand—Charlie’s hand, the one with his wedding ring. She looked up. He was pale and somber. He was wearing a Yankees cap and a faded navy blue tennis shirt, all three buttons uncharacteristically undone, revealing a thatch of light-brown curly hair.
    “Alison,” he said, and she heaved forward, a sob rising from her stomach into her throat like a wave that has been gathering underwater. He crouched down, and she pulled him toward her, clawing his shirt, wanting to climb into his lap, to hide herself there. “Easy, easy,” he whispered, but he didn’t move, and she burrowed closer. She gulped and choked and a noise came out of her, a low whine. In a distant part of her mind she could see herself as she must have looked to him: rodentlike with panic, scrabbling and desperate. She could sense him flinch, but it only made her cling tighter. She wanted to reassure him that she was all right, she would be fine; but she couldn’t speak. She felt poised on the edge of something deep and terrifying, vertiginous with fear and regret and anger—at herself, at the slick carnival of the evening, at the parents of the little boy who let him sit in the front seat. “This can’t be happening,” she sobbed, clutching at Charlie, and he stayed still for a moment, then reached up for her hands and held them firmly in his own.
    “It is happening, Al,” he said quietly. “It is happening. And you need to pull yourself together.”
    It was a rebuke, and it stung. She searched his face for any sign of compassion, but his expression was unreadable. She felt a creeping annoyance, like a teenager with a scolding father. “I know,” she said.
    “So how’s your wrist?” He touched the bandage tenderly, as if to mitigate his harsh words.
    “It’s just a sprain.”
    “That’s good. How does it feel?”
    She shrugged. “It hurts a little.”
    He nodded, then rubbed his whole face with his hand. “Do you know anything—the boy … ?”
    “They haven’t told me anything.”
    “Jesus.” He filled his lungs with air and breathed out slowly. At a desk across the room, a clerk was typing on a keyboard, her eyes steadfast on a computer screen. The room had the claustrophobic feel of an underground bunker. Everything was gray: the carpeting, the desks, the computers and chairs. The room even smelled gray—fungal, with an overlay of disinfectant. Mildew and ammonia. The fluorescent lights overhead were encased in cages. Alison could not quite comprehend that it was almost midnight on a Friday, and they were there in that room.
    All at once she thought aloud: “Where are the kids?”
    “I called Robin,” he said.
    Alison winced. Robin was a good neighbor, but not a close friend; Alison hated that she was involved. But who else could he have called?
    “What did you tell her?”
    “That there’d been an accident. That you hurt your wrist.” For the first time, he looked in her eyes.
    The clerk got up from her desk and riffled through a file. She picked up the phone and dialed, waited a moment, and began talking quietly. Alison heard her say, “Not much. An accident report. Yeah, one. In surgery. A three-year-old male.” She shook her head. Then she caught Alison looking at her, and turned away.
    “So what now,” Alison said to Charlie, trying to keep her voice even.
    “I suppose you should tell me what happened.”
    “I think you already know,” she said. “Don’t you?”
    “Well, I know some things,” he said. “I know that your blood-alcohol level was just over the limit. Point oh-nine