c trash bag and put it out with the garbage inside a can and say never again a bird, though the kids would probably insist on a burial in the backyard. If they did he’d give it but just the bird dumped out of the cage into a shoebox into a hole and no words after he kicked the dirt in. Wonders if he sang while they were away. Would if he heard birds singing outside or some rattling truck noises from the street, which often set him off. Does having the family around inhibit or encourage him to sing? Should have brought him with them as he wanted to, but his in-laws don’t like pets, especially noisy ones—“Singing isn’t noise,” he told them, but that didn’t do it; “What’s music to you,” his father-in-law said, “could be noise to me, and same thing reversed”—and thought he might get out of the cage and mess up their place and worse yet get lost where he wouldn’t be found till after Lee left. “What would you do then?” he asked them and his mother-in-law said “Let him out the window and tell him to fly home, what else?” “He’d probably hook up with some outdoor birds in the park and wouldn’t live through the next winter,” he said and she said “Birds like that have a short life anyway so one half-year free with friends would be worth another year or two alone in prison, I’d think. Naturally, I’d hold him for you if you wanted to drive up to get him and he’d flown back into his cage, but for no more than a day; I couldn’t take the squawking and I wouldn’t know how to take care of him.” “It’s simple; what is this, run in the family? He was originally Margo and Julie’s but they also say it’s too difficult looking after him. You change the water — that takes ten seconds; you dump the top of the old seeds and put in some new ones — that’s another thirty seconds. And as sort of a treat for him, if you want, you squeeze a lettuce leaf and fruit slice between the wires someplace where he can reach. Then you put a fresh paper towel on the liner and maybe clean any kaka that might have stuck to the wires, which you do with a damp paper towel, and comes to all told about three minutes, and for someone new at it, four. I do this once a day because I think every caged animal deserves a clean roost and fresh food and I feel it’s the least I can do till I train him to fly out of the cage and then back when I want him to, but if you did it every other day that’d also be okay.” Then he notices a car on his left, same one, how’d it get there from where it was way up front before? Well, he hasn’t been following it, but it could have slowed down and got around him somehow. Passenger looks at him, snaps his fingers and points to him as if he wants to say something pretty important, rolls his window down, smiles as if he recognizes him, “Oh you, how ya doing, buddy?” passenger seems to say and he nods and says through his window “Fine, thanks,” but also doesn’t like quick chats with cars alongside, feels they’re even more dangerous than just driving beside them and close, and looks front and picks up speed and their car speeds up too and stays even with his. What’s with them? he thinks. Years later he thought I should have known something was wrong right off and not looked at them or rolled down my window or smiled and said “Fine, thanks” or just not looked after my first look, rather, or played around or anything. I didn’t play around, but just not bothered at all with them after my first look. Or maybe “Fine, thanks” was enough, for saying nothing, ignoring them completely, might have triggered them too. I should have switched to the slow lane after my “Fine, thanks” and when I saw they were staying even with me, and if they started switching lanes to stay next to me I should have stopped on the shoulder first place I could and I’m sure that would have been that. I also should have started looking for a state trooper, for maybe there was one on the road or median strip then or in one of the opposite lanes going north and I could have flashed my headlights that something was wrong and maybe it would have worked and he’d have slowed down and crossed the median and eventually pulled me over to see what’s up. But by staying in the next lane to them, having an exchange of sorts with them, maintaining some contact with them, in other words by not doing more right away to get away from them other than speeding up some, it started things — familiarity, whatever — where they thought they got to know me in a way, something, but enough time had gone by where they’d decided I was going to be their target of the day, of the week, the year, even if there were kids in back — just their target, period, and maybe for some peculiar reason they even liked the idea better that there were kids with me; more to scare; more targets if they knew all along they were going to shoot at our car. It could even have been that enough time had gone by where they had begun to dislike me for some reason, though I didn’t do anything I know to encourage that. It could have been my face all along and only my face that they didn’t like, an expression I’m unaware I give to people in passing cars when I quickly look at them, or to people in general — unaware of till even today. No, today my expression’s different than it was then, I just know that. I’m sure it’s almost never been the same anytime since that day — since that moment when the guy started shooting — when he first stuck the gun out the window, even — except maybe when I sleep. When I’m driving, for instance, I rarely look at people in other cars and when I do, and it’s almost always because I think their car’s getting too close, it’s with a dead expressionless look I’m conscious of giving — I’m not even giving it, it’s just there. Or at least I think it’s dead and expressionless — again, I might not know my own look — but anyway the feeling is that every time I look at another car and especially on an Interstate or any main highway, I bring back to myself that particular day. It also could be those guys didn’t like my look from the moment they saw it when they were on my left the first time; in the end, who the hell knows? But what I’m getting at is that if I’d acted sooner — got on the shoulder sooner, let’s say — things would have been different. Much different. Altogether different. They would have passed us, I feel, and disappeared. Maybe. Or maybe nothing I did would have changed things except maybe if I’d had a gun and shot them first, and they would have followed our car to the shoulder, if I’d gone there sooner, and pulled alongside instead of shooting from a few hundred feet in front and opened up on us broadside with two guns instead of one, the passenger with two guns, the driver still driving or maybe getting in on the gun fun and shooting past the passenger at us too, with a semiautomatic rather than just a pistol or something like a machine gun and sprayed our car with bullets and killed all three of us but definitely one or two of us and wounded badly the third. Did I ever once think I would have preferred dying with Julie that day? Sure, thought of it before, plenty. And of course I would have wanted Margo to stay alive and unhurt, of course both of them alive and unhurt and me dead if anybody had to take Julie’s place. Thought all that before. But it probably would have been, if I’d gone to the shoulder sooner, different in a much better way. They would have driven on, never seen again. Wouldn’t that have been something. I would have then started up the car on the shoulder — but I actually never would have turned the ignition off. I’d have kept the car running in case they got on the shoulder in front or behind us and I had to go forward or reverse. Or maybe I would have turned it off unconsciously, doing what I usually do when I make a complete stop like that, even shifted into Park and pulled the key out and done what with it — put it in my pocket, thrown it on the dashboard? — but what did I do with the key that day? I forget. And if the key was out and they had stopped on the shoulder, what would I have done then? Stuck it in the ignition fast, but why my thinking that? And then driven off the shoulder — if they had gone on — and taken the next exit, reported the incident to the state police perhaps. Maybe I would have remembered better what they looked like if they hadn’t shot at us and what happened to Julie from it. I would have looked for a trooper station, at least, or probably just stopped at a gas station to find out where one was and gone to it and then gone home another route to reduce the chances of coming up against them again on the same Interstate. There are a few alternative routes, though longer, but so what? They’re probably more traveled, possibly because there are no tolls on them and there’s cheaper gas because there are more gas stations, and a wider variety of restaurants, and probably also because of their greater activity they’re more patrolled. And then, once home, done all the things I said. Fed the bird and cleaned his cage. Turned the water heater dial to Normal, house heat to sixty-eight. Got the mail, put out the garbage. Had a drink and started the kids’ dinner. Opened the living room curtains if there was still daylight, maybe taken a shower. But by then, having come home the long way and stopping to report the incident to the state police or at least phoned them about it and so forth — probably driving slower and more cautiously after what happened with those men, and forced to drive more slowly because I’d be on slower roads and some of the alternative routes have stoplights — it would have been dark. Sat down with the kids at dinner, had a glass of wine while they had juice, read the mail or glanced at it and the front pages of the newspapers, and so on. The automatic light switch. Gathered laundry from around the house and out of the bag of dirty clothes they brought back from New York and started a wash. Called Lee to tell her what happened that afternoon — just to speak to her and maybe as part of that conversation, what happened, or maybe I wouldn’t say anything till she got home, not wanting to alarm her or send her to sleep that night with bad thoughts. And maybe because of what happened on the road that day or because I was still keyed up from the long drive, or a combo of both, another scotch after dinner, maybe a third or just more wine. Cleared the table with the kids’ help, washed the dishes, got the kids in pajamas and washed up for bed, the story, from a book or my head, kisses, hugs and final words before they went to sleep. Next day, school for them and work for me. I’d set the table for them the night before, make their school lunches the night before too, put the washed laundry in the dryer. Day after next we’d all go to the train station to pick Lee up. Maybe during the drive home I’d tell her. I certainly by then wouldn’t have forgotten about it or thought it too small to talk about. In a few years Julie would be fifteen, he thought, five years after that, twenty, and so on. Twenty-five, thirty. Twenty-six, thirty-one, thirty-two, what’s the difference? Life isn’t divided by fives. They used to celebrate the kids’ half birthdays but stopped when she was killed. Just, was never brought up again by Margo, who started it when she was around six. “What’re you going to get me for my half birthday?” Margo and Julie would say and I’d say “I don’t believe in half birthdays,” but would always get them something but nothing expensive or big. She would have done well in grade school, I bet, gone to a good college, probably on scholarship. She was that smart and there probably would have been a financial need. Like Margo, tops in her grade-school classes in reading and math — probably grad school after. Become a scientist of some sort as I predicted she would when she was four, or a doctor or scholar or done something with the piano — performing, composing. She was that good and precocious at it too, her piano teachers said. Married, worked, had kids, continued to work or even while she was having kids, all of that. She would have been a great daughter, I just know it, he thought, and I would have been a better father, though her dying so young and no doubt the way she died and that I was there and perhaps could have done something to prevent it, though if she’d died slowly or quickly of a disease, let’s say, and at any age, it might have been the same, killed off a lot of it for me. I’d pass her room or go into it for something, suddenly go crazy. Go crazy sometimes when I was mowing the backyard grass, for instance, and looked up at what had been her bedroom window on the second floor; was tired, taking a break of a minute or so from mowing, looked around just to do something and happened to catch her window, one time remembered her looking out of it at me and waving and rapping the glass; depression, would just break down and cry. Sometimes in her room, fall across her old bed and bang the mattress and walls with my fists, burrow my face into the pillow, kick the head-or footboard, wouldn’t speak to anyone for hours after that even when they pleaded for me to, would go to the linen closet for her old comforter to lie under, would get drunk that night, usually, and eventually pass out and maybe stay that way for days, drunk, depressed, out of it, doing odd things, and it still happens occasionally but doesn’t stay for days. Anything reminding me of her can start it off. When I noticed a pimple on my nose in the bathroom mirror while I was shaving I suddenly heard her saying what she said once when I was in the bathroom brushing my hair: “I know I’m going to have ugly pimples and lots of scars from it when I grow up; it’s in our blood,” for I had a row of acne scars on each cheek and at the corners of my jaw. Saw on TV her favorite actress on a kids’ show from a few years back presenting an award — like that. Suddenly couldn’t make it, would crash. Someone else had to turn the TV off; my wife took the shaving brush out of my hand. Became overprotective of Margo; that’s one place where I meant I could have been a better father. When we crossed the street sometimes, even when she was twelve and thirteen: “Hold my hand, I said