Preston Falls : a novel

by Gates, David, 1947-

  But Jean's wondering what's going on up in Preston Falls. Could he maybe have—God, a million things. He's fallen off a ladder, lying there with his back broken, and here she is digging the last of the butter out of a little pleated paper cup for the last triangle of a buckwheat cake. Well, maybe when they get back to the house they'll find his truck parked behind Carol's, and the reason he didn't call to say he was on his way was—well, whatever it was. This just really doesn't look good.

  "Why don't we do this,'" she says to Carol, for the kids to hear. "We have to go back to the house anyway, right? If we're taking Rathbone. So what I thought we could do, you could get your truck and follow me to the reservoir, I'll hike with you guys for a little, and then I thought maybe I'd take off and drive up to Preston Falls, and sort of check and see if Willis needs a hand with anything. There's always so much stuff to take care of. And then maybe he and I could caravan down tonight."

  Good old Carol: doesn't even raise an eyebrow. "Actually, that might not be a bad idea," she says.

  "I want to go too," says Mel. Roger just stares down at his puzzle placemat, tracing routes through the maze with his knife.

  "That's nice of you, sweetie," Jean says. "But you know what that drive is like. And then we'd have to turn right around and come back. You'd be bored out of your mind."

  "I'm bored here."

  "And besides, I think Aunt Carol could use your help." Jean tips a quick nod in the direction of Roger. She hates herself when she pushes their buttons. Then again, it seldom works anymore.

  Mel heaves a major sigh.

  "While the cat's away," says Carol, giving Roger a wink he doesn't see. "Now we can stop at the video store on the way home and go bazonkers."

  Carol's the good cop. The kids like their friends to see them bombing around with their hippie aunt in her little red pickup, and she lets them blast their own tapes, as loud as they want. One night she allowed

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  them to rent Nightmare on Elm Street, Part Something —which in fact pissed Jean off. Roger, of course, said it wasn't scary, but Mel had trouble getting to sleep. (Jean worried more about Roger.) Still, when Carol leaves . . . Oh, but then Willis will be back. Her rock. God, was there a time she really thought that?

  "Crap," Jean says. "I just remembered. I totally forgot about candy for tomorrow. For the trick-or-treaters."

  "We can take care of the candy," says Carol.

  "That would be great if you could," says Jean. "I usually just pick up some M&M's or Raisinets, and one kind of miniature candy bar, Milky Ways or something, and then those little rolls of Smarties? And then we put together little individual bags. What we've been doing, we take this stamp—I think it's in the desk—you know, that's got our name and address? And just stamp each bag. I think it makes the mothers a little more secure."

  "What a cool idea," Carol says. Willis used to say it was begging people to sue their asses.

  The waitress puts the check down in front of Carol.

  "Here, let me give you some money for the candy," Jean says, grabbing the check. "You sure you don't mind doing this?" She gives Carol a twenty, then lays four singles on the table for the waitress and puts an unused knife on top of them.

  "It'll be a good project for tonight," says Carol.

  The four singles look mingy, so Jean takes them back and puts down a five. For the working woman who has to be inside on a day like this. Whose face she never looked at.

  Out in the parking lot, sunlight beams off bumpers and windshields. "All right,'' says Carol. 'Tm pumped." Fist in the air.

  The kids say nothing; still, they climb in without complaint and Jean doesn't have to tell Roger to fasten his seat belt. She rolls her window down, puts on the radio—the middle of something sprightly with violins—and swings onto Route 9. But the sun looks like it's already starting down the sky.

  "Listen, I hate to say this," she says, "but would you guys mind too much if I punk out on this hike entirely? It's already getting sort of late, and it's such a trek up to Preston Falls, you know?"

  "Booo," Carol says. "No, you're probably right. Be nice to get there before dark if you could." She turns to the back seat. "But hey, one party pooper isn't going to poop on our party, right? No way.''

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  "I really want to go with you," Mel says.

  "It's going to be so late, dear," says Jean. "And you have school tomorrow. And it's Halloween."

  "I can sleep in the car."

  Jean shakes her head.

  ''lean/'

  "I really appreciate you wanting to keep me company, sweetie. But I want you and Roger to get to bed early." God knows why she's pretending this is about altruism.

  She takes the long way up: the Taconic to 22 to 22A. Because she hates all those trucks on the Thruway and the Northway Because she feels like indulging herself. And because whatever's wrong can't get much worse in the extra forty-five minutes. And really because she doesn't want to be doing this. As she goes north and north and north, the fierce reds and yellows give way to browns and then the leaves themselves start going and at last it's bare trees reaching up into the bright, blank blue. In the little towns, pumpkins sit on doorsteps and ghosts dangle and flap from tree branches: mostly store-bought plastic ones with cartoon faces, but here and there just a white bedsheet hung from a noose. Very Diane Arbus.

  She holds out against putting on the radio until she gets off the Taconic, then holds out some more until the shortcut around Queechee Lake, and then all the way to Center Berlin, where she finally feels like it's either get something on the radio or go into an absolute panic. There's static where WQXR had been, and she hits Seek: a country-music station; a rock station, obviously for teenage boys; some man talking about the teachings of Paul, two seconds of "Dock of the Bay." She can't imagine why she would ever again need to hear "Dock of the Bay," or "Hey, Jude," or "California Girls." What it is, she's come to hate most music. She lands at last on a classical station out of Albany, where a solemn-voiced man is summarizing the plot of an opera. "The wedding party and Elvira reappear while Walton sounds the alarm and organizes the pursuit. Shock and grief at Arturo's disappearance strike Elvira senseless, and in a dreamlike delirium she imagines herself being married to him." She's driving past sagging barns and sagging trucks and cows standing in mud and a sign saying PUMKINS FOR SALE. She sees a dead raccoon up ahead, lovely round-ringed tail, body bloated huge, as if inflated. This is all too crazy. She turns the radio off and listens to the

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  wind and the tires and the engine: a three-part noise that if you really listen has little parts within each of the parts. She turns the radio back on. She passes landmark after landmark. The grocery store with the magnetic-letter sign at the curb: WE HAD A 2 MILLION WINNER. The boulder somebody painted to make it look even more like an Indian in profile. The used-book store that has the post boy out front; now it's wearing a Dracula mask.

  The sun is just trembling above the horizon when she comes up the last hill—the real last hill, not the hill that looks just like it—and turns onto Ragged Hill Road. Past the tumbledown barn that Willis used to call Nude Descending a Staircase Acres. Past the silver trailer almost hidden by sumacs and the blue trailer with chickens running loose and a circle of dooryard gnawed bare by a tethered goat. Past the house with pastel-green siding where you usually see the fat little boy with the Mohawk out riding his bike and every year they have a perfectly weeded garden with absolutely straight rows. Then on through the stand of half-brown pine trees, going uphill all the time, and past the trailer with the GUN SHOP sign, the junk cars, the Hog Roster and the mountains of heaped-up firewood. What's-his-name's.

  She comes around the last corner and sees that at least the house is still standing. But what's all that blue plastic? He must be putting a new roof on, God knows why—and God knows where he's getting the money. His truck's not here, and if ever a house looked deserted. The maple trees are bare and the lawn is higher than
your ankles, except where it's covered in dead leaves.

  She pulls up onto the lank grass, superstitious about taking the place where he parks his truck, and climbs out. The late-afternoon sun is higher above the horizon up here, and it feels hot through the thinning air. Not warm. Hot. Sharp and stinging. One of the reasons she hates and fears Preston Falls: in this clean air you can really feel the damage they've done to the ozone, far worse than they're telling us. Instant sunburn. Up here she keeps slathering Mel and Roger with sunblock and making them wear hats outside. Willis disapproves.

  But she's forgotten how quiet it is, A breeze sets leaves rattling in a narrow file, as if a swift ghost had rushed through on the way from one arbitrary point on the lawn to another and vanished. She walks through the grass and leaves to the kitchen door, looking for signs that any-

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  one has walked this way lately. But she doubts even a man could see anything—even if he'd been a Boy Scout and read all of Shedock Holmes. The door's unlocked. There's a musty smell inside, together with a rotten whiff of stove gas. She calls Hello, then feels stupid: a house doesn't smell this way if people have been in it. But it's weird. Willis always locks up, though of course you can get in through any window. Which is in fact how he gets in, instead of going into the woodshed for the key. You'd have to know Willis to know how perfect that is.

  He's left the boombox right out on the counter, and a stack of CDs. Which is weird, too: he usually hides stuff because the house was once broken into. But what she really doesn't like is this one little gray spider strand connecting the handle of the JOE mug with the countertop. She lays her fingertips on the rim, absurdly hoping to feel whether Willis is near or far. But no feeling of anything floods in on her. Of course. Because the whole idea is stupid.

  She looks around. On the floor, Rathbone's food dish and water bowl, both empty. In the sink, a bowl with a spoon and a single Cheerio stuck to the inside. On the table, a Want Ad Digest folded open, with an ad circled in pen:

  TRACTOR Ford 8N w land plow, disc harrow, snowplow, sickle bar, VGC, $2250 W/D.

  The calendar says September: summery picture of a lake with these cliffs hanging over it and a red-and-white sailboat out in the middle, no sail up and nobody inside.

  The furniture's still piled up in the dining room, and the living room's still empty. Her footsteps echo. Plastic still over the window, still the same hole in the ceiling. He hasn't gotten much accomplished in his two months. Though in fairness he is doing major stuff to the roof. She goes into the front hall, around the sofa and upstairs. She peeks into the kids' rooms at unwanted toys: a red-and-blue plastic three-wheeler and a broken space robot in Roger's room; in Mel's, jigsaw puzzles (Mount Fuji, a covered bridge) and games (Candyland, Don't Wake Daddy). And there sits the black-haired doll, Rosita or whatever her name was, that Mel used to tote around everywhere: legs spread, arms spread, back against the wall, eyes open, waiting for somebody to give a thought to her. Waiting for years. Jean actually feels herself getting teary. Oh please.

  She goes into what Willis used to call, with that little sneering hesi-

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  tation, "the, ah, master bedroom." Bed's unmade—of course—and the floor littered with underwear, socks and t-shirts. Well, damned if she'll clean up his mess. Not that anyone's asking her to. The light's too spooky for her to linger, anyway: that slanting, end-of-day sunlight that makes things seem to glow from within. She opens the door to Willis's little study—God, there's a window broken in here and glass all over the floor. The lovely locals. And his computer's on, with his customized Screensaver crawling: I CAN'T GO ON I'LL GO ON. She looks around for the rock somebody must have thrown—nothing—then kneels and touches her wrist to the seat of his chair. Out of sheer stupidity. Could it be that locals broke that window downstairs, too, and this was some kind of hate campaign like what happens to black families? She wouldn't put it past these people. And she can actually sort of see it their way: city folks are driving up the price of homes so locals can't afford to live here anymore. In Wakefield, the next town over, teenagers used somebody's summer place for a drug party house all winter and did fifty thousand dollars' worth of damage; toward the end they were blamming the walls with shotguns.

  But what actually happened here? Okay, he's working on his computer, somebody throws a rock, he runs down to investigate, gets in his truck—and then what? He just never comes back?

  Meanwhile the red light on the answering machine's going crazy.

  She presses Play. "Hi, how are you, how's the. house coming . . ." Beeeep. "Hey. It's Marty. Listen. Couple things to go over, for when you come back. Nothing major Give me a call the next day or two? Four four two six? In case you've forgotten." Beeeep. "Hi, just thought I might catch you in. . . ." Beeeep. "Aahsk nawt why yaw brotha has nawt called you, aahsk why you have nawt called yaw brotha." Beeeep. "It's Marty. Listen, we do need to talk. Please get back to me? Four four two six?" Beeeep. "Hi, uh, listen, I'm a little concerned . . ." Beeeep. "Willis, it's Marty. It's very urgent that you get back to me as soon as you can. We're assuming that you're coming back to work, since we haven't heard to the contrary, but we badly need to talk. So if you get this . . . four four two six. Okay?" Beeeep. The red light stops flashing.

  So he got none of these messages? Her first one was at least two weeks ago.

  She looks through the stuff on his worktable. Receipt from the Quicklube in Chesterton, August 30. Old phone bills, electric bills, bill from Drew's Propane Service. No letters. Catalog from Renovator's Sup-

  ply, folded open to a page of hinges. What's strange, though, his pictures aren't up anymore. Just nail holes. They're on the floor, stacked against the table leg. Here's the farmhouse he grew up in. His horrible father, whom she used to try to think of as his pathetic father. His grandparents, though she can never remember which grandparents. Mel and Roger on Block Island, when she was six and he was three: Mel scooping sand with a plastic bucket, Roger holding up her Little Mermaid inner tube around his waist, neither one looking at the other or at you. And Jean herself, just after they were married, sitting on a lawn chair in Sarasota, umbrella'd drink in her hand, with sunglasses and that floppy old straw hat. She looks like any carefree young woman.

  She picks up the phone. "Hi," she says when Carol answers. "Well, I'm here. But there's no sign of him. No messages, I take it."

  "No, not at all. Everything's fine." Which must mean the kids are right there.

  "It's very weird up here," says Jean. "It just looks really deserted. And there's this window broken up in his study, and his computer's still on?"

  "Really?" says Carol, in the sort of bright tone she'd use if Jean had said a deer was standing at the kitchen door. "Well, Roger's right here. We've got the goody bags almost finished, and of course Rathbone's lying here supervising, Oh-oh, somebody heard his name."

  "I guess you can't really talk."

  "You got it," says Carol.

  "I have no idea what I should do," Jean says.

  "Oh, I know just what you mean. So I imagine Roger wants to talk to you."

  Jean hears Roger say, "No I don't."

  "Correction," says Carol. "He does not want to talk to you. He is, in fact, heading upstairs. Just a sec. Rog?" she calls, muting the phone somehow. "Would you just knock on Mel's door and tell her it's time to get up or she'll never get to sleep tonight?" Jean doesn't hear Roger answer. "Sorry about that," Carol says.

  "What's wrong with Mel?" says Jean.

  "Just taking a nap."

  "Really? She never does that."

  "Well, we had a pretty good hike. And I think she's a little bummed, to tell you the truth. Nap will probably fix her up. So what's your plan?"

  "No idea. Turn around and come back, I guess. I don't know."

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  "But don't you think you better get the police going on this?"

  "Oh God."

  "WeUj^tf^..."

  "I mean yes, I've thought ab
out it. But it's like, what are the limits? He's perfectly within his rights to just, you know, go somewhere."

  "When he has to be back at work tomorrow'^ Come on. He could be in some kind of really serious—"

  "Look, can I call you later?"

  "Jean, I'm only—"

  "I'll call you later."

  Jean goes to the broken eyebrow window, gets down on one knee and looks out. A squirrel moves along the stone wall, flowing from one frozen pose to the next. Carol is right: what's she waiting for?

  For this not to be happening.

  She goes back downstairs to the front hall and sits on the sofa. She folds her hands in her lap, closes her eyes and begins to say One, one, one in her mind. It was Carol who got her into meditation, back when Jean was eighteen and going through stuff and Carol was living with her hippie princeling in Central Square. (This was before Gid the mountain man, or whatever he thought he was.) Carol doesn't know she still does this; she doesn't want to encourage Carol in anything mystical. And she would certainly not want it known around The Paley Group. She did tell Willis, back when they told each other things. Since they were in confession mode, he said, he might as well admit that he sometimes prayed. She asked what his prayers were like; he said they always began "Dear God," like a little boy's. And in fact, when they were first married they tried saying this sort of nondenominational grace for a while. In a way, she's glad she never took Mel and Roger to church, or even taught them the Lord's Prayer or talked about God, probably because deep down she takes it all too seriously and didn't want to offer it to them unless she could absolutely get behind it herself. Though you could also look at it as the absolute worst form of child abuse, to starve the spirit. One more reason she's an unfit parent: she doesn't know what to think about anything.

  All this self-talk is totally screwing up her meditation, of course, though you're not supposed to worry about that but simply go back to the one, one, one. When she opens her eyes again, the hall is darker and she feels slowed down. She cranes her neck and looks over her shoulder