Eric asked for peanut M&Ms, and his mother bought them and a drink for herself before drifting off to mingle with other important adults. Eric made a game of throwing and catching the candies in his mouth.
“Do you want one?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, holding out my hand.
“Then you’ll have to catch it,” he answered. He tossed another and caught it in his mouth before I could grab it. Cackling, Eric shoved handfuls of M&Ms into his pockets, and I pinned him against a pillar, grabbing for them. I could feel his thin body, the delicate rack of his rib cage, and it felt like a body long familiar, though I’d never touched him—though, I realized, I’d never really touched anyone before. And it was all wrong, to be touching him, and I stopped laughing and pulled away, horrified. Oblivious, he danced with triumph, thrusting his fists in the air.
“Don’t be a dork,” I said quietly, so quietly I couldn’t be sure he had heard me. I looked around the lobby. Eric’s mother was elaborately extricating herself from a circle of hairsprayed women, kissing cheeks. I didn’t belong here with Eric—I belonged at Jocelyn’s or Abby’s, or kicking a soccer ball around with Elizabeth Talbot.
Eric ate the chocolates smugly. After a while he finally offered me one, and at first I ignored him, but then I took it and ate it without meeting his eyes.
“What?” Eric said.
“Nothing,” I answered. We went back into the theater for the second half of the ballet.
When we went outside, the sun was low and pink in the sky. As we walked to the car in the parking ramp, Eric skipped and twirled, curving his arms the way the dancers had. His mother gave him a hard look. “What?” he said, but he stopped. After that, no one spoke.
Eric’s family lived close to Orlando, only ten minutes or so from the performance hall. In his neighborhood the houses were large and made of gray brick, with a lot of space between each one, great distances of perfectly manicured grass. Mrs. Biersdorfer pulled the car into a garage that opened automatically as we approached it.
“I hope Livvie kept everything warm for us,” she said.
In the uncomfortable silence that followed, I asked, “Who’s Livvie?”
Mrs. Biersdorfer snapped her head in my direction, as if she’d forgotten I was in the car.
“Livvie works with us,” she said. “She’s our housekeeper.”
Eric looked steadily out his window. His mother shut off the ignition, and he made no move to get out of the car. Mrs. Biersdorfer got out, shut the door behind her, and went into the house without looking back at us. Eric and I sat in the backseat for a moment, not moving. With the air-conditioning off, the car was quiet, the ticking of the engine the only sound.
“I’m sorry about her,” Eric said suddenly, gesturing toward the driver’s seat. His face started to redden, and he met my eyes for only the shortest second before he looked away.
“You shouldn’t be sorry,” I said, embarrassed for him. “It’s not your fault.”
“Well, anyway,” Eric said, and he fumbled with the door handle for a moment before opening his door. I followed him into the house, which was cold from air-conditioning and had a slightly musty smell. The furniture was sparse, all angular chairs facing one another. The living room had a high ceiling, open to the second floor. I didn’t know anyone else who had a house with a second floor.
“Come on,” Eric said, and led me up the stairs.
Eric’s room was large, almost as big as my family’s living room. The walls were painted a pale sky blue that darkened toward the ceiling, where the blue became black, dotted with silver stars. Everything was neat in a way that seemed vaguely military—the bed was made, no toys or clothes in sight. Nothing gave him away. I wondered whether the room was always like this, or whether he had cleaned because he knew I was coming over. Even his books were pushed way back on their shelves into the shadows, making it hard to see the bindings. Eric stood in the middle of the room, still wearing his suit.
“You’re very neat,” I commented. Eric nodded. He stood stiffly with his hands in his pockets, looking almost angry.
“What do you want to do?” he asked. “Do you want to play a game? I have Scrabble and backgammon.”
“Don’t you want to change out of your suit?” I asked. “I’ll wait out in the hall.”
Eric seemed to consider this. “No, that’s okay,” he said finally. “You have to wear your dress. It wouldn’t be fair.” He pulled a backgammon board out of his closet and we sat on the floor to play. By the time his mother called us for dinner, Eric was already winning. He looked up impatiently.
“I’m not even hungry,” he said. “Are you?”
“Kind of,” I said. In fact, I was starving. The smell of roast beef had become stronger since we had been playing, making my stomach rumble.
“Well, let’s go, then,” Eric said. I followed him down the stairs to the dining room. I had assumed that Mr. Biersdorfer would be home for dinner, and I had also expected to see Livvie, the mysterious housekeeper. But only Eric’s mother was in the dining room, sitting at the head of the table. Eric and I sat across from one another, unfolding linen napkins onto our laps.
“Did you both wash your hands?” Mrs. Biersdorfer asked.
“Yeah,” Eric lied for us. We ate silently. I tried not to watch Mrs. Biersdorfer, but it was difficult not to: she did everything slowly and deliberately. Her plate was neat at all times, each forkful of food organized and well balanced before she carefully placed it in her mouth without disturbing her lipstick. Then she chewed slowly, looking off at a point far away. Only after she had swallowed and taken a sip of wine did she turn her attention to her plate again to organize another forkful.
Eric kept his head down and ate quickly, picking up little bits of food: a dab of potatoes, a few peas, a sliver of meat. I had expected this dinner to be different from our dinners at home—better food, no TV—but the silence was strange. It embarrassed me, made me feel that I should speak but also that I should be as quiet as possible, that I should be the quietest of all.
After ten minutes, Eric put down his fork and sat back forcefully. He looked at his mother, then at me. Then he crossed his arms across his chest and looked down at the table.
“Did you get enough to eat?” she asked without looking at him.
“Yup,” he said, then looked at me. “Are you done?”
“Eric, let her finish,” his mother scolded.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I was done.” I put down my napkin and stood. Mrs. Biersdorfer looked up at me, surprised, then looked back down at her plate. For an awkward moment I stood there, knowing I had done something wrong but not sure what.
“May we be excused?” Eric said, sliding himself to one edge of his chair. Clearly we weren’t supposed to stand without permission. I never would have guessed that.
“You may,” said Mrs. Biersdorfer.
We were halfway up the stairs when Eric stopped and turned back.
“Oh, um,” he said with a false offhandedness. He rifled through his hair with a hand. “Did you say thank you?”
“What?” I asked, my pulse quickening.
“You should say thank you for dinner,” he said, gesturing at the dining room door. Of course: thank Mrs. Biersdorfer for dinner. The most obvious opportunity to thank her for something, and I’d missed it. But how could I go back in there now just to thank her?
“I’ll meet you upstairs,” Eric said. He stood watching me until I turned to walk back down the stairs. I felt a weird anger toward him then. I had never had my manners criticized by another kid before. Yet I also felt ashamed because clearly I didn’t have any manners. I never knew what to say to adults like Mrs. Biersdorfer, so I said as little as possible.
I paused at the door to the dining room, not sure what I would say when I went in. I stepped inside thinking that Mrs. Biersdorfer might have left. But she was still there, standing at the head of the table folding napkins, while a large black woman in a shapeless beige dr
ess loaded our plates onto a tray—Livvie.
“Thank you for dinner Mrs. Biersdorfer it was really good,” I blurted, all of the words running together. Both women looked up at me, then briefly at each other. I had meant to address Mrs. Biersdorfer, but I realized I was still staring at Livvie. Livvie picked up her tray and pushed through the swinging door to the kitchen.
“You’re welcome, Dolores,” Mrs. Biersdorfer said. “We’re glad you could join us today.” She gave me a tight little charity smile, and it occurred to me for the first time that Mrs. Biersdorfer thought I was poor, underprivileged, that she thought of taking me to the ballet as offering me an opportunity I would never have had without her generosity. Even the food, her smile said, was better than I usually got, a rare treat.
“Can I do anything to help clean up?” I asked.
“Oh no,” Mrs. Biersdorfer said. “That’s very kind of you, but we’ll take care of it. You run along and play with Eric. What time is your father planning to pick you up?”
“I don’t know,” I said. No one had told me any of the details, yet now I felt stupid that I didn’t know. I felt a sudden fear that my parents would forget me, that there had been some miscommunication between them—maybe my mother thought my father was picking me up, he thought she was, and I’d be stranded here until late at night, imposing on the Biersdorfers.
“Well, I’m sure he’ll be here before too long,” Mrs. Biersdorfer said with another tight little smile. She disappeared into the kitchen.
Upstairs, Eric sat on his bed, still wearing his suit, reading a book. We got back to our game, and only a few minutes later we heard the door open downstairs. I assumed my father had arrived to pick me up, but the booming male voice was nothing like my father’s. Eric lifted his head from the game and held his face up like a dog catching a scent.
“My father,” he said.
“Should we go down?”
“Why?” Eric asked.
We went back to backgammon, and it seemed like a long time before the doorbell finally rang again. That time, I heard the singing notes of my mother’s polite voice.
“What’s wrong?” Eric asked.
“It’s my mom,” I said. But he couldn’t understand that my father was supposed to pick me up—the whole plan my mother had worked out in her mind, with Mr. Biersdorfer inviting my father in for a drink, then helping him get his job back. I could imagine what had happened at home: her trying to coach him on how to behave, as she had with me; her growing conviction that he would decline any offer of a drink, that he would not make small talk, but just gather me up and go. I could imagine her deciding not to trust him with this opportunity, deciding that she would have to come over and charm the Biersdorfers herself.
Eric and I sat nervously, expecting to be called downstairs at any moment. But minutes went by, and nobody called us. We put the game away and stood near the cracked door, listening. We could hear our mothers talking to each other, though we couldn’t make out the words.
“Do you get along with your parents?” I whispered. Really what I wanted to ask was why he had invited me to the ballet—whether he’d asked me because he wanted to be my friend, as I had thought at first, or whether, like his mother, he wanted to offer an opportunity to someone less privileged.
“What do you mean?” Eric asked. “Do you mean, like, do we fight?”
“I guess,” I said. “Or, like, are they mean to you?”
Eric thought for a minute. “They’re older than other people’s parents,” he said finally. “They got used to not having kids around before I was born.” He fell silent for a while and we both strained to hear what was going on downstairs. I wondered whether Eric’s parents had told him this story, or whether he had figured it out on his own.
“I ran away from home once,” he whispered. I gave him a skeptical look, but he stared back at me steadily.
“Where did you go?” I asked.
“To my old school. I climbed in an open window.”
“Did you walk there?” I asked, incredulous. I was trying to picture Eric hiking through the suburbs of Orlando, a sleeping bag under his arm, his most treasured possessions in a knapsack.
“I took a cab,” Eric said. “I was only there for a few hours. My parents figured out what happened and called the cab company for their records.”
I tried to imagine the punishments that might befall me for doing such a thing. I would have no idea how to summon a cab, what to say to the driver, or how much money to give him.
“Did you get in trouble?” I asked.
“They came and picked me up. They told me not to do it again.”
“Dolores!” my mother’s singsong social voice rang out from the bottom of the stairs.
“Yeah?” I called back.
“You ready to go, baby?”
“Come on,” Eric said. Downstairs, my mother and Mrs. Biersdorfer were standing in the living room looking up at us. My mother was wearing one of her work outfits, a green dress and white jewelry, even though it was Saturday. She was smiling and flushed under the gaze of Mrs. Biersdorfer.
Through the dining room door, which was open just a crack, I heard the clinking of glass. A warm yellow light seeped out. Something moved and resolved itself into a man’s thick arm, the white sleeve rolled up, a glinting watch. I heard the sound of a glass of ice rising and falling. Above the arm, I saw a sliver of pink face and silver hairs.
“Are you ready to go, baby?” my mother asked. I nodded.
“It was really so nice of you to invite her,” my mother sang to Mrs. Biersdorfer. “She’s never been to a ballet before. This was quite a treat, wasn’t it, Dolores?”
“It was fun. Thank you, Mrs. Biersdorfer.” I tried to sound like my mother, to give my voice the lilting tone hers had.
“I’m glad you could join us, dear,” Mrs. Biersdorfer said. Her eyes flicked from my mother to me as she spoke. “We’re looking forward to seeing you again.”
Eric waved from where he stood on the third stair.
“’Bye,” he said, looking suddenly embarrassed.
We pulled the heavy door closed behind us. I didn’t see our car, but my mother took my hand and led me confidently down the sidewalk. Soon I saw it, parked a few houses down.
“What a handsome woman Mrs. Biersdorfer is,” my mother said, still using her theatrical voice. “And what a lovely home. It was decorated by a professional. I could just tell. Everything was just…perfect. The husband was awfully nice, too. An old-fashioned gentleman.”
“I didn’t meet him,” I said, and I was surprised to learn that she had.
“I got the feeling they might have liked to ask me to stay longer. But, of course, dinner was already over.”
“You were there a long time anyway,” I pointed out.
“Yes, well. Did you hear her say she’ll be seeing us again soon? I think that’s a good sign maybe they want to socialize with us. You know, D, this could be really important for your father.”
“I think she was just being polite,” I said. “Isn’t that just something people say? It doesn’t mean she’s really going to call us.”
My mother’s brow furrowed for the slightest moment.
“You are the most pessimistic child I’ve ever met,” she said. “You’re just like your father. Sometimes people say that and mean it, and sometimes they don’t. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
When we got home, she told my father about her encounter with the Biersdorfers in detail, acting out all the parts. She seemed to remember everyone’s exact words.
“He’s a real old-fashioned gentleman,” she said of Mr. Biersdorfer again. My father listened quietly. When she finally finished telling him about it, she watched him for his reaction.
“Well, that’s great,” he said. He gave a quick nod, patted his thighs, and stood up to turn on the TV.
My mother didn’t mention the Biersdorfers again for the rest of the evening or the next day, and by Sunday night it seemed she had forgot
ten about them completely. Now and then, I felt a tiny sharp feeling in my chest, and I knew it was about Eric and what would happen if anyone at school found out we had been together. I never should have done anything as ridiculous as going to the ballet with him. When I saw him on Monday, I decided, I would be polite but distant. In this way I would save us both.
But on Monday, Eric wasn’t in school. Mr. Jaffe said that he was sick, and it couldn’t have happened at a better time. When I got on the bus that afternoon, I realized how much I had made a habit of sitting next to Eric; that would have to stop too.
Just as the bus was pulling away, it jerked to a stop for someone running toward it. Elizabeth Talbot, panting and smiling, pink-cheeked, climbed on and sat next to me.
I thought of my space notebook at home in a desk drawer, its embarrassing pages packed with all the details and specifications of my uncoolness. My heart beat rapidly and I couldn’t think of things to say, but Elizabeth simply looked at me, opened her mouth, and started talking. She told me all about her soccer game on Saturday, the white piping on her new green uniform, the goal she had scored against an eighth-grade goalie. When she got through that, she told me about an old movie she’d seen on TV about a lady who pretended to be another lady, maybe her sister, in order to get a man to fall in love with her. He did, in the end, but Elizabeth was principally preoccupied with a scene in which the woman plucked her eyebrows down to almost nothing. Then she cut her long hair short so that it curled all over her head. After all that, she put on a lot of makeup and then she looked completely different. Elizabeth smoothed the tips of her fingers across her brows and down the sides of her face, her eyes closed. She said, “First she pulled her eyebrows with the tweezer, then she cut her hair with the little silver scissors. And then she was so pretty, she was like a totally different person.”
Elizabeth sat with her eyes closed as the bus bumped us along. Then she opened them and looked at me. She said, “I know who your boyfriend is.”
The Time It Takes to Fall Page 4