Rachel opened her mouth to disagree—Paddy could see that knee-jerk response—but Marcus said, "You're right!"
Rachel shut her mouth. Then Marcus launched into a long description of the black kids at his school. There were two types: the ones who hung back and made no noise, trying to become white, Marcus proposed, and the noisy ones who hung together, yelling, slapping each other, hooting in halls, jabbing at the air, swaggering, inexplicable. The quiet ones were fearful, the noisy ones unapproachable. He'd tried to be an exemplary citizen, encouraging tolerance, going out of his way to extend friendliness, and where had it gotten him? Punched in the face. The unfairness made him furious.
"I know what you mean," Paddy said. "Makes you mad, doesn't it? That's why you should punch back, just get really dang mad." He held up his hand, because he knew Rachel was going to disagree. She was going to disagree and then they'd have to discuss it later. Discussing it later would be a waste of their private time together; so Paddy tempered his advice, although he still felt Marcus ought to have punched the boy. "Ordinarily," Paddy said, "I would recommend punching back. But with black people, I just don't know. Haven't got experience. It shouldn't be any different, but maybe it is. Maybe you ought to go punch your bed? Or kick your bathtub?"
"Kick the bathtub?" Rachel said. "What sort of advice is that?"
Paddy shrugged, but Marcus was nodding. "Good advice," Marcus said. In his mind, he was back on the train, throwing his fist and foot over and over again into the boy who'd hit him, hoping blood or sweat might splatter the two women who'd witnessed the original punch and done nothing.
Rachel observed her lover and her son candidly. Paddy shrugged ■when she caught his eye, smiling in his friendly way; Marcus looked thoughtful, less pathetic than before holding his limas. It was as if agreement had been reached about a troubling and persistent problem. Almost palpably, the different disappointments that had bothered each of the three of them lifted; they shifted in their chairs and began looking forward to dinner.
***
"He should write his feelings down," Evan said to Zach. "He should explore the contradictory nature of his response. He feels singled out and unfairly attacked. Well, that's exactly how black people feel. That's exactly what prompted his attack."
Zach blinked, wondering what his father would serve him for dinner. Meals here had grown more and more incomprehensible. Instead of shopping at health food stores the way he used to, his father now bought takeout and then complained when the food was unhealthful. Typically he purchased the most wholesome-looking thing on the menu, which frequently was the least flavorful, and then criticized its blandness. It was Zach's experience that all the really good food was not good for you; you'd think his father would have figured this out by now. Down on Clark, they'd find Thai food, Ethiopian, Jamaican. Zach imagined steaming boxes on the table...
"But," his father went on concerning Marcus, "he probably did something to provoke getting hit."
"Why?"
"The boy didn't hit you, did he?"
"No."
"That's what I mean. That is exactly what I mean. You don't get in fights, you don't show up with a broken nose, you don't go around..." Evan stopped. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes and forehead and hair roughly, as if trying to scrub out thoughts. He looked sick, in Zach's opinion, like he was coming down with a cold, like he was coming down with whatever Zach's grandfather had had before he died. In Zach's opinion, Ev needed to go home, too, down to their warm apartment in Lincoln Park, to a tableful of food, to Rachel.
"I don't think he did anything to make that boy hit him," Zach said, remembering that it was his own clutter of bags that had started the whole thing. "What are we going to eat for dinner?"
"Why didn't Marcus come with you?" his father asked, his glasses now back on his face, resting on his wrinkles.
Zach shrugged, trying to look innocently perplexed. His father's apartment was cold and loud, lacking all the soft things, like curtains and rugs and pillows. Other people in the building had televisions, but not his father. Other people had food on their shelves and a lot of lights on, but not his father. "Could we go see Gerry?" he suddenly asked. Since his mother and brother were clearly out of the question, he resorted to his uncle, whom he hadn't seen in months. "I'd like to see Gerry," he said, desperate to see somebody besides his father.
So, with some difficulty, Ev located his brother, who was staying not with the first people Ev phoned but with the eighth, a linking chain like a relay race that intrigued as well as irritated him. "What do you mean, 'Who's this?'" he shouted into the receiver. "Who's this?" Gerry had sequestered himself like a celebrity, was hidden behind many layers of people, all of whom required proof of Ev's right to know where his own brother was. Finally, it was left that Gerry would telephone within the next half-hour if he wished to be in touch. Ev slammed down the phone and glowered at Zach. Outside, it had grown dark.
"You happy?" he said.
Zach sighed. "I guess," he said bleakly, hoping his uncle would phone soon.
Instead, Gerry showed up at the apartment door forty minutes later. He'd called Rachel to get directions. He stank, but he hugged Zach long and hard.
"How's it hanging, men?"
Evan absorbed his brother's new persona: confident, well dressed. He wore a suit under his coat and muffler, a navy one, and black shoes. He looked theater-bound, and as if he'd been eating a lot lately; his disposition was not strung-out but jolly, as if he'd had two stiff drinks at a rollicking party just before coming up. His face held the high color of gin blossom; his nose was a merry alcoholic berry on his face.
"New digs," he said of Ev's apartment. "Why do you suppose they call it falling in love?" he asked his brother and nephew, apropos of nothing, as usual.
Zach laughed. He'd convinced his father not only to find his uncle but to order pizza. Now he busied himself with the pepperoni and cheese—his piece plus the whole surface of his father's, which Ev had scraped off—pouring on crushed red pepper as a way of warming himself up. His uncle was silly, as always, and that cheered him. He couldn't figure out what bothered his parents so gravely about Gerry. You could forget he didn't have a home or a job; he seemed perfectly content, as if he didn't know people considered him incomplete. He always left something behind when he went, a gift of some sort, and tonight he bestowed on Zach both a two-dollar bill and a Susan B. Anthony silver dollar. Zach loved exclusive mementos; Gerry had given him countless unique tokens, including an Oscar Mayer wienie whistle and a first-day cancellation Elvis stamp.
"Who'd you fall in love with?" Zach asked.
"Where'd you get the suit?" asked his father.
"Oh, Ev, you always want to spoil things." Gerry sagged like a sad clown onto the futon. To Zach, he said, "I fell in love with Yolanda, an improv girl."
"Improv!" Zach said. He licked his greasy fingers and smiled.
"Yes, she improvises. When you meet her you ask her to show you an assembly line or a country-western singer dry-out retreat." Gerry slid from the folded futon onto the floor, as if still in the process of falling, complaining of the lubricity of the furniture.
"Lubricity." Zach giggled.
His father had brought a kitchen chair into the room and was sitting on it with his legs crossed. Zach's father didn't mind sitting like a girl, with his legs crossed up high and his fingers laced together. Only recently had Zach begun to notice how feminine his father's gestures were, how if he imitated them he got ridiculed by classmates. Sometimes he wanted to tell his father, in case he didn't know. Other times, he suspected his father of wanting to be misunderstood, to be thought of as pussy, just to be different from other men. For gestures, Zach had begun looking to Paddy, who liked to pull up chairs and sit astride them like a coach, who flung open the refrigerator and then closed it with his foot.
His uncle Gerry was talking about Yolanda and comedy, but Zach's father had become impatient and stood up. Gerry immediately stopped talking. "What?" he
said.
"I've got a headache," Ev said. "I think I'll lie down." He first crushed the pizza box with unnecessary force and then strode off to the bedroom and shut the door.
Gerry said, "He doesn't look so good."
Zach agreed. They smiled at each other. "There's not much to do here, is there?" Gerry said eventually, looking around the empty room.
"No," Zach said.
"I've only been here this once, and I could be wrong, but I think I like your old place better."
"Me, too."
"Maybe Evan will go home soon."
"Maybe."
"You want to go cruise around?" Gerry asked. "I don't have a car or anything, but we can ride the trains for a while if you want."
"O.K.," Zach said, eager to get out of his father's depressing apartment. He couldn't imagine what his father did here all by himself. It was the kind of place where homework became entertainment.
From his bedroom, Ev heard his son and brother laughing. He liked having them there, on the other side of his door. He liked being near them yet not with them. He liked their existence on the other side of the door from his existence. It was a peculiar satisfaction, having guests in another part of the apartment. Apartment, Ev thought: apart. Yet together. Then Zach rapped on his door to tell him he and Gerry were going for a train ride.
"Be careful," Ev said, opening the door. He found that he actually did have a headache now, as if his power of suggestion were that potent. He handed Zach a ten-dollar bill surreptitiously while Gerry used the toilet. "Don't tell Gerry you've got it unless you run into trouble. You know my number here?"
"Duh, Dad."
Ev crossed the room to open the front door for them. He resisted asking the things that most interested him: where had Gerry's suit come from? Who was this Yolanda person really? "Be careful," he told his brother noting now the frayed jacket collar, the sheen of thrift store garment, the odor of used belongings. "Be back in a couple of hours, O.K.? And walk him all the way to the door here. He's only ten," he said, indicating Zach.
"Eleven," Zach corrected him.
"Eleven," Ev amended. But he knew Gerry had no full way of processing cautionary information—never had, never would; Ev set down the rules mostly for Zach's benefit. "Have fun," he added as they thumped down the four floors. He wished they would stay, laugh some more where he could hear them.
Later he would remember his scorn for Gerry's mothball-scented suit, his dress shoes. Later, after Zach returned alone, ambling from the station, Ev would curse Gerry, not yet knowing it was the last time he would see his brother alive.
Fourteen
IN HIS APARTMENT, a nest directly in the city's flow, uncushioned beside elevated trains and busy police station, above liquor store, next to taquito shop, and catty-cornered from newsstand, Evan dreamed of the wilderness. In the hubbub of urban uproar, he dreamed fervently of serene vistas, places he, city cynic, had never visited in his waking life, blinding blue skies, luscious green trees, mountains the color of which he had to concoct out of whole cloth (they were purple, as in the song). In bed he heard and felt the lumbering rumble of traffic and commerce and the strident tone of crime, and even knew, in the way self-conscious people know, that he was lying above the thick city squalor but he felt the sun, unadulterated, resurrecting something dormant, something embryonically hopeful, in himself. In his dream, he felt pleasantly intoxicated, as if high, reveling in the moment rather than experiencing his customary dread of the impending. In his dream, he ignored his anxieties. In his dream, he knew Joni was dead, but he was also holding her hand, nothing more, and they were walking in the overwhelming, luminous, yet fragile landscape where she'd last been. In his dream, he knew he was deluded—his knowledge was the black smoke that floated the illusion, that crept along the periphery of his vision, bubbling up in ominous vapors—but he also knew he could control it, could will a few more moments of abandon, could ride the ghostly crest before crashing once more into Chicago's stark gray morning.
***
Paddy dreamed of the Coles' coffee table again, only this time he'd broken it (he'd known all along he would end up breaking it, he could have predicted it from the beginning; it was smart and art, and he wasn't). He'd put his foot through the glass right into the girl's stomach, the way a farm boy could be expected to. Her hand had fallen to the floor and then he'd managed to crush it, too, as he stumbled in the rubble. Rachel was shaking her head, not even angry at Paddy, just so sad to see her table ruined. She certainly wasn't surprised that he'd done it; they both seemed to understand that Paddy couldn't be trusted to walk through a room without knocking over a few things.
He'd fought with Didi before bed, and now he was ruining his mistress's furniture. He was a failed husband, a failed lover. A written test was administered by Evan Cole at the YMCA. Paddy received his back with a D on it, although others who'd also been tested had received A minuses for simple childish drawings. "It's a written exam," he protested to Evan, who merely shrugged, disappointed in him.
And then he remembered that he knew Evan's secret, that he could tell Rachel about the suicide woman. No one would expect him to do that. "I'll tell her," Paddy told Ev smugly in the dream. "I'll tell her all about it."
***
Rachel dreamed she was watching a movie. She sat between Evan and Paddy. She had her hands in theirs. It was dark, but each of them seemed to be aware of the other's claim to her other hand. They were separated by her. They were seeing the movie differently. To Paddy it was an adventure; to Ev it was an ironic tale of corruption. Rachel became annoyed when she discovered herself thinking about their reactions to the movie rather than formulating her own. Yet she was also entertained by understanding both versions, Ev's and Paddy's. Both were interesting, both were valid, and she was proud of her competence—her superiority—in seeing the situation so objectively. Women mediated, she told herself as the movie washed over her and caused the men to react, each in his own way and each drawing Rachel's complete attention and sympathy and understanding. She squeezed Paddy's hand when the bad guy was in trouble, she squeezed Ev's when a dry line of dialogue emerged, all the while entertaining herself with the superiority of her position, wishing Zoë was there so they could discuss it.
At the end of the film the men argued with each other, but Rachel wandered amiably along, wishing she'd eaten popcorn, great greasy boxes of it, because in dreams, of course, popcorn has no calories, no consequences.
***
Marcus dreamed his recurring dream, the one in which Paddy Limbach was tied naked to a cable spool, stretched around it like a tortured man, held in place with barbed wire. Typically, in this dream, the spool would be sent rolling down a rocky hill, off a cliff, and into the ocean. He himself would set the wheel in motion, giving it a mighty shove. Marcus had never loathed anyone the way he loathed Paddy Limbach.
And typically, after Paddy landed in the ocean, Marcus would fall to the ground, horrified, guilty. He'd killed a man, and he would wake frightened, then relieved: just a dream.
This time, however, he didn't push Paddy from the cliff. This time he tried to untie the barbed wire, but it was too late. Away Paddy went, rolling toward death once more. When Marcus woke, he told himself he would have to get to Paddy sooner next time, keep him from ever being near the spool. He was glad not to want to kill somebody.
To Rachel, whom he'd wakened by calling out, he said cheerfully, "I always dream Paddy dies," and Rachel was distressed to think that Paddy's death would affect Marcus so little, that he would want to tell her so cavalierly about it. Why had he called her to his room to report his callousness? Did he really hate Paddy that intensely? Was her son becoming not only cold and dispassionate but proud of it?
But she had a headache from drinking wine and wanted more than anything to get back to bed and her own dreams, so she told Marcus to turn on his light and read for a while, and then returned to sleep herself without giving the issue of his hostility further thought.
&nb
sp; ***
Melanie Limbach dreamed of the wolf in the woods; the bright cracking shot of lightning became the fall of a tree, her mother's and father's shouting was the voices of all the animals, screeching as they tumbled from or were crushed under tree branches. She was wakened by the wolf himself, who'd managed to creep through the litter and disruption of the falling tree, who'd pursued her even while she'd thought of other things, of the tiny birds flung far from their nests. He crept and pounced, and it was his teeth, so unthinkably near and large, like a roaring drawerful of knives, that forced her awake.
And there was her father, saying her name, Melanie, their faces nose to nose, her father's fingers smoothing over Melanie's mouth and eyes.
Their nightmares, Paddy realized in a wild second, were precisely identical: they dreamed of losing each other.
***
Zach dreamed he rode his bike into a grocery store and sacked the shelves, pulling all the food he could into his backpack. He loved the canned beef stew and the frozen tamales and the ice cream candy bars and the sour cream potato chips. Miraculously, everything fit. Nobody stopped him. The aisles were wide enough to navigate easily, and Zach was surprisingly agile on the large bike. He waved to the cashier, he rode through the automatic doors, he rode into the streets dreaming of his booty, the bulk of which rested comfortingly on his back. He would eat and eat and eat.
***
Gerry Cole spent the night high on Seconal and morphine. The Seconal made him sleep, the morphine gave him great dreams. In one, he invented a game that involved a chessboard and hardware store goods, nails and screws and bolts and tiny pipes. Moving them required the proper tools, tweezers and hammers and a curling iron and a corkscrew; there were teams, designated by mortal status, the dead versus the living; his father cheated, using a hacksaw instead of a nail file. For a cogent moment Gerry woke, lying on Yolanda's bathroom floor—the bathmat padded, the tile pleasingly cool—and believed himself a pawn in the game. The tool to move him was a clever drug, something poured or shot or blown into him to make him ooze willingly forward. He had to hold on to the sink, he understood. Its smooth pedestal would slide or roll or stump onto the next square, and he with it, if he held on.
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