Breaking the Fall

by Michael Cadnum

  And she was gone, just like that, her eyes glittering with things she wanted to say, or was afraid to say, and I sat there, my words drying up, gazing after the closing door.

  I made a point of eating with my father that night, an uncommon event. We had Mrs. Paul’s clam crisps and a spinach soufflé in a plastic bag that looked like a green rock until you cooked it. I asked how things were going at the foundry, hoping to hear about molten steel and gigantic drop forges slamming out axles or exhaust manifolds.

  “Our dental plan has fled the country,” said my father.

  He said this with just the slightest wry tone, so I knew I was supposed to ask for more information. I was slow that night.

  “I have spent the afternoon talking to the world’s rudest dental receptionists, those sweet ladies who reassure you when you lose a filling.” He put down his fork. “I knew there was trouble,” he said, “when Macroplan wouldn’t answer the phone for two months.” He let air out through his teeth. “I should have played it differently. Finessed it somehow.”

  I got ready to ask him to tell me all about it, but when I looked at him, I really studied him. He was tired, dark smudges under his eyes, and he hadn’t shaved very well that morning. There was a little stand of whiskers under one nostril. He had a handsome, craggy face, and looked exactly like what he was—a smart man with many worries. He was drained, and not just from recent struggles. He was getting used up.

  “You know what life comes down to,” he said with a little smile. It wasn’t a question. It was one of those topic sentences my father liked to use in conversation: “you know what really pisses me off” or “you know what the problem with unemployment insurance is.”

  I gave him a look of interest, a hopeful smile.

  “A good filing system.” He laughed, an ironic sort of laughter I did not feel invited to join. “Isn’t that depressing?”

  I made a little questioning sound.

  “Depressing because you expect life is a question of courage or brains or love or something. But the guy who knows where he put things, where the money is, where the facts are, and who can put his hands on the hot numbers the quickest is the winner. It wins wars. It wins hearts and lives. It cures the halt and the lame. Not genius. Not the tireless, merciful soul. Those are nothing compared with a good information retrieval system.”

  He chewed, and I said: “Mother isn’t happy.”

  His answer was quick. “Happy,” both ironic and a little sad. He thought for a while. “That’s my point.”

  He regarded me. “She’s in Boston,” he said, and I wanted to say that she was nowhere at all, really. She was in flight, finishing a report, but then it stung me: he didn’t really know where she was, he was guessing, hoping that I knew. She hadn’t told him.

  After a long while, he said, “We may not make it.”

  My throat constricted and I stopped chewing. I had tears, blinding, quick tears, and I looked away so he wouldn’t see.

  His hand was on mine. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s going to be fine, Stan. Don’t worry.”

  I nodded, even tried to look a little tough. Sure. No problem.

  I had irritated my mother beyond exasperation; I knew that. I suspected, too, that my father was weary at least in part because of me. A dental plan doesn’t humble a man like my father. Without me, he could have taken a leave from his job, maybe, or quit it and found another. He could have done romantic things with my mother, bought her flowers and taken her away for weekends in Carmel.

  But it wasn’t fair to blame me. It wasn’t fair. They couldn’t count on me to hold things together for them. It wasn’t right.

  “You’re okay, Stan? Really?”

  I was okay. I was dead inside, but that seemed just about normal for this time and place. It was one of life’s IQ tests. If you felt wonderful you were stupid.

  It was obvious that Jared was right. I could hear Jared’s voice, sense his laughter. Don’t waste your time trying to help these botched people.

  Or, sure, you care about them. That’s natural. They’re your parents.

  But there is only one way to feel alive.

  17

  A white shape broke from the tangle of geraniums, and half hopped to where Sky sat.

  She caressed the large white cat, a creature who leaned into her and purred. The cat had strong-looking hind legs, and a single large front paw. Where the other forepaw belonged was nothing. Not a stump, not a scar.

  “A dog bit him,” she said.

  This news silenced me. I stopped to caress the cat, too, and for a moment took pleasure in the fact that we were both touching the same living creature.

  It was two days after I had helped push the big Ford back to the driveway. The car was there now, chocks behind the wheels to keep it from rolling, Tu bent over the engine. I had not seen Jared since the terrible night. Mrs. Trent had said he had a virus.

  I had to talk to Jared. I had something to tell him.

  “A German shepherd,” said Sky. “The cat was bloody all over. I tied a tourniquet.”

  “You saved his life.”

  She rubbed the cat one way and another. The cat spasmed, purring, hunching. “He’s a good cat.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “This isn’t our cat. He is his own cat. No name.”

  “He likes you.”

  “He remembers me,” said Sky. She looked up at me. “I know you used to pass by me and not know what to say.”

  I wanted to say something smart but couldn’t think.

  “And then you had your big chance with that guy on the football field.”

  “You needed some help.”

  “He wasn’t so strong.” She thought, and added, “That was a kind thing to do,” then looked away. “I was a little surprised.”

  “Why were you surprised?” I said, more sharply than I wanted.

  She tilted her head and did not answer, smiling at her own secret. “You try so hard, Stanley.”

  I bridled. “I do more than try.” I hated my snippy tone, but it was really more than I could stand.

  “I have offended Stanley,” said Sky to the cat. “Now he will never like me.”

  “Oh, I’ll like you,” I said, and I hated the tone of my voice. I said it as though regretting it. I was doing everything wrong. Being close to her made me an idiot. I blundered further, aghast at my words. “Tu says you have a boyfriend.”

  She gave a sideways look, her head tilted back, regal and very slightly offended. Her long black hair, full and highlighted with a burnish of mahogany, flowed about her, and her dark eyes took me in, weighed me, held me. “What does Tu say?”

  “He says there’s someone else you know.”

  “I know many people, Stanley.” She was solemn, but she was something else, too. Was she also teasing me, just a little? I tingled inside at the thought. It was an almost pleasant feeling.

  “Tu likes you,” she added.

  “I don’t know anything about cars,” I said, wondering why I insisted on making such a baldly honest statement.

  She looked at me sideways again. She was smiling, inwardly, and her eyes were narrow and searching my own eyes. “I think you know some things,” she said.

  “I like history,” I said, chattering on like someone who has taken sodium pentothal and absolutely has to blab the truth. “It would be wonderful to be a historian. To go back and figure out how things were and tell people about it.”

  “I thought you were very different.”

  That shut me up.

  “I thought you were going to be in trouble.”

  “How?”

  “With Jared.”

  “I hardly know Jared.”

  This first lie, out so quick, surprised me, and I sank back, away from what I had said, actually leaning back against the step. The concrete ledge dug into my backbone. A sow bug, curled up into a little seed, rolled in place beside my elbow. I had just now nearly crushed it.

  “I used to know h
im,” I added, for the sake of plausibility, and also because I knew she had seen the two of us together. To salvage some self-respect, I continued, “He’s really an interesting guy.”

  The cat purred under her hand. “You should meet my father,” she said.

  I looked out at the front yard, the big palm tree with its huge, dropped feathers and old date pits, the quiet street. A pigeon clapped through the air. I could see that talking with Sky was going to be an unusual experience. She didn’t indulge in the paragraphs that come between the title and the conclusion.

  “He saw you,” she added. “When you were here, pushing the car.”

  I helped the sow bug back to the edge of the steps and off into the geraniums.

  “He wants to meet everyone,” she said. I knew she meant everyone Sky was involved with. Did that mean, I wondered, that I was involved with her? But it was easy to imagine Mr. Tagaloa: gigantic, with dark, intelligent eyes. The sort of grown man who sees into someone like me, and knows. I had seen him only once or twice, a large man driving a copper-brown van picking up Sky after school.

  “But I have to think first.” She looked away. I had always wanted to talk with Sky, as I was now, but I had not anticipated her turns of thought. She leaned toward me, her eyes on mine, and said, “We have skunks.”

  “Aren’t they kind of a nuisance?” When she didn’t respond, I added, “They eat garbage, don’t they?”

  “Sometimes. I used to see their footprints around the garbage cans. I feed them.”

  I took a breath, gazed at the palm tree, and said, “They must like you.”

  She was laughing then, her eyes nearly vanished, a large, quiet laugh, so much like Jared’s way of laughing that I twitched and fell very still. “You think I’m crazy.”

  “No.” I said that very quickly.

  “You think I’m lying, don’t you, Stanley?”

  “Why would you lie? It’s nothing to brag about.” I clenched my fists. Talking with her was a disaster.

  “My father will like talking to you, Stanley. He knows a lot.” She watched her brother open the car door and lie down on the front seat, his legs sticking out into the sunlight.

  “Come over on Saturday,” she said without looking at me. “My father will be ending a plague. At least, that’s the way he looks at it.”

  The Biblical turn of her phrase, and the fact that it didn’t really make any sense, stopped me.

  She laughed. “Not you,” she said. “You aren’t a plague.”

  Then she added, enjoying, I think, the fact that I didn’t quite understand her, “I don’t like killing.”

  18

  The gray water shifted and surged around a man who swam in a circle, dog-paddling.

  He splashed in a bewildered panic. Then he found it.

  The floating object tossed in the water. It seemed to seek him. The severed leg floated toward his hand, bobbing, as another crocodile plunged into the water, and the beast that had taken his leg returned, torpedoing through the current to the man’s splashes.

  Jared switched it off. The screen went blank.

  “You always wonder why the cameraman doesn’t do something,” I said after a while.

  Jared was red-eyed, and my homework papers were scattered at his feet. “No,” he said. “I don’t wonder.”

  He wore a very old T-shirt featuring Fred Flintstone on a surfboard. Fred Flinstone was faded, and there were little holes worn in the fabric of the shirt. Sometimes Jared bought old clothes at Goodwill and wore them just to communicate something.

  He was smoking yet another cigarette. Beside him, the ashtray on the pile of magazines held cigarette butts, charred seeds, and the remnants of stems.

  On other evenings, Jared watched the death tape with interest. It was a collection of actual deaths, beheadings, firing squads, and in the one sequence that I hated most of all, the bewildered man who lost his leg to a crocodile.

  Tonight Jared leaned on his elbow and made no move to turn on the screen, although the VCR was still running, and the tape must have reached the electrocution by now.

  The marijuana taste was in my mouth, sticky and weedy, and my eyes burned from the smoke. I hadn’t smoked very much, just enough to be polite—I had to finish my homework. The lampshade was turned to the wall, spilling an oblong of light behind Jared.

  His mother had ushered me up the stairs, saying that she hoped I’d get him to feel better. There was a dinner party in progress, long white candles and long, narrow candle flames reflected off black bottles of wine.

  “If you get shot, you have time to get downstairs,” said Jared.

  I laced my fingers together.

  “Just a little nightstand gun.” His nostrils flared with a yawn. “No kind of stopping power.”

  “I don’t know what kind of gun it was. I never saw it.”

  “Maybe there wasn’t a gun at all.”

  “I think there was.”

  “You probably imagined it.” He said this almost sadly.

  “Maybe he went and bought a gun, to go with his security system.”

  Jared shrugged. “I hope so.”

  His words made me turn slightly in my chair, so I did not face him so squarely. “I’m not going.”

  These words shocked me. I had no idea where they came from. I was almost able to convince myself that I hadn’t spoken them, except for Jared’s response.

  He half smiled, brushing an ash off his T-shirt without looking. “You have to.”

  “I’m quitting the game.”

  He closed his eyes briefly in his silent laugh. “You can’t quit.”

  “I can’t do it anymore.”

  He pulled hard on his cigarette, then lowered his chin to his chest. “I won’t let you quit.”

  I made a breathy exclamation, a whispered syllable of frustration.

  “I want to get him to use his gun,” he said. “I want to risk everything, right up to the edge.”

  I said something I had been thinking about for a long time. Not the words so much, but the thought. “It’s sick.”

  “What?” His voice was hard, even though quiet. I knew he had heard me quite well.

  I didn’t say anything else.

  “You think this is just a game,” said Jared. “You think it’s like some kind of Monopoly you can pick up and put down when it bores you.”

  I shook my head, and did not meet his eyes.

  “It’s sick,” he mocked. He folded his hands and looked nearly kind. “You’re so ordinary, Stanley. You could change, you know. You don’t have to be one of these dull people.”

  Why I had tears just then I did not know. I looked away and cleared my throat, blinking.

  Perhaps the marijuana made the spill of light brighter, and made the fibers of the carpet distinct, the thousands of unnoticed filaments bound together into a seamless mass.

  “I know I owe you,” I said. “I know I was a coward.”

  The ugly words made it hard for me to speak, to breathe.

  “But I can’t.” I shook my head. I couldn’t say any more for several heartbeats. I closed my eyes. “It’s all over. I can’t do it.”

  “You’re going to try to go back,” he said. “To your old, dead life.”

  I didn’t answer. I had learned silence from my parents.

  “But you can’t,” Jared said, calm, soft-voiced. “You can’t walk away from feeling alive.”

  I knew he might be right.

  19

  The large man was sweating, uncoiling a hose and looking up into the tree. The hose was new, and it squeaked, the coiled circles wound into it not shaking out very well. The hose wriggled, a long, looping spiral.

  The tree had a trunk about as big around as my leg. The branches were naked except for subtle black movement. What appeared to be leaves on the twigs and branches were slowly wriggling. The wriggling larvae had fed on all the foliage, and now the black, spiked grubs were starving, raining slowly onto the lawn.

  His hand surrounded m
ine, but he kept his grip gentle.

  Sky made the introduction, and then she vanished, leaving me in the backyard with her father.

  “Baseball,” he said.

  I followed his thought after a pause. “A little.” I didn’t tell him that I had basically taken myself off the team in recent weeks.

  He whipped the green hose, and far away a loop of it straightened out.

  I had met Sky’s mother a few times, a woman who, as far as I could tell, never spoke, a round, slow-moving woman in outsized T-shirts. Sky’s father didn’t talk much either. He twitched the hose and did not talk at all, and yet he was not ignoring me. His work was convivial, a sharing of his presence, the way some people might whistle or hum a song when someone is around even though they don’t want to say anything.

  I sat on a low wall made of bricks. The light was both bright and gray, and the bare tree was alive in places with caterpillars.

  “I used to want to be an athlete,” he said. The hose flicked again, the pulse traveling in a wave along the length of the green hose to where it screwed into the wall.

  He turned his back to me, and I made out by his motions and the glimpses I caught that he was fastening a container of poison to the mouth of the hose.

  He did not bother to glance over at me to see if I was paying attention. He was used to commanding people with his size, and as a result was friendly and full of confidence in himself. He drove a truck that delivered big bags of ready-popped popcorn to movie theaters.

  “I worked all over,” he said, scuffing his foot over some of the larvae. “I worked in Hollywood, delivering.”

  He looked at me as though he wanted to remember something he didn’t like about me. “It’s all fake,” he said. “Those buildings. You know those buildings? Only half-buildings. You walk around them and they aren’t there.”

  The poison container looked like a space gun worked by a lever. He sprayed poison all over the naked tree, and all over the black, still-crawling larvae, and the ones that weren’t moving anymore, and all over the grass under the tree.