Breaking the Fall

by Michael Cadnum

  The owner was a man, slightly out of shape, and his younger wife. Or at least, she was pretty and the man was not all that handsome. He waddled a little bit when he came down the walkway to pluck the newspaper off the lawn, but he often seemed to be whistling through his lower teeth, the sort of whistling I think means contentment. He was even a little smug. His life was complete.

  She flounced as she walked. He drove an Audi, and she drove a Fiat, and there was a little girl who visited sometimes, a daughter, I decided, from an earlier marriage.

  They probably saw intruders as a compliment: someone thinks we’re rich enough to rob.

  It took a week. Not more. I knew enough about them to write a research paper. They got a lot of bills, the kind with window envelopes that are green or sand-yellow so you have to give them a second look. They took the Examiner and the Tribune.

  Once he saw me, looked right at me, as I wandered by across the street. His eyes caught mine. They were easy on me, dismissing me. He was probably the kind of man who would be reassured that I was a white kid, and harmless-looking. But then he looked at me just a beat too long, and my spine went cold.

  I smiled. Just a little smile, a crinkling of the eyes, a casual I’m-on-my-way attitude.

  After another beat, he smiled back.

  They had a lot of friends. Tanned, square-jawed men dropped him off after tennis, and I wondered if he might be more fit than he looked, or perhaps very likeable. She jogged with friends, wearing a white terry-cloth visor, a visor so white I knew that she must replace it every week or two.

  I had a plan, but I didn’t know when the plan would begin to establish itself. I was an explorer not sure on what island he would build his fort. I felt uncertain but fresh, eager. I could not be sure of anything, and that made me begin to feel alive.

  Sky saw me in class, but her smile was sad, and when I tried to speak to her, she only tilted her head, smiling but looking away.

  I passed Jared in the hall, and he gazed through me. He looked pale and gaunt, and missed more school, showing up late to classes, looking both bored and triumphant. I knew that he was, in a way, pleased that I had quit.

  He had won a contest I had not been aware we were playing. I had thought we were partners. But Jared had always been out to prove that I was inferior. The game had been called, in Jared’s mind, Stanley the Loser. I had lived up to his expectations.

  Now I had a surprise.

  28

  I didn’t know which night it would be, but I knew that the night would come. I was more and more certain every time I hurried through the dark, and felt myself becoming more and more invisible, fading, growing transparent.

  I was free of the world of clocks and history tests. But I intended no harm. I did not want to take anything of value. I only wanted to achieve that single, perfect moment of life, and then I could stop. Jared thought he had taught me all of this. Of course, in a way, he had. But I could master an aspect of the game he would never achieve.

  It was just another evening. There was nothing to tell me that this was the night. I escaped out my bedroom window with the ease of someone going to work or school. I felt like one of those race car drivers who never open the car door, but always swing out the window.

  My father was no threat. It was entirely safe. We lived like two men who liked each other but did not quite share the same language. The pidgin silence my father had always used had broken down into plain quiet. My father would never check on me.

  I scrambled down the roof slope, and leaped to the damp lawn.

  I didn’t go directly to the house with green shutters. I went by the school, and saw the new buildings all lit up for the maintenance crews and the security, and I stayed wide of all the lights because of the school police car that was backed up to the cafeteria loading bay.

  Computers were always getting stolen, and the cops were supposed to be cracking down, but everybody said that it was people on the inside, custodial or maintenance or cops, and that nobody could stop what was happening.

  I remembered the night the school blew up. It had been a gas leak. An old main had fractured spontaneously, the result of minor earthquakes, and not so minor ones, over eighty or ninety years, and the result of something else, too, gravity and time—the way things are.

  People still talked about it. The school blew up so badly the news was sure it was a bomb, and the cops had dropped by and were very polite to my father and went away almost at once when he called the company lawyer. But they had questioned everybody, and people from the federal government did, too, Tobacco and Firearm men measuring how far a doorknob had blown across MacArthur Boulevard.

  The gas had trickled out into the corridors past the showers, and into the dance studio, all the old closets and storage rooms. It had been a school of spires and towers. No one had ever really looked at it. It was the kind of building you remembered more than saw even when it was there.

  It had turned inside out.

  We had all gone to see it, towel racks and clock faces and all the amazing debris blown all the way across the drug corner. Yellow police tape had trembled in the sunlight, but it couldn’t protect the junk from being pawed through.

  I jogged away from the glow of the school lights, and zigzagged across the street to avoid streetlights. I knew how to do it, that slow sprint, an easy lope, a way of hurrying without seeming to be traveling fast, a way of remaining secret without hiding.

  I hurried along the sidewalk, over the tree roots twisted in the squares of concrete. I was just dancing over such a root when I saw. And stood still.

  There was an extra car in the driveway. I nearly fell to the ground right then. This was the night. This was the very night I had been planning for.

  And I was almost too late.

  The guests were already in the driveway, that after-dinner good-bye ceremony that can take so long, people promising to see each other some other time. Keep talking, I whispered. Gossip all you want.

  I turned and tried not to run, and tried to still my heart. It’s all right, I told myself. Don’t panic. This is exactly what you knew would happen.

  I’m brilliant, I told myself.

  The alley was so familiar that the sound of my steps in the fine gravel was almost pleasant.

  The dog Jared had soothed that night rarely barked, but tonight he decided to use his voice. It was not a bark—more of a throat clearing. I hushed him, and my stage whisper broke another bark from him, but it was half-hearted. He remembered.

  The splintered top of the fence rasped under my palms. I was over the fence and into the backyard easily.

  A car door clunked. An engine chattered and caught. I was running out of time.

  The back door was chained. The kitchen windows each lifted a finger width and jammed. You have no time—hurry. You have plenty of time—don’t blunder.

  The laundry window jammed.

  I forced my shoulder against it, and it shuddered upward another creak or two, but jammed again.

  The distant front door shut. The subtle shift and rustle of an occupied house was at my ear. The man spoke. The woman answered. Then she answered too close, from the kitchen, perhaps, or even just inside the laundry room.

  I told myself not to duck my head or make any quick movement. Easy and smooth, I told myself.

  When the back door opened, I dropped to the grass.

  29

  I crouched, breathing so hard it hurt.

  My eyes picked up the woman, fading at the edge of the back porch light. Her steps were in the grass. Her figure was bent slightly to one side, and I caught the plastic rustle of a garbage sack.

  I slipped through the back door.

  Inside, the air was warm, a mass of cooking odors. The kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes, casserole dishes of meatballs and steamers of broccoli. On a butcher table stood several bottles of liquor.

  I could not move my feet. I was standing there gawking at someone’s kitchen while a step was in the hall, the step of the
man, slow and weighty, and the intake of breath as the owner of the house was about to speak.

  Get small, I told myself. Get invisible.

  The purr of the water heater was a welcome sound. The scent of detergent and the barely discernable waft of bleach were my refuge. I slid to a crouch behind the water heater, and took long breaths to still myself.

  Water surged in the sink, and there was the friendly clunk of dishes in water. They weren’t talking to each other, tired, comfortable. The garbage disposal grumbled and water splashed. The disposal worked a long time.

  When it was silent, the man splashed more water and shifted his weight, and the dishes clattered one by one into the rack. Once the heater at my ear thundered, and the laundry room floor was blue from the gas fire under the heater.

  If they don’t see you, you aren’t there, and they won’t see you if you are perfectly still.

  It was a shock when the kitchen light went out. I cautioned myself, actually moving my lips: don’t move.

  The longer I stayed motionless, the easier it became. The tank of water gave warmth, and I belonged right where I was. I had a giddy feeling of security. Everything was fine. They were upstairs, and I was here.

  But it couldn’t last.

  I knew that before he went to bed the man, who was wary enough to have a gun beside his bed, would be cautious enough to turn on the silent alarm. As soon as I began to move, the space sensor would see me, and I would not be invisible anymore.

  I began to stand up. Very slowly, my knee joint popping.

  I was up, and now the device in the hall would begin to register my movement.

  The floor made too much noise. It had been waxed again, and my running shoes squeaked on the surface. I crouched at the entrance to the hallway, and the red light was on.

  There was no time.

  It was already too late.

  And I had convinced myself how brilliant I was.

  The alarm in the hall made the tiniest tick, hardly a sound at all. And I knew that it would happen all over again.

  Only this time it would be worse.

  30

  Dead meat, said the old, mean voice in me.

  You.

  You don’t have a chance.

  My foot slipped with another squeal, and then the carpet muffled my steps, and even though I willed myself quiet, the carpet clung to me, each step a heavy clump.

  The plumbing in the walls, in the ceiling, thrummed, or perhaps that steady, distant rushing sound was the blood in my arteries.

  There was a very heavy weight inside me, in my belly. I had to pee.

  I wasn’t sneaking across the floor, I was wading, and my guts were growling. All this noise made it impossible to pretend, and by the time I was on the stairs I did not bother to be light-footed. It didn’t matter. They must have heard me by now. The only thing that mattered now was speed.

  Each step was loose, a wagging, warped board. Each nail in the stairway made a little shriek. I gave up all attempt at quiet, stormed up the remaining steps, and dived toward the doorway to the bedroom.

  I had the exact picture, just then, of where they were. Under the bathroom door down the hall was a sliver of light, and that rushing sound was bath water. And there was only one of them in the bedroom, only one, and it was the woman.

  I saw all this, the walls transparent to me. And then I was in the bedroom, in the bright light, every lamp in the room lit, and the woman’s eyes went wide, and her breath caught.

  She screamed.

  It was her scream that stunned me. I went dumb. I couldn’t think. My hand seized the first thing within reach, acting on its own, both dumb and quick, and her screams pulsed through me.

  I was slowing down, wading through the room. My bones would not lift. My feet dragged. I would never make it back to the doorway again.

  We stayed like that forever. The woman, one small breast just exposed, a tangle of clothing held up as a shield, did not look human. Her face was too afraid, her lipstick too dark, way too dark, nearly black against the pallor of her skin.

  “It’s all right,” I nearly said. I moved my lips. I all but uttered the words. “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”

  But I did not speak. I had no voice. I had my prize, a lump of some sort in my fist, and I reached the doorway and the stairwell just as the man swung naked and wet, a great hairless dripping bear, out of the bathroom.

  He didn’t say a word, or make a sound, and that’s what made it worse. His wet feet slapped the floor, slapped a stair, his genitals hidden in a wet mass of black hair, the coursing hair down his belly skimming the big dome of his fat.

  I had the sense, as a little boy would, that this large male animal was powerful and ugly but also somehow right. I felt myself slowing down, taking a step a little too slowly, so he could catch me. I wanted him to catch me. I wanted his hand on my neck, because he was right. I was his if he wanted me.

  His wet, hairy hands slipped around either side of my face from behind, and the weight of him, the dripping bulk, fell down and over me, a wave of human meat.

  I closed my eyes and went down, rolling from step to step, shoulder, hip, ribs shaken with each bounce.

  But I was rolling lightly, my body knowing what to do, and he crashed. The struts of the banister broke, and the banister itself reared up in the dim light. One of the man’s joints, a shoulder or a knee, snapped.

  He said something I didn’t understand, a word in a foreign language, sliding farther down the stairs as I turned, running now, escaping across the living room.

  I was turning back, unable to control my body.

  Stay here, my body said. He’s hurt. You can’t run away.

  A whipcrack deafened me. My hearing was gone. The sound of my breath, my heartbeat, the thud of my feet—it was all gone. There was nothing.

  There was the sight of the woman on the stairs as I turned back. She crouched at the top of the stairs, both hands together. She was taking aim again, and she knew exactly what to do, her feet speared, her hands bringing up the weapon as I turned away, tingling within, my lungs burning, my flesh alive in the places that would soon explode.

  I dived through the curtain, through the glass, into the world.

  31

  Running, lungs empty of air, I knew I was dead. I even wanted it—an end to it all.

  The thing I carried was fat and heavy. I would not look at it, or let myself really see what it was I had stolen.

  They’ll catch me and it will all be over.

  But I reached my own backyard, and climbed upward into my own house.

  “Stanley.”

  A single word. I couldn’t breathe.

  My father was sitting on my bed when I crawled up the slope of the roof, through the window, and spilled onto the floor. The light was not on, and he must have been sitting in the dark for a long time, because when he said my name it came out hoarse, like a voice that has been tense and silent for a long time.

  Then, his voice clear and strong, “Where have you been?”

  My lips couldn’t form a single word. I tried. I wanted to lie. I even wanted to tell the truth.

  He grabbed me, pulled me to my feet, and shook me. He shook me hard, and it hurt. “Where have you been, Stanley?” he yelled.

  He flung me away, and I stumbled into my chair, which rocked and nearly went over.

  He put his hands to his face, and bent over. I wanted to tell him it was all right. I wanted to tell him everything was perfectly fine.

  “You’re doing something wrong.” He was panting heavily, as though he had been running through the darkness.

  Tell him something, my inner voice said. Don’t just sit there.

  I huddled in the chair. My feelings made me a cripple. And besides, I had something to hide now, something in the pocket of my pants. It was something that had to be a secret, always.

  “Stanley.” He said the name again, and while I knew that the name was mine, it sounded spooky, a word with a nasty rasp
to it.

  My father doesn’t like to show anger. He knows that sometimes the words plunge out when you are mad and you can’t stop them. He resented me for making him angry, as well as for making him worry. I tried to formulate an apology, an explanation.

  “You’re doing something,” he whispered. “I don’t know what it is.”

  But some of his force was gone now. He had begun to think, consider, reflect.

  I was shivering.

  He turned, moving woodenly. He found the lamp and fumbled with it. The button clicked but the light wouldn’t come on. When it did at last, it was too bright, and we both looked away, blinking.

  The effort to adjust to the light calmed him a little bit more. “I thought,” he said, measuring his words, “you went off somewhere with your mother.” He made a bitter little whisper-laugh through his teeth. “I tried calling her.”

  But she’s not home, I thought, filling in the silence with the words I knew he wanted to speak: she’s gone, and I had to sit here waiting.

  He said, “Is that what you want?”

  I had my arms folded, my face turned away, one shoulder up. His question didn’t make any sense for a moment.

  “Would you be happier with her?”

  I had to piece the meaning together, like translating French. No, I thought. The thought shivered me. Not that I would be unhappy living with my mother. It shook me that he knew so little about me.

  “You’re hurt.”

  I stirred, as though waking. No, I thought, not hurt. I’m fine.

  “Jesus, Stan. What have you been doing?”

  It wasn’t anger anymore. It was something else. Curiosity, worry, pain at the sight of my pain.

  32

  It was early.

  I had fallen into a gray, awkward sleep, and when I woke, I sensed my father’s wakefulness far away. Even that next morning, in the gray light, I thought that I could tell my father. There was still time. I could tell him what I had done.

  But I listened to the sounds of my father getting up and I knew I couldn’t tell him about breaking the glass, me cascading with the window to the ground, and rolling, stunned and yet still moving.