The Fall of Lisa Bellow

by Susan Perabo

  God, she thought, death was complicated. And exhausting. And apparently it just kept on being complicated and exhausting forever, probably until you yourself died and became an exhausting complication that someone else had to constantly negotiate.

  Maybe, Claire decided, standing at her kitchen counter over the dead turkey, it was possible that she was a tiny bit depressed.

  •

  “It’s like my brain just knows,” Evan said to her father at the dining-room table. He held a fist out in front of him, representing the ball. “I’ve done it so many times that it’s hardwired. Catching’s harder than hitting, but—”

  “You’ll get there,” her father said, a medical pronouncement based on absolutely nothing of fact, because her father had never been overly concerned with facts. “It’ll just take time. Like riding a bike.”

  Mark looked across the table at her, the merest shade of a wry smile on his lips. Even he—even Mark—knew that catching a baseball half-blind was absolutely nothing like riding a bike.

  “When does the season start?” Nancy said. “I want to plan our trip now.”

  “There are some preseason games in February,” Evan said.

  “Baseball in the snow!” her father exclaimed. “This stuffing is tremendous.”

  “May I be excused?” Meredith asked flatly. She had disposed of much pretense of politeness over the last couple weeks, although the level of sourness displayed today, especially in front of her visiting grandparents, was something of a new low. She’d hardly said a word throughout the meal.

  “Don’t you want seconds?” Mark asked. “There’s more of everything. There’s loads of stuffing.”

  “I’m really tired,” Meredith said.

  “It’s been a long day,” Nancy said, nodding. “Full of excitement.”

  It had not been a long day, Claire thought, and there had been no excitement.

  “Yeah,” Meredith said. “I mean, yeah. I’ll be back, okay? I’m just going to lie down for like ten minutes.”

  She scooted her chair out and left the room, and the table fell silent, everyone slipping seamlessly into the we’re-not-talking-because-we’re-too-busy-eating charade. Well, Claire thought. Now you’ve seen her. Now you’ve put your eyes on her. Now you know.

  “I think she looks terrific,” Nancy said after a minute. “Considering everything.”

  “There are good days and bad days,” Mark said, pouring himself another glass of wine. Claire wondered if he really thought this was true or if this was just the whitewashed in-law version of things. Since it was Mark, it was entirely possible he had talked himself into believing that there were good days. She wondered which days, specifically, he had in mind.

  “The poor girl,” Nancy said. “The other one, I mean. What’s her name?”

  “Lisa,” Evan said.

  “Lisa. It’s terrible to think what might have happened to Lisa.”

  “Theirs not to reason why . . . ” her father said earnestly. Her father, now retired from teaching for ten-plus years, always had a line of poetry at the ready when he was without something of his own to say. She’d noticed that it had gotten worse since retirement, but he’d done it before, too. This particular “theirs not to reason why” had always been one of his go-to sentiments, an easy fallback, close enough to be relevant in most situations. Had he said it to her mother twenty years ago, after her cancer diagnosis?

  “Really?” Claire said. “That’s all you’ve got?” She made sure she was smiling when she said it so that everyone would know she was not having a nervous breakdown but was merely being funny. “Already trotting out the Longfellow? It’s only six o’clock.”

  “It’s Tennyson,” Evan said with his mouth full.

  “That’s my boy,” her father said. He pointed his fork at her. “It is Tennyson. He’s been listening in class.”

  “See?” Claire said to Mark. “Poetry—yet another talent. Maybe he could be an English major.”

  •

  When she’d finished putting away the leftovers—a job she happily accepted—Claire glanced into the living room. Mark and Evan and her father were watching a football game. Where was Nancy? She went upstairs to Meredith’s room. The door was two-thirds closed but she could see Nancy in there, sitting on the corner of Meredith’s bed petting the tolerant cat. Claire backed herself against the wall so she could listen without being seen.

  “You’re lucky to have a sweet kitty,” Nancy said.

  “Yeah,” Meredith said. Claire could only see Meredith’s feet, or the shape of them, under her blanket.

  “I had a sweet kitty a long time ago, when the boys were still at home. Long, long ago. She was sweet but such a pest.”

  “Yeah,” Meredith said.

  “Once she spent the night in the car. She slipped in while we were taking out grocery bags and no one saw her. She tore up the backseat with her claws. You would have thought there was a bear in there.”

  “Wow,” Meredith said.

  A for effort, Claire thought. Just sit on the corner of that bed forever talking about your sweet kitty. Be my guest, Grandma. Just see how far you get. She knocked lightly on the door and stuck her head into the room.

  “Anyone for pie?” she asked.

  •

  “When did you learn to cook like this?” her father asked, admiring the bite on his fork. “My god. This pie is extraordinary.”

  “It’s from the bakery,” Claire said.

  “Ah,” her father said.

  “Someone call the baker,” Evan said. “Tell him Grandpa likes the pie.”

  It was silent for a moment, until Nancy said, “I always say, why spend hours and hours baking a pie when you can get something everyone loves at a bakery.”

  “No argument from me,” Mark said.

  Claire was acutely aware that Nancy had spent the last eighteen years trying to make things up to her. She could not recall a single instance in the almost two decades where this woman across the table in her festive holiday sweater had been anything but supportive and friendly, about everything from childrearing to pie buying. It seemed to Claire now that their relationship had been one long, sustained apology, which was made doubly awful by the fact that they both knew very well that there was nothing to apologize for.

  “And what are you all doing tomorrow?” Nancy asked.

  “I’m going shopping with my friends,” Meredith said.

  “You are?” Claire said. “With who?”

  “With Becca.”

  “Becca who?”

  “Becca my friend Becca. Becca Nichols. You don’t need to quiz me. You just say yes.” Meredith smiled tightly, to indicate that she might be cleverly playing the role of the obnoxious teenager or she might actually be the obnoxious teenager. The line between the two, the role and the reality, was no longer visible. “No questioning necessary. Just a simple yes will do.”

  The table was silent until Evan dramatically cleared his throat. “Let me just say, as the elder child: that’s probably not the best way to get the result you want.”

  “I don’t even know this Becca,” Claire said. “I’ve never met her.”

  Meredith glared at her. “She was at Lisa’s house the day you were there, so technically, yes, you have met her.”

  She was emboldened somehow. Could this have been brought on by her grandparents? What exactly about her father and Nancy was emboldening? Had their empty, grandparent-ly platitudes, their kitty stories and their assurances—just like riding a bike!—given her some kind of bizarre confidence?

  “We can talk about it later,” she said. “I don’t think this is the time.”

  “Speaking of time,” Nancy said. “We have had a lo-o-o-ong day. But we’ll see you in the morning? I hope?”

  “Probably not me,” Evan said. “I’ll be at the gym.”

  “Well, I’m not going to be the person who stands between you and your workout,” her father said, standing. He shook Evan’s hand, as if Evan were a man who was
now making manly decisions. Why don’t you ask him about college? Claire thought. Why don’t you ask him if he’s filled out any applications? Why don’t you suggest that instead of rolling a ball off the roof he spend a bit of time working on his personal statement?

  After they’d gathered their coats and left, Claire went back into the kitchen and found Evan and Meredith still sitting at the dining-room table, Evan eating pie straight from the serving plate, Meredith making designs in the remnants of her dessert with the tines of her fork.

  “Well, that was embarrassing,” Claire said.

  “Agreed,” Meredith said, not looking up from the table.

  “I hear that you’re angry,” Claire said, bracing herself against one of the dining-room chairs for support. “Okay? I hear that. What I don’t understand is why you’re so angry at me. You talk as if—”

  “I have a life, okay?” Meredith said. “I have friends. I have things to do. I have plans. I don’t know why you can’t accept that.”

  “I don’t know why you think I can’t accept that. All I said was that I didn’t know a certain person and—”

  “Becca. Her name is Becca. Becca Nichols. She’s my best friend.”

  “Since when?” Evan asked, finishing the last bite of pie.

  “Since now,” Meredith said. “Since right this second. Since—”

  “That’s fine,” Claire said. “I’m happy she’s your friend. I just don’t know why you—”

  “Hey, let’s all cool down,” Mark said. He’d come in behind her and she sensed he was about to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, so she quickly took two steps to the right. “Let’s all just—”

  “I don’t need to cool down,” she said. “I asked a perfectly reasonable question. I asked, ‘With who?’ I don’t think that’s an extraordinary thing to want to know. It’s just simple common sense that—”

  “Common sense!” Meredith said, slamming her fork to the table. “Like the common sense you used on Halloween when you drove drunk to pick me up?”

  Claire could tell she’d been saving this up, this hoarded trump card, now so triumphantly revealed for all to see.

  Meredith turned to Mark. “Did you know that, Dad? Did you know she drove drunk?”

  “Your mother was not drunk,” Mark said, shaking his head. “I saw her before she left. She was absolutely not drunk.”

  “Really? Then why was she hitting on a high school guy at the party?”

  Evan laughed a bark of a laugh, so absurd was the accusation.

  “For god’s sake, Meredith,” Claire said. “I dropped my phone. He found my battery in the dark yard.”

  “Well, I’ve never heard it called that before,” Evan said.

  Meredith turned to Evan. “It’s true,” she said bitterly. “It was that Logan guy. From your class. He said he knew you.”

  “Logan Boone?” Evan asked. “Ha! Mom, remember that guy? He was such a dick in grade school. Then finally somebody knocked some sense into him.”

  “I knocked some sense into him,” Claire said. “I knocked some sense into him.” She laughed out loud in her dining room. God, she hated the dining room. Once they had laid wooden train track across this table, and then they had sorted baseball cards, and then later it had been a bead-making factory, but after that . . . what? What was there to spread out, after the days of train tracks and baseball cards and plastic beads? Tax forms. Suspect books. Living wills.

  “You want to go shopping?” she said to Meredith. “Go shopping. I wasn’t even going to say no. That’s what’s so funny. Everyone always thinks I’m going to say no. Sometimes I just want to ask questions before I say yes. That’s all.”

  “But then all the answers to your questions are no,” Evan said. “So it’s kind of hard to tell what you’re after.”

  “What I’m after?” This was infuriating, coming from Evan of all people. “I’m not after anything. I have no agenda. I have no plan.” She turned to Mark. “I have no goal of the day.”

  Which was absolutely true, and now the full weight of it struck her. Was there something horribly wrong with her? Was it possible that, as it seemed in this moment, she had never actually made a decision to do anything in her life? Here, in the dining room, her daughter with the accusatory fork, her son and husband witnesses for the prosecution. The charge, simply this: she had always always always let everything be decided for her. Her only decisions, her only moments of taking charge, were spontaneous and terrible. Starting up with that man when her mother was sick. Hurting a young boy, a future finder of phones. Driving to pick up Meredith at the party when she was still drunk.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked Evan. “What do you expect me to—”

  “I think you’re doing fine,” Mark said, touching her elbow.

  “Shut up,” she said, yanking her arm away. “This isn’t about you.”

  “Don’t talk to him that way,” Meredith said. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  “What have I done wrong?” she asked her daughter. “You tell me. You tell me what I’ve done wrong. You tell me what I’m supposed to do. You tell me how I’m supposed to make this better. Any of this. You tell me and I’ll do it.”

  Meredith stared at her from across the table. Determination. Detachment. Silence. Claire stared back. Their game faces were set. Maybe, Claire thought, they were set for good.

  •

  “I’m sorry,” Mark said to her later, in bed. “I know you’re getting the brunt of this. I know she’s taking it out on you.”

  “I can’t stand to get up tomorrow and drive my father to the airport,” she said. “That’ll be the last straw. I just can’t stand it. I’m going to tell them I’m sick and they have to take a cab.”

  “That’s pretty harsh,” he said. “They’re only here for thirty-six hours.”

  “That’s their doing,” she said. “Not mine.”

  “I think they wanted to see Mer in the morning. You know. Breakfast or something before the plane.”

  “I can’t stand it,” she said. “I can’t stand to look at their—”

  “I’d do it,” he said. “I’d take them. But I have Hillsboro tomorrow.”

  Hillsboro. Their geriatric dentistry. Last Friday of the month. It was his turn.

  “I’ll trade you,” she said impulsively.

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Honestly, I swear to god, I just can’t sit through that drive with the three of them. I can’t do it. I’ll go to Hillsboro. I don’t mind. It’s fine.”

  “Okay,” he said. “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure,” she said. “Tell them we got our signals crossed. Make it sound like you—”

  “Give me a break, kid,” he said, turning off the light. “I know how to lie to your father.”

  17

  Meredith awoke to her father gently poking her shoulder.

  “Come to the airport with me?” he said. “I have to take your grandparents.”

  “Can I sleep? I never get to sleep in on Fridays.”

  “There’s breakfast in it for you,” he said. “Pancakes. Keep me company?”

  It was not company he wanted, she knew. Her mother was already at work and Evan was probably already somewhere not catching baseballs, maybe dropped from a cliff or a helicopter or something. Her father did not want to leave her alone.

  “I’ll be fine here,” she said. “Please.”

  “It would mean a lot to them,” he said. “I know they’d like to spend a little more time with you.”

  “Then why aren’t they staying for longer?”

  He sat down on the edge of her bed. “They don’t want to intrude,” he said, drawing out the ooooo to absurd lengths.

  Well, that she could appreciate. All hail to Grandma and Grandpa, who seemed to understand that all they had to do to outstay their welcome was to arrive.

  Ashamed by the thought, she rolled over so she was facing away from her father. What was wrong with her? She imagined Lis
a slashing another green BITCH tally up on the shower wall. But the fact was that she didn’t particularly want her grandparents around. It was nothing personal. What did she want? To be left alone. To be left in her bed. To be left in her head. She might have stayed there all weekend except that, if she tried, surely everyone would decide there was really something wrong with her. So she would get up. She would eat pancakes with her grandparents and drop them off at the airport and then drive home with her father. At least there was this: after the scene last night, at least she wouldn’t have to drive with her mother. She probably wouldn’t even have to see her, at least until the evening. That was one thing to be thankful for on the day after Thanksgiving.

  “And another,” Lisa said, marking the wall. Blood had been trickling from her nose for hours, days . . . or could it even be weeks now? The rim of the bathtub was lined with wads of soggy, pink toilet paper, the small bathroom wastebasket long overflowed, its contents spilled onto the floor. Why wasn’t anyone emptying the trash? Where was the man? How long had it been since they’d seen him? How long since Lisa had eaten? Or peed? Or slept?

  “Can you be ready in ten minutes?” her father asked.

  “Sure,” she said.

  •

  “Maybe we’ll see you at Christmas,” her grandmother said.

  “If not, we’ll talk on the phone,” her grandfather said.

  They stood beside the car, shivering, while her father pulled their luggage from the back of the van.

  “You take care of yourself,” her grandmother said. She gathered her in for a hug and held it until Meredith felt dizzy and gently twisted free.

  “See you around like a doughnut,” her grandfather said. He gave her a one-armed hug. This was his specialty, the old one-armer—she and Evan had often laughed over this—as if every person he loved was a high school chum. “Tell your mom we said good-bye.”

  “I will,” she said. She wondered why her mother wasn’t here. Sometimes she felt like her mother would be happier if there were no actual people in her life, but rather just a series of tasks to complete, a checklist of root canals. This thought didn’t even make her angry; it just made her feel heavy now, the weight of its sadness draped over her like one of the x-ray blankets. Alien Examination. Evan with his giant lamp. Her father wheeling down the corridor on his stool. Her mother . . . where?