by Jon Cohen
Bert brought him back. “Say, Louis,” he said gently. “How is it you fell out that window?”
Louis still looked at his knees. Bert used the word fell. But he meant it to cover all sorts of words, including the suspicious ones, like push or jump. Did someone push you, Louis? Gracie, even, did she finally break after all these years, suddenly and irrevocably tire of your unending eccentric presence and come up behind you as you stood before your bedroom window, and give you the shove you probably deserved? Or did someone else push you, a citizen of Waverly who’d cracked under the strain of your hidden thereness, who wanted to see you, damn it, after all these years, who wanted your ass out of the house and in the daylight where we can keep an eye on you, because who knows what you’ve been up to all this time, there’s such a thing as too much privacy, so if you’re going to be among us, then be among us, out the window you go, neighbor, enough is enough. Or did you jump, Mr. Louis Monster Malone? That’s probably what happened, isn’t it, because who among us, if for one terrible moment we became you, lived within your skin, the unimaginable skin beneath your hat and behind your scarf, who among us would not run to the nearest window and hurl ourselves out of it?
Louis felt the intensity of their wild surmises build around him. They had to know, but what could he tell them, since he didn’t know himself. He’d been at the window, watching, content to watch, even. He had not been predisposed to go out the window, but the moment had suddenly changed, as it does when you are pushed, as it does when you are standing at the edge of a cliff and you are overwhelmed by a thought you had not had a second before: I could jump, you think. Or perhaps he had merely stood by the window and, of its own accord, the house shifted all of its molecules for him, moved itself back a foot or two but did not take him with it, so that where there had been a floor and a wall with a window, there was only air—everything that was in front of Louis was suddenly behind him. Down he went, reentering the world through no effort of his own. But would they understand this? Louis lightly touched his broken arm, and the whisper of pain cleared his head so that he might answer the looming question.
He said, “The storm window, you see. The screens.” His listeners craned toward him. “The one in my bedroom always sticks, you know.” His listeners nodded as if they did know, as if they’d watched him every year during the window-changing seasons, struggling with the screens. They were rooting for him, they wanted his answer to succeed, to be within the realm of ordinary experience and not be some strange, complicated reclusive mishap. “I put my knee on the windowsill,” said Louis, “which I shouldn’t have.” They were behind him now, they’d all done foolish, dangerous things within the household, hadn’t they? “And I wasn’t paying attention…” Who among us has not been guilty of that sin of omission? “And I gave the screen a yank, and the next thing I know I’m out the window.”
Hooray! Not jump or push. He fell. Bert almost clapped him on the back. Up front, the ladies released a collective sigh of relief. He’s one of us, sort of. He fell.
Carl said, “My Aunt Ruth fell out her window about ten years ago. Did something funny to one of her eyes. Knocked it loose or something, so it doesn’t quite sit right, like those wall-eyed people where you never know where they’re looking.”
“Soupy Billings had a cat like that,” Francine joined in.
“Fell out a window?” questioned Bev.
“No, had eyes that looked every way but straight ahead. Think they were different colors, too.”
“I fell off my back porch landing one time,” said Kitty. She hadn’t meant to bring it up, but then she didn’t want to hear Francine start in on cats, or next thing you knew it would be Minky this and Minky that.
“Falls can be dangerous,” said Bev.
“Sure can,” said Carl.
But boy oh boy, they’d all take falling over pushing and jumping any day.
Bev turned off of Spain Street and onto Oakley Crossing. “Which one’s Donna’s? Blue with white shutters, or white with blue shutters?”
“Green with no shutters,” said Louis. This caused everyone to look at him again. How did he know, if he’d been inside for sixteen years? They didn’t want to ponder the question, having just survived his falling out the window. It was exhausting if you had to think about the implications of every little thing he said. But he answered it. “Least it was sixteen years ago.” Of course, they all thought. “I see Donna’s Honda up ahead on the left,” he said.
Gracie was walking out of the house with Donna, and when she turned slightly, she noticed the Chevy wagon weaving up the street with a disembodied arm hanging out of the passenger-side window and the hand attached to it waving slowly up and down. A moment or two went by before she recognized the car as Bev’s and the hand as Francine Koessler’s, and in those moments, she and Donna reacted to the hand and responded in turn, wiggling their fingers in a sort of generic, noncommittal greeting.
Gracie asked, “Isn’t that Bev’s car?”
Donna said, “That’s Francine waving, isn’t it?”
The Chevrolet approached, full of people, but the sun and shadows playing off the window glass made it hard to see them. When it pulled to a stop beside the curb, Donna took a step or two forward on her chubby legs and began to call out names to Gracie, her voice rising excitedly as if the car were a mobile surprise party in her honor. “That’s Kitty next to Francine, and there’s Bev,” said Donna to Gracie. “And Bert! And I think the new fellow who moved in across from you, isn’t that Carl?” Donna’s voice stopped with a squeak, as if an invisible hand had reached up and plunked a large cork in her open, startled mouth.
Gracie’s hand, too, was moving, toward her own mouth. They have Louis. Not “Louis was with them,” but “they have Louis.” Words that Atlas had once spoken came to her suddenly: “His covered face is like the monster… sound the alarm, let the citizens light their torches and brandish their clubs and pitchforks.” While she had had tuna and egg-salad sandwiches and iced tea, the citizens had broken into her home with their clubs and taken Louis. They had waited all these years to do it, for Atlas to die, for me to let down my guard, and then they lit their torches. She saw them breaking down her door, heard Louis’s pitiful sounds as they clambered up the stairs and into his room where he slumped in the corner cowering, his hands before his face not to protect himself, which is what they thought, but to protect them. Even as they came after him, he sought to protect them from the burning deformity of his face. Oh, Atlas. Gracie’s eyes went blurry with frightened tears.
She started to move toward the car but her legs went weak. She could hardly see, and the air pressed in on her. Bert opened the back door. Then she saw Louis clearly, and he called to her. “Gracie, I’m hurt…” Words continued to come out from behind his scarf, but she failed to comprehend them because all she heard was “Gracie, I’m hurt,” and his voice turned into the frightened bleating of a lamb for its mother, or some other animal child calling, and the maternal force surged within her. She could see again and her legs were strong, and she ran with her head down right straight for Bert’s soft belly. Bert’s eyes bugged as he waited to be gored by the horns that he imagined sprouting from Gracie’s white head. Francine, who’d started to open her door, shut it again quickly, but even a steel door didn’t look like it was going to stop Gracie.
Francine was about to scream, when a voice unknown thundered, “Duke, get your ass back here!” From nowhere, a reddish-brown blur of beast leapt between Gracie and Bert. Duke gone squirrel crazy, one moment leashed and walking down the block with Arnie, the next, loose and crashing across the sidewalk, Arnie in pursuit, pursuing more than just Duke, because the leash had been looped over the end of his hook, something he didn’t ordinarily do and which he sure shouldn’t have done this time, because he’d experienced Duke and squirrels on too many occasions. Duke and one squirrel was bad enough, but this was three squirrels which they’d both spotted in the same instant. Arnie had been distracted by the sight
of an elderly woman running down the front walk with her head lowered like a bull, and he hadn’t got the leash off his hook in time, not that he’d have had much time even if he hadn’t been distracted, Duke took off so fast. So Arnie’s hook was jerked free of its straps by the force of Duke’s interest in the squirrels, and the hook, still attached to the leash, bounced along behind Duke. That’s what saved Bert and Francine from being attacked by Gracie—the combination of the total surprise of Duke’s big reddish-brown body, the leash with Arnie’s hook, and Arnie tearing after Duke. Gracie stopped short as Duke whooshed past her with such speed that sparks flew off the tip of Arnie’s hook as it clattered along the sidewalk. Arnie followed, shouting at Duke. Then the two of them, preceded by three terrified squirrels, rounded the corner and were gone. Just like that.
The Duke distraction gave Louis enough time to slide along the backseat and arrange himself before the open car door so that Gracie could see him—see that he was safe and not a captive of a neighborhood mob.
“They came to my rescue, Gracie,” he said. Everyone began to nod, yes, that’s right, to his rescue, really, Gracie. Easy, now. Don’t go charging the car again.
“He broke his arm, we think,” said Bev, coming around the driver’s side toward Gracie.
“He fell from his window,” said Carl from beside Louis.
“The second-floor window,” said Bert, watching Gracie carefully in case she should sprout horns again.
“We happened to be there. I was just walking by,” said Kitty. She didn’t mention that her eyes had been glued, as always, on Louis’s window, and that there might have been some sort of cause and effect between her eyes and Louis’s fall.
Francine twittered, “Why, he almost landed right on top of me and Minky,” which she still believed might have been Louis’s intent.
Gracie looked from one to another as they spoke, and then back to Louis for confirmation. “We’re going to the hospital,” he said. “Want to come?” His mouth made a movement behind his scarf, which she had come to know as his smile. She looked in his eyes as she started toward him, to make sure she saw nothing unstable there. Like everyone else, her first thought was that for a recluse, reentering the world was an act of madness. Then she was ashamed that she should think her son so out of place in the ordinary world. But it was dizzying to see him sitting there, surrounded by people, touching them even, for Carl sat beside Louis holding him upright. When she’d left him two hours earlier to have lunch with Donna, she hadn’t given him a thought—that is, leaving her recluse son behind in the house was an act not worth thinking about because, she now knew seeing him there in the car among her neighbors, she had assumed that it would go on forever that way. Seeing him where she’d forgotten he’d once belonged, among people, she was ashamed and jealous, because she understood now that when he was hidden in her house, he was hers completely. In her house, he was within her, carried by her, nurtured by her, protected by her. What mother gets a chance like that twice, to be so needed that the cord reappears? Louis didn’t fly away at sixteen, as had all the other sons of all the other mothers in Waverly. A flaming moment reversed time, returned him to her arms. How very wide they had been opened for him, thought Gracie. Was this why I could look at Louis when Atlas could not, why I could dress his wounds which so tormented Atlas he couldn’t bear to be in the house when I did it? Was it because I was so happy to have Louis with me again, my baby back, while Atlas mourned his return, the loss of manhood? Atlas mourned, but not me, thought Gracie. I was his mother. When he came back to me this second time, when he wore his scarf and hat, when I left him two hours ago so casually I thought nothing of it, I had assumed that he would stay within my house, and within me, forever.
Louis must have sensed it, how hard it was for Gracie to see him suddenly out, with no warning, pushed into the company of Francine and Kitty and the like. When she was close, he whispered, “Gracie, I want to go back home.” He said the words for her, gave them to her, so she could participate in the event he’d begun on his own, so it would appear to her that she could influence his destiny, make the choice for him, so that what he’d started, she’d continue of her own free will.
She said next what he knew she’d have to say. “Not home, Louis. We have to get you to the hospital.” And when she said it, they both felt better. Gracie had given her approval for a further step into the world, allowed for the reemergence of the possibilities that had been taken away from Louis sixteen years before.
Bev touched Gracie’s arm. “You okay now, Gracie?”
Gracie turned and touched Bev’s hand. “I’m fine now. I was just…”
“Shocked?” Francine offered from the front seat. Kitty nudged her in the ribs.
“I guess, yes, Francine, surprised anyway. Really surprised.” She looked at Bert sheepishly. “I’m so sorry, Bert. Reacting that way. You must have thought I was, well…”
“Crazy?” said Francine, who’d certainly thought so.
“Francine,” said Kitty, giving her an elbow again.
“Well, sure, crazy,” said Gracie, trying a smile.
Bert shrugged. “Upset,” he said. “You were just upset. Things coming at you so sudden and all.” Bert was being exceedingly gracious. He still wasn’t quite sure she wouldn’t charge at him again.
“It’s certainly not the kind of day I thought I’d be having,” said Gracie.
“Me neither,” said Donna Hodges, peering at Louis over Gracie’s shoulder.
Carl said, “We better get going.”
Francine did a silent head count. Eight. How were all eight of them going to fit in the Chevrolet? Well, she wasn’t staying behind, that’s for sure. She slid a secret hand up the car door and locked herself in.
Francine wasn’t the only one who’d pondered the situation. “Hmm,” Bert said. “Looks like we’ll be needing another car.”
“Another car?” said Gracie.
“For all these people,” said Bev.
And then Gracie understood. She looked at her neighbors and imagined what such an event must have meant to them. Of course they’d all want to be in on it. Louis gave his approval with a tiny nod. This was his way of thanking them, though they could not know what it must be like for him to be so overwhelmed by the continued nearness of them.
“Yes,” she said. “I want you all to come. Louis and I would appreciate it.”
“We would,” said Louis.
“We’ll take my car, too,” said Donna, who’d felt insecure about joining the original rescuers. But with her car, she had suddenly become integral to the effort. “It’s only a little Honda, but you’d be surprised how many people can squeeze in there. Last week, after the Rotary barbecue, I gave five of the girls rides home, including Bea Hoaster. As much as I love Bea, she is not petite, especially after three helpings of braised chicken, which I know for a fact is the number she had because I was in line behind her every time.”
Up in the front seat Kitty rolled her eyes at Francine, and Francine rolled her eyes back at Kitty. For once, the two women were in perfect agreement: Donna Hodges was a silly old bird.
“So,” said Donna, “who wants to come with me?” She smiled expectantly at the group.
Well, nobody, of course. Francine checked the lock on her car door; she sure wasn’t going. Kitty settled firmly in her seat. Bev slowly made her way back around to the driver’s seat; she’d decided her role was too important to relinquish. Carl held on to Louis, so he certainly wasn’t going. Louis was definitely staying put, and that meant Gracie should be sitting beside him. Bert glanced around and realized he’d been outmaneuvered. He shot a look at his wife as she slid in behind the steering wheel.
Donna’s smile faded. Bert shrugged and said, “How about I go with you, Donna? That should be enough. Gracie’ll take my place in the Chevy.”
Donna perked right up. “Great,” she said, already hurrying up her front walk toward her house. “Let me get my keys. I won’t be a minute.”
In that manner, they made their way through town and on to Barnum Memorial Hospital. Bev’s Chevy wagon led and Donna’s Honda brought up the rear. It was good enough for Francine Koessler, who held her hand out the window again waving to the citizens of Waverly. For Francine, smiling ear to ear, two cars were a motorcade.
CHAPTER FOUR
OF COURSE Iris’s shift was going horribly, she was working in ER, wasn’t she? Mr. Toofer and Mrs. Horner both turned out to be keepers, so Iris spent an hour getting beds for them through Admissions, contacting their attending doctors for orders, having Lab draw bloods and X-ray do their chest films. Plus all the admission paperwork. And it wasn’t like the ER was quiet. The waiting room was full, so she still had to pick up the patients with lacerations, and sprains, and bloody noses. Even Inez and Winnie were working. Inez was blowing quick little bubbles and popping them angrily as she moved in and out of the ER treatment rooms.
“Looks like you’re having fun,” Iris said to her as Inez rifled through the supply cart in search of sterile gloves.
Inez snapped her gum. “I mean, does this place suck, or what?” she growled.
Iris noticed the wet stain on the front of Inez’s uniform.
Inez shook her head. “Guy in room 5 puked on me, can you believe it? We’re just sewing up his thumb, and all of a sudden he turns his head and loses it all over me. I mean, why didn’t he turn his head the other way and puke on Dr. Gunther? I’m telling you, the nurses get the shit end of the stick every time.”
Can’t think of a nurse who deserves a shittier stick, thought Iris, breaking into a grin as she walked out of the supply room.
The ward clerk, Dotty, waved her over as she walked by the front desk. “Iris, call for you on line two.”
Iris picked up the phone, expecting to hear from Lab or X-ray. “Iris Shula,” she said.