Fallen Land

by Patrick Flanery

  12:55 PM: He and Joslyn have formed a habit of walking the perimeter of the playground. Most of the other kids are busy with games, and they’ve discovered that if they keep moving rather than trying to sit in one place, the others are less likely to bother them. The usual games are going on: older boys playing basketball, a group of girls bouncing basketballs in time, hopscotch, jump rope, kids on the play equipment, the security guards watching everyone. As they approach the far side of the field he sees someone outside the school grounds, across the street, walking. Because it is strange to see an adult on foot in the area, they both notice the man, who seems also to notice them. They stop and stare at the man, who slows down for a moment before speeding up and starting to run until he disappears around the corner. “What was that about?” Joslyn asks. “It was him. I think it was him,” he says. “What are you talking about, Policeman?” “That was the man who lives in my basement. I recognized him.” Joslyn looks at him, pushing out her lips, narrowing her eyes. “Are you soft or something?” “What do you mean soft?” “Are you crazy?” “I don’t know. I think I might be dying.” She laughs and takes his hand and drags him forward. “If you’re dying then I’m already dead,” she says, “and I can tell you that I’m as alive as those trees.”

  1:32 PM: Mrs. Pitt is in the middle of social studies. This week the lessons have been about citizenship and government, about the importance of rules and regulations, of obeying orders and signs. Yesterday she asked them what would happen if nobody paid attention to signs. “What if people ignored traffic signals? Stop signs? Crosswalks? What if drivers didn’t follow speed limits? What if the bus drivers ignored the bus stops?” He understood there was only one true answer to all her questions. Signs and rules have to be followed or else there will be nothing but chaos, and chaos, Mrs. Pitt has explained to them, is another word for evil. He has looked in the dictionary at home and this does not seem to be true, not true at all. He raised his hand and asked Mrs. Pitt, “What if a sign is wrong? What if it’s pointing in the wrong direction?” “That doesn’t happen very often, Copley.” “And what if a rule is wrong?” “I don’t know what you mean,” Mrs. Pitt said, “a rule can’t be wrong.” “But what if it is?” “That’s enough, Copley. I’m giving you a warning.” Today they are talking again about rules. “We have to have rules,” says Mrs. Pitt. “It’s important to have rules at home. What are some of the rules you have at home? Max?” “I have to brush my teeth before bed and after breakfast,” says Max. “Very good,” says Mrs. Pitt, “and if you didn’t brush your teeth you would get cavities.” “What about you, Emily?” “I have to ask permission before I go outside.” “Very good,” says Mrs. Pitt, “because if you didn’t ask permission your parents wouldn’t know where you were, and because you’re not old enough to know whether or not it’s safe to play outside.” It goes on like this for five minutes; he checks his watch, and although he and Joslyn both raise their hands to offer answers (he is going to tell the class about the rule that allows him only half an hour of television a week), Mrs. Pitt ignores them. “Very good. Hands down. Now what we’re going to do is think about some other rules we can create for the classroom. We already have lots of important rules, about being quiet and lining up and following directions from Miss Fox and me, but I bet you can think of some other good rules, maybe even rules that I haven’t thought of.” The room is silent for several moments, Mrs. Pitt walking back and forth across the front of the room, Miss Fox standing at the back, the rain flinging itself against the windows. At last Austin raises his hand and Mrs. Pitt calls on him. In the past week, Austin has taken the lead in whispering to Copley during bathroom breaks. Yesterday, Austin came into the stall where Copley was trying to urinate and pushed him against the yellow tiled wall. “What are you doing in here?” Austin asked. “Why don’t you use the urinals like a normal boy? Are you even a boy?” When Copley did not answer, Austin pulled at his pants, whispering, “Let’s see if you’re a boy.” The only thing that saved him was Mrs. Pitt shouting into the boys’ bathroom to ask what was taking them so long. Now, waiting for Austin to tell Mrs. Pitt and the class his idea for a new rule, Copley has a sense it will be something to do with him. “I think that only real boys should be allowed to use the boys’ restroom and only real girls should use the girls’ restroom.” Mrs. Pitt looks at Austin and writes on the board: “Boys in the boys’ restroom, girls in the girls’ restroom.” “Yes, Austin, I think that’s an important rule,” says Mrs. Pitt. “So does that mean Copley won’t be able to use the boys’ restroom now?” Austin asks, and everyone except for Joslyn, everyone including Mrs. Pitt, laughs. “We’ll just have to help Copley straighten up,” says Mrs. Pitt, raising her hands to quiet the room. “I’ll count on all you other boys to help him do that.” “But he isn’t even a boy,” Austin says. “That’s enough now, Austin. Who can think of another good rule for the classroom? Emily?” He feels dazed and dizzy and the world turns red. Miss Fox catches his eye, smiles through a frown, and seems to say without speaking that she is sorry. He tries to think of something to say but the words rise and then flatten, sliding back into his throat, wreckage building up, clogging, rusting. He looks out at the dark day through the slats of the blinds and puts down his head on his arms, crossed on top of his desk. “Head up, Copley. Back straight. This isn’t naptime,” says Mrs. Pitt, and the lesson continues.

  3:25 PM: It is swimming today and they have started a unit on diving. In Boston, his swimming teacher had already taught him to dive before they moved and he has been looking forward to this. In the boys’ locker room Austin sneaked up behind him and whispered in his ear, “You’re supposed to be in the other locker room. It’s a classroom rule. Let’s see what’s there. Are you a boy or not?” Mr. Bruce shouted at Austin to “knock it off” and Copley was able to change into his swimming suit without being seen. Now it is his turn on the diving board. Mr. Bruce and Miss Connie are in the pool with the students who have already done their dives. Behind him, on the concrete deck surrounding the pool, are the rest of his classmates. He has no fear about doing the dive. He remembers what his swimming teacher in Boston taught him, and he knows he can dive well. As he approaches the edge of the board, Austin shouts from the far side of the pool, “She’s going to fall!” He jumps, and in the moment his feet leave the board, he knows his form is wrong. His knees bend, his legs scissor, his arms go wide and wild, and he can see the surface of the water rushing into his face.

  3:28 PM: He is on his back on the concrete at the side of the pool and Mr. Bruce is leaning over him saying his name: “Copley, Copley, Copley, Copley.” He is fine. He opens his eyes. He tells Mr. Bruce he is fine. He hears Austin shout, “She belly-flopped!” He looks down on himself from a high corner of the building and sees, for an instant, a shiny red disk on the concrete under his head.

  3:55 PM: Louise is waiting just inside the front door of the school, arguing with the security guards over a piece of paper. It is not the first time this has happened. He does not know what is on the paper, but when he approaches, the two men look at the paper and look at Louise’s driver’s license and then one of them says, “Okay, you look like your picture.” Louise takes his hand and they both open their umbrellas for the walk home. It takes ten minutes on foot to get from the school to the house, cutting through River Ranch, the Demon Point nature reserve, and the woods behind their house. He likes coming home this way, through the gate into the backyard. It feels secret, hidden, protected from the neighbors, although he has met none of them and knows nothing about their lives. If they are anything like the students and teachers at his school, he does not want to meet them.

  4:30 PM: While he changes out of his uniform and puts on dry clothes, Louise makes him peppermint tea and they meet in the playroom on the top floor. He thinks most clearly at the top of the house and his tongue moves faster, getting the words out before they flatten, slide, and collapse. He tells Louise about his day at school. She shakes her head and says, “I can see why y
ou don’t look forward to it. I’ll speak to your parents.” “You know I could fly if I wanted to,” he says, putting his hands on the glass of the balcony doors and looking out at the sodden platform. Wet ashen drapes sweep across land and houses. “What do you mean?” Louise asks. “If I thought hard enough I could fly. It wouldn’t be difficult. I don’t weigh very much. I could. And anyway, weight doesn’t matter.” Louise puts her hands on his shoulders and turns him around. She kneels down in front of him so they are face-to-face, and then takes both of his hands. “I want you to promise me,” she says, “that you won’t do anything of the kind. I want you to promise me you will not jump off of anything anywhere. Flying is for birds and insects, not for humans. I know what a bright boy you are, Copley, and I want you to think about this like it’s a math problem. It does not add up, your body and the air and high places. You understand?” He nods but knows she does not understand. He tries to tell her without words, to show her the way he has already left his body, the way he is watching both of them from outside the window. “Watch yourself,” she says. “I am,” he says. “I’m always watching myself.”

  9:22 PM: Although he is supposed to be in bed he has crept onto the landing to hear the conversation in the kitchen. The voices of his parents and Louise rise up the back stairs, their words all coming with such ease and speed that he knows this is the way people are supposed to talk.

  Louise: “He’s being bullied by the other students, and by his teacher.”

  Mom: “Bullied in what way?”

  Louise: “Teasing, name-calling. Picking on him, making an example of him in class.”

  Mom: “He’s told you this?”

  Louise: “He’s been dropping hints since I came but today it all came out.”

  Dad: “And you believe him? You don’t think this is just another one of his tall tales?”

  Mom: “Nathaniel, please. Calm down.”

  Dad: “I’m perfectly calm. I just don’t understand how Louise can listen to someone who is so clearly a practiced and talented liar and fail to see that anything he says can’t be trusted.”

  Louise: “I don’t know why you chose that school, but I’d move him sooner rather than later. There’s a perfectly good public school two miles away where an old friend of mine is the principal. You’d have no trouble getting him in there.”

  Dad: “The reason he’s at the Pinwheel Academy is because it’s funded and sponsored by my company. If I didn’t send him there it would look weird. And frankly, I can’t believe EKK would have anything to do with a school that allowed bullying. We’re an equality-minded organization. And if there were real bullying going on, then the security cameras would catch it. Do you see bruises on him? Do you see injuries? He’s fine. If he were really being bullied, we’d know it just by looking at him.”

  He doesn’t need to hear more. Nothing will change. He will continue at the school through the rest of his dying days and his parents are not going to save him.

  11:15 PM: He fell asleep for an hour and has now woken from a dream he might call a nightmare. He was bouncing on the end of the diving board but did not want to jump because Austin and Ethan were in the water below, calling out to him, saying, “She’s going to fall.” He leaped into the air, flipped, and made a perfect dive. As he swam back up to the surface, their hands reached out to hold him down, pushing his head underwater, and he ran out of air. And then, when he felt as though he was going to die, larger hands gripped him around the waist and pulled him away, deeper underwater, and then up, backward, dragging him out of the pool. He sucked in air, spat, shook the water from his ears, and squirmed around in the hands that had saved him until he could see the face of his rescuer. It was the man from the street, from his basement, the giant who lifted him up on the lawn and carried him back inside.

  12:30 AM: Everyone has gone to bed, the lights are out under the doors. Though he knows he should be afraid of whatever lurks behind the pantry wall, he tiptoes down the back stairs, through the kitchen, and into the basement. At the far end of the pantry, he wriggles down under the shelf, and knocks against the short door that he knows is there, although he cannot see hinges or anything else to prove what he knows. His knuckles rap softly against the wood as he whispers, “Help me. Please, help me. Help me.”

  Why do you keep siding with him?” he asks her. She’s still wet from the shower, running a towel round her head. Julia has always been thin but in the last month she has started to look even thinner. He can see all of her ribs, the bony knot of her sternum, the arc of her clavicles. To look at her body you would never say she had given birth. The towel hangs over her face as he asks the question. She whips it away and looks at him, her eyes dark and sunken between cheekbones and brow.

  “What are you talking about, Nathaniel?”

  “Why do you always side with Copley?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she says. “Are there sides? I don’t side with Copley.”

  “Every time we have an argument you side with him. He’s always right.”

  She sidles past him into the bedroom and flicks through the hangers on her side of the closet. It would be easy to push her inside, close the door, and then she’d see how serious he was.

  “Don’t put me in the middle, Nathaniel. If you have problems with Copley you need to work them out on your own.”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “That’s not fair. You have no right to say such a thing.” She puts on a bra and underwear, steps into a pair of black slacks and sticks her arms through the holes of her beige blouse. All her clothes hang loose on her. He is sure they used to fit.

  “You sound exactly like my mother. Don’t your books say parents should be united? You try to be the kid’s friend when he doesn’t need a friend, he needs authority.”

  “He does need a friend, Nathaniel. In case you haven’t noticed, he doesn’t have any friends. We haven’t done anything to meet our neighbors. He asked me if I could arrange a play date and I haven’t even helped him with that, so don’t tell me I’m siding with our son against you. This is not a competition.”

  “You let him get away with murder, Julia. That kid could walk in here right now, hit me in the gut, and you wouldn’t do anything. You’d tell me it was my fault.”

  “What’s got into you?”

  “You’re like a team, you and him and Louise, all ganged up together to run this place. I don’t know why we ever hired her.”

  “It was your idea, Nathaniel. And I think it was a good idea. I admit I was skeptical but she’s been wonderful with him so far. Even if he hasn’t stopped acting out at home, at least there haven’t been any more problems at school. He seems less troubled, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not at all convinced—”

  “Has he spoken in that weird voice?”

  “I—no, I don’t think so. But that’s as much to do with the drugs as anything else. I’m talking about relationships, Julia, and when it comes to relationships, the three of you are this tight little unit, all aligned against me, because I’m the one who tries to impose order and discipline and rules. Louise is always telling me the kid needs more freedom. I never should have hired that woman.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “Because there was no one else!”

  He almost says, because you refuse to stay home and look after our son, although this is not, in fact, what he thinks. He cannot tell Julia he hired Louise Washington on the spot because when he saw her sitting in their kitchen, dispossessed, turfed out of her house by agents of his own company, he remembered a woman from his past he had nearly forgotten, the black woman who was briefly his nanny as a child while his mother went to study in London for six months. He was only six at the time, and remembers calling her Mozelle, although when he later asked Matthew about it his brother insisted the woman’s name was Maisie. Louise instantly reminded Nathaniel of Maisie or Moz
elle, of her quiet, challenging presence, and of the way she had hugged him, saying what a tiny boy he was for his age. “Like a little munchkin,” he can hear her saying, “a chubby little munchkin running away from the wicked witch.” Looking at Louise, seeing Mozelle, he had also seen the shadow of his own guilty conscience, his aiding and abetting and association with a corporation capable of evicting an elderly woman who wanted nothing more outrageous than to remain in her house—that was as much as he could explain to Julia. When he’d heard that she was living there, he had assumed a straightforward case of trespass, nothing more. The truth, when he learned it from Louise herself, had so devastated him that he could see nothing else but to offer help in the only way that seemed just.

  As the weeks have passed, and he sees more of Louise, of her quiet, lurking ways, slipping up and down the stairs, front and back, the way she can suddenly appear in a room without warning, he has remembered another thread of Maisie-Mozelle’s relationship with his family. The woman had a brother or husband, a male relative at least, who sometimes came to pick her up when she went back to her own house on weekends. The first time this relative came to fetch her the doorbell must have been out of order, because the man, in dark brown overalls, with a tight spherical afro, came round to the back garden, bounding through deep January snow, and knocked furiously at the window to be let inside.

  “Well, now we have her, Nathaniel, and as far as I’m concerned she’s here to stay, for as long as she wants,” Julia says, leaving the room and closing the door behind her. It was not a slam, but neither was it uninflected.