Preston Falls

by David Gates

  “I have to say that was not all his fault,” she says. “I mean, I was there—and yes, he was wrong, but—”

  Petrosky holds up a hand. “I’m not trying to judge it. All I’m saying, it’s just a thing that struck our attention as being out of the usual. But the other thing that—”

  “Mo-ther?” Mel, calling from the foot of the stairs.

  “We’re up here. In Daddy’s study.”

  “Everything’s ready.”

  “Okay, be down in just a minute.”

  “She’s something,” Petrosky says, shaking his head. “This hasn’t been easy on her, I can see that. But she’s got an awful good heart.”

  “I like to think so,” says Jean. “This thing today scared me to death, though.”

  Petrosky nods. “Tell me something. How, exactly, did your husband come to have dealings with Mr. Castleman?”

  “Oh, God,” says Jean. “I don’t really know. Except that, you know, he lives so close. My husband bought firewood from him.”

  “I take it he’s not your kind of guy.”

  “No, I don’t like him.”

  Petrosky picks up a perforated side strip torn from computer paper and holds it up with both hands, as if examining a piece of movie film. “Let me try to show you what this looks like when we look at it. Here’s Mr. Castleman. Known drug person, would have gone to prison—I don’t know if you know that story.”

  “Enough of it.”

  “Okay, and here’s Mr. Reed, who defends half the drug cases in central Vermont.” He fusses again with his pants leg. “And then here’s your husband. Knows them both. Travels back and forth regularly between here and New York City, raises a large sum of money selling off his collection of musical instruments—to Mr. Castleman, of all people—shows a history of erratic behav—”

  “Wait. Since when is one thing a history?”

  “Hey,” says Petrosky. “All I’m telling you, this is the profile people would see. I’m not one of your husband’s intimates.” He picks up a Sucrets box from the desktop and takes out a foil-wrapped lozenge.

  “His intimates?” Jean says. “That’s like really a sick joke.”

  He looks at her. “Okay, whatever word you want to describe,” he says. “But you start to wonder.” He examines both sides of the Sucret, puts it back and closes the lid. “Especially when this person suddenly disappears from the face of the earth.” The bill of sale vanishes, and I CAN’T GO ON I’LL GO ON begins crawling across the screen from right to left. The change in the light makes Petrosky look back at the screen. He watches the words crawl, then nudges the mouse on its pad, and the bill of sale reappears. “That’s what a lot of this job is,” he says. “You wonder about things and you talk to people. For example. Who’s been bringing all this cocaine into the Rutland area for the past six, nine months? Or here’s another thing. Why did Mr. Castleman fly to L.A. last week? Picture him in California?”

  “I don’t get any of this,” Jean says. “I can’t imagine Willis was into any sort of drug thing. But you know, I lost track of him.” Petrosky’s rolling the strip of paper up like a party noisemaker. “I guess I’m not one of his intimates.”

  Petrosky puts the coil down on the corner of the desk; Jean watches it expand.

  “Mother?” Mel, from downstairs. “It’s getting cold.”

  “I’ll be right down,” Jean calls.

  Petrosky stands up. “Sounds like we got our marching orders.” You’d swear his smile is real. “Tell me something. Were you planning to get that roofing work finished before snow flies? It’d be a good idea.”

  “I don’t know what he was planning.” Jean gets to her feet, then has to sit: roaring in her ears, black butterflies before her eyes. The chair’s still warm from him.

  “You all right?” Petrosky sounds far away.

  Jean takes a breath, lets it out. “I think I must be hungry.”

  “Need a hand?”

  She reaches up; he grasps her hand—his skin feels rough and hard—and lets her pull down to get herself up.

  “Thank you.” She braces her palm against the doorframe. She breathes. She starts downstairs; he pushes the chair in and follows. His eyes on her ass, she feels like.

  They stop in the kitchen doorway.

  Mel has set three places at the table: three spoons on three folded paper towels, three mugs with tea bag tags dangling down the sides, three bowls of steaming soup. A leftover inch of white candle flaming. “Oh sweetheart, thank you,” says Jean. “It’s beautiful.”

  “You can sit here if you want,” Mel says to Petrosky, pulling out the middle chair.

  “Hey, this looks terrific.” The gun bobs at his side as he walks over and sits down.

  “Me here?” says Jean. She’s stupidly worried about that beltful of bullets so close to a lighted candle.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mel says. “This was so nice of you, sweetie.”

  “O-kay, Mother.” What it is, Mel must not want it to seem that this is unusual for her to do. Jean sits, and Mel brings a saucepan from the stove and pours hot water—seltzer, actually, with the bubbles boiled away—into their mugs.

  “Thank you,” says Petrosky.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Thank you,” says Jean.

  “Welcome.”

  Mel puts the saucepan back on the stove and sits down across from Jean.

  “Good soup,” says Petrosky.

  “Delicious,” says Jean. Campbell’s minestrone. “I was so hungry. How’s yours?”

  Mel shrugs. “It’s the same soup, Mother.” She looks down at her bowl, picks up her spoon, tastes. Remembers and puts the paper towel in her lap.

  “You know, I don’t think we ever heard the other side of Sgt. Pepper,’s” Petrosky says.

  “My mom’s not real into the Beatles,” says Mel.

  “I don’t mind the Beatles,” Jean says.

  Mel shrugs again. “I don’t really feel like it. Does anybody want any crackers? I found some saltines that’re a little stale, but I can put them in the toaster oven.”

  “No, I’m fine,” says Petrosky. “This hits the spot.”

  “No, thanks, dear,” Jean says.

  Mel takes another spoonful of soup. “It’s weird to think of Daddy up here eating saltines.”

  “Why is that weird?” says Jean.

  “It just is.”

  Jean lifts her tea bag out, lets it back down. “It is, sort of.”

  “You don’t know.” Mel bangs her spoon down and stalks into the dining room. Jean looks at Petrosky, who’s looking down at his bowl.

  “I don’t think me being here makes it any easier,” he says. He lifts the bowl to his mouth, tips it back and sets it down empty.

  “It’s not you,” says Jean. She hears Mel clomping up the stairs. “Listen, I can’t thank you enough for bringing her and taking care of her. She obviously likes you.” She can’t keep that from sounding like an accusation.

  “In a way, I’m more sorry for her father than I am for her,” Petrosky says. “What he’s missing out on.”

  “I’m not,” says Jean. “But that’s nice of you to say. Especially considering her behavior.” She lifts the tea bag again; there’s no place to put it. She drops it into her soup.

  “Oh, I don’t mind a little behavior.” He gets up and takes his bowl and spoon to the sink. “You weren’t planning on driving back tonight, were you?”

  “She has to be in school tomorrow,” Jean says. “I have to be at work.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

  “It is? God, it is, isn’t it.” Jean feels her legs just aching, like a buzzing in the bones. She takes a long gulp of tea and shakes her head. “We need to get home, though.”

  “Just so you get there in one piece.” Petrosky comes and sits down again. “I were you, I’d get some sleep and go down in the morning.”

  “You’re not me,” says Jean. “You’re not my husband, you’re not my father—”

 
He holds up a hand and says, “Okay. Enough said. You do what you think best.”

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t open up on you. I just really need to get out of here, and get her out of here, and get home, you know? Plus my son just—”

  He puts up the hand again. “Your decision.”

  Jean closes her eyes. She opens them and stares at the flame of that little stub of candle.

  “Looks like you’ve had it with your soup,” he says.

  “I guess so.” She only ate a couple of spoonfuls, and now she’s getting these stabbing cramps. She’s still gazing at that candle flame. “Do you remember E. Gordon Liddy?” she says.

  “Hey, Watergate. But I thought it was G. Gordon.”

  “I’m sure you must know,” she says.

  That makes him look at her.

  “The thing I remember,” she says, “he supposedly held his finger over a lighted candle.” She starts switching her index finger back and forth through the flame. “And they asked him what the secret was, and he said, The secret is not to mind.” Back and forth with her finger, her gaze fixed on the flame. “I always thought that was amazing,” she says. “Am I scaring you?”

  “No. Are you scaring yourself?”

  “No.” She looks him in the eyes, still switching her finger through the flame.

  He lowers his eyes and stands up. “Let’s get your house shut down so you can be on your way.”

  “Oh my God,” says Jean. She blows the candle out. “Shit. Captain Petrosky, I am so sorry—I’m just completely raw. I really need to get some rest, and I need this thing to be over. I don’t want you to think I’m some crazy-woman.”

  “Well. This isn’t the easiest circumstances, I don’t imagine.”

  She gets up—her legs are killing her—and brings her bowl and Mel’s over to the sink. Where she can’t wash dishes. “Crap,” she says. “What am I going to do with this soup?”

  “Do exactly whatever you want,” he says.

  “Look, I said I was sorry. God. Scenes from a marriage.”

  Petrosky actually laughs. “Tell me about it,” he says. “I been there too. Once or twice. Why don’t you just pitch it out the door.”

  “I’m afraid it’ll bring raccoons,” Jean says.

  “Probably,” he says. “So who cares?”

  13

  In her dream, she and the kids are driving somewhere, except the inside of the Cherokee is their living room. And Mel comes in holding her eye in the palm of her hand and Jean’s frantically trying to put it back, but it’s a rule in the dream that once you take your eye out you can never get it in again. She wakes up in bed in Chesterton, confused about whether or not that’s a rule in life too. Her lower back hurts.

  She closes her eyes again and listens. No birds this time of year, and no lawn mowers; but there’s still the swish and hum of traffic, dogs barking, kids yelling. Roger: she’s got to deal with that, first thing. She was so whipped when they got in last night, she forgot to look at Carol’s truck. She has to get up.

  When she opens the bedroom door, she hears music coming from Mel’s room and different music downstairs; maybe the tv too. She fights off the idea that all this is a turned-way-down version of what you’d hear in hell. She goes into the bathroom and washes her face with cold water, which supposedly tightens the skin. Right, for about five seconds. The hamper’s almost up to the top again already. So three guesses what she’ll be doing today. She sneaks a glance in the mirror: pale, lines, raccoon eyes. What else is new.

  Coming down the stairs, she can tell that what she’s hearing is cartoons (Wheep! Boinnng!) plus Alan Jackson from Carol’s boombox, the song about how he’s going to buy him a Mercury and cruise it up and down the road. Rathbone slithers out of Carol’s room, wagging his tail in greeting. She pets him, tells him Good dog, then peeks into the living room: Roger’s belly-flopped on the floor, chin resting on commandeered sofa cushions, gazing at the screen. She’ll have to pry him away, force him back into life, before the big showdown can even begin. She needs some coffee first. It looks like a nice day out: through the dining-room window she sees sun glinting off the good old sturdy Cherokee, which got them home safe and sound. Its front end seems to be giving a big loyal toothy smile.

  Carol appears in her doorway, hugging a carton whose top flaps are folded shut in that interlocking way where you don’t need tape. “Hi. I thought you were still asleep.” She takes the box into the kitchen and sets it on the counter. Jean follows her in, and she turns around. “I was going to say something last night—actually, I was going to say something the night before, but I just thought it was, you know, too much convergence.”

  “Oh,” Jean says. She sits down at the table.

  Carol pulls up a chair next to her. “I feel like I’m leaving you in the lurch,” she says. “But I also feel like it’s a perfect time for you guys, in a way, because you’re sort of at the beginning of something. Where I am in my life, though … You know, ever since the leaves started changing, I felt like—okay, it’s beautiful, but it was also telling me that I didn’t belong back here anymore? And of course Dexter’s out there, not that he … you know.” She shakes her head. “And I think it’s also just that the land out there is still young. In terms of geology? Whereas here it’s real old? I mean, the earthquakes are the downside, but out there it’s like it’s still in process. Like the mountains are really sharp”—making a mountain crest with her fingertips—“where here the hills are just, like, waiting for the rain and everything to grind them down the rest of the way.”

  Jean has nothing to say on the subject of geology. “Do they know?” she says, nodding toward the doorway.

  “I told Roger last night. And then when Mel came down to get her juice this morning, I couldn’t exactly hide the fact that I was carting boxes.”

  Jean looks into the living room and sees only Roger’s sneakers, one toe kicking in rhythm into the carpet. Wheep! Boinnng! Alan Jackson’s gone off, but the cartoon noise is loud enough so he won’t overhear. “I don’t know what to do about him,” she says.

  “Oh listen, I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Carol says. “I went and looked up swastikas—you know how you think you remember something?—and sure enough, the swastika is like this really ancient symbol of good luck. All Hitler did was just ruin it for everybody. They say in this book that it started out as being the sun, with rays whirling around?” She windmills her hand. “I mean, it’s not like Roger consciously knew about this, which he obviously didn’t, but I think something really really old could have actually, you know, taken control of his hand.”

  “Maybe something old should take control of my hand,” says Jean, “and give him an old-fashioned spanking, which is what he probably needs.”

  “You’re kidding, right? You don’t spank?”

  “No,” Jean says. “I don’t do anything. Obviously. I’m never even here.”

  “I know, I feel that same thing,” says Carol. “Just the need to be in the place you’re supposed to be. I really think I had to come back to the East Coast again and do this whole process to sort of get clear about it.”

  “Right,” says Jean. She gets up, takes a glass down from the cabinet and opens the refrigerator. No orange juice. She pours a glass of seltzer.

  “Did you get enough sleep?” Carol says.

  “I’m okay. Listen, I have to give you money to get that thing fixed. You can’t be driving around with a swastika on your door.” She takes a burning sip of seltzer and sits down at the table again.

  Carol laughs. “You don’t think I’m that nuts, do you? Look, I totally know what the boundaries are. Last night Roger and I took some of your big brown wrapping paper and painted a sun with poster paints—you know, since it really is a sun—and we duct-taped it right over the thing. That should hold until I can get out to McCall.”

  “Wait, you’re going to Idaho? I thought you were going back to Anacortes.”

  “Well … eventually.” Carol gets up and walks to the
end of the counter by the phone. “But I thought I might as well go by way of Idaho because there’s this amazing body shop in McCall.” She takes a pen out of the jelly glass Jean keeps full of pens, tests against her palm to see if it writes and brings it over to label the carton. “When Gid rolled his army truck that time—I told you about that.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” Jean says.

  “Wow, I never told you that story? See, these biker guys—I don’t know, I guess that should be for another time. Anyway, the point is, the people at this shop towed the thing in, banged out all the dents, matched the camouflage perfectly, and you know what the bill was? Seventy-five dollars. I could never get over that.”

  She writes MISC on a flap of the carton and puts the pen behind her ear. Then she sits down cross-legged on the crappy old linoleum floor that was never high on Willis’s list of priorities.

  “But you lived there such a long time ago. How do you know they’re even in business anymore?”

  “It’s worth a try,” Carol says. She looks down at the floor, smiles. “Everything doesn’t change. I mean, it does, but …” She shrugs. “Actually, I thought I might hang out there for a while. There was a long time when I never wanted to go back there, but it seems like now it might be a good thing for me. Anyhow, the woman who’s renting my house is supposed to have it until April.” She takes the pen from behind her ear and examines it.

  “So in other words, you don’t even know where you’re staying? Carol. You’re surely not—”

  “Good God no. Gid’s not even there anymore. He went back to Stone Mountain. Stone Mattin, Joe-ja. I thought I told you. Staying with his sister and her family, going to meetings every day. It’s like everybody’s suddenly going home now, back to their old hometowns and everything.”