Fall Guy

by Carol Lea Benjamin

  “Where is he now? In jail?”

  There was another silence on the line, this one longer.

  “Michael?”

  “Believe me, we’ll find him.”

  This time I was the one who had nothing to say.

  “The closets at her apartment were full of his things, most of them new,” he said.

  “Freshly shoplifted?”

  “Could be. He had a nice little shrine set up on the coffee table. There was almost nothing of his aunt’s personal effects in the place. You’d think he had been there for years, that it was his apartment, not hers.”

  “He threw her stuff out?”

  “When the detectives spoke to him earlier, he claimed she went on a trip, took her things with her. He said she left him a note to that effect, saying he could stay there until she got back.”

  “Let me guess. He neglected to save it.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “And he had nothing to do with…” I turned around to see if Maggie was listening, but she was gone. That’s when I heard the shower curtain being ripped back.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said, ending the call and running toward the bathroom.

  The door was open. She stood in the middle of the room, staring at the tile wall, her body so still I thought she might no longer be breathing. But then she made a little noise, almost like a cough but not quite. When she turned around, her face was composed.

  “Where shall we begin?” she asked. As if nothing out of the ordinary had happened here, as if she didn’t understand the meaning of what had been right before her eyes.

  “Maggie, I—”

  She waved a hand at me, took a deep breath. “Are there any other photographs?” she asked. I stepped out of the way and she walked past me, through the kitchen and back to the living room. I put some water in the kettle and lit the stove. “I gave this to Timothy just last week,” she said, holding the photograph of Kathleen, the one that had been found on his desk the afternoon he’d been found dead in the bath. She looked around for a place to put it. I figured she’d take it, take all the family pictures.

  “Let’s put the things you want to take on the daybed for now.”

  She walked over to the daybed, Tim’s bed, carefully smoothed the cover I’d smoothed less than an hour before, and put the photo down. Then she began to look at the pictures hanging on the walls.

  “It’s all the family,” she said, her hand to her lips. “When we were young.”

  I followed behind her. Dashiell did, too, staying at her side.

  She began to take the photos off the walls and I went to get the paper towels, so that we could dust them off, wishing I’d thought to bring some boxes so that she had a place to pack them. While she dusted and stacked the framed photos of herself and Tim and Dennis and Joey, I made two cups of tea and set them on the table. Then I picked up the briefcase from the floor near the desk, taking out the letter Maggie had written to Tim after seeing him the week before.

  “Come in the kitchen. Let’s have a cup of tea,” I said, walking to the table ahead of her, the blue envelope in my hand.

  “What’s that?” Standing behind her chair.

  “I’ve been collecting Tim’s mail,” I said. “The lawyer for the estate, Tim’s lawyer, pays the bills and sends me the checks to sign. She’ll take care of all that. But this was in the mailbox the first time I came.”

  I pulled out my chair and sat. Maggie remained standing.

  “He never read it then?” She pulled out the chair and sat, putting her hands around the mug. “No, of course he didn’t. I didn’t mail it until Saturday night. He couldn’t have read it, could he?”

  “No, he couldn’t have read it.”

  I took the letter out of the envelope and handed it to her. She moved her cup aside, wiped the table with her hand to make sure it was dry, and put the letter down in front of her, smoothing it flat with her hands.

  “Will you tell me about Breyer’s Landing, Maggie?”

  She took a sip of tea, looking into the cup after she’d put it back on the table. “They say hot tea cools you off in summer,” she said.

  “There’s not much here. It was either tea or water.”

  “This is fine. I always find a cup of tea comforting, don’t you?”

  Dashiell lapped some water from the bowl I’d put down, then sighed and slid down noisily next to Maggie’s chair. Then there was only the sound of the air conditioner, the compressor cycling on.

  “It’s up on Clausland Mountain, in Upper Nyack. The boys would ride their bikes up old Tweed Boulevard and then hike in to the swimming hole. It was forbidden to go there, of course. For one thing, it’s part of the army’s property. For another, it was dangerous. It was a deep hole in the mountain where the water would collect from melting snow, rain, any sort of runoff. Of course there was no lifeguard, no supervision of any kind. It was just a hole filled with icy water, surrounded by rocks, inside and out. All the parents made a point to tell their children not to go there, but they all did. All the boys, anyway. That’s how they’d prove themselves, by jumping in,” she said, her voice cracking. “It was the way they’d show how brave they were, how little they valued life. Or so they thought.”

  “You couldn’t be cool if you didn’t do it.”

  “Exactly. Of course, they didn’t invite me. They didn’t want girls there. If a girl jumped in, it would spoil it. It would no longer be considered a brave thing to do if a girl could do it.” She stopped to sip her tea. “There was a rumor that this girl Nancy Shapiro went once and dived in. She was a Jewish girl, from over in Orangeburg. We didn’t know her. And I only heard it was so. I couldn’t swear to it.”

  “But you never did?”

  “No. I was never allowed to go.”

  “But you did.”

  “Twice. I was there when Joey hit his head and drowned. And I was there again when they pulled him out.”

  “Tell me about it,” I whispered. I wanted to reach for her hand, but they were both around the warm mug, her eyes down, seeing then, not now, not me.

  “It was a Saturday. They all left on their bikes, my brothers and my cousins Liam and Francis, the five of them. It was always the five of them, always together. I asked Tim if I could go and he said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ And when I asked him why, he said, ‘You’re a girl.’ As if any fool would know the reason without asking. Any fool but me.

  “After they left, I took my bicycle and followed them. I’d heard them talking once or twice, about what roads they took. And I’d been on Tweed Boulevard. I just wasn’t sure exactly how to get to the swimming hole, to Breyer’s Landing. I wasn’t sure where to leave the road and walk in or which way to go once I did. It was all trees, one spot looking pretty much like the next. I wasn’t even sure I’d find them at all because I couldn’t be close enough for them to see me. Besides, I didn’t ride as quickly as they did, not going up that mountain. Part of the way, I had to get off and push my bike, it was that steep.”

  “But you saw their bikes.”

  “I did, yes. And that’s how I knew where to head into the woods. But I didn’t leave my bike there. I took it way beyond where they’d stopped and hid it behind some bushes, some overgrown forsythia along the side of the road. Then I wandered for a while. But finally I heard them, their voices. That wasn’t so hard. They were shouting. As I crept up closer, careful where I stepped, I could see why. It was at Joey. He was way up on top of the rocks, near where the waterfall came down into the pool. You could see even from below that the rocks were slick, that it was a precarious place to stand. They were all yelling at him, telling him to come down, telling him not to jump, not from way up there. He’d picked the highest spot, the very highest, ten feet or more above the water. I crouched in the bushes, afraid. He was stubborn, Joey. He was the smallest one, so he had to be the scrappiest. He’d take on anyone, Joey would, especially if they called him a baby. That was the worst.”

  “He was twel
ve?”

  “And me eleven, barely ten months apart. Irish twins.”

  “What happened next?”

  “He looked so small up there with his shirt off, so pale and skinny. I thought he’d jump, to show them. I thought he’d think he had to, or it would be the end of him, that they’d never let him live it down.”

  “And he did? He jumped?”

  Maggie looked up, startled, as if she’d forgotten I was there. “Not right away. Not before I had the chance to look good and hard at Francis.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s why I’d followed them. I didn’t care anything about their precious swimming hole. I was madly in love with my cousin Francis. I would have gone anywhere just for a glimpse of him, just to be near him. You remember how it was when you were eleven?”

  Maggie looked up again, her eyes shining.

  “I do,” I told her.

  “He was a beautiful boy with the most startling eyes. They were so alive. Mischief was the fire in them, I guess”—Maggie smiled to herself—“because he was a daredevil, that Francis Connor, braver than the whole lot of them put together.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Twelve, like Joey, only Francis’s birthday was three months earlier, so he wasn’t the baby. They were the best of friends, Francis and Joseph. ‘Find one, you’ll find the other,’ my father used to say. It was true, too. They were inseparable.”

  “Had Francis made the jump?”

  “I don’t know. I’d only ever followed them that one time. How’s that for the luck of the Irish?”

  “No one ever said? No one talked about it?”

  She shook her head. “No. If that was their road to manhood, they wouldn’t tell a mere girl now, would they? It was something between the lot of them. They never talked about anything they did when they went off together. But I had the feeling Joey was the last to try it.” She shook her head. “Me, even from the lowest spot, I wouldn’t have done it, the water that cold, and black as the devil’s heart. If you put your hand in, you wouldn’t see your own fingers, and when you pulled it out, to make sure it was still there…because in no time at all you couldn’t feel it, your hand would be blue.”

  “When did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Put your hand in.”

  She stared straight ahead with flat eyes. “After,” she said, “after they took him out.”

  I nodded. “Maggie,” I said, “you said you didn’t know if Francis had made the jump.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then what made you think he was so brave?” Thinking that love is blind, even when you’re eleven. Maybe especially when you’re eleven.

  “It was because of the fire, what he did then, that’s where you could see how fearless he was, the second youngest of the boys, but the one to rush in and do the saving when it was necessary.”

  “What fire?”

  “It was the winter before Joey’s accident. They were playing cowboys and Indians with a couple of younger kids from Nyack. And the game got out of hand.”

  “How so?”

  “They’d made themselves the Indians and the two other kids were supposed to be the cowboys. They didn’t mind. It meant they’d be the good guys. But then the Indians captured one of them and tied him to a tree.”

  “And then what?”

  “They piled some dead leaves around his feet, leaves and small dry sticks. They said they were going to burn the white man at the stake. At first Freddy, he was the kid they’d captured, he thought it was all part of the adventure. It was playacting to him, the same as any other game. And I think it was meant to be. I really do.”

  She stopped and just looked at me, desperate for me to believe along with her.

  “But something changed,” I said.

  “It was just an accident. Truly.” She reached across the table for my hand. “One of them had stolen some cigarettes from my father’s pack. They did that all the time. Cigarettes, even booze sometimes. And the match, I guess it was, started the leaves on fire. The wind was up and the fire grew too quickly for them to stamp it out. So they began running around and shouting, not knowing what to do, except for Francis. He was the one who untied the ropes and got little Freddy free. Then he took off his own jacket and wrapped it around Freddy’s legs and rolled him on the ground.”

  “Was he burned badly?”

  “Not as badly as Freddy. That poor boy, he was only ten, he had a lot of damage to his legs. If not for the patches of snow, it would have been worse. The fire would have moved faster. The woods might have gone up. But after Francis got Freddy free, it seemed to wake up Timothy, Dennis, Joey and Liam. They began to throw handfuls of snow on the fire and then they were able to stamp it out.”

  “Did they ever tell your parents?”

  “They had to tell them something. Francis’s jacket was ruined. Everyone had part of their clothes or shoes burned.”

  “They must have been furious.”

  “Not at all. They never knew the truth. No one ever told the truth about anything back then. You just swept it all under the rug and went on.”

  “What did they say happened?”

  “They said there was some kid from Nyack, Freddy Baker, in the woods and he was smoking and accidentally started a fire. They said he ran away and they put the fire out, that that’s how they’d gotten burned. The way they told it, they were heroes.”

  “What about Freddy Baker? How did he get home? What did he tell his parents?”

  “There was no Freddy Baker. That’s just a name the boys made up, to have a scapegoat.”

  “But what about the real kid, the kid who was injured, whatever his name was?”

  She picked up her cup and put it down again without drinking. “People are pretty resilient, Rachel. I’ve certainly learned that, being a nurse. You see someone at death’s door and a few weeks or months later, they’re back living their lives.”

  “As if nothing happened?”

  “Not necessarily. But they go on. What choice is there?”

  “So how did Freddy, or whatever his name was, get home? Wasn’t he burned too badly to walk?”

  “He was,” she said. “Francis carried him.”

  “All the way to Nyack?”

  She nodded.

  “And on the way, they worked on Freddy’s cover story?”

  “I guess they did.” She smiled. “I’m sure they made him the hero in it, too. That’s how they did things.”

  “And they were believed?”

  “My father was angry, of course. He told them they should stay closer to home, that they should stick to themselves, to family. He said they were foolhardy and headstrong, but you could tell, he admired them, too. He wouldn’t have wanted boys who were Goody Two-shoes. He loved the fact that they were wild, that they were brave.”

  “They must have told a damn good story,” I said, thinking Maggie was doing the same thing with me.

  “They could talk the silver out of your teeth, those five. That’s just the way it was. My parents liked things to be pleasant, so you grew up telling them the things you knew would make them happy. When you had a problem, you kept it to yourself. We were all good storytellers. It’s in the blood.”

  “Were you there that day, the day of the fire?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then if they didn’t tell the truth, how did you find out what happened?”

  “Joey. He made me swear I’d never tell.”

  “He told you everything?”

  Maggie took a sip of tea and made a face. It must have gotten cold by then.

  “He told me a lot. But…”

  “Not that he was planning on that jump.”

  “No, not that.”

  “You couldn’t have stopped him, Maggie. No one could.”

  “No, I surely couldn’t have stopped him. I do know that.” Close to tears, it seemed. But not crying.

  “Was that what you wanted to te
ll your brother?”

  She looked up, startled. “Was what?”

  I pointed to the letter. “Is that what you meant? That you wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t stop Joey from jumping, that no one could have.”

  “Yes. That was what I meant to tell him.”

  I got up and put the fire on under the kettle. I should have thought to bring something to eat. But we could always order something in when we got hungry. I hadn’t emptied the kitchen drawers yet. I was sure O’Fallon had take-out menus. Everyone in Manhattan did.

  Maggie got up and began to wash both our cups. “Is that lovely garden part of Timothy’s place, too?” She was standing on her toes, leaning over the sink and looking out the window.

  “It’s a communal garden for this building and the one next door. That’s where the memorial will be.”

  She sat down, leaving the clean cups on the counter. I sat down, too, waiting for the water to boil, for Maggie to tell me more, hoping to learn something that would make everything else make sense. I wondered if that was it, the boys growing up wild, doing some terrible things, if that’s why Tim took in all those men and tried to turn their lives around. Did he do it to try to make up for the things he’d done as a boy, for burning poor Freddy Baker, whatever his real name was, at the stake? But lots of boys did things like that, and worse, and they didn’t grow up and take dangerous drifters in off the street, spend money on them, risk life and limb trying to help strangers get their lives in order.

  “Liam’s suicide must have been a shock to the family. He was so young,” I said, hoping to get Maggie started again.

  “Sixteen. He’d wanted to be a priest. That was the plan. But after he died, that was the end of it,” she said. “Everything changed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The two families. It was the end of their being so close. For a while, we just didn’t see them much, not my aunt and uncle, not Francis. Then they moved away. And everything was different after that.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, it was just Timmy and Dennis then. After a bit, they went their separate ways. Dennis met some new boys in school and started hanging out with them. He spent a lot of time away from home. Tim was by himself a lot or away from the house, too. But when they were home, they didn’t have much to say about where they’d been.”