Falling in Place

by Ann Beattie

  “Let’s get going,” John Joel said. “Let’s go to the museum and get it over with.”

  “Leave me a big tip,” Sal said. “He quits on me, I’m going to need cheering up. He goes off to Atlantic City, I’m all alone here. Just me and his grill.”

  “Ocean City,” Robby said.

  “Probably you’re going to march in the beauty parade. Leave here and put on your Easter bonnet, march in the beauty parade.”

  “You’re all screwed up,” Robby said. “Don’t tip him but five percent.”

  John Joel left a fifteen-percent tip because he knew he’d go back to the hamburger shop. He looked at his watch and saw that they didn’t have much time. Nothing was worse than being caught in New York late on Friday and having to ride the commuter train home. The few times that he had done that with his father, his father had always stood in the bar car instead of sitting down, standing and being shaken around, saying that he knew he couldn’t really get out, but standing gave him the illusion of escape. When the voice came over the p.a. system and began announcing where the train was headed, the message always started: “Make sure you’re right.” John Joel’s father always sighed and bent his head back when he heard that, and then shook his head as the announcement went on: Stamford, Noroton Heights, Darien…

  On the street, they passed a man in jeans, smoking a cigar, standing and staring in a bookstore window. Parker coughed and fanned the air. They went into the Whitney without discussing it again. Parker gave his package to the man behind the desk, and they went to the booth and John Joel bought two tickets. Then they walked into the museum and had to turn back for their stubs—John Joel had almost forgotten that Parker’s mother would reimburse him if she saw the stubs. He put them in his pocket, and they waited for the elevators to come.

  “Walk,” Parker said.

  “Are you kidding? It’s too hot.”

  “It’s air conditioned.”

  “Are you kidding?” John Joel said.

  Eventually the elevator came and the door opened and they got on. It was a huge elevator, like somebody’s room, without furniture. John Joel thought that there should be at least a pole light in one corner, a pillow or two on the floor.

  “Walk,” John Joel snorted.

  They got off at the third floor and started looking around. John Joel could tell that Parker was really interested in the show when he went to look at a group of people who weren’t even naked. Parker stood and stared so long that John Joel wandered off and read what was written about the scene Parker was looking at on the wall:

  Though the figures are cast from friends,

  by adding color to them, I touched

  on terror, hallucination, nightmare.

  He stood beside Parker and looked. The most interesting figure was the one that was all blue. By a process of elimination—because he was sure that that was Antony and Cleopatra sprawled on the floor, and because he could recognize Catwoman and Superman and Pussy Galore—the one he liked had to be Bottom.

  “Come on,” he finally said to Parker.

  “How much does he get paid for doing this?” Parker said.

  “He’s a famous artist, so he’s got to be rich. I don’t know.”

  They looked at other pieces of sculpture: a woman on a subway car, with something rigged up so that the lights of another subway car seemed to be passing the window. A person behind a counter. Someone seen through a window, watching television. Then they got to the good stuff: a man and a woman sprawled on a brass bed, with an old mattress beneath them, the man’s penis half erect, the sheets a mess. Parker stared. He crossed the gallery and looked at the other bed scene, a blue woman sitting on the side of the bed and a man asleep. The beds both looked very uncomfortable. The lighting was odd. He stared for a while longer, then looked for John Joel.

  John Joel was looking at the sculpture that Nick had stared at for so long the week before. There was a girl emerging through tile—tile like the tile that was in their shower at home, but she was breaking through it, her left breast showing, her left leg and pubic hair, some monster of the shower, with eyes that you couldn’t really look into because they were looking down, just indentations, or because of the way the light was. To the side of the woman breaking through the tiles were four other women, or rather fragments of women’s bodies. John Joel was thinking about Mary, and how much he would like to be able to push her from behind so that she would go through a wall like Superman, though hopefully with more pain. The woman breaking through the tile didn’t look upset, though. John Joel couldn’t imagine why she was doing what she was doing, and thought maybe she couldn’t, either.

  “Nick says the guy who does these stands around his friends’ bedrooms and when they’re asleep, he does this.” John, Joel was pointing to the figures on the bed, and Parker, beside him, was staring at them.

  “Creepy,” Parker said.

  “I bet he gets a hundred thousand for that,” John Joel said.

  “What does he do? He puts plaster on his friends, like Gold-finger, or something?”

  “I don’t know. Nick said he watched them.”

  “Who’d go to sleep with somebody watching them? And if he’s such a rich artist, how come he knows people who’ve got such lousy mattresses? They look like rafts with the air going out of them. You know the way a raft curls up before it flattens out?”

  “You’re the one who wanted to come.”

  “Hey. You mentioned it. I didn’t even know there was a show.”

  “You wanted to come, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t say the stuff was bad. I just said the guy who did it must be a weirdo.”

  “You want to look at other stuff?”

  “Nah. What about an éclair?”

  “There’s food downstairs, but I don’t think they have stuff like éclairs.”

  “Let’s get the train. My feet are starting to hurt. Too bad I didn’t see this thing this morning. It might have given me something to talk to my shrink about. I could have said it was something I was doing this summer. The shrink always wants me to do things. Shrink sits around behind his desk all day, and I should be out running around so I can report on it.”

  “What do you go to a shrink for, anyway?”

  “Same reason you’re getting braces. My parents made me.”

  “What did they make you for?”

  “Because they’ve all gone to shrinks. Who knows.”

  “Maybe you’re really sick, Parker.”

  “Sure. Look at me. I’m sick. I’m hot and hungry, that’s all.”

  “I’ve only got ten bucks left.”

  “Ten bucks? I thought you had twenty.”

  “No. Ten.”

  “For the train and everything?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ve still got enough for éclairs,” Parker said.

  They took the elevator downstairs and went to the counter and got the package. “Ugly bug,” Parker said, in falsetto, when he took the package, pretending to be staring at the picture of the woman inside through the wrapping. “Ugly, ugly, ugly,” he chanted in a high squeak.

  They walked up to Park Avenue and got a cab. Parker sat on the jump seat and smoked a cigarette, facing John Joel. “I wonder if it’s worth anything. Some of those old pictures are. We could sell it and I’d say I lost it. She’s always yelling about something.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Sure. What am I supposed to do, take this thing home and have to look at it?”

  “You don’t know where to sell a picture.” Parker thought it over. He didn’t.

  “I wish I had money,” Parker said. “How can I get some money?”

  “What do you want it for?”

  “I just want it.”

  “You don’t have any relatives?”

  “I’ve got an uncle in Maine who’s an alcoholic. He floats those little bottles of vanilla extract in the toilet tank. He’s real crazy. He and his wife are poor. They’re not going to give me any mo
ney.”

  “That’s the only relative you’ve got?”

  “A cousin I never see in Greenwich.”

  “You don’t even have other kids in your family. You’re lucky.”

  “If I had them, I’d get rid of them.”

  “Sure. Drown them like the kittens.”

  “My mother stopped me. I would have drowned them.”

  “You wouldn’t have. You were just waiting for her to stop you.”

  “Old alley cat. Wasn’t even ours.”

  “You liked them,” John Joel said. “Did I tell you about how our dog got hit by a car? It was sort of my mother’s dog. It ran out into the street and smoosh! It was all over the road. She talks about it all the time. ‘My dog, my dog, my dog.’ ”

  “I can see liking a dog. Not an old alley cat.”

  “So why’d you try to kill all the kittens?”

  “My mother wanted me to. Then she changed her mind.”

  “She changed her mind because she was just joking, and you freaked her out.”

  “Lay off,” Parker said. “I’m not a sissy like you. I’ll do things. You think I’m the only person that ever thought to get rid of kittens?”

  “I’m not a sissy,” John Joel said.

  “Oh yeah? You let your sister do anything she wants to you.”

  “Come off it.”

  “You do.” Parker threw the package onto the seat of the cab. “Tear it up.”

  “For what? What would that prove?”

  “That you’d do something. Go ahead and do it. Or did you think she was pretty?”

  “Yeah. She was real pretty. She was your type, Parker.”

  “So get rid of her,” Parker said.

  “Yeah. Then you’ll tell your mother I ripped it up.”

  “I’m not taking it home. Are you going to rip it, or am I?”

  “Lexington Avenue okay?” the cab driver said.

  “Okay,” John Joel said.

  “Go ahead,” Parker said.

  “Leave it in the cab if you don’t want it. I don’t want it.”

  “You’re afraid to do it.”

  “You’re afraid. So you’re trying to put it on me.” John Joel paid the cab driver. They got out and walked into Grand Central.

  “What’s the matter with you? I bought you hamburgers and French fries and a milkshake, and you want an éclair out of me, and you’re not speaking to me.”

  “Nothing’s the matter. You just won’t admit that you’re a coward.”

  “Okay. I’m a coward. Now snap out of it.”

  “Yeah. You’re saying that, but you don’t believe it.”

  “Jesus,” John Joel sighed.

  “I might not have a lot of friends, but you don’t either.”

  “Jesus. What’s this, I’m with a five-year-old?”

  “What did you talk about the cats for?”

  “They never got to be cats. Your mother gave them away. They’re gone. Big fucking deal. An alley cat.”

  “Tear it up. Go on,” Parker said, shoving the corner of the package against John Joel’s arm.

  “You’re gonna make me mad, Parker. I’m gonna leave you here and get on the train without you.”

  “I’ve got eight bucks.”

  “Okay. Then pay for your own ticket. And stop hassling me.”

  Parker got in line for a ticket. John Joel stood in the line opposite him and watched him out of the corner of his eye. Parker was sweating. It was hot in the station, but not that hot. Parker got this way a lot: He’d harp on something that didn’t make any sense to begin with, and he wouldn’t quit until somebody really sat on him. He was always shoved around in school. In fact, John Joel didn’t really pal around with Parker in school. It was easy to avoid Parker, because Parker was twelve, and two classes ahead of him. When Parker wasn’t around, he’d laugh with the other kids at things Parker said and did. But during the summer he saw a lot of Parker. Parker was always coming over, and nobody else called him when school was over. He called people a couple of times to see if they were home, but their parents always answered, so he couldn’t be sure. He hung up when their parents answered.

  Parker got his ticket first and walked away, heading for the gate. John Joel wondered if Parker would wait for him, or if Parker expected him to find him on the train. He decided that if Parker wasn’t waiting, he wasn’t going to look for him. He didn’t care if Parker’s mother gave him a ride home from the station or not. He’d call his own mother. She didn’t like Parker, and if he told her they’d had a fight, she’d probably be glad.

  Parker was waiting, just inside the gate. He was standing and watching a woman arguing with a man. The man was in his early twenties and he had a magazine that he was trying to give the woman, and she was objecting. She tried to involve one of the conductors in the discussion, but he walked past the two of them as if they weren’t there. A lot of people began to come through the gate; a few looked at the two people quarreling, but nobody but Parker actually stood and watched. John Joel tried to get his attention so he’d move—they always kept the doors on the damn train closed until you’d walked half the length of it, and John Joel wanted to get on the train, where it might be cool. He sighed and stared at Parker.

  In another few seconds the man walked off, and the woman stood there, talking to herself. “It was a wig,” she kept saying.

  John Joel gestured for Parker to come on. Parker paid no attention, and John Joel decided to give him ten more seconds and then start walking. Parker was crazy if he thought the woman wasn’t going to turn on him and start giving him a rough time if he continued to stand there. Parker was always getting involved in situations where he’d put his face in the middle of something. It was happening now; the woman, slowly realizing that Parker was there, was turning toward him, complaining. Parker listened, a silly smirk on his face. Then, after a few sentences, he interrupted the woman, and John Joel was amazed to hear him asking her if she believed in the Kingdom of Heaven. “The real Kingdom of Heaven,” she said to Parker loudly. “Not some man in a wig. That magazine wasn’t really about Heaven.” And then John Joel watched as Parker said something he couldn’t understand. The woman didn’t get it, either; she leaned forward and cocked her head. She stopped talking. Parker was doing all the talking. He was holding out the picture to her, still in its wrapping, telling her that the other man was just testing her, and that she had passed the test. Her reward was a picture of herself in the Afterlife. The woman began swaying as he talked to her. “Who are you?” John Joel heard the woman say. She began to back away from Parker. The crowds were thinning out. They were going to miss the train. He decided to give him five more seconds, and then walk away. Parker was getting into another one of his crazy routines, and what he was doing was sure not to make any sense. He stared, along with the woman, as Parker fanned his shirt away from his body with one hand, then pushed the package toward her. “You might as well see it,” Parker said. “This is who you’re going to be.” The woman reached out for the package just as John Joel turned and began to walk quickly toward the train. There wasn’t going to be a seat, just because Parker was so crazy, just because he was always kidding around. He turned to see Parker running behind him and the woman ripping open the package. A man with a beer can in his hand and a briefcase in his armpit rushed past her, past John Joel and Parker, mumbling to himself.

  “Now what are you going to tell your mother?” John Joel said.

  “I gave it away, didn’t I?” Parker said. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  John Joel sat down in the first seat he saw. He didn’t care if Parker stood all the way. But when he turned around he saw that Parker had found a seat not far behind him. John Joel had been right about feeling Parker staring at the back of his head. Okay: So Parker had given away the picture, if that meant so much to him. He wondered why he felt guilty himself; he wondered if the right thing to do wasn’t to get off the train and run back and try to get the picture, if the crazy woman was still ther
e. The doors closed and the train started to move out of the station. They hadn’t bought éclairs, and he was hungry. He had the nervous feeling in his stomach that meant he ought to eat something soon. He decided he’d get some peanuts from the bar car. Walking down the aisle past Parker, he was surprised to see that Parker had his bandanna out, and was rubbing his eyes. Parker was crying. Sitting on the train, crying. John Joel kept walking, and pretended not to know him.

  When they got off the train, John Joel waited on the platform for Parker. He half thought that Parker wouldn’t get off, but he did. His eyes weren’t red and the bandanna was back in his pocket. Parker had gotten so sweaty that his shirt clung to him in rivulets of wrinkles. Parker shook his head to the side, and if his hair hadn’t been so damp, it would have fallen across his forehead the way Parker liked it to. He gave up and smoothed it straight back, and as he walked, he took a cigarette out of the package and put it in his mouth. He did his trick of lighting a match by bending one forward, closing the book, and striking it with his thumb. He held the match to the cigarette and shook the flame out.

  “I’m walking,” Parker said.

  “Walking? All the way home? You’d never be able to walk all the way home.”

  “She won’t do shit to me,” Parker said. “She knows I’d tell the shrink. She’s gonna be half-crocked by the time I get home anyway.”

  “Come on, Parker. Call”

  “I’m not going to New York with you anymore,” Parker said.

  John Joel sighed and kept walking. He felt guilty about the picture being gone and didn’t know why. It wasn’t his fault. Parker was always acting crazy, and it was his mother’s fault for asking him to do an errand like that. He tried to imagine what his own mother would do if she had sent him for a picture and he had done what Parker did. She’d probably find some way to start talking about her dog. It would probably remind her of her dog.

  “You’ll get your money,” Parker said. “Give me the stubs and I’ll show them to her and you’ll get your money.”

  John Joel reached in his pants pocket. His pants were tight, and he had to worm his finger down hard to bring up the two small ticket stubs. He handed them to Parker, and Parker smiled.