Falling in Place

by Ann Beattie

  John Joel picked up the box and threw it to Parker, meaning to hit him. The box hit the side of the bed and fell to the floor.

  “I could fix your sister,” Parker said. “Your sister really needs fixing.”

  Walking home, John Joel remembered the time when Parker had had poison ivy, the way it had gotten in his ears, the way the swelling had nearly closed his eyes, the sores that were partly inside and partly outside his nostrils; and how he had gone up the stairs, talking to Parker’s mother, and how she had opened the door and there was Parker in the bed, painted with some white stuff that almost covered his body, lying there just staring into the room, though there were only slits where his eyes should be. He was holding a glass of lemonade that Parker’s mother had given him. Parker had not said hello. He had not tried to cover himself, even though he was naked. John Joel had stood there and wondered if what he was seeing on the bed was some huge swollen mummy of Parker, if Parker hadn’t really disappeared, and this was what was left. He had been afraid to get too close to him. He had tried to get Parker to say something, but he wouldn’t. The whiteness of Parker, the way he had looked on the bed, was like those plaster people at the museum; and thinking about the museum reminded him that Parker had gotten his way: Parker had seen the show and done him out of being reimbursed. Parker wasn’t really his friend, and he had always known that. He had been surprised, himself, that when Parker called he had been happy. He had been even more surprised that he had gone over there, and that he had stayed so long. Sometimes he thought that Parker could read his mind. That was part of the reason he had gone: Because whatever he had said to him, Parker would have known what he was really thinking. He would have known that he was glad to hear from him. He would have known, the way he had known that he had told his mother about Parker burning the ticket stubs.

  He was thinking about Parker’s poison ivy, and he decided not to risk cutting through the lot that separated Angela’s house from his house, even if he was careful to avoid the shiny-leafed vines that wound through the lot. It was better to walk the long way, and be safe.

  Parker knew that he was afraid of firecrackers and snakes. Parker knew what everything sexual meant, and Parker had stopped telling him. For a long while, he had been able to ask, and after an eye roll or a shrug, Parker would tell him; but now Parker was learning more and more and he wouldn’t say anything. And that day he had gone berry-picking with Tiffy and his mother. He was sure that he was right about the way he felt: that if he hadn’t been there, they would have talked during the picnic; that they wouldn’t have just sat there awkwardly; that the only laugh wouldn’t have been about the bird that crapped on the cloth. His mother and Tiffy were like one person, in a way, and he was an extra. He felt the same way about his father and Nick—that they weren’t really talking the way they would talk if he weren’t there. When he was alone with his father they talked, but he always said the wrong thing, even about small things, even about Nick’s girlfriend. He was thinking about his father saying, “Not your type, huh?” He couldn’t imagine being part of his father’s and Nick’s world, even when he grew up. He couldn’t imagine having a good friend when he grew up. He thought that Parker would still be around, and that Parker would always know more than he did, that he would always take risks and not care; and that he would always be in the position he had been in, standing in Parker’s bedroom doorway, trying to get Parker to say something and Parker not talking. He had talked, finally. He had made a joke that wasn’t really a joke. He had said, “Come over here. I want you to get poison ivy.” Then he had laughed, the way his father had laughed on the train when he said, “Not your type, huh?” Both of them were sad laughs: Parker’s because for once he couldn’t impose his will; his father’s because when they talked, no matter what either of them thought about how pretty Nick’s girl was, and no matter that the rocking train threw them into each other time and again, they were still worlds apart.

  Thirteen

  NINA WAS almost exhausted, and things were starting to get too crazy. She thought that when Horton left things would calm down, but Jonathan and Spangle had almost been on a rampage since he left. She could hardly imagine Horton being a stabilizing influence on anybody, but he had talked so much that the two of them had been outdone. Of course, when Horton was there a couple of hours ago, nobody was as stoned as they were now. She wished that she had had less to smoke, or at least that she did not have to go to work the next day. She knew she was going to be standing there for hours, with her head hurting and her eyes not functioning right, having flashes of this night. It was hot, even with the window open. The window was really open—he had tried to fix the screen and had pushed it out, onto the sidewalk. Thank God nobody had been walking underneath. All of them knew better than to make an appearance outside, even to do something as simple as retrieve a fallen window screen.

  The game now was pin the tail on the donkey, but instead of a tail there was her green bathtowel, and instead of a donkey there was a yelping, stoned person who thought he was playing another game, insisted on it, and was getting very annoyed at being pursued as a donkey. At least, that’s what it seemed like. No one was communicating terribly well.

  “Charades!” Spangle screamed, and she groaned and rolled over on the rug. She couldn’t believe that just a few hours ago—no, probably many hours, more hours than she wanted to count up, because then she would know how late at night it was—the two of them had come in and taken over again, as though it were old times, simply old times, and here they were.

  “It can’t speak for itself,” he said, pointing to the towel on the rug beside Nina, “but it’s doing its imitation and it’s a book. The fucking towel is a book. And it wasn’t easy to spread it out flat on the floor, so everybody had better try to guess. What’s that towel on the floor? Name of a book.”

  Jonathan kicked the towel and almost tripped on his way to the bathroom.

  “You’re ruining it,” he hollered, and Nina said, “Sssh.”

  “Okay,” he said, straightening the towel. “Towel on the floor, name of a book. Okay. What am I?”

  “What are you, or what’s the towel?” she said.

  “What’s the towel. I know what I’m doing. I’m concentrating,” he said, wandering into the kitchen. “Four words. No, five. Five words, a charade of what that towel on the rug is impersonating. Not hard to guess. Running out of Coke.”

  “Go home,” she said. “I’ve got to work.”

  “That’s six words,” he said.

  “What?” she said. “Did you close the refrigerator door?”

  She hoped so. She didn’t hear it creak closed, and she didn’t see how she could get up right away to close it.

  “I’m completely fine,” Spangle said, coming back into the room and collapsing on the sofa. “If I was on an airplane, they wouldn’t serve me. They saw me trying to get on a plane like this, they wouldn’t let me on. You can’t get on an airplane when you’re in this kind of shape. They’ll leave you on the ground forever.”

  “Metaphor for your life,” Jonathan said, coming out of the bathroom. His jeans were much too big for him, and he’d realized it. When he lost the belt the last time he’d gone to the bathroom, he’d stuffed a washcloth in the waistband. He hadn’t put the washcloth in very well. It was wadded up and stuffed in like a lumpy baseball.

  “What did you say?” he said.

  Jonathan went into a coughing fit. “I said it’s too hot in here,” he said.

  “We’ve got to leave the country,” he said to Nina. “It’s too hot.”

  “That’s not the answer,” she said. “Hard work and no play,” she said. “That’s the answer.”

  “We’re in the middle of a game. What do you mean? See that towel on the floor? You know what it reminds me of?”

  “What?” Jonathan said.

  “The answer is How Green Was My Valley.” He put his arm over his eyes, as if he’d been struck blind by the sun. “I gave it away,” he said. “
Fuck me, I gave it away.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Jonathan said. He pulled the white washcloth out of the waist of his jeans and threw it on top of the green towel. “One’s short and the other one’s tall, but they’re the same kind,” he said. “They’ll get it on. Lots of pale-green hand-towels.”

  “How come you two are still here?” Nina said. “What?” he said. “I’m not still here. I got stoned and died. I left the refrigerator door open.”

  “Can you close it?” she said to Jonathan.

  “I can do anything,” he said. He went back into the bathroom and closed the door. She smelled it again: grass. He was smoking more grass.

  “No,” she said. She thought she said. Nobody said anything.

  “I never read How Green Was My Valley. You read that, huh? You read that at Bard College?”

  “We wouldn’t read crap like that at Bard.”

  “Not at Bard,” he said, frowning down at her. “Where are we again?”

  “Columbus Avenue.”

  “Columbus didn’t discover America,” he said. “I’m fucked. I’m fucked. I smoked grass last week and it calmed me down. If I went out it would be all over. Stop telling us to leave.”

  “I haven’t said that for an hour.”

  “You’ve come to your senses.”

  “No. I just know that you won’t leave.”

  “If I tried to get on a plane in this condition, you know what they’d do? They wouldn’t let me get on. I would be denied boarding. I couldn’t even get a denied boarding pass, because if the plane was there and I was the one who was fucked, it wouldn’t even be their fault. They can crash DC-10ʼns, and that’s their fault, but if you have one puff too many, they keep you on the ground.”

  “We missed the plane. Who cares. We missed the plane,” Jonathan said. “Then we got another one.”

  “This idiot would have brought drugs through customs. You know what you get for being busted in Spain? Seven years and seven days. Longer than it took God to create the world.”

  “Somebody close the refrigerator door,” she said.

  “Does anybody object if I take a shower?” Jonathan said. “You’ll do okay without my company? Can I be enough at home that I can just take a shower?”

  He was undressing. He left his T-shirt and jeans by the towel in the living room and walked—stumbled—into the bathroom in his Jockey shorts. He didn’t close the door. He relit the joint he’d left in the soap dish and started humming.

  “Turn the water on,” she said. Thought she said.

  “He’s taking a shower,” Spangle said. “I can close the refrigerator door, I just don’t want to. The truth is I don’t fucking want to.”

  “Shut up,” Jonathan called from the bathroom. “I can hear you in here.”

  “Bring it out, you grass-hog,” he said. “If you come out and don’t see your shadow, you can go back in with it.”

  “How am I going to see my shadow out here?” Jonathan said, stumbling out into the room. “It’s all dark in here. You can’t see your shadow in the dark. Never mind shadows, there might be people all over, and you can’t see them in the dark.”

  “Mind games,” he said. “You know who’s here.”

  “I’m going to close the refrigerator,” Jonathan said. He got the towel from the floor and headed toward the bathroom. He left the towel there and came back into the room, jumped over Nina leapfrog style and went into the kitchen and closed the refrigerator door.

  “Let’s send out for a pizza,” Jonathan said.

  “I don’t want to eat,” Nina said.

  “I don’t want to argue about what goes on the pizza,” Spangle said.

  “Who said we had to argue? Extra cheese and mushrooms,” Jonathan said.

  “So send out for a pizza. We can hang it on the wall and use it as a dartboard.”

  “It would drip down the wall,” Nina said.

  “Like that surrealist clock,” he said. “You could have an original work of art on your wall, Nina. Let’s fix Nina’s wall.”

  “What does it cost to send out for a pizza?” Jonathan said. He looked over his shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said. He went into the bathroom and closed the door. Nina heard the water running.

  “Here’s a riddle. See if you know this one,” he said. “Why did the little moron throw the clock out the window?”

  “He tripped. There wasn’t any screen in the window. The clock fell on Columbus Avenue.”

  “Fuck you. Come on, Nina. Why did he?”

  “That’s such an old joke. I can’t believe you’re telling me such an old joke. I can’t believe you’re here. Will you round up Jonathan and please go home?”

  “I can’t believe you’re here. New York chic. Christ’s thorns.”

  “It’s a dumpy apartment on Columbus Avenue.”

  “It wasn’t a riddle, it was a joke. Different thing. Pardon me. Let me go into the kitchen and see if he closed the refrigerator door.”

  Spangle got up and felt his way along the wall into the kitchen. “He closed it,” he called. Then everything was silent, except for the water slapping down in the tub. The showerhead was broken and had to be tilted a certain way to make the water spray out instead of pouring out of the spigot. Jonathan didn’t know that. She thought about going in and telling him, but she couldn’t move.

  “Here,” he said, holding out a joint to her. It was wrapped in blue paper, and she had no idea where it had come from. “That’s a pencil,” she said, taking it.

  “I know it. Write down my number so you can call me. It’s unlisted. It’s not in the phone book, and if you go to call me, you won’t be able to. Write this down.”

  “What am I supposed to write on? The rug?”

  “I don’t know where there’s any paper. We both closed the refrigerator door. You could get up and find the paper.”

  “Call me and tell me your number,” she said, dropping the pencil.

  “Maybe we should order a pizza,” he said. “Is there somebody who delivers?”

  “There’s a book by the phone. Look under ‘pizza’ in the book.”

  “You could write my number in the book, then,” he said. He walked over to the phone. She thought, watching, that he looked like a person standing upright and swimming. It was dark in the room, but things had bright edges, because of light from the sign across the street.

  “I’m writing in the book,” he said. “I’m writing you a poem. What rhymes with Nina?”

  She sighed and closed her eyes. New York working girl.

  “Piña colada,” he said. “Will they bring a pizza with onions and meatballs and a pitcher of piña coladas?”

  “The pizza man brings his dog. It’s a corgi. It’s named Bess.”

  “Is that the truth?” he said.

  “One time he brought it, one time he didn’t. I don’t like pizza. I never eat pizza.”

  “New lover’s got a lot of money, huh?”

  “What did you do with all your money?”

  “I spent it. If you have money, you can buy things. I bought some things. My possessions all linked arms and disappeared over the hill.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am. I want to order a pizza before he gets out of the shower. There’s nothing in the book under ‘pizza.’ ”

  “Give it to me,” she said.

  He got up and gave her the book. He sat down beside her and blew into her hair, to watch it separate.

  “What’s this?” she said, pointing to the word “pizza.”

  “Tell him to bring piña coladas, too,” he said. “I’m going to have a drink. Do you want a drink?”

  There was about an inch of vodka left in the bottle. He swirled the vodka, shook it, stared at it and put the bottle down.

  “Does anybody have any money?” she said.

  “The plan is,” he said, “we call him and order the pizza. When he comes we overpower him and kidnap the corgi, and if he wants it back, we say that he has to leave the p
izza and find a pitcher of piña coladas.”

  “So he leaves and finds the cops.”

  “So we throw the corgi out the window.”

  “Were you two drunk before you got here?” she said.

  “All day,” he said, holding up both hands in surrender. “I swear to you. We have a high tolerance level. That grass is a wipeout. Moves your brain cells around like a tidal wave. Little deuce coupe.”

  “What?”

  “The Beach Boys singing Saturday Night Fever music,” he said. “Double whew.”

  “The Bee Gees,” she said, closing the book and dropping it on the rug.

  “Bee Gees. Sure. What a relief. Thank God,” Spangle said. He sprawled on his stomach next to her. “You think somebody who came in here would think I was Tab Hunter and you were Sandra Dee?”

  “Let’s see if he guesses when he comes out of the bathroom.”

  “What’s he doing? He’s taking a shower? I thought he was going to call for a pizza.”

  “Forget it. I don’t want anybody up here.”

  “You’re unsociable. Even avoid all your old friends. New York chic. We can go out for a piña colada.”

  “Really,” she said, “really, it’s true, I have to work tomorrow.”

  “Tell ’em they don’t have to buy stockings if they don’t have any legs. Tell ’em all they’ve got to do is head for some subway platform and wait for a loony to push them under and their stocking problems are solved.”

  “They reattach everything.”

  “Surgeons? They don’t drink. They’ve got to be sober men. Bite my mouth: Surgeons are women, too, right? Women—what do you call them?”

  She could hear him breathing. The water. A sound that might have been Jonathan, breathing louder than the water was falling. She shook her head in confusion. Had he just asked what you called women?

  “Microsurgeons!” he said. “I thought of it! It’s microsurgeons. Women microsurgeons reattaching legs—they call them limbs, right? Microsurgeon attaching a limb that a train ran over, some loony just stands there and pushes and splat! Lady microsurgeon to the rescue.”