Falling in Place

by Ann Beattie

  “Did you call the hospital?” he said.

  “No,” she said. “Is that what you want me to do?”

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “It’s crazy,” she said, “but I was driving by—I’d made strawberry muffins with the berries we picked the other day and I was bringing them. I walked into the kitchen, and we started to talk, and then we heard it.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Yes,” Tiffy said. “Really.”

  “Drink the water,” the policeman said. “Drink it so we can ask you some questions. Are you all right?”

  “No,” he said again.

  “Put your head down,” the policeman said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Tiffy said. “What happened?”

  Tiffy was asking him what happened. One of the men with the walkie-talkies came into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and took an ice cube out of the bin inside the freezer compartment. “You left your car running,” he said to John. “I turned it off.” He ran the ice cube over his face and neck, dropped it in the sink.

  “The gawkers are starting to show,” he said.

  “No,” he said. He heard a buzz on the walkie-talkie, and then everything went still, and silent. He heard himself breathing.

  “Jesus God,” the man in the suit sighed. “Do I get tired of gawkers.”

  “Get out there and chase them off,” the policeman said. He had a notebook open. He was sitting where Tiffy had sat, and he had opened a notebook. Before him was a perfectly blank page.

  Tiffy was still there when he and Louise got back from the hospital after midnight. They had given Louise a shot of something, and made her take a pill, and given him more pills to give her later, and he had been horrified that they were going to over-medicate her and that she would die right there in the hospital. The doctors asked if he was all right. The police offered to drive them home. He said that they were fine. He agreed to talk to the police more the next day. Mary was in bed, a bullet removed from her side, and John Joel was there too, on a different floor of the hospital. He had thought that his wife was going to ask for a divorce. Nick had thought that she was going to ask for a fur coat. What had happened was that while his wife was talking to Tiffy Adamson and stuffing chicken to put in the oven, his son had shot his daughter—with a gun he had gotten from Parker, apparently. A gun he had fired a shot with, then dropped on the ground. Then John Joel and Parker had climbed down from the tree and were standing there, looking no more amazed than children caught stealing cookies from a jar. Louise had opened the back door, and there they had stood, and Mary was on the ground.

  “She was a bitch,” John Joel had said, when John went into his hospital room. He was in bed, and he looked tired. Fat and pale and tired, the way any ten-year-old would look at midnight. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” John had said to the nurse who stood in the room. He had not been able to say it to John Joel. He had turned and said it to the nurse. The nurse had acted as if he hadn’t spoken. She might as well have been a paper cutout of a nurse. She just stood and looked blank-faced. She was all in white, and his son was all in white. He could think of nothing but Mary’s blouse, the blouse that Louise was holding outside the operating room when he got to the hospital, the blouse that they were trying to pry away from her, saying, “She’s alive. She’ll be fine.” They wanted the blouse, and Louise wasn’t giving it to them. “We need that,” they said, and another person tugged. Louise held on to it.

  In the room, he had hugged John Joel. He had heard his son’s breathing, and his own breathing, and he realized that his breath was coming fast and hard, and his son’s breathing was the calm breathing of near-sleep, that he was squeezing and not getting squeezed in return.

  He had been going to take Brandt to a Little League game.

  His mother had told him to get an air conditioner for his car. He had wished for an air conditioner for his car. That was something he had thought about, a few hours before—being cool in his car.

  He had said that he could drive home with no problem, and he had been lying. He wanted to tell them that he couldn’t, but he had found himself saying that he had driven there, and of course he could drive back. The young cop offered two times to drive him. “You could get your car in the morning” the young cop had said, and his partner had said, “He knows that,” as he tried to nudge the young cop along. “I didn’t know that,” John had said. What he meant was that he hadn’t thought about it. “You what?” the cop said. The young cop looked back at him. “Ride?” the young cop said. He had raised his hand, then had no idea why he had done it. He had waved to the cops. “Nothing,” he had said. He and Louise had ridden to the lobby with the cops, and then the cops had turned and gone one way, and he and Louise had gone another. He was trying to think of the fastest route home, and he couldn’t visualize any of it; he couldn’t even remember one way to get home. But when he got out on the road—he drove by sight, not by road signs, anyway—he would remember instantly. He wanted to remember instantly. He wanted to be home, but he was not sure if he could drive there. For a second, the older cop’s face had blurred and he had thought that it wasn’t a face at all, but a scarab. Then the lines had hardened into features again.

  Tiffy and her husband were in the house. When they came in, Tiffy’s husband rose to greet them, as if they were visitors. Tiffy just sat and stared. Her husband asked if he wanted them to go. He wanted them to go. “No,” he said. “Sit down,” Tiffy’s husband said. They sat down. Tiffy got up and put her arm around Louise’s shoulder. “You were right,” Louise said to Tiffy. “It was a shot.” “Everything’s all right,” Tiffy said. “I called the hospital. They said you were coming home. We didn’t know if we should go or stay. Do you want us to sleep in the living room? Just so we can answer the phone or something?” Louise looked at John. “That’s very nice of you,” he said. He was thinking: I was at work today. I worked, and I drove back to Connecticut, and Mary and John Joel are in the hospital, and he did it because she was a bitch. He said she was a bitch. It was true that someone could dress very conventionally and still be evil: Nixon with his jacket and tie walking on the beach, for example. But Mary—Gingerbread Mary—a bitch? He wondered what his son had meant by that.

  Tiffy and Louise had gone upstairs. He had heard Louise crying, and Tiffy talking. He hardly knew Tiffy’s husband, and didn’t know what to say to him. They sat there awkwardly for a while, and then Tiffy’s husband said that he thought he would take a walk—did he want to come? He said no. He thought that if he went out to walk, he would start running. He was afraid that he would run until he died. He had been so frightened, watching them swabbing Louise’s arm. He had thought: It’s not to calm her—they’re tricking us. “Is this what you want?” he had said to Louise, but the needle was already in her arm. The doctor turned and glared at him. Then the piece of cotton in place, the nurse clamping her finger over it and pushing Louise down into a chair. She sat very still in the chair, and didn’t seem to care that she was being stared at. She didn’t really seem to notice that he was there, either. She noticed when he walked in, but then she didn’t seem to notice him. In the car, she sat with her knees drawn up, hands clasped around them. He had tried to take her hand, but she wouldn’t let go. He had put his hand over her hands, steered with one hand. He had found the way home, and now he did not want to go out walking. He thought about calling his mother, Nick, Nina. He couldn’t imagine what he would say. And then he had fallen asleep. He woke up and saw that an hour had passed. He heard Tiffy, still upstairs, still talking. Her husband had not come back. He began to pace the house. He went out to the kitchen and opened the back door. Insects were chirping. Moths came from nowhere and flapped past him, into the bright room. He looked at the tree, at the back of the yard, remembered lifting the robin’s egg, gently, from the grass: the fragile egg, safe in a dish in Nina’s apartment. John Joel had shot Mary from up in that tree, the same tree where the robins had built their
nest, the same tree he had voluntarily vacated until the birds were gone. The tree he watched, and kept the neighbor’s fat orange cat away from. He closed the door and went to the kitchen table and sat down. Dishes were pushed to one side, and the day’s mail, full of bills and advertisements, was on the table, too, and as he flipped through, he found it. He found it and knew instantly why she had called him. It was a travel brochure on Nantucket, and there was a petition—“Petition for Nantucket Vacation” was written across the top of a piece of paper—signed by Louise and John Joel and Mary. They were asking to be taken to Nantucket. That was what it was all about. The idea of packing bathing suits and going to Nantucket seemed more grotesque to him than setting off with snowshoes for Alaska. He put the brochure down, as shocked as if he had found a letter to Louise from a lover. That was what she had called him about.

  Then he drove. He meant to drive for a while and go back to the house, but he got lost, and then he found the Merritt Parkway, and it seemed more logical to go than to stay. He was speeding, watching the needle climb. And when he looked at the road again he realized where he was, how close to New York he was getting, and he pushed hard on the accelerator. There was too much wind at such a high speed, so he put his window halfway up. He was going to keep driving for a while, and then go back. He knew he wasn’t. He looked at his watch and wondered where so many hours had gone. He must have looked at the clock in the house wrong, or maybe his watch was wrong. A van with a plastic flower on the aerial passed him. A Honda Civic passed him. He was amazed that he was driving so slowly. He looked at the needle and saw that he was going thirty. He pushed hard, watched the needle climb to forty, fifty, sixty. He held it at sixty, watching the sky gradually lighten.

  And then he was in New York, and the light was even, and he didn’t know what to do but start the usual routine. He took the car to the garage, he walked up the cement ramp to the street, and walked for miles before he thought to hail a cab. “Some son of a bitch threw up after I picked him up at Studio 54,” the driver said. “I hope it doesn’t still stink back there.”

  “Have you been driving all night?” he asked the cabbie.

  “Yeah. I been working eleven to eleven. Beat the heat.”

  He pushed a wad of money into the man’s hand and got out, in front of Nina’s building. He felt light-headed. He stood there and tried not to look like a crazy man or a drunk still stumbling from the night before. A woman with a baby in a stroller walked by and didn’t look at him, and a teenage girl dropped her eyes and quickened her pace. A garbage truck was out. It was going to be a hot, hazy day. Nina was right that he was a coward. How could he even admit to her what he had done? He would have to call Louise with some excuse. He had an appointment to talk with the police. But he was not even in Connecticut. He was in New York, in front of Nina’s, and the trick was to get into the building and up the stairs.

  Child’s play: one foot in front of the other. Child’s play: bend your finger, pull the trigger. His son had shot his daughter.

  Seventeen

  HE WAS TRICKED. Parker set him up for it. After refusing to go into the city with John Joel, Parker called, suspecting, no doubt, that John Joel wouldn’t go alone. They talked for a while on the phone about trying to get a ride to the movies to see Moonraker. Parker told him he wouldn’t understand half the movie, but if he didn’t talk during it, he’d explain what he didn’t get afterward. John Joel’s mother was doing an errand for one of the hospital patients, though, so she couldn’t take them, and Parker’s mother had laryngitis. Parker had him hold the phone while he asked his mother if she was in bed because she was sick with something in addition to laryngitis, or whether she could get up and take them to the movies. Parker’s mother had written: “You don’t have a sympathetic bone in your body.” Parker suggested calling Frankie Wu. Wu’s mother didn’t work, and when they got to the theater, they could ditch Wu and meet him outside when it was over. John Joel said that wasn’t a good idea. Parker said, “Ah, you pansy.” When they hung up, John Joel went into the living room, sprawled in the chair, and got a comic to read. It was one he had borrowed from Parker, called Pig Fig, and it showed pigs being fed into a giant machine that ground them into pulp, and pig-faced bakers molding the pulp into the nearly round shape of a fig.

  “So are you going to flunk summer school?” he said to Mary as she walked into the room to get her purse.

  She had her tablet and her book in her hand. She picked up her purse, pretending not to hear him.

  “Think I’ll go to New York today and have some fun,” he said.

  Mary was doing something in the kitchen. She was humming a Linda Ronstadt song, getting something out of the refrigerator.

  “Wanna make me another breakfast?” he said, following her into the kitchen.

  “You need it,” she said. “You look like a breakfast. You know which part? The sausage part.” She jabbed her finger into the roll of fat above his Bermuda shorts. A pain shot through his stomach.

  “I’m not ignorant, though,” he said. “Fuzz Scuzz.”

  Parker had taught him that insult. Somebody that made you itch to look at them was a Fuzz Scuzz. He said it to her again, curling his fingers and making a face.

  “How old are you?” she said. “Ten?”

  “Daddy and Nick and I had lunch in New York,” he said. “You’ve never had lunch with Daddy in New York, have you?”

  “If Daddy really wanted to see you, he’d live here,” Mary said. She got a Tab out of the refrigerator. “You’re probably why he doesn’t,” she said. “He can’t stand you.”

  “I hear you’ve got a crush on Lloyd Bergman,” he said. “Somebody whose brother was at that party you and Angela went to told me. Want to know who?”

  “No,” she said. She opened the Tab, took a sip.

  “Frankie Wu’s brother. How come you don’t get a crush on him?” John Joel pulled the skin at the corner of his eyes, making them into slits.

  “You don’t look as ugly that way,” she said.

  “Are you the homeliest girl in summer school?” he said.

  “Beat your meat,” she said. She slung her purse over her shoulder and picked up the can of Tab, clutched her books under her arm. She was carrying a lot of stuff, and he watched her, hoping she’d drop something going out the door. She walked very close to the door and opened it with a stiff flick of her wrist. She went out, and he heard the slow hiss as the door closed behind her. As usual, she had topped him with an insult he didn’t understand. It reminded him that he was hungry and hadn’t eaten for two hours, since his mother fixed him breakfast. He opened the refrigerator, saw that there was hamburger meat, and took out the package, ripped off a handful and made it round. He put a lump of butter in a pan and turned on the stove. When the butter sputtered into liquid, he pressed the hamburger into the pan. It was ten o’clock. She was late for school, and he was surprised that she was going. His mother had stalked out of the house, after calling Mary three times and getting no response. Mary’s breakfast was still on the table. The eggs had congealed. The toast was all buttery shine. The bacon looked fine. He picked up a piece and ate it. As the hamburger cooked, he ate the other two pieces.

  He was finishing the hamburger when Parker called again.

  “What do you want?” he said to Parker.

  “I want you to come over. I want to show you something.”

  “What have you got that I haven’t seen?”

  “What are your big plans for the day?” Parker said. “I’ve got about a dozen comics you haven’t seen, for one thing. My mother made an orange cake before she got sick. She’s going out, anyway. Somebody just called her, and she’s getting dressed.”

  “I thought she was sick.”

  “Listen,” Parker said, “I’m not going to beg you.” He hung up.

  John Joel took his last bite of hamburger and put the plate in the sink. He went outside and ran across the lawn, after a bird that was pecking in the grass. The bird flew away, a
nd he watched it go, higher and higher, until it landed in the peach tree. The peaches got about half the size of peaches in the store, then turned gray and dropped from the tree. Mary had put one in his bed, and when he showed his mother, she had yanked Mary by one arm into the room and made her pick up the peach, which had burst, and throw it away. Then she had made Mary strip the bed and wash the sheet in the laundry tub. It was the first time he had seen Mary cry in a long time. It was also the first time he had seen his mother and Mary crying together. While they were downstairs, he had taken his mother’s little manicuring scissors and carefully cut the threads for about two inches along the seam of Mary’s jeans, in the crotch. He tugged, to make sure the seam had come apart. When he tugged, a couple of tiny threads he had missed burst. Parker had taught him that trick. He did it to his mother’s tennis shorts. “You can do too much or too little,” Parker said. “Cutting this much is about right. Don’t tug at the seam, and it’ll open gradually. It’ll open while she’s playing tennis.” Parker had his own scissors. He had scissors in about six sizes, that his grandmother had given him because he told her he was interested in paper cutting. Parker had cut a butterfly shape out of a piece of paper and sent it to his grandmother with a thank you note written on one wing. His grandmother had sent a small knife that had belonged to his grandfather that seemed never to go dull. Parker used that knife for fraying upholstery.

  John Joel climbed up in the tree, saying “shit” when he scraped his leg. He weighed more than he had at the beginning of summer, and it was hard to bend his leg as sharply as he needed to to haul himself up on one of the branches. When he got to the limb he usually sat on, or stretched out on, he settled himself and examined the scrape on his leg. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bleeding. He clamped his hand over it and hoped the pressure would stop the stinging.

  There was nothing to do. He stared at the big bumblebees hovering around the abelia, and wished that there were some way to blindfold Mary and lead her into the bush. He looked at the lot between their house and Angela’s. Some butterflies flew up from the brush. It was a sticky, hot day. His stomach felt heavy, but he was also hungry. He swung his legs back and forth, too lazy, after just having climbed into the tree, to work his way down and go back to the kitchen for more food. He thought about Parker’s mother’s orange cake. He had eaten a piece of that cake before. There were thin rounds of orange on the top, around the edge, like little wheels on their sides. When Parker’s mother was making bread, or a soufflé, Parker would go into the kitchen, if she was on the second floor, and jump hard outside the oven. He didn’t do anything to ruin her orange cakes. His mother had stopped making bread. Most of her energy now went into making orange cakes that were perfectly shaped, tall, beautiful. John Joel watched a bird hopping around on the grass. The bird didn’t know he was up in the tree. “Meow,” he said, drawing the word out, speaking in as high a pitch as possible. The bird jumped along. John Joel did it again. The bird flew a few feet forward, continued to hop along the grass. Only when John Joel started to climb down from the tree did it fly away.