Falling in Place Page 14

  “Now, watch,” Parker said. Parker stopped on the sidewalk, away from where everybody was walking. He put one stub on top of the other and squatted. John Joel knew what he was going to do. He was going to light them.

  He wanted to fight with Parker. He was afraid of getting hurt, but he was so tired of Parker and his craziness that he wanted to hit him. Instead, before he really thought about it, he tried to push Parker over, but Parker just braced himself with his left arm and didn’t fall. His right hand was already holding the burning match to the ticket stubs.

  Some man with a briefcase looked over his shoulder at the two of them, and John Joel met the man’s eyes. The man gave a little smile and kept walking. John Joel kept watching him, but he went into the bar across from the station without turning around again. John Joel stared at the door of the bar, at the other people walking in. Then he shrugged and sighed and looked down at Parker.

  “Big deal. So you burned them,” John Joel said. “You don’t want to be friends, we don’t have to be friends.”

  He walked away. He hoped that Parker wouldn’t follow him, because he thought there was going to be a fight. Only he didn’t think that he was going to start it anymore: He thought that Parker was. He kept walking and didn’t turn around. He was trying to think where the nearest phone was, so that he could call his mother to come get him. As he walked, he kept thinking of the woman in the picture, and how ugly some women could be. He wondered what Parker’s mother was going to do to him, whether Parker might not tell her what he’d really done.

  Then she was there: Parker’s mother, in the Oldsmobile convertible, a white visor pulled low on her forehead. She played tennis all day and got very tan in the summer. When she pulled over and raised her hand to wave, John Joel saw she had a sweatband on her wrist.

  “Where’s Parker?” she said.

  He shrugged. “Back at the train,” he said, guessing.

  “Well, why is he there?” Marge Pendergast was sitting next to her, drinking something from a Styrofoam cup. Her hair was all tangled, and she wasn’t brushing it out of her eyes. They both had on tennis dresses.

  “Get in,” Parker’s mother said. “I had a feeling you’d get this train.”

  “Nah,” he said. “Thanks. I’ve got to go somewhere.”

  “What are you talking about?” Parker’s mother said. “I’m giving you a ride home. Where’s Parker?”

  “At the train,” John Joel said again. “You really don’t want a ride?” Parker’s mother said. “No, thanks.”

  “Go on,” Marge Pendergast said. “I’m hot and I want a shower.”

  “John Joel, while I’m here, why don’t you get in the car and we’ll find Parker and I can drop you where you’re going.”

  “No,” he said, and turned and started to walk away from the car.

  He listened for the car to pull away, and in a few seconds it did, with a screech of tires. He wondered if she’d find Parker, and he half hoped that he was gone—that there was no chance that she’d find him and that Parker would try to blame him, somehow, for the lost picture. He wondered if that woman in the picture ever suspected how she’d end up, the trouble her picture would cause. He regretted all the money he’d spent on Parker. He wished that he had another friend, because even if Parker called him, he wasn’t ever going to see him again.

  A mile up the road, he went into the food store and bought Pepperidge Farm Mint Milanos. He started eating them as he stood in line waiting to buy them, two bites to a cookie. Outside the store, when he finished the first layer, he took the paper cup out and wadded it until he made it into a ball in his fist. Then he threw it, as if he meant to strike somebody out. The ball had no weight and only went a few feet before it hit the ground.

  “Why don’t you pick that up?” a woman in the parking lot said, opening her car door.

  He had only gone a few yards when he felt, for the first time, a painful sting: He had gotten a blister on his little toe in New York.

  Eleven

  “COME WITH ME,” Louise said. “It’ll be fun. It’ll be more fun than lying around the house all day.

  “I don’t want to,” John Joel said.

  “Come on,” Louise said. “Tiffy’s made lots of picnic food and we’ll go berry-picking. I’ll make a strawberry pie. But you have to come help me.”

  “Mary doesn’t have to come.”

  “Mary is at Angela’s. Come on. Why do I have to urge my children to move? It’s not going above eighty today. It’s a perfect day to pick berries.”

  “Why can’t I stay here?” John Joel said.

  “To tell you the truth, you can. But I wish you’d come with me. I know you’re depressed about something, and if you won’t tell me, at least let me try to cheer you up.”

  “I don’t like Tiffy,” he said.

  “How could you not like Tiffy? You’ll like her. You hardly know her. Your father badmouths every woman I know. Don’t pick up all your father’s prejudices.”

  “I don’t even see him,” John Joel said.

  “You see him on the weekends,” Louise said. “Come on. If we start talking about this, I’m going to get depressed, and I’m in a good mood today.”

  “What am I supposed to say to people who want to know how come he’s never around?”

  “Is that what’s bothering you?” Louise said. She sat on the sofa, across from the chair where he was sitting and reading a Zap comic.

  He nodded yes. It was a lie, but he wanted to see what she’d say,

  “Say we’re separated,” she said.

  “He’s here on the weekends,” John Joel said. He hadn’t wanted her to say that. He hadn’t thought she would.

  “Ask your father what you should say. As far as I’m concerned, it’s an adequate answer to nosy people to say we’re separated.”

  “It’s going to be plenty hot getting berries today.”

  “I think you can stand it. Last time: Are you coming?”

  He put down the comic book and got out of the chair. “Mary doesn’t have to come,” he said again, but he didn’t want her to be coming, and he knew that his mother knew that. She didn’t say anything. She got up and stretched and went into the kitchen and began taking containers out of the cabinet.

  “Wear an old shirt and shorts so it doesn’t matter if they get stained,” she said.

  He went upstairs. It had been three days since he and Parker had been in New York, and Parker hadn’t called him to apologize. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have seen Parker again, but he wanted to be able to hang up on him. He hoped that Parker had gotten into trouble with his mother.

  He tried to put on his madras shorts, but they wouldn’t zip up all the way. He put on a pair of cut-off denim shorts that didn’t button, but that zipped and that had a reliable zipper. He put on a white shirt with a rip down the back, from snagging himself when he was getting out of the tree. His mother never mended things that were ripped. She’d approve of his choosing this shirt to go berry-picking in.

  “Why are you so blue today?” she said when he came downstairs.

  “I’m not. Lay off.”

  “I can’t even inquire about how my children are feeling without being told to lay off?”

  “I thought we were going out,” he said.

  “As soon as I find a bag to put these containers in.”

  “What’s for lunch?” he said.

  “I don’t know. Tiffy’s bringing a picnic.”

  “Chicken,” he said. “I’ll bet you.”

  “It probably is chicken. Will that be all right with you?”

  He held the door open for her. She walked out, swinging the bag she was carrying, humming a song. The car was hot inside from sitting in the sun. She opened her door, then went around to his side and unlocked it and opened that door. Heat poured out of the car.

  “You never told me what you did in New York,” she said, getting in her side, throwing the bag into the back seat. He got in and closed his door. His shorts were
tight across his stomach.

  “Nothing much,” he said.

  “Nothing much. New York City. If you want some suggestions, I can offer a few the next time you go in.”

  “I’m sick of New York,” he said. “It’s too hot in the summer.”

  “Take the boat out to the Statue of Liberty. Remember when we all did that last summer? Or the summer before, I guess. I love that ride. It’s not too long, and it’s so cool. I was telling your father that we ought to go to Nantucket this summer and rent a boat for a week. Would you like that?”

  “Sure. I guess.”

  “Tell him,” she said. “If we gang up on him, he’ll take us.”

  “Isn’t he taking a vacation?” John Joel said.

  “Of course he’ll take a vacation. But we’re going to have to persuade him to take it in Nantucket.”

  “Maybe he’s going on vacation alone,” John Joel said.

  His mother was turning on the air conditioning, steering with one hand as she rolled up her window.

  “Why do you say that?” she said.

  He shrugged. “Maybe he’d go alone.”

  “Did he say that to you?”

  “No, he didn’t say it. I just thought that since you’re separated he might not take a vacation with us this year.”

  “Yes he will,” his mother said. She didn’t sound sure. The air conditioning was already making his knees cold. He drew up his legs.

  “Are you going to tell me about the fight you had with Parker?”

  “I told you. It wasn’t any fight. He’s just stupid.”

  “I’m not too crazy about him myself. Did something happen in New York with Parker—is that why you don’t want to go back?”

  “I’m going back next week. I’ve got to get braces, don’t I?”

  “I mean for fun. And yes, you have to get braces. I know you don’t like the idea, but you wouldn’t like crooked teeth when you grew up, either.”

  “I wouldn’t care.”

  “You’d care then.”

  “I wouldn’t care,” he said again.

  “God,” she said, sighing. “Maybe you wouldn’t. You’re a pretty blasé kid.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Blasé? It means you let everything roll off your back like water.” She smiled. “I didn’t realize what an old-fashioned expression that was,” she said. “I guess it is.”

  She always came to a full stop at stop signs. It drove him crazy. A dog was running at the side of the road. He waited for her to say something about her dog. She looked, but didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll tell you one thing Parker did. We went to the museum and he told me his mother would pay me back if I showed her the tickets, and then he—” He broke off, and decided it would be better to hedge on the truth. “Parker tore up the ticket stubs.”

  “On purpose?”

  “Sure, on purpose.”

  “What was the point of that?” she said.

  He shrugged. “He’s stupid.”

  “The other thing that surprises me is that you went to a museum. What did you see?”

  “Where’d you think we’d go? Some porn movie?”

  “I do have some faith in you, John Joel. I just didn’t think the two of you would go to a museum. I think it’s wonderful that you did.”

  “Nick took me the week before,” he said.

  “Really? And you liked it and went back?”

  “I sort of liked it. It was these plaster people.”

  “Oh,” she said. “You saw the Segal show at the Whitney.”

  He shrugged.

  “Well, tell me about it,” she said.

  “I read what he wrote about one of the things, and he said it was his friends. One of them was all blue, and it had a face like a goat.”

  “I’d like to see that,” she said.

  “Some of it was dumb,” he said. He decided not to tell her about the people naked in bed, or the women’s bodies.

  “Do you like Nick?” she asked him.

  “Sure. He’s okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “I don’t love him or anything.”

  “Your father does. Your father worships him.”

  John Joel shrugged. “He’s a nice guy,” he said.

  “Maybe I’m just jealous,” she said. She turned down the air conditioner. They were passing the reservoir, with the geyser of white water shooting up.

  “Nick’s got a pretty girlfriend,” he said.

  “A lot of them,” she said. “Was this one black or foreign? Or white for a change?”

  “She had huge eyes and she was pretty. She worked at some department store. Nick was surprised to see her, when she showed up outside the museum. Dad was late. He finally showed.”

  “Nick finds a new one every week,” she said.

  “Her name was Nina,” he said. “I just remembered.”

  “Nina who works in a department store. Let me guess: Bloomie’s?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Bloomie’s. And she was twenty-five, right?”

  “You would have liked her,” he said.

  “Right?” she said.

  “About,” he said.

  “They don’t come over twenty-five. That model gets discontinued.”

  “You sound like you’re talking to Dad.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I envy those lunches—flirting with somebody nice, all of it paid for with an expense account.”

  “You want to flirt with somebody?” he said.

  “Oh, you know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t.”

  “You shouldn’t dislike Nick,” he said. “He’s okay.”

  “So I hear. Constantly.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to talk about him,” he said.

  They were going up the steep hill that led to Tiffy’s house. Another dog, out on a lawn; this time it was a German shepherd, the kind his mother’s had been, and he would have bet all the money in his wallet that she’d say something. He would never forget being out on the front lawn with his mother the day Mr. Blue was hit by a car. His own scream had sounded like a woman’s, and his mother had opened her mouth but made no sound at all. The paper boy—there had been a new paper boy, and he would throw the paper onto the lawn from the other side of the street… his mother’s dog had been standing at the side of the house, and it had seen the paper boy raise his arm with the rolled-up paper, and suddenly the dog had gone bounding into the street because he thought the paper boy was playing “get the stick” with him. He had lunged into a car with a heavy thump. Now, John Joel looked at his mother. She was looking in the rear-view mirror and had seen the dog, but wasn’t saying anything. She said: “This is pretty in here. It’s quiet, too—off the main road.”

  “Do you wish you worked in New York?” he said.

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “I thought you might.”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes I like it here. I think I’m lucky that we have enough money that I don’t have to work and that when the sun is shining and I’m feeling pretty good, I can go meet a friend and have a picnic and pick strawberries. It’s a pretty nice life.” She came to a full stop at the stop sign, then went slowly forward about twenty feet and stopped again, where she could see. “I don’t know what kind of a job I could get anyway,” she said.

  “Tiffy’s got a job.”

  “Tiffy has a Ph.D. and teaches at NYU and will probably be booted out before she gets tenure, on general principles.”

  “Couldn’t you be a teacher?” he said.

  “What’s this? You’re trying to send your mother off to work?”

  “Just if you wanted a job,” he said. “You could get a job.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Seriously. I’m glad you have faith in me.”

  While he wasn’t looking, a little dog ran across a lawn close to the car, and she said, “I wish I had had a job when Mr. Blue died. I don’t know why I took it so har
d, but to this day it’s all I can do to look at a dog that reminds me of Mr. Blue in any way. That one was nothing like him—just the way it was having fun, running across the lawn after something.”

  “I was talking about the cats to Parker. He said his mother told him to drown them.”

  “You shouldn’t talk about that,” his mother said. “He’s going to a psychiatrist. Things like that you should probably leave to the two of them to talk about.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t even think he should tell the truth?”

  “I think he’s embarrassed the story got around. I don’t know how it did. I think his mother told some people. I think part of Parker’s problem is that his mother is more interested in everybody else than she is in her own son.”

  “Yeah, but he said it was an alley cat.”

  Louise laughed. “A two-hundred-dollar chocolate point,” she said. “That’s crazy, too: his mother paying that kind of money for a cat, and then having it put to sleep. It wasn’t the cat’s fault that he tried to go after it and the kittens. You’d think at least she would have tried to find a good home for it.”

  “She’s pretty strange, too,” John Joel said.

  “Everybody is, I guess. Everybody has their little secrets and their little half-truths. All those people at lunch in New York hedging and dodging like football players.”

  “I know something about her even she doesn’t know,” John Joel said.

  “About Parker’s mother?”

  “Yeah. I shouldn’t tell.”

  “How could you know something she doesn’t know?”

  “Promise you won’t tell?”

  Louise shrugged. “I can’t imagine what I’d find out about her that I’d care about. All she does is play tennis, anyway. Does it have to do with her tennis game?”

  “No. It’s that Parker put a pinhole in her diaphragm.”

  Louise snapped her head around to look at him. “What did you say?” she said.

  He blushed. Parker had had to explain to him what it meant. Now he knew what it meant, and he was suddenly embarrassed to have mentioned it. He should have told her, instead, about the naked plaster people in the museum.