The Bend of the World: A Novel (7 page)

Nevertheless, I knew that I’d be nagged, rationally or not, in proportion to the night’s excesses or out of proportion thereto, by that second self, the creature of habit and indoctrination and acculturation that lives in all of us and delights in nothing so much as picking at the scabs of our venial wounds.

When I’d emptied my bowels and small intestines and pride and dignity into the dingy toilet and cleaned myself and made it back to the bar, I found myself in the middle of an altercation. A hairy Sasquatch in a sleeveless T-shirt and a hat that read
HOMESTEAD HARLEYS
had Mark in a sleeper hold. I blinked. Not a Sasquatch, but a man of Sasquatchian stature. I knew I shouldn’t have done those fucking mushrooms. He kept saying, Easy now, easy now. The bartender, Joey, was trying to reason with Mark. I didn’t see Helen anywhere. Mark, buddy, he said. Come on. I sidled up to the girl with the bright drink; whatever she’d moved on to, it was now as blue as something out of
Star Trek
. What the fuck? I said.

Aw, no, she said, and her voice was every Pittsburgh accent blended, distilled, and evaporated into a little bouillon cube of swallowed vowels and nasal consonants. He was beatin’ on his girl.

Easy now, easy now, said Bigfoot.

Mark? I said. That guy?

Naw, Billy, she said.

Who?

The dude who gawt him in the sleeper hold. Yeah, of course Mark.

Get off me. Get the fuck off me, Mark was yelling

No one else was paying much attention; they’d seen this shit before. Shawna was leaning on the bar with her chin in her hands, watching the struggle with the look of a businessman eating alone in an airport restaurant.

He hit her? I asked.

The girl shrugged. He snatched her up n’at, she said.

He snatched her up? I repeated.

Yeah. She looked at me as if we were speaking a related but mutually unintelligible language. He snatched her up.

Mark told the big man, I’m warning you.

Come on, dude, said Joey. Let’s call it a night.

What did she do? I asked.

Who?

Helen. His girlfriend.

Aw, she slapped the fuck outta him and took off.

I saw Mark take a deep, three-part breath. He closed his eyes for a full second. He stopped struggling and his body went slack. He opened his eyes. He took another breath. All right, he said. Sorry. He opened his palms as much as he was able in that yeti’s absurd grip. It’s cool.

All right, then, said the yeti, all right. And he set Mark down.

Mark turned his head and looked straight at me. Mark, I said. The fuck?

Then I thought I saw him flash another reptilian wink. Then he wheeled around and sucker-punched the poor fat fucker right in the nose. It made a sound like someone opening a bag of chips. The bigfoot stumbled back, hand to his nose, tripped on a barstool, and sprawled on the dirty floor. His hat fell off and sat sadly on the floor behind him. His nose might have been broken; anyway, it was bleeding. There had been a few screams as it happened, well, anyway brief yips of surprise or dismay. Joey took a step backward. Shawna now had the surprised look of a woman who never expects to be surprised. Mark straightened his tie, turned to Joey. The poor bigfoot on the floor was sitting up and gripping his damaged snout. Mark seemed about to say something; I waited for him to deliver some sort of terrifying and deadly ultimatum, but he just made a sound between a snort and a laugh and rolled his eyes and turned and walked out.

Then I somehow found the presence of mind to dash back to the pool table and grab Mark’s jacket, which he’d left slung over a chair, before I scurried out after him.

21

Oh, thanks, he said. He reached into the inner breast pocket and pulled out his wallet. I thought I’d lost this. He extracted two twenties, paused, and added a third. He pushed the money into my hand. I stared at it. Listen, he said. Sorry. She gets a little crazy. I’ve got to go find her. She’ll try to walk home and end up in a ditch. Cab’s on me. Sorry for the whatnot. Listen, we’ll have lunch or something next week. I owe you.

Then he walked across the street.

Then he got into his car.

Then I said, mostly to myself, But you can’t get a cab on Mount Washington, but he was already pulling away.

Joey the bartender and Homestead Harley, who had a wad of brown institutional paper towel over his nose, came out onto the sidewalk. Your friend’s a real piece of work, Joey said.

A real piece of shit, Bigfoot said. I think my nose is broke.

Sorry, I said. He’s not my friend. I just met him.

He leave you up here? Joey said.

I shrugged. Gave me cab fare, I said.

What the fuck, Joey said. You can’t get no cabs in Pittsburgh.

Yeah, I said. Whatever. I’ve got a friend who lives down on the South Side. I’m just going to walk to his place to crash.

Well, said Joey, you might as well tie one on for the road, since you’re not driving.

Oh man, well, I’d feel a little awkward after the, uh, the whatnot.

Aw, shit, said the yeti, and he gave me a brotherly clap on the shoulder that reverberated through my spine. You can’t hold nobody accountable just because his buddy’s a douche. Anyways, he just caught me off guards is all.

So I had another beer, and maybe Shawna gave me a little bump for the road on my way out.

22

The Mount was a mystery to anyone who didn’t live there, and although I was sure there were shorter and better routes down its face to Johnny’s street, I only knew to take the McArdle Roadway, which ran crosswise to the hill from Grandview down to Carson Street on the Flats four hundred feet below. It took me a few drunken minutes to get my bearings and find my way back to Grandview; then I turned left and walked along the scenic overlook toward McArdle, the bright city across the river to my right, a half mile distant but seemingly so close that I might, with a running start, leap from here to there. I’d texted Johnny and told him I was en route; he’d replied: my r not we out late. It’s a long story, I typed. U can pay for breakfast, he replied.

As I neared one of the small overlook balconies perched off the roadway, weird modern toadstools sprouted on concrete stems from the cliff below, I noted a solitary figure, and a few steps later saw that it was Helen, and I thought that Mark must not have been looking very hard, because here she was in the most obvious place you could imagine.

Helen, I said.

Oh. She only glanced at me before turning back to the view. You.

Me, I said. Are you okay?

How’re you doing? How about this weather we’re having? What about those Pens, think they’ll win the Cup?

Yeah, I said. Sorry. Habit. Reflex. Are you cold?

I’m pissed.

I’d offer you a ride, I said.

Now she turned, and she smiled in spite of herself, the sad smile of someone who knew pretty well what was coming. I think you may be missing an important component of that offer.

True, I said. Does Mark know you’re here?

No. Yes. I texted him and told him I got lost in Allentown to flip him out. You know, delicate white woman amongst the etc. in the middle of the night. I guess I ought to tell him where I really am.

That seems wise.

Wise, she repeated. You’re funny.

I’ve been accused of worse.

She tilted her head. Are you trying to flirt with me? she said.

I flushed. No.

You should be warned, she told me. I flirt back. She took her phone out of her purse and spent a few seconds composing a text. A moment later, it rang. She answered. Yeah, she said. I’m here. Yes. Yes. No. Yes, we seem to have bumped into each other. She covered the receiver with her hand in the old-fashioned gesture. He wants to know, she said to me, if you’ll wait with me until he arrives. Yes, I said. Yes, she said, bringing the phone back to her mouth. All right. All right. Okay.

She put the phone back into her bag. She leaned on the rail and looked at the city. I let myself look at her again now that we were alone, and it seemed to me that, while Mark was slightly less than human, she looked, if you can imagine, almost too much so.

Lovely view, she said.

Struck by the incongruity, I didn’t reply, but leaned on the rail beside her and looked at the skyscrapers across the way for some period of time.

Then she touched my chin with her hand, and when I turned, she looked as if she were about to kiss me, so I kissed her, meaning it to be serious but brief, getting something more than I’d anticipated in return.

Whoa, I said. Um.

Your girlfriend is very pretty, Helen said. A bit of a space cadet. You ought to pay more attention to her. She smiled. She likes you, I think. And we all need attention, one way or another. It’s our worst quality as a species. We’ll take what we can get.

Then Mark pulled up and hopped out of the car and strode across the grass and sidewalk to where we were standing. He looked at me, gratitude mixed with calculation, then at her, and he said, Honey, you scared the shit out of me. Jesus.

I know, she said. Punishment.

Mea culpa and so forth. Let me take you home.

You know I will.

Yes, he said.

Um, guys, I said. Because behind them, between us and the city, hovering, silent, mirrors so perfect that I could see my own face reflected even at a distance and even in the dark, were three silver disks, twenty or so feet in diameter, rounded at the edges, humming distantly, watching us, or so it seemed to me, as we watched them, before they moved, or seemed to move, at an impossible speed in a vertical line and became nonexistent somewhere above the few thinly visible clouds.

1

Three days into sixth grade, a new boy sat across from me at lunch. My two best friends had both been sent to Sewickley Academy, and I felt alone as only an eleven-year-old could truly feel alone even though I’d been going to school with everyone else in Quaker Valley since kindergarten. The boy said, You’re Peter Morrison. He was even skinnier than I was, with a wild tousle of brown hair like a little lapdog had perched on top of his head, and he had a slight lisp: Morrithon, he said. Yeah, I said. I did some research, he said. Did you know that your great-grandfather, William Aloysius Morrison, was a well-known Nazi sympathizer in England who was hung by his neck until he was dead for being a traitor during the war?

When I told this to my parents that evening, my mother crunched the ice in her scotch and told my dad, I told you we should have sent him to the academy.

Oh, really, Suzanne, my dad said, and he sipped his Syrah. I think this proves the other point very well. It’s an awfully sophisticated imprecation for someone of Pete’s age, isn’t it? But, buddy, it’s not true. Neither of your great-grandfathers on my side was named William, and our family hasn’t lived in England for hundreds of years. Your grandmother is a Daughter of the American Revolution. Different Morrisons, I’m afraid.

You’re afraid, my mother said.

Hm, said my father. Yes, I might have chosen a different way to put it.

The next day I told Johnny, My dad says that we’re not related to the Nazi guy. Our family has been in America since, like, before the Revolutionary War.

Oh. His face fell. That sucks. But then it brightened. Maybe your dad is lying, he said. To protect your family from the shame. Maybe, he said, it’s a conspiracy.

2

Johnny and his older brother, Ben, had moved to Leetsdale, a weedy little town just up the river from Sewickley, from Florida to live with their grandparents. Ben was sixteen. He explained, Our parents are total fuckups. They’re like the biggest meth heads in Tampa. Do you know what meth is?

Yeah, I said.

What is it?

Duh, it’s drugs.

You’re right, Ben said. It’s cocaine for white trash. Do you know what white trash is?

Yeah, I said.

What?

It’s, like, I said, poor people.

We, Ben said, pointing across the bedroom at Johnny, are white trash.

Which wasn’t strictly true; their grandparents’ house was small and neat, more a cottage than a real house, in a small clearing at the end of a long driveway on a woody lot surrounded by raised vegetable beds and rhododendrons, and if it lacked the acquisitive grandness of the neighborhoods in my own town of Sewickley, the inescapable tackiness of ostentation even when that ostentation is superficially elegant, it wasn’t what you’d call poor. There was another building on the property, a shedlike garage that was bigger than the house itself, in which Johnny’s Pappy worked on his invention, a metastasizing perpetual motion machine that looked like the vast megalopolis of an immensely advanced but tiny alien race. But I gathered that in Florida their circumstances had been reduced; actually, that was how Ben put it exactly. In Florida, he said, our circumstances were much reduced. He wore eyeliner and listened to the Smiths and sometimes affected something like an English accent. Heeth gay, Johnny told me proudly.

3

Now, at a certain point in
Fourth River, Fifth Dimension
, Winston Pringle’s idyllic tale of East End childhood changes without warning to a crypto-Dickensian tale of row-house deprivation in the shadow of the Edgar Thompson Steel Works in Braddock. The digression involves a brilliant but troubled young student named Wilhelm Zollen: