We All Fall Down (10 page)

At the last moment, The Avenger took his eyes away from his grandfather’s downward flight. Did not want to see him land on the pavement below. Like in the movie when the camera turned away at the last minute and you gave a big sigh of relief because you did not want to see the smashing, the splatter, all of that.

He withdrew from the railings and sat in the chair for a moment. Waited to hear something. But did not hear anything. Did not hear screams or sirens or anything. As if he had gone deaf. He counted to ten. Slowly. Then he went into the apartment and picked up the telephone, paused a moment, and remembering the instructions about emergencies he had learned at school, he punched 911 and told whoever answered to please send an ambulance, his poor old Gramps had fallen off his balcony.

Jane woke up with a start, having heard
something
—a footstep in the hallway? a door closing?—and wondered if
somehow the trashers had come back, had broken into the house in the middle of the night. Then calmed down as she recognized her father’s footsteps as he padded down the hallway in his slippers on his way to the bathroom.

Unable to go back to sleep, she fought the blankets that seemed too heavy for this mild night. When she threw them off, her shoulders in the thin nylon nightgown grew cold. She thought of Karen in the hospital who slept night and day, did not knew heat or cold. Realizing finally that her father had not returned from the bathroom, she sat up in bed, saw the time in the glowing red figures of the digital clock: 2:57.

She slipped out of bed, went down the hallway, saw, at the head of the stairs, a spill of light below. She found her father in the kitchen, leaning against the sink, a glass of milk in his hand.

“What’s the matter, Dad?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, yawning, but a fake yawn, rubbing his hand across his faint stubble of beard.

“You always sleep like the proverbial log,” she said, quoting his own words.

He smiled, a small wan smile. “Things change,” he said. “Somebody said your body changes completely every seven years. Maybe I’m going into a new cycle.”

Which she did not for a minute believe.

Studying him surreptitiously, she realized that people do not often look at each other. Not even fathers. Her father had grown a mustache a few years ago, wore it for a few months and then shaved it off one morning before breakfast. No one at the breakfast table noticed his clean-shaven upper lip. When he was leaving the house to go to work, Artie, whose sharp eyes missed very little, said: “Hey, Dad, something wrong with your face?” But even Artie had not realized the mustache was gone, only that
their father’s face looked different that day. Her mother finally noticed the missing mustache at the dinner table that night.

No missing mustache now, only her father looking forlorn and lonely at three in the morning. Hair disheveled, eyes dull, listless. Needing a shave. A faintly familiar tone to his voice when he spoke, disturbing to her. Where had she heard that voice before? Then remembered. The voice in which he answered the detective who had asked if he had any enemies. A small boy’s voice. Not really her father. Jane got the shivers again as she had that day but worse now. Middle-of-the-night worse. She shivered, not from the cold, but from a sense of dread. She remembered a poem from school: “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.” Her family falling apart and her father, at the center. Could he hold them together? If he couldn’t, who could?

“How about you, Jane? What are you doing up at this crazy hour?”

“I heard you come downstairs and wondered if you were okay, not sick or anything.”

“I’m okay,” he said. “Just restless.”

Her father startled her with his next words.

“Actually, I had a bad dream,” he said. “I’ve been having bad dreams lately. At least, I think they’re bad dreams. They wake me up and I’m in a sweat but I can’t remember the dreams, only the feeling of them, their aura. Like a black cloud, although the dreams aren’t about black clouds. Just a feeling of something dark and menacing …”

Oh, Dad, don’t say that.
Fathers aren’t supposed to have dreams like that. Kids run to their fathers in the middle of the night when the
kids
have bad dreams, Fathers
are supposed to soothe them and say: It’s only a dream, only a dream.

“Do you think the dream is about Karen? Because she’s in kind of a black cloud?”

He glanced at her sharply.

“You think so?”

She shrugged. Tried to appear calm although panic whistled through her veins. He was supposed to know the answers.

“I worry about her, of course,” he said. “We all do. I guess what’s especially bad is the sense of helplessness. We can’t do anything to help her …”

“Maybe she knows, Dad,” Jane offered. “Maybe she
does
hear us when we visit and talk to her, like the doctor says. Knows we’re there.” She wasn’t sure she believed this but needed to offer him comfort of some kind.

Silence for a while. Nighttime silence different from morning or afternoon. No cars passing, no shouts from kids outside. No lawn mowers. Not even the sounds of nature, birds, dogs, or cats.

Her father’s jaw tightened, a pulse throbbing at his temples, lips pressed tight. “Another thing,” he said, and the simmering anger again. “Helpless against who did this thing to her, to us. If I could get my hands on them …” He looked up at her sheepishly. “Sorry,” he said. “This is middle-of-the-night talk, that’s all.” Rousing himself, pushing himself up from the table. “Let’s go to bed, Jane. Sleep, the best medicine …”

Jane did not fall asleep for a long time. Tossed and turned. Got all mixed up between sheet and blankets. Punched the pillow. Could not get comfortable. Remembering that look on her father’s face. The anger below the surface. The helplessness as he clenched his jaw.
If I could get my hands on them.

She was suddenly afraid
for
her father. And almost hoped that the trashers would never be found.

Buddy reached into the pile of rags, probing for the familiar touch of the paper bag and the bottle it contained. Felt—nothing. He groped further, to the left and right, mildly puzzled but not really concerned. Frowning, he cleared the shelf of the accumulation of rags, tools, old paint cans, placing them on the floor next to the workbench. Still not there. He looked under the shelf, scanned the floor. Even checked the old tin wastebasket next to the bench and the hanging shelf above the bench. No bag and no bottle.

Breathing a bit heavily, perspiration bubbling on his forehead, he leaned against the wall, eyes closed. He had heard that one of the bad effects of drinking was blackout. Had he somehow blacked out and couldn’t remember where he’d placed the bottle? Ridiculous. His memory was sometimes hazy the day after a wild night but he had never drawn a blank.

“This what you’re looking for?”

Turning, he saw Addy in the doorway, holding the bottle, her nose wrinkled as if a foul odor came from it.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Buddy asked, holding back an impulse to grab the bottle out of her hands.

“I’m trying to save your life.”

“Save your own life,” he said, walking toward her reaching out for the bottle.

She stepped back, moving the bottle away from him.

“
My
life’s not in danger,” she said. “I’m not in danger of becoming an alcoholic.”

Buddy shook his head in disgust. “Look, there are
plenty of other bottles I can put my hands on,” he said. “Keep the goddam thing. Have a drink or two yourself. Maybe it’ll make you more human.”

“Is that what you think it does? Make you more human? Let me tell you something Buddy. It does just the opposite. Makes you a monster. A silly-looking monster. Ever look into the mirror when you’re so stupidly drunk? You ought to see yourself. That silly look on your face, like a moron. And you ought to see yourself at the dinner table. That stupid grin of yours. Mom won’t admit it. She’s so wrapped up in her own worries that she doesn’t see
anything,
not even how stupid you look and act.”

Silly, stupid. Didn’t she know any other words?

“So you think you can stop me from being stupid and silly by taking my bottles?”

“Now you’re being stupid and silly when you’re sober. Bad enough when you’re drunk but absolutely ridiculous when you’re sober. I assume you’re sober, anyway. So, no, I don’t think taking this bottle will stop you from drinking.”

“So what’s this all about?”

“I’m simply trying to get your attention.”

“Why do you need my attention? I don’t need yours. Don’t want yours.”

“Because …” Now she faltered and the bottle in her hand seemed ludicrous.

“Because why?” Challenging her.
Okay, here I am, you have my attention. Now tell me why you need it

“Because we have to talk. I can’t stand this any longer. Mom going around in a permanent daze, like she’s sleepwalking. You drunk most of the time. Your father out there with that woman, that
girl.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do?” he asked, but not really interested because there was nothing they could do.

Which, he decided, he ought to tell her: “There is nothing we can do.”

She heaved the bottle as if throwing a football and it struck the stucco wall, breaking into a thousand pieces, the neck flying away while the rest of the bottle and the precious liquid dropped to the floor.

“Christ,” he said.

“See? There’s always something that can be done.”

“And you think you’ve been acting like a sane person?”

Which made it a draw, as he turned to look at the soggy mess on the floor.

“Look,” she said, conciliatory. “All I want to do is talk. Is that asking too much? And I’ve got a present for you. In my room.” She took a step toward the hallway. “Please,” she said, her voice cracking forlornly.

Reluctant but curious he followed as she led him upstairs to her room, opened the door and gestured him inside. She pointed to the bureau where a gleaming bottle of gin stood, a glass beside it.

“Help yourself,” she said. “From me to you,”

His first reaction was to think that Addy was a boozer, too, with her own secrets but a moment later realized that this was not possible. Not Addy, of all people.

“No, the bottle’s not mine,” she said. “I wouldn’t drink this stuff for anything in the world. And never mind how I got it. It involved bribes, from the friend of a friend. But I got it for you and this is another bribe. So that we’d talk. If you have to drink, then do it with me. Not alone. I can’t stand being alone in this house anymore.”

Suddenly, he did not want a drink. His eyes became ridiculously wet and he fumbled in his pocket for a stray piece of Kleenex. Saw how pathetic they’d become, brother
and sister: the brother a drunk, the sister abandoned, tracking down a bottle of gin in order to make contact.

“We’ve got to do something, Buddy,” she said. “We can’t keep on like this. Remember the sins of omission?”

Buddy shook his head, didn’t remember. He remembered only vaguely those religion classes on Monday nights in the basement of St. Dymphna’s church. Old Father O’Brien conducted the classes, explaining the Bible and the Ten Commandments and other stuff. Buddy had paid scant attention. Monday nights were ridiculous nights for religion classes. Kids were already loaded up with regular homework. His mother insisted that he and Addy attend the classes. “Her conscience bothering her,” Addy surmised. Their mother was Roman Catholic and their father a Presbyterian if he was anything at all. He seldom bothered going to church. Their mother herded them to Sunday masses and Christian Doctrine classes on Monday evenings. Until the last two or three years when she seemed to give up on the classes although she made Buddy and Addy sit through interminable services on Sunday morning, or sometimes Saturday evenings. Saturday evenings were even worse than Sunday mornings.

“The sins of omission are the sins of doing nothing,” Addy said now in her smart-alecky way. “Like, I think wars get declared because somebody somewhere does nothing to stop them. And we’re doing nothing to stop what’s going on with Mom and Dad.”

“But what can we do?” he asked, still not looking at her, his eyes remaining moist, concentrating on the window and the yellow plastic butterfly she’d installed to cover a hole in the screen.

“I don’t know. But let’s talk about it. About the possibilities.”

Which made him realize that Addy dreamed of possibilities
when she was sober and he only indulged in them when he was on the booze. “Okay, let’s talk …”

“Do you need a drink first?” she asked.

The word
need
stung him, made him flinch. Was she being sarcastic? Saw her face and decided she was sincere.

“No,” he said, glad to be saying no. “Let’s hear about these possibilities.”

Addy flung herself on the bed, cupped hands holding her chin, while Buddy went to the window, stared at the backyard where the old picnic table needed paint and the barbecue grill rusted away. The family suppers out there were only dim memories now.

“Maybe,” Addy said, “we ought to have plans.”

“What kind of plans?” Speaking almost absently, still staring into the yard.

“Plans to end this crazy stuff between Mom and Dad. Maybe we can do something to get them together again. At least to talk …” She launched into a series of plots-arranging a meeting between them on “neutral ground,” like in a restaurant. Approaching that woman,
that girl
as Addy always described her scornfully, and trying to reason with her. “If she sees us, his son and daughter, she probably will
see him
in a different light.”

All of it impossible, of course. Which he tried to tell her without hurting her feelings or fracturing this sudden intimacy. “Addy, this is dream stuff. Sounds beautiful but I don’t think it can work. That woman, that girl—you can bet your life she’s already seen us, she knows who we are. And getting Mom and Dad together—do you think that can really work out? This thing just didn’t happen overnight. Who knows when it began? Maybe Mom and Dad began falling apart long before that woman came along.…”