We All Fall Down (24 page)

Did her voice break on that final word?

He didn’t know. All he knew was that he said
Jane
and wasn’t sure later whether he had said it out loud or tried to speak. Could not remember afterward. Remembered only the pale fury of her face, her eyes blazing not like fire but like ice, remembered standing there mute, absolutely numbed, and then turning, almost running into the door which was still open, turning away from her whom he loved with such desperation and desire, and ruining, running down the walk, running to the car, knowing that he was
guilty of what she had said, knowing that he was one of the bad guys, after all.

She had just returned from visiting Karen in the hospital when Harry Flowers called.

Her visits to Karen were the only moments of light and gladness—not gladness exactly but absence of sadness, perhaps—in the grayness that her life had become. Able to speak again, Karen was a nonstop talker, filled with plans for resuming her life, shopping for new clothes, seeing all her friends. Her hospital room was filled with gifts from her classmates, crazy get-well cards on the bulletin board, balloons floating above her bed, flowers everywhere. Although Karen delighted in all the attention, a shadow sometimes crossed her features. She still could not remember what had happened on the night of the trashing. Her memory was a blank beyond the point where she opened the door and stepped into the house. For which Jane was grateful.

Jane was also grateful that her abduction and subsequent escape had disappeared quickly from the newspapers and television. The fact that Mickey Stalling left no survivors and his earlier crimes happened thirty years ago in a small town in Maine five hundred miles away contributed to the swift neglect of the story. The media lost interest in Jane and Amos Dalton when interviews were refused and Amos was packed away to relatives in Indiana. Poor Amos, who had done the brave thing in the end. Someday, when he returned, she would tell him how courageous he had been, after all.

No one in the family spoke of the future, whether they would remain in Burnside or move away. Jane was certain they would stay. One afternoon, she went by Artie’s room and heard again the weird blips and bleeps from his video
game and found herself smiling. Artie himself brought up the subject at the dinner table that night. “Are we going to move, Dad?” he asked, frowning, making one of his grotesque bratty faces. “We’ll make a decision later,” her father said. “When Karen is back from the hospital.” Glancing tenderly at Jane: “And Jane has sorted out her feelings …”

Jane had no feelings to sort out. That was the problem. Her ordeal with Mickey had taken on an aspect of unreality, as if it had happened in a dream long ago. She had refused efforts to have her consult a psychiatrist. She did not have nightmares. The episode had been so brief, so fast-moving, that she could not remember all the details. She pitied Mickey Looney, would never forget his pain and anguish as she sat helplessly bound to the chair. She was not convinced that he would have actually killed her. She was surprised at her ability to relegate Mickey and the events in that shed to a distant corner of her mind.

Buddy was different. For the first few days, he was a pain in her heart. Knew that sounded dramatic but she actually felt that her heart was fiery with pain, like a knife blade twisting and turning in it. She knew vaguely that she still loved him. But also knew it was an impossible love. The damage was too great—the damage to her house, her life, her heart. If he had confessed earlier … if he had told her what he did and explained why … she might have felt differently. But she would never know. The worst thing is that she could not talk to anyone about Buddy. Merely told her family that the relationship was over.

“Did something happen in that shed to affect how you feel about him?” her mother asked, and Jane looked up sharply, amazed at her mother’s astuteness.

“No,” she said, conscious of lying but finding no other
way to answer. “We were beginning to drift apart anyway …”

Doubtful glances from her mother in the next few hours did not change Jane’s decision to remain with the lie.

Often at night, before sleep came, his image formed itself in her mind. She would think of him in this room, on a rampage, the pee stains on the wall. She imagined the stains still there under the paint. Is that what he had become: pee stains on the wall? She sometimes cried just before falling off to sleep. Strange crying, without tears.

One morning, she opened her eyes and saw only the bare walls without posters or pictures. Something was different. But what? The sun edged into the room along the borders of the window shades. She threw off the blankets and sat up, glanced as always at that certain spot on the wall, trying to see under the paint.
She
was different. Not the room. The ache of Buddy’s loss was absent. No pain at all, no anger. No odor under the surface, either. Just this hole inside of her now, like that black hole in space, and all her emotions, anger, regret, sorrow, had been pulled into that hole. She slipped out of bed, raised the shades, closing her eyes against the invasion of the sun. Then drew back testing herself. How she felt. She felt—nothing. Numb. Vacant. Half believed that if she cut herself at this instant, no blood would flow from her veins. As if her veins were as empty as her body. Buddy was really gone now, not only from her life and her days and nights, but from herself or whatever she was deep inside. Had it really been love then, if it could abandon her like this? What would take its place? Could you go through your life without feeling anything? She had read somewhere that nature hated a vacuum. This vacuum inside her now—what would move into it?

Harry Flowers called that day.

A pleasant aroma filled the house as she picked up the phone: her mother was boiling carrots spiced with cinnamon in the kitchen.

“Hello, Jane Jerome?”

“Yes,” she said, hesitant, She did not recognize the caller’s voice.

“Listen, you don’t know me. But you know my name. My name is Harry Flowers.” Then quickly, at her intake of breath: “Wait, don’t hang up, please dont do anything. Just listen, that’s all, a minute, two minutes. Just let me say what I have to say …”

Her mother came to the door, peered in questioningly. Jane shook her head, gave her an it’s-not-important look and her mother returned to the kitchen.

“What I have to say is this: You’ve got Buddy Walker all wrong. Sure, he was with me and the others that night at your house. But he was drunk, didn’t really know what he was doing. He didn’t touch your sister. What happened to your sister was an accident whether you believe it or not, but Buddy had no part in it …”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, surprised at how calm and reasonable she sounded. How cool.

“I owe him this call. Look, I don’t even like him. He’s the kind of guy that I can’t stand. Thinks he’s better than other people, including yours truly. But he’s sorry about what he did that night. His father and mother were getting divorced and I took advantage of his crappy life. That’s why he got drunk and came with us to your house.”

I should hang up, she thought. But didn’t. She was curious. She wondered what Harry Flowers looked like. Wondered if she had already seen him on the street or at the Mall without realizing it. She tied to imagine his face, his features. But saw only Buddy in her mind.

“Buddy’s in trouble. He’s drinking again. He stopped for a while but now he’s drinking more than ever.”

She heard him take a deep breath.

“I was thinking,” he said, his voice becoming intimate, like a caress in her ear. “Maybe we could get together sometime.” Smooth, sly. “You know, to talk about all this. Just you and me …”

The telephone was suddenly like a snake in her hand. She dropped it to the floor and let it lie there for a moment before slamming it down on the receiver.

Jane and Buddy met by accident at the Mall on a Saturday afternoon in November, five months later.

She had been purposely avoiding the Mall, shopping instead at the small specialty stores on Main Street in Wickburg or a new shopping center that had opened a few miles away, near Monument.

He haunted the Mall, hoping to see her. Went out of his way to roam the stores, lurking near the entrances, sitting on the edge of the plastic bench in the lobby. The fountain still was not working, peeling even more than ever these days.

He sometimes drove to Burnside High in the afternoon and parked near the entrance—but not too near—hoping to catch glimpses of her. The sight of her walking along, her book bag slung over her shoulder, caused him such anguish and longing that tears sprang to his eyes and his chest hurt. He vowed not to return but always did.

On that November afternoon, they met face-to-face as he stepped off the down escalator and she approached the up.

Caught by surprise, she frowned, annoyed at herself for agreeing to meet her mother at Filene’s, having forgotten
her intention to avoid places where she might run into him.

“Hello, Jane,” he said.

Although the Pizza Palace was several doors away, the smell of tomato sauce and pepperoni spiced the air with reminders.

He was pale. He had lost weight. She had once thought his blue eyes were beautiful. Now they were more gray than blue. The whites of his eyes laced with red.

“How have you been?” he asked.

She had wondered how she would react when they met again. “Good,” she said. She had no reaction. He might have been a stranger. Not to be needlessly cruel, she asked: “How are you?”

Her question energized him, the fact that she had inquired about him. “Fine,” he said. “I’m doing real good in school this year. All A’s and B’s so far.” Had to keep talking, had to keep her here. Silence would take her away. “Things are fine at home. I mean, my mother and father are definitely getting divorced but it’s a friendly divorce. Addy is doing fine, and my mother’s doing fine, too.”

How many times have I said
fine? “I don’t drink anymore. I’m concentrating on my studies …”

“Good,” she said. He was obviously lying. She was amazed that he had once been able to deceive her so easily.

He realized that she had said
good
twice but had made no other comment except for that one question. He wanted to ask about her sister, Karen, but couldn’t do that because it would bring up the subject of what had happened at her house. His mind skittered, went askew—how many times he had dreamed of meeting her like this, arranging conversations in his mind, what he would say and what she would say, and was now speechless. More than
that: without thought, the way it happened sometimes in class when he gave an oral talk and everything went blank.

“Well, I have to go,” she said. “My mother’s waiting for me—I’m already late.”

“Jane,” he said, unable to let her go.

She paused, half-turned toward him, not saying anything, waiting.

His mind cleared and he found himself speaking words he had rehearsed countless times in his head, words to make her remember the good times.

“It was beautiful there for a while, wasn’t it, Jane?”

He looked as if he were about to cry.

She thought of the trashing and Karen in the coma all that time and Mickey Looney dead and her father and mother and Artie. And those yellow stains under the paint in her bedroom.

“Was it?” she said, suddenly sorry for him, so sorry. As pity moved into that hole inside her, she discovered how distant pity was from hate, how very far it was from love.

She stepped on the escalator and slowly ascended, not looking back, leaving him down below.