We All Fall Down (4 page)

Picking.

“What about the police?” Patti asked. “What do they think?”

“The police don’t know what to think,” Jane said, banging her heels against the banister posts. “No clues.”
Clues,
a movie word. “No witnesses.” Another movie word. Which made it all seem unreal. “That other stuff, the phone calls, the dead squirrel. The police don’t think they’re connected. They think the trashing was done by someone else, more than one person. Four or five.”

“You mean, Karen and four or five guys …” Leslie began, horror growing in her eyes, her voice dying away in that horror.

“They’re not sure about that,” Jane said, avoiding the word that Leslie avoided and then going ahead with it. “Look, she was not raped. She was … assaulted, attacked. But even that much is hard to tell. She fell down the stairs. Or was pushed down the stairs. But definitely not raped.” That hateful terrible word again.

No one spoke for a while. A stillness pervaded the neighborhood except for the distant purring of a lawn mower. Jane wanted to change the subject but also needed to break the silence in which that terrible word seemed to echo.

“The police are puzzled about how they entered the house,” Jane said. “There was what they called ‘no signs of forced entry.’” Seeing their puzzled expressions, she said: “Which means, they didn’t break down the doors to get in. Or didn’t pry them open.” Then, almost to herself, because it was so puzzling: “Another thing, they didn’t break any
windows. Broke like a thousand glasses and all the mirrors in the house but no windows.…”

“What does that mean?” Patti asked, perplexed.

“I don’t know,” Jane said, her voice sounding distant and meek.

Their shoes drummed against the banister. “I used to love it here,” Jane said. “Arbor Lane.” Her voice wistful as she whispered the name of the street After the initial resentment over her father’s transfer to Burnside had subsided, she had been fascinated by Arbor Lane and her new neighborhood, realizing that it was a dream street, like something out of
Leave It to Beaver
in the old television reruns. Neat houses, with shutters and rose arbors, bird-baths on front lawns, and the lawns carefully manicured. People waving hello to each other, evening barbecues in backyards and the aroma of burning charcoal or wood smoke from chimneys. A neighborhood of station wagons and vans, family cars. Kids of all ages and sizes. Typical kids, some regular, some nerds. But then all kids just before reaching puberty seemed to have undergone some kind of brat injection, like her brother, Artie, and his addiction to video games, barricading himself in his room while he zipped and zapped at the television set, causing his father to issue ultimatums and limits on playing the games. Mikey Bryan from two houses down who specialized in riding his bike helter-skelter on the sidewalk, running people down unless they leaped out of the way. Little Kenny Crane whom everyone picked on. Every neighborhood had a kid like that and Kenny Crane with his baby face and sissy walk filled the role on Arbor Lane. She once saw Artie, who wasn’t exactly her idea of a hero, defend Kenny, telling the other kids to leave him alone, placing his arm around Kenny Crane’s frail shoulders. Maybe there was hope for Artie, after all.

“Hi, Jane.”

She looked up to see Amos Datton trudging by, taking a shortcut through the backyard. Amos: an old man’s name and the boy himself like a premature middle-aged man. Always a worried look on his face, always carrying one or two library books. Always sly glances at Jane’s boobs. She was self-conscious about her breasts these days and boys staring at them all the time. She was both proud of them—they seemed to have appeared practically overnight—and embarrassed about them. Wanted them and didn’t want them. Wished she could flaunt them the way Karen flaunted hers.

She crossed her arms in front of her chest now as Amos stopped below.

“Sorry about your house,” he said in a croaking voice. “And your sister.”

She nodded, hoping he’d just go away.

“If there’s anything I can do, just let me know,” he said, scuffing the grass with his foot. He didn’t wear sneakers like other kids but laced shoes, middle-aged shoes.

“Who was
that
?” Leslie asked, face wrinkled in disgust as Amos trudged away.

“A kid from the neighborhood,” Jane replied. “He’s kind of weird but nice.” Trying to hide her irritation, wanting to defend Amos, the neighborhood, herself.

“Oh, oh,” Patti said. “Speaking of weird …”

They looked up to see Mickey Looney getting out of his old beat-up truck. Mickey was the neighborhood handyman, performing odd jobs, mowing lawns, shoveling snow, raking leaves, all in season. His old truck wheezed and rattled as it gasped its way through the streets. Short and plump, ageless, he could have been thirty years old or fifty.

“Who is he?” Leslie asked, as if she were at a zoo inquiring about some strange species.

“His name is Mickey Stallings but everybody calls him Mickey Looney,” she said. “Behind his back of course.” Needing to explain: “Because he looks like that old movie star, Mickey Rooney? But, Looney because he is sort of odd.”

She was sorry she had told them about Mickey’s nickname as soon as the words were out of her mouth. In the neighborhood, the nickname Mickey Looney was used affectionately for this gentle man who patted dogs, tousled the hair of small kids, nodded respectfully to the men and tipped his faded baseball cap to the ladies.

“He gives me the creeps,” Leslie said.

“Me too,” Patti agreed.

“He’s very nice,” Jane said, anger stirring inside her. Anger at Patti and Leslie and also at herself. “He’s smart, too. Knows how to fix things, knows all about plants and stuff. My father says he could have been an engineer if he’d gone to college. But he likes fixing things, working for himself …

Patti rolled her eyes. Jane knew that look. It meant: Are you kidding?

“I still think he’s weird,” Patti said.

Jane felt like a traitor. To her house, which she had exposed to Patti and Leslie. To Mickey Looney, who was not really loony at all. She had betrayed Mickey, her house, the entire neighborhood.

Now the silence again as they watched Mickey unloading his garden equipment, silence thick and heavy like an invisible fog enveloping them all. Jane sighed, softly but tremulously, toping that Leslie and Patti did not notice. Loneliness invaded her. Here she was, sitting on the porch banister of her house with her two best friends in the
whole wide world, and she had never felt so alone, so forlorn, in all her life.

Buddy placed the pint bottle on the top of his father’s workbench in the garage and carefully studied the label,
Seagram’s Gin, 80 Proof,
then took the bottle in his hands and caressed it tenderly, as if it contained something precious. Which it did, of course. Actually, he hated the taste of the stuff. Despite its perfumery taste, it burned his throat and spread sourness in his stomach. He much preferred Coke, Classic. But Classic Coke did not do to him what gin did. Even when he mixed the gin with the Coke it did not take away the harsh edges of things, did not blur, did not bring the haziness, did not soothe him with soft stroking, letting him float pleasantly away while just sitting there. Two or three gulps and he would give himself up to sweet lassitude, and the hate and the ache folded their tents like the Arabs and silently stole away.

That’s what was happening now, all the rotten things stealing away—this terrible house that was his home and that other house where the girl had bounced sickeningly down the stairs—replaced by a glow spreading through his limbs, as if his body were a light bulb on low intensity.

He glanced around the garage which his father never used for cars but for storing the paraphernalia of house maintenance—lawn mower, wheelbarrow, shovels and rakes, all kinds of tools spread haphazardly here and there, which made it easy to hide the bottles of booze Buddy sneaked into the place. Neatness was not one of his father’s strong points. He always left a trail of disarray and debris behind him. Kept losing things. Didn’t hang up his clothes. Ironic: in this house, the son was neater than the father. The mother would nag his father to put things away, holding the son up as a model.

Notice the formality here: calling them Mother and Father, not Mom and Dad. No more Hi Mom, Hi Dad, how did things go today? What’s on for dinner? Pork chops? Swell. We all love pork chops. And then telling jokes at the dinner table, like we always do. Dad’s atrocious talking—animal jokes which were funny without being funny. Like the kangaroo who orders Scotch on the rocks at the bar and
…

Christ.

Not only didn’t call them Mom or Dad anymore. Did not call them anything at all. Not even
hey.
Amend that. Called his mother
Mom
sometimes because it slipped out from habit. She still lived here at least. He had a soft spot for her but was angry with her, too. But it wasn’t her fault at all, Addy said. But what did Addy know? Addy Walker, fifteen years old. Little sister but not so little, slightly overweight. Not particularly likable, either. Pain in the ass, in fact. Little Miss Know-It-All. Sometimes he almost hated her, her smarty-pants attitude, high honor roll, smirking as they compared report cards, Buddy barely managing to keep a B average, always in danger of flunking at least one subject, never acing anything. Addy was starring in the sophomore play, a play she had written with her English teacher, for crissakes. While he had even flunked basketball, hairline fracture of his knee ending potential stardom. Stardom? Hell, he had been lucky they let him sit on the bench: too short at five nine in a game that called for giants, too uncoordinated, with a knee that gave way on occasion, sending him unceremoniously to the floor.

Have another drink, Buddy.

He lifted the bottle to his lips, then hesitated. The moment always came when one more swallow was too much, made him cross the border between being pleasantly high and deathly sick and he never knew when that moment would come, which swallow would change things
around. Like at that girl’s house the other night. One minute, beautiful. Next minute, sick on the floor. Vomiting on the rug of a perfect stranger.

He drank anyway but a small, tentative swallow. Testing, testing. Testing the state of his stomach, the state of his life. As he swallowed he heard the back door open and then slam shut. Glancing hazily at his watch, he saw that it was two thirty-three. Addy home from school. Unexpected: she usually stayed late, involved in all kinds of extracurricular stuff. His mother worked at the office till five, never got home till almost six.

Buddy sat still. Gathered himself. Blinked, relaxed. Slipped the bottle of booze under the pile of stuff on the workbench. He rose slowly to his feet, pleased to see that he was only a bit dizzy. He had found out since he had started to drink that he was a superb actor, that he could have stolen the show even in Addy’s stupid play. He was often a bit high, a bit drunk, but nobody noticed. Maybe Addy did. She often regarded him curiously, scrutinizing him as if he were a puzzle she could not solve.

“How much do you drink?” she had asked one night, meeting him in the hallway upstairs.

Her question stunned him for a moment, almost made him lose his cool. Not
do you drink?
But
how much do you drink?

“Not much,” he managed to mutter as he brushed by her.

So, he was always extra careful in her presence, tried to avoid her most of the time, which was hard sometimes because she seemed to be trying to track him down.

It was different with other people, especially teachers. He found that if you were polite, didn’t say very much, chewed peppermints or Life Savers or gum—all of which he actually hated—you could fake your way through any
number of situations. The trick, too, was knowing when not to take that extra swallow: like now. He had stopped at the right moment, Addy arriving home unexpectedly.

The door between the garage and the back hall opened. Addy stuck her head in. Clown face, round, sprinkled with freckles. She would never win a beauty contest.

“What are you doing?” she inquired suspiciously, looking around the garage. “God, you’re acting spooky lately.”

“All of us are,” he replied. The secret: short sentences.

“You’re weirdest of all,” she said. Frowning, she said: “Have you been drinking?” Sniffing the air.

He had failed to pop anything in his mouth, had not anticipated Addy searching him out in the garage. Now, he pressed his lips together, tried to breathe through his nostrils. Made himself busy at the bench, as if he was looking for something.

“Mind your own business,” he said, enunciating each word separately to let her know he really meant for her to mind her own business.

Funny thing: most of the time, they each minded their own business. Days passed when they hardly communicated. The good old days, that is. Not lately, not in these bad new days. These days, Addy tracked him down, popped in the house early from school. Like today, this afternoon.

“I hope you’re not drinking
and
driving,” Addy said. “That would be the most stupid thing in the world.”

“I don’t drink and drive,” Buddy said. Which was true. His license had been issued only seven weeks ago and Buddy had vowed never to drive while liquor flowed through his veins. This took an effort of will because his mother kept offering him the use of the car. Guilt, on her part, probably, trying to compensate for the dismal thing
their lives had become. Buddy was not very proud of himself these days but he was proud about keeping his vow even though the car, sitting day after day in the driveway, was a constant temptation.

Addy studied him closely now, eyes narrowed in appraisal. “I have a feeling you’re drunk right this minute,” she said.

“I’m not drunk,” he declared, bringing himself to his full height, which wasn’t much, really.

She looked at him for a terrible moment, her dark eyes flashing darker than ever, and then turned away, slamming the door behind her as she dashed out of the place.

Buddy grimaced, realized he’d been holding his breath. He let the breath out. That terrible look in her eyes. They had always shot dynamite glances at each other when they weren’t being completely indifferent, Addy dismayed at his lackadaisical ways, his lack of ambition, the way he bumped into things. He could not abide her schedules, her snap-crackle-and-pop way of doing things, always on time, on the ball. He was far from stupid but Addy made him look stupid, feel stupid.