Falling (7 page)

Roger lets me stay here all summer if I want, said Elvis. He says I can be in charge of things. I have a bathroom too. I’ve got a shower curtain with a picture of Elvis Presley on it. And I’ve got this Winchester 30.30. It was my mother’s, but Roger said I could take care of it because my mother went to California. She took his motorcycle. He misses it because it was a vintage Harley-Davidson and you can’t buy them cheap. He misses that Harley-Davidson, even if he can’t ride it. But I have the Winchester 30.30. My mother went to California. She went all the way to the Baja Peninsula in Mexico, which is about as far away as you can get, Roger said. Now she lives in San Diego.

Elvis went around a bookshelf and Damian followed, watching as Elvis knelt down and shoved the gun under a futon on a frame. The duvet was covered with yellow happy faces, and imprinted on the pillow was Shania Twain, smiling broadly.

That Winchester Trapper Carbine, it can shoot two thousand feet per second, Elvis said, getting up.
Bouuff
. Like that. Bruce said he saw pictures of a bullet going through a pineapple. He said it looked like a head being blown apart. Bits going every which way.

Elvis stood with his head cocked thoughtfully to one side.

Who’s Bruce? asked Damian.

He’s at the workshop.

That’s where you work?

Bruce says he gets paid the big bucks so he can call himself the Big Cheese.

That must make you the mouse.

The mouse, laughed Elvis. The
mouse
.

He laughed until he grasped his crotch. I have to go, he said.

That’s okay – you go.

Elvis vanished into the bathroom, closed the door and locked it. When he came out, he stood looking at Damian, who had flopped down on the bed.

I don’t want to go to a nursing home with Roger, said Elvis.

I don’t think he really meant –

You never come out. I don’t want to go there.

You could come out.

You go in a nursing home and you never come out. That’s what happened to Bruce’s grandmother. She went in
a nursing home and she never came out. She died in her bed, Bruce told me. Right in her bed.

Lisa shouldn’t have been in a coffin that looked like a bed, thought Damian. The casket that his parents had rented for the visitation and funeral service was made of poplar, and it opened like a Dutch door so they could only see the upper half of her body. The casket had a honey-coloured sheen. It had a crepe interior and a large white pillow, edged with lace. It didn’t matter that they were not putting it in the ground, it still cost a fortune, not to mention the cost of the urns that would hold ashes after the cremation, and a keepsake box.

People could kneel by the casket, if they wished, and offer up a prayer. Or they could stand in silence, thinking about how tragic it was –

How are you doing? Ingrid murmured to Damian.

All right.

The open casket bothered him; he couldn’t look at it.

The first group of people was clustered tentatively around the guest book at the threshold. Ingrid drew herself up. So did Greg. Damian, between them, tried to do the same. He knew his mother wanted them to do everything well for Lisa’s sake.

Ingrid put her hand gently against Damian’s back.

Then it began. Here was Mrs. Sullivan, who had arranged for Lisa’s summer job as a cashier at the grocery store. And girls from high school: Breanna, and someone whose name Damian forgot, though it ended with “issy” or “esca.” Fresca, thought Damian, but that wasn’t right. She’d had a crush on him, and he’d always tried to avoid her. Both girls had tears streaming down their faces and it had
smudged their eyeliner. Some women hugged him, but the men just pressed his hand, which was usually better than being hugged by people he didn’t know.

Thank you for coming, said his mother or his father.

Damian was mostly silent.

His mother murmured to Greg that her own brother wasn’t there. Her own brother.

Then Trevor, dressed in a dark suit that was a little too big for him, so that the cuffs of the jacket came too far down his wrists. His tie was knotted neatly, but it was striped garishly in red, blue, and green.

I’m Trevor, he said, speaking to Ingrid. I’m – he paused, swallowing.

Trevor, Ingrid murmured, to give him time. Thank you for coming.

I’m – I was a friend of Lisa’s. I have something for you. I’ll – maybe I’ll come back later and –

Thank you for coming, Trevor, said Greg, taking over from Ingrid and passing Trevor along to Damian.

There were tears in Trevor’s eyes, but he wasn’t crying.

God, Damian, he said.

Yeah. Damian hated Trevor, hated him standing there.

I’m sorry, said Trevor.

Damian studied his shoes, polished by his father that morning, and when he looked up there was an old woman with a walker standing in Trevor’s place.

Oh, she said faintly and gripped Damian’s hand in her claw.

And then it was over; it had gone on for two hours. His feet were tired. Greg had gone to speak to the bird-thin funeral director in the hall.

Damian stood with his mother, gazing at the young
woman who was not Lisa, but a wax copy of Lisa, lying before them in her dark green dress with sprigs of cherries printed on it. It was true that everything had been done to make her look perfect. She was wearing coral-coloured lipstick and there was a rosy blush to her cheeks, though she’d never bothered with makeup. It wasn’t Lisa. Lisa was long gone.

Look at this, said Elvis. Roger says this is his pride and joy.

Queen of the Mist
, read the black letters on the barrel lid. And in smaller, stamped letters:
Property of Annie Edson Taylor
. Elvis took out the large cork in the lid, inspected it, poked the cork back down snugly in its hole, and took the lid off the barrel. Inside was a mattress, stained and yellowed with age. Elvis put his head in the barrel.

Oooooo
, he called into it. Then he climbed inside.

What are you doing? cried Damian.

Now Elvis was stuck, with his chest and head inside, legs outside. Pride and joy, he shouted, and the words reverberated.

Pride and joy
.

He kicked his legs, and the barrel fell over with a crash.

Elvis, are you okay? Damian dragged him out of the barrel. Are you okay?

Yes.

You’re sure?

My head isn’t okay, but the rest of me is okay, said Elvis. Do you have brain damage?

Not that I know of, said Damian, supporting Elvis as he got up. But I could have had some brain damage if you’d shot me.

Brain damage, Elvis laughed. You’re right about that. You’re right about that.

There was a fine, powdery dust on his hair and eyebrows. He was laughing, and he put his large, pale hands over his mouth. When he looked sideways at Damian, his eyes were wide.

Let’s go to the casino, he said when he could breathe again.

No, I don’t think so.

I want to.

No, Elvis.

He opened his mouth so Damian could see his tongue and throat, dark red. A strangled cry came out. He looked so strange with his mouth open, his molars showing, his face all twisted up in agony. Then he fled, vanishing out the door and into the night.

Elvis!

Damian stood for a moment at the doorway of the carriage house and then stepped out on the back lawn, not knowing which way Elvis had gone. If anything happened, it was Damian’s doing. He shut the door and went across the lawn to the big house. He opened the kitchen door quietly, but Elvis wasn’t in the kitchen and he wasn’t in the hall. Damian could hear the low voices of his mother and Roger through the screened door as they sat on the porch, but he wasn’t about to tell them that Elvis had run away. He hesitated. The ghostly coil of the snake’s skeleton turned gently as it hung from the light fixture. Moonlight came through the window halfway up the stairs, slanting down the steps and across his sandalled feet, turning them into softly tinted fish.
Damian walked through the foyer of the funeral parlour, made to look like someone’s home, past the photos of Lisa on the gilt-framed bulletin board on an easel: the photo of Lisa with her paddle raised in the air as she sat in her kayak; the photo of Lisa waving, with her best friend Alicia, just before the school trip to Atlanta; the photo of Lisa with Damian; the photo of Lisa at Christmas in front of the tree, with her hair in braids; the photo of Lisa as a little girl, wearing a yellow-and-white-striped dress that she held out on either side as if she were going to curtsy; the photo of Lisa as a baby in Ingrid’s arms.

He returned to the viewing salon for Lisa Felicity MacKenzie, where a few people were still gathered in a corner, whispering respectfully. His mother was sitting in front of Lisa’s casket; she had taken off her high heels and closed her eyes. Damian was about to turn away when Trevor approached and said something quietly to her. She opened her eyes and made an effort to greet him.

Hello, she said. You are –?

Trevor.

Oh yes, Trevor. I remember now. You went to a dance with Lisa.

I have something for her – for Lisa, he said, uncrumpling a piece of paper. I wrote it. Would you mind if I read it?

Damian could see he was going to read it to her whether she wanted him to or not.

It’s something you’ve written? she asked.

Yes. It’s a poem.

Lisa would have liked that.

Trevor looked at Ingrid bashfully. I don’t know if it’s all that good.

Don’t worry, said Ingrid.

For one ridiculous moment, Damian felt the urge to laugh.

Trevor composed himself. For Lisa.

Why don’t you sit down? said Ingrid.

All right. He sat beside her. For Lisa, he began again. Lisa, you were my heaven and earth, though you were here just ten years and seven –

The paper trembled in his hands.

It was too short a time, he went on. Sun and moon can’t – Sun and moon can’t rhyme, now you’re gone.

That’s it, he said. That’s my poem.

Ingrid put a hand on his sleeve. Damian could see that she wanted Trevor to be quiet, but he took it for encouragement.

I’m really going to miss her, he said.

Ingrid put her hand quickly to her mouth and got up from her chair. She went to kneel next to the casket. It wasn’t her custom to kneel, or even to pray, Damian thought, but now she clutched the edge of the casket with both hands.

Trevor hovered nearby, folding the paper and slipping it into the casket.

I need to be alone with her now, Ingrid said, her voice quietly firm.

Thank you for listening to it.

It was – courageous of you, she told him.

Trevor brushed his hand over his eyes. He left the room and walked through the foyer without seeing Damian.

There were two beefy security guards at the entrance to the casino when Damian got there. One was chewing gum. He
blew it out of his mouth in a transparent pinkish bubble, smacked it so the bubble collapsed, and drew it back into his mouth.

She really gets off on it when I do that, the other man was saying. You wouldn’t think a feather would do it, but it does.

Damian asked if they’d seen Elvis.

Nope.

In the lobby, the lights were duplicated in mirrors, fractured and reflected, making them seem larger. A wide stream of water ran down a glass wall and cascaded into an illuminated pool fringed with palms. When Damian reached the top of the escalator and stepped off, he felt the luxuriously soft carpet under his sandals. A woman spun around on her stool with one leg in the air, so her shoe dropped from her foot, and Damian noticed that each of her toenails was painted a different colour.

My Lord, Mike, she said to the man next to her. I’m
all
jazzed up.

She picked up a little bucket and fed the machine some quarters. Damian heard the clinking sounds as the coins went into it.

Sir, said a girl. Her waistcoat had a satiny sheen. Her shiny mouth transfixed him, as if it were perfectly glued on. Sir, can I help you?

Did you see a man – a large man wearing pyjamas?

No, she said blankly. No one like that.

Damian looked around wildly at the people by the slot machines. A woman was laughing. A man was swinging his wife’s purse just out of her reach, grinning as he did so. There was someone with slicked hair and a wide smile on his face as he bent to fill up his container with coins.

Damian went down the wide marble staircase into the lobby, past the potted plants and security guards, out into the summer night. When he looked up at the moon, it seemed smaller and more transparent than it had been before, as if it had been cut from gauze. There was a smell of diesel in the air, and a girl calling for someone named Justin.

Justin, where the fuck are you?
Justin?

Through the sidelight by the funeral home’s front door, Damian could see Trevor sitting in his truck in the parking lot, sobbing. The sight of him weeping like that – his head down, shoulders shaking – made Damian furious, so his throat burned. He went outside. As he walked toward the truck, Trevor raised his head. The window was half open, and Damian could see how pale he was. Damian didn’t reach for the door handle; he banged the hood instead. He banged it over and over, spoiling for a fight.

What are you doing? yelled Trevor.

Get out of the truck, cried Damian.

Why?

You know why. You know what you did to Lisa.

Damian –

Christ, said Damian. Get out of the truck.

I don’t know what you think, Damian. Trevor didn’t move from the driver’s seat. I swear to God it wasn’t what you think.

Get the fuck out of there.

Trevor got out and closed the door. He loosened his tie, which looked like something a clown might wear. He took it off, balled it up, and put it in his pocket. He took off his
jacket too and tossed it in the half-opened window. His shirt was very white in the twilight.

I loved her, Damian.

No, you took advantage of her.

I did not. I would have done anything for her.

She told me that the two of you – anyway, she was too young. I told her she was too young.