Falling in Place (17 page)

“My one grandmother doesn’t send me money because she’s dead,” Parker said. “The one that’s alive sends me stuff, but not money.”

“When did she die?”

“Last summer. Swimming in the Adirondacks. She had a stroke or something.”

“I never thought about a grandmother swimming,” John Joel said.

“What’s yours do?”

“She doesn’t do anything. She takes my brother and the dog to the park sometimes, I think. She reads books.”

“My grandmother had the Kinsey Report on her bookshelf in the kitchen with her cookbooks. It was boring. Just a lot of crap.”

“What’d she keep it there for?”

“Adults don’t think they have to hide anything,” Parker said. “No. I take it back. My father hides things. But nothing as stupid as the Kinsey Report.”

“What does he hide?”

“He’s got pictures hidden. He’s got a dirty deck of cards. I opened what I thought was his fishing box, and it was full of stuff like that. Maybe it isn’t even his. When my grandmother died and my grandfather went into a nursing home he hauled home all kinds of crap. I don’t even think the stuff is his, come to think of it.”

“What did you think when you found it?”

“You sound like my shrink,” Parker said. “Would I have to beg for a milkshake?”

“They’re a dollar ten.”

“Will it do me any good to beg for a milkshake?” Parker had torn two matches out of the book. He pushed them toward each other, head to head.

“Okay. Tell the guy we want two.”

“Garçon,”
Parker said to Sal. “Two chocolate milkshakes, please.”

“I was in Paris in World War II,” Sal said. “Give me a sentence in French and I can answer you. Go ahead.”

“I don’t know French.”

“You sounded like you did there, for a minute. What kind of milkshakes?”

“Chocolate,” John Joel said.

“Chocolate malt,” Parker said.

“My brother was in the Philippines,” the counterman said. “Used to get the monkeys drunk as skunks. Leave beer in the cans. Monkeys would swing around, loaded, fall out of the trees. Monkeys were certifiable alcoholics. He brought one home with him, smuggled it in. Drank with him at night. Staggered around the house. There was a lost soul. My brother, I mean. There’s somebody who never figured out what he was going to do and never did it. Spent years drinking with a monkey.”

“Here we go,” Robby said. “Sal: responsible hero of the family.”

Sal put two metal containers under the machine and turned it on. Water ran down the sides of the containers. Parker took out his bandanna and wiped his forehead.

Robby was still standing in front of the grill with his hand over his heart.

“I should disco and get drunk with monkeys. Sure,” Sal said.

“Their milkshakes are ready,” Robby said, pointing.

Sal put two glasses on the countertop—the kind of glasses Coke used to be served in. He poured each glass half full and set the containers on the counter.

“I never spent so much time talking to kids in ten years,” Sal said. “How did we get talking?”

“We’re fat and jolly. People can’t resist us,” Parker said.

“That’s the truth. You won’t dare weigh too much when you’re chasing the ladies, though. Listen to me: I sound like somebody’s father. If I’m somebody’s father, I don’t know about it.”

“You’re somebody’s father, I’ll fry a leg on this griddle,” Robby said. “I’d like to see what you do besides work.”

“All this because I wouldn’t close up shop for August. You’d think this was the French Riviera. That he’d do anything worthwhile if I closed for August.”

“My sister’s got a condo in Ocean City. How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Yeah. And a pool that fell through the ground. A swimming pool brought down by carpenter ants.”

“There’s the ocean, you know, Sal.”

“Yeah. I can see it. Full of seaweed. Stay here where the fan’s going.”

“I might quit,” Robby said.

“You’re not going to quit,” Sal said.

Parker tapped his cigarette on the counter. He knew that Sal was watching him, that he was making Sal nervous. Earlier in the day he had tapped the cigarette on his psychiatrist’s table. In front of the sofa the patients sat on, the psychiatrist had a table with magazines on it, as though the patients might tire of talking and just stop and flip through a magazine. As though they were waiting to see the doctor instead of being in the room with him. Some of the old
Life
magazines Parker thought might be collectors’ items, but he didn’t want to get into that with the shrink. He would rather have spent the hour eating. He had no interest in talking to the shrink about why he wasn’t doing anything all summer.

“Let’s get going,” John Joel said. “Let’s go to the museum and get it over with.”

“Leave me a big tip,” Sal said. “He quits on me, I’m going to need cheering up. He goes off to Atlantic City, I’m all alone here. Just me and his grill.”

“Ocean City,” Robby said.

“Probably you’re going to march in the beauty parade. Leave here and put on your Easter bonnet, march in the beauty parade.”

“You’re all screwed up,” Robby said. “Don’t tip him but five percent.”

John Joel left a fifteen-percent tip because he knew he’d go back to the hamburger shop. He looked at his watch and saw that they didn’t have much time. Nothing was worse than being caught in New York late on Friday and having to ride the commuter train home. The few times that he had done that with his father, his father had always stood in the bar car instead of sitting down, standing and being shaken around, saying that he knew he couldn’t really get out, but standing gave him the illusion of escape. When
the voice came over the p.a. system and began announcing where the train was headed, the message always started: “Make sure you’re right.” John Joel’s father always sighed and bent his head back when he heard that, and then shook his head as the announcement went on: Stamford, Noroton Heights, Darien… 

On the street, they passed a man in jeans, smoking a cigar, standing and staring in a bookstore window. Parker coughed and fanned the air. They went into the Whitney without discussing it again. Parker gave his package to the man behind the desk, and they went to the booth and John Joel bought two tickets. Then they walked into the museum and had to turn back for their stubs—John Joel had almost forgotten that Parker’s mother would reimburse him if she saw the stubs. He put them in his pocket, and they waited for the elevators to come.

“Walk,” Parker said.

“Are you kidding? It’s too hot.”

“It’s air conditioned.”

“Are you kidding?” John Joel said.

Eventually the elevator came and the door opened and they got on. It was a huge elevator, like somebody’s room, without furniture. John Joel thought that there should be at least a pole light in one corner, a pillow or two on the floor.

“Walk,” John Joel snorted.

They got off at the third floor and started looking around. John Joel could tell that Parker was really interested in the show when he went to look at a group of people who weren’t even naked. Parker stood and stared so long that John Joel wandered off and read what was written about the scene Parker was looking at on the wall:

He stood beside Parker and looked. The most interesting figure was the one that was all blue. By a process of elimination—because he was sure that that was Antony and Cleopatra sprawled on the floor, and because he could recognize Catwoman and Superman and Pussy Galore—the one he liked had to be Bottom.

“Come on,” he finally said to Parker.

“How much does he get paid for doing this?” Parker said.

“He’s a famous artist, so he’s got to be rich. I don’t know.”

They looked at other pieces of sculpture: a woman on a subway car, with something rigged up so that the lights of another subway car seemed to be passing the window. A person behind a counter. Someone seen through a window, watching television. Then they got to the good stuff: a man and a woman sprawled on a brass bed, with an old mattress beneath them, the man’s penis half erect, the sheets a mess. Parker stared. He crossed the gallery and looked at the other bed scene, a blue woman sitting on the side of the bed and a man asleep. The beds both looked very uncomfortable. The lighting was odd. He stared for a while longer, then looked for John Joel.

John Joel was looking at the sculpture that Nick had stared at for so long the week before. There was a girl emerging through tile—tile like the tile that was in their shower at home, but she was breaking through it, her left breast showing, her left leg and pubic hair, some monster of the shower, with eyes that you couldn’t really look into because they were looking down, just indentations, or because of the way the light was. To the side of the woman breaking through the tiles were four other women, or rather fragments of women’s bodies. John Joel was thinking about Mary, and how much he would like to be able to push her from behind so that she would go through a wall like Superman, though hopefully with more pain. The woman breaking through the tile didn’t look upset, though. John Joel couldn’t imagine why she was doing what she was doing, and thought maybe she couldn’t, either.

“Nick says the guy who does these stands around his friends’ bedrooms and when they’re asleep, he does this.” John, Joel was pointing to the figures on the bed, and Parker, beside him, was staring at them.

“Creepy,” Parker said.

“I bet he gets a hundred thousand for that,” John Joel said.

“What does he do? He puts plaster on his friends, like Gold-finger, or something?”

“I don’t know. Nick said he watched them.”

“Who’d go to sleep with somebody watching them? And if he’s such a rich artist, how come he knows people who’ve got such
lousy mattresses? They look like rafts with the air going out of them. You know the way a raft curls up before it flattens out?”

“You’re the one who wanted to come.”

“Hey. You mentioned it. I didn’t even know there was a show.”

“You wanted to come, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t say the stuff was bad. I just said the guy who did it must be a weirdo.”

“You want to look at other stuff?”

“Nah. What about an éclair?”

“There’s food downstairs, but I don’t think they have stuff like éclairs.”

“Let’s get the train. My feet are starting to hurt. Too bad I didn’t see this thing this morning. It might have given me something to talk to my shrink about. I could have said it was something I was doing this summer. The shrink always wants me to do things. Shrink sits around behind his desk all day, and I should be out running around so I can report on it.”

“What do you go to a shrink for, anyway?”

“Same reason you’re getting braces. My parents made me.”

“What did they make you for?”

“Because they’ve all gone to shrinks. Who knows.”

“Maybe you’re really sick, Parker.”

“Sure. Look at me. I’m sick. I’m hot and hungry, that’s all.”

“I’ve only got ten bucks left.”

“Ten bucks? I thought you had twenty.”

“No. Ten.”

“For the train and everything?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ve still got enough for éclairs,” Parker said.

They took the elevator downstairs and went to the counter and got the package. “Ugly bug,” Parker said, in falsetto, when he took the package, pretending to be staring at the picture of the woman inside through the wrapping. “Ugly, ugly, ugly,” he chanted in a high squeak.

They walked up to Park Avenue and got a cab. Parker sat on the jump seat and smoked a cigarette, facing John Joel. “I wonder if it’s worth anything. Some of those old pictures are. We could sell it and I’d say I lost it. She’s always yelling about something.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Sure. What am I supposed to do, take this thing home and have to look at it?”

“You don’t know where to sell a picture.” Parker thought it over. He didn’t.

“I wish I had money,” Parker said. “How can I get some money?”

“What do you want it for?”

“I just want it.”

“You don’t have any relatives?”

“I’ve got an uncle in Maine who’s an alcoholic. He floats those little bottles of vanilla extract in the toilet tank. He’s real crazy. He and his wife are poor. They’re not going to give me any money.”

“That’s the only relative you’ve got?”

“A cousin I never see in Greenwich.”

“You don’t even have other kids in your family. You’re lucky.”

“If I had them, I’d get rid of them.”

“Sure. Drown them like the kittens.”

“My mother stopped me. I would have drowned them.”

“You wouldn’t have. You were just waiting for her to stop you.”

“Old alley cat. Wasn’t even ours.”

“You liked them,” John Joel said. “Did I tell you about how our dog got hit by a car? It was sort of my mother’s dog. It ran out into the street and
smoosh!
It was all over the road. She talks about it all the time. ‘My dog, my dog, my dog.’ ”

“I can see liking a dog. Not an old alley cat.”

“So why’d you try to kill all the kittens?”

“My mother wanted me to. Then she changed her mind.”

“She changed her mind because she was just joking, and you freaked her out.”

“Lay off,” Parker said. “I’m not a sissy like you. I’ll do things. You think I’m the only person that ever thought to get rid of kittens?”

“I’m not a sissy,” John Joel said.

“Oh yeah? You let your sister do anything she wants to you.”

“Come off it.”

“You do.” Parker threw the package onto the seat of the cab. “Tear it up.”

“For what? What would that prove?”

“That you’d do something. Go ahead and do it. Or did you think she was pretty?”

“Yeah. She was real pretty. She was your type, Parker.”

“So get rid of her,” Parker said.

“Yeah. Then you’ll tell your mother I ripped it up.”

“I’m not taking it home. Are you going to rip it, or am I?”

“Lexington Avenue okay?” the cab driver said.

“Okay,” John Joel said.

“Go ahead,” Parker said.