Preston Falls : a novel (28 page)

Back in the dark, gassy-smelling kitchen, she pulls the string and on comes the fluorescent ring Willis was always planning to replace, except Renovator's never had quite the right fixture. She drops the bottle into a Grand Union paper bag they use for recycling. Then she goes into the pantry for the electric space heater and sets it on one of the wobbly oak pressback chairs, plugs it in and turns the knob; it gives a rattle and a buzz and starts turning orange inside. Wasteful compared to the wood-stove, but she's only going to be here half an hour or so, just long enough

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to rest up for the drive back. Besides, the woodstove takes forever to warm things up, though she has to admit it is lovely once wood heat takes hold.

She shuts the door to the dining room so it'll be warmer in here, and fills a saucepan with water enough for a cup of tea. The gas flame looks weak—maybe it's running out, which might explain the smell— but it should be able to boil this much water, no? She looks through the CDs, though she should really just drink her tea and go. Nothing much to tempt her anyway. A bunch of that truly offensive rap music Willis belatedly discovered a couple of years ago: bitches and pussies and guns. Neil Young, the big-browed burnout. The Rolling Stones, of course, with the sainted Keith Richards that every man secretly wants to go to bed with. Various bands she's vaguely heard of, which basically break down into your dark unshaven ones and your blond pouty ones—not that they aren't cute, but for a presumably straight man it's like what's the deal? And of course Bob Dylan, prince of woman-haters. Just a mean little insecure boy, and all his women either ballbusters or cock-teasers or oh-so-incomprehensibly mysterious gypsy queens. Don't get her started on Bob Dylan. She flips the switch on the boombox to FM and gets violin music, though it's stupid to allow this to make you feel less alone.

Now it's completely dark outside. She checks and sees little bubbles forming in the bottom of the saucepan; in the cupboard she finds a box of Earl Grey with the cellophane still on it. Willis is strictly a coffee man: that is, a man. Not much else here. Box of Cheerios, two small cans of water-packed tuna, can of Chicken & Stars Soup, package of dried black beans that Willis would never in a million years take the trouble to fix. About an inch of Dewar's. She puts the beans on the table to take back to Chesterton, sticks a tea bag in the JOE mug and pours in just enough Dewar's to make it float. Then she holds it down with a spoon and pours in the hot water. Is this stupid, with that drive ahead? She lifts the tea bag out on the spoon and winds the string around it to squeeze out the good strong stuff. Her stomach growls. She pictures opening the can of Chicken & Stars and the yellow fat floating. Instead she reaches into the box for a fistful of dry Cheerios. She sits down facing the heater, both hands around the hot cup. Earl Grey spiked with Dewar's and classical music playing: this could pass for one of those precious woman moments, nurturing and strengthening yourself before you have to go back

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and deal some more. She has the mutinous thought that it can all just go to hell.

To atone for this, she calls home again.

The machine picks up, with the message she made Willis record so it would sound like there was a man in the house. "This is five five five, one five three six," he says. "You know what to do."

"Not really," she says. Then it beeps and she says, "Carol? Hmm, okay. Listen, I'm suddenly just totally exhausted"—this comes out of her mouth and suddenly she is just totally exhausted—"so I don't know if I should—"

"Jean?" Carol breaks in, and the phone starts squealing. "Wait— here, let me turn this thing off." Suddenly the connection is absolutely clear of noise. "Hi. Sorry. So you're going to stay over?"

"I don't know. The thought of that drive, you know? Maybe if I went to sleep now and got up really early—but that would mean you having to get the kids off to school."

"Like I've never gotten a kid off to school before."

"Oh, I know, but I hate to dump everything on you. And especially a Monday. You know what a pain they can be."

''These kids?" she says. ''Ho problem "

"Let me talk to Mel for a sec. Carol, you're sure this is okay?"

"Absolutely. Mel's right here. Mel, your mom wants to talk to you."

"Hi," Mel says. "Is Daddy there?"

"No, I guess I missed him." Think fast. "He said something about he might go over to see Nonnie before he came back home. So I expect that's where he is."

"So why can't you call him there?" says Mel.

"I did try calling there," Jean says. Digging herself in deeper. "They're probably out to dinner or something. I thought I'd try again a little later."

"When did Daddy say that?" says Mel.

"Say what, hon?"

"Say he was going to Nonnie's.''

"1 don't know—the last time we spoke?" Hard to imagine a worse way of handling this, but it seems to be the way she's handling it. Soon she's got to sit Mel and Roger down and tell them she doesn't know what to tell them.

Mel says nothing. Obviously not buying it but stumped for what to

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ask next. Now Jean will have to coach Carol in case Mel tries to get something out of her. She'll also have to try to reach Sylvia immediately, and somehow not scare the hell out of her in the process. Then again, maybe he is at his mother's.

"Listen, dear. I'm going to spend the night here and come down in the morning, and Aunt Carol's going to take care of you. So will you do me a favor and help out as much as you possibly can, especially in the morning? You know how slow Roger can be." Another of Jean's cheap little masterstrokes of motherhood; Roger's no worse than Mel.

"I guess so," Mel says.

"So I'll see you tomorrow, sweetie. I should be home in plenty of time for trick-or-treating."

"Mother, that doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters," says Jean. "Listen, is Roger there?"

"Yeah, he's here."

"Would you put him on, please? I love you."

"Love you too. Roger, Mom wants you."

"I know who it is," Jean hears him say. "I'm not stupid.'' The phone clunks down. Then Roger says, "What?"

"Hi, handsome," says Jean. Her new strategy is not to let him dictate the tone. "I was just telling Mel and Aunt Carol, I decided to stay over and come down in the morning. So I want you and Mel to be really good. Like, I want you to go right to bed when it's bedtime. And make sure you let Mel have enough time in the bathroom in the morning. Okay?" ,

"How come she can't use the downstairs?"

"Because Aunt Carol uses the downstairs," she says. "You know that."

"Yeah, but she gets it all to herself.''

"Enough," says Jean. If he says No fair, she's going to scream.

Roger says nothing. Jean decides to pretend this means he's knuckled under. "So Aunt Carol said you guys might rent a video?" she says.

"Yeah, we did, but it was stupid."

"What did you get?"

''Home Alone Two. I already saw it ten times. It sucks."

She's given up on sucks, though she still calls him on sucks the big one. "Well, maybe Aunt Carol would read more Lord of the Rings with you. In fact I know she would if you asked her nicely." It's the one thing he'll allow to be read to him anymore; Jean figures it's because of the

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sword-and-sorcery aspect. Which is in itself worrisome: next step is heavy metal—which he's already into anyway—then on to satanism. But at least it's a book. By an Englishman.

"She doesn't read it right," Roger says.

"That's very rude, Roger. And I hope Aunt Carol didn't hear you say that. It would hurt her feelings."

Silence.

"Is she right there? Did she hear what you said?"

"No," he says. Probably a lie.

"Still," says Jean. "Next time, think before you speak. And listen, don't forget—right to bed when Aunt Carol tells you. Sleep tight, and rU see you tomorrow. Hugs and kisses. Would you put Aunt Carol back on, please? Love you."

Silence.

"Hi," said Carol. "We're doing fine."

"He can be such a trial," says Jean.

"Honey, you're forgetting Dexter.'' Carol's son was hyperactive until he was ten, when she finally gave up her nothing-inorganic trip and put him on Ritalin; he's now at the University of Washington.

"Well, anyway, thank you. One more time. You know, I just feel like we've prevented you from having a life while you've been here."

"Don't be silly," says Carol. "As long as I've got strong fingers and my Alan Jackson tape with him on the motorcycle, I'm a fulfilled woman."

"They didn't hear that, right?"

"Look, I better let you go, so you can get some sleep."

"Yeah, I guess I should—oh crap, I almost forgot. I told Mel that Willis might be at his mother's."

"Right," says Carol. "Um. Do we have any reason to think that's the case?

"No. But I had to tell her something.''

"I see," says Carol. "Ah, any instructions?"

"Not really. God, I wish I'd kept my big mouth shut. I mean, if Mel wants to call there you obviously can't say no. But if you could just stall her for even like a minute after we hang up, I'm going to call Sylvia right now and forewarn her."

"That would be good."

"Except what do I say to her} Like, Don't have a heart attack but your son's missing?"

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"That would get your point across," says Carol.

"Crap," Jean says. "Okay, I'll call you later."

Sylvia's phone rings five times before a machine picks up. Willis? Oh, right: he once said he was going to record a thing for his mother too. "Please leave us a message after you hear the beep." So it's not true that Willis never follows through. She notes, however, that his own family didn't rate an us.

After the beep she says, "Hello, Syl. And Willis, if you're there. It's Jean. Ah, Sunday night? Syl, I was just wondering if you'd heard from Doug, because I was under the impression that he might possibly be stopping by your place before he comes back down to Chesterton, Anyhow, if that's the case, could you have him give me a call? I'm in, ah, Preston Falls right now, it's Sunday night—I guess I said that—and I'm heading back down Monday morning. Anyway, I hope you're well. Talk to you soon."

Was she casual enough? Upbeat enough? The woman is seventy-one years old, for God's sake. Not that seventy-one is old anymore, but even so. After a while she notices that music's still playing, and turns the boombox off. What relief, this silence. She takes another sip of the tea and Dewar's, then gets the bottle and pours in just a hair more. Whatever she told herself she was accomplishing by coming here, what she's really doing is taking a night off.

She gets up to go to the bathroom, opens the door, turns on the light—and there's a huge gaping hole in the floor. All the boards are gone between the sink and the bathtub, and cold dank air is coming up. One more project he started and didn't finish. It feels creepy, sitting there peeing, as if there's nothing under her.

The bedroom's cold and the sheets are filthy She drags an oil-filled electric radiator out of the closet and plugs it in on Willis's side of the bed, where the outlet is. Now, are there any clean sheets? Well, there's that garish flowered set of her mother's. She strips the bed and puts the dirty sheets and pillowcases in the hamper. Along with his dirty clothes from the floor.

While the bedroom's warming up, she goes back into his study and plays girl detective. She opens a little plastic Tandy box and finds unlabeled diskettes, still with plastic over them, and one with a label marked BACKUP. She clicks the mouse to see what documents are on his C drive:

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SALEBILL, MEMOS, SHITBULL, MEM07, SPORTY, 27734, MENSONG, LIED-JOUR, MEM06, 2MARTY, BULLSHIT, TWADDLE, SPINDOC. She opens MENSONG, which turns out to have nothing to do with music; it's a press release about some blind taste test of Sportif against Gatorade. She closes MENSONG, reaches up to bat away a spiderweb hanging from the ceiling, then changes her mind. This is hopeless. She shuts the computer down and goes back into the bedroom, where it already feels warmer. She starts opening drawers, but turns up only clothes. In the closet she finds his Air Jordans and his cowboy boots. Therefore: last seen wearing Timberlands.

She goes downstairs to find something to read. In the front hall she picks up book after book; what are these things? Willis is forever snapping them up at tag sales and junk shops and then reading nothing but the same obsessive stuff he's already read a hundred times. Look at all this. Fear Strikes Out, by Jimmy Piersall with Al Hirshberg—some baseball player, apparently. Five Acres and Independence, by M. G. Kains, which figures. A worn-out edition of Pilgrim's Progress with this crude picture on the cover of a man in helmet and armor and another with long hair and a red tunic, hands clasped in prayer as waves rise around them. Not your world's greatest illo, but the lettering's nifty: tall, sort of shaky-looking, all caps—they did upper case simply by making the same letters taller—obviously hand done by somebody just making it up as they went. Still, it's nicely consistent from letter to letter, and it might be fun to have on hand. You'd have to extrapolate the rest of the alphabet, but it looks doable. You've got all the vowels—thank God for that U in Bunyan—and the R would give you the D, the E, the F . . . definitely doable. Right, and she's the only hack graphic designer in New York who ever fantasized about doing a children's book someday.

So he was having some kind of religious crisis? Is that what she's to gather? Pilgrim's Progress, for God's sake. Reverting to some ancestral Puritan caca? The Willises themselves hadn't come over on the Mayflower, but somebody had, back on his father's mother's side or something. Willis always talked about it— talks about it—with such contempt, at the same time making good and sure you know. Well, probably he was just showing off by reading something old and unreadable, though God knows who he was showing off to. Even when he's absolutely by himself he's still doing his Mr. Everything number: out with his chainsaw, or "sweating joints" or putting up sheetrock, which he now seems to call "drywall," and at night reading Pilgrim's Progress.