Things Go Flying (12 page)

“Oh.” Mrs. Kushner looked doubtful. But she didn't go home, so Harold took her coat and she proceeded in her peculiar, impeded gait, sat down on the living room couch, and looked up at them as if from under an overhang.

Audrey went off to get the tea. Harold stood there awkwardly for a minute and then fled to the kitchen to help Audrey.

“What the hell does she want?” he whispered.

“I have no idea,” Audrey whispered back. “Maybe she's lonely.”

Dylan surfaced to see who was there, then retreated back downstairs to the basement.

Audrey and Harold returned to the living room and Audrey set the tray down on the coffee table.

“This is probably none of my business,” Mrs. Kushner began. Audrey poured the tea, spilling some. Harold sat in his chair across from the couch, one eye on the old bird, and one eye on the deck of cards he'd put back on the dining room table beyond.

“What?” Audrey said.

“I know,” Mrs. Kushner said apologetically, “that there are challenges facing parents today that didn't exist when I was raising my five sons—”

Here we go, thought Harold, she was probably in the temperance movement as a girl.

They waited for her to continue, but she seemed reluctant to go on.

“What?” Audrey repeated.

“—Well, I saw your oldest boy climb out the window and go down the street a little while ago,” Mrs. Kushner said.

Harold stood up.

“Maybe I shouldn't interfere, but I—”

Harold charged up the stairs on his way to John's room, leaving Audrey and the old crow staring after him. He flung open the door, saw the bulky shape beneath the covers and turned on the light, already knowing what he would find. He wrenched back the covers and saw the bundles of clothes where his oldest boy should have been.

How complicated the human heart, to feel equal measures of anger, love, and fear at the same time.

• • •

N
OW AUDREY AND
Harold were doing good cop, bad cop in the kitchen. Mrs. Kushner had been hastily thanked—politely, but not warmly, because she was the bearer of bad news—and hustled out the front door as fast as civility and her stoop would allow.

Dylan was in one of the kitchen chairs; his arms weren't bound with duct tape or anything, but he was held in place by the wildness in his father's eyes. Harold was interrogating him about John sneaking out the window—Dylan's window. Audrey was fluttering in the background, as if she was afraid Harold would blow a gasket. Dylan was pretending he was playing a scene in a movie.

Dylan regretted the loss of their escape route—his cash cow— but at the moment, he was more worried that someone was going to mention the ecstasy. Dylan knew exactly what he'd say: he never tried it, and that it came from his mum's friend Ellen, via her son Terry, who'd stolen it from his mum's dresser drawer. It was the truth, and—even better—it would immediately divert attention away from him.

But his dad was onto this window thing like a dog on a bone, and he wasn't letting go. “Did you know about this?” Harold asked again.

Dylan had to think fast, because he hadn't planned on John getting caught. He was thinking with disgust how lame John was, when he realized that now that John had been caught, he'd almost certainly rat on Dylan about the fifty bucks. Dylan, smart as he was, couldn't think his way out of this one fast enough. At last, he nodded.

“You can't blame Dylan,” Audrey said, “for protecting his brother. It's only natural.”

Harold ignored her. “Do you know where he went?”

Dylan shook his head.

“Are you sure?” Harold said this very quietly.

Dylan caved under the pressure of his father's gaze and the deadly quiet of his voice. “All I know is that he went to meet a girl.”

“A girl. Who?”

“I don't know, honest.”

“That's not so bad,” Audrey said.

Harold turned on her. “What do you mean, that's not so bad! He's grounded, remember? He wrecked the car! He came home stinking
drunk,
for Christ's sake! What about parental authority? What about respect? What about obedience?” He was yelling now. “We're running a family here, not a three-ring circus!”

Audrey looked unabashed. “Well, he
is
seventeen. He's not going to listen to us for much longer anyway.”

“The hell he isn't!”

“Well, I don't know how we're going to make him do what we want,” Audrey said, exasperated. “Grounding him obviously doesn't work.”

“It doesn't work because he's going out the window!”

“Well what do you want to do? Board up the window?”

“That's a start!” Harold said.

Dylan was watching the exchange between his parents as if he was watching a tennis match. They seemed to have forgotten that he was there, which was fine by him. Besides, this was really interesting; he could learn something useful.

“Maybe we should try rewards, instead of punishments,” Audrey suggested, grasping at straws.

“You want to
reward
his behaviour?” Harold said.

“When he does something right—why not?”

“So—we pay him to stay home.”

Audrey thought this through. She knew that she'd heard something about using rewards instead of punishments, but she wasn't sure how it actually worked. There was probably a book.

“All I'm saying is that if he's going to defy us by going out when he's grounded anyway, we might as well stop grounding him.”

Dylan was listening intently.

“You mean just give up,” Harold shouted, “and let him go to hell in a hand basket!”

“I'm not giving up!” Audrey protested, angry now, but at Harold more than John. She thought it was kind of romantic—she was a bit proud—that John, who was so handsome, had snuck out the window to meet a girl. It would be entirely different, of course, if he'd gone out drinking.

“Yes you are.”

“
I'm
not the one who gives up,” she said, and it was a dig at Harold. Now that it was out, like a big ugly toad, she didn't even wish it back. They glared at each other over Dylan's head.

That's how it happened that Harold sat up alone most of the night waiting for John to come home, and gave in to his ghosts.

• • •

J
OHN, UNAWARE OF
events at home, was experimenting. From the moment Nicole came up to him, in the dark, it was as if the old John had stepped aside, leaving this body to him. He cuffed one arm around her neck and kissed her, and she kissed him back, just like that. No awkward bumping of noses, no painful small talk. John was learning that there is power in silence, pleasure in not seeking permission.

He stopped kissing her and leaned back against the wall, looking her up and down. She was wearing a short skirt and black tights, and boots with stacked heels. He slipped his hands inside her jacket to her waist and pulled her closer. They smiled at each other—slow, fraught smiles.

“So,” she breathed, “what now?”

He ran his hands up and touched her breasts. He could feel her nipples with his thumbs. Her eyes closed briefly and popped open again. “Not here,” she said, and took his hand.

“Where?” he asked, willing to follow her anywhere, but hoping it wouldn't be far.

“I'll show you.”

Hands linked, they walked down the street and veered off onto a path and into the woods. He put his arm around her as they walked toward the ravine, the leaves crunching underfoot, the trees a dark tangle against the sky. He could smell her girl's skin, feel his own heart beating.

“You don't talk much, do you?” she said.

Then, because he couldn't stand the suspense any longer, because he was afraid that the other John would shoulder himself back in before he got his chance, he stopped and pulled her to him. “You're gorgeous,” he whispered.

They found a bed of leaves under the trees. It was cold, but they didn't notice.

CHAPTER SEVEN

H
arold had played his cards badly. He shouldn't have argued with Audrey; he needed her to ward off the spirit of his dead mother. For some reason, his mum seemed to flee whenever Audrey was around. From this Harold concluded that his mother didn't like Audrey.

Well, he thought, Audrey probably wouldn't like his mother much either.

Now he sat in his reclining chair with an unaccustomed glass of scotch in his right hand, preparing for the inevitable. He was going to get this over with, but only because he didn't seem to have much choice. Maybe there was something his mother had to tell him. The thought that his mother might have something to tell him that was important enough for her to reach out to him from beyond the grave was absolutely terrifying.

He waited and drank. He gulped his drink and remembered glumly how good Tom had looked in his coffin. Even dead he looked more alive than Harold himself did on a good day. Tom had looked like he was merely faking it and that at any minute he'd jump up and scare the living daylights out of everybody. That would be just like Tom, Harold thought. Such a kidder.

Harold, a man unused to drinking, drank steadily and imagined this scene, perhaps because he so needed to believe that Tom wasn't really gone. He pictured Tom suddenly bolting upright in the coffin— eyes stretched wide, his arms lifted up like a zombie—and screaming AAHHHHH!! People shrieking, dropping like flies at the dead come to life; the organist keeling over, putting an end to the music; Tom's laugh, then his “
What
?” when he realized that people weren't taking this the way it was meant. The pained confusion of the mourners; the widow who'd spent thousands on the funeral thinking
next time it's going to be [email protected]
; his children mortified.

In university, Tom's motto had been “Damn the torpedoes!” and that's how Harold remembered him now, Tom who always went after what he wanted, regardless. And Harold, filled with an unspoken admiration, had followed him, carried along in his brilliant, buoyant wake, for as long as he could.

Where the hell was his mother?

Harold shuffled into the kitchen and poured himself another quick scotch, and decided, getting into the spirit of the thing, that while he had her, he should ask her a few questions. Like, what's the food like up there? And what do you do all day? Do you have to atone for everything you ever did or didn't do in your whole sorry life? Do they make you sit down and watch the whole pitiful thing over, squirming and cringing at the bad parts, weeping at the missed opportunities, at the road not taken? Do they—
torturers
—make you watch what might have been? These are things, Harold told himself, that a great many people are dying to know. Ha Ha.

He rummaged around for pen and paper to jot down a few ideas, fumbling a little in the kitchen, pouring another drink.

Where the hell was she?

Here was a good one:
Does anyone ever really come back as a dog or a worm? Do you get to pick?

Can you meet Elvis?

(He was excited now.)
What really happened to Amelia Earhart!

The room was spinning as he sloppily wrote:

Can you have sex? With anybody you want?

Is there life on other planets?

What's God like?

Have you talked to Dad?

How much time do I have left?

This last question sobered him a little. He'd have to shred this paper later, he realized, so that Audrey wouldn't see it.

Where the hell was everybody?
Harold remembered through an alcoholic fog that he was waiting up for John; it was after 2 am and he wasn't back yet. He was out drinking with a sonofabitch tow-truck driver and that kid was going to have his ass in a sling by the time Harold was done with him.

And his mum was a no-show. It just figured. You really couldn't count on anybody.

He didn't feel so good. He wanted to go to bed. But in his drunkenness, he was afraid of the shredder; he forgot about the automatic shut-off, remembering only his earlier thought that he might get his hand caught in it and bleed to death. So he clutched the scrap of paper in his hand and told himself that he'd get up
really
early, before anybody else, and shred it then.

He fell asleep in his chair, with the lights on.

• • •

J
OHN WALKED ALL
the way home because the subway was closed, his euphoria tinged with uneasiness. Maybe he'd gone too far, showing off about identity theft like that, like he knew all about it—implying, without actually saying—that it was a racket he was into. But as she'd nestled against him—after frankly mind-blowing sex—he'd dug himself deeper and deeper, unable to help it as he saw her approval rating of him climb.

He remembered how she'd looked at him, all interest and admiration, and decided that it had been worth it.

Now—unexpectedly, and from some distance down the street— he saw that the living room lights in his house were still on. This was alarming, because it was after 3 am. His feeling of triumph twisted in his guts, turning into something else, something small and contemptible. When he got near the house he stood outside, indecisive. He wondered who was waiting up—his mum, his dad, or both. He thought he could handle his mum, but he didn't want to face his dad. He didn't want to disappoint his father, who seemed to hold him in such high regard. His mother, he felt, had a more realistic appraisal of him. Also, his dad was the one with the temper.