Falling to Earth (28 page)

He's been rendered nothing more than a ghost now; a vapor, the suspicion of a man who once inhabited this place. Paul laughs a short, bitter laugh. All that will be true soon enough, once he's sent the letter he has in his pocket. It will need to be written out fresh—it's been riding around in his coat pocket so long the paper is wearing away at the creases from his worrying it—but that's a small enough thing. He knows it by heart.
Dear Johnny . . . Mae's nerves since the storm . . . Can't find peace here anymore . . . invest in your lumberyard . . . partners again . . . rent a little house near you . . . Don't like to leave . . . things are real bad . . . Please write
.

He'd taken time, at his mother's suggestion, letting go by degrees. “Once you let go a little bit,” she'd said, “you'll find the next bit gets easier, and you'll wonder what it was you were afraid of in the first place.” Yes, Paul had thought privately. And when you remove a finger from the edge of the cliff, you find the next one comes off faster and it's that much easier to fall. He wrote the letter to see how it felt, to see what it looked like on a sheet of paper and, when it was done and lying there on his desk at the lumberyard, he'd still thought it so empty and cowardly a thing that he'd wanted to crush it into a tight ball and hurl it into the stove, but had folded it and jammed it in his pocket, instead.

Having decided to mail the letter, Paul finds he is looking differently at the town, looking at it with the heedful eyes of a man taking his leave. More than anything, Paul thinks, the town has now come to resemble a boomtown. It does not, in any case, resemble itself. If, a year ago, this place had been a frontier town and gold had suddenly and improbably been discovered on someone's land and the requisite number of prospectors had stampeded in to unearth their share, the alteration could not have been more remarkable. Paul wonders if people can see things as he does or if they are just keeping busy scurrying around town trying not to see the way the rows of new structures are punctuated reliably by holes in the ground where nothing has been rebuilt. It's easier, certainly, to ignore them, signaling death as they do, a family's abandonment of the town, or both. Paul wonders, though, if people even see how leery they've remained; the way, when a friend or acquaintance greets a person or says a funny thing, the smiles slide quickly off both faces, as if an ordinary smile had become too suspect to sustain.

Despite walking slowly, despite taking the long route home, Paul arrives. He stops at the bottom of his own front walk. To continue up the walk will be to admit that he's beat, that there's finally nothing anymore to be gained by turning on his heel and going back downtown to try again. That the bit of land this house and family all ride on is still his, but only for the present moment and only in the sense that it will be his job to hammer the “For Sale” sign into the ground by the curb. To continue up the walk will be to admit that they had been scoured from this place as surely as if they'd been hit by a thousand such storms. He imagines that when he tells his family the news about the move they will wonder at his expression. They'll just have to wonder, he thinks. None of them, not a single one of them will understand that, even if he no longer denies that the children will thrive only after a new start in a new place, even if he can toil at other work and put another roof over their heads in another place, he can never rebuild his idea of himself.

Lavinia opens the front door and calls to him in a low voice, “You're making a spectacle of yourself, standing there.” Once he's inside, she hangs up his hat and coat and says, “Was he at least polite about it?”

“Oh my, yes, he was polite. It was almost unbearable. He shook my hand and then shook it again so hard it hurt and he smiled at me so earnestly I believe he'd even convinced himself it was my idea for him to turn down my offer of lumber.”

“I'm sorry. I know how you were hoping he would accept.”

Paul looks at Lavinia, expecting to see hesitation in her face, expecting to see her wondering what interval she should let pass before she asked him what he intended to do next. But he sees nothing of the sort, only a mother who is anxious for her son. He tries a smile and squeezes her hand and the tenderness of her gaze is almost enough to make him blurt out that he's already written the letter to John and is now ready to copy it out fresh and send it. Something stops him, though, and he decides that he'll tell them all––Mae, his mother, and the children––when he can show them John's reply. He knows what John will say and even how he will likely say it, but the exchange of letters is somehow a necessary formality; the first event of their renewed partnership.

“Why don't I heat you up a cup of coffee,” Lavinia says.

“I don't want any coffee, Mother, thank you. Where's Mae?”

“In the basement, cleaning.”

Before Paul can ask, Lavinia answers his question, “I don't know why, but she's a good deal less agitated when she's occupied, so I don't like to ask.”

 

Upstairs in his and Mae's bedroom, Paul closes the door behind him. The bed is immaculate, each pillow plumped to identical thickness and the chenille bedspread creased under them. The wooden bedstead, the tables, and the floor are gleaming and the curtains hang starched and smooth, parted evenly in front of the polished window. Paul looks around him for a moment, feeling that he hardly belongs in this room, that no one could belong––let alone sleep––in a room so pristine. He decides that he has been preoccupied, that the room certainly always looks like this, and he sits down at the small writing desk beside the bureau to recopy his letter. Once he's finished and signed the letter, he reads and rereads it, staring at the words
sell
. . .
failed
. . .
move
. . . finally sealing it inside an envelope and addressing it to John. He leaves through the backdoor when he is finished, tossing the first copy of the letter into the cold stove in the kitchen on his way out. He shouts, “I'll be home before supper,” to anyone who can hear him and walks quickly toward the post office.

He's consumed by thoughts of Mae for the rest of the afternoon: of her way of running a palm over the surface of a newly made bed, of her bending to take one of the children's faces in her hands. He wonders if there are flowers all year long in California. It's surely warm enough. He never thought to ask before. It would please Mae, if he could tell her that there were.

When he comes home again into the kitchen through the back door, Mae is there. He smiles, but the confounding expression on her face stops him cold. He closes the door behind him and turns back to face her.

“Could you tell me how to back the Ford out of the garage?” she says without greeting him.

“What?”

“I wondered if you could tell me how to back the Ford out into the driveway.”

Paul looks at Mae standing there. She's bunched a dishtowel in her hands, looking as though the wrong answer from him will cause her to splinter into shards.

“Do you want me to teach you how to drive?” he asks.

Her eyes fall and she shakes her head, turning away from him.

“No, I don't,” she says. “I've gotten an early start on spring cleaning and I thought I'd clean out the garage tomorrow is all. I didn't want to have to bother you about moving the Ford.”

Paul takes a step closer and, when Mae doesn't move away, he stands behind her and holds her arms. He lays his cheek against her hair and says, “You can just ask me to move it for you.”

“I suppose you could do that.”

“I could show you how to put it in neutral, but I don't know if you could push it by yourself. Why don't we just say that I'll move it out on my way downtown tomorrow morning.”

“If you think that's best.”

When she turns, she's only able to look up at him with difficulty before her eyes dart away. Paul feels as if he is burning. If he could, he'd ask her how they got this way, how it is that they're standing toe-to-toe and he can't ask her to tell him what she's thinking, can't ask why they're talking about spring cleaning, can't kiss her, can't seem to ask her a thing. The girl he kissed in the apple orchard is now so remote a memory he might just as easily imagine that he and Mae fell in love sitting in the mud together as children, he in short pants and she in bloomers, making pies.

What would he say to her with his eyes if she would truly look at him? What would he tell her if she would listen? That if he's become a ghost to the town, she's become a ghost to him and maybe to herself. That he feels something like surprise each time he looks and sees that she's still there. He could tell her that he watches her at night and that, even though she lies with her back to him, he knows when she's not sleeping. He knows that she leaves their bed each night to lie on the floor in one of the children's rooms, to go downstairs, even to go outside. He knows all this because he tries not to sleep, because of the dream of the coffins that will come if he does. He smells the new-sawn wood and hears others at work around him, hammering at coffins. He hurries because there are so many coffins to build and because, suddenly, the others are no longer there, and he's left to build them alone. He can't see anything anymore but coffins in teetering stacks all around him, and when he finishes joining the pieces of the very last lid and lifts it to set it on the last coffin, he turns and sees a shrouded body on the ground, but there is no more wood now and no way for him to get any. He wakes in a sweat each time he has the dream, alone and wondering if Mae will come back to bed before dawn.

H
omer is rushing home. Ellis and Ruby are ahead of him, like always. They don't pay him much notice these days, not if no one is looking. They walk to and from school faster than they know he can, forcing him to skip to keep up with them. He stopped complaining long ago. No use pleading with them, no use telling on them at home. Today he's almost managed to keep up, but hearing him close behind has made them walk, if anything, even faster. It's always the same. Try to keep up. Eat your bread and butter at the kitchen table, try not to get nabbed for a chore before dinner. Stay out of Mama's way. Stay out of Gran's way, too, because she'll just tell you
don't bother your Mama
, or give you a chore to make sure you stay out of their hair.

Homer stops at the little spit of sidewalk above where the driveway descends into the street. Ellis and Ruby are already in the house, the front door slammed against him. Didn't they even see it, he wonders, looking at the black Ford standing there in the drive. Homer looks around him, up and down the street, but the sidewalks are empty. He stares at the car. Daddy never leaves it outside, has not left it outside one single day since the storm, but there it stands, spotless and shining, parked facing the garage door as if it's waiting to be let in.

Homer knows that his Gran is inside the house, giving Ellis and Ruby something to eat. They'd have come out again if Gran hadn't been there waiting for them. Why is it, then, that no one else has noticed the car? Daddy walks to work, and Gran and Mama walk, too, to do their errands in town. If the car stands out, it's only because Daddy is washing it and Homer and Ellis are watching him tip buckets of clean water over the black, soapy metal, waiting to help him rub it dry.

He walks between the house and the garage and stands on tiptoe, trying to see in through the small four-paned window on the side. He can't see well enough, so he goes around back to get a crate he can stand on, but even when he's higher up, cupping his hands against the glass in a hood over his eyes, he still can't see so well. He could go get someone to raise the door for him, but Gran can't manage the heavy door any more than he or Ellis or Ruby can.

Homer steps down off the crate and stands back to look at the garage's side door. Daddy has taken to locking it, although he never used to. He leaves his lunch pail and books beside the crate in the grass and goes to try the knob. He closes both hands over it and it turns. He pushes lightly against the little-used door until it's open a crack and he stands there, his stomach muscles shaking. He closes the door again and stares at the knob and then finally turns to run to the backdoor and into the house.

He forgets to catch the storm door and it cracks shut behind him. Gran winces at the noise and snaps, “Hands!” at him so he'll go to the sink and wash before he sits down at the table. His bread and butter is there on the plate at his place and he chews and swallows his first bite before he asks, “Why is the car parked outside, Gran?”

“Hmm?” She drops a peeled potato, slick and white, into a pot of water by the sink. “Your mama is cleaning in the garage today. I guess she wanted the car moved out so she could get at everything.”

Homer frowns and asks, “Where's Mama now?”

“I expect she's still out there. Didn't you see her when you came home?”

“No,” Homer says.

“Well, if you saw the car . . . Didn't you two see her?” She points at Ruby and Ellis with the vegetable peeler and then looks at the kitchen door when they shake their heads no. She drops the peeler into the sink and her voice trails off, saying, “Where in the world . . . ” Her wet hands bunch up in her apron and she raises a slow hand to her mouth. Homer hears her breathe the word, “Lord,” and she raises a finger to them and looks at them hard. “Stay here,” she says and goes out the backdoor.

They don't move while she's gone, not to lift the bread to their mouths, not to swing their legs under the table. They wait and watch the door, and when she flings it open again and cries, “Go get your daddy!” and none of them moves, she shrieks, “One of you run get your father!”

Homer hurtles out the door and around the house to the sidewalk. He tucks his head down and pumps his arms as he has seen his daddy do and runs harder. He runs through a stitch in his side, runs straight down White Street instead of zigzagging as they usually do, to and from school, then left on Union, all the way to the Liberty movie theater and the lumberyard.