Breaking the Fall (10 page)

But aside from history, I knew very little. The actual creatures were unknown to me. Sky, though, was comfortable with animals, and had even stopped to caress the muzzle of a horse tethered to a fence post while its rider wandered off somewhere. The horse had nickered at her as we walked on, already missing her.

Jared had this way with animals, too. A barking dog always fell silent or made its bark an I'm-only-kidding yelp when Jared strode by.

But Jared would never have scanned the scattered clouds like this, looking upward.

“They breed in the trees,” she said. “In the tops of the redwoods.”

It was all emptiness to me, but a good emptiness—promise. Then I saw one. Two, circling high up, tilting gracefully. I grabbed her arm.

Touching her like this stunned me. My hands leaped back. The strength of my feeling was surprising. I realized how little we had touched each other, and there I was, shaking her shoulder.

“Turkey vultures, Stanley.”

My hands felt clumsy, foreign. I picked at a blister on my palm, a remnant of my batting practice.

“They are so pretty when you see them flying.” She watched my vultures through the binoculars.

I thought that it was typical of me to pick a dead-meat-eater.

“They can float like that forever, on the thermals,” said Sky, watching my carrion birds drift.

Then there was a voice, a curling, spinning voice, a word that was not human. Sky turned to it at once, and reached her hand to me without removing her eyes from the binoculars. She touched my cheek.

She will take her hand away, I thought, when she knows that she has touched you.

But she turned and smiled at me, and before I could smile back or even think, she kissed me, and put her arms around me, her hair closing in around both of us with the wind for a moment, and the scent of her, like cinnamon, quickened me.

The binocular strap tickled the back of my neck. Stay like this, I thought. Forever.

Then she was apart from me, laughing. She handed me the binoculars, and I fumbled with the strap.

The bird sounded its cry again. It did seem amazing to me, as it never really had before, that a hawk could make such a high, science-fiction announcement to all the mice and bugs that it was up there in the sky.

We found a place where we could lie down and gaze upward. The ground was only a little pebbly, and there was grass, and foxtails that were still green. Young eucalyptus trees bent over us, and the shadows of the long, slender leaves spun and danced.

When we stopped waiting for another hawk to skim over us, we held each other, and Sky let me explore her, smiling into me and letting my hand find where it could begin to give her pleasure, although through her clothes, and only for a little while.

I was afraid, really, to do more, or even want more, because even though my body was all over Sky, I was almost disturbed at my good luck, at the way the day had gone, at the way my life had turned and become right.

I was afraid, and yet I wasn't afraid, because I trusted Sky. I knew she would give me what she wanted to give, and what I felt wasn't gratitude and hope so much as ignorance.

She knew everything, and I was just a beginner.

But it was working. I was doing the right things. Tu had told Sky that I was playing baseball again, and I hadn't talked to Jared in what seemed like months.

I actually believed that everything was fine.

And I thought it could last.

23

In my father's world there are great spaces that cannot be visited. Sex is one.

He doesn't like to talk about it, and if there is a real sweat-and-grunt scene in a movie you can sense his embarrassment and feel embarrassed yourself. I think, even though it's awkward to consider, that he loved my mother, and that they were happy together in that physical way. But talking about it is to walk off the trail into the woods, and my father will not do that.

He cannot talk about his dead parents, either, although when he does, it is always dignified and beautiful because he talks about them like someone making a speech before serious, quiet people. “My father loved football,” he will say. Or “Mom used to love that song,” and the statements have a frame around them, a silence that sets them off from conversation.

He cannot talk about many things, and this is strange, because he is easy with words. I have been proud of him when I overhear him on the phone, persuading a tax collector that the factory's tax rates are too high or consoling a man he has had to fire, and doing it so well you know that he has not made an enemy.

I knew there was a conversation coming, a speech he would have to make, and I was embarrassed for him, for both of us, and I did not want to hear it.

I knew what was coming because my mother had taken me to San Francisco, in her new car that smelled of vinyl and adhesive resin, a Japanese sports car she kept stalling on the Bay Bridge.

She had made me wear a tie, and I didn't mind. Feeling uncomfortable suited me that day.

She didn't want to see the wine list, but wanted water, and since there was still officially a drought, a little sign by the ashtray said you had to ask. The water came in very tall glasses like wine glasses, and the ice cubes were flat and small.

She said that we should share a Caesar salad.

“It's fun, coming over here,” she said.

It was, although I knew what she was doing—or thought I did. It was a different world, men and women looking like extras in a television show, dressed up and delighted, but quiet, too, knowing not to speak up or spill coffee.

“I don't have to tell you,” she said after she had handed our menus to the white-haired waiter. “You know.”

My mother has her silences, too. Her silences are tense and dramatic, and make a point.

“You and Dad,” I began.

Then her nostrils flared and she had to look away, like someone swallowing a yawn, except it wasn't a yawn.

The tablecloth was coral-pink, and there was a white carnation in the tall, thin vase.

Her voice was steady. “I hope it's okay I brought you over here. I didn't want to talk about it at home.”

She had never used exactly that tone of voice with me before—asking if something was okay, one adult to another. “If it makes you feel better,” I said, and then I hated myself for sounding so offhand.

She flinched the tiniest bit, and her face was just a little less pretty, the makeup a little too heavy around the eyes. But she recovered very quickly. “You blame me.”

I don't know why, but I had to look away and blink back tears. I really couldn't believe what I heard myself saying. “I want everything to be different. I remember when you were happy.”

I said this with a twisted voice, with a feeling of sadness so strong it hurt my chest. I stuffed the linen napkin between my teeth, and really hated myself then for losing all control right there in a restaurant, and with zero warning.

I bit the napkin hard.

“Jesus,” she said, and leaned on the table with her hands flat.

I imagined what she might be thinking, her silence working on me as it always did.

But she said, “It was unfair to bring you here. I wanted to be in a situation I could control.”

I blotted my eyes, wishing I could turn invisible.

“I'm sorry, Stan,” she said, and this was new, too, this honest-sounding apology.

I nodded.

When my father stepped heavily up the stairs, I closed my eyes. I knew it all—the long phone call, the long wait before this almost-bedtime visit while he paced downstairs, silently passing from room to room, stalling and facing what was happening at the same time.

I nearly wanted to get put of bed and call down the stairs that he didn't have to talk to me, that he could forget all about it. I knew, I understood, and now I just wanted to pretend it wasn't happening.

But I waited.

When he knocked on the door, and I said, “Come in,” I felt that there wasn't enough air. We weren't people, we were cut-outs, cartoons you could pin to a bulletin board.

I saw that my father was dry-eyed. He looked at the room as though deciding it needed to be painted soon.

“She told me she rented an apartment.” After I said that, I thought about the words. It sounded simple.

Only when he sat on the bed did he look weary, but weariness was not what I wanted.

He began to say what he had decided to say.

I listened. I saw him being proud, and using his intelligence to reassure me and calm himself, and I felt pity for him.

He loved me, and I felt sorry for him.

24

I could sense her in the classroom. I didn't have to turn to look at her. I knew her. I could close my eyes and see.

Mr. Milliken drew a pistol on the board. He took his time scratching in a snub-nosed cap-and-ball. He stood back and nodded once at his work.

“One shot. A lead ball like a nice-sized olive. Right into the back of his head.”

Saying such a bad thing made him pause. “It would have made a noise like a balloon popping. A little puff of blue smoke. Just a little puff.” Mr. Milliken dusted the chalk from his hands, running his fingers up through the white hair on his arms. “He lived a few hours. But there was no hope. His pillow was soaked with blood.”

The bell doesn't sound all at once, simultaneously all over the campus. You hear it down a hall, buzzing in the clock, then trilling outside somewhere.

Sky nudged me on the way by, a swing with her hip that rocked me, and I followed in her wake.

But Mr. Milliken stopped me, a freckled hand closing around my arm. “Are you all right?”

I looked up at his beefy, red face. And for some reason I stayed with him for a moment.

Mr. Milliken hovered, waiting for me to respond.

“Perfect,” I said.

“You look old before your time, Stanley. The weight of the world on your shoulders or something.” He kept his tone light, so that if I rebuffed him he could act unoffended. “I heard about the baseball team.”

I made a little laugh. “That's okay. History,” I said, aware just a beat too late that this was not the best word to use.

“I might be able to talk to Mr. O'Brien,” said Mr. Milliken. “Put in a good word.” His voice went up as he said this, making it sound like a half-question.

I smiled, one corner of my mouth higher than the other: thanks but no thanks. I knew Mr. Milliken was a man who wanted to do good, but I also knew that he lived, basically, in another universe.

“We need to have a nice talk,” he said.

“Anytime,” I said, in that manner that means “never.”

“Before you dig yourself a hole,” he said.

Tina ran over a trash can on Park Boulevard. It was very easy, and looked deliberate.

We drifted, not even going over the speed limit, and then a trash can lid flung itself at the windshield. It bounced away, and then vanished. There was a clattering, a chuffing, a metallic hammering. The car pounded up and down, wrestling, despite its size, with what was trapped beneath it.

Mr. Milliken rose up in his seat, standing on the brake.

When we got out of the car, Tina laughed and leaned against the fender. “I thought I would have a heart attack.”

Dung did not laugh. She was chagrined at her friend's driving, and at having to be there on a city street with a squashed trash can.

“I never ran into anything before,” said Tina. “My heart is pounding. I thought I was going to die.”

Mr. Milliken wrote on his clipboard, and no one came forth to claim the trash can, which was not on the sidewalk anymore, but out in the street.

“We can sue them, right?” said Tina. “We can sue them for leaving their trash can all over the place.”

Mr. Milliken finished writing and stuck a Post-it on the can.

Then, looking completely satisfied with life, he said, “Let's go run over something else.”

Jared saw me at my locker. He didn't say anything. He just looked at me and made his silent laugh.

I dropped my eyes, and felt myself blush, and it wasn't until then that I knew how much I had wanted to avoid him.

“I'll call you tonight,” I shouted through the metallic din.

His eyes brightened, and he turned away.

Jared likes me, I told myself. He likes me and he needs me.

I had let him down, and he had been waiting for me. I reflected on what I had just called to him. Those were not the words I wanted to say, but the words had uttered themselves.

The air conditioning broke down just after school. The halls were hot and stuffy. An air-quality study had reported the school to have the lowest possible quality of breathable air, and that was when everything was humming. Now, with the air stagnant, we began to drag ourselves through the thickening atmosphere. There had been a fight during sixth period, but I had not heard the complete story. There was a handful of hair across from Mr. Milliken's door, torn out of someone's head, even though you couldn't see any blood.

I knocked. There was no answer. I tried the door, but the knob would not turn. He might be in there, I reasoned, correcting papers, ignoring the din from the hall, or even unable to hear.

The teachers all locked their doors, even during class, ever since the year before, when a French teacher had been attacked by someone with a knife. Her throat had been cut, but not very badly. You couldn't even see a scar.

I knocked again, but by then it was too hot.

I stopped by Sky's house, and as always she was not home. Tu had jacked the big white car up onto four wooden blocks. The car had no tires, and only ugly black steel stumps where the wheels should be. He was under the car, looking up into it.

“All kinds of trouble,” he said cheerfully.

25

I didn't call Jared that night. It wasn't because I forgot—I deliberately did not.

I made my father and myself microwave-toastable fish and chips—Iceland cod. My mother called, and she sounded cautious and rested, a combination that left me guessing how she really felt about my father and myself. She had a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, and a little patio. There were tennis courts. She was going to buy a geranium.