Falling (30 page)

Maybe they wouldn’t be angry and he could tell them the other joke that Bruce had told him. The one about the seven dwarves and the penguins.

And so all this time Damian’s been safe and sound in Nova Scotia?

Yes –

Well, fuck him.

Elvis stirred the soup. He didn’t like it that Jasmine’s voice wobbled. He stirred the soup faster because it was bubbling, and that meant it was time to take it off the burner, but he had to remember to turn off the right leg burner too and not turn on another one when he did it. He had to do it right. He used the blue-and-white-striped pot holder to lift the pot, which he put on the coaster on one side of the stove. He was doing everything right. He didn’t need the pot holder, though, because the handle wasn’t hot, so he left it on the stovetop and went over to the counter. He had to walk between B and CA again as he did this, with the pot held out in front of him. He kept holding it while he got a white bowl out of the cupboard. Then he put the pot down in the sink and the white bowl on the counter, so he could spoon the soup into it.

Oh my
God
, cried Tarah. The pot holder.

He turned around. Tarah made a sudden move and Elvis lunged forward. He got to the stove at the same time
she did. He reached for the blazing thing and so did she. He let go. Someone shouted his name. She held it with the tips of her fingers. It was the pot holder. He saw Tarah hold it for a moment before she took a couple of quick steps, as if she were dancing, and then she threw it into the sink. She did it so rapidly that it was hard to follow. She pulled him over to the sink, but there was pain in his hand, and now she was running water in the sink, so it made a hurrying, rushing sound. A fast white sound. Roger shouted. They told him to follow the order of things when he got confused. But there was no order. She put his hand under the tap and the cold water ran over it, and ran over it, and ran over it, making a rushing sound that he felt in his hand.

Is he all right? Roger was asking. Is he all right?

Yes, said Tarah. He’s fine. He’s shaking. But you’re fine, aren’t you, Elvis?

I’m okay, he said, but the pain was still bright. He watched the water, the way it came out of the tap and poured over the place on his hand.

God, Tarah said, staring out the window at the rain. What a day this is turning out to be.

She kept his hand under the tap, though Elvis could have held it there by himself. She held him by the wrist, hard, but not too hard.

She hadn’t said Elvis’s name, but he waited, because he was sure she would say it. She was going to talk about the pot holder. The pot holder had gone from being a clean, blue-and-white-striped thing to being a blackened, soaked thing. He could feel something. It banged around in his chest. It was his heart. Roger had told him that. He kept looking down at the pot holder that lay underwater in the sink. It was a square. His heart was banging around in his chest.

Tarah left the tap running over Elvis’s hand and turned away from him.

It’s not a bad burn, she said.

Maybe butter would help, said Jasmine.

There’s ointment in the upstairs cupboard, Roger told her. That would be better. And there’s a roll of gauze in the left-hand drawer by the sink, if you need it. Does he need it looked at?

No, said Tarah. It’ll be all right.

Jasmine got the ointment. Tarah turned off the tap and then she dried Elvis’s hand with a towel, but Jasmine was the one who put the ointment on it. It was Jasmine who held his wrist now, not Tarah. The ointment felt good.

Things go wrong, said Tarah. Why do things just go wrong?

She rubbed the darkened tips of her fingernails against the palm of her other hand. Oh shit – what’s the time?

It’s nearly six.

Oh fuck, fuck,
fuck
. I was supposed to meet Matt – and it’s raining and I’ll get all wet.

She left.

Jasmine, said Roger. This is a shock – it’ll take a while for it to sink in.

It’s not a shock.

Ingrid said Damian was coming here. She put him on the bus in Truro – he should be here tomorrow.

Good for him. If he’s coming here, I’ll be gone.

If he’s coming back it’s because of you, Jasmine. It’s because he wants to see you.

Why would he do that?

Because he –

Don’t say he cares about me.

He does.

Right
. Well, I don’t want to see him. He screwed up my life. He screwed up all our lives. And then – what do you know? He turns up.

Roger sighed.

You’re angry with him, she said. You are. I know you are.

Yes.

So why would you welcome him back with open arms?

Because.

Some kind of prodigal son
shit
, she snorted.

Jasmine, don’t.

Don’t what? Don’t turn cold and heartless? What kind of a guy does something like that and then expects to be welcomed back with open arms? Tell me. Tell me, because I’d really like to know.

Roger didn’t say anything.

I’d like to know, she said.

I can’t speak for him, he told her.

No, you can’t.

Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.

You didn’t say anything about this to anyone, said Jasmine flatly. I don’t know anything. As far as I’m concerned, he’s still missing. Okay?

Roger went tapping out of the kitchen.
Tap
, step,
tap
, step, tap.

Now Elvis was alone in the kitchen with Jasmine. It was nice to be alone in the kitchen with her, together and alone, with the sound of the rain on the window. She unrolled a little of the gauze and stood looking at it. She held it up and
looked through it at him and he grinned, because he could see her through it.

She took another look at Elvis’s hand, as if she were figuring something out. There was a line between her eyebrows. She was the way she always was. She was Jasmine. A small white flower. Elvis was close enough to lean his whole body against her, but he didn’t. He held his hand up for her. She asked him if she was hurting him and he said she wasn’t. It didn’t hurt at all.

I don’t think gauze is a good idea, she said, and rolled it back up. It’s probably better if the air gets at it. Don’t you think?

He nodded, because she wanted him to do something. He could look at her all he liked and no one would say he was staring.

Do you want to sit?

He went over and pulled out a chair with his good hand.

Oh, she said, sitting down and looking up at him. I don’t know.

She didn’t say anything for a long time.

It makes me angry and it makes me sad and – oh, I don’t know, she said. Why would Damian just go off like that? Why would he do it? Wouldn’t it make you angry if somebody went off and left you?

Yes.

I don’t know what to think, she said. I just don’t know.

Don’t cry, said Elvis.

Oh, Elvis.

Don’t cry.

I don’t know what to think. I don’t want to see him. I want to see him and I don’t want to see him.
Jesus
.

Elvis shifted his weight from one side to the other. The pain was in his hand, bright and then not bright, bright, and not bright.

They could hear Roger running water in the upstairs bathroom.

Anyway, she said. I’m finished with it.

Roger tapped along the upstairs hallway.

But sometimes I wonder what it could have been. Damian and I, together.

You and Damian getting married and having a baby.

Well, I wasn’t thinking of getting married or anything. I wasn’t thinking of a baby.

She got up and put the top back on the ointment. Then she took the blackened pot holder out of the sink, squeezed the water out of it, and put it in the garbage.

She leaned against the counter. You know, sometimes I think I loved him. Did I? And then I think I didn’t love him, she added, in a low voice. But either way it hurts.

Like my hand. My hand hurts, said Elvis.

And now there’s nothing to keep me here.

Are you going away?

She looked at him. I’ll go to New York City and do all the things I’ve been wanting to do. I could make things out of hair. She looked around the kitchen. Chairs and tables and cupboards – whole rooms made out of hair. She laughed. They like that kind of thing in New York.

But Damian is coming back. Roger said so. And Damian’s your boyfriend.

Not any more.

She took the garbage out of the bin under the sink and put the bag on the floor where she spun it around and made a knot in the top. Elvis watched her do it. She spun the bag
around on the floor and made a circle in four squares of the floor.

I like babies, said Elvis. Bruce at the workshop – he has a baby.

Jasmine opened the door and tossed the garbage into the can outside.

I should go home, she said. I shouldn’t hang around, but it’s awfully wet out there.

She poured the rest of the asparagus soup into a container and put it in the fridge. Then she rinsed out the pot.

Bruce and Joannie named their baby Ethan, after an actor, said Elvis. The actor and his wife broke up. Joannie read it in a magazine and she said she was sad for him because he wasn’t with his wife any more. So she called the baby Ethan.

That’s a nice name for a baby.

She wiped the counter where some of the soup had spilled. She wiped the counter in circles; her hand went around and around. Then she went over to the stove and made a swipe around each of the burners.

Ethan has soft skin, said Elvis. I like the top of his head, but you have to be careful about the top of the head because there’s a spot where the skull hasn’t closed.

Jasmine stopped wiping the stove. She looked at him. You know things about babies, don’t you, Elvis?

I like them. I told you. Ethan has three first names. Ethan Gregory Matthew Cook. Cook is his last name. It’s Bruce’s and Joannie’s last name. He’s not big. He’s about the size of three cans of soup. Maybe four cans of soup.

Jasmine smiled. Three cans of soup.

He’s gaining each week, Joannie says, but he’s still not very big. When she weighs him she stands on the bathroom
scales and weighs herself, and then she weighs herself holding Ethan and then she subtracts his weight from her weight. She weighs 139 pounds, and with him she weighs 153 pounds. So Ethan weighs fourteen pounds. We did it together. I helped her. She said her dressing gown probably weighed a ton because she usually weighs less. She usually weighs 125 pounds, but now she weighs 139 pounds, so she’s not going to eat any more of those big chewy cookies with the chocolate chips in them.

And I helped her bathe Ethan after that, in a plastic tub that she put in the bathtub. She was going to put papaya bath foam in the water, but then she didn’t because it might have given him a rash. It smells nice, that papaya bath foam. She washed his head with a washcloth and did his ears, but he didn’t like it much. Ethan’s got soft ears. They’re small. I like his ears, and his hands. And I like his toes. But I like it best when Joannie wraps him up in a towel and hands him to me, and I hold him the way she taught me to, in the crook of my arm. I like that a lot. He stops crying then, because he likes me. Ethan likes me. I sing to him and he likes it.

What would you call a baby, Elvis? asked Jasmine. What would you call a baby if it were a girl, say?

Priscilla, he said. Or Lisa Marie, but I like Priscilla better, because it’s a really nice name.

But you couldn’t call her that, could you? It’s too long. What would it be for short?

I’d call her Silly.

She laughed. Silly. A baby called Silly. She laughed and he laughed too.

Silly, he said, and she laughed again.

She put the scissors and gauze in the string drawer.

The rain’s not coming down as hard, she said, closing the drawer with her hip. It’s not coming down hippos and elephants. She looked out at the rain.

What would you call it? he asked.

What?

A baby.

If I had one, you mean?

Yes.

Sophie, she said. If I had a girl. Sophia means wisdom.

Sophie. I like that name.

But if I had a boy I don’t know what I’d call him.

You could call him Elvis because it’s the name of the greatest star in all of music history.

The name of a star, she murmured.

They were together and alone in the kitchen, looking out at the rain. It was pretty, Elvis thought; it made shiny spatters against the glass.

THE BUS SWUNG INTO GATE FOUR
at the Niagara Falls terminal and when it came to a stop people got out of their seats, waiting in the aisle or standing awkwardly with their heads craned to one side because of the luggage racks overhead.

Damian didn’t get up from his seat on the bus. He’d caught sight of Elvis and Jasmine.

The sharp thorn of seeing her.

Jasmine had a big knapsack on her back that almost prevented her from bending to pick up a brown suitcase. It broke open as she picked it up, and a tumble of clothing fell to the ground: a drift of shirts, a robe, dresses, flip-flops, something white and lacy. It could have fallen open hundreds of times, clothes spilling out. Damian thought he could hear, far off, the water from Lake Erie flowing down the Niagara River and parting into the Chippewa and the Tonawanda, passing Grand Island and tiny Buckhorn Island, until it merged into one powerful river. But it was only the sound of another bus drawing away, expelling blue fumes as it went. Jasmine waved away the smell, got her things bundled
together and straightened up, speaking quickly to Elvis. An edge of lace hung from the closed suitcase.

She was leaving, thought Damian, as he went down the steps of the bus behind an elderly woman. He could see whitened skin through her sparse grey curls. When the woman had planted both feet on the ground, in running shoes that were too large, she turned to him, smiling, and her eyes nearly disappeared into a face that was folded and puckered with hundreds of wrinkles.

There, thank you for bringing my cane, dear.

Leaving. Someone jostled Damian, so he couldn’t see Jasmine and then he could, just over there, with Elvis. He slung his knapsack over his shoulders and went out of the terminal, where the air was crisp. Deep autumn blue. He went around the corner and stopped, putting down his knapsack and taking out a bottle of water and half a carrot muffin. He drank some water and put the bottle and the remains of the muffin away, hoisting up the knapsack again.