Preston Falls : a novel (17 page)

Crouched in that hole in the bathroom floor, Willis smears on the soldering paste and pushes pipe and fittings together; he fires up the BernzOmatic, touches the solder wire to the hot copper and sees it melt away into quicksilvery liquid racing in to seal the joint. He gives it a minute to cool, then goes and turns on the water. The pipe shudders and goes still again. He comes back and looks the joints over. Good. But shit—there's a drop of water gathering. Then another. Then a tiny spout whizzing up out of a fucking pinhole. God damn it to shit.

He goes and cuts off the water again and tries to sweat the son of a bitch apart, but of course now that there's water in the pipe, you can't get it hot enough. So he ends up cutting the son of a bitch. And now he has to go through all this shit again? No fucking way. Out in the shed he's got some radiator hose that should be about the right size and if he's lucky some hose clamps. He cuts off six inches of hose with the hacksaw, works soldering paste into each end with his pinkie, then twists and forces the ends onto the cut-off pipes. He tightens the hose clamps to the point where he's afraid he'll crimp the pipe, turns the water back on, and bingo. After all that fucking BernzOmatic Sturm und Drang. Hillbilly plumbing: why the fuck not?

The thing with his greased pinkie working in that tight hose inspires him to lie on the couch and haul out the Unnamable just on the off chance. But he can't get it happening. Which is cool. Okay, so now the next thing is, patch those joists and put the floorboards back. Though of course he forgot to stop at the lumberyard for two-by-sixes. Fine. Tomorrow. Today he'll stack that wood, maybe hit that lawn too. He zips up and reads Our Mutual Friend until he starts to doze, then has to wake himself from another devil dream, which he can't remember except that the devil really does have horns.

Eventually he notices the sky out the window is reddish. If you don't even go out and look at the sunset, then what the fuck is the point? So he goes out and looks at the sunset and what the fuck is the point? Orange cloudbanks, pulsing gold at the edges, and Willis standing there regarding them, with all his bullshit that he can't drop for a second. He goes back inside, the sky still blazing away. It occurs to him that he hasn't checked the answering machine for God knows how long. Shit: the son of a bitch is blinking. One blink. He just knows.

He hits Play, and Jean's voice says, "1 need to talk with you." So he did know. Which is scary just by itself. It's too late for her to be in her

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office; she must be home. He goes into the kitchen and dials. She picks up on the first ring.

"Hi, it's me," he says. "I just got your message. When did you—"

"I can't talk now."

"Sorry," he says. "When would be—"

"I'll call you later." Dial tone.

Fine. Fuck you too, lady. May he remind her that she asked him to call? Though on the other hand, she's obviously in the middle of putting together a dinner, vetoing unsuitable tv shows, listening to Roger piss and moan about how Net Nanny blocks him off too many Web sites, starting subtly to steer the evening toward a quiet bedtime. All the shit he should be there to help with. It's the end of their first week of school, and he hasn't so much as spoken to his children. Though wasn't he forbidden to? Okay, what you don't want right now is to start thinking about when you used to read to them, Mel always on your left and Roger on your right, both in flannel pj's, a child's head resting against each shoulder. But hey: there they are and here you are. And isn't this the way you wanted it?

He puts on VPR and starts fixing oatmeal. They're playing some generic nineteenth-century piano shit. Schumann? He stirs in raisins, and it turns out the old ear's still good: the piano goes into fucking Trdumereiy so this must be Kinderscenen. And that's enough of that. He kills the boombox and eats his oatmeal while reading the part of Our Mutual Friend where Noddy Boffin starts pretending to be obsessed with misers; then he takes his bowl and spoon out to the kitchen and steps outside into the warm, breezy dark. Stars and a half-moon. He just can't get his head around it that each of these things is like the sun and that some could be whole fucking galaxies. Well, not really at the top of his list.

By eleven o'clock Jean still hasn't called back, and he starts coffee. (What would be great is some cocaine.) He's halfway through his first cup when the phone rings.

"I was starting to wonder if you'd gone to bed," he says.

"No. I've been busy. What happened at your thing?"

"What, the court thing?"

Jean says nothing, which he takes to mean yes.

"It went okay," he says. "Fifty-doUar fine."

"Well, Good for you."

He says nothing.

"So now what happens?" she says.

"In what sense?" he says.

She says nothing.

"Listen," he says. "I agree that things haven't been going well."

"Oh, so you agree with that."

"That's not helpful, Jean."

"Well, what do you think would be helpful?"

"I don't know," he says. "Maybe having this time apart?"

"Oh," she says. "So you come back at the end of October and everything will be fine."

"Why are you—"

"We could go somewhere as a family again and not have it end up you being taken away in handcuffs'}''

"That wasn't completely my fault," he says. "As you know. But I understand that I should have controlled myself. And Fm incredibly humiliated that you had to see it—and especially that the kids saw it."

''You were humiliated? Tell me something. Have you thought about trying to get some help in controlling yourself? Or with any of your other problems?"

"Like what other problems?"

"I don't even really know anymore," she says. "Whatever it is that's making you so dissatisfied."

"Well, I'm hoping that I can use this time away to get a handle on some of that."

"But since you already spend as much time away from us as possible, I don't quite see how this is supposed to help."

He says nothing.

"You're due back at work when?" she says.

"October thirty-first, Halloween. Appropriate, wouldn't you say?" Whatever this means: probably something as witless as Witches are had and so is going hack to work.

She says nothing.

"That's a Monday," he says.

"Then I guess we'll see you that Sunday night."

"This feels so terrible." He takes a sip of coffee, which has gotten cold.

"Listen," she says. "It's eleven o'clock, I'm exhausted, I've just gotten the kids to bed, and now I have approximately half an hour to myself. In which I can either wash my hair and clean the downstairs

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bathroom or I can do what I feel like doing, which is have some scotch and feel sorry for myself. What I don't feel like doing is trying to think of something to say that will make you feel better about yourself. Because I don't actually think you should."

"Isn't Carol there?" he says. Damned if he's going to let her bait him.

"No."

"But I thought she—"

"She'll be here sometime next week. She stopped off for a couple of days in Taos."

"I think I'd better come down there," he says.

"As someone who wishes you well, I wouldn't."

"Would not}'' he says.

"You'd be coming back to someone who would not be fun to be with. And who would probably not snap out of it at the first kind word."

"Well," he says, "maybe you need this time too."

Silence.

"I have to go now," she says.

"Wait."

"For what? For me to break down weeping? Or for you to? So you can get your little jolt of feeling for the night?"

"Jean, you're not actually telling me anything about myself I don't know."

"Good night," she says.

Dial tone.

Well. Okay, so whatever that was about, he guesses it wasn't a summons to Chesterton. Unless it's up to him to figure out that it was. Willis unplugs the phone to prevent a hysterical callback: he didn't like the sound of that thing about the scotch. The coffee's starting to brighten him up, though, so maybe he'll play some guitar. But maybe instead of punishing his ears with the electric tonight, he should get out the J-200, which he feels sorry for because it never gets played anymore. He fetches it in from the woodshed and opens the case: the strings are rough with rust. There should be steel wool under the sink; he looks, then remembers it's still in the bathroom with the plumbing shit. He loosens each string in turn, pinches and rubs the steel wool along it until it squeaks, then tunes it back up. Shit, great-sounding guitar. A crime that it never gets used.

I

By Saturday night, Wrayburn has married Lizzie and Rokesmith is still dodging Lightwood, who could finger him as Julius Handford. Willis sets the alarm so he can go to church in the morning—not because of this devil shit, especially, though it is weird to have so many dreams about the devil. Though you could dismiss that as a father thing, probably. It's because he just feels sort of out there. But won't it make him feel even more out there to watch himself going to church for the first time in however many fucking years? Since he was thirteen, probably, during his mother's Unitarian phase. Still: if shit like the Lord's Prayer makes AAs feel better—^look at Marty Katz—then dot dot dot. It's like he doesn't want to get into magical thinking but he's almost at the point where it's sort of that or get somebody to put him on Prozac. What he wants, really, is more cocaine, which is probably the worst thing for this, whatever this is. Tonight it takes two three-finger jolts of Dewar's to put him under, and he dreams that the devil is sitting on a tall throne that's also sort of the electric chair, except the devil's own energy is powering it.

When the alarm goes off, he starts coffee and puts on his man-of-the-people Sunday best—brown Dickies work pants, khaki work shirt, with a brown knit tie. Kind of a Nazi vibe, actually. Hey, the old man would be proud. So balmy this morning he doesn't need a jacket. Can it be Indian summer already?

Inside the First Congregational Church of Preston Falls, the organ is wheedling away to a quarter-churchful of mosdy white-haired people. Willis scuttles sideways into an empty pew in the back; he's the only one here alone, which makes him look as if he's even deeper in spiritual crisis than he is. Fuck, if only it would be a crisis. Though isn't this a good way to bring it on, coming here and screwing around with the irrational?

Nice old church. All white inside, bare wood floor, tall windows, and up behind the pulpit a plain, squared-off gold cross—no faux tree bark, no writhing Saviour—against a hanging of burgundy-colored velvet. Either laudably severe or contemptibly bland.

He's deciding this when the organ cranks up and they all rise for the opening hymn—^which sounds like "Morning Is Broken." By Cat Stevens. And it is. Too bizarre: he can't do this. He scissors-steps out of the pew and heads for the exit, doubled over with his hands across his belly, miming a sudden attack of stomach flu. Back in the truck, he loosens his tie. Well, at least he's found out that he's not far enough down yet to start begging help from "Jesus."

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He stops at Stewart's for milk; the old farmer type in front of him asks for a pack of what he calls Pell Mells and takes for-fucking-ever picking out three different kinds of lottery tickets. When Willis sets his half gallon and his Milk Club card on the counter, he surprises the shit out of himself (though not really) by saying, "And a pack of Marlboros."

"Hard or soft?" says the girl. Pretty girl, a little beaten down.

"Make it hard, please?" he says. Willis, you dog.

He waits until he gets home to try the first cigarette; it's been ten years—no, more; he quit before Mel was born—and he's afraid if he lights up while driving it will hit him so hard he'll have to pull over. He finds a book of matches and a saucer, and settles on the couch. He zips the cellophane off, lifts the lid, slips out the square of dull silver paper to expose the caramel-brown filter ends. Sniffs them. Extracts one with a pinch and a tug of thumb and forefinger, then slips it between forefinger and middle finger. Which is just the way they found his father: smiling in his La-Z-Boy, his last Chesterfield burned all the way down, the skin fried in the crotch of his fingers. Harmlessly. Willis scratches a match, lights the cigarette, inhales, and whump. Yep, good thing he's sitting down.

When Willis got the call about his father, the doctor simply said it was a "sudden, massive" heart attack; he heard about the cigarette later, from Kenny Bishop, his best friend in sixth grade, who'd stayed in Etna all these years and who happened to be on rescue-squad duty that day. Willis had always expected something more operatic. If not a shootout with ATE agents, at least a Hemingway: both barrels in the mouth, brains on the wall. Shit, this was a guy who'd named his sons after Douglas MacArthur and Curtis LeMay—and that was before things got heavy. (In Cambridge, Willis's mother used to tell her new friends he'd been named for William O. Douglas, which they must have thought was an odd thing to volunteer.) Willis had learned to avoid visiting him during manic episodes, but the old man could still fool you. One time, just after Mel was born, his father had sounded fine on the phone, and six hours later, when Willis walked across the porch to knock on the door, he heard the tv going, looked through the window and saw him in his recliner scribbling on a legal pad. He was writing down the words of the newscast that coincided with Dan Rather's eye blinks.

Champ blew off the funeral and Jean stayed in Chesterton with the kids, then six and three. (Mel had seen Grandpa Willis once and didn't remember him; Roger had never seen him at all.) Afterwards Willis

drove his mother on up to the house. While she prowled around in the attic—a bunch of her books and her old term papers from Smith were still up there—he sat in the La-Z-Boy and looked at a composition book he'd picked up off the floor. On the cover, his father had written "2/8/89-." A journal, the last entry dated April 22, the day he died: "Colder, mostly sunny this morning. Trees getting red with buds, grass getting green." Most of the entries simply recorded the time he'd gotten up (always between 6:30 and 7:00), the weather and his daily errands: "To P.O., paid light bill, bought bread and tuna fish." Had he found these simple things numinous? Or was he just completely shot to shit? On the back page, he'd been listing the small animals killed by his cat, Geoffrey: "3/12/89, 1 mouse. 3/17/89, 1 mouse. 4/3/89, 1 blue jay (feathers only found)." Willis and his mother split a Harry and David pear from a box he and Jean had sent the old man, then captured Geoffrey, put him in his Kennel Cab and drove back down to his mother's one-bedroom condo in Brookline. Next thing Willis heard, she was putting it on the market and moving up to Etna. Less because she'd gotten sentimental (though who the fuck knows) than because it was her one shot at ending up in a nice old farmhouse somewhere reading M. F. K. Fisher and shit. Or is that unkind?