Special Topics in Calamity Physics (73 page)

"Just as no imposing character in a book may be cleverer than its minuscule author," Dad remarked in his lecture "Landlocked Switzerland: They're Nice and Neutral Only Because They're Tiny," "no government can be greater than its governors. And provided we're not invaded by Little Green Men any time soon —reading a week's worth of
The New York Times,
I'm not so sure that'd be a bad thing—these governors will always be mere humans, men and women, cute little paradoxes, forever capable of astounding compassion, forever capable of astounding cruelty. You'd be surprised— Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Totalitarianism—whatever
ism
it happens to be doesn't matter all that much; there will always be the tricky balance between the human extremes. And so we live our lives, make informed choices about what we believe in, stand by them. That's all."

It was 9:12 P.M. and Dad still wasn't home.

I turned off his computer, returned the copy of
Federal Forum
and the other books to the bookshelf. Gathering together my notes, I switched off the study lights and hurried upstairs to my room. I threw the papers on my desk, took a black sweater out of my closet and pulled it over my head.

I was going back to Hannah's. And I had to go, not tomorrow, not in the bleaching daylight that killed everything, made it laughable, but
now,
while the truth was still squirming. I wasn't finished. I couldn't tell anyone about my theory now. No, I needed something else, physical evidence, facts, papers — Minipress in one of those nineteen prescription bottles, a photograph of Hannah and George Gracey hand in hand or an article from
The VallarmoDaily,
"Policeman Shot, Woman Escapes," dated September 20, 1987—something,
anything
that would handcuff Hannah Schneider to Catherine Baker to Smoke Harvey to The Nightwatchmen.
I
believed it, of course. I
knew
Hannah Schneider was Catherine as surely as I knew a turtle could weigh a thousand pounds (see "Leatherback Turtle,"
Encyclopedia of Living Things,
4th ed.)- I'd been with her in her living room and on the mountaintop, painstakingly collected those splinters of her Life Story she'd scattered on the ground. Td always suspected something beautiful and grotesque lived in her shadows, and now, finally, here it was, shyly inching out of the gloom.

But who'd believe me? Lately, my average of persuading others of my beliefs was around zero for eight. (I'd make an appalling missionary.) The Blue-bloods thought I'd killed Hannah, Detective Harper thought I had Witness Traumatization and Dad seemed to be deathly afraid I was soft-shoeing into madness. No, the rest of the world, including Dad, needed proof to believe in something (it was a crisis the Catholic Church faced with its rapidly diminishing numbers) and
not
the kind of proof that was a faint shadow darting through a doorway, a hiccup on the stairs, but proof like a stout Russian schoolmarm standing directly under a floodlight (and unwilling to budge): three chins, frantic gray hair (barely pacified by bobby pins), a big orange skirt (under which an adult orangutan could hide fully undetected) and a pince-nez.

I'd find this proof if it killed me.

As soon as I finished tying my shoes, however, I heard the Volvo cruising into the driveway—a snag in my plan. Dad would never let me go to Hannah's
now,
and by the time I'd explained everything, fielded every one of his tenacious, sticky questions (trying to convince Dad of something new, one had to be outfitted like God in Genesis), the sun would be rising and I'd feel as if I'd just fought off a Giant Squid. (I'll admit, too, even though
I
felt I'd proved it satisfactorily, I was nevertheless afraid that, unlike the Boltzmann Constant, Avogadro's Number, Quantum Field Theory, Cosmic Inflation, my feeble premise could very well collapse within twenty-four hours. I had to get moving.)

I heard Dad enter the front door, chuck his keys onto the table. He was humming "I Got Rhythm."

"Sweet?"

Wildly, my eyes veered around the room. I ran to a window, unlatched it, heaved the thing up with all my might (it hadn't been opened since the Carter Administration), then the rusty screen. I stuck my head out, looked down. Unlike a clammy family drama on network television, there was no mighty oak with ladderlike branches, no lattice, rose-garden grill or well-situated fencing—only a three-story drop, a sloping ledge above the bay window in the dining room and a few feeble strands of ivy clinging like hair to a sweater.

Dad was playing messages on the answering machine, his own, about dinner with Arnie Sanderson, then Arnold Schmidt of
The New Seattle Journal for Foreign Policy
who spoke with a lisp and slurred the last four digits of his phone number.

"Sweet, you upstairs? I brought home some food from the restaurant."

Hastily, I slipped on my backpack, swung one leg out the window, then the other, awkwardly sliding onto my elbows. I dangled there for a minute, staring down at the shrubs far under my feet, noting I could very well die, at the very least, break both arms and legs, maybe even my back, end up a paraplegic—
then
what sort of crimes would I be able to solve, which of Life's Great Questions would I ever answer? It was a mome
nt I was supposed to wonder if i
t Was Worth It, and so I did: I wondered about Hannah and Catherine Baker and George Gracey
. I pictured Gracey in Paxos, the
n as rawhide holding a margarita by an infinity pool, the ocean jaded in the distance, skinny girls fanning out on either side of him like celery sticks on a dip tray. How faraway Jade and Milton had become, and St. Gallway, even Hannah — her face was already receding like a set of history dates I'd crammed into my head for a Unit Test. How lonely and absurd one felt dangling out a window. I took a giant breath, opened my eyes —I wasn't the sort of drip who
closed
her eyes, not anymore; if this was my last moment before total paralysis, before it all went haywire, I wanted to go down seeing it: the huge night, the grass shivering, the headlights of a passing car scissoring through the trees.

I let go.

32

"Good Country People"

T
he bit of roofing jutting out like stiffened, hair-sprayed bangs over the dining room's bay window braced my plummet to the earth, and

though my entire left side was scratched by the side of the house and the rhododendrons in which I landed, I stood up, brushed myself off, remarkably unscathed. Obviously, I now needed a car (if I risked creeping through the front door for the Volvo keys, I risked encountering Dad) and the only decent place that came to mind, the only person who might help was Larson at the BP gas station.

Twenty-five minutes later, I was dinging into the Food Mart. "Look who's come back from the dead," announced the intercom. "Beginnin' to think ya bought a car. Beginnin' to think you didn't like me."

Behind the bulletproof glass, he crossed his arms and winked at me. He wore a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off that read, CAT! CAT! Next to the batteries stood his latest girlfriend, a string-bean blonde in a short red dress eating potato chips.

"Senorita,"
he said. "I missed ya."

"Hi," I said, hurrying to the window.

"What's goin'
on?
How come ya haven't come seen me? Ya been breakin' my
corazon."
String Bean surveyed me skeptically, licking salt off her fingers. "How's high school?" he asked. "All right," I said. He nodded and held up an open book,
Learning the Spanish Language

(Berlitz, 2000). "Been doin' some studyin' myself. Came up with a plan to break into the film industry. You stay here, you gotta do it from the ground up, too many people. Go to a foreign country? You can be a big fish in a little pond. I decided on Spain. I hear they need actors—"

"I need your help/' I blurted. "I-I was wondering if I could borrow your truck again. I promise to have it back in three or four hours. It's an emergency and — "

"Typical
chica.
Only comes to see ya when she wants somethin'. Can't ask yer pops cuz things are rough with him—you don't have to tell me. I pick up on the
simbolos.
The
signs."

"It's not about my father. It's something that happened at school. Did you hear about the teacher who died? Hannah Schneider?"

"Killed herself," said String Bean through shards of potato chips.

"Sure," said Larson, nodding. "Been thinkin' 'bout that. I was wonderin' how yer pops was. The male species mourns different from women. Before he left, my pops was datin' Tina who worked at Hair Fantasy, took her out only a week after my stepma died of brain cancer. I had a fit. But he sat me down, told me people show their loss different, is all. Got to respect the mournin' process. So if yer pops starts datin' again, can't hold it against him. I'm sure he's upset. A lot of people come through here, all different kinds, an' I can spot real love like I kin spot an actor who's not in the moment, just readin' lines—"

"Who are you talking about?"

He smiled. "Yer pops."

"My pops."

"Figure he's pretty broken up."

I stared at him. "Why?"

"Well, yer girl ups and dies on ya—"

"His
girl?"

"Sure."

"Hannah Schneider?"

He stared at me.

"But they barely knew each other." As soon as I said it, the sentence sounded absurdly frail. It curled, began to fall apart like an empty straw wrapper when a drop of water falls on it.

Larson didn't continue. He looked uncertain; sensing he'd stumbled into the wrong stairwell, he couldn't decide if he should keep going down or back the way he came.

"What made you think they were a couple?" I asked.

"Way they looked at each other," he said after a moment, leaning forward so his freckled forehead was an inch from the glass. "She came in here while he waited in the car once. Smiled at me. Bought Turns. The other time they paid for gas with a credit card. Didn't get out of the car. But I saw her. Next thing I know her picture's in the paper. Her face was so pretty, it gets etched in yer mind."

"Are you positive? It wasn't a-a woman with yellow-orange hair?"

"Oh, yeah, I saw
her.
Crazy blue eyes. No. This one was the one in the newspaper. Dark hair. Looked like she wasn't from around here." "How many times did you see them?" "Two. Maybe three." "I can't—I have to"—my voice was scary, coming out in clumps —

"Excuse me," I managed to say. And then, all at once, the convenience store became highly inconvenient. I whirled around, because I couldn't look at Larson's face anymore, and the whole place looked smeared, out of focus (or else all gravitational fields had gone limp). As I turned, my left arm smacked the display of greeting cards, and then I crashed into String Bean who'd left her position by the batteries to go get a cup of scalding coffee the size of a small child. It erupted all over us (String Bean screaming, wailing about her burnt legs), but I didn't stop or apologize; I lurched forward, my foot hit the rack of beaded eyeglass chains and angel air fresheners, the door dinged and finally, the night jammed into my face. I think Larson might have shouted something, "Make sure yer ready fer the truth," in his chainsaw accent—but maybe it was the screeches of the cars as they honked to avoid hitting me, or my own words as they skidded through my head.

33

The Trial

I
found Dad in the library.

He wasn't surprised to see me—but then, I can't remember a time when Dad was ever surprised, except when he leaned down to pet June Bug Phyllis Mixer's chocolate Standard Poodle and the thing leaped into the air in an attempt to bite his face, missing it by half an inch.

I stood in the doorway for a minute, staring at him, unable to speak. He put his reading glasses in their case with the air of a woman handling pearls.

"I gather you didn't watch
Gone with the Wind"
he said.

"How long did you date Hannah Schneider?" I asked.

"Date?" He frowned.

"Don't lie. People saw you with her." I opened my mouth to say more, but couldn't.

"Sweet?" He leaned forward slightly in his reading chair, as if to better observe me, as if I was an interesting principle of Conflict Resolution scrawled across a blackboard.

"I hate you," I said in a quivering voice.

"Excuse me?"

"I hate you!"

"My God," he said with a smile. "I—this is an interesting turn of events. Rather ridiculous."

"I'm not ridiculous! You're ridiculous!"
I lurched around, yanked a random book from the bookshelf behind me and hurled it at him, hard. He deflected it with his arm. It was
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(Joyce, 1916) and it fell open at his feet. Instantly, I grabbed another,
Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States
(Bicentennial ed. 1989).