Tumbledown (39 page)

“Sister-woman does not want Billy there.”

“Ah, Billy. Skipper and Gooper rolled into one.”

It wasn’t just the farm that had their father playing Big Daddy, Jimmy reasoned, but also Violet’s strange decision to visit him on her honeymoon. She was afraid their father would die without ever meeting her husband. The pretend bout of pneumonia had worried her, even though she had known it was just an excuse not to come to the wedding. The irony—the ugly, bitter, awful irony—was that their father was still alive, and Violet’s husband was dead and gone.

Frederick Lansing Candler was sixty-eight the spring day that Jimmy, Violet, and Arthur arrived at the farmhouse, but he might have been mistaken for fifty-five if he would have condescended to dyeing his hair. He had grown portly—not fat, neither Jimmy nor Violet could ever have attributed that adjective to him had he weighed a ton. On the day they arrived, as they trundled up the driveway, he was watering a flower bed with a hose, wearing overalls, which Violet could not help but comment on—“What an affectation,” she said. It was not a working farm but an old house with a screened-in porch that wrapped around three sides where her father and his girlfriend set up their easels. Their father bent slightly to peer into the car as it motored up the gravel drive. When he recognized Violet in the front seat, he threw his arms open. His hair and beard were long and unkempt, and the overalls seemed silly, but the gesture—spreading his long arms as if he might lift off—pleased her so much that she tossed herself forward against the constraint of the shoulder belt and cried, “Daddy!”

Candler counted that moment as one of his sweetest memories. “What an awful car,” her father said when Violet climbed from the rental and ran to him. “I could paint that car, it’s so hideous.” Jimmy had followed right behind her, but Arthur took his time getting out, giving them a moment together. This small gesture defined one of the things that made Arthur who he was—a type of consideration about which men of Jimmy’s generation had no clue. Jimmy loved his father’s embrace, the residual smell of paint, even the tang on his breath left over from his morning chewing tobacco. Jimmy had been upset with his father about the divorce, but he had a different take on it than their mother. The family had been falling apart for a long while. Wrapped in his father’s arms, he could muster no anger.

“You’re not so old,” their father greeted Arthur. “May made you out to be ancient. I damn near rented a wheelchair for you.”

Jimmy hoped his sister didn’t remember that line. Some ironies in one’s life could simply never be appreciated.

They expected the girlfriend to be homely but she was nothing of the kind. Sally MacLean possessed a narrow waist and large breasts, and while her face was not conventionally attractive—her wide mouth nearly equaled the span of her eyes—she had a friendly, laconic manner and a soft, imperturbable voice. What Violet did not like about her (she would confess this to Jimmy while they were strolling the grounds that evening) was the scrutiny the woman inspired. Violet caught herself looking for flaws, stories of an unhappy childhood, wondering why this young woman had chosen their aging father. She hated herself for doing it, as it was precisely what their mother had done in London.

Jimmy liked Sally immediately. She was his age and friendly, shy but also pleased that they had come. She seemed to make their father happy. What else did you need to like someone?

The second night in Kentucky, without Violet having asked—Jimmy hadn’t even thought about asking—Sally said, “I was in a fog, you know? What to do and why to bother? Fred is answer enough. I feel grounded. The questions are still there, but they don’t much matter.” She shrugged and looked out to the porch where Frederick and Arthur—the grown-ups—were sitting in kitchen chairs, drinking and chatting. “Maybe we’ll get ten good years. Possibly more.” She revealed what they already had guessed: Violet’s father had not been ill. That was a story to satisfy May. He had not come to his daughter’s wedding because he and Sally had married on the same day. “It’s not a coincidence,” she told Violet. “Your wedding pushed things to a head.”

Sally was twenty-three, a Capricorn. She painted miniature canvases, no larger than her hand. She dropped out of the fine arts program when Frederick was forced to retire. “It was screwing me that got him axed.” She smiled, an embarrassed acknowledgment of pleasure. It was the first time she stretched that wide mouth to reveal its barricade of teeth, which transformed her face, and made her quite attractive.

“I understand your wanting to know,” Sally said, speaking to his sister, but then expanding to include him, “and I appreciate that you don’t judge.” After a moment, she said, “There’s something I’d like to know. It’s about your brother.”

Of course, Jimmy thought, the endless mystery of Pook.

“He killed himself,” Violet said. “I suppose you know that much.” She nodded. “I have the facts but not what really happened, you know?”

Did anyone ever know what really happened? Jimmy knew more than the facts, but he could not say what really happened. His sister, though, had an answer.

“What happened is, it destroyed our family,” she said. “It turned out that Pook was the glue that held us together.” She offered a sad smile. “Who would ever have guessed?”

Jimmy said nothing, but he had known as much from the beginning, long before Pook died. Pook had been the secret part of them that made them whole.

Ten years later, and May Candler still did not know that Violet and Arthur had come to the U.S. on their honeymoon. Candler suspected that if he made the effort to look up Dlu, she still would not have forgiven him for not taking her to London. And the Corolla never ran again. He’d had it towed to a car lot and traded it in, along with the remainder of his savings, for a Toyota pickup, which he drove back across the country, taking three days, sleeping in the cab at rest stops. He drove the truck through graduate school and up until he heard about the Boxster. He missed that truck. Sometimes, more often than he liked to admit, he missed Dlu. And he missed his family and how they’d once been a single group, not always happy, but always always always bound together.

“You have to like this one,” Lolly was saying. A new song began on the jukebox. “It makes me think of us.” She reached past James and took Violet’s hand: Aretha Franklin, “Bridge over Troubled Water.” Except to mouth the word
us,
Violet said nothing.

The halfway house was nothing more than an old Victorian on the wrong side of the freeway, painted mustard yellow, inside and out. What had Billy expected, a lobby and rec room? A list on the wall provided room numbers for the occupants. It was full of cross-outs and scribbles to indicate the current dwellers. Henry Veeks lived on the third floor, room 301.

The place reminded him of an apartment he and Jimmy had shared in Flagstaff. It, too, was an old house, with beaverboard partitions to create extra rooms, full of guys who wore kerchiefs and women with hair to their waists, people who played their music constantly and burned incense that smelled exactly like an angel food cake tossed into a campfire, which Billy had done accidentally one time. It became obvious they had to move after Dlu spent the night a few times. “This is officially a hell hole,” she said after something raucous upstairs—likely sex but possibly dancing or a fight—had shaken the walls and a fluff of black insulation fell into her bowl of chowder.

On the positive side, Billy twice saw Dlu naked in that terrible apartment. To get to the bathroom, you had to go through Billy’s narrow bedroom, and the door didn’t want to stay shut. The first time was just a glimpse, but the second time he lay on the bed and watched as she dried herself after a shower. She wrapped her hair in a towel and stared into the mirror over the sink to put on makeup, bending in ways that made her butt flat and unattractive (a lesson in why not to look at sex scenes in Hollywood movies because they only show perfect angles, which ruin you for a real person). At one point, mascara from the tiny brush fell on her, and she made a sweeping motion to wipe it away. That just killed him. God, he loved that woman.

He wondered if any of the others at the workshop lived in such dumps. He had been to Alonso’s and met his parents. “Onyx Rehab has been a godsend for our boy,” Mrs. Duran told Billy and insisted that he take home a slice of ginger cake. Such nice people. He had gone there to deliver some comic books from his own stash that had been riding in the trunk of the Dart since he left Flagstaff. His plan was to read one to Alonso each day that he went until noon before shanking his baloney pony in the john. So far Billy had read two issues of
The Incredible Hulk
and one
Aquaman
—three successful days in one week.

He climbed a flight of yellow stairs to a dusty second floor, the only sound of life a humming that might have been a novice harmonica player or a refrigerator that needed balancing. He couldn’t find another flight of steps. An aluminum ladder at the end of the hall finally clued him in. He did not care for ladders, having never counted among his talents the gift of
balance,
either the literal or figurative type. Above the ladder, as flat as the ceiling, an attic door had the numerals 301 scrawled upon it. Billy had to ascend four rungs to tap on the door.

Vex’s voice called out: “Who is it?”

“Billy Atlas.”

That got no response.

“Billy Atlas from the sheltered workshop. Your supervisor.”

“What do you want?”

“I read your story.”

“ ’Bout time.”

“I want to talk to you about it.”

The attic door swung down from a metal hinge. He had to duck, and the ladder teetered.

Vex scowled through the opening. “Don’t fall,” he said. “If you knock the ladder over, I can’t get out.”

Billy planted his hands on either side of the opening and pulled himself up.
I’m doing this,
he thought.
I’m climbing high on a ladder. To visit a psychopath in his dim attic room. Why am I doing this?
The attic was a low-slung garret, all one room, too short for standing upright. The narrow windows were covered with aluminum foil.

“I prefer artificial light,” Vex said. He was wearing the ANGER RUINS JOY T-shirt. “The sun is the last thing I’d try to control, except to keep it out. You got a problem with that?”

In one corner was a toilet and a bathroom sink. The porcelain sink was maybe six inches above the floor, and the bottom of the toilet was set below floor level, on a subfloor of some kind. A shelf beside it was crammed with canned goods, a microwave, and a roll of toilet tissue. A mini fridge stood beside the shelf. The room had garish carpeting that looked like it had come out of a Taco Bell. Several mismatched lamps, all heavily muted by their shades, offered fettered light. On the floor, beside a low table, lay an ax, the blade a bright red, the handle made of pale polished wood, like a great and gently curving bone.

“You don’t have to like the place,” Vex said, “but at least shut your gaping mouth.”

Billy did as he was told. He was bent over awkwardly and holding his head up, like certain long-necked, humpbacked ogres. Vex had the advantage on his knees. Billy gave it a go. “Much better,” he said, rolling his neck. “Quite the place you’ve got here.”

“Did the plumbing myself.”

“I might have guessed that.”

“And the electrical, drywall. You got to sit to pee. Otherwise, it’s no hardship.”

Billy nodded quickly, a quacking sort of nod. The lamps inhabited the room like sullen prisoners, which made the light seem trapped and reluctant.

“You want knee pads?” Vex asked.

“I’m okay.”

“I’m in the middle of something,” Vex said. “Not quite the middle. The premiddle.”

At the far end of the room a tarp was spread over the floor. The tarp was covered with mechanical pieces, a bicycle chain, and a flat shaft of some kind.

“A hobby?” Billy asked. “I used to collect bluegrass albums.”

“You come here to buy dope? I don’t have any to share. My connection dried up, not entirely dried up but he’s no longer . . .
moist.
”

“I’m not here for that.”

“My story then?” Vex asked. “Am I in trouble?”

“Your story scared the holy shit out of me.”

“That’s what fairy tales are supposed to do.”

The room was hot and stuffy, and Billy’s nostrils were reluctant to carry the requisite oxygen to the familiar destinations. “I came to talk to you face to face, man to man, like,” he said, wishing he could take off his shirt. “I came to ask if you’re a danger to others or me.”

“Yes,
kimosabe,
I’m a danger,” Vex said, “and don’t you ever forget it. I won’t hurt anybody, though. I’m just dangerous. There’s a difference, like potential energy and the actual pistons cranking.”

“Can I sit somewhere?”

Vex knee-walked to a low table. Billy followed and seated himself on a plaid cushion. The guy was less scary walking on his knees.

“Beer? Soda pop? Water?” Vex said. “The water tastes funny. I don’t get a lot of company. Fucking unannounced visitors.”

“Beer sounds good. It’s kinda hot in here.”

Vex knee-strode to the mini fridge, flipping a switch along the way. A window unit hummed to life, and the cool breeze changed every thing. The place immediately began to grow on Billy. There was the charm of the miniature about it, and the rent had to be minuscule.

“I had a room downstairs,” Vex said. “It was noisy and expensive. Except for the workshop or some other job you guys give me, I have no income whatsoever. Not a cent. My old man is tapped out, and my former employers won’t let me on the premises.” He handed Billy a can of Miller Lite.

“Have you ever hurt anybody?” Billy asked. “ ’Cause your file doesn’t say if you’ve ever hurt anybody.”

“Depends on what you mean by
hurt.
You ever hurt anybody?”

Billy thought as he popped open the can. “Not counting disappointing my parents, or letting down a landlord, I
tried
a couple of times to hurt people, especially this one girl, by snubbing her, but no luck.”