We All Fall Down Read online

  When his turn came, The Avenger had looked them straight in the eye and lied. No, he had not seen Vaughn Masterson after school on the day he died. He learned that it was easy to lie, easier than reciting lessons in class. In movies and TV, the guilty party always looked guilty, sweating, not looking anyone in the eye. But The Avenger answered their questions in his best helpful voice, like when he asked his mother if she wanted him to run an errand even when he did not feel like running an errand.

  As he yawned with boredom, trying to tune out the minister, The Avenger made a startling discovery. The discovery came when the minister said: “No one knows why Vaughn had to die that afternoon.” The words banged around in The Avenger’s head. No one knows why. Why. In other words, neither the police nor anyone else knew the reason for the killing, the motive. He seized on that word motive. He had heard that word a million times in movies and television—once we know the motive, we will find the killer—but never realized its deep meaning until this moment. The motive is what links the killer with the victim. The motive is the arrow that points toward the killer. If the motive can’t be found, then the killer can’t be found. Simple. Terrific. That’s why they couldn’t connect anyone with Vaughn Masterson’s murder and why they did not even know that it was a murder.

  Remember that the next time, he told himself as the minister finally shut up and the organ boomed forth, the pews trembling with the vibrations.

  The Avenger found it hard not to smile and had to cover his mouth with his hands as everyone stood up to watch Vaughn Masterson’s coffin roll by.

  Buddy dreaded dinnertimes. That’s because his mother insisted that he and Addy show up at the table at six-fifteen on the dot: “The least we can do is get together once a day.”

  She was sleek and stylish, every hair in place, slim and elegant. When preparing meals in the kitchen or baking a cake, she never appeared disheveled, never a dab of flour on her face. Even her aprons were stylish, not merely to protect her from spills or splashes. They matched whatever she was wearing.

  The dinners were excruciating. The food was not exactly a thing of inspiration either. Because she worked five days a week in downtown Wickburg as an executive secretary, his mother prepared casseroles ahead of time and heated them in the microwave oven. Casseroles or frozen dinners, low-cholesterol, low-calorie meals. She made up for this on weekends when she prepared special dishes following exotic recipes from her collection of cookbooks. She was experimenting with ginger these days. All these crazy dishes, Japanese especially, laced with ginger, which Buddy ate without enthusiasm or dislike, going through the motions like everything else in his life. Addy chewed away listlessly; food was never an exciting thing for her. “I live the life of the spirit,” she was fond of saying, although Buddy found about a thousand candy bar wrappers when he went into her room one day looking for a dictionary for his homework.

  Food aside, the dinners consisted of chitchat between his mother and Addy, nonstop, as if fines would be handed out if a silence fell. Chatter. About school and work and the weather and traffic conditions, for crissakes. Buddy tuned them out. Which was easy to do when you were in the glow of the gin.

  He wondered what would happen if he disturbed the dinnertime routine. Like showing them the story Randy Pierce clipped from the newspaper.

  HOUSE VANDALIZED

  GIRL, 14, INJURED

  See what your son has been doing, Mom, dear ol’ Mom? Keeping busy, but not keeping out of mischief. Randy had made Xerox copies of the news story and spread them around the school, even thumbtacking them up on bulletin boards and on lockers until Harry, his voice withering in its fury, ordered him to take them down. “We don’t call attention to ourselves.” No more trashing, Buddy had finally said to Harry. Your wish is my command, Harry had replied, bowing low, like an actor on a stage. Harry, the actor, only pretending to give in, as Buddy learned later.

  At the dinner table, Buddy was the actor and maybe his mother and Addy were also acting. Pretending that the chair across from their mother was occupied. The empty chair and the lack of plates and utensils. One afternoon, Buddy looked into the dining room as Addy was setting the table, saw her burst into tears and realized what she had done. Out of an old habit, she had laid out a plate, a knife, fork, and spoon at her father’s place. Her face hideous with grief, she swiveled away from him.

  “Stop it,” Buddy said, voice harsher than he intended. “He isn’t worth crying over.”

  Buddy hated the dining room because it was the place where his father announced that he was moving out of their lives. The announcement, while surprising as well as shocking, made something click inside Buddy and suddenly solved a lot of puzzling things going on in their lives. For weeks, his father had been abstracted, quiet at the table, not participating in the usual dinnertime talk. He was often late for meals, rushing in at the last minute, suddenly talking too loudly, making too many excuses. All of which had been only mildly puzzling to Buddy. Until his father made his big announcement. Apologetic, frowning, clearing his throat, hands moving everywhere, touching his plate, knife, fork, wineglass so that the chardonnay swirled inside and almost overflowed the rim.

  “Your mother and I have decided that I should move out of the house for a while,” he said in a strangled voice. Which Buddy learned later contained some untruths. First of all, it was his father’s own decision: his mother had nothing to do with it. And it wasn’t “for a while.” He was not planning to come back.

  “Are you going to move in with that woman?” Addy asked.

  This was the real shock to Buddy, realizing that Addy had known about the woman all along. So shocking that he could not remember later what his father had replied or whether his father, too, had been shocked by Addy’s words. Those words later hung in his mind, like washing on a clothesline, whipped by the wind, the words lashing around, echoing: that woman. What woman?

  “Look, I’m sorry, kids. I didn’t want to tell you this way. But there was no good way to tell you.” Looking down at his plate, avoiding their eyes. “Yes, there’s a woman involved. But I’m not moving in with her. And this is not something I planned. It just happened.”

  Buddy shot a careful secret glance at his mother. How was she taking this? She was holding herself rigid as if posing for a picture. Her hands folded on the table in front of her, food untouched. Not looking at his father or at Addy or him. Staring off into space, trancelike, as if she were lending her body to the scene but she, herself, her essence, whatever she was, not there at all, absent, gone off somewhere because the words were too terrible to bear.

  “Buddy, Addy—I love the two of you,” his father continued. “You both know that, I shouldn’t have to say it. But I’m saying it anyway. What has happened between your mother and me has nothing to do with you or my love for you.”

  Later, of course, Addy answered his arguments, refuted them all.

  “Did you hear what he said? And how he said it?” Mimicking him: “‘Your mother and I have decided.’” Snorting: “He decided. Mom decided nothing. He wants this woman and he’s moved out to be with her, no matter what Mom thinks, no matter what we think.” Mimicking him again: “‘What has happened between your mother and me has nothing to do with you.’” Flinging herself on the bed. “Bullshit. Who does he think it has to do with? Other people? It took the two of them to bring us into the world, didn’t it? And now, all of a sudden, what happens to them has nothing to do with us? It has everything to do with us.

  “What happens to them, happens to us. Affects us. Changes our lives.”

  Buddy was still unprepared, felt stupid, didn’t know what to say. “Who’s this other woman, Addy?”

  “First of all, she’s not a woman. She’s almost a girl. I mean, Mom is a woman. This … this person is maybe in her twenties. I don’t knew her name.” She sat up in the bed, grimacing, face getting red. “Okay, I hate to admit this but I knew about this woman, girl, whatever, because I listened in, eavesdropped on Mom and Dad arguing o
ne night. Felt like a creep standing outside their bedroom, my ear practically glued to the door. Her name is Fay. She’s a secretary at his office. Know all those late nights he worked? That’s when it started.” Again, cruelly mimicking their father, “‘We didn’t mean to fall in love.’” Imagine, telling that to Mom. Telling Mom he fell in love with someone else. The bastard …” She pulled a blanket around her as if for protection.

  Later, his mother knocked at his bedroom door.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, standing in the doorway, as if unsure of her welcome.

  “It’s not your fault, Mom,” he said, although later he was not thoroughly convinced about whose fault it was.

  “I’m also sorry for the way he told you and Addy. That was my fault. I wanted to be there when he told you. Wanted to hear him say it. Which was cruel of me, perhaps, but I did it anyway.”

  Buddy did not know what to say. Wanted to say a lot of things, ask a lot of questions but said nothing. Saw the grief in his mother’s face, more than grief, a stunned shocked expression as if she had just heard that the world would end in ten minutes and everybody would perish, all she held dear. Stricken by that look, his mother’s shattered eyes, he turned away from her.

  “Look, Buddy, I’m not going to make excuses for your father. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know whether this is temporary or not. Whether he’ll get over it. I don’t even know if I want him to come back if he does get over it. Christ, I don’t know anything….”

  He had never heard his mother swear before. She was always fastidious, elegant, cool, precise. Or maybe she hadn’t sworn. Maybe Christ had been the beginning of a prayer.

  “He’s your father, Buddy. Yours and Addy’s. You belong to him as much as you belong to me, as much as either of you can belong to anybody. I want you and Addy to love him….”

  But how are we supposed to love him after this? Buddy wondered. Thinking of his father with someone else, another woman, and shutting them out of his life, walking out on them this way, deserting them. And nothing he could do about it.

  The next night he met Harry Flowers and his stooges at the Mall.

  And got drunk for the first time in his life.

  He had made his way to the Mall through a series of bus transfers and hitches. The hitches were time-killers between buses, filling small gaps of space. He arrived downtown at dusk and entered the Mall, where it was never dusk or dawn, afternoon or evening but a world without seasons, without weather.

  He sat on a yellow plastic bench, looking at the fountain that did not work anymore but not really seeing it. Not seeing anything. Not wanting to see anything but unable, after a while, to ignore people coming and going, drifting by, guys and girls holding hands or brushing against each other. Felt sad watching them and did not know why this sadness should be added to the other sadness that had brought him to this place.

  A couple walked by, holding hands: the girl with long, flowing blond hair and the guy tall, a basketball type. Stopped walking and embraced suddenly, as if they were alone on the planet. Would they someday marry, have kids, two kids maybe, and then separate and later get divorced?

  “Somebody die?”

  Buddy heard the words at the same time as he raised his head and saw Harry Flowers looking down at him. Is he talking to me? Buddy recognized him immediately. Harry Flowers—one of the popular guys at Wickburg Regional and also the subject of rumors: drugs, drinking, wild times.

  “You look like somebody died,” Harry said, speaking unmistakably now to Buddy. “I’ve been watching you awhile—you’re from school, right?”

  Buddy nodded, getting to his feet. Harry Flowers was about Buddy’s height but seemed taller because he stood almost at attention but at the same time, managed to be completely at ease. His eyes were the color of khaki, hooded sometimes but other times, like at this moment, sympathetic. Buddy had seen him strolling the corridors at school, always surrounded by his friends, laughing easily, never hurrying to class like other guys.

  “You okay?” Harry asked.

  “Nobody died,” Buddy answered, realizing that Harry Flowers had not bothered to introduce himself, assuming Buddy would know who he was. Buddy said no more, shrugging, unwilling to share family secrets with Harry Flowers.

  “You need action,” Harry said, smiling his confident and confidential smile. “A bit of diversion. A bit of fun …” Waggling his fingers, eyebrows dancing. Astonishing: cool Harry Flowers doing a Groucho imitation.

  Buddy did not discover booze that first night with Harry. But he discovered the marvelous escape it provided. He had taken drinks before at parties or quick gulps from a pint bottle in a paper bag at football games. The excitement of drinking had intoxicated him more than the liquor itself. Or what he regarded as intoxication. But sitting in the front seat of the car with Harry while Randy Pierce and Marty Sanders carried on their Abbott and Costello routines in the backseat, Buddy discovered the marvelous methods of booze, the way it soothed and stroked, made hazy the harshness of things, made him—almost—happy. Languid, and feeling what the hell.

  That first night, they only drank and talked and joked and Harry dropped him off in front of his house. Buddy made his way haphazardly up the front walk, stumbled going into the house, lucky his mother and Addy were asleep. Fell into bed, the splendid magic of the booze tumbling him into the bliss of sleep.

  Later, came “Funtime,” Harry’s label for the exploits, stupid when sober but exciting and daring when drunk. The evenings always began the same, drinking leisurely in the car while talking casually, joking, listening to Marty and Randy’s conversational routines in the backseat. Buddy noticed after a while that Harry did not drink much, if at all, but encouraged Buddy and the others to do so, supplying an endless amount of booze. Including the gin that became Buddy’s personal drink. He loved the beautiful exotic smell of the gin and what it did to him. Finally, Harry would cry out: “Funtime.” And off they’d go.

  To the movies where they caused disruptions, laughing too raucously at scenes that were not funny at all, spilling food, particularly popcorn, all over the place, tearing wrappers off candy bars and sending them flying through the air, guffawing, scuffling mildly, knowing that the ushers were high school kids, most of them easily intimidated, not eager to notify the theater manager about the noise and distractions.

  Other nights they merely cruised the streets, searching for mischief, Harry intimidating other drivers by driving too fast or too slow, cutting in, tailgating.

  One weekend Harry obtained some fireworks in New Hampshire while on a trip there with his parents and showed off his display of lethal-looking bombs, an evil grin on his face. Off they went to the countryside, the outskirts of Wickburg, where they blew up mailboxes with the miniature bombs, delighting in the whomp of the explosion, giddy and laughing as they roared away. What made this especially exciting, Harry said, was that blowing up mailboxes was a federal offense.

  Sometimes, their exploits were senseless, war-whooping their way through Jedson Park, disturbing couples making out in the dark, tossing debris into the decorative pots, pissing in fountains. The next morning, Buddy would shudder, recalling dimly the events of the night before. Those mornings presented him with his first hangovers—stomach in distress, eyes like raw wounds, head bulging with pain plus the knowledge that he had acted shamefully the night before. Looking at himself in the mirror, seeing the perspiring sallow flesh, the bloodshot eyes, the unkempt hair, he vowed that he would not allow Harry to lead him into further “Funtimes.” But somehow by nightfall, he would capitulate again, following Harry Flowers wherever he went.

  More than Harry, however, was the liquor that forgave everything. “Funtime” with Harry Flowers and the stooges gave him camaraderie, a sense of belonging to something. Drinking, however, gave him bliss in his loneliness. When he drank and began to drift, the lovely vagueness taking over his sensibilities, he did not need comrades or companions. Needed nobody. Especially did not need his mo
ther and father.

  Artie’s screaming began two weeks after the vandalism. The first time it happened, Jane vaulted from her sleep, unsure of the sound, unable to identify it immediately as screaming. There was silence for a moment, and she heard a door close and then a shriek, this time muffled. Instantly and completely awake, she checked the digital clock on the bedside table: 2:11.

  When the screaming began again, she said out of bed, went to the doorway and listened, shivering a bit in the chill of night. The sounds came from the bathroom across the hallway from her bedroom. More screaming, more shrieking, sheer terror in the sound, which set off a kind of terror in her own self.

  The oak floor was cold beneath her feet as she paused near the bathroom. Silence within now. Then, whimpering, like a small animal trapped and crying. As she opened the door slightly, she recognized the soothing murmurs of her mother and father. Peeking in, she saw her father sitting on the edge of the bathtub holding Artie in his arms while her mother knelt on the floor, her arms encircling Artie, whose face was pressed into the folds of his father’s pajamas.

  Artie began to scream again, lifting his face away from his father’s protection, his eyes open in terror. Then became mute, silent, but holding himself rigid.

  Her mother looked up and saw Jane.

  “A nightmare,” she said.

  But it was not a nightmare. It was sheer terror that Artie could not remember when he finally woke up after a few minutes.

  The terror happened three nights in succession, Artie screaming and sobbing, eyes wide with horror as if he were witnessing acts so horrible and obscene that his mind refused to acknowledge them. His eyes were always wide open as if he were awake. Crying out inconsolably, he inhabited a private world nobody else could enter, beyond the borders of comfort or consolation.