by Tom Perrotta
Just for a moment—that strange way station between dreaming and not—May McGorvey thought she heard the Voice of God calling to her from the sky, finally coming to take her home.
“WAKE UP!!” the Voice repeated.
“Okay.” May sat up in bed, her heart pounding rapidly, but not with fear. “I’m awake.”
“OPEN YOUR EYES!” The Voice was harsher than she’d expected. “GET YOUR GODDAM HEADS OUT OF THE SAND!”
My heads? thought May. My goddam heads?
She stood up too quickly and had to sit back down until the dizziness passed. By the time she made it to the window, she understood quite clearly that she was not listening to the Voice of God.
“DON’T YOU PEOPLE LOVE YOUR CHILDREN? DON’T YOU WANT TO PROTECT THEM FROM EVIL? THEN WHY AREN’T YOU OUT HERE DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT?”
May pulled up the shade. That awful man was standing in front of her house, spreading his poison through some kind of loudspeaker.
“BLUEBERRY COURT, THERE’S A PERVERT IN YOUR MIDST!”
He had no right. No right to strut across the lawn—my lawn, May thought bitterly—trampling the grass and saying those horrible things, not after what he’d done at church.
“YOUR CHILDREN ARE NOT SAFE!”
May hadn’t been feeling well for a long time—her legs were weak, something was wrong with her breathing—and the demands on her energy had increased to the breaking point now that Ronnie had his arm in a cast. He couldn’t tie his shoes, or button his shirt, or cut his meat. It was like he was a child again, needing her for everything. She was tired, more tired than she’d ever been in her life.
“A MURDERER LIVES IN THIS HOUSE! DON’T YOU PEOPLE CARE?”
You bastard, she thought. I see what you’re up to.
A wave of righteous anger spread through May’s body like a wonder drug. Her legs were steady as she moved through the upstairs hall, her breathing deep and regular. She felt like her old self as she scurried down the stairs and pulled open the front door.
“You dirty son of a bitch! Get off my lawn!”
The old lady was in some kind of frenzy, hobbling toward him in bare feet and a short nightie, her enormous bosom jiggling in a way that made Larry embarrassed for both of them.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” she demanded. “Mr. High-and-Mighty.”
Larry ignored her.
“NO PERVERTS AT THE PLAYGROUND! NO PERVERTS AT THE PLAYGROUND!”
“You think you’re God?” the old lady shouted, her toothless face contorted into a fright mask of rage and loathing. “You’re not God. Far from it!”
“I KNOW I’M NOT GOD,” Larry replied, inadvertently addressing her through the bullhorn. “I NEVER SAID I WAS.”
The old lady cracked a nasty smile. Her voice was soft and hateful.
“You’re the murderer. You killed that boy at the mall.”
Larry lowered the bullhorn.
“I didn’t murder anyone,” he said, making a real effort to control his temper. “Now why don’t you go back inside and put some clothes on?”
To his amazement, the old bitch made a lunge for the bullhorn, grabbing hold of the flared end and trying to rip it out of his hands. Luckily, his grip on the handle was secure.
“You shot him through the neck,” she said, spreading her feet and giving another tug. “I read it in the paper.”
Larry tugged back, but she was stronger than she looked, or maybe just angrier.
“That was a mistake,” he said. “It wasn’t murder.”
He dug his heels into the grass and tried again. By this point they were locked in a full-scale tug-of-war, crouching low and revolving in a slow circle on the lawn, yanking on the bullhorn with all their strength. Larry felt the old woman’s grip slip a little at almost the same moment he heard the voice.
“You need to go home, Mister.”
He glanced over his shoulder and saw two men standing by the curb—a big guy in lightweight pajamas, and a little guy in suit pants and a T-shirt. It was the big guy who had spoken.
“The police are coming,” the little guy added.
The big guy glared at Larry.
“You’re scaring my kids,” he said. “I wish you’d cut it out.”
“Your kids need to be frightened,” Larry grunted, tightening his grip on the handle. “They live across the street from a child molester.”
He heard a siren in the distance as he gathered his strength for one last monster tug. Before he could wrench it free, though, the old lady suddenly let go, sending Larry stumbling backwards onto his ass, the bullhorn cradled to his chest.
When he got back to his feet, he saw the two men crouching on the grass, looking down at the old lady and shaking their heads. She was flat on her back, like a boxer who’d taken a knockout punch.
“Now look what you did,” the little guy said, as Larry approached.
A cold shiver of fear ran through him as he looked down at Mrs. McGorvey. She was alive, at least, her limbs twitching, an awful gurgling noise coming from somewhere deep in her throat. Her eyes were wide-open, staring straight into Larry’s. Her lips were moving, too, but there weren’t any words coming out, just a few foamy bubbles of spit.
“Oh Jesus,” Larry said. “This is all I need.”
They were lying on their backs at the fifty yard line, gazing up at the sky as if an answer to their unspoken question might appear there at any moment, yellow letters blazing against the black dome of infinity. Todd fumbled for Sarah’s hand, feeling her sweaty fingers intertwine with his own.
“I don’t want to go home,” he said. “I want to stay right here forever.”
She didn’t answer; it wasn’t necessary. They’d said everything that needed to be said in the first five minutes. For the last two hours they’d just been repeating themselves.
“Thank God you came,” he continued.
She rolled onto her side to look at him. Her eyes were wet and puffy, her voice husky with emotion.
“I was going out of my mind.”
“Me too.” He lifted his head and shoulders off the ground and planted a soft kiss on her kiss-swollen lips. “When I looked up and saw you—”
He stopped. There was no use trying to put it into words, the perfection of that moment, the way she seemed to have been conjured by his touchdown, as if she were the physical incarnation of his happiness. He gave a heavy sigh, letting his head sink back down to the artificial turf.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he said. “I can’t go another week without kissing you.”
A subtle change came over Sarah’s expression as she gazed down at him, and Todd felt his mind grow suddenly alert, as if a cool breeze had blown all the confusion away. It was as if the whole summer—his whole life—had been imperceptibly narrowing down to this very moment, the slight widening of her eyes, the little catch in his breath, the sudden realization that they’d crossed a line so big and bright it was hard to believe he hadn’t seen it coming.
Part Four
Meet Me at the Playground
Swing Me
THE PLAN WAS LOVELY IN ITS SIMPLICITY. AFTER WRITING NOTES to explain their sudden absences and concealing them in places where they were certain to be found, Sarah and Todd would slip out of their respective houses, rendezvous at the Rayburn School playground, and head north for a few days at the seashore, giving all the interested parties some time to absorb the shock of their departure and begin the difficult process of orienting themselves to a new alignment of the domestic planets.
For the fleeing lovers, of course, this adjustment period would also be a honeymoon—premature by one standard, overdue by another—a celebration of the miracle of their finding one another, a hard-earned opportunity to savor the fruits of their daring. For three whole days, at the very least, they’d have nothing to do but eat, sleep, and make love whenever they wanted to, free from the banal responsibilities of child care, the ceaseless petty time pressures of family life. The sweetness of t
he prospect was almost too much for Sarah to contemplate.
Todd had originally proposed Monday as the date for their getaway, but it wasn’t doable. Richard was returning that night from a weekend business trip to California, and wouldn’t be home until close to midnight under the best of circumstances. After that, though, the coast was clear: He would begin a two-week vacation upon his return, leaving him free to watch Lucy for as long as Sarah needed him to. So they pushed the plan back to Tuesday, despite their eagerness to get the messy part over with as quickly as possible.
Sarah endured an excruciating weekend alone with Lucy, her mind a million miles away from her daughter’s annoying questions (What you favorite color? Why they call it raisin?) and highly specific requests (Hang me upside downy. Now drop me on the couch). But there was never any way she could see of deflecting the questions or ignoring the requests, so she said, Blue, and I don’t know, that’s just what they call it, and carried Lucy into the living room by her ankles and dropped her on the couch, and then did the same thing five more times without a break, all the while thinking, In two days I’ll be in a motel room near the beach with the man I love. In two days I’ll be a different person. In two days I’ll finally be happy.
It was unbearable to be so close to something so momentous and have nothing to do but wait, and no one to talk to about it. She was besieged by worries—he’s going to change his mind, he’ll never be able to leave her—and in desperate need of reassurance, but Todd had made her promise not to call or e-mail him if she could possibly avoid it, as he had reason to believe that his communications were being monitored (it didn’t help that he shared a cell phone and an e-mail account with his wife). She had no contact with him until Monday afternoon, when they made cautious eye contact at the Town Pool, separated by a distance of about fifty feet. His mother-in-law was sitting right next to him, but she was momentarily distracted by a problem with one of her sandals.
We still on? she asked with a hopeful grimace.
You bet, he replied, the vehemence of his nod undercut by the slightly fearful grin that accompanied it. But why shouldn’t he be scared? She was scared, too. It was okay, though. Just a glimpse of him steadied her nerves, made her feel like she wasn’t about to explode into a million tiny pieces after all. For the first time in days, she remembered how to breathe.
I love you, she mouthed, but he must have misread her lips. His face contorted into an uncomprehending slack-jawed squint, like he was a kid who didn’t yet realize he needed glasses to see the blackboard.
Oh, forget it, she mouthed. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Richard had come to San Diego not for business as he’d told Sarah, but for Beachfest 2001, the summer meeting of the Slutty Kay Fan Club. It had not been an easy decision to make. He’d resisted the temptation for weeks, just as he’d done with the panties, telling himself that it was out of the question, not even worth thinking about: Grown men didn’t belong to fan clubs, and even if they did, they didn’t lie to their wives and plunk down a couple of grand to attend a meeting on the other side of the country. And what if his plane went down on the way? Would people read about his idiotic mission on the obituary page? Richard Pierce, 47, died last week when his plane crashed in the Nevada desert. Pierce, a successful branding consultant for Namecheck, Inc., was on his way to a gathering of the Slutty Kay Fan Club, a web-based group of perverts that he had recently joined. He leaves behind a wife and a three-year-old daughter, as well as two grown daughters from a previous marriage.
But it was no use trying to scare himself straight. As the big weekend approached it became painfully clear to him that nothing was going to deter him from making the pilgrimage—not the dishonesty, not the expense, not even the possibility of shameful public exposure. Partly it was jealousy that motivated him: He couldn’t stand the thought of other men—braver, less self-deluding men—cavorting with Kay while he sat home, stewing in the juices of his own cowardice masquerading as virtue. But there was something else, too: the desperate hope that doing something so extreme might somehow cure him. Maybe the way out of his obsession with Slutty Kay was through it. Maybe some contact with the flesh-and-blood person would release him from his bondage to the virtual woman.
It was worth a try. Partying on a beach in California with his fellow weirdos couldn’t be any more embarrassing than sneaking into the bathroom at work five times a day to sniff a pair of panties whose odor had grown so faint that he was no longer even sure if he was smelling anything at all beyond the fumes of his own sick imagination.
An oddly familiar-looking man—he was white-haired, with a big belly and a ruddy, incongruously youthful face—was waiting among the chauffeurs at the airport, holding up a sign on which the word Beachfest! had been scrawled in a notably shaky hand. When Richard did a double take, the guy stepped forward.
“Here for S.K.?” he asked in a soft, conspiratorial voice.
Richard cast a quick glance at the air travelers and professional drivers milling around him. No one seemed particularly interested in his business. He nodded discreetly. The red-faced man stuck out a meaty, slightly humid hand.
“Walter Young. I’m president of the fan club.”
“Richard Pierce. Jeez, it was nice of you to come all the way out here.”
“It’s not that far,” Walter said, balling up the sign and jamming it in his pants pocket. “Besides, I know what it’s like to show up in a strange city at night, no one to meet you. I spent a lot of years on the road, trade shows, sales conferences, client meetings, all that shit. I’m retired now, thank God. I go where I want, when I want.”
“Good for you,” said Richard. “I’ve still got a few years on the chain gang.”
“Counting the days, huh?”
“You know it.”
On the way to the baggage claim, Walter persuaded Richard to cancel his rent-a-car. He explained that the club had arranged for a van to shuttle everyone from the hotel to the beach and back.
“Saves a lot of trouble,” Walter said, wrenching the suitcase out of Richard’s hand as soon as he hefted it up off the conveyor belt.
“Don’t be silly,” said Richard. “You don’t need to carry my bag.”
“It’s not a problem,” said Walter, yanking up the pull-handle and dragging the bag along as he headed for the exit doors. “I’m sure you’re tired from your trip.”
“Thanks,” said Richard, hurrying to keep up.
“Yeah, like I said, we started doing the van last year. Carla got tired of all the headaches. People getting lost, showing up late in a pissy mood. Who needs it, right? Plus, this way you can have a few beers and not have to worry about the drive home, you know?”
Richard was happy to hear it. He had long ago reached the age where having to make his own way around an unfamiliar city had lost all its charm and had become a genuine source of anxiety.
“This is great,” he said, following his guide out into the balmy night. “You guys thought of everything.”
“That’s Carla for you. She insists on doing things first-class. That’s just the kind of lady she is.”
“I’m a little behind the curve. Who’s Carla?”
Walter glanced at him for a second, apparently to see if he was kidding.
“Kay,” he explained. “In person she’s Carla. Slutty Kay’s more like a stage name or something. You know, just for the web site.”
Walter clicked the remote and the trunk of his white Chrysler Concorde popped open.
“That’s weird,” said Richard. “She doesn’t really seem like a Carla.”
Walter heaved the suitcase into the trunk.
“That’s what her mama named her.”
“I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem right to me.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
The hotel was only a fifteen-minute drive from the airport, and Walter talked the whole way about recent club events, many of which Richard knew about from photos archived on sluttykay.com. They were just pulling i
nto the parking lot of the Holiday Inn when he suddenly realized why his companion looked so familiar. In one of the “Hot Tub Encounter” photos that Richard knew so well, Walter was sitting naked on the edge of the tub with a beer in one hand and his other hand resting on the shoulder of a naked old guy with leathery skin and a sad little tuft of white hair on his chest. The two of them were leaning close together, engaged in a lively conversation, apparently oblivious to the fact that Kay was having sex with a bald man just a couple of feet away.
“You want to get a drink or something?” Walter asked as he pulled up in front of the office. “After you check in, I mean.”
“I don’t think so,” said Richard. “I’m kinda beat. Still on East Coast time.”
Walter nodded. “Yeah, that jet lag’s a bitch. Just be in the lobby tomorrow, eleven o’clock sharp. You snooze, you lose.”
“I’ll be there,” Richard promised, holding up his right 7hand. “Scout’s honor.”
Walter returned the salute.
“Scout’s honor,” he laughed. “I like that.”
Carol told him he needed to get to the hospital right away.
“Call a cab,” she said. “And tell them it’s an emergency.”
Ronnie hung up the phone, gripping the edge of the counter for support while he waited for the strength to return to his legs. This was it. He could sense it in his sister’s voice, in the very fact that she’d lowered herself to speak to him personally, which she had not done for years. For the past week, even with their mother in critical condition, Carol had somehow managed to arrange it that they were never at her bedside at the same time. If she needed to communicate with him, she used Bertha as an intermediary, adding insult to injury.
He looked around the kitchen in a fog of dread and disbelief, his mother’s unmistakable presence radiating from the avocado tea-kettle and toaster; the peeling wallpaper with illustrations of various herbs and spices, their names written helpfully below; the brown medicine containers lined up like good little soldiers on the windowsill, the prescription labels all facing out. It didn’t seem possible that she wouldn’t be coming home. Just the thought of it made him feel dizzy and imperiled, as if he were standing on a high balcony with no railing, looking straight down at an empty parking lot.
