The Time It Takes to Fall

by Margaret Lazarus Dean

“Wait,” I whispered, “Just a second. It will be better if we wait a second.” I wanted to put off going out there until things had calmed a little.

  “She’s calling us,” Delia said again, and for the first time I could remember, Delia pulled her hand from mine. I remember the rubbery way it slipped away from me, skin from skin, and then her small red back upright as she walked away from me.

  4.

  MR. BIERSDORFER SAT IN MY FATHER’S RECLINER. ERIC HOVERED behind it in the shadows, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He looked up briefly as I came in, then looked away. He was wearing the same bow-tie outfit he’d worn to the ballet, and it was getting to be too small on him; his wrist bones poked out past the sleeves.

  Eric’s mother was perched at one end of the couch; my father sat at the other. My mother was nowhere in sight, and the kitchen resonated with clinking noises. Delia leaned against my father’s leg while he absentmindedly patted her back. There was nowhere left to sit; I stood in the doorway to the dining room.

  I had only ever seen Mr. Biersdorfer in his picture on the calendar. In real life, he looked older and angrier. His hair was thinning at the front, and his eyes, a light blue, were small and dull. He looked at me, then at Delia, but when no one said anything to us, he looked away.

  “Eric, aren’t you going to say anything to your friend?” Mrs. Biersdorfer asked without interest.

  “Hi,” Eric said without looking at me.

  “So Frank,” Mr. Biersdorfer said. “What’s a man got to do to get a drink around here?”

  “I thought my wife was getting some drinks, but maybe she’s busy with the canapés,” my father said in a jovial voice I had never heard him use before. “What can I get for you?”

  “If you’ve got any scotch in there I wouldn’t turn my nose up at it.” His voice made me jump every time it went off. “And my wife looks like she could use a glass of white wine.”

  Everybody watched as my father disappeared into the kitchen. Then Mr. Biersdorfer slapped his hands against his knees and looked around the room as if for the first time. We all looked around with him. I’d been so proud of our living room earlier in the day, but now that the Biersdorfers were here, everything seemed shabby and second-rate. The carpet was drab and worn, the furniture discolored and lumpy. The curtains hung limply from their rack. I tried to imagine what the Biersdorfers might say about our house as they drove home. I watched Mr. Biersdorfer, trying to decide what his exact words might be, and his eyes caught on me.

  “Hello, little girl,” he said to me. I’d already come to the conclusion that he was the sort of adult who ignored children entirely, so I was astonished when he addressed me.

  “Hi,” I said very quietly, almost whispering.

  “You must be Dolores,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I answered. We stared at each other for a long moment. Then he looked away in stages, and wound up staring at the kitchen door. My father burst through it a moment later holding two squat glasses and handed one to Mr. Biersdorfer. My mother followed him carrying a full glass of red wine.

  “I’m so sorry,” she gushed to Mrs. Biersdorfer. “I know you wanted white, but I only have red tonight because we’re having beef!” By the time she got to the end of her sentence she sounded more angry than apologetic. I knew she felt tricked by the request for white wine.

  “Red is just fine with me,” Mrs. Biersdorfer said. “I actually prefer red.” She picked it up and took a small sip.

  “Delicious,” she pronounced. My mother gave a tense smile and disappeared into the kitchen again. She reemerged almost immediately carrying a tray of pigs in a blanket, and circled the room with them. After we had each taken one, she seemed unsure of what to do with the tray.

  “Here, let me take that,” my father said, popping up again. “You sit with our guests for a few minutes.”

  My mother reluctantly sank into his seat on the couch. I watched Mrs. Biersdorfer nibble at one of the pigs in a blanket carefully with big horsey teeth.

  “Well, I’m just so glad we could finally all get together,” my mother started. “Dolores has told us so much about you.” Eric’s eyes darted to me for a second. He seemed to be considering whether this could be true. Of course it wasn’t, but I blushed imagining what Eric might think I’d said about him.

  “Well, we were glad to know that Eric found a friend at Palmetto Park,” Mrs. Biersdorfer answered. “This school has been a hard adjustment for him.” Eric glowered at his mother.

  “What’s Frank cooking up for us in there?” Mr. Biersdorfer asked.

  My mother pinked. “Oh, he’s just getting things organized,” she said. “I’ve already done all the cooking. Everything is almost ready.”

  “I was about to wonder,” Mr. Biersdorfer said with a laugh, just as my father appeared in the doorway.

  “I said, I was just about to wonder, Frank,” Mr. Biersdorfer called to him. My father raised his eyebrows in polite confusion. “I was just about to wonder who does the cooking around here, you or your wife!”

  “All the best chefs are men,” Mrs. Biersdorfer said quietly.

  “My wife says all the best chefs are men!” said Mr. Biersdorfer as my father drifted into the room, unsure of where to stand. “But I can’t boil an egg without help. I must not have been given that talent!” Mr. Biersdorfer smiled broadly around the room as if he had made a joke. My mother beamed back at him.

  “Shall we all come to the table?” my father asked timidly.

  “Oh! Well—okay,” my mother stammered quietly, giving my father a quick glare. She clearly felt that this announcement was one she should have made herself. My father looked at her and gave a little shake of bewilderment, his hands turned up.

  We all wandered into the dining room and took our seats. Mr. Biersdorfer was at the head of the table; Mrs. Biersdorfer was on my left. My mother took her seat closest to the kitchen door while my father slipped into the kitchen again. The table was covered with a new white tablecloth, the creases from the package still sharp. I wondered why she had gone to the trouble of refinishing the table a few days ago if she was going to cover it up. Our places were set with my parents’ wedding china, a pattern of blue flowers I’d only seen a few times. At the center of the table wobbled a single silver candlestick with a half-burnt purple candle in it.

  Eric was seated across from me. Delia sat next to him and stared up at him, her mouth slightly open. Eric pretended not to notice and scowled at the candle. Mr. Biersdorfer cleared his throat over and over again.

  He picked up his empty glass and rattled the ice. “Could use another one of these,” he said quietly.

  My mother didn’t seem to hear. Mrs. Biersdorfer subtly shook her head no without looking at him.

  “Maybe later,” he said. My mother heard this: her head snapped up, and she studied his face, trying to understand what this meant.

  My father appeared in the kitchen doorway, balancing a platter of meat surrounded by potatoes and carrots. Mr. Biersdorfer let out an appreciative holler. My father crouched at Mrs. Biersdorfer’s elbow.

  “May I serve you?” he asked.

  She examined the tray. “Of course,” she said skeptically. “What is it?”

  “Standing rib roast,” my father answered. “…But it’s not really standing anymore. It seems to have sort of fallen over. But it’ll taste the same.”

  “It’ll taste the same,” my mother repeated quietly. My father circled the table, serving everyone. My mother watched Delia and me, making sure we remembered not to start eating until the grown-ups did. I held my hands in my lap. Delia held her fork in her fist and stared at Eric, leaning forward so far her chin almost touched her food. When my father finally sat down, we all began to eat.

  “This is delicious, Deborah,” Mrs. Biersdorfer said after a few minutes.

  “Yeah, it’s good, Mom,” I added. This was the sort of thing I’d thought my mother wanted me to say, but she didn’t seem to hear. No one else said anything for a long
time. Eric coughed quietly and swallowed hard. Somehow, this tiny movement called everyone’s attention to him.

  “Eric,” my mother ventured. “It was so nice of you to invite Dolores to the ballet. She’d never been before. She loved it. She came home asking to take ballet lessons!”

  This was a lie, but none of us were about to point that out. As she spoke, Eric developed unhealthy-looking red blotches on each cheek. He let a second go by, unsure how to answer, then simply nodded at her miserably. When it became clear he wouldn’t answer, Mrs. Biersdorfer looked over at me.

  “Are you taking class?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. Mrs. Biersdorfer looked at my mother.

  “It was just a thing of hers,” my mother said, using her manicured hand to brush away the importance of this thing. “If she watches gymnastics on TV, she wants to take gymnastics. When she sees a shuttle launch, she wants to be an astronaut. If she sees men working at a construction site, she wants to do that too!”

  “They need to begin the training very early,” Mrs. Biersdorfer said. “I’m a patron of the Orlando City Ballet. Some of the dancers started when they were three. If you don’t have the foundations by eleven or twelve, well, then professional dancing is out of the question.”

  As she spoke, Delia started to kick a table leg in a slow, annoying rhythm. She was staring at Eric, as she had been since she had first laid eyes on him. No one said anything to her, but we all watched the purple candle vibrating in the center of the table every time she kicked.

  Mrs. Biersdorfer continued to talk. “Their bones need to grow a certain way, the joints. And they need to develop the ankles. The ankles need to be strong enough to go en pointe by thirteen. Otherwise, it’s out of the question.”

  “Oh, is that so?” my mother asked pleasantly. “I never knew that.” She was more comfortable in this type of conversation. She knew the right sorts of things to say. Delia kept kicking, but my mother didn’t seem to notice.

  “Oh yes,” said Mrs. Biersdorfer. “I met a dancer from one of those little places in the Soviet Union, Slovakia or Slovenkia, something like that. She grew up in a one-bedroom apartment with thirteen people. Sometimes they didn’t have enough to eat, but she took class every day with a prima ballerina from when she was three. Every day! Sometimes she gets stuck en pirouette, like Baryshnikov. Her balance is so perfect she just keeps going around and around and she can’t get down!”

  “Delia!” my mother hissed suddenly. Delia froze, and the kicking stopped. Mrs. Biersdorfer pursed her lips and took a sip of her wine.

  “Well, maybe we should look into signing you up for some lessons,” my mother said to me. We both knew she had no intention of doing this.

  “Where would you recommend she start?” my mother asked Mrs. Biersdorfer.

  “Well, there is a very fine school in Orlando. Many of the dancers in the OCB teach there. But it’s rather expensive, I’m afraid.” She paused for only the tiniest second. “But they do have some scholarships for promising youngsters,” she offered. We all thought that over for a minute.

  “You’ll have to write down the name of it for me before you go,” my mother said. Either she was doing a good job of hiding her reaction or she didn’t realize that she had been insulted. My father did, though. His face had gone bright red, and he suddenly cleared his throat and asked Mr. Biersdorfer a question he seemed to have been saving for an emergency.

  “I read about the issues on 51-C,” he said. “Sounded pretty serious.”

  “Oh, don’t even say ‘51-C’ to me,” Mr. Biersdorfer answered, clearly relieved to have a topic on which to hold forth. “Well, right from the beginning, as you know, it’s been a nightmare. We’ve never had to swap one Orbiter for another.”

  My mother realized the men were talking NASA business, and looked back and forth between my father and Mr. Biersdorfer eagerly.

  “I read that there was also a high helium level during the countdown phase,” my father added politely.

  “That’s right. Then, on top of all that, the BFS didn’t take over at separation.”

  “Backup Flight System,” I whispered. Eric looked up at me for a second, then looked down at his plate again.

  “Luckily, it was nominal during reentry,” Mr. Biersdorfer said. “Could have been bad.”

  My father gave a professional grunt of amusement and shook his head slowly.

  “I’ll tell you honestly,” my father said. “When I read about this mess in the paper, I said to Deborah, ‘I sure hope my team had nothing to do with this.’”

  Mr. Biersdorfer’s hearty laugh thinned to an uncomfortable cough. “Heh heh, no,” he said. “Your team did a hell of a job on this launch. Everyone knows what a nightmare those SRBs have been from the beginning, and your team has kept us flying despite all that.”

  My mother beamed at the sound of praise. Her hair had gone limp over the course of the evening, and a few of the curls had flattened completely. She watched Mr. Biersdorfer, her cheeks flushed from the wine, her eyes sparkling in the candlelight.

  “That joint rotation problem is one of the biggest messes we ever had to deal with,” Mr. Biersdorfer said, leaning toward my father. “Because the specs say one thing, but if the rocket doesn’t look like that, you can throw those specs right out the goddamn window! Because you got to keep in mind, it was the contractor that fucked it up! Excuse me, kids.”

  Mrs. Biersdorfer frowned.

  “I’m sorry for talking shop at the table, ladies,” Mr. Biersdorfer said to my mother. “But Frank here ought to know that his team did a hell of a job!”

  “Well, I sure am glad to hear that,” my father said quietly.

  “And I sure feel bad that your team was rewarded the way they were for their efforts, I’ll tell you that too!” Mr. Biersdorfer was shouting so loudly now I could feel the sound resonating in my fork.

  My father cleared his throat and looked down at the table, nodding.

  “I’ll tell you another thing, Frank, this situation won’t go on much longer like this either! We’re going to need your skills again real soon!”

  My mother sat up straight, smiling at Mr. Biersdorfer. She brought her hands together into a single, silent clap. My father didn’t move or respond.

  “What are you doing these days, Frank?” Mr. Biersdorfer asked. “Just taking some time with the family?”

  “I’ve got a situation out in Titusville,” my father said. “I like to keep busy. I like to stay challenged.”

  “Well, that sounds great,” said Mr. Biersdorfer. “I tell you, when we need you again, we might not be able to get you back!”

  This was met with a silence that seemed to vibrate in the room. My father didn’t move but smiled tightly at his butter knife while turning it over and over on the tablecloth. An uncomfortable long second went by.

  “Oh, he wants to come back,” my mother said finally, in a tiny voice. Surprisingly, Mr. Biersdorfer heard it.

  “Well, great!” he said. “Because we’re going to want you back real soon!”

  My mother served coffee and encouraged Mr. Biersdorfer and my father to continue talking in the living room while she and Mrs. Biersdorfer cleaned up in the kitchen. I was embarrassed to think of Mrs. Biersdorfer scraping food into our garbage can when I knew she didn’t have to do those things for her own family. I wondered whether I should have told my mother that the Biersdorfers had a maid; if she’d known, she might not have let Mrs. Biersdorfer help in the kitchen. But it was too late now.

  Eric followed the men into the living room and plopped himself forcefully onto my father’s recliner. Delia curled up on the couch next to my father like a dog and went to sleep. There didn’t seem to be anything for me to do but talk to Eric.

  “Do you want to see how that chair can recline?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said.

  “Do you want to see my room?”

  He paused, staring angrily in the direction of our fathers. He didn’t want to see my room
any more than I wanted to show it to him, but we both wanted to get away from the others.

  “Okay,” he agreed, and followed me out of the room. Halfway down the hall, I remembered the bags full of junk, but by then it was too late. I led him into my room and turned on the light. The room was extremely messy, even without the grocery bags piled by the door. Eric walked in carefully, trying not to step on books and clothes. He went to the bookshelf over my desk and squinted at the spines, his head cocked to one side.

  “Are these all the books you have?” he asked. Most of them were about the space shuttle.

  “Yeah.”

  I thought of trying to explain this, but I couldn’t think of any excuse for owning so many space books. He pulled a book off the shelf and flipped through it: The Space Shuttle Operator’s Manual.

  “Your sister seems really different from you,” he said after a while, without looking up from the book.

  “I know,” I answered. “She’s retarded.” Eric could be a terrible snob about intelligence, and I wanted to set myself apart from Delia.

  “No, she’s not,” he said, scowling. “She’s just younger than you. That’s not the same thing as being stupid.”

  “I was smarter than that when I was five,” I said.

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “How do you know? You didn’t know me. I could already read chapter books when I was five.” Eric didn’t respond to this, but I could hear his response anyway in my head: Just because you could read chapter books doesn’t prove you’re smarter.

  We settled down to read. Eric lay stretched on his stomach on the floor. A couple of times, I thought to show him my space notebook, to see what he would think of it, but I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Eric had read almost thirty pages of The Space Shuttle Operator’s Manual by the time his mother called for him.

  In the living room, the Biersdorfers were putting on their coats. “We so enjoyed finally getting to meet you all. We must do this again sometime,” Mrs. Biersdorfer was saying. My mother smiled, her face flushed, and my father slipped his arm around her waist in a showy way I had rarely seen.