“Are you a friend of Will’s mother?” she said.
“I am,” he said. “We’re visiting for a few days, too. She’s upstairs having a little lie-down. Long car trip and all. Plus, we were up late last night.”
Something about the way he said “we” caused Pen to begin formulating a complicated word problem inside her head: if Will was twenty-six and the oldest child, which he was, and if Charlotte had gone to college, which she had, and if she’d gotten married after graduation, which Pen was pretty sure she had, even if it had been right after graduation, which it might have been, and even if she had been slightly pregnant at the time, which Randall Wadsworth liked to insinuate when he was feeling mean, how old would that make Will’s mother? Mental math was not Pen’s strong suit, but, eventually, her brain managed to eke out a number: forty-nine.
Will’s mother was, at the very youngest, forty-nine years old, and, unless Damon were a vampire—which was possible, since he sort of looked like a vampire—he might have been thirty at the very oldest, which would mean he was dating (and this word seemed entirely wrong, although Pen realized it should not), if he was dating her, a woman at least nineteen years his senior. And that woman was Charlotte Wadsworth, Will’s mother. When Pen, using emotional calculus, factored in the two measly months Will’s mother had been separated from Will’s father, along with the two measly months plus two measly weeks Will’s mother had been sober, assuming she still was sober, plus Will’s sky-high hopes and bone-deep worry for his mother, the only answers she came up with were these: a vision of her friend Will running, fleet and unsuspecting, toward a mountain of fresh worry and her own heart beating out the words, Oh, Will. Oh, Will. Oh, Will.
PEN’S FINDING DAMON CALLAS SLEEPING ON THE PORCH OF THE summerhouse marked the point at which things got weird, but things did not progress from weird to surreal until after Pen got drunk.
Pen got drunk. Not falling-down drunk, but not just tipsy, either, which meant that she got drunker than she ever usually got. She didn’t plan to get drunk at all, but after she, Will, and Damon got back from their walk to the sea glass beach—a weirdly unweird excursion—while Will and Damon sat in Adirondack chairs in the yard, making conversation in a weirdly normal way, Pen went into the house to get herself an apple and found the bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse on the counter, open and half-empty. It should not have been on the counter, open. It should have been in the refrigerator, unopened, the way Pen knew it had been when the three of them had left the house, with Will’s mother still asleep upstairs.
Pen panicked. She could not let Will see the bottle. She could not let Will’s mother drink any more of it. With shaking hands, she got a large wineglass, a goblet really, out of the china cabinet in the dining room, poured herself a glass of the wine and gulped it down. Then she poured another big glass, draining the bottle, and hid the bottle in the cabinet under the sink behind dishwashing soap and two boxes of scouring pads. For a moment, she leaned on her hands against the counter, her stomach burning, her head bowed, and whispered an already drunken prayer inspired by the box of scouring pads, “S.O.S., S.O.S., please S.O.S.” Then she picked up the glass of wine, drank it, washed the glass, put it away, and walked outside.
“WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST POUR IT OUT IN THE SINK?” ASKED AMELIE.
“I should have, but, honestly, for some reason, I didn’t think of that.”
“That reason possibly being your subconscious desire to have a drink?” said Amelie.
“Or two,” said Pen ruefully.
WHAT PEN SAW HAPPEN IN WILL WHEN HE GOT BACK FROM HIS RUN had struck her as both marvelous and chilling: after she’d raced out to meet him on the driveway, giving him a rushed explanation, as much as she had one, for Damon Callas’s presence on the porch, and after she’d watched confusion followed by anxiety followed by revulsion followed by anger pass over his face and she’d heard him spit out the words, “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he had pulled out what Pen would later describe as “the big WASP guns.” He had slid his emotions into some noiselessly opening and shutting WASP filing cabinet, turned his face into a blandly friendly WASP mask, and put on good manners like a suit of clothes.
Instead of pounding Damon’s towering, scrawny body into the summerhouse yard, Will had made conversation, which is how Pen found out that Damon taught at the art school where Charlotte was taking a class (“Not my class, of course,” he’d told them with a quickness and a reassuring tone that effectively turned “Not my class, of course” into “Will, I am banging your mother.”), that he was a painter and collagist, that his hands were purple from dyeing cloth for use in one of his pieces, that he was “six-foot-six in stocking feet” but had not played basketball in high school or anyplace else.
When Damon asked if they’d mind showing him around a bit, Will had taken him to the sea glass beach, the two men walking ahead, talking in mellow tones about the history of the North Shore, and Pen following behind, fighting off the urge to fall to her knees on the stony beach and wail, “Will, let’s go home!”
It wasn’t until Pen had disappeared the wine and was walking unsteadily out of the house that she saw Will’s remote demeanor crack, just for a second. He looked hard at Pen’s face and said, “Everything okay?” The question made Pen want to weep.
She scraped together a feeble smile and said, “Should we start making dinner?”
“That reminds me,” said Damon, giving his forehead a light smack. “There’s a cooler of wine in the car I need to unload. Give me a hand, Will?”
Pen reeled at this, but everything else—Will, the house, the birds in the trees—seemed to stand still. She could see Will’s face, which was not full of rage, but of sadness.
“Oh, Will,” she said.
He turned toward Damon and said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” asked Damon.
“I guess you don’t know that my mom’s a recovering alcoholic. She hasn’t had a drink in over two months.”
Damon drew his heavy brows together, confusion all over his face, then he closed his eyes and sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”
Before he was even finished saying it, Pen had walked over to Will and taken his hand. “Don’t,” she told Damon.
The screen door sighed its sigh, and Will’s mother stepped onto the porch. She was tall and straight and wore a long, loose sweater dress and boots. Pen noticed that she’d cut her hair; it hung at either side of her high-cheekboned face, blunt and expensive-looking.
“Why don’t you say I’m a work in progress, Damon?” she said brightly. “Like all of us.”
“Mom,” said Will. His cheeks were red; he looked the way he looked when he had a fever, but his voice was ice-cold. Pen wanted to put her arms around him and take him away; she wanted to make his mother and Damon and the last couple of hours disappear off the face of the earth. Oh, please, she prayed, let it end, make them leave.
“Hello, darling,” said his mother. “I didn’t know you were coming. Lovely to see you.”
“Lovely to see me?” said Will.
“You and Pen, both,” said his mother, smiling. “Hello, Pen.”
“Hello, Mrs. Wadsworth.”
“Charlotte, please.”
“Charlotte,” said Will with a raw laugh. “That’s great, Mom. Very hip. Like your new boyfriend and your cooler of wine.”
“Please don’t be rude,” said Charlotte.
Will turned to Pen and said, in a low voice, “I need to get out of here before I lose my mind.”
“I’ll go get our stuff,” said Pen.
“No, I mean right this second,” said Will. “I need to drive. Or something. I’ll come back.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Pen.
“No,” said Will, shaking his head and letting go of her hand.
“Why not?”
Will gave her an exhausted look with something scarier hovering behind it, “Because I really can’t talk to you r
ight now about why in the hell you’re drunk and when you got that way.”
Pen took a step back, her eyes stinging. “Will!”
“You have the keys, right?” He held out his hand, and Pen gave them to him.
“Promise you’ll be careful. Promise you’ll come back,” she said, but Will was already turning away from her and running toward the car.
IN ALL OF THE BIG HOUSE, PEN COULD FIND NO PLACE TO BE. SHE’D started out in the guest room, but its door, like most of the doors in the house, was too warped by salt air and age to shut properly, and the music, along with the laughter and voices, poured hotly into the room just as the moonlight poured coolly through the white curtain to pool on the floor and make shadows on the wall. Pen gulped water and tried to read, but the words swam in front of her eyes, and all she could do was lie on the bed, trying not to hear the noise from downstairs, straining to hear the sound of Will’s car. Emotions washed over her: mostly anger—at Charlotte, drinking wine, dancing while her son’s heart broke somewhere out in the dark; at Damon for letting her drink, for dancing, for being attractive, for being here at all; at Will for leaving her alone with them—but also sorrow and worry and something else, a cut-loose reckless feeling that might have been desire if it had any suitable object to fix on.
At midnight, Pen could not stand it a minute longer. She pulled on her shoes and the fisherman’s sweater, yanked the quilt off the bed, and crept downstairs, wincing at every creak the steps made, wanting to be invisible. From the landing she could see Will’s mother in the living room, dancing with surprising grace across the floor to sit in Damon’s lap. How could you? she thought. How could you? She had to stop herself from shouting the words. Later, she would remember this righteous indignation with shame.
They didn’t see her. Pen let herself out, the sound of the screen door reminding her of how arriving at the house just a couple of days ago had felt like a blessing. She had planned to sit in the porch rocker, but it was too close to what was happening in the house and, when she looked at the chair, she remembered seeing Damon there, asleep, so she went out into the backyard to get one of the Adirondack chairs and clumsily carried and dragged the big, awkward bulk of it to the grass a few yards out from the porch, a spot that gave her a clear view of the driveway. Then she cocooned herself in the quilt, tucked her hands deeply into the cuffs of the sweater, and sat down to wait for Will.
She woke, or half-woke, to the feeling of hands on her shoulders.
“Will,” she whispered, with sleepy gratitude. “You’re home.” She opened her eyes.
Damon knelt on the grass in front of her, his face close. Pen blinked and leaned away from him, confused.
“Hey there,” he said, smiling. “You must be cold out here.”
“Where’s Will?” Her voice was a croak.
“Not back yet,” said Damon. He took his hands off her shoulders and put them on the wide, flat arms of the chair and said it again, “You must be cold.”
Then he kissed her, and, after a numb few seconds, his warm mouth began waking her up, and the restless free-floating wanting that had been moving through her for what she now realized had been days, weeks even, contracted and concentrated to the point at which their two mouths met. She didn’t think about Charlotte or Will or even Damon, because the man kissing her wasn’t Damon. Or he was Damon and at the same time wasn’t. It didn’t matter. When he began to pull away, she put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him back to her. She kissed him because he was there. She kissed him because he was kissing her.
“TRANSFERENCE,” SAID AMELIE.
“What?” said Pen.
“You transferred your desire for Will onto Damon. Clearly.”
“Except that I didn’t have desire for Will.”
“Oh, please.”
“Trust me, he was my best friend. I definitely would have noticed if I had desire for him.”
“Or maybe,” said Amelie smugly, “that’s why they call it the subconscious. Because it’s subconscious.”
SHE MIGHT HAVE PUSHED HIM AWAY. SHE MIGHT HAVE SLID FROM THE chair to the grass, opened the quilt, and pulled him inside with her. Pen would never find out because what broke, ragged, through the night was Will’s voice, saying, “How could you do this?” And just as quickly as they’d come together, Pen and Damon broke apart, Damon dropping back to sit on the grass.
“Will, man,” said Damon, but Will didn’t even glance in his direction. Will stood in the darkness just beyond the circle of porch light so that Pen couldn’t see his features, but she knew he was looking at her. In alarm, she jumped to her feet, shucking the quilt off her shoulders and starting toward him.
Will held up his hand. “Stop.”
Pen stood still. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Will took a step toward her and the light fell on his face. His expression, not closed and angry, as she had expected, but wide open as a child’s, stunned and hurt, made her hate herself.
“Him?” said Will.
“I don’t know why I did it,” Pen said pleadingly. “I’m so sorry.”
“You—” Will broke off and just looked at Pen. “That’s not something you would do.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“What does that mean?”
Pen didn’t know what to say.
“It means you’re down here making out with my mother’s whatever-the-hell he is. Boy toy. It means I don’t know who you are.”
“Yes, you do.” Pen was crying. “You know you do.”
“Will, brother. It was just a kiss,” said Damon, with an attempt at a laugh, and Pen shut her eyes (had he really said “brother”?), waiting for an explosion.
But when Will answered, his voice was simply cold. “My mom is what? Passed out someplace? Seemed like a good time to give old Pen here a go?”
He shook his head in disgust, then ran up the porch steps. Before Pen realized what he was doing, before she could stop him, Damon was trotting up after him. He put one giant, bony hand on Will’s shoulder. Oh, God, thought Pen, her chest tightening, whatever you’re about to do, don’t, don’t don’t.
“Listen,” said Damon, with a smile that was probably meant to be kind and ingratiating, but under the circumstances, just looked smarmy, “I want you to know that there’s no betrayal going on here. Nothing like that. Your mom and I are a no-strings operation, strictly casual.”
A frozen second. Then the bottom dropped out of the world, and all of them crashed downward into a roaring nightmare, worse than a nightmare because it was so real, so flesh and blood. Pen’s voice screaming “stop” might have been a fly buzzing. Nothing stopped. It went on and on. Until: Will’s mother on the porch in a yellow bathrobe, yelling, “William, William”; Will turning his head to look at her; Damon catching him off guard and, like a battering ram, knocking him across the porch and into the corner of a railing.
Will lay still, his head bleeding onto the gray-white boards of the porch.
Pen ran to him—stepping over Damon, who sat slumped against the wall of the house, holding his rib cage and gasping—with a single throbbing thought: If he is dead, I will die.
Will’s mother got there first. She dropped onto the porch next to him, put her face close to Will’s, and pressed her fingers to the side of his neck. “My baby. My darling boy,” she cried out. “I am so sorry.”
Pen’s heart seemed to stop, but she saw Will put his hand on his mother’s hand and hold it for a few seconds. When he let go, he sat up, pressed his hand to the side of his head, groaned, then twisted sideways and vomited over the edge of the porch into the bushes.
“Forgive me,” said his mother in the most regretful voice Pen had ever heard. “It’s all my fault.”
“Not all,” said Pen. Will took his hand away from his head and stared uncomprehendingly at his wet red palm, and Pen saw that it wasn’t the time to sit around talking about blame.
“You’re going to the hospital,” she said.
Will turned h
is battered face up to her, and, to her amazement, laughed a short, bitter laugh.
“What?” asked Pen.
“Who will drive me?” said Will. “You’re all drunk.”
“I’m not,” said Pen. “I drank that wine hours and hours ago. I’m as sober as I can be.”
She watched the archness fall away from his face and the hurt flash back into his eyes. She knew what he was thinking as surely as if he’d spoken the words aloud: You kissed my mother’s piece-of-shit boyfriend, and you weren’t even drunk. Pen quashed the useless impulse to apologize again and said, “Can you walk to the car?”
Pen heard a long groan from behind her and turned to Damon. “What about you? You need to go, too?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, working his way slowly up the wall, until he was standing, hunched and still breathing hard. He shot a glance at Will. “You’re crazy,” he said, with a strange lack of anger. “You’re going to get yourself killed one day.”
“Maybe,” said Will.
“Go inside the house,” said Charlotte to Damon. “Go on.”
When he was gone, she started to help Will to his feet, but he picked up her hands in both of his and moved them off him, impassively, as though they weren’t his mother’s hands or hands at all. He reached for the porch railing and pulled himself up, wincing every time he shifted position. Blood was running down his neck and the front of his shirt.
“Wait,” said Pen. She ran into the house, catching a fleeting glimpse of Damon on the living room sofa, ran upstairs to the linen closet, and grabbed an armful of thick white towels.
Back on the porch, she handed Will a folded-up towel for his head and took hold of his arm.
“I don’t need help,” said Will balefully.
“Yes, you do,” said Pen.
THEY DIDN’T TALK ON THE WAY TO THE HOSPITAL. PEN DIDN’T TALK because she couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t scolding or apologizing, and she assumed Will didn’t talk because he was too busy hating her and bleeding. He had refused to lie down in the backseat and sat with the towel between his head and the front passenger-side window, leaning as far away from Pen as it was possible to lean. The ride lasted twenty minutes, twenty minutes of silence, Pen catching glimpses of Will’s unmoving face in the occasional beams of light from outside, and by the end of the ride, Pen found she had reached an odd, wrung-out state that was almost like peace. The tumult of blame, anger, confusion, worry, regret was all gone, everything was gone, except for love, of course, from which there was no relief.
Falling Together Page 17
