The Hole We're In

by Gabrielle Zevin

  “Honestly, Helen, Dad seemed to be taking care of it—”

  “Jesus, Patsy! You’re such a baby! Don’t you know by now that Dad doesn’t take care of anything?”

  Patsy continued, “And I basically got fired from the Suck ’cause of her. And I’ve got problems of my own, you know.”

  “Yeah, you’ve been away for five years. What problems do you have exactly?”

  Patsy said nothing.

  Helen sighed. “Here’s what you’re going to do now. You’re going to drive down to Mom and Dad’s, and you’re going to see Mom and talk to her and find out everything that’s happened since last Friday. Then you are going to call me back.”

  “Seriously, Helen, I’ve got stuff to do today.”

  “Yeah? Like what? Big appointment with Dr. Phil? You just told me how you got fired from your job. Seems like you should have some free time on your hands.”

  “Screw you. I’m a soldier, man. I’m an eff’n soldier, and I’ve got problems—”

  “Patsy, I want you to know that I respect that you served your country, but you are not in Iraq anymore and you are not a little girl.”

  “FUCK YOU. You’re not here. You’re in your big fancy Texas house with your big fancy husband. You are not my commanding officer, Helen. You don’t get to give me orders.”

  “Go deal with this, Patsy.” Then Helen hung up.

  Though Patsy was annoyed, she called the Pharm and asked him if he’d heard anything about her mother. He had. The rumor was she’d been put in some kind of a place.

  “What kind of a place?” she asked. “You mean like a crazy-person place?”

  He said nothing for a beat, so she knew that was likely his theme. “The Sabbath Day Hospital past county line,” he said. “I thought you would have heard.”

  As it was Magnum’s day for the car, she asked Pharm to drive her there.

  They arrived around two. The receptionist asked if they were there for visiting hours, and Patsy asked why else would she be there. She and Pharm gave their names, and then they were led into an expansive, sunny room with bars on the windows. Most of the inmates were engaged in activities like macramé or painting, but not George. George sat by herself in the corner.

  “Hi, Mom,” Patsy said.

  Her mother’s eyes took a second to focus, but then she recognized her. “Patsy.”

  “And I brought my old friend, Marcus, with me, too. You remember Marcus, right? He’s the old pastor’s son.”

  “Oh...,” George said, and she averted her eyes and waved at him. Patsy told the Pharm to go amuse himself so that she and her mother could have it out alone.

  “It’s nice here,” George said.

  “Yeah,” Patsy said, and then because she couldn’t come up with anything else, she added, “lots of activities.”

  “Roger thought I needed a break.”

  “Probably not the worst idea Dad ever had.”

  “Yeah, that would have been getting his PhD.”

  George’s reply surprised Patsy, and she didn’t know if she should laugh. “Well, Helen wanted me to come and check that you were doing OK.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Good. Then I guess I’ll be on my way now.”

  “Wait, Patsy. Stay for a bit, would you?”

  She sat back down, but her mother didn’t seem to have anything to say. The silence made Patsy uneasy, so she said, “Sorry I didn’t come help you that day at the Slickmart.”

  George waved her hand. “I was acting crazy. I see that now. I had gotten some antidepressants”—she didn’t mention that they had come from the Pharm—“and I guess I was taking the wrong ones. Made me hallucinate a bit.” She laughed. “Now I’m here, it’s pretty much getting straightened out.”

  “Good,” Patsy said.

  “Patsy. You work at the Slickmart. I just want to know, what’s gonna happen to that ceiling?” she asked.

  “Well,” Patsy said, “I guess they’ll eventually repair it and put a new one up.”

  “Oh!” George’s hands rose up to her face.

  “I thought you knew it wasn’t real,” Patsy said.

  “I do know. I just thought it was beautiful. It was something beautiful in this world, and even if it wasn’t real, it was still beautiful and it was still a miracle and there aren’t that many of those these days, I think.”

  “OK,” Patsy said. “OK, OK.”

  “I just hate to think of that ceiling sitting in some Dumpster!” Pastor Mom grabbed her daughter’s hand and looked her right in the eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “Sure,” Patsy said. “I’m sorry, too.”

  “No... For your father. For the way he’s acted toward you. I told him to give you the money, but... And for when he sent you away in high school...”

  Patsy laughed. “Mom, I don’t even think about that anymore. It was so long ago.”

  George nodded and looked at her hands. “I’m proud of you,” she said finally.

  Patsy wanted to tell her to fuck off with her pride. She hadn’t joined the military to make anyone proud, and if her parents had been any sort of folks to her, she wouldn’t have joined at all. But she knew her mother was in a weakened state. So she just stood up and left. “See you around,” said Patsy, and George turned back to the window.

  ON THE DRIVE back to Buckstop, the Pharm stopped to make several “deliveries,” and then they ate at a Fuddruckers. “This place is repulsive,” he said.

  “Pretty much.”

  About halfway through their meal, the Pharm said, “You know, I feel sort of bad about selling your mom those antidepressants since you told me they were the reason for her seeing things and all.”

  Patsy shrugged. She was in the middle of a bite.

  “Maybe I could do something to make it up to her.”

  “Like stop selling pharmaceuticals?”

  “Truth be told, I was already thinking about doing that. Drug lords are one thing, but those pharmaceutical companies are evil,” he said. “But as far as your mom goes, I was hoping for something more personal.”

  While finishing her Diet Coke, she considered the question. She set down her glass. For the first time in a very long while, she knew exactly what action to take.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I know something she would really like.” And, she told him, and the Pharm agreed to it. She had never found it hard to convince the Pharm of anything. He was predisposed toward breaking the law.

  Pharm paid the check at Fuddruckers, and then they drove to the Slickmart, where Patsy French was no longer an employee.

  Breaking in was easy. This wasn’t a Wal-Mart, after all. The security system only worked from the front of the store, so they went through the back, through the loading area. The only thing holding the loading dock door in place was a combination lock of not much better quality than one found in a high school gym. Patsy sprayed it with liquid nitrogen (which they’d stopped to pick up at the twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart superstore), and the Pharm smashed it with a hammer. They were in.

  They walked down to the condom row. The Pharm shined his flashlight on Him. Jesus was still beaming down on the contraceptives, though He was a bit blearier than He’d been when last she’d seen Him. “It really does look like the Messiah,” the Pharm said somewhat reverently.

  “Only when you’re shining the beam that way,” Patsy said as she grabbed the flashlight.

  “What’s your plan for getting the Nazarene down?” he asked.

  “It’s simple,” said Patsy. She had spent plenty of time considering that ceiling in the brief time she’d been employed there. “See, those are all just separate acoustic panels. We just need a tall-enough ladder. And then we can take the three Christ panels down one at a time.”

  “Patsy, we’re never gonna be able to reach that. The ceiling’s like thirty feet up. We’re gonna need an apple picker.”

  She thought that the store might have one. She and the Pharm searched around for a bit
, but they both came up empty-handed.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  For thirty seconds, Patsy felt rather discouraged, and then she remembered Lenny and George’s secret passage above the store. “We go from above,” she said.

  They went back outside and then up the metal staircase that led to the attic space.

  “Sweet Jesus,” the Pharm said. “There’s a liquor store up here.” He noted all the empty bottles of Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark.

  “Yeah.”

  The Pharm kicked over one of the empty bottles and a bit of liquor seeped out. “You suppose this is what might have caused the blessed miracle below?”

  She thought it seemed like a reasonable theory.

  They ascertained that the attic structure wasn’t a weight-bearing part of the building proper, but more a freestanding loft space, like there might be in a church. There was an approximately two-foot gap between the floor of the attic and the ceiling of the Slickmart. They concluded that if they pulled up the floorboards they’d be able to reach the triptych of Jesus panels, no problem. So the Pharm pulled up one of the floorboards—they were pretty thin and warped—and that wasn’t enough space, so he pulled up another. Patsy leaned over the new hole and found she could reach the middle panel that comprised the Jesus stain (basically, His nethers). The upper and lower panels were more challenging because her arms were too short. She pulled herself out of the gap and the Pharm said he would give it a go, though he was not particularly tall either. He stretched himself as long as he could. She said, “Hey, buddy, don’t kill yourself. We can just open kill yourself. We can just open another board, and then I’ll be able to do it.” But the Pharm said he could reach. About twenty seconds later, he pulled out the panel that depicted the Savior’s skirt and sandals.

  Patsy looked down the gap. She could see the condom row that had so enraged her mother. From these heights, it was a long way down.

  The Pharm returned for the final panel.

  “You sure you can reach?” she asked. She offered to hold his feet.

  “I’m fine,” he said. His body stretched out long and catlike. “Got it!” he called.

  That’s when the horrible thing happened, though Patsy didn’t see it. She just heard a whoosh and a clatter and a thud and a bang and a whimper.

  “Pharm!” she called. “Marcus!”

  There was no answer.

  As she ran down the stairs back into the Slickmart, she was pretty sure she’d killed her last friend in the world. She thought of Magnum and Minnie and how aggrieved they were going to be and how much it was going to blow to have them on her conscience, too. She started a round of AlphaBravos just to keep herself together, but it didn’t help. She kept forgetting what came after Juliet.

  She ran to the condom aisle. Marcus was not moving, but his head appeared somewhat cushioned by several bags of menstrual pads that had fallen from the shelf. The final panel of the Son of Man, His crowned head, was lying beside him, smashed straight through.

  Marcus was passed out, but still breathing. She couldn’t tell which parts of him were broken.

  “Marcus,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m gonna go call the ambulance.”

  “Don’t,” he said, then he opened his eyes and she almost cried for joy. “Just help me out of here.” He reached for her, which she took to be an incredibly positive sign, because she was worried that if he was alive, he was going to go all Christopher Reeve on her. He reached for her again, and then he passed out.

  “Pharm,” she explained though he wasn’t listening to her anyway, “I shouldn’t move you. You could have, like, a back injury. And you shouldn’t be moved.” This was something she’d learned firsthand during her time in the service and also back when she was a cheerleader, though that seemed too long ago to even count.

  She decided it was a far better thing that they both be arrested than that the Pharm be paralyzed because she so foolishly tried to move him. She left him on the floor and went into the employee break room, where she dialed 911.

  She explained that she was a disgruntled former employee of the Slickmart and, due to her many grievances, she had gone into the store after hours and, long story short, her friend had fallen through the roof and was now in need of medical attention.

  After an extended pause, the operator said he would send an ambulance. Though the man had chosen not to say, Patsy assumed there would be a cop car, too.

  Patsy Makes a Phone Call

  FIVE TIMES THE sheriff asked Patsy if she’d like to make her phone call, and five times Patsy told her no. The sixth time the question was posed, Patsy threw up, which wasn’t by way of response, though she worried that the timing might have made it seem otherwise. “Sorry, ma’am,” Patsy said. The sheriff was wearing one of those ridiculous empire-waist maternity uniforms and was significantly with child. Patsy hoped the pregnant cop wouldn’t be the one to have to clean up the mess. “Really sorry,” she repeated.

  “Hate to break it to you, but it’s not the first time that cell’s been used that way and it’s not the worst use it’s ever been put to neither,” the sheriff said. “You drunk?”

  “Pregnant.”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “I wish I were drunk,” she said.

  “Amen to that,” said the sheriff.

  “Do you know what happened to my friend?”

  The sheriff shook her head. “Nope. You could call him if you want.”

  “I think he’s probably on some pretty serious painkillers right now.”

  “You could call your husband or whoever, and they could probably find out for you,” the sheriff suggested.

  “It’s late,” she said. “I’d rather use my call tomorrow. No sense worrying all my folks tonight.”

  “Well, most people don’t feel like you, that’s for certain,” the sheriff said. And then she picked up a book from her desk, probably because she’d decided that a person who didn’t want to make a call was not worth bothering with.

  Patsy could see that the book was an old copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. “I had to read that for school,” she said.

  The sheriff nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t really like it at the time, but my dog’s named for one of the characters.”

  “Boo?” the sheriff guessed.

  “Scout.”

  “Good name.”

  “I’m sorry you have to be here on my account tonight,” Patsy said. “Away from your family and all.”

  “It’s my job and I thank the Lord for it.”

  “Truth is, I really don’t know what the heck my friend and I were thinking.”

  The sheriff smiled and said nothing, and Patsy didn’t feel comfortable bothering her anymore.

  She lay down on the cot and tried to fall asleep. In the distance, she could hear Handel’s Messiah, and though it was soft and sweet, she still found it difficult to sleep through. She couldn’t really quiet her thoughts anyhow. She was thinking of Scout, and of Magnum and the Pharm letting Scout run off, and then she was thinking of dogs in general and how they were so much better than most humans, and then she was thinking how even Iraqi dogs have a hard time of it.

  “Maybe I will call my husband,” Patsy said.

  The sheriff let her out of the cell and then pointed her in the direction of the phone. “I’ll only be a minute,” Patsy said.

  The sheriff shrugged. “No one’s timing you, honey.”

  Patsy dialed Magnum’s cell phone. When he finally answered after seven rings, she could hear music and people talking in the background. A party.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “We did it!” he said. “We made the world’s largest cupcake!”

  “That was tonight?”

  “Yeah, I told you about it. You should have come. Anyway, the local news was there, and my picture might be in the paper and on TV. Hey, could you tape the eleven o’clock news for me? It’s no big deal. Just if you happen to think of it.”

  P
atsy said she would try but that she wasn’t sure if they had any blank tapes.

  “Where are you?” he asked. He hadn’t recognized the phone number that she’d been calling from.

  “Just out,” she said. “I’ll be home soon.”

  “You sound funny,” he insisted. “Is the Pharm with you?”

  “No ... No ... I was just thinking ... About this dog, of all things!” She tried to make her voice light and silly, but she couldn’t quite manage it. “Did I ever tell you about this dog my unit adopted?”

  “No, Patsy,” Magnum replied. He sounded more sober than he had before. “You don’t say much about all that.”

  “Well, we called him Old Yellow, ’cause he was yellow—pretty eff’n creative, I know. He was a yellow dog with a speckled gray belly that almost touched the ground and liquid brown eyes like molasses. He weren’t of a breed you necessarily see in the States. Sad to say, but I remember this dog in greater detail than most any other non-American I met Over There.

  “One day, we’re disarming this old schoolhouse. They thought the Hajjis were stockpiling weapons, but it had mainly turned out to be a place where a bunch of folks were living. So, the people were confused about why we were there, and we were confused about why we were there, too, and one of them fired a shot ’cause people will defend what’s theirs, no matter how shit it is, to the death. And we fired shots. And the dog had come along with someone, and that dumb beast got in the way, I reckon.

  “I waited till I got back in the truck. I bit my lip right through, till my teeth were touching, but it didn’t help none.

  “I tried to hide it from Smartie—did I ever tell you about Smartie? He was probably the person I was closest to over there. You’d like him, I think. I tried to hide it from him, but he seen. How could he not?” She could hear Magnum breathing. It was quieter. He must have gone outside. “You still there?” she asked.

  “I’m here, Patsy.”

  “You’re quiet.”

  “I’m just listening is all.”

  “So what I told Smartie was that I was sweating something fierce. Pretty lame excuse, but it really was eff’n hot, by the way. I said I was sweating something fierce, but my stupid mouth failed me a bit on fierce.