Ready to Fall

by Marcella Pixley

  I’m lucky.

  Fish walks behind me.

  Whenever I lose my balance she touches my back, my shoulder, my elbow, my waist. I start stumbling a lot more than I need to, because it feels good having her touch me. I want to reach back and grab her hand, but I’m worried I’ll lose my footing completely and we’ll both catapult into the pit. That would be bad. Plus it would greatly reduce the chance of more touching in the future. So instead of holding her hand, I call out, “Whoa!” and then when she puts her hands on me to help steady me I say, “Wow, thanks, Fish. Jeez.”

  “Everyone okay?” The Monk calls back.

  “Just dandy,” screams Ravi behind us. “It’s Monday night. A great night to die.”

  “Not funny, Ravi,” says Fish.

  “Who was being funny, Miss Bossypants?” says Ravi. “I’ve never been funny in my life. I don’t even know how to be funny, thank you very much, you small pink-haired caterpillar. Now let me concentrate on not plummeting to my death.”

  “Ravi can be kind of bitchy,” says Fish.

  “Um. By the way,” says Ravi, “I heard you. And it turns out that this statement is the third time you have assassinated my character and also, by the way, I don’t appreciate the constant patronizing back-chatter, and finally by the way, I can see you petting Max as though he were a pussy cat and it makes me want to puke.”

  “He’s just joking,” says Fish.

  “No,” says Ravi, “not joking. Not joking at all.”

  I stop walking and turn around to glare at Ravi.

  “What,” says Ravi. “You think that look is intimidating? You think you’re upsetting me?”

  “Just cut it out, Ravi,” says Fish. “You’re being melodramatic.”

  “Again, the character assassination.”

  “Now, children,” says The Monk. “Don’t make me come back there.”

  “She started it,” says Ravi.

  “We’re almost there,” says The Monk from his place in the lead. “Look, just a few more yards. There’s the swimming hole right down there. Oh man, look at it.”

  The swimming hole is frozen, circled by the rock wall on all sides. It’s the color, or the lack of it, that catches me off guard and makes me almost gasp, the way the faded sky and the rock and the ice all take each other’s shadows, so it becomes a muted watercolor, as though someone had brushed a gray painting with their thumb, smearing the lines so all the parts of the picture blend together and it becomes impossible to distinguish where one natural body begins and the other one ends. I want to be part of that. I want my body to be part of that faded landscape.

  We stand on the edge, just staring at it. I raise my face to the sky and watch the snowflakes dance. I open my mouth and stick out my tongue and allow snowflakes to twirl in, cold as tin. Inside my pocket, the woman on the shard shivers deliciously. She lets the snow fall on her cheeks.

  If I die tonight, I will die having swallowed glorious snowflakes. I breathe the snow. I want to take winter into my lungs. I close my eyes and metastasize.

  The Monk checks the time on his phone. “Okay, guys,” he says. “It’s eight o’clock. Me and Ravi and Smitty and Griswald need to be back in the dorm at ten. Are we going to waste our precious time standing here staring at this thing, or are we going boot skating?”

  “Boot skating!” screams Smitty at the tops of his lungs as though it were a battle cry.

  “Boot skating!” screams Fish.

  Griswald grins and gives a silent thumbs-up.

  “Okay, then,” says The Monk. “Let’s go.”

  The Monk lets out a barbaric battle cry and runs the rest of the way. We follow, propelled by the momentum of his sudden dash.

  The frozen swimming hole stretches in front of us.

  The Monk leaps onto the ice and slides out to the middle. He twirls around and around, whooping and gliding, a dark form moving in the snow.

  One by one, we join him. First Smitty and then Griswald, then me and Fish and Ravi, each of us finding our own way onto the ice.

  At first, we circle in our own orbits, arms outstretched, twirling, testing our balance, running and then sliding, falling down on our knees and crawling on all fours. There is nothing in the world besides the ice and the quarry and the snowy sky and the six of us. And the tumor expanding like a beer belly in my brain, but I won’t think about that sadness now, I will just twirl and at least I’ll know that I had one good night before I died. Besides my dad and Grandma and Lydie and the twins, there will be at least five other people at my funeral, which is not bad, considering my track record. Maybe we could get Donna Pruitt to give my eulogy. That would be eleven of us. Good enough for a party. Too bad I’d miss it on account of being dead.

  It doesn’t take long for people to begin orbiting closer to each other, except Griswald, who just stands there looking up into the sky like he’s waiting for the mother ship to come back and take him home. Ravi skates over to The Monk and tries to waltz with him. The Monk grabs Ravi, puts him in a headlock, and flings him across the ice. Smitty falls on his knees and slides, screaming Stellllaaaa! Fish just spins, her hair a wild pink blur. I spin too. The world whips around me like a merry-go-round. A blur of gray. Again and again and again. At a certain point I become aware that Fish is spinning near me, and then, suddenly, she has grabbed my wrists and we are spinning together and the whole world spins around us. We are the vortex, smiling at each other, our faces a crazy blur, and for just a moment, for just a single blessed moment, I am happy.

  ALL THINGS FRAGILE AND DESPERATE

  On Tuesday, there’s an inch of new snow on the ground. Not enough for a snow day or a delayed school opening, but enough to make the world look new, with the sun coming through bare trees, making things sparkle. There is something so hopeful about snow in the morning before it gets covered in footprints and tire tracks, the way it covers the gray in the sidewalks and the streets, brushing its smooth white palms over everything.

  Grandma’s in her flannel nightgown, sleeping at the breakfast table. One hand is curled around a coffee mug, the other is open in her lap.

  “Jean,” says Dad at her shoulder. “We’re heading out now.”

  Grandma doesn’t move for a moment, but then she stirs, inhaling sharply.

  It’s strange how much smaller a person looks when they’re not moving. They seem so fragile, impermanent as paper. Movement gives the illusion of immortality. Stillness catches in your throat and makes your heart ache. It promises more stillness one day, just like Hamlet says, To die, to sleep—no more. Grandma’s fingers are crooked, her white hair rising from her head like smoke.

  I uncurl her fingers from the mug, hold her hand, and put my face down to her. “Grandma,” I say near her ear. “I’m heading to school.”

  She opens her eyes and looks at me, blinking.

  “We’ll be heading off now,” Dad says gently.

  Grandma takes my other hand and pulls herself up until she’s steady and planted on two feet. She looks into my eyes.

  “I wanted to ask you something. Did you have fun with your friends last night?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Actually I did. I’m sorry I didn’t bring home dinner for you.”

  “That’s okay,” says Grandma. “I’m just glad you had a good time. Why did that girl have pink hair?”

  “I don’t know. I guess she likes it that way.”

  Grandma laughs. “You crazy kids,” she says. “You beautiful, beautiful crazy kids.” And then she swings my hands back and forth the way she always does, kisses each fist, and shuffles out of the kitchen. We hear her footsteps up the stairs and then above our heads to her bedroom.

  Dad and I never talk much on our way to school, but today our silence is as comfortable as new white socks as we drive past the frosted houses, most cars still parked on the side of the road, each still dusted in a layer of snow. Dad turns on the radio and we listen to the country-and-western station, all the way through the center of town, the shops and office b
uildings still sleeping. Normally, I’m not a fan of country music. The way it pulls at you. But today, for some reason, I don’t mind it. I lean my head back and listen to the promises it makes. Music. The new sun leading us down the road, rising through the trees in the school parking lot, where we stop for a while and sit in the car, the heat still going. The tumor is sleeping. When I cover my mouth to yawn, I slip the shard into my mouth and let it rattle against my teeth like a lozenge, sliding my tongue against the surface, and it’s all kind of peaceful because we’re early, and there’s no point in rushing. Because somehow, sitting here together, just the two of us, surviving like this feels almost okay.

  Then, suddenly, a battered car peels into the parking lot and the world is filled with dissonance again. A woman, elbow out the window, cigarette between her lips, sucks in and blows smoke out fast so she can scream at the kid slumped down beside her as she jerks into the parking space. We can hear them arguing above the music, their voices shrill and frightening.

  “Slut!”

  Dad turns off the truck.

  I put the shard back in my pocket.

  We listen to them shouting at each other.

  “Stupid, selfish slut!”

  “You think I should do something?” says Dad.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  The voices rise even higher.

  “I wish I lived with Dad! I hate you! I’ve always hated you!”

  Movement inside the car and the sound of the girl sobbing.

  We rush out of the truck.

  That’s when I see who it is. Fish.

  She flings open the door.

  “You’re not leaving until you apologize!”

  “I’m not apologizing to you!”

  The mother grabs her backpack.

  Fish yanks and pulls until the strap breaks from her mother’s grasp.

  She falls forward with the backpack out the open door of the car and onto the pavement.

  I run over to help her up.

  Her lip is bleeding.

  Her mother slams the passenger door, cranks her music, and starts backing up, cigarette butt sailing out the open window. She tears out of the parking lot at full speed, the pounding music fading as she roars down the road toward town.

  “I’m going to call the police,” says Dad.

  He reaches into his pocket for his cell phone.

  “No!” says Fish. Then she puts her hand on his arm. “No need to call the police, Mr. Friedman. I’m fine. We were just having an argument and it got a little heated. Please. I’m okay.”

  “Has she ever been rough like that before?” Dad asks.

  “Never,” says Fish. “I swear.”

  “Your lip is bleeding,” says Dad.

  “Please, Mr. Friedman. We just get on each other’s nerves. But most of the time things are fine. I fell out of the car, that’s why my lip is bleeding. It’s my own fault. I’ve always been kind of a klutz. Please don’t call the police. She didn’t lay a hand on me.”

  “I’m calling the school then,” says Dad. “Somebody should know what happened.”

  “What should they know?” says Fish, her eyes blazing. “That we got in an argument? Why do they need to know that?”

  Dad strides back to our truck and starts dialing numbers on his phone.

  We watch him turn away from us to talk.

  I reach into my pocket to find a folded Dunkin’ Donuts napkin. I take it out and press it against her lip very, very gently. Her eyes are red from crying.

  “Ow,” she says.

  I press it even more gently, barely touching her.

  “What happened?” I ask, looking into her eyes.

  “Mom doesn’t like The Monk,” says Fish. “She knows I was out with him last night. And then this morning she saw this drawing I did of us in my sketchbook and she just lost it. I didn’t mean for her to see it. I was so stupid.”

  “What drawing?”

  Fish doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me.

  “What drawing?” I say again.

  “You don’t want to see it,” she says.

  “I do,” I tell her. “I want to see what you drew.”

  “Okay,” says Fish. “I guess, if you really want to.”

  Fish reaches into her backpack for her sketchbook.

  She opens it.

  There is a drawing of Fish and The Monk in the nude, handcuffed together.

  My heart stops. Fish is looking at me, waiting for me to say something, but I don’t know what to say. The tumor wakes up and sets off a flare. He starts waving red flags behind my eyes. Fish reaches out and touches my arm. I can’t look at her.

  Dad walks toward us.

  Fish shoves her sketchbook into her backpack. I help her zip it closed.

  “Hey,” says Dad. “I just called the nurse’s office and told them what happened. She wants you to stop by right now so she can take a look at you, okay?”

  “Okay,” mutters Fish. “But you’re making a big deal out of nothing. I’m completely fine.” She starts walking away.

  “Go with her, Max,” says Dad. “Make sure she gets there.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m going.”

  Dad watches as I catch up to her. Fish is crying again. At first I can’t tell, but then her shoulders start shaking. I take her backpack and put my arm around her hesitantly. She stiffens, but then she looks at me, and gently, slowly, we walk together up the path to Trowbridge Hall, Fish leaning against me, until all of a sudden The Monk comes hurtling toward us from nowhere.

  “What’s going on?” he says.

  She looks down so at first he doesn’t see her lip, but then he takes her chin and moves her face toward him.

  “Jesus Christ!” he screams.

  He pushes me, as though I am the one who did this to her.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “My mom,” says Fish, crying harder. “She knew we were together.”

  “Did she hit you?”

  “No,” says Fish. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “What did you see?” The Monk asks me.

  “They were fighting,” I tell him. “We heard it. And then they were pulling on the backpack and Fish kind of fell out of the car. She’s supposed to go to the nurse’s office so they can check her out. My dad called.”

  “Oh,” says The Monk. “Your dad called. Well, aren’t you a hero. Daddy made a flipping phone call.”

  The Monk puts his arm around Fish’s shoulders and takes over like he belongs there, walking fast, owning her all the way up the staircase, guiding her like a person who knows how to take charge. Fish holds on to the railing and The Monk holds on to her. I trail behind with her backpack, watching how easily their bodies fit together, his arm around her all the way to the nurse’s office, where he opens the door for her and sits her down on the orange vinyl couch and pretty soon the school counselor is there with a clipboard, and she is asking all kinds of questions and Fish is saying No, no, it’s not like that, and The Monk is rubbing her back, with me holding her backpack like a dog.

  I clear my throat so they can hear about what I saw, so they can know that I was the one who helped her up, I was the one who wiped her lip. I was the one who comforted her and walked with her gently, in the beginning, before The Monk came and took over. I was the one who was there. But there is no space for me. Now the nurse is putting ice on her lip and the counselor is still asking questions, and Fish is saying No, no, I swear, and The Monk keeps kissing her head.

  I know I should wait, but I take a step backward instead because I can’t deal with the jealousy. I should be the one at her side.

  Selfish bastard, says the tumor. This isn’t about you.

  Gently, slowly, I lower Fish’s backpack onto the nurse’s desk, making sure it’s upright so she’ll see it and remember it when she and The Monk leave here together. The counselor sees me standing at the desk and frowns because this is none of my business, and she says, “Time for class,” and ushers me out
of the room with a single stern glance.

  UNGEZIEFER VERWANDELT

  Fish and The Monk arrive late to World Literature together. He leads her to her chair by the elbow and helps her get settled. Dr. Austerlitz glances at Fish for a moment and frowns. Then he goes back to making grammatical connections between Rilke and Kafka. He is explaining the syntactical structure of their sentences, and the differences between the English translations and the original German. Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt. I try to make eye contact with Fish, but she is looking down. All around us, kids are taking notes, scribbling furiously like little drones. Dr. Austerlitz lectures about subordinate clauses and the various and layered meanings of words like Ungeziefer, which could mean cockroach or dung beetle or vermin, but could also mean the symbolic separation between a human being and the order of his natural world.

  According to Dr. Austerlitz, Kafka uses The Metamorphosis to struggle with the theme of the natural versus the unnatural. He looks in the mirror and sees something unrecognizable. This makes sense to me. My mother’s face, for instance, was always moving and shifting in life, emotions flickering around her eyes and mouth and cheeks as thoughts occurred to her, like clouds across a sky, but in the coffin, her face was still and the blood had drained from her cheeks and her lips had already grown thin and grim. As a result, her face in death was almost but not entirely devoid of human characteristics, it looked instead like a mask, a terrible experiment in de-animation.

  “You see,” says Dr. Austerlitz, prowling between the rows and wiggling his bony fingers as though he were a tremendous insect, “Gregor Samsa is transformed both physically and metaphysically. But this is not the kind of metamorphosis that happens in nature—the pupa into an insect, the caterpillar into a butterfly. What happens to Gregor Samsa is hideous and unnatural. He has forgotten what it means to be human. Do you agree with this?” He is standing beside my desk, obviously expecting me to say something.