Walter Falls

by Gillis, Steven;

  For the longest time, Gee had tried to define the breakdown of her marriage, how beyond the events of last year their separation was the culmination of a thousand different battles, each significant and unrelated to her feelings for Tod. (“Not Tod,” she felt it was important to note, though the more she focused on removing him from the equation, the harder it was to be sure.) What reason then? She composed a list: The distance between us, the estrangement that entered my bones like a chill and made it impossible to recall a time I moved with any sense of joy or freedom when I was with you. How our love turned old, the incompatibility of our desires—not always this way. How your honesty (lost), your resourcefulness (narrowed), and faith (ignored) all faltered until everything which once appealed to me was no longer there. What reason? (Walter!) Because your approach to life turned rigid and wore me down. (It wore you down, too.) Because your love became constricting and rid itself of trust. Because you became harsh and cynical. Because you lied. (I know, you can accuse me too, but it’s true.) Because you allowed the very worst within you to take over. Because I’m frightened when I think back. Because you were unjust and forced me to pity you at a time I should not have been made to do so. Because it takes too much energy for me to care the way I once did. Because it’s over. That’s all. There’s nothing more to it really.

  She reached across and found Tod’s hand. The feel of him and the ability to touch his flesh was something she still was not completely used to, and yet the strain in her face gave way while rolling onto her side, she said, “Turn off the light.” She shifted her hips then and lifted her left leg over his center. (“Here I am,” she thought. “Here and now.”) Her needs were not immediately sexual, although the proximity of Tod’s body stirred her. She felt the length of him, the contour of his flesh and texture of his muscle, the weight of his arm, the width of his fingers, the size of his penis, even his smell all different from Walter’s, and placing herself on top of him, she offered and received sweet kisses as she settled and set herself down. “It’s you,” she whispered then. “Everything,” she confided, all deep and light and certain.

  CHAPTER 20

  In the end, after a period of high speculation, Janus agreed to accept the Trust, and delighted, I considered the moment a great triumph. Such a glorious feeling! What a magnificent confirmation! I cheered and spent the next three days finalizing the last details, reviewing the clinic’s debts, and putting the first checks in the mail. New supplies were purchased and equipment ordered. As happy as I was for Janus, and my desire to help the clinic notwithstanding, my own expectations could not be discounted. I laid no claim to virtue being its own reward and waited eagerly for my beneficence to provide me with favor.

  Signs that I was on the right track included the quick $9,000 I made acquiring Invensys P.L.C. stocks just before the company’s planned spin-off into the United States. (I also made a significant profit buying and selling Corning, Inc., Juniper Networks, and JDS Uniphase.) My health continued to improve, and motivated, I added several dozen push-ups and sit-ups to my afternoon walk, tightening my chest, stomach, and arms. Myrian finished her series of canvases, which turned out wonderful. She said that I inspired her—“Absolutely, Walter Brimm!”—and as a gift, offered to paint a wall of my apartment. “It’ll be fun. Tell me, what would you like?”

  I dismissed the idea, then changed my mind and showed her again the photograph in my wallet of Gee and Rea. “Can you do this?”

  Myrian studied the snapshot, and after a brief hesitation in which her gaze did not quite reach my eyes, she smiled and said, “Sure I can, Walter.” and so she did.

  Further proof of my good fortune came early in April as I learned that I’d passed all the tests put to me by the court-appointed doctors, and as my prize I was allowed a visit with Rea, “Saturday,” the letter said. “Eight a.m. until five p.m.” And there it was. Fantastic! (“Yes!”) How remarkable the universe! How ultimately efficient and fair! Here was the reward I was after, the notion that one good turn deserved another. If I could be vanquished as a consequence of all I did to Tod, then certainly I should profit from the charity I performed. This was the principle upon which I hung my hat, a theorem of supreme sensibility which held that equity and rightfulness were mandated in such a grand and glorious world.

  It was with high expectation then that I pulled up in front of my old house at eight in the morning, awake for hours, too excited to sleep, my thoughts leaping back and forth between Gee and Rea, Rea and Gee. Such a time as this—so long in coming!—warranted celebration, and twice on the way over I couldn’t resist and rolled down my window to shout, “Hooray!”

  The front of my house was bathed in morning light that swept out across the lawn, soft and gold. (Janus had loaned me his car, which I took yesterday and had the oil and filters changed, the brakes adjusted, and the carburetor cleaned, and in my exuberance, I also purchased four new tires, windshield wipers, muffler, pipe, and shocks; the total investment more than the car was currently worth. “A gesture is all,” I laughed at Janus’s surprise.) I parked in the drive and moved quickly up the walk. Rea answered the door and how pleased she was to see me! “Daddy!” Her reaction so pure of heart as to buckle my knees. “Look how tall! How tall!” I repeated over and over and almost wept as I scooped her up and held her in my arms, feeling her flesh and bones, the smell of peppermint and Ivory soap on her skin, the moment dream-like and as perfect as I imagined in the weeks before.

  “Where’s your mother?” I glanced about, anticipating Gee’s entrance, picturing her coming into the hall, her hair freshly combed, in a new dress, her eyes wide and eager to see me. How I longed for her then, my excitement nearly too much to bear. “Mommy’s upstairs,” Rea said as I set her back on the floor. She went to the table by the door and retrieved a folded piece of paper and pen. I opened the note and recognized Gee’s writing at once: “Rea is to be home no later than five. Please feed her a timely lunch, though not dinner, and list below where you plan to take her. In case of an emergency,” she felt a need to add, and signed at the bottom with a simple scrawling of the letter G.

  The note caught me by surprise. Such avoidance on her part seemed ill-suited. (At the very least, I thought she’d say hello, if for no other reason than to make sure I was, in fact, well.) I did as instructed nonetheless, and in the process tried to place a positive spin on why my wife chose to hide away upstairs. No doubt her reticence to appear reflected on her desire to not intrude on my reunion with Rea. Perhaps, too—I indulged further—the note was a sly way of enticing me to go upstairs, as maybe she wanted a moment alone with me and was using her absence as a lure. Despite the prospect, I decided to play things safe and instructed Rea to “Say goodbye to your mother.”

  “Goodbye, Ma,” she yelled up the stairs.

  “Goodbye, darling,” Gee’s voice thrilled me with its sweet proximity. “Have fun. Be a good girl.” Her tone was tender, a gentleness in her delivery which was lilting and maternal, and yet her inflection was also oddly pitched, forced high, unnatural and nervously rehearsed. I considered again running up to her and taking her in my arms, if for no other reason than to soothe her, but the possibility was much too real, and frightened of making a fool of myself before the day even began, I turned and led Rea out the door.

  I’d spent Thursday afternoon shopping with Myrian and the back seat of Janus’s car was now filled with several wrapped packages—two new schoolgirl outfits, dolls and books and computer games—which Rea delighted in finding and asked at once as I buckled her in, “Are those for me?”

  “Well, let’s see,” I teased, and handed her one before we drove off. By the time we reached Fourth Avenue all five boxes were opened, the wrapping paper tossed off, and the empty cartons piled once more in the back seat. Rea’s joy made me want to sing. (“La-dee-dee!”) Her features, while more handsome, were similar to mine, with narrow chin and deep-set eyes, a roundness to her cheeks, and sharp extension to her nose, though her air was her mother’s, the
way she spoke—even so young—with a conciseness and candor consistently aimed at striking the nail on the head. “So many presents,” she thanked me with an examining look.

  Although we’d spoken several times of late by phone, I anticipated our actual reunion requiring a period of adjustment, and as such, I decided to keep to a specific itinerary; protecting against any awkward moments when uncertainty might arise between us and in our sudden silence Rea would gaze at me and wonder, “So where have you really been, Daddy, and what are you doing back now?” I informed her of my plan for us to have breakfast, but Rea said she’d already eaten, so we went to Peterson’s Pancake House just for juice and to view Myrian’s work. I hoped the dinosaurs would impress her, and was pleased when she walked enthusiastically up and down the length of the wall. She was fascinated when I told her I knew the woman who painted the mural, and asked me then, “Is she your girlfriend?”

  The question threw me. “My what?” I was startled she could even think in terms of my having a relationship with someone other than her mother. “No, of course not. She’s just a good friend.” and wondering where she’d gotten such an idea, I waited until we were back in the car and driving toward the Museum of Modern Art before bringing the subject up again. “So you liked the dinosaurs?”

  “Yes. Especially the brontosaurus.”

  “Are you studying dinosaurs at school?”

  “Our teacher read us a book.”

  “I see. You know Myrian, the painter, is my neighbor.”

  “In your apartment?”

  “That’s right. We’re friends. Does your mommy have any friends like that? The way Myrian is a friend to Daddy, I mean?”

  “Like Uncle Tod?”

  “That’s right,” I steadied my hand on the wheel and turned us into the lot. “Like Uncle Tod.”

  “She has him.”

  “I see.”

  I hadn’t been to the museum for some time, and distracted now by my conversation with Rea could barely concentrate on the paintings. We wandered through the first floor with its abstract works, the colorful pieces by de Kooning, Mark Tobey, Patrick Heron, and Jasper Johns, and as we reached the third hall, I spotted Miró’s “Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird.” The sight of the lone Miró inspired me to tell Rea, “This is where your daddy met your mommy.” I explained the story of Miró’s “The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Couple in Love,” and how I found Gee sitting in front of the canvas.

  “You mean the one Mommy put in the basement?”

  “I don’t know.” I hadn’t noticed as much when I first entered the house as the wall where the Miró print usually hung was out of view. “Did she?”

  “The big one we used to have? She asked Uncle Tod to take it down.”

  “I see,” the news depressed me though I tried my best not to let on, even as Rea said, “She covered it with a bunch of old blankets.”

  I didn’t reply, did what I could to convince myself Gee’s reason for removing the painting was that she simply couldn’t look at the print everyday without me there. (She didn’t get rid of it, I told myself as a means of raising my spirits, didn’t set it on fire or put it out with the trash, but stored it downstairs in anticipation of my return.) I refused to think further than this, and hurried Rea up to the second floor and the classics of Rubens and Botticelli, of gentle, smiling madonnas, and Christ laid over a rock while the Virgin Mary washed the wounds in his feet. I hoped she’d like these paintings better than the abstracts, but she said they were “too eerie” and having seen enough, we left after forty minutes and got back in the car.

  We followed the museum with a trip to the Woodberry Aquarium where Rea enjoyed the saltwater tanks, the animated faces of the puffers and large angels, the bright colors of the loaches and box fish. As we passed the enormous freshwater tank, I stared solemnly inside but said nothing about the muskellunge. Rea wasn’t hungry for lunch, so we decided to stroll across Fourth Avenue and on through Mandinger Park.

  The day was pleasant, sunny and crisp, and a number of children Rea seemed to know were playing in the grass. I allowed her to run off and took my place along the fence with a half dozen other fathers watching their kids in a makeshift game of tag. After a short while, a small boy with an affliction in his legs and hips, a degenerative condition that caused him to move stiffly and put him forever on the verge of falling forward, approached the group of children who kindly altered the speed of their game in order to invite the boy to join in. The gesture was sweet, and regarding the scene from a distance, watching Rea as she rose up on her toes and extended her hands high in the air as if to dance with the boy, I couldn’t help but smile.

  Focused on the revelry, I didn’t notice in time an older boy charging across the grass in order to knock the crippled child to the ground, pushing him down again as he tried to get up. “Hey!” I shouted, and turned to look at the collection of other fathers, the six men standing with me in the half-shade. “Did you see that?” and when no one answered, I yelled again, “You there, cut it out! That’s enough!”

  Three of the girls, including Rea, ran over and tried to chase the older boy off, but he simply circled around a tree and came again and knocked the smaller boy back onto the cement path. I was already moving forward as the second series of blows were delivered, and could see the stricken boy’s expression the moment he was hit; his face filled with an ancient sort of horror, his eyes opening wide as he let go a terrified gasp, pitched and fell again, his arms too slow in coming up so that he crashed down hard on his chest and chin. I rushed to where he fell and bent down beside him. There was a scrape on his cheek and a welt already visible above his left eye. The older boy skipped over to the swings, laughing and trying to impress the remaining children with chin-ups and wrestling. The reaction of the others was subdued, each child giving way to their own fears. (Those who weren’t immediately cooperative with the older boy’s taunts stood silently shaken.) No one ran off—afraid of being chased—and however upset by the brutality, no voice was raised in the fallen child’s defense. Even the girls who assisted before were reluctant to challenge the older boy again, preferring to hang back, satisfied they’d done their best and hoping the worst was over.

  On my knees, I tried to scoop the boy up in my arms, but as I touched him, he rolled onto his side, and straining to right himself, managed to climb to his feet, pushing me from him while shouting, “Get away from me! Get away!” and limping off. Rea stood just to my left, watching me now, the features of her face fragile with surprise. (Although she was still a young girl, the knowledge conveyed in her expression gave the impression she was no longer a child.) I thought at first she was imploring me for answers, wanting to know, “Is that it? Is that all? Is it over?” and to this end, I’d no idea what to tell her, no clear way of explaining what had happened or comforting her. But then I understood—a bit too late—this wasn’t what she wanted at all, for suddenly she was turning from me, disappointed and rushing toward the swings; all four feet and sixty pounds of her shooting across the grass, wielding a sizeable stick she snatched up from the ground, and without the least hesitation, no warning shrieks nor angry howls, she struck the older boy hard on the knee, and when he yelped and spun around, she recocked and levelled him flat in the face.

  The mayhem which followed was unfortunate. Fathers came running toward us now, all the men who otherwise stood silent and glum as they observed the initial assault on the crippled child, shrieked and howled and said, “Did you see what that girl did? Whose kid is that? Whose kid? She hit my son!” I decided it was best to beat a hasty retreat rather than stand our ground and try to explain, and taking Rea by the hand, we crossed the park on our way back to the car.

  We drove east, stopping at Hamburger Haven for lunch where I ate my food with a nervous sort of hunger, thinking about what happened at the park and knowing I should discuss as much with Rea. “I’m proud of you, of course,” I said. “But you understand there are better ways of handling things.”<
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  “He started it,” she said this calmly and without the sort of emotional tumult otherwise expected in someone so young. “He hit him first. No one else was going to do anything.”

  I agreed with her, and tried once more to explain. “It’s the hitting we object to however, so it makes no sense for us to turn around and hit him back.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, because.”

  “But doesn’t he deserve to be punished?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why did those men just stand there? Why weren’t they going to do anything?”

  These were hard questions to answer, issues of indifference and insensitivity, qualities inherited over time and otherwise impossible for children to understand. “Well,” I began slowly, “sometimes people are insensitive. Sometimes men, and women, we—that is people—don’t care as much about what happens to others and only react when something affects them directly. Do you see? The men, the other fathers, weren’t inspired to help your friend because they didn’t think enough of the situation, didn’t appreciate how it should matter to them. That’s why what you did was commendable. You showed compassion for someone and weren’t acting for your own benefit. Still, you shouldn’t have gone after the boy with a stick. Do you get what I mean?”

  “A little.”

  “I’m not saying the boy shouldn’t be punished,” I now repeated, “but there are rules we have to follow. Laws of conduct. Just because the boy acted badly doesn’t give us the right to respond in kind. People get what they deserve. I’m sure that boy will get what’s coming to him.” I was being too abstract, and yet I couldn’t think of any other way to resolve what had transpired. I waited as Rea processed my more salient points, wondering how she would respond to the notion of fallibility, antipathy, and even cruelty in a world she was just then maturing into. She was a smart child, and deserving of the truth, and still I was surprised when she replied, “Is that what happened to you, Daddy?”