Norma doesn’t exempt herself. She isn’t hateful, but she feels that what she is inside is worse, in a way—that she is cowardly and secretive and that this is even more despicable than being cruel. She never tells her friends anything important about herself. At giving vague, misleading answers she is masterful. Even where she lives she keeps secret, each afternoon parting with her friends at the bottom of her street and then meeting them there the next morning. Once, when the tall girl asked if she could stop by Norma’s house to go to the bathroom, Norma just said lamely,“Oh, you can hold it,” and walked away. She might have dredged up that old story about their mother being sick, but she has become incapable of the direct lie. Because she is so sneaky and cowardly, she thinks.
She thinks that all the crosses she bears, all the housework, the study regime, the name-calling, the loneliness, are her just deserts.
He’s the only customer in the doughnut shop. He’s in the last booth, facing the door, smoking a cigarette.
“Well, what do you know about that?” he says, smiling. “She showed up.”
“I always take my break here,” Sandy says, sliding into the seat across from him.
“Want one?” He extends the pack of Players.
“I don’t smoke.” She twists around to study the doughnut menu, although she always orders a chocolate glaze. When he offered her a cigarette, she noticed that he was wearing a chain bracelet. She doesn’t like jewellery on men. She doesn’t like bald spots.
“You’re one beautiful doll,” he says.
She twists back round.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re beautiful?”
She nods. Does he think he’s the first? She tried to see what it is about him that made her perspire in the store, but she only sees how old he is.
“What are those big blue eyes staring at?” he says, laughing.
Her face burns. That’s what she likes—his laugh.
He orders two coffees and two cherry-filled donuts. When the waitress leaves them, he lights another cigarette and says,“Sandra Field. Sweet sixteen. Youngest of three sisters. Popular as hell but no steady boyfriend, though I find that hard to believe.”
She feels a rush of familiar dread. “How do you know all that?”
“I asked.”
“Who?”
He shakes his head, smiling.
She leans into the table. “Who?”
“Can’t reveal my sources, now, can I?”
She clings to the edge of the seat, touching the ridge of hard chewing gum underneath. Has he found out that their mother dropped their brother over Niagara Falls? No, that’s crazy. Who would tell him that? But this is what happens when boys—men—pry into her life. “I want to know everything about you,” they say, and what always happens is that her mind plunges straight down to her deepest secret.
“Hey. Doll.” He attempts to lift her chin. She doesn’t let him. His thumb traces the line of her jaw, and then his hand is gone and picking his cigarette out of the aluminum ashtray.
“Okay,” he says. “Fair’s fair. Reg Sherman. Thirty-eight years young. Only child. Former Albert Park High School quarterback. Present proprietor of Sherman Shoes.”
She looks at him. Sherman Shoes is next to the fabric store, and now she remembers that she’s seen him before. He’s the man who sold her her blue ankle-strap heels. She remembers that he held her foot for too long and squeezed her toes, but so gently, the way a doctor feels for breaks.
“Part-time spy,” he goes on. “Current mission—get the lowdown on one Miss Sandra Field.” He laughs, and she does, too, because his laugh makes her delirious.
“Married,” he says.
She laughs into her paper napkin.
“Fifteen years,” he says, shaking his head, and she realizes he isn’t joking.
He grasps her arm. His married man’s hand on her arm is plum-coloured under the black hair. Why didn’t it occur to her that someone his age would be married?
“Look,” he says. “I want to be honest with you. I’m married. Unhappily, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve got two kids. Great kids.”
She waits.
“It doesn’t make any difference,” he says.
She doesn’t know what he means.
“Sandra …” He lets go of her arm. “God. Look at you. You’re a living doll, you know that?”
“I better get back,” she says, reading the time upside down on his wristwatch.
“Let’s go for a drive,” he says enthusiastically.
“Now?”
“Sunday. Sunday afternoon.”
So that’s what he’s after. A girlfriend on the side. A sweetie pie to keep him happy.
“Come on,” he says. “You’ll get to ride in my new car.”
“Oh, okay,” she says, partly because her break is over, partly because if he’s anything like their father, it’s not as though his wife and kids will care.
The insulation and two-by-fours and top-of-the-line knotty pine have been piled downstairs for over a year. Their father bought it all one day during a week of craziness. The next day he decided to send it back but couldn’t because the sale was final. That got him so mad that he threw the vacuum cleaner through the wall between the dining room and the front hall, making a boot-shaped hole, which is still there. He gave Lou a shiner that week, ran the car into a streetlight, and one night, thinking he heard a prowler in the back yard, got his World War Two gun from the bomb shelter and accidentally shot himself in the foot. Now he’s lame.
Norma knows what the reason for his crackup is and for him being in a terrible mood ever since. Lou told her. Not realizing that their mother and Sandy also knew, they decided to keep it to themselves.
“They couldn’t take it,” Lou said.
“No,” Norma agreed. She wasn’t sure that she could take it either. She went down to their father’s workroom and made a footstool for their beautiful, prematurely white-haired little mother.
Now, a year later, the fact that their father fools around is just another secret. Norma had hoped he’d stopped, but a couple of weeks ago he brought home three pairs of duck-head slippers. To show him, and to take advantage of his good mood, she starts fixing up the basement. All year she’s been dying to get her hands on that wood, and one Saturday she goes downstairs and saws a piece of the knotty pine in half. It feels death-defying, though not brave. Out of control is more like it.
But not reckless, either. She wants to do the job right. She consults the man who owns the hardware store about the wiring and insulation, and she buys a book called So You Want to Build a Rec Room? What she can’t find out, she figures out. It only takes common sense, and common sense is her big attribute, the one thing about her that people find to praise. In three afternoons she installs fluorescent lighting and two new outlets. Then she begins to strap the walls.
Their father finally notices what’s going on. He arrives home early one night, in time for supper (Lovergirl—Lou’s name for all his women—must be busy), and after inspection goes to the basement for a beer. “What the heck …” he says at the bottom of the stairs. A month ago, before Lovergirl, he’d have said what the hell. He calls Norma to come down. “Who did all this?” he asks.
“Me,” she says sullenly. She knows he won’t hit her.
“You? By yourself?”
She nods.
“But how the heck did you know how?” He is looking straight at her.
She won’t answer, she won’t tell him.
He goes over to the wall and grips a vertical support. His suit jacket is ripped up the back seam, she notices. And his pants—the cuffs still have mud on them from when it rained last week. She sighs. Evidence that she and her sisters are lousy substitutes for a wife always undoes her. “I bought a book about it,” she relents.
“Great,” he says. “This is just great.” He turns from the wall, smiling.
She remembers supper. “Oh, I’ve got the burner on high,” she cries and runs u
p to the kitchen.
He follows slowly. Going up and down stairs, he has to hop because of his shot foot. He calls that he’s bowled over. “The outlets work?” he calls.
“Yeah, sure.”
When he’s in the kitchen, he comes up behind her at the stove and drops his hand on her shoulder. “What say we work on it together? This Sunday.”
“Sure,” she says, stiff under his hand, mortified by love.
On Sunday she rises at six o’clock, when she hears their mother turn on the t?, and does the dusting and two loads of wash so that she’ll be free the whole day to work with their father. At seven-thirty she puts on the coffee for the aroma to wake him up.
He whistles “For Me and My Gal” in the shower. Norma pours out his Shreddies and orange juice. Feeling benevolent, she takes her plate of toast and jam to eat in the t? room and keep their mother company. A bearded minister is on, saying that everbody’s soul is in a constant and everlasting state of torment. Even when you believe yourself to be happy, the minister says, even when you are an innocent, gurgling baby, your soul is contorting in character-building pain. “This is good,” he declares. “This is one of life’s eternal verities.”
“You girls used to skip off to Sunday school holding hands,” their mother says wistfully. “That dance skip from The Wizard of Oz. I always hoped you’d turn out like the McGuire sisters.”
When Norma hears their father getting dressed, she goes back to the kitchen and pours out his coffee.
He is wearing his navy suit.
“I’m on my way,” he says, looking past her to the clock on the wall. “I’ve got to go into the office.”
“Today?”
“No rest for the weary.” He is already gone down the hall. Whistling “Easter Parade.”
It’s still early. Eight-fifteen. Norma eats his cereal, does the dishes, empties out the wastepaper baskets and refills her mother’s mug. She washes the kitchen floor. Now it’s nine-twenty.
She stands at the window, looking out at their little weeping willow tree that has no leaves left. Its bare branches hanging down make her think of the thin shocked arms of Vietnamese war children, and that makes her hungry. She has a piece of bread. Two pieces, three. Before she knows it, she’s devoured almost the whole loaf. She goes downstairs.
It’s like a light turning on inside herself to see the fluorescent lights flicker white, all working. She stands there reconsidering how she’ll proceed.
“He would have got on your nerves,” a voice inside her says. “He’d have taken over and bossed you around. Everything works out for the best.”
She holds her breath. She has never heard Jimmy speak to her when she isn’t standing in front of where his picture is. After several minutes, while she waits to hear if he has anything else to say, she goes into their father’s workroom and takes the photo from the accordion file.
Jimmy’s face seems to be straining to communicate an urgent message.
“What?” she asks aloud.
She hears the t? upstairs, the furnace comes on. She hears her own thoughts registering these events, and presently she is aware of the fact that the sound of her brother’s voice is the sound of herself thinking.
She stares at the picture, taken when he was three months away from going to heaven. She kisses it and puts it away. She is fraught with a sense of having encountered an eternal verity. Returning to the other room, she feels that her legs are heavier and more muscular. And her hand, gripping the hammer, is mighty, and afflicted with responsibility.
At noon she goes up to the kitchen to make lunch. Lou, who came in late last night from babysitting, has just got out of bed. She is still in her pyjamas, hunched at the table over a cup of black coffee, smoking their father’s cigarettes. Her long hair is tangled and greasy, and her skin is sallow. Seeing her through different eyes, Norma divines that Lou is on the road to becoming a bag lady. “You should give those up,” she says about the cigarettes.
“Fuck off” Lou says incredulously. She takes a deep drag. “I gather Giovanni Masturbati is out humping,” she says.
Giovanni Masturbati is one of Lou’s names for their father. It comes from a dirty song. Lou knows a slew of dirty songs, and lately she sings them as if they’re all about their father and Lovergirl. She has decided that one of the greatest things that has ever happened to them is their father having aifairs.
Norma spreads margarine on the bread that she didn’t polish off a couple of hours ago. “Has Mom had anything to eat?” she asks.
“I gave her a can of beans,” Lou says. “She’s on some memory lane trip about how cute we used to be going to church.”
“Reminiscing is a sign of old age,” Norma says sadly, struck by another divination that their mother will die before her time.
Sandy comes into the kitchen, pours herself a cup of coffee and sits across from Lou.
“You’ve got too much makeup on,” Lou says.
“Have I?” Sandy asks quickly, touching her face.
Norma turns from the counter. “Get a load of you,” she says.
“Do you think I’ve got too much on?” Sandy asks her. “Tell me the truth.”
The truth, Norma thinks reverently. She looks Sandy over. Hair tied back in a blue ribbon. Tight yellow shell sweater that Sandy knit herself and that makes her breasts appear artificially high and round. Short, hip-hugging, blue-and-yellow-striped skirt. Yellow tights. Blue high heels. All blue and yellow to match her eyes and hair. And blue shadow on her eyelids. And false eyelashes? Norma asks.
“Do they look false?” Sandy asks nervously.
“Yes,” Norma says. “Yes, I think they do. I don’t think you should wear them.”
“What’s with the opinions all of a sudden?” Lou says. Then she lifts her chin, alert. “Is that in our driveway?”
Sandy stands to see out the window. “Oh, no. Dad’s home.” She holds up a hand as if he could tell from out there that she’s wearing makeup.
“He won’t care,” Norma says to her.
“I can’t take any chances,” Sandy says. She runs out to the front hall, runs in again carrying her coat and runs out the back door.
“What the fuck is he doing home?” Lou mutters, getting up to empty the ashtray, waving her hands at the cigarette smoke.
Norma goes to the window. “Something’s the matter,” she says.
“If he and Lovergirl have split up already, I’ll slash my wrists.”
“I think he’s had a heart attack or something,” Norma says.
“What?” Lou flies over beside Norma. He’s still in the car, his forehead dropped on the steering wheel. “Shit,” Lou whispers. They watch him for a couple of minutes, and he doesn’t move. “He’s dead,” Lou whispers.
He sits up straight.
“Oh, thank heavens,” Norma breathes.
“What’s he trying to pull?” Lou says angrily.
The car door opens, and he climbs out and stands there surveying the house. His eyes skim past them at the window. His tie is loose, his mouth hanging open.
“God damn it!” Lou says, stamping her bare foot. “They’ve split up. God fucking damn it!” And then she runs and gets her coat and boots, and heads for the back door, pulling the coat over her pyjamas.
“You’re going out like that?” Norma says.
“I’m sure as hell not hanging around here another minute.”
One door slams, the other opens. Norma puts her plate in the sink and tiptoes down to the basement. She hears the hangers clink in the hall closet, him walk into the kitchen, the fridge open, the cutlery drawer open, and even—she is so still and vibrant—the release of gas as the beer cap clicks off.
He scrapes back a chair. She’s afraid to resume hammering in case he storms down and decides he’s mad after all that she started refinishing the basement. Wreck what she’s done. Anything is possible—likely—if he’s split up with Lovergirl.
But after a minute the sun comes out and through the window in
front of her, striking her smack in the face, and she immediately understands that this is a sign from the source of grace that was Jimmy’s. A sign to go ahead, to fear not.
She ties on the tool pouch, draws out the hammer and pounds in a nail, and she hears him stand, but it’s to get another beer out of the fridge.
A few minutes later he gets a third. Is he going on a binge? Once before, after the breakup with his first Lovergirl, he went on binges for a week or so, on and off between getting into uproars. The binges were as bad as the uproars because he was like a moron when he was plastered, crying, slurring his words, tripping over his feet, like a clown drunk. Even their mother was driven to say that he didn’t know his limit.
Another beer. Four. Norma keeps track, her worry rising every time he does. She knows his limit: a six pack. And yet it’s also happening that as she imagines him up there growing weaker, she is turning into a tower of strength. The sensation is much more vivid than it was in the morning. She is sure that she’s taller and that her shirt is suddenly tight around her upper arms. She flexes. Her bicep seems enormous. Hard as a rock. She runs into the laundry room, where on the wall above the sink there is a mirror—a relic from the days that their mother did the wash—and looks at her face. She takes off her glasses, going closer, to see her eyes.
“God,” she says, because her eyes aren’t shining, huge and glorious, as she imagines Jimmy’s eyes would be by now. Her eyes are their father’s eyes. Has she always had his eyes, or has this just happened? She puts her glasses back on and goes into the other room, troubled by what having their father’s eyes will turn her into. Upstairs he’s taking the last beer out of the fridge. She knows how many there are up there. If he wants any more, he’ll have to get them out of the old fridge down here.
A few minutes pass, then, bang—the empty beer bottle slammed on the table. The search in the fridge for another. The descent, thunderous with his limp and intoxication combined. Her new strength being spiritual as well as physical, she is calm.
He squints, assailed by the new lights. When he can see, he says,“Hey,” and plants his hands on his hips. “Alrighty,” he says. “Where are we?”
Falling Angels Page 10
