Seventh Heaven

by Hoffman, Alice;

  “Get down,” Jackie told Cathy.

  Cathy looked at him, puzzled, until she finally understood what he meant. He didn’t want anyone to see them together; it was death to be caught kissing her.

  “Get down on the floor,” Jackie said.

  His voice broke, and maybe that was why Cathy sat up straight and said, “No. I won’t.”

  Jackie glared at her; he wanted to slap her, but he didn’t have time for that. “Then get in the backseat,” he said, and when she didn’t move, he gave her a shove. “Go on.”

  He pushed her until she was hanging halfway into the back. The other guys had opened their windows and were calling out to him, laughing. They blinked the headlights on and off. He was trapped here with her; he had to make his move. Blinded by the headlights, he reached down and tore the car into gear. He let out the clutch so fast that Cathy was propelled back; she gave a little gasp when he floored the gas, and clung to the top of the seat with her fingernails.

  At first the Chevy took off in a straight line; Jackie’s foot was so heavy he couldn’t have let up on the gas even if he had tried, and he didn’t have time to try once they hit the ice. The Chevy made a circle and kept on going, leaning to one side so that the door scraped along the asphalt, and nothing could have stopped them when they crashed into the chain-link fence that separated the parking lot from the athletic field. They were flying on the black ice, and above them the stars pulsed with light. Cathy Corrigan held on to her pocketbook with one hand and gripped the top of the seat where she’d been perched ever since Jackie tried to push her into the back. Jackie heard her call out when they hit the fence, then all he heard was metal, as if the metal were screaming with a voice of its own. But really it was he who was screaming, as if anyone’s scream could weaken the force of the accident. And that’s all it was, that’s how it was listed down at the station house when Joe Hennessy, who had pulled night duty, came in to file his report. He didn’t have to go to the high school, but it was on his way home. The parking lot was full now; there was a car full of white-faced boys, an ambulance, three police cars, and another detective, Johnny Knight. Hennessy got out of his car and buttoned his coat. He went to stand beside Knight, and he lit a cigarette.

  “The girl was dead as soon as she hit the ground,” Knight said.

  Out in the field there was a body covered by a gray woolen blanket.

  “Kids,” Knight said. “They never think anything can hurt them. She was fooling around. Sitting on top of the front seat. Right through the window on impact.”

  Hennessy nodded and smoked his cigarette. “Mind if I take a look?” he asked.

  “Hey.” Knight shrugged. “Have a party.”

  Hennessy went over to the fence. The Chevy was totaled; there was so much broken glass that the asphalt seemed to be covered with stars. Hennessy saw something as white as milk shimmering in the dark. Only when he reached down to pick it up did he realize he hadn’t found a piece of glass. What he held in the palm of his hand was a perfect white tooth.

  THE FLAG OUTSIDE THE HIGH SCHOOL WAS AT half-mast for two days, and there had been an assembly to honor Cathy’s memory. Even the rudest boys, boys who had fucked Cathy Corrigan and boys who only said they had, were silent and wore dress shirts and black ties. Girls who had written that Cathy was a tramp with their hot-pink lipsticks on the mirrors in the girls’ room, and who had refused to sit next to her in class, put their arms around each other and wept. There was blood on the athletic field for a week, spots that looked like rust and hushed anyone who passed by, until more snow began to fall. And now, nearly two weeks after the accident, Ace McCarthy still rose at dawn. His brother would be coming home from the hospital in only a few hours, but Ace got dressed and left the house before his parents were out of bed. By the time the sun was rising, Ace was standing beside the smashed-in fence. The snow was already deep enough to cover his ankles. He had come every day to this spot where the car had crashed, and now all he saw was snow. It was so cold that the snow turned blue and Ace had to breathe into his cupped hand for warmth. He stayed there as long as he could take it, he stayed until he could see the crash somewhere behind his eyelids. And then he turned up his collar and put his hands in his pockets.

  He walked home the long way, as he did every day now, past Cathy Corrigan’s house at the end of Hemlock Street. He had to make a loop around Poplar to get to her house, and by the time he reached the far end of Hemlock his boots were filled with snow. He stood outside Cathy’s house and smoked a cigarette and listened to the barking, the way he did every day. Cathy’s father drove a delivery truck, which was parked in the driveway; crates that held bottles of soda and seltzer were filling with snow. Ace let his cigarette drop, then walked around the truck to get a better look. He went past the low evergreen bushes to the side gate of the chain-link fence. He could see a picnic table in the backyard and a barbecue grill no one had bothered to take in at the end of the summer. He could see a thick rope, pulled tight. Ace held on to the gate and blinked snow off his eyelashes. He tried to picture Cathy the way she was six years ago, when they had all first moved in and there were kickball games every night, but he couldn’t even remember much about the way she had looked the last time he’d seen her.

  Cathy Corrigan’s father came out the front door and got his snow shovel off the stoop. He walked around to the driveway and stopped when he saw Ace. “What the hell are you doing here?” Mr. Corrigan said.

  Ace turned and blinked. Everything looked hazy and white. “I was looking to see what was back there,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” Mr. Corrigan said. “I’ll just bet you were.” He was wearing thick leather gloves. He came a little closer. “I don’t want you near here. Go back where you belong.”

  “Okay,” Ace said. His toes were freezing; he couldn’t even feel them anymore. “What’s back there?” he asked.

  “If I see your brother,” Mr. Corrigan said, “I might just kill him.” He turned and started to shovel the snow around his truck.

  “Want some help?” Ace asked.

  “I don’t want anything from you,” Mr. Corrigan said, and he kept on shoveling, harder, so that his breath came out in blue clouds.

  Ace walked over and watched Mr. Corrigan work.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Mr. Corrigan said. He stopped shoveling. “Get out of here.”

  They stared at each other; behind them the barking grew more frenzied.

  “I was just wondering,” Ace said, “what it was you had back there.”

  “Cathy’s dog,” Mr. Corrigan said. “But it’s none of your business.”

  “It’s cold weather,” Ace said, “for a dog.”

  “Yeah?” Mr. Corrigan said. “You’re worried about a dog? What about my daughter? Anybody worry about her?”

  Mr. Corrigan went back to work; he was crying as he shoveled snow.

  “It’s too cold,” Ace said, and as he spoke his words froze, then snapped in two.

  “Fuck it,” Mr. Corrigan said. “Fuck it all.”

  The dog’s barking echoed down Hemlock Street as Ace walked to his end of the block. In the snow, the houses all took on the same shape, with roofs peaked and the shrubbery blanketed and the house numbers covered up. When the snow swirled around you this way it could blind you; you could easily lose your way. Rickie Shapiro had just navigated the drifts in her driveway so she could go baby-sit for the Silk boys, when she saw him. He was nothing more than a black line walking down the center of the road. Except for the sound of the barking dog, the street was silent, although Rickie could hear Ace’s breathing as he drew closer. She could have turned and gone on to Nora’s, but she just stood on the sidewalk, wearing a wool hat she wouldn’t ordinarily be caught dead in in public, and pink-and-white-striped mittens. Ace made his way up the curb and stopped in front of her.

  “I just happened to be here,” Rickie said. “I wasn’t waiting for you. I’m going to baby-sit.”

  Ace’s face was ashen; he had
a blank look in his eyes, as if he were seeing right through her.

  Rickie felt herself flush. “I’m not waiting for you,” she said, and that’s when she realized that she was, and that she had been for a long time.

  Ace walked up to her and put his arms around her, underneath her coat.

  Rickie Shapiro slid backward in the snow, but Ace pulled her to him. If he tried anything, if he moved his hands up toward her breasts or tried to kiss her, Rickie would have panicked; she would have run back through the drifts and locked the door behind her. But Ace only rested his head against hers, and then he said the one thing that could have made her stay.

  “Please,” Ace said, low down, so his voice could barely be heard.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rickie said.

  But she did. She had always done exactly what she was supposed to, and it had gotten her nothing. Maybe it was simply that she had never truly wanted anything before.

  “I can meet you tonight,” Rickie said. She must be crazy; she would never say a thing like that.

  Ace backed away. There was something else he had to do tonight.

  “I can leave my window unlocked,” Rickie whispered, although there was no one but Ace who could possibly have heard her.

  “Yeah,” Ace whispered back. “Just not tonight.”

  Rickie watched him walk away. She clapped her mittens together and snow fell off and sank into the drifts. He said no, he said not tonight, and she still wanted him. She was somebody she’d never been before. She had no pride at all. She would have done things with him she could never have admitted to Joan Campo. Not in a million years. Her face was so hot it burned, and it kept on burning even after she was inside Nora Silk’s house, after she had taken off her coat and her boots and knelt to pick up the baby. While Nora got ready to walk to Armand’s, the baby reached out and touched Rickie’s hot cheek with one finger. His touch made Rickie gasp, and that was when she realized she was no longer in the place where she stood. She was somewhere in the future, on the night when Ace would climb through her window, when he would drop down to the floor, soundlessly, and she would be there, waiting for him.

  THE SAINT HAD SHOVELED THE DRIVEWAY AND the sidewalk and was fitting chains on the wheels of his Chrysler. Marie was in the kitchen, drinking coffee. She hadn’t had a bite to eat for breakfast, except two Stella D’oro cookies, which tasted like dust. All she could think of was bringing Jackie home from the hospital. He had broken his leg in two places and dislocated his shoulder and fractured two ribs, but, worst of all, he had lost all his teeth. When they crashed into the fence his mouth had hit the steering wheel, and even now as the Chevy sat in a heap in the Saint’s garage, there was still white powder all over the wheel.

  The night of the accident, Marie had gone to the emergency room, taken one look at her older son’s bloody mouth, and fainted. They held ammonia under her nose, and when she came to she was cursing the girl who had been in the car with her boy and had led him astray. Ace had taken his brother’s place down at the gas station after school and on the weekends, but he couldn’t bring himself to go to the hospital. It would be weeks, maybe months, before the dentist and oral surgeon could get Jackie in shape and give him a new set of teeth; he had only just switched from intravenous feeding to milk shakes, which he drank through plastic straws.

  Marie had made the Saint go out and buy a blender before the streets were plowed, but he hadn’t talked to the salesgirl, just pointed to the model he wanted and then paid cash. He didn’t speak when they drove home from the hospital, and he still wasn’t talking when they were inside the house. Marie led Jackie to the kitchen table, helped him out of his black leather jacket, and sat him down. The way she smiled and cooed at him, you’d never have guessed she’d spent the last two weeks crying.

  “A chocolate milk shake,” she said.

  Jackie shook his head no. He put his hands on the table, and when he shifted in his chair his ribs hurt. He had a special boot over the end of the cast on his broken leg so he could take a shower and get through the snow without soaking the plaster.

  “A rich, thick one,” Marie said, trying to entice him. “Lots of extra syrup.”

  The Saint helped himself to a cup of coffee. His throat felt raw, but the hot coffee helped.

  “Just try it,” Marie said to Jackie, and she grabbed the ice cream out of the freezer and reached for a quart of milk and two eggs. “This is the blender you got?” she said to the Saint. “It’s not as big as Lynne Wineman’s.”

  The Saint swallowed hard, then managed to speak. “I’ve got to open the station.”

  “Today?” Marie said. “The day your son comes home?”

  “People still need gas,” the Saint said. “They need antifreeze.”

  Marie pursed her lips and poured in the Hershey’s syrup. The Saint put his coffee cup in the sink and ran the cold water to rinse it out. He could feel Jackie’s presence in the room in some odd, undefined way; usually Jackie didn’t stop talking, about his plans, his prowess, his luck. An accident was an accident; why was it the Saint kept feeling it had been Jackie’s fault, why was the girl the one who went through the windshield? The Saint turned and faced the table; without his teeth, Jackie’s face was sunken and small.

  “That girl,” the Saint said. “Was she your girlfriend?”

  Jackie shrugged and looked straight ahead.

  “What are you asking him questions for?” Marie said. “He just got home.”

  “You should have looked out for her,” the Saint said to Jackie. “You had her in the car. What was she to you?”

  Jackie looked up at his father. When he opened his mouth it still looked black and sharp, like the beak of a bird. He moved his swollen tongue. “Nothing,” he said thickly.

  The Saint went into the living room; he knew he was breathing too fast. He had no idea that Ace had risen early and been out already, so he called, “Let’s go. We’re going to work.”

  Because of Jackie, the family had missed Thanksgiving this year; Marie didn’t have the heart to cook while her son was in the hospital. As everyone else in the neighborhood sat down to turkey dinners, the McCarthys had canned soup and grilled cheese sandwiches instead. But the following day the Saint had put up his Christmas lights. He set his ladder against the garage, hoping that the Christmas decorations would cool his anger, and knowing that they wouldn’t.

  The Saint sat down in the living room to wait for Ace to get dressed, but when Ace came out of his bedroom he was already wearing his coat and his gloves.

  “He’s home?” Ace asked.

  The Saint nodded. The couch he sat on was a burnished orange; there were a mahogany coffee table and two end tables. The Saint had turned twenty-five before he made love to a woman, and then it had been with Marie, on their wedding night. Afterward he’d been so grateful, he had gone into the bathroom and wept.

  “Come on, Pop,” Ace said. “Let’s go to work.”

  The Saint stood up and they both went into the kitchen. The blender was whirring and Jackie was staring at the refrigerator. Ace put his hands in his pockets. “Hey, Jackie,” he said. He couldn’t wait to get out of there; he slipped past his mother and went out the side door. The Saint took his key ring from the shelf above the stove; he could hear Ace cleaning fresh snow off the Chrysler’s windshield.

  “At least be home by six,” Marie said. “Do me a favor.”

  The Saint reached for his pack of cigarettes and shook one out. He had always been toughest on Ace; he had to be, he loved him best. He thought of all the excuses he had made for Jackie. How many times had he looked away? When he knew the boy was stealing money from his wallet, when he realized he was smoking, and probably drinking as well, when he knew that something inside his older son was missing. “When I make my first million,” Jackie usually said in the mornings before they left for work. “When I get my penthouse.” “When I’ve got my limo waiting for me.”

  The Saint took out his silver lighte
r and flipped it open. As he was lighting his cigarette, he looked up and caught Jackie watching him. Quickly, Jackie looked away.

  The Saint put his keys in his pocket; he was headed for the door, but when he reached the table he stopped and held out his cigarette. Jackie looked up at him, puzzled, but after the Saint nodded, Jackie took the cigarette and held it to his lips. He inhaled deeply, then slowly blew out the smoke.

  “John,” Marie said, upset when she saw he was encouraging Jackie to take up smoking.

  “See you at six,” the Saint said to her. He pulled his wool hat out of his pocket; it would be freezing down at the station today, even with the heater turned up high.

  “Pa,” Jackie said.

  The Saint had reached the side door. He didn’t turn around, but he didn’t walk out either.

  “Thanks,” Jackie told him.

  ACE WAITED UNTIL MIDNIGHT, AND BY THEN THE snow had stopped falling. From his window he could see that the light was on in Rickie Shapiro’s bedroom. He tried not to think about her unlocked window; he put on his coat and slipped quietly through the house. Out on the street, it was dark and the streetlights were dim, their glow obscured by ice crystals. He could still hear the barking, but the snow muffled the sound, so that it seemed to be coming from a million miles away. There was no traffic on the Southern State, and maybe because he couldn’t hear it Ace began to wonder about the places where the parkway led. How would it feel to look out the window of your car and see sagebrush and sand, to be in a town where nobody knew your family, or even your name? Why was it that he had never even imagined another town, another state, a place where not every house was exactly the same?