Tumbledown

by Robert Boswell

  His attachment to Karly Hopper was both baffling and obvious. Karly was none too bright, though she was more dingbat than flat-out stupid. Here was the honest part—Karly Hopper was incredibly good looking. Every day Maura wound up acknowledging this. Good looks were an advantage that no amount of cleverness could overcome. You’re born, and you’ve either got it or you haven’t. Karly had it. She was dumb and fucked up in some meaningful way to be going to the Center, but what did it matter? All the boys threw themselves at her. Maura had to admit that if she were a boy, she’d do the same. Fucking honesty. She was better looking than Maura’s sisters, better looking than her brother, her mother, that girl at the high school who supposedly fucked the vice principal. Karly was a beauty. There. Said and done. Enough already.

  Some of the motels—or whatever they were—had back fences. Most were dark. One had dogs in a wire enclosure, big black dogs with enormous heads. They barked and trailed her to the end of their lot. Their black bodies had dollops of brown, like rust spots. After a quarter mile or so, she turned where the van always turned, a road that angled through a residential neighborhood. No one was walking on this street either, but there was less traffic and she didn’t feel conspicuous. She had never been trouble to her parents until she was fifteen—a straight-A student, reasonably honest, a favorite of her teachers. One day in a second hand clothing store with friends, she decided she wanted a flowery psychedelic miniskirt from the seventies, and she didn’t want to pay for it because she knew she’d never wear it—she just wanted it. She took it into the changing booth and stuffed it down her pants. That was the beginning, that stupid skirt she never wore because it made her thighs look like beer kegs. Later that week she ripped off cigarettes and became a smoker. She stole beer from the fridge and tried to drink it. She ditched her old friends and dressed like the lowlifes who convened in the park. She liked that word lowlifes and used it often. How’s my favorite lowlifes? They got her high and she stole an entire canister of Slim Jims from a convenience store. She let the air out of the tire of a parked police car. She climbed a fence, shed most of her clothes, and jumped from the high dive into the community pool at three in the morning. She learned how to give hand-jobs and took up with Skinner. Her junior year, she called a history teacher a cunt-eating cunt and got suspended.

  The suspension led to trouble. Her family lived in a house outside of the city, near the woods, and some nights she could see from her window deer that wandered in to eat their flowers and chew bark from their trees. But there was nothing to do in that fucking house. She made some calls and ran away. Friends picked her up, and they spent three nights in downtown Minneapolis—sleeping in some man’s bathtub the first night, a parked car the second night, an alley the third. They were caught in the alley, she and the four boys with her.

  Her parents wouldn’t say it, but they feared she’d pulled a train, not that they’d use that language: sexual relations with multiple partners. Her parents were dense beyond words. Maura was a virgin. Hand-jobs and one boy had stuck his pointer finger inside her to the second knuckle. Nothing else. She told all this to the Danskin counselor as well as the next therapist her parents dragged her to, a woman with a white house in St. Paul that she had turned into an office. She was friendly—there’s the tough honesty—and unbelievably dull, a fairly young woman with gray hair she refused to dye. Maura’s hair had been purple at the time, and they spent a good portion of several fifty-minute hours talking about hair. The friendly bitch wound up telling Maura’s parents they had to separate her from her peer group. Her parents would never have the same sway, the counselor said, as this group of kids. “Would they, Maura?” she asked, and Maura said, “Fuck no, gimme a break,” without even thinking about it. The gray-haired twat insisted her lowlife pals were headed for serious trouble.

  Maura liked thinking of her friends as a peer group, as if their job was to look at things other people didn’t want to see. The rest of it made her furious.

  “If you make me leave my friends,” she said, “I’ll kill myself.”

  That night she slipped down the stairs but her father was lying on the couch, prepared for her. He put his arms around her and would not let go. When he started crying she quit struggling. She went back upstairs, ran a bath, smoked a joint, and slit her wrists with a box cutter. They had to break down the bathroom door to get to her. Her father cut his shoulder on the splintered wood. Her mother was crying in the ambulance, but Maura hadn’t sliced herself deeply enough for any real damage, except to the bathroom rugs, which were ruined. Her father’s shoulder took more stitches than her wrists. The day she was released from the hospital, her parents drove her directly to the airport. They sold their home to pay for her treatment.

  Thinking about it this way, she supposed an outsider would think her family was like Mick’s, giving up their house and all, but from the inside, Maura understood the difference. Her parents were only doing it for show, to keep up appearances. Well, not her dad. He cared, but her mom resented her. Selling the house made her look brave. Though, Maura had to admit, her mother would miss the deer. She loved those fucking deer. Whatever her parents did was their own responsibility. Maura hadn’t asked them to put her here, and the place would be a complete wash if not for Mick and Barnstone. She refused to feel responsible for any of it. Were deer responsible for gnawing so much bark that the trees died? Creatures had to live. They had no choice about it. There was only one thing that Maura felt guilty about: she wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t in any jeopardy anymore, if she ever had been, and her judgment was as solid as a heart attack.

  She had been at the Center almost a year, starting out in Cagin, the high-risk ward. It had insane security routines, from which adventures like tonight’s trek were impossible. After six months, she was moved to Danker. All of the interesting girls were on the at-risk floors—cutters, nymphos, kleptos, addicts, you name it. One girl set fire to her chemistry teacher’s desk during class and wouldn’t tell her counselor why. She told Maura, though: He broke up with me. All of those girls needed to be in such a place, but Maura didn’t. She was over her bad patch.

  Okay, her common sense had been spam quality, and she got carried away with shitty influences. To be absolutely fucking honest, that peer group of hers was into meth now and had been expelled, arrested, and one was in a coma the last she heard. Her parents had done the right thing—Barnstone made her admit that. Her dad had, anyway. Her mom hardly visited and her phone calls were always indirectly about how much nicer things were now that she was out of the picture. Fuck that bitch. But her dad visited and wrote letters. Twice, her little sister came with him, and her big sister called with gossip. As for her fucking brother, he wouldn’t even take a turn on the phone. She had snapped a picture of him jerking off and emailed it to a dozen people. So, okay, honestly then, the fuckwad had reason to be pissed.

  All that sewage was behind her. She’d tell her parents as much and let them off the economic hook if not for Mick. She loved him. Or whatever love was a euphemism for, she felt that for him. She wasn’t going to act like some sad-sack missy lying on her bed whining about it. She was going after him. A vehicle slowed beside her, and she turned her head away, afraid it was someone from the Center. The voice that called to her, though, was far from professional.

  “Hey, sweetheart, want a lift?”

  The pickup truck was shiny, possibly new (how could you tell with a truck?). The men were adults, thirty-forty-fifty years old—who could say? The passenger had a day’s growth of beard and straight brown hair, long enough to sheath his ears. His face had about it the emptiness of a snowscape but not the beauty. His clothes were nice, though, and she liked sweetheart. The driver was bulky but almost good looking, a drinking straw that he chewed on while he stared protruding from his mouth. He wore a gold chain around his neck, which made him a certifiable ass, but he was otherwise acceptable. The passenger did the talking. “Where you going?”

  “Downtown.
”

  “Jump in.” He opened the door and climbed out. The truck had a bench seat, and she slid to the middle. Girls always had to ride in the middle. There was some unwritten rule. When they were back on the road, the passenger produced a short, flat bottle of copper-colored booze. “You look like you could use a drink.”

  She swigged enough to show them she’d had a drink before. It tasted like lighter fluid.

  “I’m Bert,” the passenger said and laid his hand on her bare thigh, “and that’s Ernie.”

  “I guess that makes me Cookie Monster,” she said.

  The men laughed, and the driver gently took her other thigh. “You want to party with us?” Bert’s hand was already sliding up her leg, under her skirt.

  “My friends are expecting me.” She was not afraid. She didn’t like these particular men putting their hands on her, but she liked that she was out on her own and that grown men were feeling her up. Bert’s hand found its way to her underwear.

  “I’m not going to fuck you,” she said to him. “I’m a virgin.”

  “The hell you are,” said Bert, but then he reversed himself. “I’m a virgin, too.”

  “I’m fifteen,” she said, a statement meant to provide her some protection, while at the same time she thought enough of her blossoming body to feel it was a transparent lie.

  The driver took his hand away. “Where downtown?”

  “Let’s not be in a hurry,” Bert said. He had his finger pressed against her. At the gateway, she thought, the portal, the threshold. “Give her another taste of that whiskey.”

  She turned to look Bert square in the face. “You can finger fuck me, but only till we get to where I’m going.” She took another swallow of lighter fluid and stared out the windshield, while the finger wormed uncomfortably inside her, like the scrubbing side of a kitchen sponge.

  Toad’s Tavern was a converted feed store with bad acoustics and a big dance floor. It was a landmark in the Corners: the first building constructed on the county road, dating back to the late fifties, an unattractive brick box with almost no parking. Candler, drunk and dancing with a stranger, did a spin move and then could not determine which of the nearby women was his partner. He had maybe overspun, which he took as a signal to sit down. He danced to the edge of the gyrating crowd and headed back to his friends. Clay and Duke Hao were leaving the table as he arrived. They wanted to watch the guitarist up close. Billy, hunched over the table and smiling like a donkey, poured his friend a glass of beer from the pitcher.

  “You oughta dance,” Candler told Billy. “You’re never going to meet a woman sitting here.”

  No sooner had he spoken than a thin woman with stringy hair emerged from the crowd and walked barefoot across the concrete, her shoes in her hand, a walk that was obviously a journey for her. Her hair was a light shade of brown and seriously tousled, her face young and, if not for the slanting drear of alcohol, pretty. She did not stagger, but liquor informed her gait. Her blouse was transparent with sweat, revealing the white triangles of her bra. The modesty of a bra might have affected Candler had he noticed her approach at all. The short skirt covered bare, smooth thighs. Her toenails were maroon. She was aimed at Candler’s table, but he did not see her coming. He finally turned to see what Billy Atlas was gawking at, and he had a moment to think that she reminded him of someone before she pivoted on the naked balls of her feet and seated herself on his lap. Candler startled and sloshed beer on the table. Billy Atlas smiled even wider. He liked to believe this type of thing happened to Jimmy all the time.

  The woman raised one of the shoes as if to drink from it. “The strap broke,” she told Candler. “That’s why I fell.”

  This was the woman with whom he had been dancing. Evidently she had fallen. He was a reckless dancer who did not so much dance with someone as at her. “I guess I missed missing you,” he said, his hand riding gently up her spine. Her dress was wet with perspiration and he didn’t want her to lean against him.

  Lise Ray teetered on Candler’s bony knee. She had been nursing her third Jack-and-Seven when she saw Candler step into the bar with his tubby friend. She immediately downed the drink and ordered another. She watched as he and his pal joined two Asian men at a round table, and somehow her new drink was gone. It was no coincidence that she was at the bar. Toad’s was near Candler’s house, and there was only one other bar in the Corners. A couple of weeks earlier, she had stumbled upon him there, sitting on a stool at the bar, facing the tap, his glass of beer as golden as a chalice. Sweat in his hair told her that he had been dancing. She had touched his shoulder and rocked her head in the direction of the dance floor. He acquiesced without a word. He was a surprisingly good dancer. When the song ended, he smiled at her but did not introduce himself or offer to buy her a drink. In another thirty minutes, he left the bar with an overdressed woman from a table of full of overdressed women. A woman he preferred to Lise.

  That night, she was tempted to go home with the bartender, a balding, goateed man who flirted with increasing seriousness the longer she remained at Toad’s. What was the value of three years of celibacy on the open market? She was curious to find out, yet she resisted, even after the bartender let her drink for free.

  Tell me about yourself, he said.

  She offered him an unhappy smile and the minimum biography possible: she came from Missouri and sold clothing for a living.

  I’ve seen you in here before, he said and she mentioned the proximity of her apartment.

  I live in the sticks, he told her and left to pour a round of shots for a gang of middle-aged cretins in matching polo shirts.

  I dropped out of law school, he said upon returning.

  I have season four of The Wire.

  Lise asked for stuffed olives.

  My family owns a ranch, but there’s nobody left out there anymore but me. Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help, he said. That’s Hegel. You ever read Hegel?

  That guy doesn’t know you exist. He isn’t worthy of you. He’s just some clown who can dance a little and puts mousse in his hair.

  He’s sweating, she explained. It isn’t mousse.

  I’m going to fire up the grill, he said. This job encourages eating funny hours. My freezer is loaded. Steak, hamburger, venison. Fresh tomatoes in the hothouse. The guest room has a private patio. I inherited an Otto Mueller, a nude in a landscape.

  I’m not bringing up nudes to make you think of sex. I just like talking to you.

  Well then, he said after a while.

  Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion. Hegel, he added.

  The same bartender was working again, but he was too busy to flirt—or perhaps he had written her off. It didn’t matter. She ordered one more Jack-and-Seven and finished it while Candler danced with a woman who did not look old enough to legally drink. Lise advanced to the general vicinity of his table. “Do you want—” She pointed at the moving bodies, and “Sure,” he responded. They danced to three songs before the measly strap that held her upright gave way.

  As for Candler, he did not know that he had met her before. He did not recognize her—or did not fully recognize her. Some part of him laid claim to her, but he could not consciously touch it. She had grown a little heavier and a lot smarter since Los Angeles, and Candler was not the only one who might have failed to recognize her. She thought her friends from Missouri or her associates from L.A. (none of whom qualified as a friend) might not recognize the less slender, healthier-looking, working woman she had become. Her parents would still be able to pick her out of a crowd or ID her body, if it came to that, but they, too, would be surprised by her appearance. Her face carried her features more generously now, and she had greater confidence and was more at peace. Her eyes had lost the desperation that had long been the source of her trouble. She was at once more comfortable in her body and less
obvious. People saw what she wanted them to see—her clean face, her strong body, her manicured nails. Every part of her body was under her control, except perhaps her heart, which would not give up its single-minded pursuit of James Candler.

  Candler could not place her, distinguished nothing beyond a nagging déjà vu.

  “I like the way you dance,” she said, putting her hands over her heart. She had boldly plopped down upon him, but she didn’t know what to do with her hands. Once upon a time she provided strangers with lap dances, as many as a dozen in a night, and never worried about what to do with her hands. “Most men don’t dance worth a damn.”

  “It’s my only talent,” he said.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Candler introduced Billy Atlas, saying, “We’ve been friends since grade school.”

  “You’d know then,” she said to Billy. “He have any talents besides dancing?”

  Billy Atlas displayed his oversized teeth, happy to have a woman speak to him even if she was perched on another man’s thighs. “Let’s see,” he said, “talent.” His eyes worked the bar’s dim stratosphere for a moment, as if the details of their long friendship hovered there. Finally he said, “He knows the words to the preamble to the Constitution. We learned it in American history sophomore year.”

  “Just the preamble?” she said and whapped Candler’s chest with her hand. “For once I’d like to meet a man who can get to the actual amble.”

  Candler laughed. Though he could not have articulated the thought, the woman’s witty line reminded him of Karly Hopper. It was the kind of thing she might have said without irony or the intention of humor. This moment of cleverness pushed open a door in his mind to the cubicle bearing the label an interesting woman. His mind held many such rooms, and the one labeled a worthy person held Jane Goodall, Clay Hao, Cornel West, and even the Barnstone. But no one ever entered the room labeled an interesting woman but women he found both attractive and compelling, and they never stayed there long. They were either tossed out after he discovered their entry was in error, or they were ushered along to the next space, this one with the label a fascinating woman. With one exception, no woman ever made it to fascinating without first residing in interesting, and that exception was Lolly Powell. She burst through all of the barriers and splashed down in fascinating in the first moments of their acquaintance.