Tumbledown

by Robert Boswell

  Candler wondered which of the pictographs meant cheerful.

  “I picked up lunch,” he said. “We can eat on the back porch. It’s shady and shouldn’t be crazy hot.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “What question?”

  “Why are we here? What is it you want me to see?”

  “It’s private.” He shrugged theatrically. “A public private place. I just wanted some nearby location where we could be alone.”

  “We could have gotten a motel room if you simply wanted privacy.”

  “If I have other motives,” Candler said, “they’re hidden even from me.”

  The back porch was fully shaded by the house and more comfortable than he had any reason to hope. There was a round metal table and matching chairs on which to perch themselves, as well as a view of the rock garden and its few plants—sagebrush, prickly pear, ice plant with yellow blooms, pink bougainvillea. The backyard was the best thing about the museum. He had brought Vietnamese baguette sandwiches and chips. While he parceled out the food, she examined him silently.

  “Are you upset with me?” he asked.

  “Just trying to figure you out.”

  “I swear to god I had no ulterior motive.”

  Her look was suspicious, but she put the pamphlet down and picked up her sandwich. “I’ve driven through Onyx Springs a dozen times, but I never got off the freeway.”

  “Not a lot of reason to stop,” Candler acknowledged.

  “No offense, but it seems like the worst of both worlds.”

  Candler understood what she meant. The elevated basin in which the town resided was boxed in by hills that introduced but failed to suggest the Laguna Mountains. It was too high to benefit from the coastal rains and too low to accept the cooling advantages of altitude. It was a desert town that separated the forested mountains from the lush ocean, a sore in the landscape that would not heal.

  “No offense taken,” he said. “It’s a nowhere place with nothing to recommend it.”

  “And yet you’ve taken me to a museum to read about it.”

  “I just thought it would be nice not to worry about being seen together. No one comes here. I’ve been to the museum just once—three years ago—when I was here to interview for the job, and we had lunch on the porch. So I thought—”

  Lise gulped air noisily. “That’s it then,” she said. “That’s why we’re here. You came here during your interview and now you’re here again with me.” She paused, staring at him. “You know who I am, don’t you?”

  “A big part of my job is giving tests,” he replied, “so don’t be surprised if I ace this one. You’re Lise Ray of that other local nowhere, Liberty Corners. Haberdasher to the wealthy few that have taste. You’re the woman who conducts mad experiments on willing men, making them her temporary sex slaves. Am I close?”

  She smiled weakly, words seeming to gather in her mouth, but she said nothing and unwrapped her sandwich. They ate for a while. Hummingbirds bothered the ice plant. A fly circled low over Candler’s sandwich, and he flicked at it.

  “You think you can know something unconsciously,” Lise asked, “without knowing that you know it?”

  “You mean how supposedly we use only ten percent of our brain? That’s been proven baloney.”

  She shook her head. “One time—this was in Missouri and I was maybe fifteen—I decided out of the blue to go see a girl I used to know. She’d dropped out of school because she was pregnant. It had been a long time, and I didn’t want to come empty-handed. I stopped at the drugstore and bought a cheap box of chocolates, and bicycled to her house. Her mother burst into tears when she saw me. It was the girl’s birthday, and I was the only person from her old life who remembered. Only I hadn’t remembered, even though I was there and I had a present for her.”

  “I guess I’ve probably done things like that,” Candler said, “but I still don’t think I have a secret reason for choosing this place.”

  “Maybe you know more than you think you know.”

  “Christ, I hope so, ’cause I think I know just about nothing whatsoever.”

  This confession pleased her. For an instant she recalled the evening she first investigated Liberty Corners, how she had droned repetitively by Candler’s tasteless house like a housefly appraising a new cadaver.

  They ate for several minutes without speaking. A hummingbird inoculated cactus blooms. Candler swatted at the fly dive-bombing his sandwich.

  “This church was mean-spirited,” Lise said to end the silence. “The older men were treated like gods. They had multiple wives, and they’d cripple the young men who stood up to them.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Candler said. “I don’t know anything about the church.”

  In the early part of the nineteenth century, Lise told him, a religious cult seeking holy land had claimed the northern end of the basin. According to the writings of the congregation’s leader, the combination of the spring and the defined borders—the box of craggy hills—inspired him. He saw it as a place of modest and well-delineated expectations. Another diary, left by one of the women, claimed that they were simply too weak after the trek through the mountains and the sudden explosion of heat to journey beyond the spring. Her journal also documented the sexual slavery of the women to the elder men, and the violence against the young men who challenged the elders.

  When Lise finished, Candler said, “God’s will. I’m sure that’s what they must have told the young men as they were breaking their legs or while they were holding the young women down on the bed. God works in mysterious ways.”

  “If there is a god,” Lise said, “then mysterious doesn’t quite cut it. It’s way beyond mysterious.”

  “We all have our secrets,” Candler said. “Only makes sense if you know everything, then your secrets are gonna be whoppers.”

  “God is hiding things from us?”

  “Unless he only pretends to know everything. He could be bluffing. Or maybe he’s just indecisive, and what seems like mystery to us is just god changing horses in midstream.” Candler swatted the fly with the pamphlet. He had finished his sandwich and chips. “We’re running out of time.”

  “I know,” she said, “less than seventy hours to go.”

  Candler wiped the fly carcass onto a napkin. “I meant my lunch hour.”

  She was silent for several seconds before rapidly standing, the striped skirt swinging. “I’ve got to pee,” she said and was gone.

  Even a blind man could tell that he had upset her. These final days were going to be tough. But hadn’t he been clear at the beginning that he was engaged to marry another woman? Close to the beginning. Right after they’d had sex, he’d told her.

  Between his sophomore and junior years of college, he had backpacked through Central America. On his way home, somewhere in Mexico, he met another American, a girl maybe three years older than he, her dirt-encrusted face the result of a month in the Oaxaca jungle. They were in a bus station, waiting for different delayed buses, a storm raging outside, the afternoon turning dark, and the time they had together was doubled by the storm, by the unpredictable natural world, by the luck of running into each other in such an unlikely place, and then it was tripled by these same forces, and then quadrupled, and they had a moment to believe the multiplication would never end, that each had stumbled onto the person who would matter more than any other. He took her into the lone bathroom and washed her face with his last clean shirt. He opened her blouse and washed her small, perfect breasts, and when the loudspeaker announced the arrival of his bus, he almost let it go by. Months later, he showed up on her campus—half a continent away from Flagstaff. They ate Indian food together, but the only thing they could find to talk about was that bus station. He spent the night with her, and the perfunctory sex put an end to any hope one had for the other. “We should have left it alone,” she had said.

 
Candler was determined not to repeat the mistake with Lise. The deadline that numbered their days also sweetened them. Its hovering finality kept them from openly arguing, permitted them to ignore the spitting and roaring of the other aspects of their lives.

  Oh, well, this much he had to admit: when he was with her, he could breathe. Really breathe. But some things were meant to end, and because of that they might seem more beautiful than the things that lingered. He finished his sandwich and picked up the pamphlet.

  In the 1940s, Onyx Springs became briefly famous for the Spotted Horno Rhinus, a false genus of lizard discovered by recluse biologist John Rhinus, who had moved to the city after failing to get tenure at one of the state universities. With purple spots and incomplete rear legs that forced its end to wriggle like a snake, the Spotted Horno Rhinus represented the missing link in the reptilian evolutionary chain, claimed Rhinus. The local newspaper ran a photograph of Rhinus holding the creature by the tail. The discovery became national news though no reputable biologist understood what Rhinus meant by a missing reptilian link. It turned out that Rhinus had been an English professor, not a biologist, and a neighbor was quoted in the newspaper: “Most of us believe John’s suffering from a mild form of a serious mental disorder.” The lizard—there was only one—was merely a genetically damaged gecko.

  Candler put the pamphlet down. Why the hell had he thought this place was a good idea?

  Lise finally returned, smiling and self-consciously cheery. “You never told me why you were out so late last night.”

  Kat’s daughter had fallen from a swing at her pre school, and Candler picked up Kat’s son from his afterschool program, fed him at Little Caesars, and drove him home. “She thought she’d just be an hour or so,” he said, “but her daughter had a concussion. They had to run tests. The boy and I played some awful video game and then I put him to bed.” He had called Lise with the gist of this information the night before, but she knew that Kat used to be his lover. “I went to your place as soon as Kat and her boyfriend made it back from the hospital with her daughter.”

  “What awful video game?” Lise asked.

  “A bunch of robo-guys shooting aliens. I don’t remember what it’s called.” Most men his age had grown up playing video games, but most men hadn’t been raised by Frederick and May Candler. “Blood and guts—a gory game.” There had been a moment during the ordeal when Candler thought he had a way out. An alien got the drop on them and blasted Candler’s avatar in the back before the boy’s character could whip around and obliterate the assassin.

  “All right, I’m a goner,” Candler had said. “You go on without me. Be brave.”

  “Just wait a second,” the boy told him.

  Sure enough, Candler’s character came back to life, swiftly up on his feet and humping down yet another dim roadway.

  “Isn’t that cheating?”

  “It’s part of the game.”

  “But it’s not like life.”

  “It’s like this life,” the boy said, aiming his finger at the screen.

  Candler still wanted to object. What was the point of tracking your progress if even death didn’t stop you?

  “You don’t want to be killed,” the boy explained, “even though you don’t stay dead.”

  “Why not?”

  “ ’Cause it costs you. You’re weaker now.”

  He’d definitely felt weaker, but he didn’t go into detail with Lise about the video game, and it occurred to him in a flash that he should break it off with her now, even though they still had a few days to go. He liked seeing her, but the end was going to be difficult and possibly ugly. This lunch was a sign, a signal, an omen. Encounters like this one marked the beginning of the end—this kind of disjointed unhappy conversation, full of missed connections and the little misunderstandings that would lead to the big, ridiculous fights.

  “I’ve got a client at one,” he said.

  “I like that we came here,” she replied. “Honestly, I expected some motel quickie. I’m sort of surprised, given the nature of our relationship—”

  “Less than seventy hours to go,” he said. “I know.”

  “—that it would turn out to be about something more than sex.”

  “To be honest, I just didn’t think of a motel. If I’d thought of it . . .”

  “There you go. Some part of your head decided this would be better, figured out that I’d like it more than a motel, and it kept the other part of your head stupid.”

  Oh well, he thought, people weren’t really so complicated, were they? Humans didn’t do all that much but seek out people to hold and fuck and talk to, people they might like to eat with and argue with and lie next to. But what he said was: “My head is always at war with itself. Lately, anyway.” And then, for no reason that he could articulate, he didn’t want her to go. He thought about canceling his one o’clock. He could claim an upset stomach. They would sit here and talk until they made real connection, until they corrected the misunderstandings. He said, “You know what Kat’s son told me last night? He was in bed. I’d read him a couple of books, and he was telling me about his school, how his teacher said that an ant colony is a type of intelligence. It enacts thinking. I can’t remember how he put it, but that’s the general picture. And this boy—he’s only eight. I could tell he liked that a lot. He liked lying in his bed and thinking about it. I get a kick out of that kid.”

  “I’m going to kiss you on the cheek,” Lise said. “Then you take off. I’ll stay another few minutes, and then I have to get to work, too.”

  “You’re just going to sit here.”

  She nodded and shooed him with her hands.

  He felt queer leaving her there and oddly awkward as he crossed the porch, as if he were walking on mice. The strange man was not at his desk but the iPod was, and its face was illuminated. Candler bent over to peek: The Death of Ivan Ilych.

  “It’s good to see you, Mr. Candler.” The cashier stepped from the hallway. “I didn’t want to embarrass you before. With the pretty girl waiting and all. I’m doing real well these days, and grateful for all you did for me.”

  Candler smiled uneasily, trying to place him. “I’m glad to hear that. I’m genuinely glad to hear that.”

  “My life was like the guy in this story.” He indicated his iPod. “Except I didn’t have to die to figure it out. I had the help of people like you.”

  “Nice of you to say that.” He could not come up with a name. “So nice.” The man didn’t look in the least familiar. As Candler turned to leave, the pocket of his pants caught the corner of the desk and pulled him back.

  “It’s a good story.” The man fitted the earphones back in place. “I’ve listened to it more times than I can count. He starts off dead and then he lives his whole life and then he dies again.”

  Candler could not remember the plot or the man, but he knew the story was one of those dreary Russian things. “You take care of yourself,” he said. “Don’t be a stranger.” He stepped carefully away from the desk, through the door, and into the heat of the day.

  DAY 13:

  Despite the dumb corporate name, Lise felt Petco Park had the dignity of a train station, one of those elegant old buildings that called to mind women in long dresses and men in hats. She had purchased tickets down the third-base line, a good location for foul balls, with a clear view of the field. The Padres were terrible, and it was easy to get good seats.

  She had moved in with her friend in Ocean Beach and given up her apartment in Liberty Corners, and soon she would have to give up James Candler, as well. But not this evening. On this evening, she and James and Billy were in downtown San Diego, in the red brick ballpark, and the Padres actually scored a couple of runs early, and she had sneaked in a bottle of scotch—not a flask but an entire bottle smuggled in under her skirt like a spy with a bomb.

  Her father had taught her to love baseball, but it hadn’t entir
ely taken. She recalled fondly going to major league games with him in St. Louis and twice in Kansas City and once at Wrigley Field in Chicago, where Sammy Sosa hammered one off the scoreboard in right center. But her father had failed in his efforts to make her love the sport, and his work had merely made her love him. She hadn’t followed baseball since leaving Missouri, but it was easy to revive her interest after watching Candler study the box scores with a scrutiny usually reserved for the dark spots on X-rays or mysterious passages of scripture. He and Billy slouched on the ugly gray couch in Candler’s living room and watched games together, talking to the players on the screen. “Come on, Hairston,” Candler would say. “How ’bout a clutch hit for a change?” She had squeezed between them on that gruesome couch for a couple of games, and when the opposing team had the opportunity to score, Billy Atlas would start chanting and Candler would join in: “Hey batta batta batter, hey batta, swing.” She got the tickets online. A present.

  It was a Saturday, a fine June evening, the Padres already out of the pennant race, impossibly far behind the Dodgers, twelve games out in the loss column, and Lolly Powell, that exotic frilly creature from the photograph, would arrive at San Diego International Airport in less than forty-eight hours. There was Lise’s loss column: forty-eight and counting down.

  They drank scotch from Coke cups. Scotch was Candler’s favorite, and she was developing a taste for it. He was talking to her—to her and Billy both—saying that the shortstop for the Padres, formerly their star but now struggling, suffered from nervous attacks and was having a terrible season. Candler explained that social anxiety disorder was a disaster for anyone habitually scrutinized by others.

  “Like strippers,” Lise said without thinking, the scotch and the balmy night making her tongue too quick. Candler and Billy laughed, and she asked them what a shortstop’s scrutiny was compared to a woman who six times a night took off every shred of her clothing and squatted before the audience like a catcher but without even a mitt?