After the Fall

by Brad Graber

  Brad Graber

  After the Fall. Copyright © 2018 by Brad Graber. All rights reserved.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be copied or reproduced by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing by the publisher.

  Disclaimer: The characters and story line portrayed in this book are fictional and are not based on any person living or dead. Any public figures mentioned are representative of time and place of the story.

  ISBN: Paperback: 978-0-9976042-2-1

  eBook: 978-0-9976042-3-8

  Cover design: Ronnie Seats

  Interior page design: Jeff Brandenburg

  Photograph: Yucel

  Published by Dark Victory Press

  brad@bradgraber.com

  bradgraber.com

  First printing: 2018

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To my late mother, who taught me to believe in myself. For that, I most humbly thank her.

  Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.

  —Proverb

  Acknowledgments

  To Steven Bauer of Hollow Tree Literary Service who edited my book. I’m grateful for his attention to detail and guidance with storytelling. To Jeff Brandenburg who exceeded my expectations in design and layout and continues to be my friend. To Mark Woodworth for his copyediting expertise and to Ronnie Seats for the artistic cover design. Finally, to Yucel, who snapped the photograph of me on the back cover. Ah, the wonders of Photoshop.

  1

  Rikki braced herself as the traffic light at 73rd Avenue and Parson’s Boulevard turned yellow. With one hand on the dashboard and the other gripping the door handle, she held her breath as her grandmother leaned forward and stepped on the gas. Three pigeons in the road broke into flight as the red Ford Mustang blasted through the intersection.

  Rikki was furious. “Why did you do that?” she yelled. “Didn’t you see those birds? You could have hurt them.”

  An overcast November morning in Queens, New York, and Rikki was being driven to school by her grandmother, Rita Goldenbaum. The weekend had been unusually cold, and by late Sunday afternoon, dark clouds had released the season’s first snowfall. Now the temperatures were just above freezing, and the powdery white that had earlier beautified the brick and cement neighborhood had turned gray and messy in Monday morning’s rush hour.

  Rita let out an exuberant laugh. Her bright red hair, set in curlers and wrapped in a clear plastic kerchief, matched the chipped nail polish on her chubby hands. Rikki thought the color particularly unbecoming on a woman of Rita’s age. “Honey, don’t you know pigeons are just rats with wings? Filthy animals spreading disease wherever they go.” A lit cigarette dangled from the corner of Rita’s mouth, bobbing with each word.

  Rikki rolled her eyes. “Why do you have to be so mean?” she said as she waved a hand to clear the air of cigarette smoke. “When are you going to stop that filthy habit? It’s 2005 and you’re still smoking.”

  “Mean?” Rita’s voice was pure innocence as she shifted the cigarette from her mouth to her left hand. “There’s not a mean bone in my body.”

  Never mind, Rikki thought, disgusted. She wasn’t in the mood to play Rita’s game.

  “No, seriously,” Rita said, slipping the tip of the Salem 100 out a slim opening of the driver’s side window. A bit of ash flew off. “I really want to know. What did I say that was so terrible?” She looked over at Rikki. Her large brown eyes feigned concern as the car drifted from its lane.

  Rikki had come to accept Rita as a complicated woman with many opinions, the chief of which was that life was unfair. A native New Yorker, born and raised in the Bronx, Rita spoke her mind. Whether her opinions were obnoxious, outrageous, or conventional, she wore them like a badge of honor. There was no filter. If it was on the brain, it came out the mouth.

  “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about,” Rikki said. She hated Rita’s pretense almost as much as she hated her smoking.

  Rita’s voice rose an octave. “About vermin?”

  Rikki shifted. “About everything. You’re so negative.”

  “I’m edgy,” Rita insisted, eyes focused on the road. “New Yorkers are sharp and sarcastic. That’s just the way it is. I’d have thought by now, after years of living here, you’d be over all that Michigan niceness.” She sniffed, as if being polite was to be avoided at all costs. “You’re still not one of us. My goodness.” Rita took a drag off her cigarette. “You’re one stubborn young lady.”

  “I’ll never be a New Yorker,” Rikki muttered, a sadness gripping her heart as she rolled down her window to let in some fresh air.

  The Mustang stopped at a red light. “Now honey, don’t get all emotional on me.” Rita’s tone softened. “You’ve got to grow a thicker skin to survive in this world. Trust me. I know. I’m the expert,” she boasted. “You know that I love you. Right?”

  Rikki took a deep breath. Whenever they had words, Rita defaulted to pronouncements of love.

  “Oh no,” Rita said with a chortle as the light changed to green. “If you don’t think I love you, you must really be mad. What else can I say, my darling? I keep forgetting. I have a very serious granddaughter.”

  Rikki barely listened as Rita rattled on. Her thoughts shifted to the upcoming day. High school had proved a hard adjustment. A junior, she was still struggling to fit in. There were so many students, and for a shy girl it was simply overwhelming. As the car approached a stop sign, Rikki grew increasingly anxious. Queens Hospital loomed ahead. They were at the halfway point. Soon she’d be in front of the school.

  Rita let out a hacking cough, easing up on the gas before clearing her throat and once again accelerating. “And here I am, encouraging all your nonsense,” she said, cigarette held high in the air as she took a deep breath. “You should be taking the bus like the other kids. You know your problem?” Rita lectured. “You’ve been raised like a fragile doll. Well, you’re just like everyone else. The sooner you realize it, the better we’ll all be. That imagination of yours . . .”

  “I didn’t imagine it,” Rikki quickly defended herself. “It happened.”

  Rita waved the cigarette as if, by doing so, she could dismiss Rikki’s truth. “Whatever happened, you’ve made too much of it . . . just like you always do. A big brouhaha over nothing.”

  Rikki pressed her eyes tightly shut. Why did Rita have to bring it up again? At the end of her sophomore year, walking to catch the bus in the morning, she’d been accosted by a young man. At first she thought he was going to ask for directions. He blocked her path forward. When he grabbed her by the arm, she became hysterical, dropping her schoolbooks and struggling with him until he let her go. She ran all the way home.

  The encounter had only intensified her fear of strangers.

  “This is such a safe neighborhood,” Rita insisted as they passed a group of teenagers huddled at the corner, waiting for the light to change. “Look at them,” she pointed. Two of the four were in the midst of a pushing match. The smaller one tripped and dropped to a knee, struggling to break his fall. “They’re laughing and horsing around. Doing all the things kids do. Do they look afraid?”

  Clearly, they were picking on the little kid. Rikki peered to see if she recognized any of the faces. No. None of them looked familiar.

  “You should be over this nonsense by now,” Rita griped. “I shouldn’t have to drive you to school every day.”

  “I can’t help it,” Rikki answered, mindful that she was still uncomfortable negotiating the streets of Queens.

  Rita repeated her familiar mantra. “There are lots of
people in this world. The quicker you learn that, the better.”

  But Rikki couldn’t help but be afraid. The borough of Queens was a giant melting pot of skin colors, religions, and ethnicities. Blacks, Hispanics, and whites. Jews, Italians, Indians, Greeks, and Vietnamese. More diversity than Rikki had ever been exposed to in suburban Detroit, where most everyone had been white.

  “I know,” Rikki meekly answered as they stopped for another light. Two boys ran past them, a third in close pursuit.

  “You should be riding the bus,” Rita repeated as they passed a bus stop where a group of children waited.

  Rikki hated taking public transportation. The bus during the morning rush hour was too densely packed. If she was unable to get a seat, she dreaded touching the germ-covered metal poles, and she held her breath as strangers pushed past her, not wanting to breathe in their exhalations. As the bus bounced up and down, bags, umbrellas, and, sometimes, wandering hands rubbed up against her.

  “There’s no reason to be afraid,” Rita insisted. The red tip of her cigarette glowed brightly as she took another drag.

  But Rikki was afraid. Since moving in with her grandmother, she’d struggled to adjust to the world around her. Now and then, she’d have a glimpse of a happier time. But it was merely the dimmest of memories. The doctors had promised it would all come back eventually, but so far it hadn’t. She had a terrible sense of a before and after, in which Queens was most definitely the after. And yet she did have flashes of recall about a life in Michigan. A lovely two-story brick house on a quiet, tree-lined street. A flagstone walkway that led up to a front door the color of gingerbread. Such memories contrasted sharply with the high-rise buildings that now surrounded her. The cement sidewalks that choked any bit of greenery from the landscape. When she asked Rita about what was wrong with her, Rita would become annoyed.

  “Rikki, we’ve been through this, over and over. There’s nothing wrong with you. You just need to live in the present. That’s all we’ve got. This moment. No more.”

  “I want to go back to the doctor,” Rikki had begged.

  “That psychiatrist was a quack,” Rita had insisted. “You’re done with all that now. I won’t have you up at night crying because you think something’s wrong. You’ve just had an emotional upset. Plenty of people lose their mothers when they’re young. Madonna. Rosie O’Donnell. They’ve gone on to have successful lives. And so will you.”

  Given time, the crying did eventually stop. As puberty kicked in, Rikki’s body changed, and so did her focus. Looking in the mirror, she cringed at her oily skin, untamed wavy brown hair, and hopelessly oval face. The small gap between her two front teeth made her unwilling to smile. Convinced that she wasn’t pretty, she’d recently gained weight, and because her breasts were still not fully developed, her figure remained awkward. She hid herself in oversized, baggy clothing. The bigger, the better. I look like Darlene Conner from “Roseanne,” she thought. A cross between a tomboy and a mess.

  “I told your mother that living in that lily-white suburb was a bad idea,” Rita said as the car hit a pothole and bounced. “But your mother was so set in her ways. ‘Detroit isn’t lily white,’ she’d say. ‘Maybe not,’ I’d tell her. ‘But Birmingham, Michigan, sure is.’”

  “It wasn’t all white,” Rikki protested, eager to defend the mother she couldn’t quite remember.

  “It may be green in the summer,” Rita snapped, “but Birmingham, Michigan, is white, white, and white. It might be a lovely place to live, I’ll give you that, but it’s not the real world. The real world is Queens.”

  “No,” Rikki whispered as she rebelled at Rita’s assertion. “That’s your world.”

  “Don’t be fresh,” Rita snapped as the light ahead turned yellow. “I still have my hearing, thank you very much.”

  Rikki braced herself. “You better slow down.”

  Rita gunned it, just barely making it through as the light turned red.

  “Stop telling me how to drive!” Rita complained. “My goodness. How about we listen to the radio? Maybe that’ll get your mind off of the road.” She reached over and fumbled with the dials, ash dropping onto the leather console.

  Rikki pushed her grandmother’s hand away as the car drifted from its lane. “I’ll do it. Pay attention to your driving.”

  With the turn of a knob, Rush Limbaugh’s voice bathed the car in warm, somber tones as he discussed the recent election of Angela Merkel as the first female Chancellor of Germany. Rikki winced. “How can you listen to him? He gives me the creeps.”

  Rita took another drag on her cigarette. It was getting down to the end. “You know I love Rush. Next to Bill O’Reilly, he’s the only one who can make any sense of this crazy world.”

  “But he’s a drug addict,” Rikki insisted. “All that doctor-shopping for prescriptions.”

  “That poor man was in pain. You don’t know what it’s like. When you’re older, everything hurts. And when a doctor prescribes painkillers, you’re supposed to take them.”

  “I thought you weren’t old.” Rikki smirked as she turned off the radio in the middle of Rush’s diatribe about a new Iraqi constitution. “Maybe I should call you Grandma from now on?”

  “Don’t you dare,” Rita flared, taking her eyes off the road just long enough to offer her granddaughter a sharp glare and pass her what remained of her Salem 100. “Now stop teasing me and get rid of this.”

  Rikki took the smoking stub from her grandmother’s outstretched fingers. She rolled the passenger window down. “You promised you’d stop smoking.”

  “I know,” Rita said.

  “How about making that your 2006 New Year’s resolution?”

  Rita shrugged a shoulder.

  “It’s such a disgusting habit,” Rikki said as she tossed the butt out the passenger window at the precise moment that a gust of wind spiraled the hot poker back into the car. “Oh, my God,” Rikki screamed, wildly flailing, lifting herself up, arching her back, struggling against the seatbelt that was secured about her waist.

  “What?” Rita yelled, as she looked over at Rikki. “Are you okay?”

  The car bounced up onto the curb. Rita let out an “Oh, my God,” as she struggled to straighten the wheel. Back on the road again, she overcorrected, sending the Mustang into a spin. As Rita and Rikki screamed, the car spun across two lanes, crossing the median, before coming to rest parallel to oncoming traffic.

  ◆

  Harry Aldon was tired. He hated getting up early to walk the dog. But, living in Phoenix, Arizona, that’s what he needed to do. Tender paws burnt easily on superheated pavement, and even though it was mid-November, and the intense triple-digit summer heat had long since dissipated, dogs are creatures of habit with built-in alarm clocks and a demand for consistent routine. At six a.m. Harry opened his eyes. Beetle, his wire-haired fox terrier, was wide awake and whining. The little dog’s torso was pressed up against the adjacent pillow. His head rested on his two front paws as he stared into Harry’s eyes.

  Harry blinked.

  Beetle stretched, thrusting his little body back into a downward-dog position before standing up on the bed with a brisk shake.

  “Okay, okay,” Harry groaned. “I’m getting up.”

  Harry lifted Beetle off the bed. “Good boy,” Harry said as sixteen pounds of squirming energy wiggled intently in his arms. He lowered Beetle to the carpet. “No more jumping for you, old friend. We’ve got to keep you intact.”

  Grabbing a pair of black Nike gym shorts and an old gray T-shirt, Harry lumbered into the bathroom to wash his face. A nearby nightlight offered the softest of illumination as he looked into the mirror. He was nearly fifty-five years old. Still vigorous. Still lean. His blue eyes clear and bright. Tiny wrinkles were just beginning to appear about his eyes and his mouth, and despite his age, he remained surprised by their presence. His dark gray curly hair, a crushed bed mess, had recently turned an interesting salt and pepper, making him, he believed, appear even older. He ran a ha
nd through the thick curls, pushing them away from his face, only to watch as they bounced back and covered his forehead.

  “Got you, buddy,” he said, lifting Beetle up and carrying him off to the garage where he attached a leash to the terrier’s collar. Beetle’s tongue hung out of his mouth as he panted with excitement. Harry could feel the dog’s rapid heartbeat in the palm of his hand.

  With Beetle’s collar secured, Harry pushed the button to raise the garage door. It was dark outside. The cool November air embraced Harry and Beetle as they made their way through the Arizona Biltmore neighborhood. The sweet scent of new winter grass, freshly planted and watered by early-morning automatic sprinklers, flooded Harry’s senses as he strolled quickly behind Beetle, who, despite his advanced years, seemed fiercely energized by the morning hour.

  As he turned a corner on the path, a distant figure loomed. Harry closed his eyes. He wished he didn’t have to run into anyone at such an early hour. It was hard to be congenial when the power of conversation seemed beyond him.

  “Hello!” called the figure of a woman, waving, as dawn began to break in the east.

  “Hello,” Harry politely said, alarmed that his tongue seemed stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  It was Lil. Lil Turner. He’d run into her off and on for the last few weeks. Lil was new to the neighborhood. She’d introduced herself one morning as Harry rambled by, quite oblivious to her perky figure. Though she tended to wear her shoulder-length blonde hair tucked behind her ears, on this particular morning it was rolled tightly in a bun high atop her head. With no makeup, and in her fitted, pink yoga outfit, flat midriff fully exposed, Lil appeared much younger than her fifty years.

  “It should be a beautiful day,” Lil offered, examining the sky. She held a newspaper, wrapped up tightly in plastic, like a baton.

  Harry nodded, hoping he might pass Lil without much interaction.

  “You’re awfully quiet this morning,” Lil said, as Beetle sniffed her fluffy pink slippers. “Hey there, Beetle, you sweet thing. How are you this morning?”