Even If I Fall

by Abigail Johnson

  “See,” I say, lifting another tissue to her cheek. “You’re good at this. I thought toilet paper was only ever good for wiping your nose or your tush.”

  Maggie tries to smile at me; I know she does. “I thought it would be different here, you know? I’d leave all the mean people behind. I thought a smaller town meant smaller problems, nicer people, but it’s not better. Look at you—half the town resents you for breaking up with the grandson of the custard queen.”

  Guilt smothers my anger toward the faceless trolls. Because of her friendship with me, we aren’t much better than shut-ins. We almost never go out; it’s always her house, or very rarely mine. I think about the friends she might have made at Keller’s Creamery if not for me, Tara and Dawn at least, and how I’ve been persuading her not to apply for the job at Polar Ice Rink right away. Not because she’d hate it like I tried to convince her, but because I wasn’t willing to risk that the people who work there would tell her the truth about my family and me.

  When Maggie gets off the bed again, I pick up the phone, delete the last mean comment on Maggie’s video and make a note to go back through her older videos to purge any others I find, and then I look up to where my friend is cuing up the movie. Because I’m so late we only have time to watch one, and of course she picked the one that features a figure skater, just for me.

  She glances at her phone in my hand when she rejoins me at the head of her bed. With reluctance, she takes it from me and proceeds to set it on the far side, like almost-but-not-quite-falling-off-the-edge-of-her-nightstand far, before offering me a Red Vine. “Thanks, Brooke.”

  My throat tightens. Helping her tonight is so little compared to what I’ve taken from her.

  The movie starts and the promised ice rink fills the screen. There’s even a clear shot of a Zamboni in one of the early scenes. A shiny new resurfacer that’s a far cry from Bertha’s decrepit form, but I don’t have to look at Maggie to know her eyes are looking at it instead of the meet-cute taking place in front of it.

  “How badly do you want to drive Bertha?” I ask her. It’s a rhetorical question, but Maggie pauses the movie and turns her whole body toward me, holding very still while answering.

  “Right now it’s up there with winning the NYX FACE Awards.” Basically the Oscars of online makeup videos. She really, really wants to work at Polar Ice Rink.

  “It’s not a great job,” I tell her, knowing I can’t talk her out of it, but self-preservation making me try one last time all the same.

  “But you’ll be there.”

  “And Jeff is awful.”

  “But I’ll get to drive Bertha.”

  “And clean toilets.”

  “We’ll see.” Maggie grins.

  I suppress a tremor, truly afraid that my next words might lead to the end of our friendship. “My coworkers—” I stop, unsure how to even say what I need to say. I’m not worried she’ll seek out Jeff any more than strictly necessary, but the others? Elena? My stomach is one giant block of ice and dread, because what can I say? I’ll help you get the job but you have to promise not to have a meaningful conversation with any of the other employees? I try again, with no clearer idea how to end this sentence. “My coworkers—”

  “Yeah, let’s talk about them. There’s Jeff the walking skid mark, Elena the shrew who hired you then turned you over to Jeff the walking skid mark, that other guy who drives Bertha when you aren’t there and leaves her dented and smelling like Cheetos, the concession girls who I have personally witnessed use the bathroom without washing their hands. Am I missing anyone? No? Brooke, I’m not planning on wasting my time on any of them.”

  My relief would have buckled my knees had I been standing. I turn to my friend and take in the faint mascara smears on her cheeks as her eyes soften.

  “Is that what this has been about? Do you honestly think I’d befriend the people who try day in and day out to ruin the thing you love most in the world? Well, besides me.”

  I want to cry with how much I love her and how little I deserve her, but there have been enough tears that night. My smile is a little shaky but my eyes are dry. “You’re going to want to quit within a week.”

  She grins back. “I never quit anything.” Simultaneously her best and worst quality. “Does this mean you’re saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “Truth?” I ask her. She nods. “Driving Bertha is cool. It feels like controlling some huge, prehistoric beast.”

  “I knew it!”

  “But you seriously can’t go fast.”

  “I won’t.” She waits for me to go on, but I don’t. I’m all out of excuses. Her smile gets bigger. “You’re saying yes.” I try to shake off my lingering misgivings. Please God help me.

  “I’m saying yes.”

  Maggie kicks her heels into the bed like a little kid and squeals. “It’s going to be so great. Just think about it, I’m going to be an official Zamboni driver! And...and...” She pats my knee in excitement. “Once we’re working together at the rink we can start coming up with your audition routine for Stories on Ice!”

  CHAPTER 19

  I drift across the ice, trying not to glance at Jeff’s office door every two seconds. Normally, I can forget everything when I’m skating, like the fact that Maggie’s job interview has been going on for forty-five minutes so far, but today I’m struggling. I stop, lifting my hand to chew on a nail before I remember that I’m wearing gloves.

  Realizing it doesn’t matter if I look or not, I half spin so that I’m skating backward. The door is still closed. Gathering speed, I turn forward again, extend my arms out and raise my right foot behind me before springing up off the ice with my left. There’s a single heartbeat where I’m in the air flying before I pull my arms in to rotate, spinning two and a half times before landing backward on my right foot. I rotated too early, I felt it, but I still manage to keep from falling, though my hand does kiss the ice when I land. My nostrils flare and I’m ready to try another axel—maybe even a triple—when Maggie emerges from the office with Jeff at her heels, smiling.

  My next axel jump is possibly the most perfect one I’ve ever landed.

  * * *

  Jason is laughing—he’s genuinely laughing a few days later—as I describe Jeff’s sour expression when he gave me my shifts back. “He had no choice, since he had to fire David.”

  “And that guy just drove the Zamboni into the wall?”

  I rest my forearms on the metal table in the visitation room. “David was supposed to be training Maggie, only nobody ever really trained him, so he wasn’t using the guide mark José made on the top on Bertha’s dump tank and he kept overlapping each pass on the ice by like a foot. And when Maggie, who’s had like two days of training, pointed it out to him, he shifted to tell her to—” I eye Mom next to me and soften the actual words David used “—be quiet and pay attention. And that’s when he drove into the wall.”

  Jason laughs again. “What an ass.”

  “Jason,” Mom says with a slight reproof it her tone.

  He’s still smiling when he raises an eyebrow at her. “Really, Mom? I’m wearing an orange jumpsuit for the next thirty years and you’re worried about me swearing?”

  It’s a guess who goes paler after he falls silent, Mom or Jason, but they both go white as milk and I don’t feel far behind them. Finally, Jason leans back in his chair. “Well, I wish I could have seen it.”

  It takes me a second to pick the story back up, and my words are a little jerky when I do. “David tried to claim she distracted him, but Jeff was watching, so...” I don’t relay how David started yelling about Jeff hiring violent little girls, or how Maggie had reached her fill by then and walked away to check on Bertha before David could say more. “Anyway, David was gone, and Jeff was all sweaty and red-faced by the time I got there,” I say, trying to bring the mood back to something lighter. “Bertha is still runn
ing and someone’s coming out to make minor repairs on Monday, so I’m back to working every day with Maggie while I train her. It’s been really fun having her there.”

  “That’s good, Brooke, I’m happy it all worked out.”

  “Yes,” Mom says. “We’ll are very glad.”

  We don’t laugh anymore after that. I listen to Mom talk about things Jason already knows or updates on family members who live too far away for us to know very well. I think this is it then; another visit that includes a brief spark of life but ends with us huddled around ashes and memories that have grown cold.

  Mom is talking about some cousin in Tennessee when Jason cuts her off midsentence.

  “Mom, I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have made a joke about being here. I won’t do it again. But I need you to do something for me.” Mom becomes statue-still beside me, ready to do anything. “Enough with the stories about people I don’t know and never will know.” He turns to me. “Do you care if cousin what’s-his-face is building a cabin or a ranch house?”

  “Um...” I say.

  “No, you don’t.” Back to Mom. “I don’t even think you care. So tell me something else—something that I can hold on to when you leave. Tell me what’s going on at the library. Tell me what Laura is teaching Ducky to say. Tell me that you’re not just cleaning the ice at that rink, Brooke.” He lets his eyes shut. “Tell me something so I can forget that I’m here, just for a little bit. Please.”

  Mom turns her panicked eyes on me, silently pleading. She can’t tell him what’s going on at the library, because she doesn’t work there anymore, and Laura barely speaks to anyone let alone the bird he gave her. And me—I can’t tell him that when I skate, I do it with the knowledge that I’ll never skate anywhere else.

  Because of him.

  Because of what happened the night he killed Calvin Gaines.

  Because of words and reasons only he knows and won’t share. Saying they got into a fight falls so far short of explaining how his friend ended up dead by his hand.

  So I can’t tell him what he wants.

  And he won’t tell me what I need.

  And I know I’ll dream about the murder that night, just as I know I’ll wake up heaving from sobs I can’t sound.

  * * *

  Uncle Mike isn’t there waiting to cheer us up when Mom and I get home. I’m already in bed for the night when I hear his voice mingling with Dad’s downstairs, and even though it’s been months and months, I can tell he’s drunk. He would never again drive drunk, which means he brought a bottle with him and probably drank half of it before coming inside. He’s not falling-down, pass-out-in-his-own-puke drunk—he has hasn’t done that since Jason first went to prison—but he’s drunk enough that he’s saying things he never would sober.

  He and Dad get into it, only it’s the kind of fighting where they both maintain enough self-awareness to keep their voices down. Not that it matters. From up in my room I can hear their low yelling. When I slip into the hall I find Laura in her nightshirt clutching the banister at the top of the stairs. I don’t say anything, and I’m careful to avoid the floorboard that creaks when I walk up beside her.

  “Where’s Mom?” I whisper, knowing she wouldn’t be silent if she were downstairs with Dad and Uncle Mike.

  “Running.”

  It’s after ten and black as pitch outside, and she’s running. I push that thought away.

  “Then explain it to me!” Uncle Mike says, and there’s a thud like something toppled over. “’Cause from where I’m standing—”

  “Barely standing. You want Carol to see you like this?”

  “I want Carol to see me however I can. I want—I want—”

  “Mike, what are you doing?” Dad asks, the volume of his voice giving way to weariness.

  “I’m trying to talk to you.” Another thud followed by a muffled curse.

  “Would you sit down before you break something I can’t fix?” Shuffled footsteps and a grunt.

  “Get your hands off me. I’m standing.”

  “Fine,” Dad says. “You’re standing. So talk.”

  “You need to go see Jason.”

  Beside me, Laura drops her hands from the banister and backs away from the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” I mouth since it’s fallen quiet downstairs and I don’t want to risk a whisper. Laura doesn’t risk even that much. She just shakes her head and hurries back to her room.

  “That’s not your business,” Dad says, drawing my attention back downstairs.

  “The hell it’s not. I love him like he’s mine and—”

  “But he’s not yours. None of my kids are yours, and neither is she.”

  I feel the word she hang ominously in the sudden silence. Now I’m the one clutching the banister. I’ve never heard Dad talk with Uncle Mike about Mom.

  “If he were mine, I’d be there every week. I wouldn’t send my wife and my daughter off alone to make excuses for me.”

  The floorboards downstairs shift, and I can imagine Dad drawing very close to Uncle Mike before he speaks. “I’m not going to see my son in that place.”

  “Then you’re not going to see him! What if you don’t live another thirty years? How old was your dad when he died, sixty? Don’t you get it? You might not be here when he gets out, and you won’t know him anymore if you are!”

  “I don’t know him now! How could he—” Dad cuts himself off before his voice can grow any more strangled. “I’m not having this conversation with you when you’re drunk.”

  “What about your wife—you having this conversation with her?”

  Dad’s voice drops so low I almost miss it. “Watch it, Mike.”

  “Yeah, ’cause that’s what I do. I stand back, I watch, I can’t help and I never touch.”

  I hear more than a scuffle then, and it’s punctuated by a hollow-sounding bang. I can’t help it, I creep down the top few steps until I can crouch down and see into the living room. Dad has Uncle Mike pressed up against a wall but releases him as suddenly as he slammed him back, and I can see Dad taking deep, chest-filling breaths. Both of them are.

  “Will, I—”

  “Quit coming out here when you’re drinking. Quit talking about my family like any part of them ever belonged to you. Quit acting like you know anything about being a father.” He walks to the closet and pulls out the blankets and pillow Mom keeps on hand for Uncle Mike and tosses them on the couch. “Drunk or not, friend or not, you say anything like that about my wife again and I’ll lay you out.”

  I have just enough time to retreat into my room before Dad heads upstairs.

  CHAPTER 20

  Days pass without rain. I drive past Hackman’s Pond a few times anyway, but I never see Heath. Everywhere else things are okay. Not good, not awful, just okay.

  I keep dreaming of Cal dying, of Jason killing him. Over and over again my subconscious projects the grisly scene in my mind, trying to fit the pieces together in a way that explains how my brother could have done what he did, but they never fit.

  I wake up gasping one night, sure that I can hear Cal’s blood dripping, only to find rain beating against my windowpane.

  * * *

  I’m not relieved exactly when Heath’s truck finally pulls up behind Daphne at the tree the next day. My dream is too fresh in my mind. I’m worrying my bottom lip when he joins me under the shade.

  “I thought I might have to leave for work before you got here.”

  “I couldn’t get here sooner,” is all he says while moving to the branch, to the spot I’m starting to think of as his.

  We don’t have an exact time for meeting up, and it’s not like the rain is predictable. The smart thing would be for us to exchange numbers or set specific days and times to meet, but we haven’t done that and I don’t think we will. Keeping it vague and dependent on the whims o
f the weather helps it feel less premeditated. Less like I’m doing something I shouldn’t.

  “My work schedule changes basically every week,” I say. “If I’m ever not here after it rains, that’s why. Not, you know, for any other reason.”

  Heath nods. An awkward silence stretches in the few feet separating us. I don’t know how to fill it. I’ve been sitting there for nearly an hour, trying and mostly failing to smother the guilt that surrounds me for wanting to see him. Last night, hearing the rain and knowing what it meant was the only thing that let me find sleep again after my dream.

  I don’t understand why, especially as I’m feeling worse and worse as the silent seconds tick by.

  “So you visit him, right?” I startle hearing Heath’s voice. “You go see him in prison?” He’s squinting in the sunlight reflected of the pond. He doesn’t sound angry, but I don’t know how could he be anything else when talking about Jason so I nod rather than voice my answer.

  “What do you even say to him?” A muscle in his jaw twitches. “Do you have normal conversations, like, do you tell him about your car breaking down or how the cat crapped in the living room again?”

  “We don’t have a cat,” I say quietly.

  Heath shifts his gaze to mine, forcing me to hold it as I perch on the branch a couple feet away.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “Forget it.”

  But I know he can’t. I move so that we’re facing each other. “We talk about normal things. Never anything heavy or serious. My mom will change the subject if I even try.”

  “And your dad?”

  “It’s only my mom and me who visit him.”

  “Your dad and sister don’t go?”