Falling Angels Page 3

  “I’ve got too many jobs,” she said to herself. “I’m carrying too much on my shoulders.”

  She decided that she didn’t give a damn what was happening at home, she was going to sit here for a few minutes. She took out one of her Mars bars, and as she was ripping off the wrapper, she noticed a boy who was crossing the road, walking right out into traffic and holding up his hand for the cars to brake. He started coming toward her, and then she recognized him. Lance Nipper. The boy with the metal plate in his head.

  She watched him closely. He was as unpredictable as a police dog. The plate was supposed to make him normal after he got a head injury in a car accident, but instead it made him different, a loner without fear, and it left him crazy for other metal things—nails and screws that he carried in his pockets; even knives and guns, somebody said.

  When he was only a few feet away, he gave her a glance. He would have kept walking.

  But she had a compulsion to stop him. His dangerous glance struck her as a dare, and she was in no mood right at that minute to back down.

  “Hi,” she said.

  He halted, looked at her. “Gimme a bite,” he said.

  “You can have a whole one,” she said, standing up and pulling another chocolate bar out of a shopping bag.

  He took it and tore the wrapper off with his teeth. There were bits of black hair on his upper lip and chin, like how you’d draw them on a jailbird. He was a jailbird; he’d been to reform school for stealing a car and driving it to the airport.

  “You’re Field or something,” he said.

  “Yeah, Lou Field.” How did he know her? she wondered, thrilling. He was in grade seven, three years ahead of her. He’d failed twice anyway. “You’re Lance Nipper,” she said. She watched him eat, surprised at how handsome his head was close up. She couldn’t see any scars or lumps. She’d expected him to have a bit of a ridge where the plate went in. The only noticeable side effect was how his black hair shone blue, like black comic-book hair.

  “What’d you buy?” he asked.

  “Oh, just groceries.” Out of habit, forgetting it was true, she added,“My mother’s sick.”

  He crumpled up his wrapper and shoved it in the truck’s tailpipe. “Maybe I’ll come to your house,” he said.

  “No!” she said quickly. “You can’t because of my mother.” What she meant was because of their father. Their father knew about Lance, said he was the garbage you got in the subdivision when you let apartments go up. If their father found out that Lance had even stepped on their property, he’d call the police.

  “No big deal,” Lance said. “You come to my place.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “But my groceries.”

  “Bring ‘em along.”

  She looked at the bulky paper bags leaning against each other in her old red wagon. She was more inclined to ditch them, along with every other dissuasion.

  It was as if she were hypnotized. Magnetized. Trying to keep up with him, pulling along the wagon after all, she imagined she felt his metal plate tugging at the zipper on her jacket and the buckles on her boots. He jingled the screws and nails in his pockets. From the back he looked like a short man.

  In the lobby of his apartment building he lifted the intercom phone and punched one of the buttons. “Lemme in,” he said.

  There was a loud buzzing. As he opened the door, he told her to leave the wagon, but she worried about her groceries being stolen. He motioned her over, and while she held the door ajar, he drew a couple of nails out of his jeans pocket and stuck them through the tops of two bags. “Nobody’ll take your groceries now,” he said. Nails and screws in unlikely places were his calling card.

  She hesitated. “Not everyone knows what they mean,” she said.

  “Anybody who’d steal your groceries knows,” he said.

  His mother was in curlers, lying on the chesterfield and watching t?. She didn’t look up at them coming into the apartment. They went down the hall to a closed door with a Keep Out sign beneath a drawing of a skull and crossbones that Lou thought she could have drawn way better. When they were both in the room, he reached his arm around her back, and she thought dizzily,“He’s going to kiss me,” but he was shutting the door, locking it. There was a hook lock above the handle.

  She sat on the edge of his bed. The bedspread had a brick pattern. Brown and red bricks with white mortar oozing out. On the dresser were five big jars with his nails and screws in them, sorted by size.

  “How old are ya, anyway?” he asked, leaning against the dresser and unsnapping his jacket.

  “Ten,” she lied.

  “Ya look around eight.” He slipped his hand down the back of his blue jeans and pulled out a cigarette that had already been half smoked. From his other back pocket he withdrew a stick match and struck it on his jeans zipper.

  “I’m hooked on the damn things,” Lou said.

  He glanced at her, that glance like the sign on his door, then devoted himself to smoking. He inhaled the way their father did, sucking as if the smoke were stuck halfway down the cigarette. On the t? in the living room a man said,“The wife most likely to be kissed always puts beer on her list.”

  She was afraid. Not of him, standing there smoking, but of something else, something she couldn’t put her finger on. The clock beside the bed said ten after four. Their mother would have needed to go to the bathroom by now. “How about a drag?” she asked.

  He came over and held the cigarette to her lips. “Coffin nails,” he said, took one last drag himself, then tossed the butt in the wastepaper basket. He lifted a handful of her hair. Dropped it. “I like girls to have long hair,” he said. “I like skinny girls.” He stayed standing right in front of her, his belt buckle inches from her nose.

  “Let’s go somewhere,” he said.

  “Where?” She looked up at his face.

  “I’ve got something to show ya.”

  Following him down the hall, she did up her jacket and put on her mittens to go outside, but when they got to the bottom of the stairs, he opened a door and went down some more stairs to the basement. In the back of her mind she had some idea that what he was going to show her wasn’t an electric train set.

  They went halfway along the hall to a metal door. He jiggled the handle.

  “Locked,” she said.

  “To the general public,” he sneered, taking a small nail out of his pocket and inserting it in the keyhole.

  It was the laundry room. There were two automatic washing machines and two dryers. A green folding table, a pair of sinks and a bulletin board. “So,” she said, walking across the room,“what were you going to show me?”

  “Ya gotta pull your pants down.”

  The one note on the bulletin board was for free kittens. None of the telephone numbers was torn off. “What for?” she asked.

  “We’re gonna play doctor. I’m the doctor, you’re the patient.”

  She turned to face him. “I never had to pull my pants down at the doctor’s,” she said. But she understood that nothing that had ever happened before counted now.

  “Look.” He strolled over to her, clinking the nails in his pockets. “It’s no big deal. I’ll do it if you want. I’ll be the patient, you be the doctor.”

  “No.” She shook her head.

  He shrugged. “So you be the patient. It’s up to you.”

  Her pants had an elastic waist. She pulled them to her knees, leaving her underpants on.

  “All the way down.” She pushed them down to her ankles. “I gotta examine ya,” he said and told her to go over to the table. With her pants down she walked like a Chinese girl. She was more embarrassed about that than her underpants showing.

  He had her bend forward over the edge of the table. Then he yanked down her underpants.

  “Don’t!” she cried, reaching for them.

  He grabbed her wrist, made her let go. He pushed her down on the table. “Ya can’t move,” he said, sounding mad. She
didn’t want him to be mad at her.

  It seemed like an hour passed. She regarded her hands in their red mittens flat on the table. Her thumb was coming through a hole. She’d better get Sandy to mend that. She listened to him breathing, the only sound.

  He touched her. Where she went number two. She flinched, then felt his hand on her bum, pressing her into the table.

  “I’m gonna take your temperature,” he said. And despite the fact that he was pressing her, she assumed it was over, the most evil thing you could do, the thing she’d come here to do. She’d gone ahead and done it, and it was no big deal. She could pull her pants up, and what he’d do next would concern her mouth. She raised herself a little. As she did, something went up her bum. Cold, thin, smooth. A nail. She screamed.

  “Shut up!” His hand covered her mouth. The nail went in farther. Stabbed her. She bit him.

  “Shit!” he yelled. The hand flew off her mouth. A red ring of blood on his finger.

  She ran to the door, tripping, holding her bum, crying. The nail was still in her. It was like a knife, a knife in her. She pulled it out, screaming.

  “What are you howling about? Ya almost bit my goddamn finger off.” He was at the sinks, turning on the taps.

  She got her pants up, ran to the door, shook the handle. Screamed for help and the police.

  “It’s open, ya jerk,” Lance said.

  In the hall there were two exit signs. Which way had they come down? She ran to the left and up stairs that took her straight into the lobby, where the sight of her wagon with the groceries in it was as miraculous as if their mother stood there. Their mother! What time was it? It was dark out. Probably their mother was dead by now.

  No! She was better! She was in the kitchen doorway.

  “Mommy!” Lou cried, leaving the wagon and groceries in the hall and running to her.

  Their mother seized her by the shoulders. “Did you buy my coffee?” Her eyes were on fire. Her hands shook Lou’s whole body.

  “No,” Lou said softly. “No, I can’t buy liquor, Mommy.”

  Their mother let her go and gave a great shudder.

  Lou slipped around her into the kitchen. All the cupboard doors were open and her sisters were sitting on the floor surrounded by cans. “What the hell’s going on around here?” she asked.

  “We can’t find a single bottle,” Norma sighed. “Not a single one.”

  “They’re all gone,” Sandy said, opening her hands. She didn’t like searching anymore—their mother was acting crazy. She wanted their mother to go back to bed.

  None of them heard the car pull up. The front door opening hit Lou’s wagon, but before their father could get into full swing yelling about that, their mother was in the hall announcing the crisis.

  He allowed himself a moment to register her recovery. Then he checked his watch. “Jesus Christ,” he said quietly. Lou volunteered that the stores were closed tomorrow, too, for New Year’s. She and her sisters had their hands out for inspection, but he didn’t give them a glance. He put his arms around their mother and said she should go back to bed. A couple of sleeping pills and she’d sleep right through.

  “Run next door,” she urged. “Say we’re having guests and are caught short.”

  “I’m not doing that,” he said.

  “It’s Christmas, Jim. Everybody’s stocked up.”

  She was drawing red lines on the back of her hand. Their father snatched what she was doing it with and threw it on the floor. It was a nail, one of the nails Lance had stuck through the shopping bags. Their father declared that she needed Bactine and a bandage on that hand, pronto. He tried to pull her down the hall. “No!” she screamed. She got away from him and threw herself at the door. He booted the wagon out of his way, knocking a bag of cans over, caught her by both arms and turned her to face him. The girls looked on in a calm of horror.

  But he didn’t hit her. He never had and didn’t now. He said, quietly, pleadingly,“For Christ’s sake, Mary.” Norma would have fallen into his arms. She thought,“He’s the only man that goes to church without his wife.”

  Their mother licked her lips. “It’s hot,” she rasped. “I can’t breathe.”

  “Do you want a Pepsi?” their father asked brightly. “Lou, go get some.” Lou ran to the kitchen.

  “No, no, no,” their mother groaned. “I’ve got to go on the roof.”

  Lou extended the Pepsi bottle.

  “Here’s some nice cold Pepsi,” their father said.

  “I’m just going up on the roof,” their mother said, nodding that it was okay.

  “This’ll quench your thirst,” their father said heartily.

  Lou asked,“What do you want to go on the roof for?”

  “I can’t breathe,” their mother answered, beseeching their father. “I have to be up high. High, high up.”

  Their father tipped the Pepsi at her lips. Grimacing, she hit it out of his hand. Pepsi splashed on the wall and spilled out a brown lake by their boots.

  “That does it,” their father said. He scooped their mother up like a bride and began carrying her down the hall to their room. She kicked, thrashed. A pink bow barrette that Sandy had clipped in her hair when she was sleeping shot out. She slapped their father’s face so hard his hat fell off.

  They heard him drop her on the bed. “Girls!” he shouted. “Get in here!”

  He had her on her stomach, her arms pinned behind her back. “Lou, Sandy,” he said,“get on the bed, on either side of her.” They climbed on. “Okay. Now hold her here.” He nodded at her wrists. “Come on.” They each held a wrist. Norma could put her fingers right around. “Squeeze,” he said. They held tighter. “That’s it,” he said, letting go, and she jerked, as if she could free herself now, so they held even tighter, they got up on their knees to be stronger, and Sandy sang,“Mommy can’t get a-way-ay.”

  He had Norma sit across her legs. “Now stay put,” he ordered. He said he was going to drive to Uncle Eugene’s for the whisky. It would take an hour. He said don’t worry, she wouldn’t be able to keep on fighting, she was sick. But it was easy to hold her. For a mother she was little.

  “Whatever you do,” he called from the front door,“don’t let her outside.”

  As soon as he was gone, she stopped struggling. “Get up now,” she said in a kind, motherly voice.

  “We can’t,” Sandy said. “You’ll go on the roof. You’ll fall off.” Falling to death was Sandy’s biggest fear these days.

  Lou asked,“What do you want to go up there for anyway?” She took it for granted there must be a logical reason, such as a bottle stored in the chimney.

  “My arms,” their mother moaned. She started to cry. Sandy, who was bent over her, looking at her face, instantly let go, and Lou, seeing where Sandy’s grip had reddened their mother’s thin white arm, said “Oh,” remorsefully, and she let go, too.

  Their mother reared. Norma tumbled backward, her glasses flying off. In a flash their mother was on her feet. “Stay!” she shouted, holding a hand out like a policeman. They did, they were so overwhelmed by her. But then they heard the front door handle turning, and they tore down the hall after her, catching her before she was out.

  “Get away! Let me go!” she screamed. Her eyes threw hatred at them. She was their enemy.

  “Let her go!” Sandy cried, starting to hit at her sisters.

  “She’ll climb on the roof,” Norma said. She was pulling their mother’s arm. Lou was trying to pin the other one, as their father had done.

  “I said let her go!” Sandy screamed, and with both hands she yanked Lou’s hair.

  “Shit!” Lou yelled. She pushed Sandy as hard as she could, slamming her into the wall.

  Norma had her arms around their mother’s waist now. Their mother twisted and fought, but Norma was too strong for her. “We need some rope or something,” Norma shouted. “We’ve got to tie her.”

  “Shut up!” Lou yelled at Sandy howling behind her.

  “You get it,”
Norma shouted at Lou. “I can’t see without my glasses. I’ll hold her.”

  Lou ran into the kitchen and down the basement stairs. Where was rope? In their father’s workroom? In the laundry room? The clothesline. She tried to pull it down. Then she saw her double-dutch skipping rope on the floor.

  By the time she got upstairs, their mother was curled up on the doormat, crying softly. She’d given up. Lou tied the skipping rope around her ankles and wrists anyway, in case. She covered her with her Hudson’s Bay blanket from the t? room.

  “My mommy,” Sandy whimpered like a baby and crawled under the blanket with her. She closed her eyes. Their mother’s eyes were closed, but she shuddered and stirred. Norma and Lou stayed beside them, waiting, Lou lying on her back because it hurt up inside her if she sat. Norma found herself sitting on the nail that their father had thrown, and she picked it up and cleaned her fingernails with it, prompting Lou to tell her about the other nail. Regarding her compliance, Lou lied. She said that Lance tied her up—she was tied up today, too, she said.

  “Maybe he stabbed an organ or something,” Norma whispered, dropping the nail at the thought of where this one might have been.

  “Yeah, probably,” Lou said distantly.

  “If only our brother was alive.”

  “Don’t talk,” Lou said. “I’m trying to think.” She was thinking of revenge. Setting a fire. Lance and his brick bedspread going up in flames.

  “Our brother would have saved you,” Norma said quietly. She imagined him appearing in the nick of time, filling the door. Big for his age. Brave, courageous and bold. She imagined him striding home and keeping their mother off the roof with gentle words. What their brother, Jimmy, would have been, she thought, was big and brave and gentle as the lamb of God.

  Paradise 1960

  At the beginning of the summer, one evening as the streetlights came on, the girls found a kitten under a bush. Except for a big black spot like a saddle on its back, it was all white—white fur as silky as angel hair.