If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls

TWELVE

THE DECLINE

AND FALL

OF

WILLIAM B. DWYER

 

THE DIARY OF LYNN MESSING

 

August 1st, 1998

I am getting pretty tired of pretending. When I moved here I thought that if you just smiled hard enough—and sometimes it really is hard, and you put enough thoughts out of your mind then, by sheer force of will, you could be a friend and make friends. But it’s not that easy. All these people are talking about how lonely they are, and that used to get to me because I’ll admit that I am lonely too. And then I noticed that none of these people wanted to even take the steps to be a friend. And what’s more, it seems like what people really want is romance. People really want sex.

Back in school it wasn’t any better, even though I try to pretend that it was. It wasn’t that everyone wanted to be loved. Everyone wanted to be convinced that they were worthy of being loved, and that’s completely different. No one was real.

 

Unreal City... Unreal City....

The curse of an English major is to bring up random lines from poems and not be able to remember what comes next.

 

What does come next?

I’m starting to think it’s all a tremendous joke. We all search for answers and now I’m becoming pretty sure that there are no answers. Maybe there aren’t even any real questions. Maybe it’s all a huge joke. Maybe there aren’t any real people either.

I’m starting to wonder if I’m even real. If this goes on much longer....

I started to say if this goes on much longer I’ll just... but then I didn’t know what I was just going to do.

Every once in a while I see someone who I think might be thinking the same things I’m thinking, a person who sort of seems real. (Am I trying to insinuate that I’m real too? It would be nice to think I was). There was a bag boy at the Kroger who had to be about sixteen. His sideburns were shaggy and I thought that he was probably someone who thought deep thoughts. And then I thought what a shame that was since his deep thoughts were pretty much confined to stuffing plastic wrapped meat in a paper bag.

There is also this old lady that I always see walking around the Presbyterian church in Fort Atkins, and I always imagine asking her the big questions.

I come up to her, and I open my mouth—myself not knowing the true question until it comes out—the question that will tell me everything about life. And then it comes, a gift from beyond.

“How many licks DOES it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?”

And she tells me, and life is good. In the end it all comes down to this.

And then there is someone else. My boss... Actually he’s like my boss’s boss. He doesn’t seem like everyone else, which probably means he’s a psychopath. But it might mean he’s a saint. I’ve never confessed this. I feel bad even writing it in my journal. But Mr. William B. Dwyer has the loveliest eyes and the most sensitive smile I’ve ever seen... How high school does that sound?

 

“Well,” Brad Long said, looking up at the clock on the wall, “it’s about time. And you, Ms. Dwyer, did not do a bad job.”

“Valedictorian here I come.”

“Anything’s possible,” Brad said in a voice that meant anything but that was is possible.

As Cameron carefully put away the paper she’d been working on and reflected that, a year ago she would have stuffed them in her bag and pretended to forget they existed, she said, “And now to pick up Niall.”

“You need a ride?” Brad asked, pushing her English book toward her.

“No,” Cameron said. “Dad’s letting me borrow the car.

“Thanks, Brad,” she hugged the tall musician who resembled an El Greco painting, and then headed into the living room and up the stairs.

“Bradley!” Bill Dwyer greeted him, entering the kitchen.

“Bill, I thought you were in Grand Rapids.”

“I had to drop Dave home, but I’m going right back.”

“Okay,” Brad nodded, waiting for Bill to say something. They were close in age, but for some reason Bill always seemed a lot older.

“Cameron says you’re seeing someone.”

“She does?”

“Oh,” Bill shook his head and smiled. “It’s none of our business, I know. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No,” Brad said. “It’s fine.”

“It’s only that…. Are you happy? Are you all really happy?”

Brad blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that question.

“Well, yes… I mean. Really, yes. The truth is, I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy.”

“Well, that’s grand,” Bill said, sincerely.

 “Whatever you do, don’t settle for less than that. Okay.”

“Okay,” Brad nodded manfully, making sure he didn’t look like this whole conversation was strange.

 

Cameron Dwyer parked the car, badly, in front of City Dance School on Bunting, just a block away form Rosary. She went up the stairs where dance class was ending and found her brother reclined against the bar. Niall had his snap brim cap on backwards and Cameron could see that he was starting a goatee.

Niall caught his sister’s reflection before she was actually in the large, hardwood floored room and he smiled at her.

“Cam, I don’t need the car after all.”

“Great,” she said in a neutral tone.

“Me and Sonia and a few folks from class are going out.”

“Be careful, Niall.”

Niall fought back the urge to say something harsh. He knew Cameron cared for him, which was something he lost sight of much of the time.

“We’re just a bunch of dance club geeks,” Niall said. In his leotard he did look like a dance club geek. But his smile was too studied. Cameron was able to pull a part of herself away from the Dwyer family she’d always known up close and realize that Niall was handsome, and a gifted dancer, and a boy, a man? a guy—someone with a secret life.

“Cam? You still there?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, then tried to make a joke out of it. “I was just thinking, now that I’m not letting you sneak around with the car, there goes my chance to make you teach me those steps.”

Niall put a finger to his nose and said, “Maybe if you’re an extra good girl... Imagine that,” he grinned broadly, “a cheerleader learning dance steps from her kid brother!”

“If Lourdes high school only knew the secret behind Rosary’s winning cheerleading squad,” Cameron shook her head.

“I’m going out Saturday?” Russell said.

“You’re staying at Chayne’s?”  his father assumed.

“Eventually,” Russell said. “There’s a football game, so we’re all going to be out.”

“Since when did you like football?” Patti turned from the stove.”

“Russell doesn’t care about football at all,” Cameron Dwyer said. “But the football game is where everyone’s going to be.”

“Your dad said he’d be late,” Thom told Cameron, who sat in the Lewis kitchen talking to Russell and Gilead. “I brought your uncle home. If you’re staying for dinner, you might want to call your mom.”

“She’ll be thrilled,” Cameron said as Patti handed her the cordless. “She won’t have to cook at all, cause Niall isn’t coming home either.”

“Which brings us back to Niall,” said Gilead.

“Which brings us back to Niall,” Cameron agreed. Then, “Hello, Mom? Is it alright if I stay over here—at Russell’s. No. I’m not putting them out.”

She looked at Patti to confirm this. Patti stood over the stove, smoking a cigarette and stirring the spaghetti sauce. She shook her head “no.”

“Dad won’t be home. He told you? Niall’s with friends. From dance class. Oh, okay. Alright. Bye.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, my mom says thanks.”

“Tell Dena she’s welcome,” Patti said.

Cameron always got the vibe that Patti didn’t care for her mother. She found this strangely comforting.

“Now, back to Niall,” Cameron sat down. “I wanted to say that I don’t know him anymore. But if I’m honest, I’m not sure that I ever knew Niall. I just never thought of him as anything but my little brother. The one Dad shouts at all the time. But now I start to worry about him. It’s like now that I know he has a life, it’s this secret life and I think that maybe it’s not a good one.”

Gilead looked to Russell, and without speaking the two of them held the private debate to tell or not to tell Cameron that Niall sold dime bags in the bathroom of Our Lady and on the fields of Rosary. And just as quick as the issue was brought up, their eyes and their heads turned back to Cameron, dropping it.

“Guys have secret lives,” Gilead said. Russell always depended on Gilead to be around with words of wisdom. “And it always seems freaky to girls when they find out, because they think all there is to guys is what they see on the surface.”

At the stove Patti made a noise between a laugh and a grunt, and they all looked up, but all they saw was the back of her head.

“I wouldn’t worry about Niall,” Russell chimed in.

“It’s fuckin; cold!” Simon Garrity declared passing the joint to Sonia.

“Well, it’s September, moron,” Niall stated. He was one of six who sat in the circle under an ancient oak tree by Lake Chicktaw.

“Open your mouth,” Sonia grinned.

Niall smiled and obeyed.

Sonia inhaled the joint, pressed her mouth to Niall’s, blew, and Niall passed the joint to Aaron as he exhaled smoke through his nostrils.

“When’s your mom expect you home?” Niall whispered.

“She’s not home,” Sonia told him.

“Does that mean that I should come home?”

“I think it might. What time does your mommy expect you home?”

“When I get there,” Niall said, stoutly, which was not at all what Dena would expect.

“Well,” Sonia rolled her eyes to look thoughtful and said, “I think that ‘when I get there’ is plenty of time to get anything done that... needs to get done.”

Niall got hard when she said that. Sonia didn’t see it, but she knew it.

“Who’s got a whole day to waste?” Simon asked, taking the joint. He had a large nose and thick, black rimmed glasses.

“For what?”

Without hitting it, Sonia passed the joint to Niall who took a large hit, and did to Sonia what she had done for him, passing the spliff negligently to Tasha.

“My brother’s making magic brownies,” Simon declared as well as he was able to declare anything. Everything he said sounded like a question now, and it was getting dark. “They knock you on your ass a whole day.”

“Fucking yes!” Tasha agreed. “That sounds sweet as fuck.”

Niall, in the midst of kissing Tasha, heard himself saying, “Yeah,” too.

“I had the strangest experience,” Brad said, while he took one shoe, and then the last off Marissa Gregg’s feet and began to massage them as she stretched out on the sofa, her legs on his lap.

“Which was?” her eyes were closed, and she flexed her toes a little and smiled at the pressure of Brad’s hands.

“Bill Dwyer brought you up.”

“Me?” her eyes opened.

“Well, not you per se. He said he heard I was in a relationship, and he asked me… if I was happy.”

“And you said you’re goddamned delighted, of course.”

“Well, yes,” Brad grinned at her, “I actually did.”

Marissa giggled, and said, “Well, good.”

“But then he said, make sure you’re happy. Don’t settle for anything less. He was so….”

“Wise?”

“Sad,” Brad said. “He sounded incredibly sad.”

“I’m glad you stayed,” Lynn told Bill. They were in the conference room of the office, both at the end of the long table.

“You said you needed the help,”

“But not everyone would have stayed.”

“Everyone’s not a friend, Lynn,” Bill told her. He touched her hand. It was so soft. Her eyes were wide and brown and surprised and kind.

“We’re friends, and that means I’ve got to help you when you need it. And I’ve got to fire Cormorant.”

“Don’t!”

Bill laughed.

“You’re cute when you laugh.”

 Lynn corrected herself. “I mean, I like it when you laugh.”

Bill was silent for a time.

“I wasn’t really serious,” he was massaging her hand. Both their hands rested over the stack of papers. “But now I sort of am. Look at this work load he gives you. Half of which should have been done by him. All of it without explanation.”

Bill was quiet. To Lynn it looked as if he was in some momentary pain. His large eyes were looking out on the darkening skyline.

“This room scares me,” he said at once. “I would hate to be in here by myself, spend the night working here.”

“Me too! That’s why I’m glad you stayed. That’s why I’m glad you’re here.”

Bill took up his ink pen. It was capped because he was just using it as a pointer. He was about to run over figures when he said, “Life scares me.”

“Bill?”

He turned to her, his nose quivering, his eyes wide.

“Lynn, life scares me. I feel like I can tell you that.”

“Because you think I get scared too—”

“No, because you don’t have to be afraid. You’re twenty-four. You’ve got a life ahead of you. You can—you can just grab it by the balls!”

He never said anything like that in front of a woman. He was feeling fierce now.

“I’m don’t feel twenty-four,” Lynn said. “I don’t even understand people who are twenty-four.”

“You don’t have to be afraid. You’re beautiful and you’re fun and the only reason you don’t get other people—other people your age is because they’re like me—”

“But Bill—”

“I got Dena pregnant my senior year. I married her a few days after graduation in Saint Alban’s—my alma mater’s—chapel. Then I moved to her school. I got a job in that area. She was a sophomore. By the time she graduated we had Cameron and Niall. I have spent years just getting things together, just getting to the place where I can stop and breathe and I stop and breathe and I’m sorry I did because when I stop and breathe... I feel like collapsing.”

He was silent and tragic now. His eyes were not only wide, but shining. Lynn wanted to touch him. Bill turned away and stared out the window at the hard blue-grey of the oncoming night.

“I collapsed,” he said. “And I look up, and I hate my whole life. But what I look up and find... ” he was still looking out of the window, “is you.”

“I wish you weren’t married,” Lynn said frankly, and then Bill turned to her, and kissed her. He tried to pull back, but she hooked her hands in his hair. This is what it felt like. This is what his head felt like under the hair. This is what his mouth felt like, her nose against the nose that everyone talked about, that she liked. This is what his shoulders felt like. Don’t stop. If they’d stopped this could never happen again.

She murmured something Bill, couldn’t hear. He couldn’t let go. Then he didn’t want to. Why? What was the point? Would Dena—no. It seemed perverted to even say her name.

While Bill was pushing away Dena’s name, Lynn was maneuvering herself onto the table. Bill was pushing away the papers. He worked at his belt, but then Lynn pushed his hand away and brought it to her thighs. It was warm under her skirt. He brought down her underwear. It was moist where he put his hand. She gasped. He was hard. He was a missile. Lynn’s hands had opened his slacks and they fell around his knees. She pulled down the trunks that trapped his thighs. Bill tried to throw off his jacket with a shift of his shoulders. It took a few tries.

He felt his shirt tail that went past his buttocks, he felt Lynn’s hands move from squeezing his pulsing penis to caressing the dimples of his ass, then his ass, and then he pushed himself in her with a surprised grunt, and she cried and he followed the cries as instruction, the louder she was, the deeper he went, the more frantic her hands on his ass, the quicker he was. He could hear his breathing, ragged. Then she said, “Slow… slow. Slow,” as if she knew he was about to come.

“Don’t let it end right now,” she pleaded.

For that small space he floated over her, glided in her, his eyes tearing, panicked to feel himself coming, please God, please don’t let it...

His body twisted, his face in her hands straining. She was already coming. He stiffened and shot into her. Bill heard himself groan, and then he collapsed against Lynn, still feeling his dick jump, still shaking as he shot over and over, sighing as the power of his orgasm drove him deeper into her arms.