If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls

THIRTEEN

 

WHAT

HAPPENED

ON

FRIDAY

“Okay, so we need to get something settled?”

“Yes, Felice?” Patti Lewis looked at her friend, her cigarette burn away as she sipped from the already old coffee.

“Who’s gon be the godmother to Jackie’s baby?”

“Oh, you can have the little bastard,” Patti said.

“That’s gracious.”

“Well, shit, I had thought of that too,” said Patti. “It’ll be here any day now—”

“Boy or girl?”

“I don’t know. You know Jackie didn’t want to do any testing. But you’re interrupting.”

“Well, damn.”

“Anyway, I realized, I’ll be the baby’s aunt twice over. You need to be something. And I thought I’d make the decision because Jackie would never know what to say. She’d just have us duke it out in front of the baptismal font at Saint Adjeanet’s.”

“What if?” Felice started, then stopped.

“What if what?” Patti wouldn’t let her get away with that.

“I was gon say,” Felice leaned in as if she had to whisper, “What if Jackie surprised us both and had Abby Devalara be the godmother?”

“That shit,” Patti said darkly, “would not fly.”

Patti was silent a moment, then she said, “Oh—gossip!”

“Okay, Pat, out with it?”

“Well, not much of it because it’s part of my job, but guess who is finally breaking down and coming to me in about—” Patti looked at her watch, “shit. One hour!”

Felice was not going to guess.

“Dena Dwyer.”

Impossibly, Felice’s eyes became even wider than usual.

“The crazy bitch next door who married her brother?”

“She’s married to her brother’s best friend—and her brother is married to her husband’s sister.”

“Well, that shit still ain’t right. I caint believe she’s comin’. I thought you hated her. I thought she hated you!”

“Ditto and ditto, but money is money and skills are skill.”

“Tell me all the details.”

“Felice!”

And Felice knew better than to ask again.

“Still,” said Felice. “I say if people had more friends, we’d need less shrinks.”

“Well, ditto to that, but don’t put the word out or I’ll be back to crying in my bathtub, smoking a pack a day, looking like shit and wishing I had something to do.”

 

“Good morning, Dena,” Patti made sure to sound full of courtesy. She was dressed well, professionally, but not like competition.

Dena nodded, and then remembered to say hello. Dena Dwyer must have been an attractive woman at one point in time, and after all, she did have a beautiful daughter. Now Patti could hear Felice’s voice in her head declaring Dena rat faced and hollow eyed.

“I’ve got coffee,”

“Oh, that’s alright.”

“No,” Patti put a confiding hand over Dena’s. “Have something to drink. I insist. You’ll feel much better once you do. And something in you. You probably haven’t eaten.”

“I had to drop Niall and Cameron off this morning.”

“You’ve been all over town,” Patti led her neighbor through the dining room and into the kitchen where she could smell new coffee percolating. It made her want to light up, but... she was being a professional, and a host.

“I bought rolls and buns just this morning,” Patti said. “Please don’t be impolite and not eat. People are always starving themselves,” Patti heard herself rambling on pleasantly, and wondered what the hell was going on. But the way how some people evacuated their minds and became robots when it was time to work, Patti turned on her intuition, and it ran like an engine without her accord, sitting the sad woman with her stringy hair—Patti knew all about that—down, pushing a sugary roll toward her, pouring the coffee, and getting the creamer and the sugar.

“Usually, when friends come for help they like the library. It’s very impressive,” Patti said stirring her coffee. “It’s got my diplomas and everything. But the living room’s got the sofa if you’re feeling crazy. If you need a couch. And then there’s the sunlight, the sunlight alone has gotten me through many tough times.”

Dena was quiet, looking around the house, looking so mousy and frayed that Patti felt bad for always thinking of this woman as pretentious.

“But then, if you like the kitchen. The kitchen’s fine too. Thom won’t be home until six—which you know because he’s with Bill. Russell’s at school till three which means he’ll be home by six. So this whole house is sort of my office. Me casa is su casa, my couch is your couch.”

“Oh, God I am crazy!” Dena said suddenly.

Patti didn’t deny it. She just laughed and said, “Dena, we’ve all been to the couch. The time I spent crying makes me a hell of a lot more qualified than any dissertation I ever wrote. Come to think of it, the dissertations were half the reason I was crying.”

Her pretty face frowned. It was still pretty, though.

“And you were married, with a child and a husband and you got your doctorate,” Dena said.

“Yes,” and then Patti said, “You were married with two children and you got your B.A.? Or am I wrong?”

“No,” said Dena in a voice that requested cheering up. But Patti did not cheer up, or at least, she was not in the habit of indulging.

“Well then what’s the problem?” she demanded. “There must be a problem or you wouldn’t be here.”

Well, that was putting it baldly. But she was just as harsh on herself, when she analyzed her own life in a bathtub full of suds and oil with a full pack of Benson and Hedges.

Dena didn’t say anything right away, then she shook her head and said, “I’m not sure if I know exactly what it is.”

“That’s alright,” Patti said. “Just start talking until you find out what it is. And it could be several things.”

“Well, I need to talk,” Dena admitted. “And I love Lee, I really do,. But the thing is it’s hard to talk to her w.hen her brother’s the problem. It’s hard to talk to my brother. Because he’s my brother. And there’s really no one else, and even if I could talk to Lee, she wouldn’t understand. Eve—she’s on choir with me--she wouldn’t either.”

Once, Patti had kept a notepad with her to sketch down important things. Then she’d begun to hide it on her lap, or discreetly on an end table or a drawer of her desk no one could see. Now she hid it in her mind.

“Does it feel lonely?” Patti said.

“Yes,” said Dena. “I had gotten used to that, decided it must be a condition of life.”

“And are you happy?”

“No,” Dena didn’t even have to think about it.

“Cameron... I can’t connect with my daughter. I wonder if I even want to. Bill—I don’t know him. I know I’m married to him. I know I must have been in love with him, but I don’t remember making any decisions. It’s just like someone wrote me up—the character in a book, and I was Bill’s wife and my whole life before didn’t matter, and whoever wrote it all didn’t ask me for an ounce—” she spoke with rage, “of input.

“I know somehow I chose where I am, but I just don’t know how I got here. I don’t remember choosing this.”

“I know,” Patti said. “I know exactly what you mean.”

Incongruously, Dena said, “Patti, this house is so beautiful.”

But when she said it, her eyes were shining and she was looking up and around, blinking back tears.

Patricia Lewis smiled and told her neighbor:

“Not always.”

 

Bill Dwyer had originally thought of calling in sick. But staying home with no one but Dena, who had a day off today, seemed worse than facing the monster. And Bill was not sure exactly who the monster was. Not Lynn. Not really.

They took Thom’s car this morning, and Bill was blessedly glad that Thom Lewis, unlike David, was a man willing not to ask questions and just drive. Bill found himself making light conversation, and laughing too loud. It hurt to laugh. Though he was glad Thom drove, he wished it had been his turn so that he could just spend the day driving around Grand Rapids, not facing the office.

Bill took the long way to his desk, a maze through cubicles to avoid Lynn’s, and he avoided wondering about what might be going through her head. He snuck into his office undetected and realized that this would have been funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.

It took Lynn Messing until eleven o’clock to walk into Bill’s office.

“Good morning,” she said.

Bill, flustered, looking chastened, said, “Good morning.”

“May I,” Lynn moved into the office, closed the door behind her, and sat in the chair in front of the desk, “sit down?”

Bill had the grace to realize it was not a question.

“I realize,” Lynn said, “that you feel terrible. I knew it from the moment it happened. I know you’re not a bad man, Bill. I know you’re married with two children—whom you love. I—we need to clear the air. There’s no sense in pretending that what happened didn’t happen.”

“It can’t ever happen again,” Bill said.

“Is there really a danger of that?” Lynn asked him. When her enormous eyes lifted to settle on him, Bill Dwyer realized she had not been looking at him at all this whole time.

“The way you feel right now, is there really a danger of a repeat of last night?”

Bill sighed and shook his head.

“No, I guess not.”

“And what do you think I am?” Lynn went on. Her tone was almost friendly.

“I had—” She caught herself and turned the phrase, “I was with a married man last night. I never planned that.”

She got up, straightened her skirt and was moving to the door when she said: “Maybe I did plan it. Maybe since I met you I planned it. Maybe you planned it too, a little. But....”

“It’s over,” Bill said.

“Yes,” Lynn agreed. “It’s over.”