If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls

THIRTY ONE

CONCLUSION

Shane rolled up his white trousers, and taking off his sandals, stepped into the water’s edge and began walking along the sand.

“You did not fuck Jill Barnard,:” he insisted to Leon.

“Yes. I did.” Leon said.

“I don’t believe you.”

They were both whispering, which was just as well, because they had to thread their way through children and sandcastles.

“No you didn’t,” Shane grew a little shrill and took his hands through his hair.

Leon opened his mouth and then started to crow.

“What?” Shane said fiercely.

“Oh, my God!” shouted Leon.

Shane’s blue eyes burned on his friend.

“Hey guys,” Leon shouted, running ahead where Brad and Debbie were walking hand and hand. In a clump before everyone else, Robin, Hale and Nehru were strolling.

“Guys, Shane fucked Jill Barnard too!”

“Shut up!” Shane ran ahead to hit Leon, but Nehru reached back and knocked Leon on the side of his head first.

“Could you shout that out on a beach full of hillbillies and their children a little louder!” he hissed.

Leon blinked and tilted his head like a struck puppy. Then he said, “Nehru, you think all white people are hillbillies.”

Looking from Nehru Alexander, to the people on the beach, Brad reflected that his friend might not be wrong.

Leon looked like a dog who had been struck on the nose, then undeterred he went on to Shane.

They all walked along the beach, Shane, sullenly slouching behind them. No one asked Shane if he was okay. It would just upset him more.

Leon did a cartwheel. Robin and then Hale began to explore other parts of the beach. Nehru strolled alone, watching a sea gull dive for the water, and then just miss it and veer back into the air.

Brad came up behind him with Debbie and Brad said, “Baby, can I talk to Nehru alone?”

Debbie looked offended.

“It’s guy talk, baby? Between men? Alright?”

Against his will, he was afraid he had hurt her.

“Go talk to Robin. She’ll be glad to hear from you,” Brad told her, and Nehru had to stifle a laugh. “We’ll be back in a moment.”

Debbie went off, and Nehru and Brad stood watching before Brad took out a cigarette and lit it.

“Well, the stress just left, so why are you smoking?” said Nehru.

“Com’on, leave her alone.”

“She’s what you wanted to talk about, right? I mean, I know that when people say guy talk, women’s talk, Black talk, what they mean is ‘We’re talking about you. Please go away right now so we can do it properly.’”

Brad watched Debbie go smaller as she dwindled toward Robin’s end of the beach, then turned around, and kicking the waves, he and Nehru started to walk along the shore.

After a while, Brad and Nehru stopped. Behind them Nehru could hear the young and the not so young screaming. He wriggled his toes and sank them in the soft silt of the sand. Sometimes the water was dirty. A dead fish might float to shore. And it wasn’t always fish. Little plastic liquor bottles, articles of clothing, condoms and things best not guessed at came to his toes too. Right here, in this little patch before the sandbar, the water that washed in was clear, and Nehru could see his gold brown feet through the water, sinking into the grains of red and black and brown that made the sand. Brad’s larger white feet sank in too, and the older man wriggled his toes and let the sand filter through them.

“Have you ever been to the ocean, Nehru?”

“Not yet. You?”

Brad shook his head.

“Sometimes I pretend this is the ocean,” Nehru looked out. The sky was clearly blue, the horizon filled with gold, the sun setting red into the water. “You can’t see the end of Lake Michigan either.” 

“I’m thirty-one,” said Brad.

“I know this,” Nehru replied.

“What do you think about it?”

“I don’t think anything about it.”

“What about Debbie. About me and her?”

“You know what I think about Debra,” Nehru said, folding his long brown arms behind his white tee-shirted back. “You’ve always known.”

“You think I’m too old for her.”

“Brad, why are you asking me?”

Neither one of them was looking at the other.

“You know you’re too old for her.”

“She’s the same age you are. She’s older than you.”

“You’re not fucking me. If you were happy with her, you wouldn’t ask me all these questions.”

“I just want to hear you say I should have quit her a long time ago.”

“I just said it.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Well, if you didn’t hear it implied, I’m not saying it outright. That’s on you.”

 

It was Sunday afternoon, and they were in Nehru’s kitchen on Meredith Street.

“I called earlier,” said Brad, “but you weren’t at home.”

“I was at Saint Celestine’s. It’s Sunday. Some of us still believe in God.”

“Hey, I believe in God. I don’t know about Jesus and I definitely don’t give a shit about Rome. But I believe in God, so there.”

“So,” Nehru went on, nonplussed, “that’s where I was. What happened after we got back from the beach and went our separate ways?”

“Let’s see. Shane almost beat up Leon. We stopped him, but now I don’t know if we should have.”

“Did Shane really have sex with that whoever girl?”

Brad shrugged. “Shane’s close mouthed about his sex life.”

“They say the ones that talk the least about it...” Nehru started, trailed off, drank from his water bottle.

“Then I got back to the house with Debbie.... We had sex.”

“Naturally.”

“Whaddo you mean naturally?”

Again, Nehru ignored the question. “And then what?”

“And then we broke up.”

Brad drummed on the table top. He raised one eyebrow, then lowered it, then raised the other like a bored dog.

“She cried, you know?”

“I thought she would. But, how do you feel?... Now that she’s gone.”

“A little bit bad.”

“But a great bit relieved,” Nehru guessed.

“Nehru, what do you want out of life?”

“That’s a strange question.”

“It’s not that strange.”

“Well, it kind of put me on the spot.”

Brad said, “You put me on the spot on an hourly basis.”

“True,” Nehru allowed. It was a while before he spoke.

“I guess I always thought that it was a day by day thing. That... that you just don’t plan life and say I want one thing, But that you take it each day and you do... what you have to do.”

“Well, when you’re thirty, what do you picture for your life?”

“That’s not fair.”

“Why not?”

“Cause I’m so grateful I made it to twenty-two. I can’t see that far.”

“It’s not that far off.”

“Yes and no.”

“Do you want to be living in your mom’s basement when you’re my age?”

“Com’on Brad.”

“With a group of friends who are all a bunch of morons?”

“Thanks.”

“You know I don’t mean you. And a girlfriend who’s a moron too. Who’s too young for you. When I was in college I thought I wanted to get my Masters. And I did. And I thought I wanted to do all this great stuff and be respectable and maybe teach and it’s all stupid, Nehru. It’s all worthless. It’s like I was so ambitious at one point I wanted to have this and this and that. And now this and that just feels… not worth it. There’s no place for us.”

“Us?”

“Yes,” Brad said. “We’re the same thing, you know. You’ll turn out better. You won’t live in a basement, but you’re gonna look around and see that this is all just a bunch of bullshit. I wanna get somewhere. You know? And I’m not getting any younger. When I was twenty it was cool to bitch like this and dream like this. but I’m thirty-one and there’s no time any more. I hate my life.”

Nehru sat there silent. Anything he said would be the wrong thing.

“I’m sorry,” Brad said at last, staring at the wall behind his friend.

“For what?”

“For whining. For going ballistic.”

“I think you’re not saying anything that’s not on everyone’s mind,” Nehru said.

“Do you... ever feel that way sometimes?”

Nehru nodded.

“There’s got to be something better. Something’s got to mean something. Everyone’s walking around smiling, pretending they’re so happy,” said Brad.

“Some of them aren’t pretending.”

“I kind of hope that’s true,” Brad said. “And then I sort of hope it isn’t.

“I know that it isn’t. For a lot of people. Even at the beach you could tell. I can tell. But you can tell…that something’s wrong. If you talk to people, if you talk to friends long enough, you’ll all agree. You’ll all have seen it. If you look at people a little harder you’ll see it. And... And I’m not going to live with it—whatever it is. I’m gonna get happy,”

Then Brad laughed.

“I just don’t know how to get there. I wonder what a priest would say,” Brad laughed.

“I don’t,” Nehru said. “They don’t know what the hell is going on either.”

 

 Brad was lying on his back listening to depressing music. It had been so warm this whole July. It was warm tonight, even in this basement where he lay on his back staring at the rafters and watching the tendrils and clouds of smoke from the menthol cigarette, watching the uneven cone at its tip burn rust orange. He took two last puffs before stubbing out the cigarette, and began to play air guitar as the music grew more angry and less sad. Then the phone rang. Brad reached over, turned down the stereo and answered.

“Hello?”

It was too late for anyone to be calling.

“Bradley?” it was a small voice that sounded a little desperate.

“Debbie?”

There were a few snuffles to prove that she was in real pain, and then. “Yes,” in an even smaller voice.

“What’s up, Debra?”

“I need to come over. I need to see you.”

“Debbie, honey. It’s late.”

“Please, Brad. You used to love me.”

“I still do,” he lied. He wondered if he ever had loved her. On the other side of the phone, as if she’d heard his doubt, Debbie began sobbing loudly.

“Okay,” he said. “Come on over. The basement door’ll be open, alright?”

She sobbed again.

“Alright,” she cried.

 

Brad got dressed. It really was too hot. How could it be this awful, even in July? He sat in the second room of the basement, in the old beat up barber chair that had belonged to his uncle’s shop. Often, when Debra said she was coming over, he would sit here, looking at the red metal door, waiting for it to open, sometimes fantasizing that he was waiting for a drug lord, some arch nemesis to step through, making a gun sign, licking his lips. This was the chair where he waited for the enemy.

He made a gun out of his hand, closed one eye, aimed at the red door, and fired a few times.

Then Debra came in looking sadder than ever.

“Debbie.”

“Hi, Bradley.”

She sounded so sad it made him sick. No. No. That was the thing. He made himself sick because he was falling for it. She was so little. He wanted to make her feel better.

She came to him, and guiltily he enfolded her in his arms.

“I miss you,” she said. “I love you.”

“Baby, you can’t be like this. It’s not right. You should find someone. You will. I’m not what you want. Not really.”

“Yes, Bradley. I do… Life is...” she sobbed and he stroked her hair. “Life is bad and you’re so smart, you know how to help me get through it.”

“You’ll get through it,” he said holding her tighter.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said. “I promise I’ll do better.”

“That’s not what it’s about.”

“I’ll do what you want me to. I promise. Just tell me.”

“Baby stop.”

She kissed Brad. She was like a puppy. She kissed his neck and his eyes and his ears and his head and wailed, “I promise.”

“Baby. Stop,” he said. “Baby, stop.” he pleaded. He knew what she was doing, past the promises and the tears that she herself really believed in. He knew how his body was responding. How his heart was unlocking.

“Bradley, I’m sorry,” she breathed into his chest, still weeping. “I’m sorry.”

Her little hand reached into his shorts and her fingers wrapped around his already stiff cock. As she wept, she squeezed him and went to her knees.

“I’ll do better.”

 

Brad sat up in bed staring blankly at the wall. Beyond the blankness, dully insisting itself, was anger, though Brad could not say exactly with whom he was angry. His clothing was in a pile at the corner of the bed. At the side of the bed Debra was dressing. Her face was dry and pale and showed the first trace of real, grownup sorrow.

She pulled the pink shirt on over her brassiere.

“It really is over isn’t it, Brad?”

Brad looked sullen. He looked guilty, but determined.

He nodded.

Debra nodded. She did not pat him or smile or say anything but, “I’ll let myself out.”

Brad nodded. and pulled his knees to his chest. He heard her footfalls die, and then the red door open and close.

So this is what freedom feels like.

 

He felt like shit.