Falling Sideways (21 page)
“I feel so fucking guilty,” he had told his psychologist.
“So feel guilty for a moment, then move on. The guilt helps no one. Learn from it.”
“But I did a terrible thing. To marry a woman I didn’t love was—”
“The mistake of a confused man. Move on.”
“But the babies …”
“As a very wise man once said, Harald: Shit happens. Move on.”
Now he moved on down the garden path to the neat white front door with its neat rectangle of little square white-curtained windows. He pressed the bell and listened to its pleasant chime.
Vita opened the door wide and looked at him. Then she closed it halfway and kept staring. She wore tailored jeans and a tailored tweed jacket. She looked terrific. He held out the gift. “Hi,” he said. “How are you? How are the girls? Here’s a little present for you.”
She did not take the package and she did not speak, only stared at him, and she did not step aside to let him enter.
“You look great,” he said. “Have you lost weight?”
Vita was slim as an eel, with close-cropped yellow hair that glittered silver. She was eight years older than Jaeger. She let the question hang in the air. Then she said, “What have you been up to? Who is she? I can see you’ve met someone. Again.”
It did not occur to Jaeger that he did not have to answer. “Do you remember Birgitte Sommer?”
“From your office? She’s married.”
“We … well, it just kind of happened. I—”
“Oh, I know all about you and things that just happen. You really take the bloody biscuit. You desert one wife, then steal one from another man. Do they have children, too?”
“No, I—”
“Because I ought to warn her not to let you be alone with them.”
“What do—”
“I have to ask you straight out now, and I want an honest answer.”
“What? I—”
“Did you bathe the girls last time you had them?”
It took a moment for the question to make sense to him. Was she complaining that they were dirty when he returned them to her? Then he remembered he had taken them to the deer park and it was muddy, so he’d washed them under the telephone shower back at his place. “Well, yes, I …”
She stared at him, lips slightly parted with distaste, eyes narrowed, and she whispered, “How could you do that? To your own daughters.”
“What are you … They’re my daughters … they needed a bath …”
“They do
not
need to have you undressing them and … You disgust me.”
“Where are they? It’s my weekend to—”
“You will not see them. I have to consider what to do about this now.”
“You can’t do this. I’ll complain to the—”
“Go ahead. And I will tell them what you did.”
“What I did? I didn’t do anything. I gave them a bath because they were muddy. I sprayed them with the telephone shower. There was nothing.”
“I knew you were sick, but I really never expected
this
. Now get out of here.” And she closed the door.
Jaeger was trembling. He rang the bell, knocked. “Vita, you can’t do—”
The door opened again, and Jaeger started. It was not Vita but her father, Frank, a short muscular man with kinky yellow hair and a broad, porcine face. He stepped close, and Jaeger could smell coffee on his breath.
“What do
you
want?” he demanded.
Jaeger was less afraid of the man than of what he himself might do to him. He felt his right fist ball up. His breath was ragged, and he saw the bulky little man as a door behind a door blocking him from his daughters. He wanted to bury his fist right dead in the middle of the piggy face. Words rasped from his throat in a grating whisper.
“I want to see my daughters!”
“You can get the hell out of here,” Frank snapped. “We know what went on. It’s not going to happen again.”
“That’s a fucking lie, Frank. Repeat it, and I’ll smash your fucking face for you!”
Frank spoke over his shoulder as he shoved the door between them. “Call the police, Vita! He’s violent!”
Jaeger put his shoulder to the door, and they struggled from each side of it. Moving his foot for traction, he lost his balance and the door slammed on his little finger. He yelled out with pain. The door opened a crack, and Frank muttered, “Sorry,” then slammed it again and the finger was caught once more. Jaeger bellowed, and the door opened a crack so he could pull his finger free. “Sorry,” Frank muttered again, and shut the door.
Jaeger heard the dead bolt mesh shut, and he stood there on the little brick stoop, cradling his injured finger, muttering, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” and felt the shame of tears rolling from his eyes.
Now the autumn really sinks down around us
, Breathwaite thought, standing on Queen Louise’s Bridge, gazing out over the gunmetal gray water of Peblinge Lake. Already heavy dusk at five thirty P.M. The damp autumn smell off the mossy water filled his nose and touched his heart with chill fingers. Leaves of yellow, red, and brown lay scattered across wet green grass on the bank. He shuffled through big soggy yellow leaves heaped on the bridge walk, in the gutter, like scuffling through soggy cornflakes. He remembered that this Sunday, daylight savings time would end.
What is it now, do we win an hour or lose one?
Spring ahead, fall back. Curiously he observed his own melancholy; it had been so many years since he’d felt himself this alone. Facing disaster. Too strong a word? What else to call it?
He began walking again, north, paused just before the embankment to look at a stone sculpture of a young man and woman who sat facing each other, leaning forward to peer into each other’s faces. The young man had his elbows on his knees, palms on his cheeks; the girl had elbows on knees and palms joined, wringing her hands, which were extended toward the boy. Their gaze was fixed on each other—or rather, she gazed at him, while his glance was slightly downcast. The lake water glistened between them, and Breathwaite could see the Lake Pavilion on the far bank, Codan building rising behind it like a sore thumb. He considered the girl and boy gazing at each other. A pair of opposites.
We have all come from lovers. For what purpose? To become lovers. Mate. Like mayflies. Ephemerals. Infinite motion. What’s it called? Chain of … No, chain reaction. Cause and effect and cause. What came first, the penis or the egg? Of what fucking use are we?
Some sensation at his back turned him. On the other side of the bridge, several people were standing in a loose row, leaning back against the railing, the dusky lake behind them, but they were facing in his direction. A chill crawled over his flesh, a distinct chill, infusing the moment with a distressing sense that he had been caught in some subliminal ghostly confusion. The hair on his body lifted. Were they looking at him?
His eyes flicked from face to face—man, woman; man, woman; man, woman. Six of them. Three couples, they seemed to be. As if moved by his thought, their bodies regrouped, man to woman, as if to demonstrate that they were indeed three couples.
Was he going mad? It almost looked like some scene from a Hollywood musical. He almost expected them to begin to dance, sing, tango—an older couple, sixties, perhaps, the man with a battered leather satchel beneath his arm, woman in a blue wool coat; a couple in their forties, man in a leather jacket, cap backward on his head; another couple somewhere between, dark-haired man wearing a gray beret with a woman whose blue eyes were so light that Breathwaite could see them shining across in the dark all the way from where he stood.
Breathwaite’s confusion focused. He smiled.
Dance
, he thought.
Turn into Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds and Fred fucking Astaire and whoever else.
Then, as though they had never been looking at him at all, the three couples turned and moved away along the bridge, two of them in one direction, one in the other, melding into the after-work pedestrian traffic.
They were gone.
Am I going nuts?
He glanced back at the sculpture: stone girl and stone boy peering at each other. Lovers on the bridge.
We have all come from lovers. For what purpose?
He thought of Kis. Sweet Kis. Sweet angel.
Please God don’t let her love me so much that I hurt her.
Then he noticed the date at the base of the sculpture: 1942. During the German occupation.
So that’s the story. The impotence of their love against a mad world.
Off Queen Louise’s Bridge to North Bridge Street and left on Blågårds Street to the square to visit Jes. He thought of phoning first, but that would only give the boy a chance to beg off.
On my way out, Dad. Can’t wait. Another time. Sorry.
Catch him by surprise. Take the chance and hope he’s home, hope for the best, hope.
Listen, son, you’ve got to listen to me. And use your head. I’ve got an opportunity for you that you can parlay into a berth for life.
Funny expression,
berth
. Don’t use it. He’ll say,
I don’t want a berth, Dad. I don’t want to spend my life sleeping. I want to wake up.
Sure, sure. Truist bullshit.
This is real life we’re talking about here. Not airy fairy floss. You’ve got a head on your shoulders. This job is a real shot at life. You’ll travel. You’ll earn good money. Don’t throw everything away because you don’t like the way the world is screwed together.
I want to make a difference.
This will make a difference for you.
He stopped outside the building. Sooty gray stone that needed sandblasting. Badly.
They’ll gentrify this square in no time. Triple in value. He’ll be okay. If he takes the job and gets his butt back in school.
Breathwaite stared at the bell register for a moment. Instead of Jes’s name, alongside the bell it said, “HVT6.”
Breathwaite smirked—
High Value Target 6
—decided he needed fortification, and stepped into the Café Flora a couple of doors down, ordered a quadruple Tullamore at the bar.
The very young barmaid looked startled.
Thinks I’m some rich fuck. Or dangerous, maybe.
“On the rocks, please.”
“The
what
?”
“The rocks. On ice cubes.”
“Just ice cubes? Nothing else? No lemon?”
“Oh, Jesus, no. Just ice cubes.”
This is not fortifying me.
“Just ice.”
Justice.
“Please.”
She took some time studying the bottles on the shelf behind her.
“Second shelf, fourth from the right,” he said. “No, not that, that’s bourbon, the next one … Right.” He watched her carefully pour four two-centiliter measures into the glass, then dip her fingers into an ice bucket and scoop out a single cube. Breathwaite laid a hundred on the bar and laughed at himself for perceiving this as another example of his luck gone sour. The center cannot hold. He tipped her five crowns for the finger sweat bonus and swished the whiskey in the glass to let the rapidly melting little cube chill it, then threw it back in two snaps and returned to the door of Jes’s building.
Instead of ringing Jes’s bell, he rang another at random, on the third floor, not to alert Jes yet. No warning. Just Dad there at the door, in your face. Whoever it was mercifully buzzed him in, and he began the long, slow climb to his son’s sixth-floor walk-up.
On three, he paused to catch his wind. A door opened, and a young man’s shaven head ducked out.
“Sorry,” Breathwaite wheezed. “I must have rung you by mistake.” He pointed upward. Without a word, the young man’s bald head disappeared behind his shabby door again. On the fourth, Breathwaite began to hear noise, music from above. He was feeling the climb. Too many cigars, even if he didn’t inhale. Much. Well, that was another cozy comfort that would regulate itself with the economy. Start smoking El Cheapos. Or quit altogether. Sit around and chew your fingernails instead. Free habit. Bite yourself.
On five, the noise grew louder, and louder still as he ascended the sixth flight. He stood on the landing outside Jes’s door, waiting for his lungs and heart to quiet down. Stenciled in white paint along one edge of the door were the words
SUCCES SUCKS
.
Learn how to fucking spell!
Or was that some kind of intentional irony?
He could not avoid hearing the voices from within, punctuated by short bursts of jazz.
“Listen to this, listen to this!” Jes’s voice, and then the sound of a record, discordant horns and a dramatic voice, recorded apparently, speaking in English, with urgency, shouting that he wanted to slit the bellies of frigid women, to pour gasoline down chimneys, to poison dogs; shouting accusations that a drunken cherub had been murdered, that the murderer was a son of a bitch in a Brooks Brothers suit …
Breathwaite was surprised then to hear laughter from several mouths, male and female, it sounded like. What the hell was funny about that? Breathwaite opened the lapel of his Burberry and looked at the jacket of his suit. It was not Brooks Brothers, but they would hardly know the difference.
He sighed. Then he turned back and descended the stairs. The descent was easier.
Another quadruple Tullamore in Flora. The girl remembered this time and gave him two ice cubes dug out with a tablespoon. He sat by the window and smoked, nursing the whiskey.
Try again tomorrow. Or the next day. Don’t take no for an answer.
There was a copy of the
BT
tabloid folded on the vacant table beside him. He leafed through it as he sipped the whiskey and enjoyed his Wintermans. That was maybe cheap enough, Wintermans. He could ration himself.
The news in
BT
was bad enough to match the autumn gray evening. War, torture, murder, rape, street violence, hospital waiting lists, racism, a shooting in Ålborg—gang execution—and suicide bombers in Palestine and Baghdad. A small item in the lower corner of one page caught his eye: “Police: Mysterious Death Explained. Cancer Diagnosis.” It told the story that the mystery surrounding a man who had been found dead under suspicious circumstances had been solved when his doctor stepped forward to explain the man had recently been diagnosed with cancer of the spleen. The breach of confidentiality was condoned by the police and medical profession. Apparent suicide. The man’s wife was quoted as expressing understanding that he had wished to spare himself from a long and painful death.