Saul and Patsy (22 page)

Under the surface she held her breath as long as she could, and then she thought of Gordy Himmelman, and, sort of experimentally, she tried breathing in some water, just to see what it was like, and she choked. She felt herself panicking and going up to the surface but then she fought the panic when she imagined she
saw
somebody
like
Gordy Himmelman, though better-looking, more like her dad, under the water with her, holding her hand and telling her it was better down here, and all the problems were solved, so she tried to relax and breathe in a little more water. She registered thunderbolts of panic, then some peace, then panic. Then it was all right, and Family Day was finally over, and, because she wasn’t a very good swimmer anyway, she began to sink to the bottom, though there
were
all those annoying voices. She would miss Wilbur, the guinea pig, but not much else, not even the boys who had tried to feel her up.

She drifted down and away.

Her father and the lifeguard had seen the cone of ice cream floating on the surface of the lake at the same time. They both rushed in, and Gina’s dad reached her body first. He pulled her up, thrashed his way to the beach, where, without thinking, he gave his daughter the Heimlich maneuver. Water erupted out of her mouth. Gina’s eyes opened, and her father laid her down on the sand, and she said, “Gordy?” but what she said was garbled by the water still coming out of her lungs into her mouth and out of her mouth into the sand. As she came around, her hair falling around her eyes, she seemed disarrayed somehow, but pleased by all the fuss, and then she smiled, because she had seen her father’s face, smeary with love.

Fourteen

When she arrived back home, having survived her near-death experience, Gina was supposed to lie down, but she didn’t want to be horizontalized. She couldn’t see the point to it since she wasn’t particularly tired and she certainly wasn’t dead, either. Her throat hurt; that was about it. What she really wanted to do was to call a few people. She took her cell phone along with four cookies into her room, closed the door, and sat cross-legged on her bedspread with two of the cookies hidden beneath one knee and the other two cookies behind the other knee, and she wondered which of her friends she would call first to tell about her near-death. She was glad to see Wilbur again, scrabbling in his corner. He welcomed her back with a few quiet, loving little squeals.

She bit into the first cookie, leaving three and a half.

She decided to give her friend April the first call, but April wasn’t at home—nobody was (and they didn’t have an answering machine or voicemail over there, it was medieval)—so she tried Danni instead. Danni took it on the second ring. Danni did all the phone-answering at the Wiesiewski house. Danni was pretty and stuck-up like the rest of the Wiesiewskis, but she was a good listener when she had to be. When Danni asked Gina, “Whassup?” Gina told her that they’d been out at Copper Lake, and she’d been swimming, and—this was a secret, Danni absolutely could not tell anyone—she thought she saw this ghost-person under the water who looked exactly like Gordy Himmelman, and, no, she couldn’t describe how it had happened, but it was like he had dragged her down under the water, and it was incredibly beautiful down there—it was
not
ugly—and she almost drowned, but her father or somebody had brought her back to life.

Gordy Himmelman? Danni asked. You’re kidding. That freak? Besides, he’s dead. Are you crazy? What are you saying?

No. Gina said that she was not kidding, swear to God, and not crazy. Did she
sound
crazy? No. This was weirder than being crazy. In fact, she said, it would be just exactly like Gordy Himmelman to be a ghost, because when he was alive, or semi-alive, or whatever it was he had been when he had been living, he had always wandered into places where he wasn’t wanted, and it would therefore be like him now to show up here, there, and everywhere. She ate her cookie and bit into another one, which left two and a half. She touched her hair. It was still damp and probably dirty from the lake water. She would have to shampoo it soon.

It’s like he’s in charge of something real interesting, Gina said.

Danni asked Gina if she could tell anyone, and Gina said, well, no, not really, or: well, you can tell some people, but only as long as you get my permission first, and they have to promise not to tell. “I don’t want
everybody
to know,” Gina said. “It sounds too weird.”

Danni said she understood perfectly.

Within four days Gina’s telephone was ringing every half-hour from kids she knew who thought they had seen Gordy or someone like him: Ron Burr told Chrystal Chambers that he thought he had seen Gordy in the Elysian Fields Shopping Mall, walking as if he were battery-powered and under remote control from Mars, into one of the theaters at the multiplex, but when he followed him in, Gordy wasn’t there. He had just vanished like shit in a shitstorm. Ron said he was a loser. Losers disappear on you, but now that he was dead maybe he wasn’t such a total loser after all. Death could revise you. The day after that, April, Gina’s friend April Cumming, claimed that she had seen Gordy Himmelman outside her window, looking in, like some creep stalker jackoff; then ugly little Georgette Novak, who wanted to be popular and who worked at McDonald’s because people claimed that her parents wouldn’t give her an allowance for clothes, said that she had served Gordy Himmelman a Coke and fries, and that he looked verifiably dead, which at least was convincing, and he paid her with money that totally disappeared after she put it into the cash drawer. He had paid her with bogey money. Rona Elliott said she had seen him out in the park, where she had been walking her dog, Buster, who barked hysterically at him. Gordy stood on the other side of the park, waving at her, as if he were signaling. She turned away, and when she turned back, he was gone.

Other reports put Gordy in a tree, way up where you couldn’t reach him, Gordy moving around in the house at night, Gordy’s image appearing suddenly on the computer screen, Gordy calling in the middle of the night and asking for the time, Gordy appearing on a three-A.M. infomercial—in the background in a kitchen, staring at the camera, while in the foreground they were selling a kitchen gadget.

They said he looked like himself. They said he was everywhere.

Danni told Gina that April had said that all these sightings were, like, mass hysteria, and that the Justice Department was looking into it, because it might be the work of terrorists. You had to be on a twenty-four-hour alert.

And it would have died down, too, Gina thought, if one of the nicest boys in her class, Sam Cole, who was sweet and a good athlete and really good-looking—he wasn’t like most of the other boys, and the boys knew it, and because he was both tough and goodhearted, nobody ever said anything bad about him—hadn’t been riding home from a dentist’s appointment on his bicycle and hadn’t been hit by a newspaper truck backing down a driveway. Because, after that, all the kids in Five Oaks who were even close to Sam’s age knew that Gordy Himmelman had pushed him into the path of that truck. They didn’t exactly tell their parents, but they told each other, and that was how they knew.

This is how it was: there were terrorists for their parents, and there was Gordy Himmelman for them.

Fifteen

The woman in front of Patsy at the VitaDrug prescription counter had been taking antipsychotics for so long that she had apparently lost control of her tongue. Patsy didn’t even pretend to look away. While the woman waited for her credit-card number to go through, her tongue emerged from her mouth like a snake from its nest, angled left and right experimentally as if testing the air for bugs or oxygen density, then retreated back into her mouth before emerging again, this time staying out as it continued its ceaseless explorations. Her purchases were piled on the counter in a haphazard fashion. Along with the drugs nestled in their bar-coded, stapled bags with the “Ask the Pharmacist” cartoon on the front, showing a bald-headed man with a small-town smiley face (none of the pharmacists here looked like that: they were all East Indian), the woman had bought three cylindrical containers of potato chips, four cans of tuna, and two six-packs of diet cola. She made Patsy think of a lizard-lady preparing for a party with the other lizard-ladies, all of them sitting outside on the terrace, passing the tin cans from lap to lap, their tongues wagging, the fat of their ankles spilling out over the tops of their shoes.

All through October, when she was alone, or running errands after work like this, after having picked up Emmy from day care, Patsy somehow found herself at the end of her goodwill. This falling-away from sympathetic feelings for the helpless was new for her. Random compassion without any outlet now struck her as a Saul-like indulgence. Against strangers, she could feel her heart slowly hardening, developing a shellac. Her charity was failing her. If any woman deserved her pity, this woman did. But her pity seemed unavailable to her. Everything she had was directed toward her children these days: this one, and the one to come. And Saul, too, of course.

After picking up her prescription for Dorylaeum, a vitamin supplement and sleep aid for pregnant women whose occasional side effect was that it made time speed up, Patsy wheeled Emmy in her stroller down the aisles past the magazine rack, where two middle school girls were talking quietly to each other as they flipped through the new issue of
Gloor
. They appeared to be dressed for Halloween, and it was now late October, and their white hair, kohl-darkened eyes, bleached skin, and black raggedy clothes accessorized with pins displaying cryptic symbols gave them the aspect of ghosts. When Patsy passed them, they gazed at her with the fixedness of the dead. They were part of the growing number of middle schoolers and high school kids who were affecting the gothic mortuary look. In the space of several weeks, a small but significant cult of Gordy Himmelman had surfaced, and this style, Patsy had heard, was meant either to ward him off or to evoke him. They called themselves Himmels. All over town, out of the corner of your eye, you could see these neo-goths, these Himmels, with their staring-fish expressions. Saul and Patsy’s paperboy, Darryl Anderson, was now a part-time Himmel. He was a nice kid and hadn’t quite mastered the doom-laden frown yet. Some of the others talked in a kind of code, the way they imagined that the dead might.

The school superintendent, Floyd Vermilya, had sent home a notice to parents encouraging them to celebrate life, not death, at the level of family. He had threatened suspensions. Students who ghouled their way into school with Himmel-haircuts, Himmel-overcoats, or even Himmel-like expressions on their faces could just ghoul their way out again until they were ready to dress and act like normal young people. Unfortunately, the new restrictions were hard to enforce. Himmelism had spread to both of Five Oaks’s high schools—though who would know? So many of those kids acted and dressed like that anyway. An underground goth cell had established itself there some time ago. Besides, adolescents could disguise themselves as ordinary, decent American kids and then, when school was out, turn into Himmels in the privacy of their homes. At that age, they all wore masks anyway. Masking was the pride of adolescence. Himmel-speak, the language of the dead that the Himmels had fabricated, was forbidden in the classroom or the athletic field, though none of the athletes were Himmels anyway.
Probably
. You could never tell. There was an unsubstantiated rumor of a Himmel sleeper-cell on the football team, the second-stringers and bench-warmers, though it strained credulity: What would a would-be dead football player
say
? And to whom? Himmel-athletes didn’t bleach their hair, but many of them had the trademark blank look. And their cheers lacked conviction. The school guidance counselor had suggested to parents at the latest PTA meeting that they motivate their kids to participate in more upbeat sports activities. Playing a musical instrument, he said, might also overcome the recent community-wide tendency to morbid display.

Vermilya had told Saul, and Saul had told Patsy, that he feared national attention to this phenomenon. If that happened, if the networks showed up, there’d be no stopping it. He feared Himmel websites, Himmel chat rooms, docudramas on Himmelism . . .

Something has gone wrong with our children,
he had told Saul.
Something is
spreading, and I don’t even know what it is.

The door flipped open electronically, and Patsy walked out onto the sidewalk. She crossed the street into Governor John Engler Park, a square city block decorated with a few surviving petunias planted in an uneven row on the south border. To the north was a stage and a band-stand. Skateboarders leapt up and down the benches and roared across the proscenium. The air felt autumnal and cool. In the center of the park stood an eight-foot-high statue of the former governor, holding his hand out in welcome. On his face was a smile contaminated with a dubious affability. This statue was now permanently blocked off from the sun by the WaldChem building, under construction across the street, a bright yellow steel crane perched on the topmost beam, and by the AddiData building to the west, whose windows had the rectangular shape of the holes in IBM punch cards. The WaldChem building would be the highest structure in Five Oaks. Although the Chamber of Commerce had lobbied for its construction with the zoning board, both the mayor and the City Council had complained mildly about the architecture, which was in a downsized Black Rock style. It was considered by many to be dour and not suitable for the Midwest. It did not glorify the heartland.

In the park Patsy took Emmy out of the stroller and bounced her on her lap. She was being fussy today. “Down me,” Emmy said. Patsy let her down. Emmy walked experimentally around the bench, singing her toothpaste song. With a mild shock, Patsy saw Anne McPhee sitting on the park bench opposite her, and Anne’s son, Matt, running back and forth before her, as if he were searching for some interesting trouble to get into but hadn’t yet found it. Anne was visibly pregnant and wore a besieged expression: she was still a beautiful young woman, Patsy thought, with great features that her pregnancy had not diminished, but she seemed distracted and solitary. Her blouse was stained with apple juice. She looked
used
. She had a rash on her wrist that she scratched absentmindedly. Something about her suggested helplessness and excessive brooding. She waved at Patsy without enthusiasm.

Five Oaks might boast of the new WaldChem building, but it was still a city where you kept running into the same people. You would have to move at least as far away as the Caspian Sea to avoid them.

Patsy had wanted to be Anne’s friend ever since she and Saul had shown up, muddy and in shock, at the McPhees’ door after their car turned over following the party at Mad Dog’s, but the friendship couldn’t last.

The day had arrived some months back when the McPhees announced themselves at Patsy’s office at the bank, presenting their case for a home loan. Patsy couldn’t tell if they had concocted a plan to trade on what they assumed to be her friendship. Maybe so. Emory had been holding Matt’s hand, and the young father wore his baseball cap with the visor in back. He had just shaved, and he gave off a first-date odor of drugstore cologne. Very proudly, speaking in married-couple relays, first the husband, then the wife, they announced that they wanted to buy a house in a new development, Maple Meadows. They were tired of paying rent for their current house, they said. They wanted this as a
real
investment; it was time to build a
future
. They recited these sentences as if they had rehearsed them, fanfare, emphases, and all. But Patsy, as one of the bank’s loan officers, had to refuse the loan almost on the spot. They had virtually nothing in savings or collateral, and Emory’s employment as a housepainter was sporadic. He was a high school dropout. Their credit rating was dismal. When Patsy had told Anne and Emory the bad news, Anne cried. She began her sobbing slowly, then really worked up a storm of tears. It went on and on.

You tried to create a community, but money always got in the way, and finally lines were drawn. Friendship ended at the bank’s front door, at least for working people.

Like some lovers who get romantically entangled young, in high school, both the McPhees, Emory and Anne, had an intense, greedy physicality. They always reminded Patsy of two healthy animals who had mated, almost without thinking. Their stories were always stories about the body; they never got past it.

Patsy took Emmy’s hand and walked over to where Anne McPhee was sitting in the park. North of the women, on the block bordering the park in which they sat, the yellow construction crane turned slowly, lifting a steel beam. A man, small in the distance, standing on another beam and wearing a hardhat appeared to be watching them. He appeared to wave.

“Some of those construction workers get rich, if they live long enough,” Anne said. She checked Patsy out, then smiled halfheartedly. “I see we both got ourselves knocked up again.” There was a brief pause. “Congratulations.”

“I didn’t think I was showing that much yet,” Patsy said.

“You aren’t. Not in front,” Anne pointed. “Only if a person is looking. A mom would know. It’s the way you’re walking.”

“Do you mind if I sit down?” Patsy asked. She would be the soul of politeness.

“Go ahead.” Anne patted the bench. “Please.”

“Thanks, Anne.” She sat down.

“Want a cookie?” Anne pulled an Oreo out of her purse. Matt grabbed it out of her hand before curling up at her feet. She smiled indulgently at her son. “Public space. It’s free to everybody. Hey, I see Emmy’s getting real big.” Anne smiled at Mary Esther, who was folding herself for protection against strangers into her mother’s lap.

“Matt, too. Good-looking boy.” He was, of course. He looked like a three-year-old James Dean, a little pint-sized greaser heartthrob. His mouth was smeared with cookie crumbs, but he was beautiful anyway. “Where’s Saska?”

“Saska? She’s home with Emory. Yeah, well.” Over to their right, the skateboarders made their racket, and when one of them fell, the others yelled encouragement. “I got another one coming. My
third
. Another hell on wheels, I guess.”

“Boy?” Patsy asked.

“Yeah. I think so.”

“When’d you find out?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the ultrasound . . . the amnio?”

“Oh, I haven’t had any of that. I’m just guessing. You?”

“This one’s a boy. For sure. I suppose I always knew it, but I did have my doctor do an ultrasound, and she asked me if I wanted the big news, and I said I did, and she said, ‘It’s a boy,’ so that’s how I know.”

“Our medical insurance ran out,” Anne McPhee said. “No ultrasound for me.”

In front of them, a squirrel scurried up the pedestal of the governor’s statue, stopped, then scurried down again. A whistle blew near the construction site’s trailer. Quitting time. The construction worker seemed to wave at them again, two pregnant women sitting in the park.

“I’m sorry,” Patsy said. The man on the steel beam continued to watch her.

“Oh, you don’t have to be sorry for us. It’s not your fault. And in case you’re wondering, I’ve forgotten all about that business with the home loan.”

“Really, Anne, it wasn’t personal. My apologies.”

“No need to be so sorry so much,” Anne McPhee said, mirthlessly laughing. “Besides, it’s not your fault, not giving us that loan. You work for a bank. We went to the other banks. Same thing. Besides, it’s Emory. It’s who Emory is, as a provider. Years ago we had the red-hots for each other and we got married and I got knocked up, and now here I am, sitting on this park bench with you.” She shot Patsy a huge disarming smile. She had a quality of dishonest sincerity. “We kissed ourselves right out of school into having a family before we had prospects. Same old story. Story of the ages. Story of the sower and the seedbed. We couldn’t help ourselves.”

“You get married, you struggle for a while,” Patsy sighed, scratching at her own arm in sympathy.

“It’s different for you,” Anne said. “You and Saul have two incomes. You at the bank, him at the school. No offense, Patsy. Emory and me, we had so much love so fast it just kept us ignorant about other things. The whole rest of the world.”

Patsy nodded. This conversation was like an old cat that wouldn’t get up from the carpet, that wouldn’t move anywhere at all. Anne McPhee scratched and scratched and scratched at her rash. Finally Patsy said, struggling against the silence, “How
is
Emory?”

“Oh, he’s okay. He’s thinking of getting his equivalency, then going to the Community College, get a degree in commercial art. We’re sort of fine. We’re still happy, you could say. No problem with each other. We worry about money, though.” She touched Patsy on the knee. “
All the time.
Which is more your department. You still ever ride that motorcycle you bought—what, two years ago?”

“No,” Patsy said. “Not for months and months. Not since I became a mom. It’s getting dusty in the garage.”

There was a long pondering silence. The silence was about being able to buy a motorcycle that you then didn’t use. It was about that luxury. “Sometimes I wonder,” Anne said.

“Wonder about what?”

“How long it’ll last.”

“What?”