The Bend of the World: A Novel (22 page)

Ah, my father replied. Well, I don’t imagine you can rush that sort of thing. I always— But he broke off, because the waiter had arrived.

While he and the waiter engaged in a hushed conversation over the list, Mom said, So why isn’t he doing so well?

Drugs, said Lauren Sara.

I let my eyes settle on hers for a moment; she pretended not to notice.

He never was a teetotaler, Mom said. But you’d think he’d know better, what with his brother and all.

What about his brother? Lauren Sara asked.

Nothing, I said.

My mother offered me her purest expression of consternation. Really, Peter, she said. It’s not as if it’s some taboo. He died, she said to Lauren Sara. An overdose.

They don’t actually know that it was an overdose, I said.

Everyone knows that’s what it was, Mom replied. We agreed to a degree of ambiguity in order to preserve the feelings of their poor grandmother.

Well, anyway, I said. Apparently he doesn’t know better. Although I did just see him and he seemed to be doing all right, relatively speaking.

I always liked your friend Johnny, Dad said. A real character. I remember when you two boys first met.

Hey, speaking of which, I said. Who is this William Morrison character that Nana was going on about?

Bill? Dad asked.

No, I said. William. You told me we didn’t have any English relatives.

What are you talking about? Mom snapped. I didn’t think she meant it to come out as quite such a bark.

Nana, I said, mentioned at the party that we had a cousin in England named William Morrison. And you told me that there was no such person.

Really, Peter, Mom said. She was talking to my father.

He sighed. The waiter arrived with the wine. My father sniffed the cork. My father swirled his glass, smelled, sipped, made the tight-lipped grimace that is a wine drinker’s approving expression. He sighed again. Well, buddy, he said, the truth is, and you’re certainly old enough to know, there were some related Morrisons in England, including your, well, I guess he’d be your first cousin twice removed, William. But the family is rather . . . embarrassed of that connection, and we generally feel it’s best not to mention it.

Oh Jesus, I said.

Well, Dad said, they were . . . I should put this delicately.

They were members of the British Union, my mother said.

Yes, said Dad. And you can imagine, this was a source of some embarrassment for the family after the war, your grandfather in particular.

Why?

I should think it would be obvious, said my mother.

Well, of course, he’d lost most of his money, you know, Dad said, but I wasn’t sure which of us he was addressing.

No, I said. I don’t know.

Yes, hm, said my dad, and he gulped down half a glass of wine, uncharacteristically, and poured himself another. Well, he got involved in some sort of crackpot scheme with a German inventor by the name of Wilhelm Zollen. Hm, well, interestingly, the person who was always fascinated by this was your friend Johnny’s grandfather, who, you know, was always working on that perpetual motion machine invention in his shed. Yes, I suppose that’s where Johnny first heard it from.

We know that’s where he heard it from, my mother interjected. We had to call him and have a little talk after you came home from school when you boys met.

My father shrugged and sipped his wine again and continued. In any case, Peter, it was all a confidence game. Your grandfather was fortunate to have married your grandmother when he did. She managed to wrangle some money out of the British Morrisons, who had some industrial concerns, and, you know, she really did run the business for all those years. But of course it wasn’t very fashionable to admit that your family fortune had been resuscitated by a gang of British sympathizers.

So, what about Zollen? What, you’re going to tell me he was some sort of German spy?

A spy? My father chuckled. No, I don’t think so. In fact, I don’t think he was even really German. The accent was just apparently a put-on, as far as your grandmother can recall. Hm, well, I never met him, of course, but I’ve seen pictures. He was very fat. No, no. A spy? No, but he did end up in jail. His problem was, well, there’s no delicate way to put it, really, was that he was perhaps a little too fond of . . . that is to say—

He was a pedophile, said my mother. Little boys.

Well, my dad said, teenagers.

Really, Peter, said my mother.

3

Jesus fucking Christ, I said on the way home. My family is so weird. And what about this shit? Wihlem Zollen? Can you believe it? Johnny’s going to shit himself. Lauren Sara didn’t say anything. I glanced at her. What? I said. Nothing, she said. You’re being weird, too, I said. Listen, she said, there’s something I want to tell you. That doesn’t sound good, I said. You have to promise to be cool, she said. Okay, I said. I promise to be cool. Cool, she said. A pause. Then: I’m breaking up with you. I almost ran off the parkway. The wheels hummed on the buzz-strip dividing the lane from the shoulder before I regained control. What? I said. You promised to be cool, she said. That’s before I knew what you were going to say, I said. Yeah, that’s why I made you promise first, she replied. Jesus fucking Christ, I said, why? You just don’t seem to be super into it. What do you mean? I said. I’m totally into it. Aren’t we both more into it than ever? Yeah, she said. I don’t know. I guess, but it feels like something else. I mean, come on, Peter. I mean, if you were super into it, what’s the deal with Helen? What about her? I asked. Well, you fucked her, for one, said Lauren Sara. No, I didn’t, I said. Peter, she said. Okay, fine, I said. But whatever. That doesn’t have anything to do with anything. No, I mean, I agree, Lauren Sara said, but the thing is, I don’t care about the sex part. That’s cool. Whatever. I mean, it’s just like you don’t care that I hook up with Derek sometimes. What it is, is the whole creepy Internet stalker thing. You sleep with Derek? I said. I couldn’t believe it. What the fuck! You knew that, she said. No, I didn’t, I said. He told me he told you, Lauren Sara said. Well, he fucking didn’t, I replied. Oh, she said. I hope that’s cool. No, I said. It’s not fucking cool. How the fuck would that be fucking cool? And what the fuck do you mean, Internet stalker? You left your browser history open the other day, she said. No, I didn’t, I said. Who leaves their browser history open? I don’t know, she said. I stopped by on Thursday last week and it was open on your computer. You were at work. Oh Christ, I said. Johnny. What? she said. Fuck, I said. This is such bullshit. I can’t believe you fucked Derek! I can’t believe you want to break up. We’ll still be cool, she said. I mean, we can still have sex sometimes, you know, if you’re into it. Fuck, I said. Or not, she said. No, I said. That’s not what I mean. We’d reached the top of Greentree Hill, and we stopped. Traffic went bumper-to-bumper down the long descent to the Fort Pitt Tunnel. Nothing was moving. The next day, in the paper, we’d learn that a seal had blown on a gas truck in the tunnel. Everything had to be diverted out to the West End. It took an hour to cover the two miles from where we were to the detour, and neither of us said another word in that time.

4

I had nothing to do. Mark had gone out of town on one of his vague missions, and there was no work. I sat in my office with the door closed and went back to reading blogs. I watched an old animated .gif of the mayor pulling his head off to reveal a dinosaur skull on Alieyinz in a loop for hours, giggling uncontrollably as an approximation of tears. I read Facebook updates. Helen’s remained unchanged, her most recent post a link to a postdated museum page about Jergen Steinman. I watched animal videos. I tried to call Johnny, but he never answered. In a series of texts, I told him he was an asshole. Then I told him: I believe. He replied to that one: headless lives, he wrote, and he included an address that Google showed me to be somewhere off PA 268 up near East Brady.

Then it was Thursday night. I’d come home to discover that my squirrel had chewed through the screen, chewed into and eaten the rest of a box of granola that I’d left out on the counter, and taken a squirrel shit on the dish towel I’d left beside it.
Et tu
, and all that, I thought. I thought about calling my mother.

I thought, I am thirty years old with no girlfriend and just one close friend, if you can even call him that anymore; my work is purposeless; it isn’t even work; it isn’t anything; my boss is probably a sociopath, or, if not, an alien from another dimension, because what human, given the option to do otherwise, given the option to do nothing or anything else at all, would willfully choose to do what he did, ranging from one bland office to another, tossing grenades at balance sheets, before jetting off to the next pointless exercise? I thought, Oh God,
I’m
that human. I thought, Maybe I should do something to give some sort of form to my life, because, at last, when the books have been closed and the accounts settled, the bills paid and the paychecks deposited, the promises made and broken, the goods and services bought and sold, the statements reconciled, the tip laid on the counter and the change folded back into the wallet, there is nothing to be saved, there is only one balance, and it only gets smaller, which is this life, and there is only one way to spend it, prudently or in a spree, which is the living of it.

But the world always gives you something better to do than the best thing you could be doing. Someone knocked. I answered the door. Hi, said Helen. She had a six-pack and a bottle of whiskey, which I could already smell on her breath. How did you know where I live? I asked. I don’t remember, she said. Well, I said, okay. Come on in.

5

Hey, listen, I said in the morning, what are you doing today?

Oh God, she said. Have you got any Advil?

Probably, I said.

I couldn’t sleep, she said. Which was not true. She’d had four of the beers and half of the whiskey before we fell into bed in order to have slapstick, drunken sex that ended with her snoring, one leg uncovered, and me with the spins, sick and unable to sleep myself until just around dawn. But all drunks pretend to be unsound sleepers; thus are hangovers transformed. It was ten-thirty in the morning.

Found some, I said from the bathroom.

Some what?

Aspirin, I said, emerging. Here.

All I need is some vodka to wash it down.

Haha, I said, but I shouldn’t have. So listen, I said. What are you doing today?

I was planning on staring at the paintings in my studio for a while and getting stoned enough to take a nap. Why?

Do you want to go somewhere strange with me? I said

A motel in the woods, probably full of freaks and weirdos, I didn’t say.

Sounds killer, she said.

6

So we ate some breakfast around lunchtime, or I ate breakfast, and Helen drank a Bloody Mary and picked out the innards of her omelet, then we got gas and bad gas-station coffee, which was the sort of thing that assholes like us considered to be mild transgressions, and headed out 28 toward Kittanning. It had stormed overnight, not hard, but the heat had broken, and it was one of those odd days in Pennsylvania that are sunny and cloudy all at once; the sky as far as you could see enrobed in light gray clouds, their undersides glowing like a Belgian block street in the bright sunlight just after the rain. We drove with the windows down and the radio tuned to an opera broadcast out of Chicago or L.A.; I can’t remember, but I remember it was
Lucia
. Helen said, You know, I thought you’d drive a different car.

You’ve seen my car, I said.

I don’t think so.

I’m pretty sure.

I expected a BMW.

You’re not the only one.

What do you mean?

Nothing. Something someone else said to me. You know, I used to work for a guy who was really into cars, and then I had to fire him.

Do you have any cigarettes?

Glove compartment. There’s a lighter in there somewhere, too.

Thanks. You had to fire your old boss?

I didn’t exactly fire him. I mean, I wasn’t the one who actually did it. It sort of happened in my general vicinity.

That’s what you get with him.

Who, Mark? What do you get?

It’s hard to say, really. How old are these cigarettes? They taste like a glove compartment.

Old, I said. Emergency only.

Gross, she said, but she kept on smoking. What I mean, she went on, is that around Mark things seem to have a habit of happening without happening. You realize something’s changed, but how did it change, and when did it change?

That’s true.

I hate it, she said.

How did you two get together? I asked. I mean, did you start dating right after you met?

I don’t know, she said. There he was. I realized something had changed.

Oh, I said.

So this is going to be a party? Or what?

To be honest, I don’t know. Yes, a party, I think. Or an art show, maybe. With bands? I’m sort of trying to track down my friend. He’s gone off the deep end a little. Also, he may have been right about something.

How can you tell?

To be honest, I said, I’m not really sure.

Well, I could use a good party.

I can’t promise you that.

She touched my arm. That has its own kind of promise, she said. I felt a thrill mingled with dread that went straight to my dick, even though, in my so-far limited experience, sex with Helen was a less desultory but also less satisfying affair than sex with Lauren Sara, and I was beginning to suspect that it was all the promise of Helen, rather than Helen herself, that had taken me in. I took the wheel with my right arm to break the contact between us, and I was beginning to regret the decision that I’d made, although, to be honest, I wasn’t actually sure what, if any, decision that was.

From Kittanning we took 268 for a few miles, two narrow lanes over the hills, the woods on either side, my car sandwiched between two suicidal tanker trunks on their way to or from one of the new gas rigs that had sprung up like monster-movie mushrooms all over that part of the state. Helen had fallen asleep, and I was glad, because I drove with both hands gripping the wheel, leaning forward like my grandmother. We turned off on a county road through the woods. The shoulders were washed out on either side. It wound its way up a hill for another mile or two. Helen was awake. Where are we? she asked.