The Sky Is Falling (34 page)

“Are you serious?” he said.

Her nightie was already around her neck. Now she tossed it on the floor and lay back, opening herself. “You remember what you promised?”

“Yeah.” He was fumbling with it, that much I could hear. Fumbling with the condom I'd helped her buy.

“What?”

“I'm taking the bus tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

“Yes. What?”

“You're just a kid.”

“I'm almost seventeen. I know tons of guys who've already done it. Well, two.”

“I mean you shouldn't be sick.”

“I'll be dead here in a minute.” He eased himself on top of her.

“Ouch!”

“I haven't even touched you yet.”

And then the sounds came faster, confusing, overlapping. A sharp intake of breath, a gasp of surprise or pain. I writhed with them, half in agony, but it was over in a minute. Breathless apologies gushed: “I'm sorry.” “
I'm
sorry. Too fast. What a tool.” “No, no. Never say that.” “You do like me, right?”

“I love you,” Sonia told him.

The pain in my ear. The whole side of my face incised with their words.

2004

Just after midnight I heard the back door open, then boots, possibly more than one pair. A minute later two voices confirmed this, their tone still angry, which struck me as troubling and odd. Something was going on, but if I went out there in my housecoat Joe Jr. would die on the spot. No matter what I wore, if I tried to pry it out of them they would only clamp tighter. At least they were home, I told myself.

They set upon the fridge and, afterward, stamped down to The Lair, where the volume came on low. Joe could sleep through the end of the world, and probably will, but after half an hour I couldn't take the vibrations any longer. I got out of bed and went to call down to Joe Jr. from the top of the basement stairs. Sibilants were exchanged, the volume lowered, then he appeared at the bottom of the stairs looking contrite. “Sorry. We'll keep it down.”

“It's
12
:
30
,” I said. “Where were you?”

“Just hanging.”

“You've got school tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“When's Simon leaving?”

“He's going to sleep here. Is that all right?”

“You've got school tomorrow.”

Joe Jr.: “We just went over that.”

“Okay,” I said. “But when are you planning on going to bed?”

“Now. We'll go now. All right?” I could hear a pull in his voice, like he wanted to be sarcastic but also wanted to stay on my good side.

“Where are you going to sleep?”

“In my room.”

“What about Simon?”

“On a foamie.”

Under the painted bulb his hair and face looked pink. I hoped it was the light, not that he was poised to explode because, normally, he's sweet-tempered, like his dad. “Okay,” I said. “Fine. But does his mother know?”

His mother, it turned out, did not.

“The cretins! That's all we care about! We don't give a fuck about his parents!”

“What cretins do you mean?” I asked Joe Jr.

“
The
Cretins! Our
band
!”

“Okay, okay,” said Joe, coming in from the kitchen, where he'd made hot chocolate, a clutch of steaming mugs in each hand. His bathrobe hung open showing, above the waistband of his boxers, most of his pale, doctorly stomach and chest. Poor Joe. He finally gets to sleep in and what happens? He's up half the night in the ER of our house. I woke him as soon as I found out that the girl, the love interest, had never existed except in my mind. It was that
other
girl. The Big One. It was Mother Trouble.

“Dad's almost got a gig set up,” Joe Jr. said. “A real one, not in some fucking garage. This is important. It's
so
important.”

Simon, meanwhile, was practically fetal on his end of the couch, weeping silently.

Joe: “Don't swear at your mother.”

“I didn't swear
at
her.”

“Whatever. It isn't nice.” He held out a mug to Joe Jr.

“No.”

“Take one.”

He did, with a huff, then Joe persuaded Simon to sit up and take his mug as well. I was so grateful for Joe's presence, for the calm he exuded, his reasonableness, when it was all I could do not to knock the boys' spikes together. Joe settled on the footstool on my side of the room and passed me my chocolate. “Okay,” he said. “Let's start at the beginning.”

“Simon's parents won't let him be in the band!”

“Since when?”

“Since yesterday when he told them about Mom.”

I burned my tongue. Chocolate slopped onto my housecoat and I set the mug down. “What about Jane?” Joe asked, very, very carefully.

“That she was in that group when she was young.”

“Let Simon answer.”

Simon looked so miserable and pimply wiping his nose on his bare arm. “Joey showed me the article in the paper. I Googled her. Then I told my mom about it. I can't believe I did that. It was so stupid!”

“They're so straight!” Joe Jr. spat.

“I'm still not understanding,” Joe said. “The article didn't even mention Jane.”

“She got
326
hits!”

Joe looked at me, eyebrows raised, holding in the smile. “A celebrity in our midst.”

“And she thinks! She said! ‘Joe's mom's a terrorist and you're not going over there any more!'” This came out like bullets.

I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe anyone could be so dumb. I strained to picture this woman, this idiot, but couldn't. She probably had no head. I thought: she lets him mutilate himself, but she won't let him play guitar with my son? Which was, of course, unhelpful. No doubt there was a long, complicated story behind Simon's grommetted earlobes.

“Jane wasn't a terrorist,” Joe said. “She just fell in with the wrong people.”

“I didn't!” I said. “It was all a mistake. And anyway, what were you back then?”

Joe laughed. “I was definitely the wrong person.”

“Would it help if I talked to her?” I offered Simon.

“No!”

Sighing, Joe turned to me. “What now?”

“We call them,” I said.

“No!” the boys screamed.

“We?” Joe said, appalled.

“Don't call them. Mom. Let him stay here tonight.”

“Of course he can stay.” I rose from the chair. “But I'm going to call his parents and let them know he's here.”

“No,” Simon moaned, curling over his mug.

Joe Jr.: “Fuck.”

Joe Sr.: “What did I say about that?”

From across the room, my son looked at me in a way that made me stop in my tracks. It was the kind of look you dread your whole life and, at that moment, I almost gave in. I almost did the wrong thing again. “Simon,” I asked. “What will happen to you if I phone your parents?”

“They won't let him be in—”

I shushed Joe Jr. “Simon?”

“They'll come and get me,” he muttered.

“And then what?”

“I'll get grounded.”

“Just grounded? Are you sure?” I turned to Joe Jr. for confirmation but he refused to meet my eye. Satisfied that this was the truth, that a beating or reform school were unlikely consequences, I went back to the kitchen to get the phone. “Fuck!” said Joe Jr., coming after me, begging now. “Please, Mom. Don't call them. We have it figured out.”

“What have you figured out?”

“He stays here tonight. Then he'll go to the hostel tomorrow after we get his stuff. He can't live there any more. He can't stand them. He wants to be in the band.”

“I am not letting those people wonder all night where their child is! Do you understand me?”

I guess I screamed this because Joe Jr. blanched and returned to the living room. Then I had to go and ask for the phone number. Both boys were staring at the rug in seething silence, which Simon broke only to rattle off the numbers. I punched them in and went back to the kitchen so I wouldn't have to talk to his parents in front of him. On the way out, Joe offered me an encouraging look and a shrug of utter helplessness to choose between.

A woman answered, cutting short the first ring, so I knew she'd been camped by the phone. “I'm sorry to be calling so late,” I told her. “This is Joey Norman's mother, Jane Z—”

Before I'd even finished introducing myself, a man replaced her on the line. I told him what I'd been about to say to her: “I just found out you didn't know Simon's here. He's welcome to stay the night, but I wanted you to know he's safe.”

“We'll come and get him,” the man said.

“You can come in the morning if you prefer. It's late.”

“We'll come right now. What's the address?”

When I got back to the living room, the boys were gone. Joe said, “They're in Joey's room.” I sat down and Joe handed me my mug of lukewarm chocolate again.

“What if he bolts?” I asked.

“We'll send out a posse.”

“What a mess.”

“Don't worry,” Joe said, squeezing my foot through the slipper. “It'll get sorted out.”

“That woman? She didn't even say anything and she sounded hostile.”

“Bitch,” he said, trying to be funny.

Or maybe I had only been hearing that other mother's anger. Either way, I didn't care because now I was thinking about that look Joe Jr. had given me, so calculatedly disaffected. I hoped it was temporary.

Twenty minutes after I made the call, the doorbell rang. I sent Joe to the door. He answered, then, passing by the living room to get the boys, mouthed to me that it was the dad. I felt less afraid then and got up to take a look at him hanging in the open door, bulky and balding and seemingly as appalled as I was. He shook my hand when I offered it, but refused eye contact with the terrorist.

“Sorry about all this,” I said.

“She's pretty frantic,” he said.

“Of course. I would be too.”

Simon appeared with his backpack and guitar and sank down on the stairs to put his boots on. His father picked up the instrument. “Carry them.”

Simon stood.

“Say thank you.”

Simon: “Thank you.”

“I hope to see you again soon, Simon,” I warbled, managing to pat him on the back as he ducked out.

From the window Joe and I watched father and son going down the walk, Simon sock-footed, taking mincing steps, a long boot in each hand. His father threw the guitar in the trunk, then came around to unlock the passenger door. We were relieved when he hugged the boy.

Downstairs, The Sex Pistols came on full throttle.

There are things you simply don't understand until you have a child. You might think you know about love, for example, its rigours and complications, its thousand feats, but then it turns out that you don't, that you're clueless, that love, in point of fact, might as well be a Russian word. When Joe Jr. was born safe and whole, I felt such a sense of accomplishment. I had finally made a contribution. Finally something decisive, something that mattered to the world. This tiny, purple, squalling thing? I would die for him. It would be a privilege and a joy. I'd do it twice if I could.

But those groggy postpartum days don't last. The hormonal frenzy, the ecstatic blear—it passes—and on the other side of bliss, it's still there. Death is still there, more terrifying than before.

Not mine. His.

The next day we decided to let Joe Jr. skip school. Joe Sr. got up out of habit and cooked us a big fry-up. Joe Jr. slept through this olfactory alarm so Joe and I sat down together, overtired parents of a normally trouble-free teen. Then Joe's pager went off and he had to leave for the hospital with three strips of bacon folded into a piece of toast. It was depressing to eat alone after the promise of company. Outside, spring flaunted herself against the window. She lifted her lacy skirts and bent over. Birds flew by with bits of grass in their beaks. How cliché, I thought.

I'd got as far as page
92
in the manuscript when mutterings began to issue from Joe Jr.'s room. He was on the phone to Simon, I assumed—until I heard pounding and went to find out what was going on.

“Nothing,” he said from behind his closed door.

I took a chance and opened it. He was on the bed, leaning against the wall, not on the phone at all, the laptop squeezed between his thighs and his hair flat—a bad sign. On the screen I could see bombs releasing every time his finger stabbed return. In the virtual city, people were scattering, escaping down cyber alleys, getting blown to bits.