We All Fall Down (16 page)

She had had her crushes, her tragic loves, her worshipings from afar, but never anything like this. There had been unattainable Jeremy Madison, who played the lead in the school’s abbreviated version of
Grease,
and made her feel weak when he passed her in the corridor and sent her heart into scary palpitations when his bare arm brushed her bare arm once in the cafeteria. He was one of the
unattainables among many: for instance, the entire Burnside High School football team, with whom she fell impossibly in love one glorious Saturday afternoon as they headed for the huddle, mysterious and glamorous in their helmets, their faces glistening with sweat, a love that lasted no more than the length of the game but inducing in her body small sweet longings and strange intimate warmths. Then Timmy Kearns. Her first and only date. The agony and the ecstasy, like the title of that old movie. Both terrible and beautiful. She had adored him at a distance for weeks and he finally asked her to the movies. Sweet ecstasy, head in a whirl, breathless, could not concentrate on homework, got that awful C in math. Timmy Kearns had turned out to be barely articulate, not shy or bashful but, frankly, kind of stupid, kept scratching one particular spot on his head. Scratched and scratched and scratched. Practically ignored her, too, although they sat together on the bus, stood in line at the movies, sat next to each other in the theater. He never looked her in the eyes. Not even once. He never called her again, either. Which crushed her beyond belief. Not because she had any
desire
to go out with him again but because not being asked out on a
second
date was worse than no date at all, as if somehow you had failed miserably. Patti and Leslie sympathized with her—this was before the vandalism had changed everything—but she still felt ashamed, especially when Timmy Kearns who had been shooting her admiring glances for weeks suddenly began to ignore her altogether, even when they once met face-to-face carrying their trays of food in the cafeteria, with practically the entire school watching.

So this thing—she had not yet given it a name—with Buddy Walker was not like any of the other times she had lost her heart. In fact, she did not feel as though she had lost her heart but had found it at last. As if, until now, she
did not know she had a heart, not that kind of heart anyway. It began with empathy—she had shared his embarrassment when he fell down at the bottom of the escalator and saw the stricken look on his face even at that distance. She had left the scene because he looked familiar—she had seen him somewhere before, maybe at Burnside High—and it’s always more embarrassing when you fall or do something like that in front of people you know, rather than strangers.

Then observing him outside as he rubbed his elbow, looking so dismal, as if he had been abandoned by his family and friends, good-looking but something sad and wistful about him, she had spoken to him spontaneously, surprising herself even as the words came out of her mouth. She had then made up that crazy story about her heel breaking. To make him feel better. Why should she have wanted to make this boy, this stranger, feel better? She did not know but a small curling inside her body responded to him, a leap in her veins when he looked at her, a look on his face that she could not interpret. The nearest she could come to describing that look was this: as if he were listening not only to her voice but to some sweet music coming from somewhere. And the somewhere was her.

She did not fall in love with him for another twenty minutes—it happened while they were chewing pizza with pepperoni at the Pizza Palace in the Mall—although she did not know it as love until later.

They became a couple, going steady. Walking along hand in hand. They loved to walk. On the sidewalks of Burnside and Wickburg, along the banks of the Grange River, through the lanes of Jedson Park, but most of all at the Mall. They were conscious of themselves as a couple,
existing for themselves alone, wanting to be alone, yet aware of the people around them, wanting to be seen by others, glad to parade their love for all the world to observe.

She felt a pride of possession when she met fellows and girls she knew and managed to draw him closer to her. Once, they confronted Patti Amarelli and Leslie Cairns coming out of the Poster Store and Jane reveled in their envious glances, their undisguised awe as she and Buddy walked past. She could not keep herself from looking at him, stealing sly glances as they walked along. She loved the way he brushed back an errant lock of hair from his forehead or looked at her suddenly with a surprised expression on his face, as if he had just discovered her by his side and was delighted by the discovery. She could not stop touching him. Brushed against him, ran her hand along his arm, stroked that area at the base of his neck where his hairline stopped.

He became suddenly fastidious. Getting a haircut was now serious stuff, keeping his eye on the mirror as the barber snipped away, making certain every hair was in place. He had never used cologne, only simple Ivory soap, not even after-shave lotion. Now he used cologne after purchasing a bottle of Subtle at the perfume counter at Filene’s. Sprayed the stuff on his cheeks and neck and arms. Wondering whether he had used too much or too little, he met Addy outside her room. She stopped, sniffed delicately, and shook her head.

“Buddy,” she said, grinning, “you’ve got a girlfriend.”

Stunned, he said: “How do you know?”

“That smell can only mean one thing.” Seeing his frown of embarrassment, she smiled indulgently: “I think it’s great, Buddy. You don’t have to go into details about it. But let me give you a helpful hint …”

The hint involved the cologne. “Don’t spray the cologne directly on yourself,” she advised. “Spray it into the air and then walk into it.” Which she did as a demonstration. “That way you won’t knock her down with the smell, it will be subtle like its name and creep up on her.”

Grateful for her advice, he decided to tell her a bit about Jane. Not too much, afraid this rare thing he and Jane shared might be jinxed if he went on at length. Cautiously, he told Addy the bare essentials: her name, how they met. Addy did not push for details, listening attentively, a strange expression on her face, which he later realized was tenderness. “I’m so happy for you, Buddy,” she said, touching his shoulder lightly.

Maybe Addy and I will become friends, after all, he thought, astonished at what love could do.

He became aware of the beauties of the world around him. Colors more brilliant, sunsets breathtaking, neon signs dazzling. Laughed easily at jokes, laughed at stuff that was not really
that
funny, like the stupid jokes Randy Pierce told at lunchtime in the cafeteria. Caught his reflection in a mirror sometimes and saw the idiotic grin on his face and didn’t care.

Certain nights or afternoons, he and Jane did not see each other. Need to do homework, Jane said. And Buddy found himself doing homework, too. Sometimes they met in the Burnside Public Library and did their homework in the reading room, sitting side by side, and he managed to do the lessons despite the distraction of her presence. He felt older, more responsible, knowing that someday, if he was lucky, he would marry Jane Jerome, become her husband, a father—the prospect enough to take his breath away.

Jane passed lovely weightless days, floating almost, as if her feet barely touched the earth, capable of drifting off
into the sky like a balloon and never be seen again, which would be awful because life on earth was so incredibly sweet. Spring exploded in a cascade of bird songs and flowers and she felt like a flower herself, opening, like the slow-motion flowers in a Disney movie. Ridiculous, of course, but not really. Walking along beside Buddy, she felt like a woman, yet irresistibly girlish at the same time. Wanted to flounce in dresses, feel silk next to her skin, nylon on her legs, liked the sound of her clicking heels on the sidewalk or on the tile floor of the Mall. Delighted with herself, hugged herself a lot. She had a million secret places in her body that had not existed before she met Buddy and wanted him to explore them all, find them all out because she sensed that, in the finding out, there would be some kind of bliss involved. She often found that her eyes were brimming with tears and yet she was not crying. Instead of showers, she took long baths, trailed her fingertips along her flesh, held her breasts in her hands and they seemed to ache.

They could not get enough of each other, which made it necessary for them to have rules. Unspoken rules but rules all the same, declaring boundaries, how far they could go, by some mutual instinct. How long kisses should be, how far touching and caressing could proceed. Cupping her breast drove him wild, thick juices in his mouth, the threat of a sudden embarrassing eruption. But never both breasts and never inside her sweater. They embraced lovingly in a sweet tumble of bodies. Buddy never pushed beyond those silent limits, although one night he stiffened in the middle of the longest kiss they ever had, their mouths meshed, tongues wrapped around each other, his hand kneading her breast, and he fell away from her, shuddering, then became still, silent. She reached out in the dark—they were in the backseat of his mother’s car—and
touched his cheek, felt moisture there, realized that tears had spilled from his eyes. And took him in her arms, tenderly, delicately, loving him for those tears as she had never loved him before.

Yet, there were mysteries about him that she could not solve. He grew silent on occasion, deep in thought, unreachable, which panicked her, afraid that he would somehow slip out of her grasp or her life. She wanted him to meet her parents but he always made some excuse for not doing so. He seldom picked her up at her home, but when he did he blew the horn and waited for her to come out of the house. Most often, they met downtown, at the library, at the Mall. Although this meant that she had to bus it to downtown Wickburg, she didn’t mind. He also had to bus it from the other side of Wickburg and needed a transfer to make the trip, She was vaguely disturbed but her accelerating heart, the small, sweet gasps of breath when he came into sight, obliterated her misgivings.

She pondered whether she should tell him about the trashing. Once or twice she brought up the subject. Subtly, she thought. Said: “Some terrible things happen these days, Buddy.” She loved saying his name. “Like rape and trashing.”

A startled look on his face, he turned away from her. Did not follow her lead. Changed the subject, in fact. Pointed out something or other in the park.

Another time, she said: “Some people have no respect for others.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, like other people’s property. Wrecking it, trashing.” That word again—
trashing.
Why couldn’t she just come out and tell him about what had happened? About Karen in the hospital. Was she afraid that this would somehow alienate him, the way the trashing had come between
her and Patti and Leslie? But what she and Buddy shared was different from those friendships, if they had been friendships at all.

Why, then, didn’t she take a chance? Did that hidden part of him deter her? Or did it have to do with Harry Flowers?

There, she had said his name. Ever since she met Buddy, she had relegated Harry Flowers to the dim corners of her mind, refusing to think about him. Could not allow herself to think of him. She knew that Harry Flowers went to Wickburg Regional, where Buddy was also a student. Harry Flowers was a senior and Buddy, a junior. Did Buddy know Harry Flowers? Did they nod to each other in the cafeteria? Buddy used to play basketball—had they been teammates? Stop it, stop it, the told herself. Stop asking those questions. Wickburg Regional was a huge high school, thousands of students, drawing them not only from that city but the surrounding towns as well. It was possible that they did not know each other, had not even
heard
of each other.

Reveling in the glow of Buddy’s love, she managed, most of the time, to set aside her concerns about Harry Flowers. Except for her visits to Karen in the hospital, she could almost believe that the trashing had happened in another place, another time of her life, a time that was over and done with. Harry Flowers also belonged to that time.

She also realized that the foul odor was gone from her life along with the thought of Harry Flowers.

Thank God for Buddy Walker, she murmured one afternoon in the hospital chapel.

As if saying a prayer.

The first time Jane mentioned the word
trashing,
Buddy flinched, then turned away in self-defense, his thoughts racing wildly as he anticipated what her next words would be. He had to head her off, change the subject. Luckily, his eyes fastened on a funny-sad scene: a woman’s shopping bag collapsed and all her groceries rolled haphazardly toward the gutter. He helped the woman retrieve the groceries and stood patiently with her, holding the soup cans, until her husband pulled up in his car.

Jane brought up the subject of trashing once or twice more and each time he was able to sidestep or change the subject. He had the distinct feeling that she wanted to talk about the trashing at her house. Why did she hesitate? Why didn’t she simply tell him? Terrible thought: did she suspect that he had been involved? He shook his head in protest. How could she love him, let him hold her, kiss her, caress her, if she thought he had participated in the trashing, in hurting her sister? The possibility of having Jane find out that he was guilty, after all, was an ominous shadow in their relationship. The shadow that kept him drinking, even though his desire for booze had lessened since he had met her. He had to be more devious now, of course. Had to keep Jane from the knowledge of his drinking. He worried about his breath, wished that he could buy a guaranteed breath-freshener, not trusting Certs or Scope. He chewed all kinds of gum, which he hated, the taste too sweet and cloying. Sometimes held his breath or breathed through his nose when he was close to her. Felt her stiffen on occasion when they kissed, and wondered if she could taste the gin on his tongue. The simple thing, of course, would be to stop drinking altogether. But drinking these days enhanced the happiness that Jane had brought to him. The marvel of liquor: changing with his desires,
magnifying the good things of his life. Drinking gently, not gulping frantically anymore but sipping slowly, bringing into focus the wonder of Jane and their love, allowing him visions of the two of them together through the coming years.