We All Fall Down (23 page)

Twenty minutes later, he took up his vigil in the parking lot in the space that was nearest to the front entrance of the hospital. Weary, despondent, he watched the entrance.
Tried not to blink. Tried not to think. Blink, think. Felt clever for thinking of the hospital, how sooner or later someone in Jane’s family was certain to visit Karen. They would not abandon her despite what had happened to Jane. Slouching in his seat behind the wheel, he prepared himself for a long wait, a long day. Why hadn’t she called? Let’s not think about that. Don’t blink and don’t think. She has her reasons. But what reasons? What if … don’t answer that question. No blinking and no thinking.

For an hour or so, he watched visitors come and go, heard a siren as an ambulance pulled up to the emergency entrance. Jane had told him that Karen’s room was on the fourth floor front, third window from the right, and he watched the window for signs of movement, someone pulling the curtain aside, thinking that perhaps a visitor to Karen had somehow eluded him. No movement. He yawned, bored. Wished he had brought something to eat, wondered if there was a vending machine in the hospital lobby. Then decided he had better not leave the car or his vigil.

He woke up with a start, a horn blowing somewhere, and struck his chest on the steering wheel, eyes dazzled by the sun flashing on the windshield, limbs aching. Cripes, he had fallen asleep, couldn’t believe it. Checked his watch— eleven-thirty. The parking lot had filled up. He looked up at Karen’s room. The curtain was undisturbed.

A sudden rap on the window next to him made him jump, this time striking his elbow on the shift stick. He turned to find himself confronting the beefy face of a police officer, who motioned him to open the window. Buddy fumbled for the key. The windows were automatic, would not go up or down unless the motor was on. Turning the key, he listened to the engine leap with life and then hit the window button.

“Hello, Officer,” Buddy said, still half asleep, trying to speak brightly, alertly.

“You been here quite a while, fella,” the officer said. The badge on his chest read SECURITY #15.

“I’ve been waiting for someone.” Speaking lamely, face flushed with guilt as if he were a criminal, for crissakes.

“Who might that be?” the officer asked, a hard edge to his voice.

“My mother,” he said. “She said she’d meet me here but I think I missed her. I fell asleep …” Easy to lie when you are desperate.

The police officer obviously did not believe him, seemed to be pondering his next step. Then his face softened: “Look, kid, I don’t know what this is all about but you’d better move on, okay?”

He drove out of the parking lot, roamed aimlessly for a while and then headed for Arbor Lane, where he cruised slowly down the street. Quick glances at Jane’s house. Shades down, no signs of life. No car in the driveway. An empty house sends a lonely message: nobody home.

I’d better get home, maybe right this minute she’s trying to reach me, he thought. Angry at himself for spending all that useless time at the hospital, he gunned the motor in a fuiy. The phone could be ringing right this minute at his house, echoing through the empty rooms.

At home, the house gathered him into its silence.

Why doesn’t she call?

Why
hadn’t
she called?

The beginning of an answer like a quivering worm crept into his mind.

He could no longer deny himself a drink and made his way upstairs to his bedroom where the bottle waited.

Blood suffused Jane’s dreams during the two nights she and her family spent at the Monument Motel. Blood dripped from trees, gushed from springs, streamed from faucets, flowed through streets. Blood everywhere, on everything, swirling across the floor, seeping between her toes when she realized, to her horror, that she was barefoot. She could not run, the blood having turned to a crimson clinging ooze through which she waded helplessly.

She woke up, trembling in the unfamiliar room. Searched for signs of identity. Her body was sticky with perspiration which she feared was blood. She sat up on the edge of the bed, fumbled for the switch to the lamp, pressed it, the room blindingly bright, stinging her eyes. No blood on her body, her pajamas limp only with dampness. Artie slept in the twin bed next to hers. Her father and mother slept in the adjoining room, the door between left open. She sat there miserably, her feet touching the carpet, shivering slightly yet savoring these moments alone. She had not teen alone since her departure from the cabin, the last signs of life pulsing out of Mickey Looney. A frenzy of activity, police, ambulance, television cameras, reporters, all of it a mad swirl. Her father became her protector, her salvation and strength. Even the police abided by his rules as he limited questions at police headquarters, his arm around her shoulder in the cruiser on the way home. Her street was hectic with people, cars, bicycles, faces she did not recognize, everyone trying to peek at her as if she were some rare specimen brought home from Mars by explorers.

Her father decreed no interviews with the news media and kept his word despite the battering questions, the angry reactions of reporters and newscasters clustered on the sidewalk in front of her house. Peering out once, she recognized a newscaster from the Wickburg TV station. Nothing,
however, impinged on her. She was numb inside, even her thought processes in limbo.

Everyone seemed to be whispering and in the whispers she heard words like
courageous
and
heroic
but did not feel courageous or heroic. Chief Reardon from Monument, her father’s old golfing buddy, arrived along with her favorite relatives, her aunt Josie and uncle Rod. Her family rallying around. She heard her mother say:
this place,
anger in her voice. We’ll be moving, she thought, but the words were meaningless. She had not had time to think, while being driven to the hospital for a checkup, then to the police station, answering the questions, signing reports, coming home, into her mother’s arms. “Better rest, lie down awhile,” her mother had said. But she did not want to rest, did not want to lie down even for a while, did not want to be alone. Because once she was alone she would begin to think. And she would think of Buddy. Everyone thought she was stricken with the events of her ordeal, everyone thought she was stunned and shocked because of poor Mickey Looney. But it was Buddy all the time. Buddy who had betrayed her. Buddy who had trashed her house and later trashed her, desecrated her. She had loved him, built her world around him and their future together.

They were like prisoners in the house, the crowds lingering outside. Chief Reardon came up with the solution. “Let’s get her away from here for a couple of days till the heat dies down,” He talked like an old movie tough guy.
“Come
on back to Monument, the wife and I’ll put you up.” In the end, they drove away, back to Monument, eluding reporters’ cars. At the motel, she swallowed the pill Dr. Allison had given her. Sleep came in a wave of blood.

Now she sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the sleep sounds of Artie, the familiar snoring of her father from the next room. She was finally, truly alone. With her
thoughts. Her thoughts of Buddy. She had not mentioned to anyone what Mickey Looney had revealed about Buddy, pretended innocence about Mickey’s motives for abducting her. No one pressed her or seemed suspicious, took it for granted that Mickey had simply picked her at random. Buddy’s part in the nightmare was her secret, which she would never divulge to anyone.

At one point before leaving the house in Burnside, her mother said: “What about Buddy?”

She shook her head. Did not trust herself to speak. Then spoke anyway. “I’ll call him later,” she said, turning away from her mother’s puzzled expression. Her mother said no more, kept her suspicions, if she had any, to herself.

Alone now at three o’clock in the morning, she thought of what F. Scott Fitzgerald had written—
In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning.
Spoken by her teacher in the classroom, those words had left her unmoved, probably because she had seldom been awake at three o’clock in the morning. Now she knew the desolation of the words and how it felt to be so alone, abandoned, and betrayed. Oh, Buddy, she thought. You’ve done this to us. Everything could have been so wonderful.

She climbed back into bed, reached for the light switch, and was grateful for the darkness. She thought of Buddy at home, waiting for her call, wondering why she hadn’t called. She took consolation, imagining his misery. Let him be miserable, too. She clung to the thought although tears formed in her eyes. Damn him, damn him. Why did he have to spoil everything? But realized that he had already spoiled everything even before they met and fell in love, hadn’t he? Had trashed their love before it had even happened.

Sleep, dark and ugly, came at last as the first fingernails of dawn pried at the motel room’s draperies.

“Buddy?”

Her voice saying his name trembled in his ear and he pressed the receiver closer, afraid that he might miss every nuance and tone.

“Yes,” he said. Then, needlessly: “Jane?” Because he knew it was Jane, of course, would know that voice anywhere. And without waiting for an answer said: “Are you okay?” Relief sweeping the words out of him: “Jane, I was so worried. I didn’t know what to think.” Unable to stop talking, “Where are you? I’ve been trying to reach you. Your phone doesn’t answer.… I drove by your house a thousand times….”
Why don’t you please shut up and let her speak?

“I’m okay,” she said, almost a whisper, the ghost of a voice. “I’m home. Can you come over?”

“Of course. Sure, anytime. When?”
Stupid, stop talking
but soaring inside. She had called. The long agony ended. But a warning bell going off inside him. Her voice so subdued. Yes, but she’s been through such an ordeal. She wouldn’t be telling jokes, making wisecracks. He wanted to ask her a thousand questions.

“Right now. Can you come over right now?” she asked.

“I’ll be there before you know it,” he said, but lingering on the phone a minute.

“Okay,” she said and hung up. Gone. Her voice a still soft echo in his mind.

As soon as he saw her face, he knew that it was over. That she had found out about him and did not love him anymore. He saw the knowledge in her eyes, flat and
wounded, in her features as if set in stone, a hard flint face. He would never have thought it possible for her to look at him like this. Distant and cold, as if looking at him from a great distance, even though she stood only a few feet in front of him.

She knows, he thought. About me and this house.

“Come in,” she said, stepping back.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Are you okay?” His words hollow and meaningless, going-through-the-motions words. What killed him was this: She was so beautiful even in her coldness.

“Come in, Buddy,” she said. “I want you to come in.” Her voice giving orders.

Obeying the command, he stepped inside, dreading the moment he would enter this hallway where her sister had been pinned against the wall. He kept his eyes fastened on Jane’s eyes, did not want to see the cellar door through which her sister had plunged. Did not want to look toward the stairway where he had stood with a bottle of vodka. Did not want to
think
about her room upstairs.

“I know why you never wanted to come into this house,” she said. “My house.”

Buddy said nothing, could say nothing, the mechanisms of his body not working.

“Because of what you did here.”

And now the impact of her knowledge struck him, like a giant mallet hitting a gong inside him, the vibrations echoing throughout his body. For one impossible moment, he went blind, blacked out, and then came back again, her face and eyes piercing him.

“I didn’t mean …” he began, then stopped, realizing that he could never explain to her what had happened, or why it had happened. He could not explain, even to himself.

“You trashed my house,” she said. “Did you trash my bedroom, too? Tear my bed apart? Vomit on the carpet? Piss on the wall?”

The word
piss
shocked him. She never swore. That one word,
piss,
spelled his doom. He knew that as soon as the said it. He was linked in her mind with pissing.

“To think I loved you,” she said. And now there was sadness in her voice and in this sadness hope renewed itself in him. Maybe there was a chance. “To think that I let you kiss me and touch me. And I kissed you back.” Her arms had been hanging loose at her sides but now she wrapped them around her chest.

“Jane …” he said. But could say no more. He had heard of people being speechless and knew now exactly what that meant. He wanted to say so much, defend himself even when there was no defense, but could not speak, could not find the words and even if he could find them did not know how he would express them, where to begin even.

“You make me sick,” she said, shivering, as if the fury of her words alone truly sickened her. “I don’t want you here in this house, don’t want you in my life. I only wanted you to come in here one more time. Now, get out. Out of my house. Out of my life …”