Fallen Land (26 page)

5:15 PM:
“Now I’m going to ask you a very important question, Copley. Are you ready?” “I’m ready.” “Okay. So my question is, can you tell me where you are?” He thinks about the question and looks around the room. “You’re going to answer me truthfully, aren’t you, Cop?” He nods and knows what he must say: “It looks like I’m sitting in your office.” The doctor frowns: “You say
it looks like
. What does it feel like?” “I don’t know,” he says, “it doesn’t feel like I’m really here. It feels like I’m already somewhere else.” The doctor makes a note and without looking up says, “And can you tell me where you feel like you are?” He was dreading this question but also knows what he must say. “It feels like I’m in the air.” “In the air? Do you mean flying?” the doctor asks. “No,” he says, “falling. It feels like I’m falling through the air, like toward the ocean, from an airplane, but never hitting the water. I think that’s how it feels.”

5:20 PM:
He has finished his conversation with Dr. Phaedrus, who asks his mother to come in while he waits in the rear reception room. He listens at the door as the adults talk. The doctor says he is worried about his “ability to tell reality from fantasy” and worried about his “flat affect while describing what sounds like a disturbing experience, even if it was a hallucination. It seems like he’s experiencing pretty frightening episodes and I think we should treat this with medication, and continue to see Copley on a regular basis to check up on how he’s doing.” He hears his mother clear her throat and cough before she speaks, “But what do you think it is,” she says, “that’s making this happen?” “I don’t want to jump to a diagnosis,” the doctor says, “but I do think he’s quite a sick little boy. This has been a very distressing move for him. He’s having difficulty making friends, and from the little he said about his new school I have the sense that he’s not particularly happy there. What we need to do right away is help him sleep through the night, to put a stop to the nightmares, help him begin to regain his equilibrium.” “Will that cure it?” his mother asks. “I don’t think we should be thinking in terms of
cure
, Dr. Noailles. This is probably going to be a chronic condition, something that we’ll need to continue monitoring. I also think maybe he should see a dietician. He looks undernourished.”

5:40 PM:
His mother’s face is as wet as the road. They stop at a grocery store and run inside. Because of the rain it just looks like she’s wet, like they’re both wet, which they are, but in fact they’re both crying. She picks up a few things for dinner and then they stop at the pharmacy counter and wait while the pharmacist fills a prescription. He understands these pills are for him but there is nothing about him that feels unwell. He does not understand how he can be sick with a disease that has no cure. “I’m not sick,” he says to his mother as she takes the white paper bag from the pharmacist. “I know you’re not, honey,” she says, and then he knows she is a liar. They go to the row of checkout counters at the front of the store. He can see two different bottles of pills in the bag. If he needs two different kinds of pills then he must be really,
really
sick, but sick in a way he does not feel, or at least that he does not feel at this time: sick in a way that is only going to get worse, that needs constant monitoring. If his mother is crying, it must be more serious than he can imagine. He wonders if he might be dying. He is not ready to die but the thought of dying does not make him sad. Instead, he imagines it might be a great and strange adventure, yet another room to explore in the house of
REAL LIFE
. He remembers a dream he had a few nights ago. The dream took place in their old apartment in Boston. He came in the front door and put down his bag on the chair in the hall and hung his jacket in the hall closet. He went looking for his parents, first in the living room and dining room, then in the kitchen, in their bedroom, in the bathroom. He looked in all the closets but couldn’t find them. Finally he opened a closet in their bedroom and discovered a room he had never seen before. His parents were sitting in that room with a little boy who looked like him but had blond hair instead of brown. His parents were different, too: they were both thin and blond and looked like Mr. Bruce and Mrs. Abbot.
This is your brother, Copley
,
they said in the dream, and he knew he had to kill the other boy.

6:30 PM:
His father is not home for dinner: he phoned to say he’s going to be late because he’s working on a report for his boss and they should go ahead without him. His mother makes braised tofu with green beans and rice. They sit at the kitchen island eating their dinner, and when they have both finished she opens the bag from the pharmacy and puts two plastic bottles on the table. One bottle has orange pills, the other pale green. To start, he will take two orange pills each day: one with breakfast and one with dinner. He will take three pale green pills each day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The doses will gradually increase. To take the pale green pill at lunch he will have to go to the nurse at school. “Are you going to keep picking me up from school? What’s going to happen over winter break?” His mother looks as though she is going to cry again. She pours him a glass of water and puts the two pills on the counter, pushing them in his direction. He swallows the pills one at a time and feels nothing, neither better nor worse. “I don’t know,” his mother says. “We haven’t figured out any of that. It’s not like in Boston. In Boston the university had a day care. The university here doesn’t have one except for little kids. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.” He cannot help worrying. They haven’t thought ahead, they aren’t thinking about him, and now he might be dying. “Am I dying?” he asks. His mother looks surprised and shakes her head and starts to sob, but manages to say, “No, no, no. You’re not dying, sweetheart.” She waves her hand in front of her face as though she’s trying to wave away the crying; he knows she’s lying because this is what she does whenever she lies: waves her hand in front of her face, trying to distract him from the truth on her cheeks and in her eyes and flowing out of her nose. “You talk for a while,” she gasps, but he has nothing to say. He sits there looking at her. After a few minutes she stops crying, wipes her face, and puts her hands on his shoulders, squeezing him, moving his body back and forth a little, almost as though she wants to start shaking him. She swallows several times and her jaw is pulsing. “I’m sorry,” she says, “the pills are just to make you feel
even better than you do already
.”

7:30 PM:
His father is still not home. They put all the furniture back where it should be. This only takes a few minutes. He is surprised how easy it is, how quickly and silently it can be put back in place. It is possible he really did move all the furniture in his sleep and has no memory of doing it: the casters make almost no noise and when the couches and tables and chairs are moving they feel as if they weigh very little at all. After they finish his mother suggests he should begin getting ready for bed, although the sun has only gone down in the last half hour or so. He asks his mother if he can have a play date with Joslyn and his mother says, “Yes, of course, but we’ll talk about it tomorrow.” He knows that unless he reminds her she will forget. His parents do not think about him very much, he suspects. They think about their work, but they do not think about things like the kind of school he should be attending, whether or not he has any friends to play with, or what is going to happen to him during the day once winter vacation begins. He closes the door to his room and locks it, leaving the light turned off so he can look outside at the old white house where a candle is burning in the window. Louise appears. She looks up at him and he raises his hand, moves it back and forth, and smiles. She raises her candle, moves it back and forth, and then raises her hand. He waves once more and then closes the curtains while he changes, putting his school uniform into the laundry hamper in the back of his closet. He hates the blue shirt, red sweater, khaki slacks, and brown leather shoes, which are a shape and color that make him feel as ashamed as when he has to undress for swimming or go to the bathroom and listen to the other boys hissing names at him. In Boston he did not have to wear a uniform to school, and so every day of the week he got to wear gray: gray slacks, gray shirt, a gray sweater in winter, or sometimes a black one to match his black loafers. His father used to say he looked as though he was trying out for a part in
1984
. He did not understand what this meant, and when his father explained that it was a book, he asked how it would be possible to try out for a part in a book. His father had told him to “stop being so literal” and “imagine a film version of the book.” He asked if there was a film version of the book and if he could see it. “No,” his father said, “not until you’re older.” “Can I read the book instead?” he asked. “No,” his father said, “not until you’re older.” He is going to see if the school library has a copy of the book but he suspects it will not. The only books they have are children’s books, and half the library is only open to students in grades five and six, and only then if they have parental permission slips. All this has been explained to him. He knows not even to go into the part of the library with red carpeting. If he does, he will receive an automatic fine of twenty-five dollars because “violations of library policy are taken very seriously,” Mrs. Taylor explained during his orientation tour. The library, like the rest of the rooms in the school, has a large black glass hemisphere in the ceiling. Mrs. Taylor pointed at it and then pointed at him. She shook her finger and smiled and said, “We’ll be watching,” as if it were a very funny joke.

7:45 PM:
His mother is reading him a story, although he would rather be reading his own book about the boy going to rescue his father on the planet where everyone has to move and act and speak in the same way. Once his mother leaves the room, he will pull the book out from under his pillow and turn on the flashlight under the covers. His parents do not know that he reads in the middle of the night. They do not know he can’t help himself: even if he goes to sleep, he always wakes up a few hours later and feels compelled to read. If he does not read, he believes he will die: he has believed this since long before discovering, today, that he is actually dying. His mother is reading him the final volume of
The Lord of the Rings
. She tells him that when he is older, he will be allowed to see the movie versions of the books. “Can I try out for a part in them?” he asks. “No,” she says, laughing, “they’ve already been made.” “But they could be made again,” he says. “I suppose they could,” she says. “And if they are, then I can try out for a part in them.” “I suppose you could,” she says, and turns out the light. “Who would you want to be?” He pretends to think for a moment. “Frodo.” Only when the light is out does his mother lean over to kiss him on the forehead. He has never been asked to go to bed this early, not since he was much, much younger. His mother’s face is wet. Her crying exhausts him. He wants to shout at her to stop crying, to grow up and be an adult. He is the one who is dying, so he should be the one crying, but in fact the idea does not really upset him. He has learned the word
romantic
and he thinks that dying this young will somehow be romantic because he will become even more beautiful the sicker he gets. He knows he is beautiful because Joslyn told him so last week. She said, “You know you’re pretty like a girl, don’t you? That’s why they make fun of you.” He asked her if it was a bad thing. “No, it’s not
bad
,” she said, “but it’s different. You don’t look like anyone else.” “Neither do you,” he said, and it was then that he understood they were friends.

9:00 PM:
He knows the time by his watch, by the minute and hour hand and the creeping second hand. Some of the students at his new school do not know how to read a watch or a clock unless it is digital. In Boston, everyone knew how to read a clock with hands. He has been listening to his mother crying downstairs in the kitchen. She must not realize how sound carries in the house; otherwise she would not make the mistake of crying so loudly. His father is still not home. He is almost finished with his book and decides to stay up until he turns the final page.

11:45 PM:
His eyes are closing every few minutes but he has only two pages to go. The story is ending happily. He is disappointed. Happy endings always disappoint him. He hopes for a last-minute disaster.

11:58 PM:
As he finishes the final sentence he hears the garage door open, close, the sound of his father on the path from the garage to the back door, the back door opening, his father putting down his briefcase in the drop zone, his mother asking his father where he has been and what took so long, why he did not call again to tell her how late he would be. He hears his father telling her to lower her voice. They talk for a long time, at first about Louise in the condemned house next door, and then in voices so low that he cannot hear what they’re saying, but when the crying starts again he knows they have been talking about him. He is certain he must be dying. He is no longer certain it will be romantic. He fears it will be painful. He fears pain more than death. His stomach is upset and his throat grows cold and hard.

12:35 AM:
His parents go to bed. They close their door and he can hear the lock click into place. Some nights they lock their door. Some nights they do not. Usually they lock their door only when everyone is going to bed early, so the locking tonight is unusual. They are going to cry: they want privacy to cry together, in expectation of his imminent death. It will be important to make it romantic and beautiful so it is not so hard on them.

—:— AM:
He does not know what time it is. The sky is dark and his door is open. He can hear the man breathing in the room. He can hear his parents both snoring in their own room. He does not want to turn over to see where the man is, because he fears the man will see he is awake and attack him, hit him, drag him out of the house and kidnap him. If he pretends to be asleep, the man will leave him alone. In Boston, his greatest fear was that a vampire or witch would come into his room at night, come floating just above the floorboards and bend over to—he never knew what it was they might do to him. He knows now that those were childish fears, since there are no vampires or witches, at least not witches like the ones he used to imagine. He knows now, for the first time, what real fear is: it has the same feeling as thinking about school and Mrs. Pitt. His stomach churns, his heart roars, he wants to vomit, hide, become invisible. He wants to scream but he can’t find his breath or his voice. He is frozen, his body won’t move, he cannot move, he cannot speak or scream. He wants to jump out of his bed and run into the hall and lock the man in his room and scream for his parents to come and see that the man exists, that he is right there in the bedroom,
right in the midst of them
, to see that the alarm makes NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL because even with an alarm, this man has ways of getting into the house that might as well be magic. He is aware of a warm breeze on his neck and then a sound that goes with it and he knows the man is right there, leaning over him, breathing onto his body. The man’s rough fingers are suddenly on his head, touching his eyelids and eyelashes, combing through his hair and down to his scalp, picking up his hands to touch his fingers, as though the man is trying to identify all the separate parts of a machine. When the man’s fingers touch his eyelids again he begins to shake and the water shoots from his eyes and nose. “
Carson
,” the man says. “
Carson
. Carson
.
CARSON
.
Are you alive?” The man’s hands are on his back, gripping his shoulder, shaking him, as if the man were trying to wake him up. He’s either going to throw up or he’s going to scream.
“You came back. You came back,”
the man says, pulling him over. He looks at the dark man and screams, screams a short choking cry right into the face of this giant. He tries to form words, to say, “I’m not Carson,” but the words will not come. He screams again but feels strangled as the man looks at him, eyes suddenly wide and terrified. The man opens his mouth, lets go of his body, and runs from the room.