Things Go Flying (13 page)

John's courage was leaking away. Finally he climbed onto the fence, up the tree, and back in through Dylan's window, taking infinite care not to be heard. Dylan was sound asleep, snoring. John crept down the hall and slipped into his own bed in the dark.

• • •

A
LL AUDREY NEEDED
early the next morning was to find Harold slack-jawed and unkempt and stinking of booze in his La-Z-Boy chair, and to read the following appalling note, scrawled in Harold's familiar hand:

Does anyone ever really come back as a dog or a worm? Do you get to pick?

Can you meet Elvis?

What really happened to Amelia Earhart!

Can you have sex? With anybody you want?

Is there life on other planets?

What's God like?

Have you talked to Dad?

How much time do I have left?

The regret she'd felt on waking this morning about the way she and Harold had sniped at each other the night before now flew right out the window. What the hell was wrong with him? Should she show this to Dr. Goldfarb?

She put the disturbing paper in her housecoat pocket and prodded Harold awake, none too gently. She had to get him moving; she didn't want the boys to see their father like this.

“What?” Harold muttered, squinting in confused alarm at Audrey.

“Harold—listen to me.” She bent over, gripped his chin in her hand, and looked directly into his bloodshot eyes. He looked back at her like one of those sad kinds of dogs, the ones with too much skin on their droopy faces, their eyes partly lost in pockets of flesh. She had him there, literally in the palm of her hand—she had his full attention—but what was she going to say?

She realized she couldn't stand there poised to speak forever. For one thing, she could tell his attention was already starting to wander. “You'd better have a shower, shave, and put on some decent clothes,” she said at last. “I'm going to make coffee.” When he didn't budge she said, “You have ten minutes!” which got him moving.

Once Harold was in the shower, Audrey went into John's room and bent over him to check his breath. Only he had his pillow over his head, so she had to tap him on the shoulder and then feint and dart around for a whiff as he moved. She didn't smell any alcohol. John was basically a good boy; Dylan was the one she worried about.

Make that Harold, she thought as she stepped back out into the hall and heard the shower running.

• • •

T
HERE WAS A
poisonous atmosphere at breakfast. Harold, John, and Dylan were at the kitchen table furtively eyeing one another, full of suspicion, each wondering how to play his hand. Much was unspoken. No one was clear what the hell was going on, and therefore, there was a great hesitation in the room.

John didn't know for sure if his absence last night had been noticed, but the living room lights had certainly been on, and
something
had to account for the tension in the air.

Dylan knew that John was in trouble, but Dylan was worried because nobody had mentioned it yet; he feared that it had all been thrashed out last night while he'd slept, that John had ratted on him, and that now the only remaining issue to be addressed was his own status as a blackmailer and the fifty bucks.

Harold was badly hung over. He knew Audrey was mad at him, he knew John had snuck out the window last night, but his most pressing concern at the moment was that he remembered that there was something vital he was supposed to do first thing, before anyone else got up, and he'd forgotten what it was.

Each one of them had the same strategy: volunteer nothing and try to figure out what was up.

In deference to Harold's condition, Audrey hadn't put the radio on. She was, however, being rather careless about how she put the plates and cups down, banging away regardless. Audrey knew John had been out last night but didn't care. What she worried about was the escalating conflict between Harold and John, that Dylan was into drugs (but at least they now knew he wasn't stealing to pay for them), and that Harold was almost certainly having some kind of nervous breakdown. If Audrey had a strategy, it was to prioritize. The truth was there was just too much here for her to deal with all at once. She needed to make a mental list.

The immediate problem was what to do about Harold. She'd been watching Dylan for signs of ecstasy use—insomnia, thirst, mood swings—and so far she hadn't seen anything like that. She'd also taken to looking under his mattress twice a day and counting the pills, so she knew they were all still there. She was on top of it.

Harold, though. The bizarre note seemed to smoulder in her housecoat pocket, the paper that read like it was written by a madman, or at least a crackpot. No normal person, even if he were drunk, would write something that weird. It was especially weird for Harold. She looked at her husband across the breakfast table and wondered if he even remembered writing it, whether he wondered what had happened to the note. She drank her coffee and decided that after breakfast, she would get him alone and talk to him about it. She would show him the paper and insist on his seeing a professional. She expected him to put up resistance, but she would have to be firm.

In the meantime, she'd have to keep Harold from going after John about last night. She looked at Harold again, fidgeting weakly with his toast. Fortunately, it didn't look like he was in any shape to go after anybody about anything. Well,
she
certainly wasn't going to bring up last night. The godawful silence was putting her on edge. She got up and turned on the radio.

John wolfed down his second bowl of Cheerios—he was ravenous—and tried to analyze the atmosphere in the kitchen. His dad looked miserable. His mum was holding herself so tightly that it made him afraid for his dad somehow. John was beginning to think that maybe this wasn't about him. As he relaxed, he was able to pick up details that he hadn't been able to appreciate before, when his perception had been narrowed by fear. For one thing, Dylan looked nervous, which wasn't like him at all
.

John finished his second bowl and still no one had spoken, other than to ask for the milk. He said, “Can I go?” Normally he would have just got up, but this morning everything felt different. His mother was vibrating like a tuning fork.

“Go,” she said.

“Can I go too?” Dylan asked.

Audrey nodded, getting up and starting to clear their dishes away. “Don't be late for school,” she said automatically.

John and Dylan left the kitchen, relief in their spines and shoulders, and went upstairs to get ready for school. Dylan followed John into his bedroom and closed the door behind him. Now they were staring at one another edgily.

John waited—he'd learned that there was power in silence.

Dylan, not used to John's silence, figured the jig was up. John had either told on him already, or he was certainly going to. “Did you tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“About the fifty bucks.”

From this John deduced that his dad must know about his going out the window. But that didn't make sense; his dad hadn't said anything. John realized uneasily that things must be more out of whack around here than he'd thought.

“No.”

Dylan looked relieved. “Thanks,” he said.

“I'll have that fifty bucks back now.”

“Sure, okay.”

“How'd he find out, anyway?”

“Didn't he tell you? Mrs. Kushner saw you climbing down the tree.”

“Great,” John said, and swore under his breath.

“What kind of deal did you work out with Dad?”

John treaded carefully. “Nothing, yet.”

“Well,” Dylan offered, trying to be friends, “I don't think you're going to be grounded anymore.”

“Why not?” Being grounded for absolutely ever was the thing John feared most.

“Because they don't know what the hell they're doing.”

• • •

H
AROLD HAD LEFT
the breakfast table and gone upstairs to lie down, not up to going in to the office. Audrey had let him go, but he knew it was just a matter of time before she came after him. He felt profoundly depressed; he'd felt such despair by the end of breakfast that he'd wanted to weep. If only he could pinpoint the exact cause of his despair!

Instead, he began to focus on the unpleasantness of their family meals. Breakfast this morning had been excruciating. Maybe he would take to his bed indefinitely and have Audrey send him up his food on a tray.

Harold stared bleakly at the ceiling, at the network of fine cracks in the plaster. Other families hardly ever sat down to eat together anymore. They'd just grab whatever. But Audrey had put her foot down about the family meals years ago—and it was making them all crazy. She was living in a fantasy, Harold thought to himself, his resentment bulging like a boil getting ready to burst, if she believed all these forced meals together were doing them any good. Just look at them! They were hardly the ideal family that Audrey had in mind. Other families—hundreds, thousands of them—got to eat in front of the TV, and they seemed to do all right.

The fact is,
Harold told himself, as if this was crystallizing for him for the first time,
Audrey is a control freak.

Then he had his first truly subversive thought in years. It bubbled up from somewhere. He'd buy a portable television and set it up in the kitchen so that from now on they could all watch the news while they ate supper! To hell with Audrey—they'd try it his way for a change.

When he heard Audrey coming up the stairs a little while later, he was already feeling a little better—because he had a goal. Audrey sat down beside him, her wide rump pooling on the bed. He wished she'd go away.

“Harold,” she said.

When he didn't say anything, she pulled a scrap of paper out of her housecoat pocket and held it up in front of his face. He looked at it and paled.
Jesus. That was it.

“We need to talk about this,” Audrey said.

Harold closed his eyes. He could think of absolutely nothing to say, no feasible way to explain the crazy things he'd written.
Christ.

“You can't go on avoiding things forever,” Audrey said firmly. “Obviously there's something wrong. You need help.”

He could just go along, he thought tiredly—it would take less effort than resisting her. Either way, the result would be the same. She'd win in the end.

“There's nothing to be ashamed of,” Audrey said. “This . . . crazy thinking . . . may just be from getting hit on the head. I think we should get it checked out.”

Harold mutely gave in. Let her think it was brain damage. He didn't care anymore.

“I'll call Dr. Goldfarb and get a referral,” Audrey said.

• • •

H
AROLD WAS STILL
in bed upstairs; he hadn't moved in a couple of days, except to go to the bathroom. Audrey was worried sick, but when she'd called Dr. Goldfarb the day before, his secretary had told her he was away till Monday, so for now there was nothing she could do. But Audrey couldn't stand to do nothing, so she started to think about Harold's upcoming birthday. She was out of ideas. She decided to talk to the boys and plan something extra special, something to cheer Harold up.

She tried to pull the boys away from the TV but they were in the middle of a football game and they swatted her away like an annoying fly. She had to wait until halftime. She kept sticking her head in the basement, and when the game finally stopped she grabbed the remote and hit the mute button.

They looked at her like she'd lost her reason.

“What'd you do that for?” Dylan said.

“I want to talk to you,” Audrey said firmly, “about your father.”

John looked away uneasily, trying to lip-read the commentators on the TV.

“In case you've forgotten, your father's birthday is coming up,” Audrey said, “and I think we should make a fuss.”

“You mean more of a fuss than usual?” Dylan said.

“Yes.”

“Why?” asked Dylan.

John looked at Dylan like he wanted to kick him.

“Because,” Audrey said, “in case you haven't noticed, your father is going through a difficult time.”

“We noticed,” said Dylan. “So—are you going to tell us what's going on?”

John glared at his brother, but Dylan didn't seem to care.

“Well,” Audrey said, sighing. “It's complicated.”

“It's all right, Mom. You don't have to tell us anything,” John said.

Her heart went out to John, who always hated to deal with anything embarrassing or uncomfortable.

“I think if Dad's cracking up, we should know about it,” Dylan said.

“He's not cracking up!” Audrey protested, her voice rising. She paused to wonder at the perspicacity of her youngest boy. He hadn't seen Harold talking to people who weren't there; he hadn't seen the paper that she was still carrying around in her pocket because she was afraid to put it down anywhere. At least she didn't think he had. But he'd hit the nail on the head anyway.

“He's depressed about his friend dying.” She tried that out.

“The friend we'd never heard of?” Dylan asked.

“Don't be a smartass,” Audrey snapped. She took a deep breath and tried to speak more calmly. “And you know he's had those two hits on the head,” she reminded them. “That sort of thing can cause a change in personality. Usually only temporary,” she added hastily.

“Yeah, right,” Dylan said.

“Anyway, he's agreed to see the doctor again. Maybe he just needs some time to get over the concussions,” Audrey said hopefully.

“In the meantime . . .” John trailed off.

“In the meantime what?” Audrey said.

John seemed unable to find the words. John always seemed to have trouble articulating what he wanted to say.

“You want to know what's going to happen to you after the stunt you pulled,” Audrey said. John nodded. “Well, I'm not going to board up the window—that would look terrible.”