Ann Beattie - Falling in Place

John Joel sighed and kept walking. He felt guilty about the picture being gone and didn’t know why. It wasn’t his fault. Parker was always acting crazy, and it was his mother’s fault for asking him to do an errand like that. He tried to imagine what his own mother would do if she had sent him for a picture and he had done what Parker did. She’d probably find some way to start talking about her dog. It would probably remind her of her dog .

“You’ll get your money,” Parker said. “Give me the stubs and I’ll show them to her and you’ll get your money.”

John Joel reached in his pants pocket. His pants were tight, and he had to worm his finger down hard to bring up the two small ticket stubs. He handed them to Parker, and Parker smiled .

“Now, watch,” Parker said. Parker stopped on the sidewalk, away from where everybody was walking. He put one stub on top of the other and squatted. John Joel knew what he was going to do. He was going to light them .

He wanted to fight with Parker. He was afraid of getting hurt, but he was so tired of Parker and his craziness that he wanted to hit him. Instead, before he really thought about it, he tried to push Parker over, but Parker just braced himself with his left arm and didn’t fall. His right hand was already holding the burning match to the ticket stubs .

Some man with a briefcase looked over his shoulder at the two of them, and John Joel met the man’s eyes. The man gave a little smile and kept walking. John Joel kept watching him, but he went into the bar across from the station without turning around again. John Joel stared at the door of the bar, at the other people walking in. Then he shrugged and sighed and looked down at Parker .

“Big deal. So you burned them,” John Joel said. “You don’t want to be friends, we don’t have to be friends.”

He walked away. He hoped that Parker wouldn’t follow him, because he thought there was going to be a fight. Only he didn’t think that he was going to start it anymore: He thought that Parker was. He kept walking and didn’t turn around. He was trying to think where the nearest phone was, so that he could call his mother to come get him. As he walked, he kept thinking of the woman in the picture, and how ugly some women could be. He wondered what Parker’s mother was going to do to him, whether Parker might not tell her what he’d really done .

Then she was there: Parker’s mother, in the Oldsmobile convertible, a white visor pulled low on her forehead. She played tennis all day and got very tan in the summer. When she pulled over and raised her hand to wave, John Joel saw she had a sweatband on her wrist .

“Where’s Parker?” she said .

He shrugged. “Back at the train,” he said, guessing .

“Well, why is he there?” Marge Pendergast was sitting next to her, drinking something from a Styrofoam cup. Her hair was all tangled, and she wasn’t brushing it out of her eyes. They both had on tennis dresses .

“Get in,” Parker’s mother said. “I had a feeling you’d get this train.”

“Nah,” he said. “Thanks. I’ve got to go somewhere.”

“What are you talking about?” Parker’s mother said. “I’m giving you a ride home. Where’s Parker?”

“At the train,” John Joel said again. “You really don’t want a ride?” Parker’s mother said. “No, thanks.”

“Go on,” Marge Pendergast said. “I’m hot and I want a shower.”

“John Joel, while I’m here, why don’t you get in the car and we’ll find Parker and I can drop you where you’re going.”

“No,” he said, and turned and started to walk away from the car .

He listened for the car to pull away, and in a few seconds it did, with a screech of tires. He wondered if she’d find Parker, and he half hoped that he was gone — that there was no chance that she’d find him and that Parker would try to blame him, somehow, for the lost picture. He wondered if that woman in the picture ever suspected how she’d end up, the trouble her picture would cause. He regretted all the money he’d spent on Parker. He wished that he had another friend, because even if Parker called him, he wasn’t ever going to see him again .

A mile up the road, he went into the food store and bought Pepperidge Farm Mint Milanos. He started eating them as he stood in line waiting to buy them, two bites to a cookie. Outside the store, when he finished the first layer, he took the paper cup out and wadded it until he made it into a ball in his fist. Then he threw it, as if he meant to strike somebody out. The ball had no weight and only went a few feet before it hit the ground .

“Why don’t you pick that up?” a woman in the parking lot said, opening her car door .

He had only gone a few yards when he felt, for the first time, a painful sting: He had gotten a blister on his little toe in New York .

“COME WITH ME,” Louise said. “It’ll be fun. It’ll be more fun than lying around the house all day.

“I don’t want to,” John Joel said.

“Come on,” Louise said. “Tiffy’s made lots of picnic food and we’ll go berry-picking. I’ll make a strawberry pie. But you have to come help me.”

“Mary doesn’t have to come.”

“Mary is at Angela’s. Come on. Why do I have to urge my children to move? It’s not going above eighty today. It’s a perfect day to pick berries.”

“Why can’t I stay here?” John Joel said.

“To tell you the truth, you can. But I wish you’d come with me. I know you’re depressed about something, and if you won’t tell me, at least let me try to cheer you up.”

“I don’t like Tiffy,” he said.

“How could you not like Tiffy? You’ll like her. You hardly know her. Your father badmouths every woman I know. Don’t pick up all your father’s prejudices.”

“I don’t even see him,” John Joel said.

“You see him on the weekends,” Louise said. “Come on. If we start talking about this, I’m going to get depressed, and I’ m in a good mood today.”

“What am I supposed to say to people who want to know how come he’s never around?”

“Is that what’s bothering you?” Louise said. She sat on the sofa, across from the chair where he was sitting and reading a Zap comic.

He nodded yes. It was a lie, but he wanted to see what she’d say,

“Say we’re separated,” she said.

“He’s here on the weekends,” John Joel said. He hadn’t wanted her to say that. He hadn’t thought she would.

“Ask your father what you should say. As far as I’m concerned, it’s an adequate answer to nosy people to say we’re separated.”

“It’s going to be plenty hot getting berries today.”

“I think you can stand it. Last time: Are you coming?”

He put down the comic book and got out of the chair. “Mary doesn’t have to come,” he said again, but he didn’t want her to be coming, and he knew that his mother knew that. She didn’t say anything. She got up and stretched and went into the kitchen and began taking containers out of the cabinet.

“Wear an old shirt and shorts so it doesn’t matter if they get stained,” she said.

He went upstairs. It had been three days since he and Parker had been in New York, and Parker hadn’t called him to apologize. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have seen Parker again, but he wanted to be able to hang up on him. He hoped that Parker had gotten into trouble with his mother.