Before the Fall(73)

He smudges charcoal, perfecting an effect.

“Have you ever tried sleeping in a tree?” he asks. “You have to be a panther. One by one the house lights go out. I’d forgotten to bring food, is the thing, or a sweater. So after a while I climb down and go inside. The back door is open. My mother has left a plate of food on the table for me with a note. Ice cream in the freezer! I sit and eat in the dark, then go upstairs to bed.”

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing. It’s just something I did.”

He smudges charcoal lines on the drywall, adding shadows.

“Or maybe,” he says, “what I mean is, people can say all kinds of things without ever opening their mouths.”

She stretches her arms and legs away from her body, turning her hip to the ceiling.

“They’re saying on the news that the boy stopped talking,” she says. “That he hasn’t spoken a word since the accident. I don’t know how they know, but that’s what they’re saying.”

Scott scratches his face, leaving an inky smudge on his temple.

“When I was drinking,” he says, “I was what they call a motormouth. Just one thing after another, mostly the things I thought people wanted to hear, or—that’s not true—things I thought were provocative. The truth.”

“What was your drink?”

“Whiskey.”

“So male.”

He uncaps the yellow Hi-Liter, rubs the wet felt absently across his left thumb.

“The day I sobered up, I stopped talking,” he says. “What was there to say? You need hope to form a thought. It takes—I don’t know—optimism to speak, to engage in conversation. Because, really, what’s the point of all this communicating? What difference does it really make what we say to each other? Or what we do, for that matter?”

“There’s a name for that,” she says. “It’s called depression.”

He puts the Hi-Liter down, turns slowly, taking in the work. Shape and color, open to interpretation. He feels exhausted all of a sudden, now that the room has depth, dimension. As his eyes reach Layla, he sees she has removed her dress and is lying naked on the sofa.

“You weren’t kidding about the underwear,” he says.

She smiles.

“All night I was so happy,” she says, “knowing I had a secret. Everybody talking about what happened, the mystery—a plane crashed. Was it terrorism? Some kind of kill the rich beginning-of-the-end scenario. Or some North Korean mosquito swat to keep Kipling from narcing. You should have been there. But then things turn, become more—personal. All these moneyed elitists talking about the boy, will he ever talk again.”

She studies him.

“Talking about you.”

Scott goes to the kitchen sink, washes his hands, watching ash and lipstick run down the drain. When he comes back the sofa is empty.

“In here,” she calls from the bedroom.

Scott thinks about that—what a naked woman in his bed will lead to—then he turns and goes into the study. The walls here are still white. It offends his sense of accomplishment, so he presses his stained torso to the drywall, leaving a body shape like Wile E. Coyote. He goes over to the desk and picks up the phone.

“Did I wake you?” he asks when she answers.

“No,” says Eleanor. “We’re up. He had a nightmare.”

Scott pictures the boy tossing and turning, the inside of his head a raging sea.

“What’s he doing right now?”

“Eating cereal. I tried to get him back to sleep, but he wouldn’t have it. So I found WordWorld on PBS.”

“Can I talk to him?”

He hears her put down the phone, hears the muffled sound of her voice—JJ!—across the room. Surrendering to gravity, Scott lies on the floor, the phone cord stretching along with him. After a second he hears the plastic of the receiver dragged across a hard surface, then breathing.

“Hey, pal,” says Scott. He waits. “It’s Scott. I was—looks like we both woke up, huh? You had a bad dream?”

From the other room, Scott hears Layla turn on the TV, mainlining the twenty-four-hour news cycle. Through the phone he hears the little boy breathing.

“I was thinking about maybe coming up there—to see you,” says Scott. “You could show me your room or—I don’t know. It’s been hot here. In the city. Your aunt says you’re near the river. I could maybe teach you how to skip stones, or—”

He thinks about what he has just said, Let’s you and I visit another large body of water. Part of him wonders if the boy screams every time the toilet flushes, if he shies from the sound of the filling tub.

“What helps me with fear,” he says, “being afraid, is preparation, you know? Knowing how to do things. Like if a bear attacks they say you’re supposed to play dead. Did you know that?”

He feels the weight of exhaustion pulling on him from deep below the floor.

“What about lions?” the boy says.

“Well,” says Scott, “I’m not sure there. But I tell you what. I’ll get the answer and tell you when I see you, okay?”

A long silence.

“Okay,” says the boy.

Scott hears the boy drop the phone, then the sound of its retrieval.