Confessions of a Falling Woman Read online

  Puck is pawing at the side of the mattress, letting me know that he needs to go out. I roll away from him but then feel guilty, imagining his sorrowful eyes watching my back and waiting. He’s developed the patience of Buddha, this dog. When he was younger, he’d get half his exercise before we even got out the door. An elaborate dance of solicitation, prancing toward the door and then circling back until I put on my shoes and followed him. When the leash came out of the closet, his eagerness would crest into a volley of frenzied yelps and leaps, and he’d spin in skidding circles on the parquet. Now he waits quietly, trusting me to do the right thing.

  Robin and I are playing phone tag. When I got in last night, there were two hang-ups on the machine, a message from Hal—sorry he missed me, out for a run, but, yeah, let’s get together some time—another hang-up, then a message from Robin.

  “Dan?” There was a pause, while she waited for me to pick up. When I didn’t, she announced the time, one-thirty in the morning, in what I’m guessing is the exact same tone of exasperation that her mother used with her however many years ago. And then another pause before her tone shifted to brisk. “Okay. I’m just returning your call. I’ll be around in the morning if you want to talk, but then we’re heading out. Okay, then.”

  I tried to calculate how early was too early to call, but I misjudged on one side or the other because at eight this morning, I got their answering machine again. “Hi, it’s Dan again,” I began, and suddenly I was imagining a scene on the receiving end of my phone call. With the clarity of a psychic, I could see Robin and Jack and Mina, all of them pink with sunburn and still in their pajamas, and they’re eating their granola and sipping their coffee while my voice rattles over the machine. “Sorry about last night. I was out with Stuart. Haven’t heard on the commercial yet. But I was thinking, hey, maybe I could rent a car and drive up there Saturday. Let me know what you think. Hey Jack, Mina. Catching any fish, Jack? So give me a call when you get a chance, sweetie. We’re doing great down here. Puck misses you.” Even before I hung up, I was wishing there was some way to erase the tape and start over. This time, try to sound a little less like a used car salesman. And lose the pathetic line about Puck. What was that supposed to mean? The dog misses you, but I’m doing fine?

  The dog.

  I lurch upright and search the floor for my shoes. Puck’s tail thumps twice in gratitude. He follows me down the hall and, when I hook the leash onto his collar, makes a sort of stiff-legged curtsy, a substitute for sitting and then having to clamber all the way up again. I find the keys on the hall table, stuff a couple of plastic bags into the pocket of my shorts, and we head out to the elevator.

  Our building is old and slightly shabby, but if one can look past the naked bulb on the landing and the gouged and whitewashed walls, there are still hints of its grander beginnings. The worn marble landing is the size of a spacious studio apartment, and the scrolled plaster ceilings are twelve feet, echoing a time when space was not at such a premium. The building is rent-controlled, so nothing has changed in years, not the tenants, not the paint.

  While we’re waiting for the elevator, I hear what sounds like movement behind Mrs. Doherty’s door. There’s no light coming from under the doorsill, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, even at this hour, she is eyeballing me through her peephole, alerted by the groans and squeaks of the elevator as it heaves its way up from the ground floor. She leaves her apartment only every few days for groceries, pushing her wire cart in front of her like a walker and glaring at me suspiciously whenever I greet her. When we first moved in, I tried to win her over with friendliness, but six years later, she persists in regarding me warily, as though I might one day force her back into her dusty foyer and rob her of all the china figurines and crocheted doilies that can be seen crowding the dim interior of her rooms. Robin has gradually gained her confidence, however, at least enough to discover that her first name is Mary, that she raised three children here, and that she can recite the dates and apartment numbers of every burglary, every change of tenants through death or divorce, every mishap that has occurred in this building over the last several decades. Until our break-in, the fourth floor held the record for the fewest burglaries. “And none of them came in through an open window.” Robin thought she heard accusation in Mary’s voice, as though our carelessness has spoiled it for everybody.

  The elevator is one of the slowest rides in the city, and while we descend, Puck paces the confines of the bronze cage, in a hurry to get outside and relieve his aging bladder. I am nowhere near so eager. This late-night descent into the streets charges me with enough adrenaline to keep me alert for the rest of the night. As we emerge from the relative safety of the building, I check both ways down the avenue. That I don’t see anyone in no way eases my anxiety. Puck, oblivious, lifts his leg and drowns a weed that has sprung up through a crack in the concrete.

  It is actually a beautiful street, edged on this side by graceful limestone buildings and, on the far side, by Prospect Park. All of the buildings but ours have gone co-op over the past ten years, sandblasting the grime from their gargoyles and unfurling fresh awnings onto the avenue. But the quiet prosperity is misleading. This pocket of gentrification is a scant few subway stops from half the projects in Brooklyn and an inviting destination spot for the criminally minded. The length of the avenue is a particular favorite with muggers, because they can hit their target and then disappear into the foresty expanse of the park across the street. Last winter, a man on the second floor was held up at gunpoint right where I’m standing, in the shadow of our awning.

  We move into the peachy glow of the sodium streetlights, and Puck shuffles slowly toward the curb. The curb glitters with safety glass, where car windows have been smashed in search of phones and tape decks. I wait impatiently while he sniffs the leg of a newspaper box and then waters it. Next is the bus stop sign, and then the light pole and mailbox on the corner. Usually, this is as far as we go at night, just twenty paces to the corner and back, but it takes a good ten minutes to inspect and mark each stop on the route. When I try to hurry him, he gives me a wounded look and, I swear it, exaggerates the arthritic stiffness in his gait. Then he gives his end of the leash a small tug toward the tree trunks down the slope.

  Something is fluttering from a lower limb of the old plane tree. I can’t make it out from this distance, but then I notice that the trees all the way down the block are festooned with paper. On closer inspection, they turn out to be crayoned drawings of the trees themselves: row after row of green lollipops, some with bluebirds and yellow ball suns. “Save Our Trees” is lettered in a careful, childish hand across this first one. Taped to the next trunk is another drawing, but its message is lost in the deep shadows.

  Early this spring, a utility crew showed up unannounced and started surveying the block to install new pipeline. The project would entail digging into the gnarled root system that underlies the entire length and width of the block. From the city’s perspective, the old trees are a nuisance anyway—their roots curdle the sidewalks and push up asphalt—but when they blithely started ribboning off old willow oaks and plane trees, they severely underestimated the depth of the neighborhood’s affection for those trees. They also didn’t take into consideration that half the newly renovated brownstones are inhabited by attorneys with inflated property values to protect. Wham bam, the city was up to its eyeballs in court injunctions before they could even finish staking.

  A sheet of butcher paper has been wrapped around one trunk about eye level and secured with tape. I have to walk around the trunk to read the length of the message: “This tree was planted in 1927. It will take another…”

  There is movement in the shadows. I feel the presence of another human being before I see him. A dark silhouette. He is maybe fifteen paces off, coming down the sidewalk in my direction, but even at this distance I can tell he is not one of the attorneys coming home late. When he sees that I have spotted him, his gait becomes exaggeratedly casual.

&nb
sp; He is thin, I see now, and his clothes are several sizes too large. They hang off him like a scarecrow. Enormous jeans ride low on his hips and drag at the heels of absurdly large and elaborate running shoes. It is the uniform of clowns and young urban wannabes.

  I see him glance around, checking for other eyes that might be watching us. My limbs fill with helium. I tighten my grip on Puck’s leash and try to redirect us slowly toward the curb, toward the light, casual, as though I’m not avoiding him, oh no, I just happen to live on the other side of the street. I’m not going to make it, not without running. I stiffen my spine as we prepare to pass one another, and my eyes move to his.

  It’s him. The guy in my apartment. A small flinch betrays that he recognizes me, too. You fuck. You fucking son of a bitch. Hold a knife on me in my own fucking kitchen. Not again, you shithead. No way, you fucking piece of shit. The words are coming out of my mouth. His cocky swagger wilts, and he edges around me, mumbling something. Once past, he breaks into a light trot.

  I drop Puck’s leash and yell at him to sit and stay and, I don’t know, maybe I’m yelling at the guy to stay, I’m so crazy with rage, I don’t know. I follow him. I break into a run and charge after him down the block. I don’t know what I’m thinking, my heart is thundering and pumping gallons of blood into my head so I can’t think. I just run.

  He sprints across Eighth Avenue and I follow, checking for cars, but there is only one and it is too far down the avenue to help or hurt. He cuts left, and we are pounding along Eighth. We cross Fifth Street, then Sixth, then Seventh, and I figure he must be heading for the subway station two blocks ahead. I don’t think I’m going to make it that far. There is a painful stitch gathering in my side, and my breath is coming in searing gasps. I have my eyes trained on his back and I can hear him panting, too, but he is also starting to put distance between us. And then he stumbles. His gawky limbs buckle and he flies sprawling onto the pavement. I am on top of him before he has a chance to get up. He flails, and one elbow connects, hard, with my cheekbone. I scrabble back onto my feet and kick him once, feebly, but then when he starts to rise, I kick him again, harder, and again, I don’t know how often, until he crumples, shielding his face. I find my breath enough to croak a few more obscenities at him.

  “I wasn’t doing nothing,” he whimpers. “I didn’t do nothing to you.”

  Something is wrong. Something is drastically wrong here. The voice. I have been hearing a voice in my head for the past month—“I got a gun”—the timbre of that voice, every inflection, the curl of each vowel and the thud of every consonant is burnished into my nightmares. This is not the same voice.

  I look down at this guy I’ve been chasing. He is rising slowly, warily, to his knees, one hand cradling his jaw, and though he is the same race and has the same lanky build as my burglar, he is not the same man. For starters, this is a kid, fifteen, sixteen at most. And he’s trying not to cry. His mouth is smeared with blood.

  He senses the moment has shifted and suddenly springs up and back, turns heel and takes off again, a jagged painful lope punctuated every few feet by a glance backward to see if I am in pursuit.

  I feel sick in my gut. I’ve attacked someone with no provocation, no excuse in the world, and beat him on the street. I am deeply ashamed. I am dust. There are no words for this.

  I am squatted on the steps of a brownstone, hunched over and waiting for the earth to swallow me up when a voice hails me from above.

  “Are you okay?” An old man, clad in bathrobe and slippers, is standing on the stoop of the brownstone, just inside his doorway. He is framed in the yellow light of the vestibule.

  I nod mutely. My throat is closed.

  “Do you want me to call the police?” He moves down a few steps, letting the door shut behind him. “I saw him take off. He can’t be too far. I can call the police for you. No trouble.”

  It takes me a second before I understand. He believes he has witnessed a mugging. That I am the victim.

  “No. No police.”

  He shrugs, puzzled, and takes another look at me. “You live around here?”

  “Third and the Park.”

  “Ah, that’s nice, those buildings up there.”

  “Yeah.” Into my aching head swims a picture of my block and the recollection that I’ve left Puck sitting on the sidewalk there. Who knows how long he will stay before he tires of it and realizes he can just walk away. We’ve never tested his obedience this far.

  “You’re going to have some shiner to show for your troubles tomorrow.”

  My fingers find the tender swelling along my cheekbone where I caught the kid’s elbow. “I’m fine.”

  “Well, if you’re sure you’re gonna be okay.”

  I pull myself to my feet. “Thanks.”

  It is a long walk home. A breeze has come up and is sending bits of trash and newspaper skirting up the street. I move blindly, passing in and out of shadow. I know that people have done worse. In the scheme of things, this is minor league barbarity. But I know what it feels like now. I’ve tasted what I’m capable of. Somewhere past Fifth Street, a plastic grocery bag is rattling in the branches of a tree. I keep walking until I turn up my familiar street and spy Puck in the distance, still sitting, waiting for me to come back. He wags his tail in welcome, and my grief bursts open like a melon.

  It is luck I don’t deserve that I’m wearing a mask for this commercial. By dawn, my right eye has swollen to a slit. Through my good eye—good being a relative term here to describe an eye that is red and rheumy with sleeplessness but otherwise normal—I survey the damage in the bathroom mirror. There isn’t much to be done about the swelling, but I reason that a little makeup might at least tone down some of the more garish shades of purple blooming on the right side of my face. I’m operating on maybe two hours’ sleep and so buzzy that my hand shakes when I dab pancake under the eye.

  Among my repertoire of nontransferable job skills, I know how to create a completely convincing bruise with makeup. All kinds of disfigurations, in fact, along with the standard old-age lines and pouches. Covering up a bruise is much harder, though, and I make a mess of it. In addition to the swelling, I now appear to have some rare skin disease, perhaps the early stages of leprosy. On the train out to Queens, I think I catch people eyeing me circumspectly, giving me a wide berth.

  Within five minutes of my showing up for my call at Astoria Studios, the production assistant has come striding down the hall, a stiffly perky blonde who sizes me up in a glance. One look confirms everything she already knows about actors, that we’re unreliable children who have to be coddled because of union rules.

  “You must be Dan.” She scribbles something on a clipboard and then presents me with a Junior League smile and her name, which sounds like Teacup but is more likely Teeka or Teega. “That looks nasty. Does it hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” I tell her. “A little run-in with a mugger last night.”

  “How awful. Are you okay to work?” The question might seem casual, but her bullshit antennae are up and waving.

  “Absolutely.” I resist the impulse to elaborate, to weave some long and babbling defense of my competence. But this is all she wanted to know, that I’m not going to flake out and make her morning a living hell. Now that we’ve cleared that up, her features relax into a semblance of sympathy.

  “You poor thing. Where did this happen?”

  “Outside my home. Park Slope.”

  She shakes her head and confides, “My friend got mugged on Madison and Eighty-first last year in broad daylight. It just goes to show.” What it might go to show, she leaves for me to figure out. “Well, all I can say is thank goodness you’re wearing that costume, right? So, okay.” She consults her clipboard. “I left the contracts in your dressing room. Jodi—” She waves over a waifish girl in skintight pants and an abbreviated T-shirt that look as though they were purchased for someone even smaller and thinner. When she lisps hello, she ducks her head and peers up at me with raccoon-lined e
yes. “Jodi can show you where your dressing room is. They won’t need you on the set for an hour or so. There’re breakfast goodies on the catering table. Are you hungry? Excuse me.” The two-way radio on her hip is bleating, and after a brief exchange that includes a reference to the talent—that would be me—she glances surreptitiously at me and then steps out of earshot before continuing the conversation.

  My stomach rumbles at the mere mention of food and reminds me that I haven’t eaten since…when? Yesterday, sometime yesterday. I’m buzzing with exhaustion and hunger and nerves. That’s what this is, the jitters. After all these years, the preface to performance is still a heightened anxiety, like a motor running too fast. It doesn’t matter what the role is, whether it’s Broadway or, in this case, a no-liner rodent on a commercial. You’d think I could learn to relax. Then again, I did a show once with an actress whose name you would recognize, who’d been in the business at least thirty years and still, every night at five minutes to curtain, would disappear into the bathroom and empty the contents of her stomach.

  Teeka returns, saying, “Change of plans. They want you on the set.”

  I’m escorted to a cavernous soundstage, past the catering table where half a dozen stagehands are scarfing down muffins and shooting the breeze, and through the clutch of suits who represent the agency and the client. The appearance of a one-eyed actor causes a stir. I can hear the whispered horror in my wake, but Teeka drops back to soothe and reassure them. “Thank goodness he’s wearing that costume,” she repeats. Yes, yes, we’re all in agreement on that stroke of good fortune.

  The set is something Kafka might dream up. Three walls of a room-sized cage have been constructed. Against the back wall is an enormous copier. Next to it, they’ve strapped a watercooler onto the bars of the cage. Strapped to another wall is a red-framed mirror and a large plastic chute filled with giant brown pellets, and from the ceiling hangs a big blue bell. The floor of the set is knee-deep in shredded paper. But the centerpiece of the set is a metal contraption, something like a small Ferris wheel. A half-dozen people are gathered watching a stagehand slowly revolve the wheel with his hands; he grabs a spoke and gives it a good pull, like Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune. Then a voice from up in the lights yells at him to hold. He stops the wheel with some effort, and they wait, staring up into the dark.