We're in Trouble Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  We’re in Trouble

  Back Down to Earth

  All Babies Come from Heaven

  We’ve Come to This

  Cross Country

  Solos

  In the Event

  A Single Awe

  Abandon

  All Through the House

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2005 by Christopher Coake

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhco.com

  Brenda Hillman, excerpts from “Mighty Forms” in Bright Existence

  © 1993 by Brenda Hillman, reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Coake, Christopher.

  We’re in trouble: stories/Christopher Coake.

  p. cm.

  1. Psychological fiction, American. 2. Death—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3603.O14W47 2005

  813'.6—dc22 2004017419

  ISBN-13:978-0-15-101094-3 ISBN-10:0-15-101094-3

  ISBN-13:978-0-15-603277-3 (pbk.) ISBN-10:0-15-603277-5 (pbk.)

  eISBN 978-0-544-74889-7

  v1.0715

  for

  Joellen Thomas

  We’re in Trouble

  A SUITE

  I.

  Back Down to Earth

  ERIC AND KRISTEN ARE IN UNFAMILIAR TERRITORY. THEY have only known one another a few weeks, but they have decided they are already deeply, madly in love.

  This love, this unexpected boon, has come to them with amazing speed and intensity. And at the right time. They’re young—Eric is twenty-four, Kristen twenty-two—but they met as each was concluding a long and tumultuous relationship. Kristen had just left her boyfriend of four years. Eric’s divorce, after three years of marriage, has only this week been finalized.

  In celebration, they have taken a hotel room downtown, and have barely left it for an entire weekend. And, here in the late hours of their last night in it, they’ve just finished making love. Now they talk softly, sweetly, in the dark. About their memories, their secrets. This tumble of words excites them as much as the warm, damp shape of the other’s body beneath the blankets. Everything they say and do now seems to carry weight, meaning, a symbolism of great and private importance which exalts them, and what, together, they hope to be.

  Kristen says, in a whisper, I want you to tell me something. Anything. As long as it’s important to you.

  Tell me what you want to know, Eric answers. I’ll tell you anything. I have no secrets from you.

  Something only you could tell me. Something that is you.

  Anything?

  Tell me the most vivid thing you can remember. Then I’ll do the same.

  Eric is quiet, but she can feel his hand, warm and flat on her belly. His fingers curl and uncurl.

  Well, mine’s a bad thing, he says.

  Mine’s good, she says.

  Kristen plans on telling him about the first time she saw him, which is not, perhaps, the memory that’s most important to her—that would be her mother’s death, to which she’s only alluded, and about which she tries not to think. But for now, topmost in her mind is the picture of Eric, barely a month ago, in the next line over at the movie theater—the broad wedge of his back and the slow smile on his face, the hesitation which she saw him fighting, as he kept his eyes on hers. He was going to the movies alone; so was she. She saw him and he smiled at her and kept looking, fought his shyness, and she knew—knew it completely—that he would end up with her. She wants him to know this. Kristen approached him—she’d never been so bold before—and after making their halting introductions, they laughed at themselves, the obviousness of their shyness and desire, the pleasure of their bravery, and then they sat together during the movie. And she was right. He did end up with her. Here they are, together.

  She wants to tell him she was never in doubt.

  Mine’s exceptionally bad, Eric says. I don’t know if I should tell you right now.

  Tell me. It’s good you’re going first. We’ll start with the bad and then we can finish with the good.

  You’re sure?

  I feel like we can handle anything, she says. Just like this. Don’t you feel that way?

  He shifts a bit, kisses her dry lips, and tilts his mouth close to her ear.

  I WAS SEVEN when this happened. My family went to a state park down in southern Indiana, and in this park were a bunch of deep ravines and cliffs. It was my mother and my father and my younger sister and our—my—dog. His name was Gale—I named him that because he ran so fast. I was proud of the name, to have thought that one up. Gale, he was a mutt, mostly German shepherd. Maybe a couple of years old, but we’d had him since he was a puppy. I’d raised him. He slept with me at night. I loved that dog. He was one of the great playmate dogs, waiting for me when I got off the bus, protective of me when I was around other kids. Always wanting to do a good job—like dogs do, you know?

  He had this ball, a rubber squeaking ball, that was his favorite toy. We brought it with us to the park. At midday my father took us to a picnic area and started up one of the grills. My mother and sister went to wade in the river. Me and Gale climbed a slope, into the woods, to play. I started throwing his ball, and he started chasing it, and we kept going on and on into the woods, away from the trail. Gale kept getting more and more frantic and excited, and he’d catch his ball and run with it, tearing off into the bushes, with me just trying to keep up.

  We kept climbing and I got the ball from him finally. We’d climbed high enough to get to the edge of a cliff overlooking the river. So—I don’t know why, I know I didn’t mean any harm by it—I started tossing the ball close to the edge of the cliff. I wasn’t trying to do anything—I mean, nothing wrong—I was testing him, you know, to see how fast he was. I was . . . proud of him. He’d tear off and get his ball before it got close to the edge, and I guess I thought he knew what we were doing as well as I did.

  Then I gave the ball a stronger toss, and it bounced too close to the edge, and I saw I’d messed up; it was going to fall off, Gale was too far away to get to it. But he went for it anyway. The ball went over the edge, and he didn’t slow down—he was too keyed up, I’d gotten him too excited. I shouted out, No, trying to get him to stop, but he didn’t until he was just at the edge. Then he realized where he was, and he skidded in the dirt and went sideways, and then his back paws went off the edge of the cliff, and he was stuck there, hanging on with his front paws and his elbows, trying to push himself back up over the edge.

  I ran to him, and when I was close to the edge I saw how far down it was. Maybe a hundred feet, I don’t know. A long, long way. I saw it all like I’d taken a picture of it, and I can still see it. The cliff was old, dark, rotten limestone, and it was covered with moss, and I can remember how it smelled, all wet, like turned-up soil, and vines went up and down it, and at the bottom was this dark shadowed bank, covered with old black leaves, and some slimy-looking dead trees. The edge of the cliff was crumbling and covered with gravel, and I felt dizzy looking over it. And instead of grabbing Gale’s collar I kind of . . . kind of stared for a minute, you know, I
just froze, looking at the drop.

  But only for a second, a half a second. It couldn’t have been long. Gale was trying his best to get back up, kicking against the rock with his back paws, and scraping at the gravel with his front paws. He almost made it, but then lost it again and started to slide. He was looking at me with his eyes bugging out, and making this . . . this huffing sound. That’s when I got on my hands and knees and went to him and tried to grab his collar, but a rock must have given or something, because he fell right when I got to him. He made a . . . a yelp. When he knew.

  I was at the edge, leaning out over it, to get his collar, and I could see him fall. His paws kept moving, like he was trying to get at the rock still, but he was falling in air. He turned over once or twice. Halfway down he hit an outcrop of limestone, and I think that was what killed him. He bounced off of it, but he didn’t move on his own after. And when he hit it, he made . . . this sound, real quick and sharp. Kind of like a scream that got cut off in the middle.

  He hit the bottom where the cliff turned into a slope, and slid down it like he was made of rubber. The old wet leaves bunched up in front of him and slowed him down. He left a trail through them, and underneath the leaves was this glossy wet rock. It looked like something had gotten skinned. I looked at Gale just once when he stopped sliding. I was a long way up, but even from there I could see his teeth were bared.

  I was on my hands and knees, crouched at the top of the cliff, looking over. I got vertigo—I still can’t go near heights. The whole cliff started to tilt forward, like it was trying to dump me off—kind of like the whole world was a wheel and it was turning forward. I thought—I thought I could see the vines start to lean away from the rock. I remember I wanted to scream, but my throat was all closed up.

  And . . . I almost jumped. I almost jumped after him.

  I can’t explain it, not exactly. I mean, of course I was upset—I was seven, and I loved that dog as much as anybody in my family. But it was more than that. I wanted to die, too. I’d done such a horrible thing that I had to. I knew it. I knew even at seven what it was to want to die.

  And . . . it was more than that. It wasn’t that I wanted to. It was that I had to. They took me to church then, my folks did, and it didn’t just feel like I’d done something wrong—it felt to me like the world was tilting because God wanted me dead, because I’d done something so wrong that all He could do was sweep me off the top of the cliff, send me down after my poor dog.

  It was like I didn’t have any choice in the matter at all. My hands were sliding across the gravel and I kept seeing Gale, the way his legs kicked in midair, like I knew mine were going to, any second. Just as soon as I stopped fighting it and gave in.

  KRISTEN IS QUIET for long time. Then she says, You didn’t fall.

  No.

  How?

  I lay flat against the ground. I put my cheek against the dirt and closed my eyes and grabbed clumps of grass and held on as hard as I could. And after a while the vertigo stopped. When I could make a noise again, I shouted until my parents came.

  Then what happened?

  I cried for a week, and I had nightmares . . . I still have nightmares. Maybe once a week my head sends me right back there, and we play it out all over again.

  He sighs, a long deep sigh, and says, Except that most of the time I fall.

  She turns and puts her arms around him. He can feel her cheek against his bare chest. It’s damp. She holds him tightly.

  Your turn, he says, after a moment. Tell me the good thing.

  She tightens her arms.

  Come on, he says, tell me.

  He puts his nose into her hair, which smells like strawberries and sweat. He closes his eyes and tries to see her face, but part of him is still somewhere else. He sees the gray wet rock.

  Please, he says. Please tell me.

  II.

  All Babies Come from Heaven

  NATALIE AND JOAN DO NOT BELIEVE IN GOD. THEY can’t abide the thought of one. Nor fate, nor destiny. Things do not happen for a reason. This is one of the ways they love each other: by understanding that their love, in the face of all the order the universe withholds, is also a belief.

  Because nothing they have seen in their lives can convince them that the world wishes them to do what they do—which is touch one another, make love together, live together. Joan, the child of hippies, has never believed in God, but she has known about herself since she was a teenager, and has had plenty of opportunity to see what the world thinks of her for it. But for Natalie, a lapsed Catholic, lapsed hetero, this understanding has been more difficult—Joan had no understanding to turn from, but Natalie did. She misses Mass, the comfort of ritual and answer. And, sometimes, she misses her past loves. She was engaged once, to a nice enough man, and it was never his fault that she began to understand—to believe—what she has always felt for women. They’d planned a baby, she and this man, and when she came out—and a year later, when she began to live with Joan—she couldn’t help thinking she’d abandoned motherhood, probably forever.

  Until this morning, when motherhood has returned to her, when Joan said to her, Okay, let’s do this. Let’s have a baby.

  For the entire second year of their relationship Natalie and Joan have argued about a child. When the issue first arose, Joan told Nat she didn’t want to give up any part of her career to child-raising. She’s a medical researcher, and a good one; she likes her job and works long, long hours. Natalie, on the other hand, works for an accounting firm she dislikes. She has never felt particularly tied to work—none of her jobs has ever seemed like the point of her life. She told this to Joan: I don’t have anything to want other than you. Do you want me to be like that?

  And besides, Nat said, it’s a baby. A baby.

  Joan told her, You say that word like some people say Bible.

  For months, they were tense, awkward—until Natalie had begun to think her first great love was ending. Of course they loved each other, of course they meant to stay together. But the want of a baby—this was intractable. Natalie couldn’t hide her disappointment, and Joan’s way was to be annoyed with her for it.

  But then—almost miraculously—things began to change. A month ago Joan said, I can see what this is doing to you. So let’s talk. I love you too much to go on like this.

  And so they talked. They started in the abstract: They’re not too old. Nat’s just twenty-nine. Joan’s a bit older, but it’s Nat who wants to carry the baby, to be pregnant. They feel permanent. They’ve bought the house—and the house has been perfect. They are financially secure. And, even after all the argument and tension, they feel, now, more in love—if such a thing is possible—than when they began.

  But despite all the positives laid out before them, Joan stopped short of agreement. She said, Well, it’s possible, that’s for sure. Let me think, okay?

  For a week or so after their talk Natalie felt light on her feet, almost giddy. A year from now, she kept thinking, and it will have already happened. She went to a store that sold baby clothes, found herself picking things out, fondling tiny shoes. But more and more days passed, and Joan kept silent, and Natalie understood that she was taking too long. Joan was either pretending to decide, or deciding against it. Nat prepared herself to leave—because she would have to; the pain and longing she felt had taught her too much about her life. She loved Joan, but that love alone just was not going to be enough.

  But then came this morning. As they lay curled together, Joan told her—from nowhere, and after a short, loud stutter—that sometimes she sees children in the mall, along the sidewalk, and she feels pulled to them, feels that she could, maybe, see herself as a mother.

  Joan—Joan, of all people—blushed when she said it.

  Nat, seeing this, began to weep.

  Are you all right? Joan asked.

  Yes, Nat said from behind her hand.

  So you want to have a baby?

  I love you, Nat told her.

  That afternoon t
hey go for a run. Joan runs every day; she has been a fanatic about it since high school. On weekends in the warm months Nat goes with her. They run at a public park not far from their house, where a paved track circles a lake almost exactly a mile in circumference. Joan runs several circuits, and Nat keeps pace with her for the first, then jogs and strolls as it suits her after that. Nat has learned to like these excursions together, but even so she remains unathletic, soft. They go to clubs sometimes, she and Joan, where Nat is still uncomfortable. There she sees other couples—all the dykes who have so obviously split up into hard and soft, masculine and feminine—and though she and Joan have laughed about the obviousness of this, Nat wonders sometimes if that is in fact how they’re seen: Joan with her lean body and short hair, Nat still with her love for long skirts and her ponytail and her need for a baby and her shyness at these places, where she falls behind Joan’s smiles and greetings until all she can do is nod and flutter like a wallflower at the prom. Be brave, she tells herself, and sometimes she thinks this to make herself run faster, to catch Joan, to bring more air to her lungs.

  The lake is next to a divided highway; to reach it they drive down from the road and park in a small lot on the other side, and then walk underneath the highway on a wide concrete footpath. Natalie has never liked the path, because from beneath, the bridge seems too flimsy, the highway and the cars too near overhead. The concrete shakes and echoes, and she’s aware of the tons of steel zipping along just a few yards above, and when she walks through the sunlit, open space between the north- and southbound lanes she winces, expecting some automotive horror to spill over onto the steady traffic of runners and cyclists and children and dogs underneath.

  But she doesn’t think of this today, when she and Joan walk beneath the bridge. It’s a beautiful June day, not too hot, not too humid, and Natalie is looking forward to the run. She’s keyed up, almost jumpy—all she can think of is waking to Joan’s kisses on her shoulder, Joan’s cool palm on her belly, and the merry and secretive look in Joan’s eyes just before she spoke.