Fall Guy

knocked my hand away, the water spewing out onto the carpet, the glass flying from my hand and bouncing twice before it hit the daybed. I sat with my arms around her while she sobbed. I don't know that I'd ever seen a person cry like that, decades of grief and pain pouring out of her, her body trembling, hot at first, then cold, then hot again.
    After a long time, her head on my lap as if she were a child, my hand stroking her back, Maggie fell asleep. I sat there without moving. Night was coming in the windows now, blue-gray light, and I could hear the sounds changing, too. The birds were no longer singing and traffic had picked up, people coming to the Village for dinner or to go to a club were cruising around looking for a place to park. I heard a motorcycle pass and then, for a long while, the only sound was Maggie's ragged breathing.
    She awakened and sat up nearly an hour later, her face swollen, her eyes red and puffy. I got up to make some tea. When I got back to the couch, Maggie hadn't moved. I offered her the cup of tea but she didn't seem to see it. Or me. I put it on the desk and sat down on the other side of the couch, not quite sure what to do.
    „It was the push,“ she said, staring toward the windows, „it's been killing off the lot of us.“
    „What are you saying?“
    She took a deep breath and let it back out and then she turned to face me. „I lied to you. I've been lying all my life. It's the way my family functioned. Lying wasn't only encouraged. It was the only thing allowed.“
    There was a softness in her eyes, beyond what you see after people sob their hearts out. Without the false smile, the stiff upper lip, the squared shoulders, without her mind rewriting history even as it happened so that her real feelings would be buried and only pleasantries would emerge, she looked naked. She looked, in fact, as if she'd just been bom. Mary Margaret O'Fallon was here in the world, at last.
    „I did follow the boys up to the top of Claus-land Mountain that day. That part is true.“
    „Twenty-nine years ago?“
    She nodded. „And I did hide my bike behind some bushes, farther up the road from the boys' bikes. Then I went into the woods and wandered around until I heard their voices. I bent low, following the sound. It got louder and louder— shouts, jeers, catcalls, the most cutting comments a boy could hear. 'Come on, you little pussy,' Dennis was shouting, hands at the sides of his cruel mouth. 'Jump, faggot.' He turned to Tim and whispered something I couldn't hear. Then they all started to shout. It was like that horrifying crowd mentality when people see some poor soul up on a ledge and those below start shouting the same thing, 'Jump, jump, jump.' I don't understand the human race. Honestly, I don't. I know they were only boys, but still, they should have known better.“
    I waited for the rest. I might have thought it was the teasing that sent Joey off those jagged rocks to meet his maker at the green age of twelve, except for what Maggie had said earlier. „It was the push,“ she'd said. And I didn't think, not now, that she meant the push of words, the push of contempt, the push of thoughtless cruelty. I had the awful feeling, the insistent feeling, that she meant a literal push.
    „Who did it?“ I asked. But as soon as I did, I no longer needed Maggie to answer me. I knew.
    „I could have stopped it. I could have shown myself. I could have said I'd tell on them. I could have ...“ She buried her face in her hands and wept again, but there was no sound this time, just the shaking of her shoulders and the tears falling onto her slacks. I moved closer and put my arm around her shoulders. She looked up, shook her
    head, wiped her eyes with her fingers. „They were all still shouting up at Joey when he left. He went around the back way, through the trees. And then we could all see him, coming out on top of the rocks, right behind Joey. 'Give him a hand,' Liam shouted and then he began to laugh. And they all did. They were laughing when it happened.“
    „When Tim pushed him off?“
    She nodded.
    „Say it.“ I took her hand.
    „When Tim pushed Joey off.“
    „Have you ever said it before?“
    „Not until last week.“
    „What happened last week?“
    „After the wake, I went to the priest. I told him what I saw. I told him that no one knew I'd been there, that I crouched there frozen while they waited for Joey to come up from the dark well. They were laughing at first, then