by C J Hribal
Said our mother, “Wally-Bear, why don’t you tell them the real reason?”
A giddy light enters our father’s eyes. “Your mother and I don’t have to go anywhere,” he says. He starts pointing out things we hadn’t seen right off: the circles that indicate fire hydrants, the circles for light poles. “It’s like Elmhurst when we first started. We’ll lay out everything. We’ll do everything ourselves. It’ll have everything but the kitchen sink—improved lots are a lot more valuable, you know. Why have the developer pocket everything when we can develop it ourselves? We can form our own corporation—Czabek’s, Incorporated. Ernie can handle the financing, Wally Jr. and Ike the bulldozing, Emcee writes the brochures, Robert Aaron and I will do the selling, Cinderella and Meg and your mother will run the office. We’ll be a family business. We’ll keep our house right in the center, here”—our father points—“and then we’ll buy up other farms and do everything all over again. And that’s when your mother and I will retire, and you’ll all be together. Everyone will be together, like a family, like—”
Our father caught our faces. He stopped. What he was proposing was impossible if not ridiculous. Quit our jobs, move home to the family farm, then work in tandem to eradicate its existence and live on the rump estate that was left? What was he thinking? Of all the harebrained, ill-conceived, idiotic—
We bit our tongues. What could we say to him? What could we possibly say?
“Is this what you meant by contingencies, Mom? That we’d all live here, helping out, both with the development and with you and Dad?”
“Your father was just thinking this was something that we might all agree on. He didn’t really think—”
“You’re right, Susan,” said our father, his voice trembling. “I didn’t really think. I just . . . I just thought . . . Christ, I don’t know what I thought.” His fingers traced the curb lines of his dream development. It was only then that we noticed the names of the streets: Lucinda’s Lane, Aaron’s Court, Emil’s Drive, Eisenhower’s Circle, Wally’s Way, Ernest’s Place, Megan’s Terrace. “I was meaning this as a kind of legacy for . . . you know . . . you kids. And your kids. And your kids’ kids. I guess I’ve always—I’ve always—” He couldn’t finish. His head had dropped to his chest, and it was bobbing up and down and his shoulders were shaking.
If this were a comedy, I would try to find, I suppose, some way to end this with a marriage. As though marriage ends all problems. And if it were a tragedy, I suppose I’d find some way of ending it with a death. Our father’s, I suppose. I could have him driving out to Colorado, his new promised land, and dying over the wheel of his car, slumped and fading, the car coasting to the side of the highway, not unlike the way he suffered his first heart attack.
But then his heart was always under attack.
If I were poetic, I would make the night of his death be one of those nights when the aurora borealis is draping the sky with rivers and canyons of light—yellow, green, purple, red, and white—dancing and weaving, shimmering and wheeling. Our mother would have that to look out on; she would have more than one thing to gape at with awe.
As I write this, though, everyone is still alive. It’s not going to last, no. But it is.
Marriages don’t end things. Death neither. Things continue. They go on. It’s what’s in the middle, the before and after, that matters. Marriage and death are just station markers. In between and in between—that’s life.
And near the end of his life, our father didn’t want to end anything. He wanted to start over. God bless him. Like everything else in his life, his ideas had no rhyme, little reason.
Willy-nilly, Artu would say.
Willy-nilly is a pattern, too, our father would say.
“It’s okay, Wally,” said our mother. “There are other possibilities.”
Our parents excused themselves. They had a balloon to catch.
___
You don’t catch a balloon like you catch a taxi. We drove our parents over to Chetaqua, a sleepy little village of one and a half streets twenty years ago that’s now one of the biggest bedroom exurban communities in the valley. They’ve grown because when they incorporated, they gobbled up as much surrounding farmland as they could, miles and miles of it, and claimed it all as part of their tax base. In the southwest corner of the township is a huge open field, mostly mowed marshland, that’s destined to become Chetaqua’s business park–golf resort in another couple years. For now, though, it’s where American Antiquities and Romance launches its balloons.
Flo and Eddie Brumfeld, the proprietors of American Antiquities and Romance (in addition to the balloon rides, they own a B & B and an antiques store in Neenah), greet our parents and us and introduce themselves. Flo snatches a cigarette out of her mouth and says, “Flo and Eddie, the Turtles, yeah, yeah, we’re so happy together,” even before I can ask.
Flo is the businesswoman. She’s nervous and quick, despite being a tad on the heavy side, and she smokes unfiltered Camels just as fast as she is able. You get the feeling the balloon rides and the B & B were her husband’s ideas, ways of diversifying the business, and she’s gone along, but mostly to keep an eye on him, so he’s not floating over half the countryside, giving free balloon rides to whoever asks.
Eddie is the balloon operator, a man with an orange-gray walrus mustache, a beer gut, and a comb-over. Their balloon is red and blue, tethered to steel stakes driven into the ground with a mallet. Up close, it looks like a malignant mushroom.
“Welcome, welcome, is this the happy couple?” he says. “Fifty years? I don’t believe it. You look like you just eloped,” he says. Sotto voce he adds, “Do your parents know about this?”
“Their parents are dead,” Flo hisses. “And we’re not getting any younger ourselves.”
Eddie breaks into his pitch. How fast they’re going to drift, given the wind, how high up they’ll go, again depending on wind conditions, how it’s going to be marvelous, marvelous, marvelous. “You’ll see your friends’ and neighbors’ houses like you’ve never seen them before,” he says. “We’ll be sneaking up on deer, on cranes, on geese. Keep your eyes peeled for the deer herds. My favorite thing is how they don’t know we’re there until our shadow crosses over them. For some reason that spooks them. Somehow they can tell we’re not just another cloud. Maybe it’s something they teach in deer elementary school—”
Flo, meanwhile, is handing out business cards to all of us, and a sheet of paper detailing prices for both the B & B and the various merchandise they sell from the back of their pickup truck—glassware and coffee mugs featuring balloons, ballooning T-shirts, scarves, sweatshirts, baseball caps, and the matching purple Polartec fleece jackets Flo and Eddie are wearing, which sport a bright red balloon and their company logo across the breast pocket.
“They’ll scatter every which way,” Eddie’s saying. “It’s something to see.”
“So why don’t you get aloft and see it?” says Flo, taking a stepladder out of the truck. She puts that up against the balloon’s woven basket and stands there waiting, her hair blunt and unkempt, her face pinched. She wants to get this show on the road. You wonder if maybe a certain bitterness hasn’t come to her on account of it appears that Eddie gets to do the cloud hopping while she’s stuck on earth, driving the support truck.
We head over to the balloon, form a loose semicircle around it. Flo and Eddie help our parents aboard. It’s tricky with our father. He’s big and bulky and unsteady on his feet. Our mother’s no spring chicken, either, but with a boost from Eddie she steps into the basket. Our father needs to be propelled in by Flo and Eddie, and even then it appears he’s in danger of tipping backward. Robert Aaron and Ike and I rush forward, and it looks a little like the flag raising on Mount Suribachi, the last couple of us straining but not really helping.
“Remember,” says Eddie once they’re all in the basket, “I’m the captain of this ship. If you want to get married while we’re airborne, I can do that.”
“And
if you want to get divorced,” Flo mutters just loud enough for me to hear, “see me.”
“You kids can follow your folks in your cars, or you can drive ahead. I know where your place is, and I’ll be aiming for that X you painted in your field. I don’t think I’ll be able to miss that, though with a balloon you can never tell. You catch the wrong current, and the next thing you know you’re drifting towards Canada and points west.”
“I should be so lucky,” Flo mutters. I have half a mind to tell Flo she’s in the wrong business, but it’s a nice afternoon and I don’t feel like getting my head bit off.
Eddie says, “Sometimes I do that just so’s I can get out of the house for a spell, right, dear?”
“Ha-ha,” Flo says. She’s smoking a cigarette, waiting to cast off the lines. She gestures to Robert Aaron and Ike and me to help her. Eddie turns to our parents. “You folks have any last words before you start the ride of your life?”
Our mother takes our father’s hand and says, “I believe I’ve already been on the ride of my life, thank you.” Our father chuckles. “But there is something I want to say to my children.” Our mother takes in a deep breath. She’s collecting herself. “I never told you kids this, at least I don’t think I ever did, but when Nomi died, the last words that came out of her mouth were ‘More! More!’ That seemed so much like Nomi. And I’ve always wondered—was she calling out for something specific? Did she want more light, more warmth, more water, more coffee, what? When I asked, she couldn’t tell me—she was answering to God right then, not me.” Our mother pauses, her face trembles, she wipes her eyes. Her voice quavering, she continues. “But I think what she was really doing was calling out for more of everything. I understand that. You kids don’t know this, but I called out ‘More! More!’ every time we made one of you. And I’m glad you got us that station wagon. You don’t know this, either, but most of you were conceived in the back of one. Exuberant excess is not a bad thing. And that’s what I want to say to you kids. I—your father and I—we’re not ready yet for things to be over. We still want more of everything. You may find that hard to believe, but we do.” She pauses again. Then she says, “I want to leave you with Nomi’s blessing. She used to say it at weddings and anniversaries, and since she’s not here to say it, I suppose it should be me: ‘May your progeny be as the sands upon the sea, and may they be as good to thee as ye have been to me.’ ”
“Is that a threat or a promise, Mom?”
Our mother smiles through her tears. “Which do you think?”
“What about you, sir?” says Eddie. “You want to say anything?”
We’re waiting for the litany of clichés to come pouring forth, but our father shakes his head. “No,” he says, “I believe their mother has said everything there is to say.”
“Well then,” says Eddie, checking around the basket and the gauges on the propane tank. Satisfied, he says, “You ready, ma’am?” Our mother nods assent. “Ready, Wally?” Our father gives us the thumbs-up. “Ready, Flo?” Flo flaps her hand at him, as though she’s saying, “Leave, already.” Eddie adjusts a nozzle just beneath the canopy, and a jet of flame shoots blue and yellow into the canopy’s neck. Flo yells at us to cast off the lines, and the balloon jerks up a few feet, then lifts and sways and rises as Eddie opens what seems like the throttle. Our mother whoops, our father starts to fall backward, then steadies himself with his hands. They look over the side, at the ground and at all of us gathered on it. To them, we are shrinking rapidly.
“Bye! Bye-bye!” we call. We’re waving like mad. Our mother waves, our father gives the thumbs-up again. We get into our cars and follow them, caravan-fashion, for a dozen miles. It’s a matter of making the necessary turns on the back roads and keeping them in sight. Flo gestures us ahead. We’re to speed up, shoot ahead, and greet them when they touch down.
Borowski is on the lawn with the other guests. We’ve arrived and climbed on the roof—we want this show to go on right over our heads. But something is keeping our parents—did the wind die down for a while? Did they have problems with the balloon? It’s getting dark enough for the yard lights to have gone on. To pass the time, Borowski performs backyard theater, comically reenacting dramatic scenes from movies under the yard lights below us. His rendition of Steve McQueen at the end of The Great Escape is magnificent. It’s hard to fake a motorcycle leap, but he does it, launching himself onto an invisible fence. Also magnificent is his “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” scene from Gone With the Wind, which he performs solo this time, holding himself in his arms, half bent over while delivering Clark Gable’s line. Everyone claps and cheers and calls out for their favorite scene. Borowski’s honoring as many requests as he can—he is our crowned fool—when Peg Leg Meg cries out, “I see them! They’re coming!” and we cross around to the other side of the roof, the other side of the house, to watch them drift in.
The balloon was red and blue when we launched it, but in the gathering darkness it is magenta and midnight. It’s coming in low, so low we wonder if they are going to clear the house. Our father, even reduced in his old age, is still quite a load. We see our mother waving. Her eyes in the twilight are glistening. She’s crying, she’s so happy. Our father is talking to Eddie. You can tell they’re getting along. Eddie even lets our father work the propane fire that heats the air inside the balloon. We are waving and calling out, “Do you like it? Do you like it? What do you see?”
“Everything!” calls out our mother, like the voice of God. “I see everything!”
They are almost on top of us now. They are so close we can touch the basket. Our fingers graze the weaving, our fingers are reaching up to touch our mother’s, our father’s hands. We have to step out of the basket’s way or they are going to knock the lot of us, even Wally Jr., off the roof. Dorie catches my hand. It feels good holding it. “Steady, Ace,” she says. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“Ready?” calls out our father, and our mother cries out, “Ready!” And we are not sure if it is our father or Eddie who does this, but there is the sudden hiss and whoomph! of flame shooting up, and then the balloon itself lurches and starts to rise.
“Good-bye, good-bye,” cries our mother, waving, and we are puzzled, but we keep waving. Their friends, their family—all of us waving, crying out. The balloon, with our parents in it, continues to rise. They are moving quickly. “I love you, I love you all,” cries our mother. “And that’s the name of that tune!” echoes our father. No doubt he is saying other things as well—that’ll put hair between your toes, no guts, no glory, we shall see what we shall see, et cetera, et cetera—but we can’t make out any of it. Their voices are growing faint. The hill drops away beneath them, they pass over the big red X done in spray paint on the alfalfa, and still they rise. The balloon gains altitude to clear the trees, to clear the pines on the back hill, to clear the hill itself, and still they rise, their position marked by the burst of flame from underneath the canopy.
It is growing dark. Venus has come out. The Big Dipper, too. Soon other stars will be visible as well. But not our parents. They have risen and disappeared. Except for the light of the stars, the great vault of the sky is empty.
Below us in the drive, gleaming beneath the yard light, sits our father’s ’55 Chevy Nomad, abandoned. Our father, I realize, did not want to drive at all. He wanted to fly.
Standing on the roof, my hand arrested midwave, I remember something from this morning. Folding a last load of laundry for our parents prior to the day’s festivities, I came upon a pair of our father’s boxer shorts. Saggy, loose, rent, droopy—they were a lot like our father himself. I held them up and realized that he had not, because of the diabetes and the drinking and the heart medication, had an erection in many years. “I know you know we know you know,” I said to that empty pair of boxers, and it’s what I say to the empty vault of the sky now. It’s up to somebody else now. Other people. It didn’t start with them, and it won’t end with them, either.
But ou
r mother is still our mother, our father still our father. And if the word is to have any meaning at all, then it is to be found in embracing a sagging, balding, red-faced man who seemingly has no future, with love.
Of course before our mother and father left for this grand adventure, we hugged them. Of course we gathered around. And as we stare into the spot of sky, now vacant, where they last were, we are each of us coming to the same knowledge. That we are not going to sell this plot of earth. Not now, not ever. It will fill in around us. And our children and grandchildren will grow up surrounded, much as we did, all our lives. Not protected from a goddamn thing, but happy.
Sweet Christ, happy!
Acknowledgments
This book couldn’t have existed without the help of my friends and family. So many, many thanks to A. Manette Ansay, to Robert Boswell, to Ehud Havazelet, to Kevin “Mac” McIlvoy, to Jim Marten, to Toni Nelson, to Rick Ryan, to Steven Schwartz, to Carol Sklenicka, to Ellen Bryant Voigt, and to all the faculty and numerous students at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, with whom I learned so much. For duty above and beyond the call: Charles Baxter. Sainthood for Rick Russo and Pete Turchi, for the love, advice, suggestions, and support throughout their readings of the manuscript. Special thanks and gratitude to Nat Sobel, for continuing to believe, and for his many suggestions that improved the book; to Judith Weber, for her help; and to Jon Karp, for his patience and his careful editing of the manuscript. It would not be the book it is without all of their insight and advice. I would also like to thank all the folks at Random House who worked on this novel: Susan M.S. Brown, for her careful copyediting; Evan Camfield, for all his work; Jonathan Jao and Jillian Quint, for all theirs, particularly the hand-holding; and to Gene Mydlowski and Beck Stvan and the rest of the design team for helping make this a beautiful book. Thanks, too, to Marquette University, for the time and financial assistance in getting this novel written; to the Guggenheim Foundation, for their generous support; to Krystyna Kornilowicz, for her support over the years; and to Lisa Zongolowicz and Ben Percy, for their help in preparing the manuscript. I am also deeply indebted to my children, Tosh, Roman, and Hania, from whom I learned how to resee the world.
