The Gunners

by Rebecca Kauffman

  What a universe. There was so much to see! So much to feel!

  And yet, if there was one thing Mikey knew of feelings . . . There was always that other feeling, crouched and waiting nearby in the shadows, even at a moment like this, even when he was on the brink of the most beautiful thing he would ever see in his life. It was the low tide. The sacred, empty void after the birds had taken flight. The tangled thing that tugged on Mikey, kept him sewn up inside himself, made happiness hard. Mikey didn’t yet have words for this feeling, but already at this young age, he understood that it would never leave him entirely—nature had put it in his heart, and there it would always remain, even when he thought he was in the clear, even when he thought he had left it behind.

  Mikey had asked his father about this feeling once, years earlier, when he was very small and before he had learned that it was foolish to talk plainly about feelings. Mikey had said, “I have a bad, sad feeling in me sometimes.” His father said, “Me, too.” And knowing that his father shared this had been such a great comfort to Mikey that over time he began to cherish that shadowy feeling, which proved to be as sure as the tides, as persistent and reliable as a dear friend, as real and as much a part of his universe as the sun.

  Chapter 33

  Jimmy had rented a house on Lake Oconee, an hour from Sam and Justine’s home, for the second week of June. Aside from Mikey and Alice, it would be the first that any of them had seen one another since Lynn’s wedding, although they had stayed in close touch via email over the intervening months.

  Justine was now twelve weeks pregnant, and they were ecstatic. They planned to wait to find out the gender, but both suspected a boy. Sam’s company was opening a second branch near Cleveland in the fall, and they planned to move back to the Midwest to be closer to both families. They would miss their church, Sam said, but weren’t too crazy about the new pastor anyway.

  In September, Lynn and Issa would depart for Addis Ababa, where they would spend one year teaching music at the grade school Issa had attended as a boy. When they returned to the states, they planned to move to Buffalo in order to be closer to Lynn’s mother. Issa planned to record his first album. Lynn had spoken to the current head of the AA chapter in Buffalo and conveyed her interest in a position with them upon her

  return.

  Audwin had moved to LA in April and met Jimmy’s parents on their most recent visit out west. Jimmy said that his father went through an entire fifth of sambuca in two days and didn’t say a whole lot, but his mother absolutely adored Audwin. She couldn’t stop touching his red beard. The two of them could do a bang-up impression of each other’s accents. She taught Audwin the tarantella dance, which originated in Puglia, and he taught her his grandmother’s recipe for apple zwieback torte and marzipan nougat.

  Jimmy said that he and Audwin planned to spend summers at the lake house in Buffalo in the future—Audwin simply couldn’t stand the heat of an LA summer. Jimmy said that they were in love.

  Alice now lived ten miles from Mikey, in Allentown, and had purchased storefront property for her marina, just off the northern shore of the Times Beach Nature Preserve. It was still several months away from opening, but she was slowly getting the place set up.

  She visited Mikey several times a week and called him every day. Often more than once a day, and often with no apparent agenda. She would put him on speakerphone while folding her laundry or cooking a meal, or call him just to sing along to whatever song was playing on her radio while she drove.

  Shortly after moving, Alice had learned that Buffalo Philharmonic rehearsals on Tuesdays and Fridays were open to the public, so on these days, she would drop Mikey off at the auditorium and leave him there to listen to the entire rehearsal while she ran errands downtown. Mikey couldn’t believe that in all his years in Buffalo he had never known about these rehearsals. He had never once attended a Philharmonic concert, couldn’t justify the cost to go alone, and it had never even occurred to him that there might be another way. Alice had no interest in sitting there with Mikey for a full two-hour rehearsal, but she also never complained about taking him, and she would always ask all about it on the way home. She loved to hear about when one of the musicians had been singled out for playing out of tune or missing a cue.

  Back in May, Mikey had fallen in his own home, and he had to call Alice to take him to the doctor, where a cast was put on his broken wrist. Mikey was so disgusted with himself. Humiliated. Alice had stayed at the hospital with him the whole time and listed herself as his emergency contact when the receptionist asked.

  Several days later, when Mikey was at her house, Alice had tried to outright deny the construction taking place on her front porch until he pressed her on it and she confessed that she was having the stairs converted to a ramp.

  “I’m blind, not helpless,” Mikey said. “I was just being clumsy.”

  “I know,” Alice said. “But I don’t want you to fall and break your neck at my house then sue me.”

  Mikey laughed.

  It was quiet for a bit.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Mikey said. “I’m serious. Not about the ramp out front or anything else. It’s not fair, because I just have to take your word since I can’t see things for myself anymore.”

  Alice gently took his hand and patted it, then she forcibly dipped his fingers into a dish of something sticky and too warm.

  Mikey pulled his hand back into his chest and shook out his fingers. “What the hell was that?”

  Alice was laughing. “I’m making marmalade,” she said. “Lick your fingers if you don’t trust me.”

  “I sure don’t,” Mikey said. He sniffed then licked his fingers.

  Alice said, “But in the spirit of full disclosure, there is something I need to tell you.”

  “Oh?”

  “The other night when I took you home from the hospital, you dozed off in the car, and I took the Skyway.”

  Mikey was quiet for a bit.

  Alice said, “I’m sick of taking Niagara Street. It adds fifteen minutes to the drive every time I want to take you anywhere. And anyway, Mikey, it’s just time you got over it. Not Sally. I mean, I don’t know if a person ever gets over something like that. But it’s time you got over your fear of that place. Because now you’ve been there. You were right at that edge, and you never even knew it. We just passed right on by.”

  Chapter 34

  Alice and Mikey had purchased seats next to each other on the flight to Atlanta, where Jimmy, Audwin, Lynn, and Issa would meet up with them at the airport, and the six of them would rent a car and drive together to Lake Oconee.

  Alice had promised to be at Mikey’s home at six o’clock in the morning to pick him up and drive him to Buffalo Niagara Airport. It was now a quarter after, and Mikey was nervous about missing the flight.

  Friday was weaving between Mikey’s legs and his suitcase, and Mikey knelt to touch Friday’s warm face. Mikey’s father had offered to stop over several times throughout the week to feed Friday and clean out his litter box. In recent months, Mikey’s father had started coming to Mikey’s home on Sundays instead of Mikey going to his, since it was no longer safe for Mikey to drive, and his father now had plenty of time on his hands; he was working twenty hours a week at the AutoZone. John had also discovered that if he took a Claritin an hour before coming to Mikey’s home, his allergies weren’t so bad at all.

  Mikey reached for his cell phone and dialed Alice.

  She answered after a single ring.

  “Jiminy-Christmas, you Antsy-Pants!” she said. “I’ll be there in five minutes. I stopped to get McDonald’s breakfast. You’re welcome.”

  The two of them got breakfast from McDonald’s together at least once a week. Alice always ordered three hash browns, a Coke, and a steak bagel for herself. The first time she had gotten this, Mikey watched as she ate the steak bagel. That actually steak? he had said. Or just a
burger on a bagel? Alice had scowled at him. It’s steak, or they wouldn’t say so.

  “I got your usual biscuit and coffee, light and sweet like you like. You’re welcome,” Alice said again. “Anyhow, are you gonna need my help with your luggage?”

  “No, I only have one suitcase. I’m just worried about missing the flight,” Mikey said. “I’ve heard early morning security line’s a beast, especially on the weekend.”

  “We can use your special blind-person Go-to-the-Front-of-the-Line-Free card if we need to.”

  “You know I hate doing that.”

  Alice said, “Chill.”

  She hung up the phone.

  In the past month, Alice had helped order and install voice software for Mikey’s home, extra railings, separate drawers for sharp kitchen items versus dull ones. She created an organization system for the refrigerator and his dresser, socks knotted together as pairs and arranged by color. She set up an alarm system that would contact her directly, immediately, on her cell phone if Mikey’s carbon monoxide detector went off. Mikey needed her every bit as much now as he had when he was eight years old. Oh well.

  And now she was out front his house, tooting her horn impatiently. Mikey leaned over to give Friday a final nuzzle on the top of his head, and Friday leaned up into Mikey’s hand with his little skull and damp nose.

  Mikey opened his front door, single suitcase in hand.

  The smell of the warm spring air was luscious. Magnificent. Soil and sprouts. Mikey could pick out the different aromas of individual blooms: dogwoods, hyacinths, bluebells, lilacs, lunarias. He could picture his forsythia in full bloom, exuberant and banana-yellow. Gustav Holst’s Jupiter suite.

  Mikey felt buoyant. Dizzy with euphoria. He was going to see his friends! He sniffed the air in, long and hard, greedily.

  “We are late! Hurry up! What the hell are you doing?” Alice hollered at Mikey from her Jeep, tooting her horn to animate him.

  Mikey stepped off his porch and started to make his way up the short paved path to the sidewalk, the little wheels of his suitcase scraping noisily behind him.

  “I was just waiting,” Mikey called back to Alice.

  “What for?” Alice said. “Come on, ya slowpoke!” She tapped her Jeep’s horn again, a cheery little rhythm. God, she was annoying!

  “Waiting for you to tell me what to do,” he called back.

  Mikey felt a glorious warmth spread over his cheeks. This was how his doctor had said it would happen: visual perception of light would be one of the last things to go. But Mikey didn’t have to see the light to know the sun was on his face.

  That word love . . . it was scary and outlandish to him. But what was life if not a long series of scary and outlandish things you did and said and asked of your heart, so you could carry the wild and unreasonable hope that someday someone would hold your face and say, You are perfect. You can rest now. You were always perfect to me. Not because you were even remotely close to perfect, or brave, or strong, or even very good, but because you had been very dear friends for a very long time.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, Michelle Tessler, Jessica Gotz, Jack Shoemaker, Megan Fishmann, Nicole Caputo, Wah-Ming Chang, Jenn Kovitz, Sarah Baline, Jenny Alton, Dustin Kurtz, Olenka Burgess, Kelli Trapnell, Miyako Singer, Julie Buntin. And my love and immense gratitude, as always, to my friends and family, who make life a joy.

  © Rachel Herr

  About the Author

  rebecca kauffman is originally from rural northeastern Ohio. She received her B.A. in Classical Violin Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, and several years later, she received her M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University. She currently lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She is also the author of Another Place You’ve Never Been, which was long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.