The Sky Below

by Stacey D'Erasmo

  “Gabriel, take the money.”

  “No,” I said firmly. I tightened my lucky red scarf around my neck.

  Caroline and I were walking down Henry Street. It was a weekday, but I had called in sick. (Well, now I really was sick, wasn’t I? And the dead would still be dead tomorrow.) People passed us on their way to work, hair wet, some holding a child in one hand and a briefcase in the other, some already doing business on their cell phones. A stout black woman pushed a small, fragile curl of a very elderly white woman, covered in sweaters and blankets, in a wheelchair. The white woman looked like a seashell. The sound of hammering came from an upper floor in a grand white wood-frame house.

  “And you haven’t called Mom, either, right?” Caroline said.

  “I’ve been busy.” Wishing on wishbones and counting clouds, scheming to get my latte from the right twin at Starbucks. Going in and out of the tank, diving down through layers of being. James had said my aura was much improved. “Plus, you say ‘take the money’ like Janos is handing me cash in a paper bag. That’s not what he means. He means move in with him.”

  “What’s the difference? He wants to support you. He wants to help you get better. Dependency is not a dirty word, Gabe. If you moved in with him, you could save the rent money and use it for the transfusion. They have this new kind now, they mix it—”

  “Oh, my God, shut up about the stupid transfusion. How many times do I have to say it? Do you know who I really want to tell? Who I really want the money from?”

  Caroline looked mystified. “Who? Did you tell Sarah?”

  “No. Dad.”

  “Dad?”

  I smiled. It was hard to startle my unsinkable sister; I got pleasure from getting a rise out of her. “Yes. Dad. Remember him? We have half his DNA?”

  Caroline snorted. “That train wreck. What a waste. Anyway, I think the man must be dead.”

  Now it was my turn to be startled, and angry. “That is a horrible thing to say. God, Caroline. He’s not dead. Can we sit down a minute?” We sat down on a stoop just before my knees gave out. The lion was like that, clawing unpredictably.

  “When did you become such a fan? He walked out on us two days after Christmas, for God’s sake, in that falling-down dollhouse with the mice and no heat—”

  “The Bishop house? The Bishop house was great. It was so beautiful.”

  “What planet are you on? That house was a shambles. The plumbing was a disaster, the basement was always flooding. Some contractor he was. After we went to Florida, Mom practically had to give it away, it went for so little. At least it was warm in Florida. You could be outside all the time.”

  “What planet are you on? Brewster was a hellhole. Mom became a zombie. She never read us Ovid anymore—”

  “Ovid? She never read me any Ovid. She was always in a rage. That’s what I remember. After he left that winter, she kept me awake for hours telling me awful stuff about their marriage I didn’t want to know. Sex stuff, even. Talk about myths. I hated it. Ovid?”

  I nodded, embarrassed for both of us. But I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “And the City. Remember the City?”

  Caroline smiled ruefully. “Oh, right. She was always clever with the scissors and construction paper. She had an eye. Man, the two of them: how many dreamers can one marriage stand? But Gabe, that’s why you have to tell her. She’s impossible, but she’s had such a tough time in the world, poor nervous thing. To lose the husband and then—I’m sorry to say it, but I have to—maybe the son.”

  “Why do you keep talking like that? He walked out. It’s not the same thing at all.”

  “Gabe.” Caroline shook my shoulder. “Gabe. Wake up. Doesn’t it ever strike you as odd that after the first year or two we never heard from him? We heard he’d moved to Mexico and then . . .” She made a dial-tone sound. “People don’t just morph. Things happen to them. What, did you think that all this time he was leading some other life as a circus clown in Arizona or something? That Zeus turned him into an antelope? He went to Mexico or some shit, who knows, and we never heard from him again. What does that sound like to you?”

  The morning collapsed in bright pieces around me. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it sounds like.”

  Caroline’s expression softened. “Honey, do you think you can find him and tell him about . . . what’s going on with you? Is that what you’re saying? What would it matter?”

  “He’s my father,” I said. “Don’t you think he’d want to know, that he’d want to help me out?” I let her think that I meant the transfusion.

  “Some fathers, maybe. Not him.” She stretched her legs down the stoop, pointed her toes. “I don’t know who you’ve made him into in your mind, but to me he was one of those guys who’s hiding out all the time. Behind the beard, in the garage, out who knows where at night. He was a scuttler.” She shuddered. “And then he left all those beautiful guitars behind.” She shook her head. Case closed. “What did he think he was going to be? A rock star? The next Bob Dylan?”

  I felt sliced to the quick. “You’re wrong.”

  “He did leave them behind, Gabe,” Caroline said softly. “You know that. Listen to me. Let Janos help you. You can’t live like this. That apartment with all the creepy junk in it—”

  I tossed the end of my lucky red scarf over my shoulder and stood up. “Stop lecturing me, Caroline. I told you, I’ve been feeling better. And even if it isn’t true, it doesn’t help anything to make me feel worse. I’m trying to maintain a positive attitude. The mind-body connection—heard of it?”

  “You’re an asshole,” she said, but she followed me down the stoop to Pineapple Street anyway, like a reluctant shadow. I showed her how to stand by the lamppost up the block. I positioned her so she could get a full view. “I’m so in love with this house. Now look like we’re talking.”

  “What? Did you break into it or something? Is that where all the knickknacks came from? Is this like before?”

  “No. Shhh. That was a long time ago. Come on, look like we’re talking.” Though I was angry at her, I couldn’t help but be excited. I kept my bid to myself, my sweet, pulsing secret.

  “We are talking. All right, all right. Which one is it?”

  I pointed, delicately, with a lift of my chin. I peeked at it over my shoulder and from under my eyelashes.

  But instead of my house, with FOR SALE BY OWNER written on the sign outside, I saw a skeleton. Someone had carefully, methodically taken apart the house since I’d been here last. Someone—a giant, with a giant’s hands, a giant’s strength—had skinned it. For a second I thought my father must have come back and done it while I was sidelined in the hospital.

  The front of the house was stripped to the sheathing. The porch had been removed, and in its place was a rough wooden staircase, braced in the dirt by long, raw pieces of wood, leading to the hole where the front door had been. The yard was bare, muddy, with big truck-tire tracks in it. The iron fence and gate were stacked in pieces, like firewood, along the right side of the yard. Most of the windows were gone, and in their place was thick, clear plastic. The plastic made the house look as if it was hibernating. The siding had been removed from the left side of the house, too, and in one part there were a few—well, what were they exactly? I couldn’t tell. They looked like large square tiles with a pinkish hue to them. If I had to guess, I’d say they were porcelain, but was that possible? Whatever they were, they made an odd mix with the old wooden widow’s walk, still perched, like a battered hat, on the top of the house. The anchor was still there, and under the anchor it was still 1853. The large window on the lower left, one of the windows that had previously been the dim surface of a lake, was now a single, bright sheet of glass that stood open on the diagonal, like a sail. The house was sailing away.

  Oh, God. I put my hands over my eyes. How had this happened? When could it have been done? This was what Alice had been trying to tell me in my vision. Termites wouldn’t help me now. Nothing would help me. I plummeted. />
  Caroline, next to me, shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Gabe. This is someone else’s house, right? Isn’t someone else doing all this work?”

  “Yes,” I said. “This is someone else’s house.”

  “Oh, man, you’re just like Mom.” Caroline shook her head and walked away, back up the block and out of sight. I stared at the skeleton house until my vision blurred.

  I called Carl and explained a few things to him, things I thought he should know, certain impressions, certain emotions. I tried to be quite clear.

  Carl said, “You are crazy. If you ever bother me or my family again, I will have you arrested for harassment. Business is business. It’s over, buster. Lose this number.”

  I threw my phone over the railing of the Promenade into the river. If Pluto found it, I thought bitterly, he could fucking call me.

  That night, at Janos’s, I had a nightmare. In my nightmare, my old blood was emptying out through a tube, but there wasn’t enough new blood coming in through the tube on the other side. The plastic line was pinched in one spot. And I was hungry, so unbearably hungry. In my dream, I couldn’t get enough to eat.

  I woke up with a start, rolled over in bed, still terrified by the pinch in the plastic line, and put my arms around Janos, pressed his strong shoulder blades against my chest. The hair on his thighs was reassuringly thick, alive. The back of his neck smelled like starch and a hint of sweat. No pinch, I reminded myself. Look. No pinch anywhere here. Indeed, Janos was warm, solid, his blood flowing unimpeded through his veins. I wondered if I was actually hungry, if that was what had woken me up, but I wasn’t. On the contrary, I felt slightly nauseated. My sour blood, I thought dismally, was making me sick. My fright, like my hunger in the dream, expanded, inflating just beneath my ribs until it seemed one might crack. Oh fuck, I thought, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.

  I got out of bed, naked. Janos’s house was dark, the furniture hooded by the night. A few glowing red dots near the living room ceiling indicated that the security alarm was on. I wanted to run out of there as fast as I could, just run until I reached the top or the bottom of the island, plunge my arms into the water, splash the filthy, beautiful river water on my face, but instead I rushed into the atrium. The glass door went thush behind me. I leaned against one of the glass walls, my face in my hands. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. My ribs hurt. The swollen nodule on the inside of my left thigh seemed bigger, and it hurt. I crouched down, ass in the dirt. The Tweeties were asleep, heads tucked into their feathered breasts. Brothers, I whispered in bird language, but they didn’t stir. The fan was off. Nothing moved. The air was just barely humid.

  Through the skylight above, I could see the luminous quarter moon, gathering its strength to spring and bite the sun. My ass, my balls, settled into the ground. My right big toe itched. I looked down. In the gloom, I could make out a small, scuttling shape—a pill bug? a centipede? a roach?—moving purposefully over my toe. It traversed my toenail, moved over the downward curve of my big toe, crossed a patch of dirt, and began the journey up the side of my long second toe. I didn’t brush it away. Instead, taking quick, shallow breaths, I watched the determined bug, half wanting to eat it. I put my hands in the dirt, which was nearly as warm as a body. Don’t fall asleep, don’t fall asleep, don’t fall asleep. The bug made it to my third toe, victorious.

  At the Metropolitan Museum, the statue of Saint Margaret emerging from the body of a dragon was easy to overlook, especially if you were hurrying past, hungry, as people usually were. Saint Margaret was too close to the café to be noticed. She was a small figure, perhaps two feet high, carved from brownish alabaster. Her typewritten cardboard label said she had been made in 1475. Her arms were gone, as was the head of the dragon from which she was rising with a benevolent, loving, untroubled expression. The rubies on her headdress, however, were intact. They glittered in the dim gray light of the medieval gallery. She wore a long, simple dress with a full skirt and a robe that fell in folds around her small shoulders and over the back of the dragon, who was rather stout. Her head was inclined to one side and her eyes were closed. Her long wavy hair was loose, her forehead was high, her chin was pointed. She looked so young—too young to be afraid of the dragon or surprised that she had emerged, whole, from within it. Anyone could see that she loved the stout dragon and the dragon loved her, too. They were still one, inseparable at the base; the dragon’s sturdy, scaly paws were braced against the ground, ready to move, to take the little saint where she wanted to go.

  In the past, I had come with concrete requests, like a child waiting to sit on Santa’s knee. Sarah had asked Saint Margaret many things over the years and received many astute replies. But today I felt within me a vague, windy rushing, a striped wheezing, like the accordion before it found a note. Saint Margaret, I thought, tell me who I am. The little saint, still half dragon herself, continued her silent contemplation of everything.

  From here, it all seems so clear. I see myself, an anguished, energetic figure rushing and hopping busily over the curve of the world, full of self-importance and worry, thinking I could read the sky. I studied it every day, took its temperature, ran it over my tongue. I collected endless treasure from the ground and assembled it into what seemed to me patterns and designs that would attract the maximum amount of luck. I burned incense. I made sacrifices—my cell phone, for instance. I made a rule that I could wank only every three days. I hurried down Wall Street, head bent, past the temples. I tended the dead dutifully, if without any particular emotion. I kept my trove of silver bricks intact, hidden in the freezer. That house was gone, but maybe there was another one, a better one, waiting to reveal itself at dusk. I played all the angles, in other words. What else could I have done? What else does anyone ever do?

  I sat in the spindly chair next to Fleur’s magnificent curve of divan. She was sleeping. A silver streak, she looked as if she was about to dissolve into the gold pillow beneath her head. I turned the flash drive over in my hand. This was the end of Stolen at Twilight, though I had some good ideas for Stolen in Flames. I should probably raise my fee again, I thought. Morty, his hair standing on end, his ancient jeans sagging, peeked in.

  “She didn’t wake up yet?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Oh, she will,” he said, and shuffled away.

  I touched the damask throw, fingered the silk. They were truly divine. Being rich made a difference. I held a bit of cashmere to my cheek.

  Fleur’s eyes snapped open. “Put that down,” she said.

  I dropped the divine fabric, my face red.

  “Give me the thing.” She held out her curled hand. Stung, I dropped the flash drive in it. She was in a terrible mood.

  She pulled herself up until she was almost sitting. She frowned. “I know about you,” she said. “I know what you did.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You.” She pointed an accusatory finger with the uncurled hand. “You stole my swans.”

  “Your what? No, I didn’t steal anything.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You little bastard. I know you did. I know all about you. Those. Swans. Were. Mine. You take my money. You lead me on. You help yourself to my knickknacks, some Steuben shit. That’s bad enough. But those swans were a gift from my own sister. Linda gave them to me when I finished my first book. They’ve brought me all my good luck, all my silver and gold. All this”—she waved her skinny good arm—“is because of those fucking swans. And you are going to pay, you rotten shit.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, as forcefully as I could manage. “I don’t have your swans! I’ve never even seen them!”

  “And now you’re lying, on top of it. Let me tell you something. You are done here. We are done. You will never, ever come back here. You will never get another dime from me. And I’ll tell you something else. I know about you, your disease. I put my man on you.”

  “Morty?” I almost laughed at the thought of Morty ducking behind cars and lurking in
doorways, but then, seeing Fleur’s broken face, I didn’t.

  “Not Morty, you idiot. The man I pay. The one who checked you out for me in the beginning.” With the side of her face that smiled, Fleur smiled bitterly. The other side maintained its frown. “I know what you have. You deserve it, and you”—she pointed again, her narrow finger an inch away from my nose—“you’re going to die from it.” She spat on the floor. “I curse you.”

  I felt the blood leave my face. “Jesus Christ, please don’t curse me, Fleur.” I held out my hand. “Please.” I was afraid. Darkness opened beneath my feet. I whispered, “Okay, I’ll give them back.”

  “Too late,” she said. “The damage is done.” She stared at me, unforgiving.

  Without a backward glance, I ran. Past Morty listening at the door, past the springtime meadows, past the white sofas like so many clouds, down the marble hallways, slamming out the front door, careening down the hall with its flocked wallpaper, the clanging fire stairs, running running running past the liverymen and footmen and jesters. Nearly in flight, my feet on the verge of leaving the ground, I ran into the oncoming dusk of Central Park West, where, two blocks down, I finally stopped, bent over, breathing hard. Mama, take this badge off of me. I looked at my open left hand, empty of the flash drive. Only its same tilted, wavy lines in it, which I couldn’t read. I pressed it to my face, breathing in, breathing out. Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door. My feet unmistakably on the ground. If only, I thought, that door would open up and let me in.

  When I got home, I found Caroline sitting at the kitchen table with a cigarette and a cup of black coffee, her hair pulled tightly off her face. In front of her on the rickety kitchen table was a silver brick, but the brick was split open by a jagged tear. The green bills were bursting through the torn plastic wrap and tinfoil.

  “I was looking,” said Caroline in a low, terrible voice, “for some sugar.” She flicked her fingernail against the split-open brick. “Fuck you, Gabriel. Fuck you, big-time.”