The wind has died down. Apart from the rustling leaves, it’s quiet. Standing motionless on the patio outside the sunroom, Thomas listens. Not a cloud in the sky. But he can’t see the moon. The darkness seems completely impenetrable. Then he senses something near the house. The cold air is moist and heavy to breathe. From where he stands he can just make out the barn around six hundred feet ahead, a behemoth. He feels uneasy. It’s as though something is tugging at his diaphragm, so that he can hardly stand still, as though something manic inside him is rapidly filling with air. Carefully he steps forward. The sheep are gray-white, hazy specks in what must be their pasture. A horse whinnies nearby. He sees the parked cars and some tall trees beside the main house. He tilts his head and glares up at the flicker of distant stars. A cat rubs itself against his leg. He jumps, startled, and stumbles forward until he reaches the decaying wooden barn. He follows its surface with his hands. Here’s the sliding barn door, but where’s the paddock door? He tries to recall where it is, but nothing comes to mind. The darkness is also in his head, and there’s nothing more to do than feel his way forward until he finds it. And so, like a blind man hunched over, his breathing raspy and erratic, Thomas O’Mally Lindström slowly circles the large, enclosed structure. He trips over a branch. His shoes sink into the mud. Splinters jab into his fingers and hands. An owl hoots close by. Something whizzes toward him, then suddenly changes direction. Bats. He bumps into something made of cement. Not until he’s halfway around the barn does he finally locate the door. It creaks when he pushes it open. In the middle of the room, there’s a large wooden stove with a glass front; a crisp orange fire crackles in it, giving off some light. He feels his way toward the switch and snaps on the fluorescent lights that dangle from the ceiling on thin steel wires. There’s the big loom, and the little one. Woven baskets stuffed with thick, soft balls of yarn, along with the various implements that are apparently used to process the raw wool. The straw-colored wooden floors are untidy, and smeared with dirt. A series of rectangular windows run the length of the barn all the way up under the roof beams, forming a kind of band of glass all the way around, except on the far wall where the sliding door is. The light in here must be amazing during the day, Thomas thinks, sitting on Helena’s weaving bench. He runs his fingers along the warp’s seam. Blue and purple shades, a flowing, expressionistic pattern. The fabric is coarse. This must be one of the large tapestries she’s known for. He slumps. The fire crackles comfortingly. Air mattresses lie scattered across the floor, two and two together, with a good distance between each pair; they’ve already been made, with sheets and pillows and even neatly folded towels on every one. When he was young he slept here quite a bit. He and Jenny. He and Maloney. He and various girlfriends: Danuza, Seline, Beatriz. Back then the old, musty hay was still on the floor and the carcasses of rust-bucket tractors hulked in darkened corners. Thanks to the gaps in the barn’s siding, mice and rats were a common sight whenever you woke at night and needed to piss. But the renovated space looks much different now, inviting and clean. They must have insulated the walls before hammering up drywall. Hard to believe they did it themselves. You can do so little for yourself, Thomas thinks, wading across the room to the nearest mattress. He slumps onto it, feeling like little more than a sack of clattering bones. Burying his face in the pillow, he smells the reassuring scent of fresh air and lavender.
He must’ve dozed off. Because all at once he sits up with a grunt, his heart thumping; someone’s in the room. At first he can’t see anyone, then he catches sight of Luke beside the wood stove. He’s standing motionless, his back to Thomas, staring into the flames and doing something with his hands. But Thomas can’t see what. Luke spins toward him suddenly. “Hey, Thomas,” he says slowly, as though lingering over the sound of his name. “You already went to bed?” Luke’s holding a rifle in his hands. He aims it at Thomas. “Bang!” he says, laughing, low. “I saw a light out here, and I wanted to look at Kristin’s guns. They’re not exactly new. They’re practically antiques. It’s a wonder she can hit anything with them.” Luke disappears behind the stove and returns empty-handed. “There’s dessert. You want to go back in?” Thomas gets to his feet, stuffing his shirt into his pants. Luke steps toward him. Thomas feels weirdly threatened. Exposed. But then Luke hands him a joint. “You got a light?”
They stand in the darkness underneath the awning, beside the pantry. Luke lights the joint and tokes deeply before handing it to Thomas. “Why not?” Thomas mutters, still groggy after his nap. The fat, white smoke smells sweet and good, of herbs and fresh straw. Thomas coughs. It’s been a long time since he’s smoked pot. “So you and Alice are going for a hike tomorrow?” he asks, puffing on the joint again.
“Do you want to come with us?” Luke says, looking straight at Thomas. These alert hazel eyes, pupils black as coal. For a moment, Luke’s face is clearly visible in the light from the pantry. Then he draws back into the shadow again. “We’re heading up into the mountains.”
Thomas nods without thinking. “What time are you going?”
“Around ten, I think.”
“Are you and Alice dating?” Thomas asks, hastily and suddenly.
Luke turns and regards him. Then he chuckles. “Can’t say that we are. I think of her more like a cousin.”
“A cousin?”
“Yeah, something like that. She’s family to me.” Thomas can’t believe what he’s hearing. Alice sure as hell isn’t family to Luke. That’s an insult.
“What do you actually do? How do you make money?”
“Oh, all sorts of things, Thomas. For me that’s the only way to live. It takes many bricks to build a house, so to speak.”
Luke takes the joint from Thomas. Their hands touch for a split second. Luke’s fingers are long and slender, his skin warm. Thomas pulls his hand away. “And what does ‘all sorts of things’ mean?”
“It varies. I deal in this and that. I bartend off and on and . . .”
“At Frank and Fatso’s?”
“There too. Yeah, why?”
“Just wondering,” Thomas says. Luke flicks the butt of the joint into the grass. From down in the grove come the sharp shrieks of birds, the flailing of wings. The sound grows louder. A desperate, hoarse screech, a commotion. “The owl’s hunting,” Luke smiles, his face once more within the patch of window light, but pale as a moon. Of course it’s the owl hunting, Thomas thinks, you don’t need to tell me. Fucking know-it-all.
“He hunts them down in the sky, he gives them a grave in the breezes. The sparrows,” Luke continues, his voice husky.
“What did you say?” Thomas stares at Luke’s half-turned face. “A grave. For the birds,” Luke says, “they don’t stand a chance. It snatches them in mid-flight. And then it takes their chicks.”
Thomas wants to say something more, something about the poem, something about his father, but he’s so edgy and nonplussed that he can’t utter a single word. Someone raps on the window from inside. Alice waves for them to come in.
Luke has turned and now looks directly at him. In a clear voice he says, “Did you bring good shoes?”
Thomas scrutinizes him, puzzled.
“Didn’t you say you want to go hiking with us?”
Luke waves at Alice and steps toward the door, but Thomas holds him back, gripping his shoulder. “One more thing.”
Luke pauses and turns his head.
“Your mother still alive?”
“Why do you ask that?” There’s something unpleasant about the way he says it, a kind of snarl.
“Just wondering.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m trying to get to know you better, that’s all,” Thomas says, “now that you think we’re family. Now that you quote Celan.” Luke smiles as if he’s withholding a secret, his mouth closed. He glances at the ground. His lush eyelashes throw shadows on his cheeks. Alice raps again, this time impatiently. Thomas grips Luke’s jacket more firmly. “I knew Rose when I was a kid. She was j
ust a young girl then.” He feels the pot’s effect now and, to his relief, his voice sounds gentle and friendly. Luke relaxes.
“Okay. Yes. She’s alive. But I have practically zero contact with her.”
“Because you don’t want to see her?”
“Maybe,” Luke says, grabbing the doorknob.
“Fatso must feel bad about that. He really likes his sister, doesn’t he?”
Luke doesn’t respond, and Thomas lets go of his shoulder. To Thomas, at the moment the door swings open the inside light appears to wash over them like a wave of ocher-colored desert sand. Alice’s smiling face is close to theirs. “We’ve got frozen custard,” she says, holding the door for them. He’s high and he’s hot. His skin prickles in an especially pleasant way, and he wants to laugh out loud. He glances down at himself and feels surprisingly happy: His legs move of their own accord, he’s gliding forward. He thinks of an old song and recalls every detail of the guitar solo that followed the first refrain—it’s as though the band’s playing right in his ears. A song from the deepest recesses of his mind, he thinks. Hard to believe it’s still in there after all these years.
Maloney dishes out the frozen custard, which Jenny has decorated with canned fruits. Coffee steams in mugs. The twins cling to their mother, but when Alice sits, they flock to her instead. She tugs one onto her lap and wraps her in her arms. It’s Nina; the girl blushes, her eyes beaming happily. Maya sits cautiously beside them, and Alice leans over and whispers to her, as if she wants to be democratic, as if she wants to share her caresses equally: It looks as though she’s asking her something. Maya nods and glances at the floor. An idiotic smile is now plastered on Luke’s face. He greedily shovels dessert into his mouth. His lower lip tugs downward, as if it’s trying to locate his chin, making the glistening red flap of skin behind his lip visible. Helena sits next to Jenny. Thomas can’t make out what they’re saying. What he hears instead is the clack of spoons on the porcelain. After shifting seats, Patricia’s now next to Kristin. “Where’d you go?” Maloney asks Thomas, getting his attention. “Were you out looking at the stars? Hey!” He lowers his voice, and leans across the table. “You look like someone seeing stars right now. What the hell, were you smoking dope?” And almost as a whisper: “Where did you get it? Is there more?”
“Ask Luke.”
Maloney shoots a glance toward Luke, who’s ladling more frozen custard onto his plate. He drops a hunk of canned peach onto the floor and leans over to retrieve it, but then gives up and focuses on his new portion instead.
“You could’ve invited me, O’Mally. What kind of friend are you?”
Thomas smiles goofily and wants to say something. But Maloney stares enviously across the long table and mumbles, “Goddamn, he’s sure got the munchies.” Luke dries custard from his cheek with his napkin. His red eyes meet Thomas’s, and he smiles from ear to ear. Thomas can’t help but smile back; it feels unnatural and false not to. The new softness in his face is irresistible.
“It’s time for a game!” Kristin calls out, standing. “Come. Shall we repair to the parlor?” There are crimson splotches on her cheeks. She gestures invitingly with her arms. “C’mon! Thomas and Maloney. Let’s go! Maya and Nina have prepared questions.” And so everyone tumbles more or less tipsy and bubbly into the living room. Alice crawls immediately onto the couch with the twins clutching onto her like a pair of small monkeys. Luke collapses into the big wingback chair before anyone can tell him that’s Kristin’s seat. Slow on the uptake, Thomas winds up in a beanbag chair that’s impossible to get comfortable in; it feels awkward sitting so low to the floor, knees touching his chest. Patricia settles on a footstool, and Maloney brings chairs from the kitchen for himself and Jenny. The low-hanging, rose-pink rice paper lamps cast a reddish sheen over the living room. The dog ambles in and plops down at Maloney’s feet. Helena sits, erect and cross-legged, on one of the many lambskin rugs adorning the floor. Kristin stretches out behind her, looping herself around Helena, curling her arm, and resting her head on her palm. “Okay girls,” she says, nodding to the twins. “You’re up.” Maya begins, stuttering, until her sister talks over her. “So, we want to ask you some questions. Or Kristin told us we should ask you about some things (Kristin shakes her head, smiling). First—I mean first question: ‘What is your favorite food?’” They respond cheerfully. Maloney shouts, “Anything fatty!” Patricia gives the question serious consideration, thinking for some time before deciding on stewed rhubarb. Closing her eyes, Helena says, “Oysters,” to which Kristin makes a surprised face. Luke says, “What? My favorite food? Do I have a favorite?”
“Yes, you do!” Nina screeches eagerly.
“Lasagna. Or turbot. And frozen custard!” Patricia and Helena apparently feel inspired to applaud excitedly. And so it continues. Favorite film. Best friend (“Maloney,” Thomas says. “Oh, now I’m not so sure,” Maloney responds, causing Jenny to howl with laughter), but when Alice falls silent so too does the entire living room, and then she whispers, “You, Luke” and glances at him, looking lovely. Beneath his giddy pot-mask, Thomas stiffens, his bones stiffen though his muscles are soft, his heart stiffens in its calm rhythm, skips a beat or maybe races ahead too quickly. Something happens that doesn’t feel good. “I thought it was Maria,” Jenny says, challenging her daughter.
“Not anymore. Now it’s Luke,” Alice says, lifting her chin. Then comes Maya’s next question, and they’ve reached the end of the game: “Who do you miss the most in your family?”
“My father,” Nina whispers. Helena and Kristin look at the girl in dismay. “But you don’t have a father, we had a sperm donor, you know that, right?” Helena sounds as if she has wool in her mouth.
“That’s why I miss him,” Nina mumbles, tucking her head under Alice’s arm.
“I miss my mother most of all.” It’s Jenny’s turn, and her lips begin to quiver. “I really mean that. I do, Thomas!” She’s clearly drunk, her eyes are swimming. “Though I was so little . . . when she disappeared. I have . . . a hole inside me where she was. I do!” She lifts her chin, a martyred expression on her face. “Oh.” Jenny lowers her head and Maloney hugs her. “You cry so easily, sweetheart.”
I’m in a circus, Thomas thinks. An emotional circus. It’s a TV show. It’s a group therapy roundtable with some sorry psychologist. Then he hears Maya’s clear voice calling out his name: “Thomas? Uncle Thomas? Who do you miss the most in your family? They don’t have to be dead.”
“Nobody,” he says. “I don’t miss anyone. I’m not sentimental.”
“Ha!” Jenny interrupts. “You’re a liar. He’s unbelievably sentimental. Just like his uncles. He even looks like them. Or he did anyway, back when he was still young and handsome.”
“Yes, he does,” Kristin says. “I don’t know if they were sentimental, but they’re the ones I miss the most. My brothers. I miss my brothers.”
“That’s right,” Helena says, reaching back to touch Kristin’s knee. “You do.”
“Don’t you miss Mom?” Jenny asks.
“Of course. You know I do, Jenny.”
“Where are your brothers?” Maloney asks, following a silence. You fucking know the answer to that, Thomas thinks. I told you.
“They’re dead. Many years ago now. Meningitis. The doctor came too late. We lived way out in the country back then.”
“In the big house,” Nina says.
“That’s right. In the big house. Tom died ten hours after Jon. They were only eighteen. The exact same age as you now, Alice.”
Everyone turns toward Alice with her ultra-short hair, sprawled on the couch beneath the wall tapestries. The two skinny girls are twined around her like yarn on a spinning wheel.
“Relax, people,” Alice says, grinning. “I’m not dead yet.”
Kristin and Maloney are the first to laugh. The others follow suit.
“Nope, you’re not!”
“Thank God!”
Liberating laughter, Thomas thinks, smiling
to himself. His eyes slide shut, his body is so relaxed and heavy that he couldn’t possibly budge an inch. And it feels so good, so good. He imagines his two uncles in the big yard, their short blond hair, shiny and glistening in the sunlight, slicked back, their knobby knees poking out of their dark shorts; the twins whom his mother told him about when he was in bed, because he so badly wanted to know about them, because he pestered her; his mother’s voice warm and low, maybe she made up all the stories just to make him happy. Tom and Jon, the magical uncles who were now in heaven, the innocent pair who’d played so divinely on the piano in the conservatory, who had such a great future ahead of them. And then: dead, gone, in a single feverish day. The doctor stood there with his bag, unable to bring them back to life. The images flit through Thomas on delicate, flailing wings. “Tell me about the time Tom fell in the lake.” “Tell me about Jon! That one about the loose tooth that he swallowed.” “Or that time they got a little horse, and you taught them how to ride.” “Or when Tom painted a huge tiger on the kitchen wall!” His child-voice is hoarse and extremely close, practically oozing from his adult vocal chords, his throat. He can almost feel his Adam’s apple vibrating. He can feel his mother stroking his neck. A mosquito bite itches on his thigh from under the duvet. And there’s a wall light with its blue screen, its special evening light. His mother’s silhouette on the wallpaper. Later, he’s rustled awake by Patricia. She helps him out of the beanbag chair and, with Kristin’s assistance, guides him into the cold night, across the yard to the barn, and he struggles to get his long legs into the sleeping bag while Patricia, irritated, sits up, then down, waiting beside him in her sleeping bag. All this remains in a foggy haze—until he wakes in the middle of the night to a chorus of breathing, the sleeping flock. He was so incredibly tired, vaguely recalls that Luke resembled a kind of Jesus figure or king sitting in the wingback chair, and that Jenny couldn’t stop talking about her uncles, whom she didn’t even remember, that Helena missed her grandmother, who’d had a good head on her shoulders, and smelled of oranges (though that could’ve been something he’d made up), and that he’d thought he was the only normal person in his entire family of bastards and outcasts. Now he believes this was unnecessarily hostile on his part. He’s in his sleeping bag, his feet sweaty. Around him it’s pitch dark. He’s insanely thirsty. He tries to conjure up images of himself as a boy, his mother. But now the images are gone. Something tickles his left ear, he puts his finger in and wiggles it around. When he pulls the finger out, he can hear a zipper slowly unzipping, after which someone stands very quietly, and begins to move searchingly, barefooted, across the floor. He props himself up on his elbows and sees that it’s Luke with a flashlight; its bluish cone guides him, a well-lit path leading to the door. Luke gently unbolts the door, then he’s outside.
Rock, Paper, Scissors Page 20
