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States of Motion

Page 5

by Laura Hulthen Thomas


  Rilke didn’t remember her house having bats, a memory lapse he chose not to share with her at that particular moment. What he recollected about their teenage years was thrashing it out in her cramped kitchen with her bastard-of-a-father while Julia and her mother hollered at his back and her tiny towheaded brother Steven stood with his thumb rammed in his mouth. Before long Rilke found himself craving these scenarios, the thrill of fear and helpless anger put into motion, a feeling he’d later experience as the joyous backswing of a strenuous arrest or a victim’s gratitude. “I do remember, Julia,” he responded promptly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Right then, he scouted the attic for the nest. He checked the rafters for cracks, inspected the roofing seal. Like a damn scaredy-cat he pulled his gun on a quivering shadow that might be a bat clinging to a moldy mattress but turned out to be a trick of a flickering bulb’s uneven light. Later he called Critter Control for an outrageously high quote. For a few days more, he made a show of attentiveness to the problem, which Julia guessed to be all and only show.

  She must have complained about the problem to Handelman, because before Rilke knew it the old man showed up to huddle on the porch with her. Handelman suggested a one-way door, which he offered to install gratis. Julia promptly informed Rilke she’d gone right out and taken care of the problem just like he’d suggested.

  Typical of Handelman’s busy-body outlook on their marriage to jump at the chance to interfere. Last spring Rilke had caught the old man peering into their bedroom from his bathroom window. To keep the peeping-tom shit to a minimum, Rilke installed blackout blinds. He’d told Julia the blinds were to help his daytime sleep. Julia loved the man, so it reflected well on Rilke to keep Handelman’s behavior a secret. Back when they’d first moved into the house on Peachtree Court, Handelman was the damn one-man Welcome Wagon committee, carting over a six-pack and a bag of peaches. By the wounds on his right hand, Julia recognized him as her first real-life hero. The right thumb and index finger ended in stumps at the knuckles. Soft pink scars ran the length of his palm and up his arm like lacy cobwebs. Injuries from an electrical accident at one of his rental properties some years back. The details were the one aspect of the man’s life he didn’t go on about to anyone in earshot, but Julia remembered the incident. Although her bastard-of-a-father owned his crummy house, they lived down the street from a slumlord cluster of sketchy homes. The electrical accident killed a little girl living in one of those rentals. Handelman lost those fingers trying to save the little girl’s life.

  Seeing as Julia’s regard was the one luxury he hadn’t yet pissed away on drink, Handelman offered to install the one-way door at Julia’s earliest convenience. Which turned out to be the very next day. On a late October afternoon, Handelman set to work with the single-minded purpose Rilke knew Julia would admire. Her happiness at the activity, far and away more enthusiastic than what she’d expressed over Rilke’s grueling labor on the siding, made it impossible for Rilke to object to the old man’s infiltration.

  After two days of diligent sawing and hammering that completely disrupted Rilke’s sleep, Handelman announced the bat door was ready. On Rilke’s night off, a full hunter’s moon on the rise, Handelman set up the folding chairs, Julia set out the beer, and they both set to watching the exodus. From the back porch, Rilke watched Julia and the old man stretch out their legs on the backyard grass, looking like kids sprawled in the short beach chairs. The moon’s first crimson light lit the gentle valley of Julia’s lap. They pulled on their beers and chatted away like old and best pals. Rilke surveyed the gable near the chimney where the door, neatly trimmed, swayed in the light breeze. Cutting a hole in the HardiePlank must have cost Handelman some effort, but the wretched old man had done a neat job of it, Rilke noted with, he had to admit, unreasonable consternation.

  Well, he shouldn’t be so hard on the man, even if he was a pain in the ass. In his own way, Rilke owed his happiness to Handelman. At the time of the accident that had killed the little girl, Rilke and Julia, in their junior year at Lorch High, weren’t yet dating but Rilke was in love with her, all right. He was adrift in that lonely, anxious limbo of being so deeply in love he knew he’d have to endure her certain rejection because he couldn’t keep silent any longer, he couldn’t. Julia was beautiful and popular. Rilke was just a fat kid in field hand’s plaid. He lurked in the back of every class, tongue-tied with classmates who ridiculed him as a farm kid. Her rejection was a sure bet. Still, it couldn’t be helped. Even hearing no meant possessing a fleeting part of her, at least. He spent agonizing weeks building the nerve to approach her. He analyzed every moment he saw her alone for declarative potential, not that she was alone very often. Girls like Julia were always fucking populated.

  Then, on a cold winter’s afternoon when he was cutting behind the school to the parking lot, he stumbled upon her huddled in the shop wing’s courtyard. No coat, the lack of protective foresight he’d come to recognize as a typical consequence of her emotional impulses. Chewing gum ferociously, teeth snapping like a farm jack’s clicking. Crying soundlessly behind her pale hand, hiding tears no one was around to see. Jesus Christ. Those tears, terrifying and lovely, had stopped him in his tracks. How had clumsy, brooding Dan Rilke then summoned the presence of mind to bundle her in his Carhartt jacket, stroke her golden hair, rope his arms around her as naturally as if they were already lovers? Her fragile, willowy limbs molded to him. Holding her should have felt like ferrying one of his mother’s precious china cups to the dining table. Don’t you dare drop it, Dan. But her cuddle was determined, instinctual, her body a perfect fit to his. All right. He felt her strength when she clutched his waist, the ripple of muscle her weeping raised along her back.

  She’d stammered out how the little girl she babysat was electrocuted the night before. Storm winds had ripped live wires from the girl’s home right in her path as she was running indoors to take cover. She described how the landlord had lost part of his hand, almost his whole arm, trying to save the girl by pushing the wires away with a tree branch. Which promptly conducted the current that injured him. Which outcome the landlord should have known, Rilke almost pointed out. Julia was as choked up about the man’s heroism as she was about the little girl’s death. He risked his life to try to save her, she repeated. Not exactly true, in Rilke’s view. The tree branch was a half-assed panic move, bound to end badly. But he held his tongue, held her tight, gave himself over to the thrill of her body tucked so perfectly into his. He said all the right things, soothing words he conjured out of some untapped reservoir of nurture. She dried her tears and wiped her nose on his farmer’s plaid. She asked if he would drive her home. As they walked to his pickup, the biting wind froze the shirt’s tearstain. Her ice clung to his bare chest. Helping her out of the truck, walking her to her crumbling stoop, accepting back his jacket now unbearably laced with her mint gum and grief, were the most difficult acts of his life.

  The hope of men Handelman’s heroism had illuminated for Julia had bathed Rilke in the same glow. From that very moment, she attached her hope to him. They were married straight out of high school.

  No matter the straits the bats had landed the marriage in now, the decrepit old man was in no way a rival. Rilke’s tick of jealousy was some other emotion entirely he didn’t care to investigate at that moment, brooding on the porch, staring at the curve of Julia’s lips ringing the bottle’s mouth. So he strolled out to join them. Opened a nonalcoholic beer to be sociable. “Any action out here yet?”

  Handelman caught Rilke’s glance at Julia’s leg relaxed against his knee. The old man knew exactly what Rilke was getting at, but Julia maintained her usual cluelessness, or maybe she was playing dumb on purpose to rile him up.

  “Is it time?” Her lovely voice was hushed. Rilke’s jealousy at her awe almost drove him to grab a real beer from the cooler. Maybe he should get good and drunk for once during the bat show, if the fucking door even worked.

  “Wait a bit.” Handelman drained his b
eer. “The dark will bring them out.”

  The dusk gradually dropped its gloomy mesh. Julia’s silent anticipation was a continuation of the night’s descent. Handelman respected her by keeping quiet for once. Her leg cuddled Handelman’s knee. Neither acknowledged their unconscious cradling, although Rilke felt their contact crawl along his skin like the air’s fast cooling. Back when Handelman’s peeping had riled Rilke up, he’d looked up the old incident report from that electrical accident. He discovered multiple complaints from the tenants about the electrical service. Seen in that light, Handelman’s delay in fixing the problem had resulted in the little girl’s death. The report didn’t substantiate criminal negligence, and the tenants would have been too poor to sue. The injury to his hand was really a testament to how easily he’d gotten off.

  Handelman broke the silence. “Almost there.” Although it was too dark to see it clearly in the eave’s shadow, Julia watched the one-way door, lips slack, eyes held wide.

  Jesus Christ. The drama in the man’s tone. Rilke should take him down a peg right now, tell Julia all about the peeping and a few other things about her hero Handelman, wipe that happy look off her face once and for all.

  A rustling seeped through the door like faraway voices. The first bat emerged, wheeled up and away. The air rang with slapping wings. The door swept open, swung shut, the steady rhythm of an orderly escape. Once freed, the bats glided up to the moon as if Rilke’s attic had all along been a holding room for the night sky.

  Julia laughed. Looked at Handelman with the gratitude she used to bestow upon Rilke after he’d stood up to her father or saved the cost of a plumber with an effective repair or any of the million ways, lifesaving or petty, he’d taken care of her over the years. She slipped her hand into the palm of Handelman’s bad one.

  “Thank you.” Rare vocabulary for her. Handelman heaved himself from the minichair awkwardly to fetch more beer. The man was blushing, for Chrissakes.

  When the door was still for the duration of another beer’s consumption, Julia told Handelman she had something for him and hiked to the house. Handelman diligently avoided Rilke’s glare as if evasion were a sworn duty.

  “Worked like a charm there, right, Gary?” Rilke moved to the beer cooler, stood a bit too close to the man, the tactic to put a troublemaker on the defensive while sniffing out cause.

  “I find it usually does the trick, Dan.” Handelman fixed his bleary gaze just past Rilke’s shoulder. “Tried to make the door blend in with your siding.”

  “Real nice job you did.”

  “Give it a couple of days to let out the stragglers and I’ll seal that right up for the lady.” Handelman popped open another beer. The suds bubbled up the bottle’s neck. The old man licked the head before it streamed down over his hand. “Unless you’d rather do the job your own self.”

  The man’s drunkard odor lurking under the beer’s malt was downright sulfurous. Rilke took a step back. Every time he dealt with Handelman, Rilke was grateful he wasn’t enduring his papa’s last stages. Shackled to drink, that wormy rot inside. Wishing a man dead was kid stuff, which hadn’t stopped Rilke from wishing it on Papa plenty of times even as an adult until last year his wish came blessedly true. Handelman was tempting Rilke into similar mean and childish thoughts, and from the smug look of the man, he knew it, too. “I’ll let you handle it, Gary, seeing as you started the job.”

  “I’m glad for the chance to do something useful for you folks. I’m real attached to Julia. Seeing as Lainie and the grandkids live too far away to visit.”

  Seeing as Lainie didn’t want to have a damn thing to do with her poor-excuse-for-a-father anymore, which Rilke had every sympathy for. “Yeah, Gary, I know how attached you are to looking in on us.”

  “I try my best to keep tabs on you folks.” Handelman swallowed noisily. Clueless or sly, either one.

  “Like from your bathroom there.”

  Handelman didn’t bat an eye, or maybe the flutter in his gobbler’s throat was some stiflement of reaction. “Seems like you got right down to correcting those privacy concerns, didn’t you, Dan?”

  “Some correction was called for, Gary.”

  “Glad I can take a shit now without you folks bearing damn witness.”

  That remark deserved a fuck you if anything did, but Julia returned balancing a white paper lantern and a stick lighter in her hands. Wouldn’t do to abuse Handelman in her earshot no matter how deserved. Julia heaping the blame on Rilke for any rudeness would be automatic. “Help me out with this, Dan.”

  Rilke took the lighter from her.

  “No, Dan, the lantern.” Julia showed him that march of her chin.

  “Well, tell me what to take, then. I’m not a mind reader.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  Handelman said, “Is that one of those things you light up and they float off?”

  “It’s a wish lantern,” Julia said. “You make a wish and then you launch it. And then your wish comes true.”

  Well, the old man would rather have another six-pack or a check for his troubles, Rilke would bet. Wishes were wasted on men like Handelman. On Rilke, too, but Julia knew that. She wouldn’t expect him to play this silly game.

  Julia hustled Rilke to the middle of the yard and instructed him to hold the thin rice paper careful and still while she bent to light the fuel cell. Warned him not to crush the lantern by accident, seeing that he was generally rough and klutzy with delicate objects. When the cell wouldn’t light, Handelman hovered at Julia’s shoulder to give unneeded instruction.

  The breeze picked up, ruffled the lighter’s weak flame. After another try, the lantern glowed at last. Julia stepped back. “OK, now, when Dan lets go, we all make a wish.”

  Rilke would stake cash on Julia’s wish. That the problem of the bats was forever solved.

  Handelman’s wish would breathe life into the girl he’d failed to save from electrocution.

  Rilke’s wish was automatic and childish and mean. That, after Handelman sealed the one-way door for good, a bat or two would remain in the house.

  “Let go, Dan.” Julia’s voice reached him from a distance. He blinked, startled that she stood so close, smelling of cut grass and beer. The fuel cell’s heat warmed the rice paper against his hands. The thin bamboo frame shone black and skeletal through the lantern’s pale glowing skin.

  “You have to let go.” Julia punched his arm near the cut. Not lightly, either. Handelman grinned.

  Rilke clapped his hands together. The lantern crumpled. The bamboo collapsed, projected a satisfying snap like a wishbone’s break. The fuel cell sputtered. Rilke crushed the smoking cell with his boot when he dropped the mess onto the grass.

  Julia drew away from him. A door slammed roughly from the neighbor’s yard on the other side of Rilke’s tall back fence, an invisible impatience. Rilke waited for Julia’s fuck you Dan, her tough and lovely heat.

  If she felt angry, she wasn’t about to show it. Her voice was low, like it had been in the hallway. “Should I be afraid of you, Dan?”

  Handelman retreated to the cooler, drained the beer in progress, opened another.

  Rilke pushed the lantern’s ruins around the grass with his boot.

  “Why?” was what she demanded next. He had to admit some right and reasonable answer was called for under the circumstances, but he wasn’t feeling very right or very reasonable at the moment.

  “Wishes are kid stuff,” he told her. A response he would change if he could.

  Handelman shot him a look as he tipped back the beer bottle that communicated a sly recognition of the unproductive behavior men struggled to hide inside out of pride. Or sadness. Or the desire to remind the folks who needed reminding that good-natured reliability was not a matter of temperament, but will.

  Or maybe the old man was gloating a bit over the marital trouble. What would Julia say if she knew that old man’s hero act was nothing but a fraud? Serve both of them right. He longed to tell her, right then, on the s
pot.

  Julia’s fuck you Dan lay in reserve in the house. She emerged with another damn lantern. Tasked Handelman with the holding this time. Lit the cell on the first try. She took the lantern and offered the glow to Rilke. Her blond hair captured the light like beaded fireflies. A rustling sounded from the direction of the eave. One last bat. Or a mild breeze ruffling the maple tree leaves at the side of the house. Or Rilke’s own breath coming hard and audible although he couldn’t feel the air. He held out his hands, grateful for her second chance.

  “I was saving this one for our anniversary,” Julia said, and let go.

  A nimble wind took the lantern straight and high before a draft dipped it down behind the chimney’s silhouette. The light dimmed only for a moment until the lamp rose above the roofline, steady and bright as the hunter’s moon, caught a steady current, rode the night to the vanishing point. Julia tracked the flight’s bright trail. The glow shrank to a pinprick soon enough, but an illumination from somewhere—a neighbor’s back porch, Handelman’s bathroom window—set her blond hair and her white flowing blouse afire.

  Rilke had married a beautiful and a strong woman, in every way his match and mate.

  He was struggling to keep her and losing that battle. He didn’t understand the nature of the struggle or when trouble had jumped him or why. He could have easily installed the one-way door. He could have released the lantern with the wish lodged deep in his heart, that he could save her from everything she feared the way he used to do.

  “Did you make a wish in time, Gary?” Although she was looking at Handelman, Julia’s sweet tone was cocked full bore at Rilke.

  The old man nodded, a sly maneuver of the chin.

  Rilke knew a few things for certain. Among them that Julia had made her wish in time, and that this wish no longer concerned the bats’ fate.

 

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