by Joe Meno
ARRIVING AT THE South Shore Nursing Home, a little less than a half hour from their house, Jonathan finds his father resting in his semiprivate room—incoherent, weakly mumbling, his thin face strained with frustration. His father does not seem to recognize him. His father’s greenish gray eyes are wide and empty and blank. He is lying in his bed, holding his transistor radio tightly against his chest. Jonathan glances at the old man’s hands as he slowly moves the dial back and forth, his mouth looking slightly frozen, the lips curled in a weak sneer.
Jonathan says, “Hi, Dad, how are you doing?” but he does not get a response. Jonathan takes hold of his father’s hand and immediately the old man seizes his wrist, his grip stiff as a claw.
“I…was…lost,” his father whispers aloud, his voice slow and garbled and gruff. The voice is foreign, the voice of someone just learning to talk.
“Dad, did the doctors tell you what happened?” Jonathan asks.
Henry nods. He mutters, “I’m okay,” which are the final two words he allows himself today. He hopes that his son will somehow understand the blank spaces between these sounds, the significance of the pauses, all the words he happens not to be saying.
“Why did you go to the airport, Dad? Do you hate this place that much? Are you unhappy here? Do you want to find somewhere else? Because we can. I don’t…I mean, well, it’s okay now. Just take it easy. Just stay calm. Are you breathing okay? It doesn’t sound so good. Are you breathing all right?” Jonathan asks.
Henry nods to himself but does not say anything. Just then, Jonathan notices his father’s uncovered feet: they are swollen, purple, and caked in red sores. They are lying uncovered at the end of the bed, a strange, disgusting odor rising from them. Jonathan glances at the curled-up feet, then back at his father.
“Did they explain what you did, Dad?” Jonathan asks again. “You took off from here? And then they found you at the airport. Why did you try and leave, Dad?”
But Henry does not answer.
“Listen, I’m going to go talk to the nurse. I’ll be back in a minute, all right?”
His father looks at him with bright eyes that seem unconvinced. Jonathan unzips his coat and places it in the chair beside the bed. “See. I’m leaving my coat. I’ll be right back. I’m just going to go down the hall.”
Henry nods as his son touches his hand and then slowly closes the door.
THE NURSE SAYS his father escaped around lunchtime and was found at a counter at O’Hare Airport about two hours later, waiting in line to buy an international ticket. He’s been unresponsive since he was discovered and may have suffered a minor stroke of some kind, possibly a small infarction. She describes it as some sort of neurological storm that has passed but may have left his speech and reflexes slightly diminished. She tells him the old man refuses to eat or get out of bed. He refuses to be washed and the blood clots in his legs and feet are getting worse. He has been sedated because he was threatening the nurses, clawing at them angrily when they wheeled him back into his room. He has been throwing things, the nurse, a round-faced black lady named Rhoda, says, adding, “He threw his food tray right at me and I told him that was no way for a man his age to act.”
Jonathan nods, not knowing what to say.
“I wanted to warn you,” the nurse whispers, placing a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “I think he might be getting towards the end here. If he had a stroke, it wasn’t so bad, but a lot of the time they know they’re reaching the end. They get sort of ornery like that. They won’t get out of the bed. They start talking to their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters who have all passed. I just want to warn you, Mr. Casper. If he’s got other family, you ought to let them know.”
Jonathan nods again and says thanks. He slowly walks down to his father’s room and stops in the doorway, watching the old man whispering something to himself, pulling the sheet tight against his chest. Jonathan smiles softly, holding his father’s hand.
“Okay, Dad, I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon to speak with the doctor. Maybe I’ll bring the girls with me. How does that sound?” Jonathan asks, then leans over and kisses his father’s wrinkled forehead. His father nods, momentarily appeased, his heavy eyelids fluttering, the narcotics slipping through his system.
“Okay, Dad, I’ll be back sometime tomorrow. You hang in there. You listen to the nurses, okay? They want to give you a bath, you should let them.”
Henry nods, opening his eyes, looking up at his son. He nods, then turns his head, staring out the window at the moonlit night.
ON THE RIDE HOME, even with the Peugeot stalling twice, Jonathan does not begin to cry. Not until he is near the house, thinking of his father, so tall, as sharp, as quick-witted a man Jonathan has ever known, lying there, muttering unintelligible nonsense. Thinking of his hands, cramped and clawlike, and his feet, purple and bruised, Jonathan softly begins to weep, just a tear or two, just enough to make him feel sad and slightly embarrassed.
WHEN HE FINALLY gets home, he finds Madeline on the couch asleep. Has she been waiting up for him? The thought makes Jonathan smile. The television is on and gives her face a soft blue glow. Her robe is bundled tightly at the waist, her eyelids are closed, her long eyelashes lightly fluttering. Jonathan stands above her, gently touching her cheek. In her sleep, she smiles. Jonathan decides not to wake her, switching off the TV. He leans over carefully and kisses her earlobe, pulling the small afghan up over her bare feet. Suddenly she is startled, and sits up, like a child, wiping her eyes.
“You’re home?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“What happened? How is he?”
“It doesn’t look good. He can barely talk. His legs, his feet. He won’t get out of bed.”
“Do you want me to make some coffee? We have some decaf, I think.”
“No,” he says, frowning. “Go back to sleep.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Maybe I’ll try to work for a while.”
“Why don’t you come up to bed with me?”
Madeline touches his hand softly, so gently. He nods, his heart weak and folding. “Do you want me to?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Just come up with me.”
Jonathan nods his head slowly. “Okay, I will, in a couple of minutes.” He lets go of his wife’s hand and then shuffles quietly into the den, where he shuts the door. Jonathan finds his penlight at his desk and then climbs beneath the tent of sheets, feeling like a boy, small and young and lost. There, on the floor, is an anatomical drawing of the mysterious prehistoric giant squid. There is an empty dish with crumbs. There is a map of the world’s oceans, folded in twelve sections. The lines and patterns, the underwater mountains and ridges, all different shades of blue, suddenly seem blurry. Jonathan holds the small light over the drawing of the squid, drawing an X through its three still hearts. None of this, none of this makes any sense to him.
Seven
A. Because Madeline does not want to go to sleep without Jonathan, she waits up for some time, then abruptly decides to take a look for the cloud-figure in the backyard. Amelia is upstairs on her computer, the muted echo of her fingers tapping on the keyboard. Thisbe is already in bed asleep, or maybe she is just lying there praying. Madeline mopes around the house for a few moments, straightening a picture here, pushing in a vacant chair at the kitchen table. That’s when she decides to go looking for the cloud-man. She finds the flashlight in the mess of the utility drawer and slips on her gym shoes. Outside, Madeline thinks, it still feels like it’s summer. There is dew already on the grass, the moon high like a white apple hanging from some invisible branch in the sky. Her neighbors on the west side, the Amberstans, are asleep, the noise of their air conditioner rattling from their bedroom window. Madeline steps into the rectangular shadow cast by their small garage and flashes the light around, poking holes of brightness into the dark air above her head. The outlines of the trees quickly flicker into view, the skeletal shape of a twig, the silhouette of a glimmering lea
f. Staring through the opening of the trees, Madeline sees something glimmering faintly up there, it is rounded and nearly undetectable, the soft figure of the man-shaped cloud. Madeline is surprised by how close it seems, floating there just a few inches above the topmost branches. Stunned for a moment, she switches off the flashlight, lowering it to her side. She glances around quickly to see if anyone else is watching, but the entire neighborhood has gone to sleep. Madeline switches on the flashlight once more and points it directly at the center of the strange cloud, and this time the light makes the object hanging in the sky perfectly luminous and perfectly transparent. Madeline can almost see right through it. She can see the cloud’s feet, which are pointed, shaped like shoes, she can see each of the cloud’s fingers, she can see the shape of an ear. Madeline lowers her flashlight and the cloud becomes opaque once again. Then something wonderful happens. The cloud begins to glow, just for a moment, flashing a single time, then going dark again. Madeline opens her mouth, her heart beating fast, then points the flashlight at the cloud and switches it on and off, on and off, twice. When the flashlight’s beam goes dark, the cloud glows in response, blinking with light, exactly twice. Madeline drops the flashlight in the grass, then, stumbling for it, she finds it and shines it up at the cloud again. “Hello?” she softly whispers. “Hello?”
B. The cloud does not respond. Madeline switches off the flashlight and hurries back into the house. Madeline does not sleep a wink all night. She waits the rest of the night for Jonathan to come to bed, panicked and excited, wondering what she is going to tell him.
C. Madeline decides Jonathan is an immature, selfish asshole and that she is never talking to him again. She decides she is not going to tell him about the cloud, not ever. She decides she will talk to him when she is good and ready. But not tomorrow. Definitely not tomorrow. Tomorrow night at the earliest and maybe not even then.
D. At work the next day, Tuesday morning, Madeline finds another two dead pigeons. Again, both of them are female, and after some quick lab work, she finds both of them have been raped. Checking their tag numbers, Madeline makes another gruesome discovery: the purple-hued female from the study coop, the bird which she has unprofessionally dubbed Lucy, is one of the animals that has been killed during the night.
E. Madeline’s experiment is a complete and total disaster. She stands outside the pigeons’ enclosure for two and a half hours observing the birds’ interactions but none of the beta males exhibit any particularly violent behaviors today. Then, just about fifteen minutes before lunch, Madeline watches one of the beta males mount a submissive female. Madeline does not intercede. The submissive female tries to fight off the male’s aggressive advances. The male, cornering the female, mounts her unsuccessfully again and again, his claws scratching at her puffy white and gray feathers. The female refuses to submit and the male refuses to acknowledge his failure. The male tears at the other bird’s back, scoring her skin, until Madeline opens the gate, shouting, scaring the beta male away. Why is this happening? she wonders. The female certainly should have relented. The male is hard-wired to expect female sexual submission. But the female is completely unwilling to participate. What has gone wrong in this tiny, miniature world of hers?
F. Today Madeline does not feel bad about smoking a cigarette during her lunch. Laura, the intern, has taken the day off. With a certain giddiness, Madeline climbs into the driver’s seat of the Volvo, while Eric, the other researcher, fumbles for the package of cigarettes inside his lab coat. He offers Madeline one, then fingers a cigarette from the pack for himself. He then hands his silver lighter to Madeline, who, smiling, lights the cigarette and inhales deeply. She closes her eyes and imagines being a cloud of smoke, ephemeral, weightless, rising higher and higher into the sky, until she is just air, until she is absolutely gone. She absentmindedly passes the lighter back to Eric. When Madeline leans over to turn the radio on, Eric reaches over and places his large white fingers on the outside of her gray sweater, his palm gently cupping her breast. Madeline does not say anything. She stares at him, shocked, and maybe Eric can see the shock in her eyes, because he just nods, then slowly lowers his hand.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I just thought…I thought…,” he mutters, dropping his hand back to his side, staring straight ahead for a moment.
“No, it’s okay,” Madeline mutters. “I mean, I…it’s no big deal,” but Eric is already scrambling for the door handle, and without a single word, he pulls himself out, stumbling back inside the research facility.
“Wow, okay,” Madeline whispers to herself. “Wow.”
G. The cloud-figure is still floating there when Madeline comes home, which weirds her out even more. Madeline stares up into the sky, where the cloud-man continues to hover. She taps her foot on the sidewalk, then crosses the yard, glancing up at its faint shape, its nearly dotted outline.
“Hello?” she says again, but the cloud still does not respond.
H. Of course, Madeline finds Jonathan still hiding in the den. He is sitting cross-legged beneath the tent of white bedsheets. Madeline stands in the doorway, staring into the small room, which is dark, other blankets and sheets covering the two windows. Jonathan is huddled beneath the fort, reading something with a penlight.
“Jonathan?”
“Yes?”
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Do you want to talk?” she asks, kneeling beside the opening. “The kids are busy. We can be alone and talk.”
“I don’t think so right now.”
“What’s going on in there?” she asks, opening the flap. She can see his dirty gym shoes, which were white once but now look gray, his blue sweatpants, but not his face. “What are you doing?”
“I just found out the French may have found Tusoteuthis longa. They think they may have it on their side-scanning sonar.”
“Shit. I’m sorry to hear that,” she says, frowning.
“Well, they had more money. Better support. We really couldn’t compete.”
“Are you going to want to come out and talk about what’s happening with your dad? Do you want us to all go visit him tonight?”
“No. I was just there. I just can’t deal with it right now.”
“Jonathan?”
“Yes.”
“What about me? What about you and me? Are you going to come back upstairs ever? I thought we were going to work to fix all of this.”
“I can’t,” Jonathan whispers. “I can’t fix anything right now.”
“Great,” Madeline murmurs and shuts the flap.
I. Madeline does not know what to do, so she flips through the channels to find out what has happened to the captured soldier in Iraq. There is no news. There are two car bombs, one outside Basra, the other in Baghdad. Thirty-six people are dead. Madeline switches from cable news channel to cable news channel and finally finds something about the missing soldier on Fox. They are interviewing the soldier’s mother. She is standing on the front steps of her porch, partly hidden by a white screen door, and is telling the world that her son appeared to her last night in dream and she fears he is already dead. The anchorman reminds the audience that the coalition forces have two more days to comply with the insurgents’ demands before they will decapitate the captured soldier. Madeline decides to turn off the television. Upstairs, she hears Amelia playing her music too loudly. She suddenly remembers that Amelia has been home all week because of her suspension. Madeline gets up and calls from the bottom of the stairs.
“What is it?” Amelia asks.
“Are you doing schoolwork right now?”
“No.”
“Well, what are you doing?”
“Just listening to music.”
“I need some help with the groceries. I want you to come with.”
“But Mom—”
“Come on, let’s go.”
J. Madeline finds herself at the supermarket, grocery shopping with her oldest daughter, having a conversation she’d
rather not have. Madeline is pushing the cart down the frozen food aisle when Amelia turns to her and asks, “Mom?”
“Yes?”
“What’s happening with you and Dad?”
“Your father is living in the den.”
“I know. But like I thought you were going to try and work things out.”
“Well, to be completely honest, so did I.”
“It seems exactly like the last time you guys were separated.”
“It is. That’s what’s making me crazy. It is exactly the same thing. It’s total bullshit.”
“He seems pretty upset about Grandpa,” Amelia murmurs. “I mean, so maybe it’s not all his fault.”
Madeline nods. “I know. But I want you to know there’s a good chance this might be it for your father and me. I don’t want you to mention it to Thisbe. But I just want you to know what might happen.”
Amelia nods, trying to look both concerned and unafraid. “Is Dad going to be moving out?”
“Well, we’re not moving,” Madeline says. “If he wants to be an idiot, he can be the one who moves.”
Amelia nods again, pushing the cart down the aisle. “But maybe you guys will change your mind again,” she whispers, sounding exactly like she did when she was nine.
