by Joe Meno
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT happens in near silence. Thisbe searches through her grandfather’s dresser for some clothes, Amelia, a little stronger, tries to help their grandfather out of bed. It is rough going at first, on her own. The old man’s purple, swollen feet and spindly little legs do not seem willing to bend. Their grandfather smiles at them kindly the whole time and does not ask for an explanation. To him, perhaps they are two other girls, twins, their nearly identical faces and dark hair, something from a dream or a memory. He is happy to see them, with their voices and dark eyelashes, with the softness of their hair and hands. He knows, somehow, that they have come to save him.
“I’m not so sure about this,” Amelia hisses over her shoulder. “I can’t get his legs to move.”
“We need to get his wheelchair.”
“Great. Where are we going to find that?”
Thisbe twitches her nose, surveying the room. “Go ask the nurse for one. Tell her we’re going to take him for a walk.”
“What if she says no?” Amelia asks.
“That’s why you’re here. That’s why I asked you to help. You’re good at being pushy. I’ll get him dressed.”
Amelia rolls her eyes and abandons her grandfather at the bed, placing his legs back beneath the starchy sheet. Thisbe has found a pair of large gray pants, a button-up sweater, and a blue stocking hat. Very gently, she begins to work the pants up her grandfather’s narrow legs, over his pajama bottoms, buckling them at his hipless waist, then she slips on a pair of dark socks. Leaning him against her equally thin frame, she works the sweater over his hospital gown. By the time Amelia returns with the wheelchair, its left wheel squeaking loudly as it rattles down the hall and into the room, Thisbe has their grandfather dressed. Yes, he looks like a madman, yes, he is totally disheveled, his gown tucked into his pants, the sweater buttoned up wrongly, everything looking enormous on his wilted body, but he hasn’t tried to stop them yet. He now sits leaning against Thisbe, his hazel eyes glowing.
“I found a bunch of wheelchairs at the end of the hall,” Amelia explains. “I don’t think anyone noticed.”
“Good. Help me get him into it.”
Together, they lift their grandfather from the bed to the wheelchair. When he is settled, he makes a little sound, like a sigh, and then, turning, he reaches up to place his papery-thin hand against Thisbe’s cheek. Thisbe smiles, fits the stocking cap over her grandfather’s head, then takes the two handles of the wheelchair in her hands. Before they cross the threshold into the tile hallway, Amelia, glancing down toward the nurses’ station, whispers, “I don’t know if this is such a good idea. I mean…I don’t know why we’re even doing this.”
Thisbe, undeterred by this last-minute hesitation, pushes the wheelchair into the harsh lights of the hall and answers, “Because we are.” Together, they walk behind their grandfather, the wheels of the chair squeaking with each full revolution, closer and closer to the octagon-shaped nurses’ station. “If they say anything, you have to talk,” Thisbe says. Amelia nods, sizing up the three nurses buzzing at their desk. Step by step, they move down the hall, the wheels giving a squeak every few seconds. They are passing the desk, the nurses laughing with each other about something. One of them, a heavyset black lady in a pink smock, gives Thisbe a suspicious look, which Thisbe, immediately, without having to think, returns with the most angelic-looking smile she can form with her lips, still pushing the wheelchair along. “How’s Mr. Casper today?” the heavyset nurse asks, and before Thisbe can stutter a half-formed response, Amelia has hit the security door button and says, “We’re just taking him for a walk around the block.” The glass security door opens and the two girls pass through, the sound of the elevator arriving bringing an end to that particularly uncomfortable conversation. When they hit the bottom floor, Amelia stumbles out of the elevator, then through the front doors to the street, where she hails a cab. Thisbe, smiling at the security guard as she passes, meets his question, “Taking Gramps for a walk?” with a single nod, before rushing her grandfather through the glass doors and finally outside. Already Amelia has gotten a cab: it’s waiting near the end of the block, its taillights flashing bright red as it idles. Amelia opens the back door and helps lift her grandfather into the backseat, as Thisbe climbs around the other side and keeps him upright, before buckling him in.
“Okay, so where are we going?” Amelia asks, but Thisbe just nods, taking her grandfather’s hand, making sure he is properly bundled up. The taxi driver, a young fellow in an orange and green dashiki, helps Amelia fold the wheelchair up, then he opens the trunk and places it inside. Amelia joins him in the front seat, before he puts the cab into drive and asks, “Where to?” in a distinctly African accent. Thisbe tells him their destination and the driver nods, enters something into his fare computer, and pulls away into traffic. From the backseat, staring out the window, Thisbe sees the autumn sky is cloudy, overcast, dismally gray. The sun, hidden behind a heavy cast of cumulus, does not offer much in the way of encouragement. As the cab winds its way north and east, Thisbe silently wonders if what she has done is the right thing. Beside her, her grandfather breathes heavily, glancing with wonder at the world flying by.
TOGETHER, ON THE paved path along the eastern edge of the great lake, the two girls push their grandfather along, the wheelchair moving a little uneasily against the November wind. The lakefront park, and its wide field of grass, green only a few weeks ago, now looks drab, the lake itself choppy with gray waves. Thisbe pulls the stocking cap down over her grandfather’s ears as they trudge along, past the yellowed stone fieldhouse, past the athletic field, past the end of the paved walkway. Thisbe has to turn their grandfather around backward, pulling him up the slight muddy embankment, past the spot where she and Roxie had ditched their bikes only a few weeks ago. Up and through the weedy prairie grass, once yellow and brown, now dark, nearly black, Thisbe pulls at the handles, stepping backward. Her older sister pushes from the front of the wheelchair, their grandfather silent, smiling at the unyielding margins of the cloudy sky, to the spot where she was certain she and this other teenage girl had somehow flown. She takes a rest for a moment, breathing deeply, the cold, cold November air burning her lungs, leaning against the sturdy frame of the wheelchair. Her older sister looks around, unimpressed, and asks, “Now what?” her eyebrows tilted above a face full of doubt. The field grass, though muddied, is still tall. It sways wildly back and forth with the great gusts of wind rushing along the lake. Thisbe itches her nose, then grabs her grandfather’s hand and leans in close to his fuzzy ear, whispering only a few words, which her older sister cannot hear, but very quickly their grandfather smiles wider, then closes his wrinkly, sunken eyes. Thisbe, kneeling beside him on the muddy ground, still grasping his tiny hand tightly, closes her eyes as well. Amelia, annoyed now, shaking her head to herself, knows it will be she who will be blamed for this, the sound of her father’s and mother’s voices already echoing in her brain. When the sun climbs out from behind a massive patchwork of clouds, Amelia has to cover her eyes with her hand to ward off the glare. The wind works its way through her hair and, turning, she searches for the familiar shapes of her sister and grandfather, which, just for the moment, seem to be somewhere they should not be, dozens of feet up in the air. When the sun disappears again, only a moment or two later, the wind startling itself into submission, Amelia lowers her hand, glancing back at her sister and grandfather, and finds them both on the ground, beaming.
ONE MONTH, two weeks, and some fifteen minutes later, in the final seconds just before he dies, Henry Casper will still be smiling.
FOR YEARS, Thisbe will later think of that one moment in the field as the only time she was ever sure of anything in her life.
Thirty
IT IS JANUARY ALREADY AND SOMEHOW THE WORLD has not ended. Through the windshield of the Volvo, Jonathan watches as the snow drifts through the air, dusting the top of the angular trees in perfect whiteness. Beside him, Madeline is singing along with the stereo, a son
g by John Lennon. In the backseat, Amelia is mostly quiet, staring out at the neighborhood as it flashes past in a parade of gray and white. She is reading Parmenides by Plato, on loan from William Banning, and she looks down at the pages with a certain fascination and a wide-eyed feeling of confusion and delight. The backseat, however, is missing its other occupant, Thisbe Casper. Jonathan notices this absence again when he glances in the rearview mirror. His youngest daughter has gone to the auditorium early, to get into costume, to put on her makeup, to be nervous, to stand behind the curtain of the empty high school theater, and to smile at the thought of singing onstage. Above the trees of the near-empty street, the sky is full of clouds: they move and tumble like set pieces, shifting silently as the Volvo speeds along the wet Hyde Park thoroughfare.
The family finds a parking spot close to the auditorium’s entrance, then they take three seats near the back, in the second-to-last row, as Thisbe has requested, as far as possible from the flood of lights, so that when she glances up from the last line of the chorus, she will not see her parents and her sister and suddenly lose her nerve. The auditorium begins to fill up quickly. The band, mostly juniors and seniors, in formal black jackets owned by the school, begin to tune their instruments. Jonathan takes Madeline’s small white hands, warming them, as Amelia passes each of them a simple white program: Gunga Din, it says. A musical, as adapted from the Kipling by J. R. Grisham.
BACKSTAGE, THE STUDENTS help each other with their makeup and costumes, and Thisbe, with her eyes closed, grins, her dimples visible, as a girl named Marcie dabs a smear of rouge across her cheeks. “Hold still,” Marcie whispers, giggling.
“I can’t,” Thisbe says, and laughs. “It tickles.”
Marcie shakes her head, beginning to laugh, too, and as the other girl’s fingers gently outline her faint eyebrows, Thisbe feels like she just might die. Behind them, in a narrow half circle, the other girls in the chorus, all portraying nameless British sergeants, practice their opening song, borrowed from Kipling:
It was “Din! Din! Din!”
With the bullets kickin’ dust-spots on the green.
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front-files shout:
“Hey! We need ammunition, mules, and Gunga Din!”
Mr. Grisham dashes past, muttering, “Five minutes. Five minutes, everyone!” and Thisbe blinks, overcome with excitement, nearly ruining her mascara.
HER PARENTS, SITTING in the second and third seats in the second-to-last row, begin to clap before anyone else, as soon as a rushed-looking Mr. Grisham takes the stage. Amelia, folding her book closed, turns to them and says, “You guys are so lame,” and after some brief remarks, with admonishments about cell phones, the director exits, and the band begins to play. The music is rousing, exotic, a little out of tune and a little off-time. Jonathan is still holding Madeline’s hand. They will hold each other’s hand throughout the entire performance. They will proudly watch as their daughter, Thisbe, a captured Thuggee, commits suicide, overacting a little, but with ferocious commitment. When a spotlight accidentally falls from the rigging during the second act, smashing against the stage, the whole auditorium will echo with anxiety and concern and useless worry, but Madeline will turn to her husband and roll her eyes. Then she will smile. It will be a secret message and will mean at least one million different things. Seeing it, unsure of the message exactly, Jonathan will, in his heart, say yes anyway. After an unscheduled intermission, during which the damage from the fallen light is assessed and quickly cleaned up, the play will awkwardly resume, without much excitement or poetry. It will keep going, for half an hour too long. Jonathan will continue to watch the play, though after his daughter’s performance he will begin to daydream about a number of other things: his father’s death, only a week or so before Christmas, which came quickly and without much warning, just as his dad seemed to be doing a little bit better. Jonathan’s eyes will begin crowding with tears, thinking of his father lying in the hospital bed—his small hands and narrow face so gaunt, so distant already—and he will quickly try to think of something, anything, else to keep himself from crying. He will begin going over the early chapters of a book he plans to write about the evolution of defense mechanisms in prehistoric animals, or he will start planning another grant proposal for the Hausman Institute, this one about the biological imperative of flight versus fight, or maybe he will return to his considerations regarding the new data accumulated from the squid discovered off the coast of Hawaii. What wonderful thoughts roam through his head before he looks down and sees his wife’s knees, beneath white-colored nylons, dimpled with beauty. Hidden behind the fabric, with the lights from the stage playing off of them, they look like two flowers. Or two apples. Or two mountaintops. Jonathan will stare at them absentmindedly for the remainder of the play. After the curtains are drawn and the last note sung, the audience, composed of parents, siblings, and teachers, will do what they can to stifle their disappointment and weariness. When they all exit the theater, their station wagons, minivans, sedans, and SUVs will all be blanketed in perfect white snow. A father will gently sweep the snow from the windshield—the station wagon’s engine running, the heat turned up as high as it will go—staring inside at his family, each of them smiling, each of them content, for the moment, safe, for the moment, happy. The father will stand in the snow and wonder if the world will ever be as simple and as lovely as this again, this moment, this. With snowflakes in his hair, on his shoulders, in his beard, ignoring the weather, he will climb into the Volvo and ask if anyone would like to maybe go get some ice cream. The rest of his family will groan with disinterest but it will not matter. They will get ice cream and then argue with happy voices about the daughter’s first play.
FOR NOW, THOUGH, the lights in the auditorium go dim. The dark red curtains slowly open, the crowd of parents and siblings and teachers politely hushing one another. Thisbe, waiting in the wings of stage left, repeats the first line of the first song to herself, over and over again. The lights come up onstage and the audience begins to clap quite loudly. The actors begin to take their places, the music fades, and then what follows is both astonishing and quite ordinary.
Acknowledgments
ALL MY LOVE AND GRATITUDE TO Koren and Lucia. Many, many thanks to Sylvie Rabineau, Maria Massie, Tom Mayer (one of the best editors I’ve ever had the chance to work with), Johnny Temple (for his support and encouragement), Johanna Ingalls, Todd Baxter, James Vickery, Jon Resh, Cody Hudson, Todd Dills, Mickey Hess, Todd Taylor, Sean Carswell, Dan Sinker, Jonathan Messinger, Chris Abani, Felicia Luna Lemus, T Cooper, Randy Albers, Sheryl Johnston, Donna Seaman, Quimby’s Books, the Hideout Chicago, and the Columbia College Fiction Writing Department. I am also indebted to the scientific work of Temple Grandin, Neil Shubin, and Phil Eyden, whose astute research greatly informed the writing of this book. Thanks also go to the New York Times for their material on American internment during World War II. A very special thanks to Arthur D. Jacobs, Major, USAF, Retired, whose archival work for The Freedom of Information Times concerning his experiences in Crystal City, Texas, proved to be invaluable.
