by Ron Carlson
I stared at the footage of Wayne Gretzky scoring from the wing for a moment too long and said, “No, thanks. You two go. Paris and I have plans.”
“Birthday kite. Tomorrow we make our kite, right, Dad?”
“Well then, you better get to bed,” Stacey said.
“Don’t go without a fight, kid,” Dalton smiled.
Paris stood. “I don’t need to fight,” she said. “I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
“How old will you be?” Dalton turned and gestured to me with his beer can.
“Thirty-seven,” I said.
He took a long slug from the beer and then said, “God, I’ll bet you’re glad it’s half over.” And he laughed a wit’s four-note laugh. I smiled at him. Paris had slipped away.
“Yeah, Dalton,” I tried to hold the smile. “It’s a relief.”
LATER, with too much energy to go to bed and not enough stamina to sit up and watch an old Twilight Zone on cable with Dalton and Stacey, I prowled around the garage, checking the ski rack and securing their skis for the morning. I climbed up in the pickup bed and pulled three blue bamboo poles from the rafters for our kite, and set them on the workbench. We had about fifty blue and fifty red poles from when I coached the ski team at Dorcet. They were the slalom course one year and when they were all replaced, I kept them for some reason, for this reason, I guess: fifty kites. I looked up. I would be able to make a kite a year until I was almost ninety.
As I put on my pajamas I could hear the television. Dalton’s voice came: “What a geek.” He was addressing the set. I looked in on Paris and she made that little throaty moan that meant I was supposed to come in and sit for a minute.
“It’s going to be a great kite,” I said to her. She turned and curled up to me where I sat and put her head alongside my leg. “What’s the matter, Paris?” I could see her eyes open, looking hurt. I whispered, “What do you think of Dalton?”
“He’s too old to have nicknames for beer.” And then she tightened against me and began to cry.
“Paris … Paris,” I said. “It’s okay. You’re right, but he’s our guest for one more day. We can be nice for one more day, right?”
She nodded against my leg, but the crying intensifed a touch and she clutched me tighter. I leaned down and turned her face into the small light. “Hey, lady,” I whispered again. “It’s not half over. Dalton was kidding. Your dad’s not going anywhere. Do you hear me?”
“He’d miss me too much, wouldn’t he?” she said, her lower lip interfering with the words a bit.
“He would.” I patted her back and realigned the covers. “He would. You and I are here to stay.”
SATURDAY. Kite day. My birthday. Dalton was taking a night flight back to New York. Things were going to be all right.
I offered to fry up a quick breakfast for Stacey and Dalton, but Dalton was in a hurry. He was excited to have company for a change and said, “No thanks, Mr. McGuire. We’ve got to hit the slopes. Let’s just stop and get a coffee and some doughnuts at the Seven-Eleven, okay, Stacey?”
“Okay,” she said. “Are you sure you two don’t want to come with us?”
“Mom,” Paris answered. “We’ve got a kite to build. It’s going to take all day.”
“Have fun,” Stacey said, leaning to kiss me.
“You too,” I said. “And Stacey,” I pointed at her. “Keep your arms folded.”
She shook her head at me as if to say you sad old fool, and she and Dalton drove away.
Our kite did take us all day because of material problems. We made the bamboo crossbar in an hour, notching the string sets at each tip and measuring it all with a precision it may not have required. It was a perfect five by three foot cross. But there was no string left from last year, and then I remembered using it on the tomato plants, and the visquine we had planned to use as the sail itself was marred with brown paint. Someone had used it as a dropcloth. So Paris and I ruined the midday cruising Grand Central (now Fred Meyer), Skaggs (now Osco), and ending up at a reliable standby, The West Side Drug Store, which under new management had just been painted blue, which anyone with any sense of history could see was wrong. I hated all the changes. Fred Meyer! And Skaggs, oh please: Osco? That sounds like a bad penny stock. But finding the golden drugstore of my youth painted blue, that hurt like a personal insult. Even so, they had four dusty rolls of sturdy kite string, obviously left over from the old days. And the visquine we found at Ketchums, which is also on its way down, but I’m not going to discuss that. By the time we had a late lunch at LaFrontera and had bowed the kite with string, faced the bow with plastic and trimmed it clean, it was after four P.M.
Paris stood up, and the kite was taller than she by a foot. Through the clear plastic, her blurred image appeared to be underwater. “It’s beautiful, Dad,” she said. “It’s so big it won’t need a tail, right?”
“Right,” I said. We’d learned that lesson last year.
We were both anxious to fly it, but decided to wait until the skiers returned and then take everybody down to Liberty Park for a trial.
Stacey and Dalton pulled in at about five-thirty, sunburned and exhilarated. “Whoa! Get back!” Dalton called to me. “This woman is harsh! She is totally denied amateur status! Hand her the trophy now and let’s have a brew!” He passed me on the way to the fridge. “She can ski!”
Stacey came up the stairs. “We had fun,” she said. “It was a little slushy this afternoon, but we had fun.”
“Mom, we’ve got the kite. Let’s go down to Liberty Park. We’ll all go and fly it!”
“Let me take a quick shower and we’ll do that. We can pick up some burgers on the way down, okay, Dalton?”
“Sounds good,” he said. “I’m buying. My plane isn’t until nine. I’d like to see this kite.”
While Stacey was in the shower, Dalton said, in a quiet sober voice I hadn’t heard before, “New York is such a grind. I hate to go back.” He punched softly at me. “You guys in the west have got it made. All right if I have another beer?”
LIBERTY PARK has its beginnings in April. It begins to fill with park people. The young men who polish their cars in groups. The sunbathers in pairs on pastel towels. All the sensible couples walking two dogs on two leashes, marching the perimeter. People play tennis in street clothes, and groups of skeptical children give the playgrounds a first try.
We arrived at the park as the sun was closing in on the Great Salt Lake. I wasn’t worried about the time: twilight was longer every evening and I wanted the breezes. The wind was south, so we decided to stage from the big new hill north of the pond. There was only one couple on the far side, making out on a blanket. “Don’t look, Mother,” Paris laughed. Stacey and Dalton sat halfway up the hill with our white paper bags of sandwiches and fries and that six pack of Rolling Rock, which I had saved for my birthday. Paris and I went down to the level ground and set up.
The breeze was small but steady, and on the first try when Paris released the transparent kite, it held in the air and then rose, slowly, taking string as I backed up.
“Don’t you need a tail?” Dalton called.
“No!” Paris yelled back. “We know about that!”
Paris took the controls while I was busy tying the second roll of string to the first.
As the two of us backed, step by step up the hill, the kite now out over the pond two hundred feet, we passed slowly by Dalton and Stacey. He handed me one of the cold Rolling Rocks and said, “Looks good, chief. This Bud’s for you.”
“It’s perfect,” Paris corrected him.
We let out the second roll of string and I tied on the third. From the top of the hill we could see the sunset through the trees. The kite was out over a hundred yards. We sat down and began letting out string on the third roll.
“Let’s send a message, Dad.”
“Okay. Go get a pencil and paper from Mom.” Paris ran down fifty yards to where Dalton and Stacey were talking. From where I sat they looked like any other young coupl
e in the park, their shoulders almost touching. I wondered if they’d held arms on the lift. Stacey did that. She held your arm on the lift and laughed and bumped your head softly with hers as you talked on the way up.
Paris returned with a pencil and part of paper sack. It was getting dark, and I had tied on the fourth and last roll of string.
“What are you going to send?” I asked her.
“Is Dalton Mom’s boyfriend?” I looked at Paris, but she was looking down at them in the thickening twilight. Their muted voices floated up to us. The transparent kite was getting hard to see. The pull was even and steady as it took the last of the string. A glint from the shiny plastic blinked at us every few seconds.
“Write your message,” I said. “It’s getting late.”
Paris bent to her lap and pressed some words onto the white sheet.
“Here, let me tear it so it will slide,” I said, but she held the message back. “I won’t look at it.” She handed it to me and I tore a slit in the center. “Now fit it onto the string and walk it out a little ways.” Paris stood and set the paper on the string and pushed it away about twenty feet, pulling the string down as she went. When she released the cord, it bopped up and her white note began to hop and slide up the inclined line.
“What did it say?” I asked.
“It wasn’t to you,” she said.
When the message went over Stacey’s head, I saw her point up to it. She turned on an elbow and called, “What does it say, Paris?”
“It wasn’t to you!” She had the kite string in her hand and bobbed it to help the white sheet ascend. The pull on the increased distance had become powerful as we let out the last fifty feet of string. I tied a stick to the end and she held that as we stared at what we now couldn’t see at all. Below us in the dark, Stacey and Dalton had merged into one shadow grouping. A moment later I heard Stacey call: “We better head to the airport, Michael. Paris, are you ready?”
“Really?” Paris whispered to me.
“Yeah.” She started to reel in, but I stopped her. “There isn’t time, hon.” I looked at her as a secret accomplice and whispered: “Let’s cut the string!”
Her face went secret and excited. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, what do we do?”
I took the stick from her and felt the tremendous pressure of our kite two hundred yards up there somewhere. I handed her my pocketknife and pointed to the string. She nodded slowly, seriously, and pressed the knife to the string. She drew the knife an inch and I felt the line go dead. “Listen,” I said. We were both staring furiously into the dark sky. We heard, of course, nothing.
“Where is it, Dad? Is it coming down?” She took my hand.
“That kite won’t come down in Utah. That kite is on its way.”
STACEY did not go to the airport with us. When we arrived home, she got a call from Brokaw at the firm, seven-thirty on Saturday night, and after five minutes, she covered the receiver and said—as she’s done before from some new region of seriousness—“It’s going to be an hour … minimum.” So we gathered Dalton’s bags and packed the car. Stacey covered the phone again and gave Dalton a hug. She said, “Take care. We loved having you. Good luck.”
It was the scene at the airport that came to me a new way. We walked Dalton to his gate. Paris was stopped at security. They discovered my knife in her pocket, and I explained that she was a member of the Swiss Army. The woman smiled but kept the knife for our exit.
At the gate, they were boarding already, and Dalton turned to shake my hand. He looked different. “Thank you for having me,” he said. “I know it was kind of a pain. You guys are busy and everything. But you, you were my favorite teacher and, oh hell, I may probably not stay at Parker and Ellis. Econ might have been a mistake for me.” He paused and let go of my hand and said: “Happy birthday, sir. I’m not like you, but,” and here he looked down to Paris and said to her: “I’m sorry you don’t like me, Paris. I won’t always be a jerk.” He looked back into my face and smiled. “I won’t. Thanks a lot. Good-bye.”
We retrieved the pocket knife and on the way home Paris asked, “What are you thinking, Dad?”
I put my hand on her head and told the perennial, the ancient lie: “Nothing, honey.” What I was thinking was this: I had wanted to settle. I wanted to hold on to my superiority and settle. Dalton. He had confused this old fool. I had seen Paris’s message to the kite and it had said: “Please don’t let Dalton be Mom’s boyfriend.” And I had been less than friendly to this boy who had flown across the country to see his old teacher. I had defended Mark Eubank, of all things.
I shook my head as we moved left to take the City Center Exit. We were going home. It was the second half of my life. I would have to do better.
MILK
THEY almost fingerprint the children before I can stop them. Phyllis is making a rare personal appearance in my office to help me with a motorcycle injury claim, and I want to squeeze every minute out of her, and I’m taking no calls. We all call Phyllis “The Queen of Wrongful Death,” which is the truest nickname in the firm. She likes being a hard case, and she’s lording it over me a bit this morning, rereading a lot of the stuff that I’d summarized for her, when Tim buzzes and says Annie’s on the line.
I almost wave it off. She probably wants to meet for lunch and today there’s going to be no lunch, because I want to get this motorcycle case buttoned up so we can take the twins on a picnic this weekend. Now that they can walk, our house is getting real small. But it’s not lunch. Annie’s voice is down a note or two, stern, as she says she and my mother are going to take the boys down to Community Fuel, where there is another fingerprint program today. I listen to Annie tell the story and watch Phyllis frowning through the file. My mother read about the program in the paper and with so many children abducted and missing, etc. etc. etc. Annie closes with I know what you think, but this is something we should do for your mother’s sake.
I don’t say anything.
“Jim?” Annie says.
“Ann. You said it. You know what I think. No way. Not the twins. Not for my mother. Not for anybody.”
“She’s coming over to get us in half an hour.”
“Ann,” I say again. “Take her to lunch, but do not fingerprint the boys. Okay? Under no circumstances. That’s all.”
“It’s no big deal …”
“Tell my mother that.”
“I’m going to tell your mother that you’re terrified and unable at this time to do the right thing.”
When I hang up, Phyllis looks up. At thirty-four she wears those imperious half glasses, which, in a drunken moment at the firm barbeque last summer, she admitted to me are just part of her costume, “dress to win”; and I admit now that they intimidate me.
“Fingerprints?” she says. “Are the twins being booked?”
“It’s that I.D. program at Community Fuel. My mother wants to take the kids.”
“And …?”
“My kids are not being fingerprinted. I’m not caving in to this raging paranoia. It’s a better world than people think.”
Phyllis takes off her awful glasses and lets them drop on their necklace against her breast. “And you’re not scared in the least, are you?”
WHEN I come home from work, Lee and Bobby laugh their heads off. It has become my favorite part of the day. I peek into the kitchen and say, “Oh-oh!” and they amble in stiffly in their tiny overalls, arms up for balance. They start: “Oh-oh!” as I pick them up and they laugh and laugh as we do our entire repertoire of sounds: Dadda, Momma, Baby, and the eleven or twelve other syllables, as well as a good portion of growling, humming, meowing, mooing, and buzzing. When I whistle softly through my teeth, they hug me hard to make me stop.
They are fraternal twins. Bobby has a lot of hair and a full face. Lee, though he probably weighs the same, twenty-two pounds, seems slighter, more fragile. Ironically, Bobby cries more and easier. They can lie on a blanket with fists full of each other’s hair, and only Bobby will fuss. Th
ey each have four and a half teeth and they call each other the same name: Baby.
Tonight I lift them up and the laughing intensifies as I tote them into the living room where Annie is picking up the blanket and toys.
She starts right in: “Well, boys, it’s Daddy, the Rulemaker.”
“Annie …”
“The lawgiver.” She holds the bundle in her arms and stands to face me. She goes on in a gruff voice: “No fingerprints. Not in this house! Not for anybody!”
Bobby and Lee think this is wonderful and they laugh again. Each has a good hold on my hair and their laughing pulls my scalp in two directions. Annie comes right up to the boys and makes a mock frown, her nose against mine. She growls. “Not even for my mother!” She kisses me quickly and disappears into the boys’ room. The boys snap around to watch her and the hair pulling brings tears to my eyes.
Annie’s got me. We’ve been married nine years, and it’s been a good marriage. We’ve grown up together really, and only since the boys have arrived have I started with this rule stuff. Annie and I used to go crazy after visiting our friends Stuart and Ruth and their kids. Everything was rules. No baseball in the backyard. No jackets in the basement. No magazines in the kitchen. No loud talking in hall. No snacks during homework. We promised then never to post rules. Driving home from their house, Annie and I would make up rules and laugh until we’d have to pull over. No hairdryers in the bathtub. No looking out the window while someone is talking to you. No peeking at the answers to the crossword puzzle. No shirt, no shoes, no service. And Annie even gave Ruth one of our ridiculous lists, typed up as a joke (their lists were typed and posted on the refrigerator door), but Ruth did not think it was that funny. She said, “Wait until you have kids.”
And now I have both kids in my arms when Annie comes back into the room. “Call your mother,” she says, taking Lee from me and putting him in his high chair. “She wants to know why you’re not looking out for the best interest of your children. Put Bobby in his chair before you call, okay?”
WE’VE been through this all before, but I can see this week is going to be worse. I watched the news programs on television and saw the troops of children being fingerprinted. I made it clear from the beginning that we did not want to do that. Annie watched my opposition grow over the weeks, realizing that this was probably the biggest disagreement in our marriage.
