Please Don't Come Back from the Moon

by Dean Bakopoulos

  Once they got Natalie to agree to go inside, Sunny said, "Maybe you can get Nick to tell you where he goes at night, Mikey."

  I looked at Nick, and he motioned for me to follow him to the garage. He got two beers out of the fridge he kept there.

  "I guess you know why I'm here," I said.

  "Free beer?"

  "What happened last night?" I said. "What was that?"

  "You know what it was," he said.

  "But you don't believe that," I said. "Do you?"

  "What else do you believe?" he said.

  I shrugged. I had to get to work.

  "It didn't get us yet," Nick said.

  Natalie had come back outside to where we were sitting and she wriggled her way onto Nick's lap.

  "Eventually, it might," Nick said. "Eventually, it might win."

  THAT FALL, I WAS switched to the day shift. Driving the news truck in the glare and shadow of the bright autumn afternoons hurt my eyes, and I could never take off my sunglasses, a cheap pair of aviator shades I'd picked up at the Rite Aid. I'd not gotten into the habit of shaving in the mornings, and I wore a few days' worth of stubble most of the time. With the heavy equipment on my shoulder, the glasses, and the beard, I looked like an extra from a bad war film.

  I felt disoriented in the truck, with all the sounds and lights of daytime traffic around me, and I missed those long, quiet nights, when at two in the morning I could be the only car in my lane for miles. Merging in and out of traffic on Telegraph Road and the Lodge Freeway exhausted me, and I'd come home in the evenings with a quiet, racing heart and shaky hands. It was good for me to be home with the family at dinnertime, and my mother and Mack loved being with Rusty and Nina when I was working and Ella was at class. Mack would pick up Rusty from third grade every afternoon and bring him to our house where my mother was looking after Nina. More often than not, my mother would cook a big dinner and when Ella came home from class and I came home from work, we'd sit down together as a family and eat.

  We were blessed, and I knew that. It wasn't this tranquil, if dull, domesticity that rattled me that fall. I didn't feel smothered by any of it. Instead, I felt a profound and relentless doubt; I didn't believe I belonged there. I believed, sooner or later, that I would destroy all of it.

  Most nights, I couldn't sleep: I couldn't stop thinking of the night we'd all wandered into the parking lot of the old Black Lantern, staring at the sky. The end of each day brought voices, starlight, the fading sound of machines, the constant grinding of wheels on pavement, the smell of smoke, a thick layer of burning ash, and then when I did finally drift into dreams, they were dreams that left me still half awake, not dreaming really, just drifting, floating off to somewhere else. I'd stay in bed and wait for the dreams to pass, for the feeling of floating to pass; I tried to ignore the recollections that came at me in fragments and jagged shards. I would just tough it out some nights, stay stone-faced and sober until morning, and then I would get up, not rested but restless, and the world was awake and bursting with dawn all around me.

  Ella's worry and confusion turned to annoyance. We were short with each other. She urged me to find a therapist or consider medication; we made love less and less often as the days got colder. Sometimes I didn't come to bed at all, but stayed in my chair in the living room, in my state of half sleep.

  At work my job performance suffered. I made careless mistakes. I mislabeled tapes. I didn't verify my facts. I misquoted my sources.

  My mother would come to visit the children, and I would barely talk to her. She would forward me e-mails from Kolya when he was able to get a few minutes on the computer at his base, but I never wrote to him. I had his mailing address, but didn't even send him a postcard.

  Nick and Tom said I was acting strange. "Man," they said, "you just have to forget some things, Mikey. Not everything is important. Pretend it never happened."

  "What if it happens again?" I said.

  "You can never be sure, Mikey," Nick said. "Don't ask 'What if?' so much. You'll drive yourself crazy."

  BY THE MIDDLE OF November, the gold-and-red leaves had been erased from the trees, and the air turned relentless once again, windy and damp. The skies held the color and smell of wet concrete. In the mornings, the bare black branches of trees were slick with frost and mist, skeletons of obsolete machines.

  I went to see Nick one day on my way home from work.

  He was in the garage in his jeans and quilted flannel shirt. He'd grown his beard again, and when I pulled up, I noticed his face had gotten thinner. His sad blue eyes stood out from his shadowed face like pale, smooth stones.

  He offered me some coffee from his thermos, and handed me a chipped Lions mug. We sat on two milk crates. I took a sip of my coffee and held the cup to my face long enough for the heat to warm the skin of my cheeks and lips.

  There was something unbearable, that year, about the thought of another winter. I found the fact that each day grew a little more cold and damp almost terrifying. I was having that feeling just then, when Nick said, "I make most of my money in the winter. But this year, I'm starting to wish the winter would never come. I don't trust this winter. I feel like bad things are going to happen to us this winter."

  A FEW WEEKS LATER, I woke up around midnight. I'd had only two hours of sleep. I heard, from Rusty's room, the dinging of Lucky the Dog's collar and tags. He was scratching himself, or maybe moving into Rusty's bed for a better, warmer sleeping spot, but whatever he was doing, he kept on doing it. The room felt cramped and hot, and then I heard Lucky's collar again. I was facing the wall, tucked into that side of the bed because Ella could not sleep next to a wall. I got out of bed, climbing over Ella's naked body. She didn't stir.

  In the hallway, I flipped on the light and squinted into the yellow glare. At the thermostat, I rubbed my eyes and turned the furnace down a few degrees. Just before I made my way back to the bedroom, Lucky the Dog appeared in the doorway, his leash in his mouth. We had forgotten, I supposed, to take him for a walk before bed.

  Outside, the night was cold but lush. The first snow of the season was coming down in thick flakes. A small covering of white powder was dusting the sidewalks and streets. It had turned windy, and the trees and shrubs on my street, some leafless, made a snapping, rustling sound as they moved in the wind among the snowflakes. My hair blew back, and I had goose bumps. Lucky the Dog sniffed at the air and sucked the wind in through his cheeks. It was late, nobody was out. I let Lucky off the leash and he sprinted up and down the sidewalk, ecstatic to be free, sniffing and marking every tree and fire hydrant he could find.

  I looked at the moon and walked ahead, following the dog. More clouds seemed to be merging with their purple shadows and the stars were disappearing. I felt tiny droplets of snow hit my forehead. The rate of snowfall grew more intense. I kept my eyes on the ripe, heavy moon, until it was lost in the clouds. It was hard to keep my eyes open with the swirling snow. My body left the sidewalk, and I stepped in midair for one, two, three, four strides, getting higher and higher, as if I was walking up an invisible set of steps. I was walking straight up to the moon, off of the earth, free of gravity, released.

  Just then, Lucky the Dog started barking. I fell out of the sky and onto the grass. Lucky ran at me full tilt, halted at my fallen figure, and licked my face, whining. It was just a dream, he seemed to be saying, just a dream. I shook my head, pushed the dog away, and slowly stood up again. We stayed where we had stopped for twenty minutes or more, just kind of looking around, me searching the sky and Lucky sniffing the wind.

  By the time we turned and headed back, it was a little after one in the morning. There were very few cars on Warren Avenue, and the snow was falling harder so that the few cars on the road seemed to be moving in slow motion. I put Lucky back on the leash and we went home.

  Back in my own house, I went into the living room and turned off all the lights in the house as well as the light on the front porch. I opened the curtains and moved an armchair into the mi
ddle of the room, so I could look out of the picture window and out onto the street. The snow was coming down harder now, and it was difficult to see even the large shrubs at the end of our yard. Above, the streetlamps illuminated halos of falling flakes, turning the sky blurry and pink in the air above the roofs of our houses.

  I got up and made some coffee, then returned to the window and waited to hear the sound of Nick's truck coming down the street. Because of budget cuts, the city always ran behind on plowing snow from the residential areas. Last winter, Nick had started to plow a few of the neighborhood streets himself. He did our driveways for us, too, if the snow was particularly heavy, and my driveway was usually first.

  By dawn, Nick still hadn't plowed my driveway. I had the day off and I didn't have to be anywhere, so I didn't care. But I also knew that Nick had always gotten started before first light in the past. I hoped that he simply had too many paying customers this season and was too busy to do anybody any favors. The day grew lighter and lighter and the snow continued to pile up in our yards, on our cars, on the sills of our windows. Rusty had a snow day and got to stay home from school, and I stayed inside with the baby while Ella and Rusty built a snowman in the yard. Around eleven o'clock, Sunny was calling. I picked up the phone and she said, "Michael, where is he?"

  His truck was missing. His clients had been calling all morning, wanting to know why he hadn't arrived yet to clear their parking lots and roadways.

  By noon, Maple Rock had eight inches of snow, and nobody had plowed our streets. I knew what was happening. I could almost picture Nick driving north, or worse, parking his truck somewhere and walking off into the air. Ella asked me if I was going to shovel the driveway. Like all the garages in Maple Rock, ours was a detached structure in the backyard, at the end of a long, narrow driveway. Ella had class that evening and needed to get the car out, but so much snow had blown in through the open garage door that the car itself needed some digging out.

  "I could do it," she said. "Would you like me to do it?"

  "No," I said. "I'll go and do the walk. Nick will be by soon. He'll plow the driveway."

  After I cleared off the front porch and walkways, I bundled up in my hunting boots and down jacket and walked the few blocks to Nick and Sunny's house. I stood on the front porch for a little while before I rang the doorbell.

  I waved my gloved hand at Sunny when she opened the door.

  "Don't you tell me what you're going to tell me, Michael," she said. "I don't believe in the bullshit you guys believe in. I'm not that naive."

  "I just wanted you to know something," I said.

  "What?"

  "Nick loves you," I said. "He'll be back soon."

  From the way Sunny looked—the way her arms were folded, the way her body weight rested on her left leg, the way her eyes seemed too tired to look up at me and focus on my face—I knew that she wasn't sure if she should believe anything I was saying.

  I wasn't sure if I believed all of it, but I knew that the first part was true.

  One day passed, and then a second.

  A full week went by, and the next one started.

  Nick stayed away. All that week, the snow piled up on our streets.

  VALENTINE "BUNNY" Slowinski was found dead on December 5, 2003, in a Super 8 Motel, just off the interstate in Effingham, Illinois. He had been living there for three weeks, the manager said, paying $120 in cash every Monday morning. He had just taken a job at a Home Depot nearby. The night he died, he had come back to his room after his first day, an eleven-hour stint in the lawn and garden section. He heated a can of spaghetti on a hot plate, turned on CNN, and died of a massive heart attack. He was fifty-four years old. The smoke alarm went off in the room a few hours later—because of the burning can of spaghetti—and the night clerk found Bunny dead.

  "Bunny was a nice man," the motel manager said on the phone. "He was working here part-time to pay his bill."

  "That's nice to know," Mrs. Slowinski said, before she started crying again. "I hate him, you understand."

  "I'm sure you have your reasons," the manager said. "We watched Monday Night Football at Applebee's last week. Bunny was a Bears fan too, unless they were playing the Lions."

  Mrs. Slowinski said, "No, I don't hate him."

  "I'm sorry," the manager said. "This must be hard."

  "Oh God, Bunny," Mrs. Slowinski said. "What were you thinking?"

  And the manager said, "We're very sorry, ma'am."

  Tom came over and told me the news, and we called down to the motel a few minutes later. Tom did the talking while I listened in on the extension.

  "Well, it was very odd how he showed up here," the manager said. "It was early in the morning and I had been taking the trash out to the Dumpsters, when I saw this man in a dirty white shirt, walking out of the acres of empty fields behind the hotel. He had no luggage except for a brown grocery bag, and his face was covered in dust. He had a rather large cut on his arm, and I asked him if he needed help. And he said, 'No, just a room.' When I took him around the building to the front desk, he pulled out an old wallet. He said his credit cards had expired years ago, and his driver's license—which I require from all of our guests—had expired in 1992. But I could see he needed some help, so I offered him a room for free, just so he could clean up, drink some water, and sleep. I sent my son into town to the Wal-Mart, and I got him a change of clothes. I could see he was in trouble. All alone in the world."

  "Thank you," Tom said.

  "It was the Christian thing to do," he said. "What would Jesus do? My wife is into all of that."

  The news of Bunny Slowinski's mysterious reappearance and death spread across our neighborhood and into the suburbs and cities far away, and by evening, a stream of friends and family came to Tom and Tanya's home. Tanya worked in the kitchen with other women from the neighborhood, fixing sandwiches and borscht and potato salad, while Tom held his sons and showed them off to the visitors. My mother and my aunt Maria greeted friends and family as they arrived. People stood in circles and spoke softly. To be honest, if it hadn't been for Mrs. Slowinski sitting and crying, exhausted and pale, in a small rocking chair in the corner, the evening might have felt like any of the gatherings we used to have in our neighborhood, a first communion or christening or graduation party.

  The new priest from the Ukrainian church, Father Marion, a tall, bearded man who had just arrived from Ukraine, came to the home and said prayers. He didn't seem to know how many of us had stopped going to church in recent years, or maybe he didn't care. He walked around and gave a lot of warm hugs, but he couldn't really know what the discovery of Bunny Slowinski meant to the rest of us. The house was full of our old friends, the mothers of our old friends, and small packs of old men we hadn't seen in years. Tom's grandparents drove down from Toronto to mourn their son. The house smelled of the wool of heavy winter coats and rye bread and beets.

  We all gathered there because we were good friends, because the Slowinskis were part of the extended family of Maple Rock. But mostly, I think, the mourning over Bunny—a good, well-loved, and funny man when we knew him—was so vast and intense because the discovery of the dead body of Valentine "Bunny" Slowinski meant one thing: he was not on the moon, and maybe nobody was.

  THE NEXT MORNING, well before it was light out, Ella and I woke up and drank coffee together. I could tell she was worried about me, and usually, when she is worried, I try to reassure her. I try to convince her that my sadness is temporary, that my dark moods and depressive spells will be gone soon enough. Sometimes I feel like marriage is one long lifetime of reassuring each other of our sanity. But that morning, I felt sadness that didn't seem capable of ending, and when Ella came and put her hands on my shoulders, I just hung my head and cried. Then we showered together, and I packed a bag and dressed. I kissed Rusty and Nina while they slept in their beds. Just as I finished lacing up my boots, Tom pulled into the driveway with his van and I kissed Ella goodbye. She handed me a thermos of coffee and walked me
down the driveway, where she hugged me again and then pressed her fingertips to the windshield and smiled at Tom.

  Tom and I pulled out of the driveway with a few flakes of snow falling onto the windshield. Tom was playing a tape of Ukrainian music that his father liked. I thought it bordered on the maudlin, but I didn't say anything. Who knows how I might have acted if my father had been the one they'd found dead in a Super 8 Motel?

  Our journey was a maudlin one, to be sure. The hotel manager in Effingham had arranged for a mortician to embalm the body and prepare a casket. Tom and I were on our way down to pick up the casket and drive it back to Detroit for the funeral. There were services you could hire for this kind of thing, but Tom insisted he didn't have the money. That was probably true, but part of me believed and still believes that he craved this road trip as a ritual, that he longed to drive and get his father's body back because it would make the surreal situation seem more real, make it mean something. I knew he was mad at Nick for not being there, and I was too.

  It was three in the morning, and I-94 was empty and dark, the only traffic an occasional semi passing us on the left, blowing a smoky dust of snow over the windshield. The forecast included the possibility of an early-winter blizzard. By the time we made it to the long, flat stretch of I-57 that runs down through Illinois, blowing snow would occasionally swell up from the endless prairies and obscure our vision. The going was slow. We took turns driving, but neither of us slept. The roads seemed treacherously empty, and the areas around us flat and gray in all directions, and for a minute, I thought perhaps we'd driven off the earth.

  When we reached Effingham, it was daylight and the snow had stopped and we were most definitely still on the earth.

  THERE WAS A SMALL BOX of Bunny Slowinski's belongings at the Super 8, in which these things were found: a collection of rough, gray pebbles in a Milwaukee Pickles jar; a handful of dirt in a sealed plastic bag; and an assortment of autumnpainted leaves, pressed dry and flat into the pages of a hardcover copy of Awaken the Giant Within. These things were returned to the Slowinskis, along with the remains of Bunny Slowinski.