by Joanna Scott
He would have slept for hours, would have preferred to sleep in his quiet den rather than eat Marge’s pumpkin pie, would have chosen to sleep forever if he were offered the choice, but just as he was about to slip into a dream Josie gave a shriek and darted away, and Eddie’s strong hands pulled him by his shirt out into the open.
“Who do you think you are!” Eddie yelled. “Huh? Huh? Who do you think you are!”
Too confused to resist, drugged by his fatigue, Bo let Eddie lift him by his waist higher and higher until he could almost touch the ceiling. He wasn’t scared. He knew himself to be as invulnerable as a stuffed animal, felt magically safe inside his padding and tight seams as he swished and swayed in Eddie’s hands and then went soaring across the room, nothing but a white wall blocking him from the sky.
When the phone rang in the house on Sycamore Street, Erma Gilbert wasn’t dealing blackjack as she liked to do on Thanksgiving Day in that lull when the potatoes had been set to boil, the turkey rested beneath foil, and the gravy simmered on the stove. She wasn’t out in the living room enjoying the company of her family right then. Nor was she fishing around in the foamy pot with a fork or mincing turkey gizzards or arranging the silverware or scolding Miraja for leaving peanut shells everywhere or tapping her two-hundred-and-eighty-pound nephew Taft on the side of the head because he’d used unfit language in front of the children.
When the phone rang Erma Gilbert was just finishing her business in the bathroom, and she didn’t hear the phone’s jingle over the noise of the flushing toilet and so didn’t go find Sam to ask him who had called. Instead she dallied in front of the mirror, examined the mole on the side of her chin, compared her reflection to her memory of herself as a young woman and thought it strange that the changes in her life had left no obvious traces.
Here she was in a house full of family and friends, the world a hop-skip from the next millennium and folks everywhere working themselves into a panic over the calendar’s grid. Here was one woman’s life reflected back at her, a life worth as much as anyone’s, no more, no less, and thanks to God and to the circumstances of history, it was a life fairly blessed with health and love. And yet she might as well have lived in the midst of war, for though she’d survived, she’d lost so much — her youngest son killed, her grandson stolen. That was more than enough for one woman to handle.
She blinked back her tears and set her mouth straight from its ugly grimace. Why waste her sorrow on herself? When she took it all into account she recognized the bounty of her life as well as the need to resist the forces that had conspired to break her, though sometimes she liked to imagine Kamon’s voice to help her along.
Come on, Ma!
So out she went to join the crowd in the living room. Alcinder and Taft were watching football on the TV. Taft’s younger brothers, Johnny and P.J., were playing poker with Merry and Sam. Erma’s sister Leonore hadn’t been able to take time off from her nursing job in Buffalo to come along, so she’d sent her boys on their own. Add the three grandkids and Merry’s husband, Danny, and there would be eleven sitting down to dinner, including Erma and Sam. Twelve, if Kamon had been there. Thirteen with Bo.
Erma stood over the card table, watched her daughter deal a hand, and looked across to Sam, who had returned from the kitchen with a bowl of peanuts and was just settling back down in his chair. And right away, because she knew Sam as she did, knew the few wrinkles that decorated his relaxed face, knew how he should be breathing and blinking and shifting back to stretch his arms, she saw that something was wrong.
At that point, however, Sam didn’t think anything was wrong. Nothing wrong with the hand Merry had just dealt him, a queen up, an ace down, thank you! Nothing wrong with having company on Thanksgiving Day. Nothing wrong with peanuts and bottled beer. And nothing necessarily wrong with someone calling on the telephone and hanging up after a long, long pause without saying anything. Probably a wrong number and the caller knew it from Sam’s voice: Hey-low… hello… hello there!
“Higher than high on the hog…” he sang, scraping the pile of coins over to his side of the table.
So why did his wife stand there looking at him so strangely? Not saying anything like time to carve that fat bird. Just staring at him. Not sashaying over, wrapping her arms around his neck, and announcing that she’d hit the jackpot when she married Sam. Just staring.
“Hey, lady.”
“What do you want, Sam?”
“What do you want is what I’m thinking!”
“Nothing.”
“That turkey ready for the knife?”
“Not quite. You go on stealing money from your family.”
“I call it winning fair and square. Isn’t that right, Merry?”
“Sure, Dad.”
Erma headed into the kitchen then, and Merry collected the cards for another round, but this time Sam begged out of the game and went after Erma.
“Anything I can do?” he asked.
“You could give the gravy a stir,” she said. So he stood over the stove, the steam from the potatoes rising and spreading across his face, glossing his skin, and with a spoon he broke the skin just starting to form on the surface of the gravy. He drew in the good smells of the feast they were about to eat, thought to himself, nothing wrong with this food, and yet started to feel sure that there was something wrong, he just couldn’t put his finger on it. Something to do with that phone call.
Erma reached around him and turned off the knob for the right burner. She drained the pot of potatoes and went to work breaking and fluffing them with a masher. The physical effort comforted her at first until her mind found its way back to the thoughts that had absorbed her earlier: all that she’d lost. She wished her nephew Taft had stayed away today. She didn’t like to have to look at him and remember the trouble he’d brought into her home.
She glanced at Sam and felt the old urge to pack up and escape with him, though they had nothing in particular to escape from, nothing but history, and you can’t run from that, Erma told herself. Better to keep on doing what they were doing, living their lives and financing the appeal that might, just might, bring Bo back into their home.
“Why don’t you go ahead and cut her up,” Erma said. “Sam?”
“Yes ma’am?”
“Did you hear me?”
“What?”
“You can start carving.”
“Sure, sure.”
Something to do with a hang-up call on Thanksgiving Day, Sam decided as he slid the knife back and forth over the sharpener. Thanksgiving Day. He liked holidays, liked to have a crowd in the house, liked to win at blackjack, and didn’t mind washing dishes and picking up peanut shells when it was all over. Today was Thanksgiving Day, and he felt his usual gratitude. He missed his boys, sure, but he didn’t dwell on missing them and kept his hopes focused on the lawyer — as long as she stayed on her toes, everything would work out, and Bo would be back home before his next birthday.
Sam eased a drumstick around in its socket, searched with the knife tip for the joint, and began cutting. While he worked he felt Erma’s eyes on him again. Standing there and staring. Just staring.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“That’s just what I’m wondering,” she said.
Sam tugged at the turkey thigh and cut through the last fold of crisp skin. He laid the leg on the platter and started in on the meat of the breast.
“It’s something,” he confessed after a minute.
“Something to do with…?” Erma prodded.
“This being Thanksgiving Day,” he said.
“Makes the missing harder, I guess.”
“I don’t know.” Sam shrugged and caught a slice of meat on his palm.
Erma shifted her weight, put her elbows on the counter, and formed an envelope with her hands in front of her mouth. This being a holiday with their family, but not their whole family. Thanksgiving Day.
“Need help?” Merry pushed through the swinging door from the dinin
g room holding a full ashtray of cigarette butts.
“You could finish setting the table,” Erma said.
“Hey, Dad, who called earlier?” Merry asked as she collected a handful of spoons from the drawer.
“Just a hang-up call. Merry, do me a favor and scratch this itch on my face, will you?” She lightly scratched his cheek with a long red fingernail, and Sam thought, now that feels good, but didn’t say it because he sensed his daughter would come back with some sly rebuttal.
“A hang-up?” Erma asked.
“Yeah. They heard my voice and decided they had better things to do than talk to me. Oh, Merry, don’t stop.”
“I got better things to do, sweet Daddy of my dreams.”
Erma held the door open for Merry, who carried an armful of napkins and silverware to the dining room. She let the door ease shut, releasing it at the last moment so it swung toward her before settling back in place. With her mind groping to make sense of the uneasy feeling plaguing her, the swinging door supplied the image for the hang-up call that Sam had just told her about. Silence on the line, a door swinging shut, a conversation never taking place. Nothing new about that. A phone ringing, no one taking responsibility for calling, the silence of hesitation, the click of an ending.
Nothing new about any of it, Sam thought to himself. Someone calling the wrong number and hanging up. There was a difference, though, between someone hanging up right when Sam answered and someone waiting on the line long enough for Sam to say, “Hey-low,” and again, “Hello,” and a third time, “Hello there,” the caller listening to him break up the silence with his greetings but not willing to try out his or her own voice. Maybe there was something unusual about the length of the wait before the person hung up, Sam decided. A little bit unusual but not so unusual that he needed to waste his time thinking about it, especially now that the rush of the meal had begun, with the dishes still steaming, the table set, everyone eager to dig in, wine to be poured, milk for the children, and had anyone seen the ladle for the gravy boat because dinner was ready!
The accomplishment, Erma believed, was not in the taste of the food but in its warmth, everything served piping hot to dissolve the cold of this November day, unrelenting cold for two long weeks, making it the coldest November in fifty years, according to yesterday’s paper. She announced this to the others at the table, and Alcinder said the county had budgeted for a warm winter and had reduced its supply of salt for the roads.
“Speaking of salt,” Sam said, “Joe, can you send it over?” Joe, Merry’s son, was fourteen, already an expert jazz pianist, rambunctious on the keyboard but a quiet kid on his own. Joe passed the salt to Miraja, who passed it on to Sam. Miraja was the chatterbox, took after her grandfather in this way, and as soon as she’d filled her plate she announced that she had a joke to tell, a knock-knock joke. It was Sam’s job to say, “Banana who?” seven times before Miraja brought the joke to an end with orange.
Sam chewed on his turkey leg and thought about that period of time after the accident when Bo wouldn’t respond to his stories. Sam had sat with him and kept right on talking in hopes that he’d say something ridiculous enough to prompt a question from the child. Sam couldn’t remember the stories he’d told, he’d told so many there at the hospital and then back at home, talked at his grandson without knowing whether the boy understood what Sam was saying, unsure in those early weeks whether Bo had been damaged in some permanent way by the accident, fearing that language had been ripped out of him.
“Knock-knock,” Miraja said, and this time answered herself, “Who’s there?”
Erma asked, “How’s the turkey?” Everyone erupted in compliments, except Miraja, who after the praise died down said, “How’s the turkey who?” Amid the laughter that followed, Sam kept thinking about Bo’s silence. He felt Erma watching him again. She stared at the new wrinkles that had formed on Sam’s forehead and wondered why he wasn’t laughing. But how could he laugh when he was thinking about that time when his youngest grandson wouldn’t utter a single word? Erma wished only that Sam would tell her what was wrong, Sam thought that what was wrong had to do with Bo being unable to talk. Erma wanted to take Sam aside so she could ask him, Sam figured that speech had returned to Bo only when he’d stopped being afraid, and Erma gestured toward the kitchen, nodding toward Sam — they could talk out there; he’d tell her in private what was wrong.
Sam rose and excused himself from the table; Erma followed. In the kitchen he picked up the phone, started to tap out a number, and hesitated.
“What’s that code for call return?” he asked.
“Code…?”
“When you want to find out —”
“Trace a call?”
“Trace it, yeah… yeah…”
Erma reached over her husband and pressed the numbers herself. Sam motioned with an empty hand and Erma found him a pencil and scrap of paper and watched while he listened to the computerized voice and wrote out a phone number. She felt a strange suspicion grow as she watched the pencil nib making its marks, felt with each new numeral her suspicion slowly turning into recognition. Yes, she knew that phone number. It was a number she’d memorized when Bo was taken away, a number she’d never dialed.
“Jenny’s folks,” she said, still staring at the paper. Sam stared hard at her, waiting for her to look up and see what he was trying to tell her with his eyes.
He could be, couldn’t he, someone in someone else’s story? And maybe in that story he died and became an angel. So what if angels aren’t really true? It was only a story, one version out of many, a catastrophe loaded with meaning by the author of the tale. If he hadn’t been able to pull himself up off the floor and run away after Eddie threw him against the wall, then the meaning of the story would be born out of accusation, Eddie to be the one accused, the end. But Bo didn’t like that story. He wanted to live on as an angel, for he knew it would be much better to be an angel than a boy — then when he soared across the room he would keep flying right through the wall and up into the sky, and that’s the kind of surprise a good story needs! Just when you think the hero is doomed….
Also his tears turned into diamonds and dropped on the ground as he ran. The next day another little child, a poor, barefoot, hungry child, would find the diamonds, and he’d go live with that nice old woman and her parakeets in the cottage by the lake, and they’d have enough to eat forever and ever.
While Marge and Eddie fought with each other Bo had run from their house. This time he headed toward the lake. When he’d run away before he’d gone everywhere else except to the lake, perhaps because he preferred to stick to the road so he’d have something to follow, a paved path leading away from the beginning. When you got to the lake you couldn’t go anywhere but around it, Bo knew — around and around. Now, however, he was an angel so he could fly across it if he wished. Besides, the lake was different from any of the roads he’d walked along, and he wanted something different, a new story, a happy ending. So to the lake he headed, hop hop, bunny hop.
Funny, happy story. It could be that he was a dead child crumpled on the dining room floor, and Eddie Gantz was guilty, the end. A dead, not-knowing child, and Marge was still bending over him, begging him to come back to life, but he refused, the end. It could be that he was a story in the newspaper, nothing more. But who wants to hear that kind of story? You’re expecting something amazing to happen and what do you get? A not-knowing child. Forget it. Don’t tell that story, please. Bo had turned into an angel — that’s the story he wanted to be in, so that’s the story to tell, and it was only just beginning.
He ran. No, he didn’t. He danced lightly over the earth, with each step sprang three feet off the ground, for angels are virtually weightless, or even if they have weight gravity applies only to the living, and an angel is something else. Hop hop, bunny hop. He ran so fast, so effortlessly, that the birds stopped flying and settled on branches to watch him. But he didn’t run fast enough to leave behind the voices. Voices you r
emember are faster than angels, and Bo still remembered what he’d heard no matter how fast he ran, and remembering made him aware of the throbbing pain in his head.
Poor not-knowing child. Stop! That’s the wrong story!
Bo ran down the hill and across North Lake Road. See how simple it is? A child ran like an angel. An angel ran like a child. When you’re a child you don’t mind contradictions. Like an angel, like a child, Bo ran, leaping high in the air with each step, defying the pounding in his head. He snatched at a chickadee perched on the bare branch of a dogwood but missed, descended to earth, leaped high again. Hop hop, bunny hop. Josie ran after him but soon fell far behind. Cats aren’t as fast as voices. Still Bo remembered the voice crying Stop! as he’d been sailing toward the white wall. How did that story begin? Bo couldn’t remember the particulars, but he knew Josie had been in it. A cat, however, isn’t as fast as an angel, and Bo ran on, discovering to his relief that even when you think you know what’s going to happen, you’re bound to be wrong. Look! There was ice on the lake! He hadn’t expected that. Strips of ice laid side by side over the water. Ice like packing tape, like empty highways, like blank pages, like empty maps. He didn’t need to fly after all. He could just walk one step in front of the other. Slide. Skate. Kick that hockey puck right into the goal, and everyone would cheer!
Yet how quiet they were. He stopped, listened to his audience listening, stood on the page of the book and looked up, tried to see them but saw only gray tree limbs looming overhead. Tree limbs like arms about to snatch him and crumple him and throw him out.
To save himself he danced. Tapped and spun on the ice in an effort to entertain his silent audience, imagining as he performed how he would look from above: a tiny figure spinning in a music box. Then he remembered that no harm could come to an angel, so he stopped. That’s when he noticed he’d lost the voices and could hear only the sounds of the world — branches creaking, wind hissing — and his own panting breath. And then it occurred to him that he must be invisible. Of course! Invisibility was one of the many advantages angels had over children. That’s why he was alone, at least until Josie caught up with him. His audience had gone away, having concluded — incorrectly — that the story had ended because they couldn’t see Bo anymore when in fact here he was, standing on the ice of Hadley Lake, a regular comedian who had just performed a major disappearing stunt!
