Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  Getting a learner’s permit at fourteen is a state-sanctioned accommodation usually reserved for boys from farming families, but by 1997, Larken’s family needs her to be legally authorized to drive the Pontiac every bit as much as the families of her male peers need them behind the wheel of a tractor.

  They arrived right on schedule, soon after the doors opened, but it took awhile to get Hope out of the car, up the stairs, and inside. Because the Americans with Disabilities Act won’t be signed into law for another thirteen years, the Beatrice Department of Motor Vehicles offers no handicapped-designated parking spaces, no ramps, no elevators, no wheelchair-accessible bathrooms, no widened hallways, no special seating areas.

  Viney left the car double-parked and idling at the curb while she and Larken unloaded Hope and settled her into her wheelchair. It was cold when they got here, but not bad—not the piercing, eyeball-chilling cold that comes after a snowstorm, but the cozier, cloud-roofed cold that comes just before.

  Larken pushed her mother to the bottom of the stairs and waited. Viney drove around and around the block looking for a place to park. This was an exercise in futility, since the residents of southeastern Nebraska weren’t just out and about gathering provisions in preparation for a killer snowstorm, they were panicked by the knowledge that there were only ten shopping days left until Christmas. Viney waved each time she passed, her face and her salutory style reflecting a steady, declining progression from shining optimism to teeth-grinding ire.

  Finally, she came charging toward them. The heavy, urgent clack of her boots against the sidewalk made her sound at least fifty pounds heavier. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Can you believe it? I had to park in a lot! Six blocks away!”

  “No worries, Viney,” Hope said, squeezing her hand.

  Larken hated how close they were. She hated herself for hating it, but she couldn’t help it. They were both so good it set Larken’s teeth on edge.

  “You ready?” Viney asked.

  Hope nodded. Using her cane, she pushed herself to standing. She took two shaky steps away from the wheelchair and then balanced precariously.

  “Aviator grip!” Viney ordered. She and Larken quickly clasped each other’s forearms behind Hope’s back at the level of her bum. “Ready!”

  This was Hope’s cue to sit. She eased herself into their four-armed chairseat and spread her arms, settling them across Larken and Viney’s shoulders. The three of them then made their way: Hope in the middle, Larken and Viney on either side, bearing her up and up and up.

  Once they reached the top of the stairs (all breathing heavily, all wondering why the entrances to federal buildings invariably demand mountaineering skills), Larken and Viney set Hope back on her feet. While Viney skittered back down and up the stairs to fetch Hope’s wheelchair, Larken buttressed her mother’s body with hers to keep her upright and steady.

  “All right, then,” Viney said once Hope was back in the wheelchair. “You two go on in. I’ll be back as soon as I can” She looked at the sky and grimaced. “Shit!” she said, and then gave each of them a kiss and hurried away.

  “Agile,” Hope remarked, “isn’t she?”

  When they finally got to the waiting area—which was decorated with uncomfortable-looking plastic furniture and government posters—they found that it was packed. Dozens of people had already taken a number and were sitting down.

  Larken pushed her mother’s wheelchair so that it was positioned next to the front row. Since there were no available seats, she slouched against the nearest wall. After a minute or two, Hope turned to the surly, multiple-chinned man next to her. “My daughter,” she said pleasantly, “needs to sit.” He didn’t budge, so she glared at him until he left. Larken sat down. Her mother reached for her hand.

  They waited. Numbers were called. Larken went outside a couple of times to take cigarette breaks, staring down any adult who gave her the hairy eyeball.

  By the time #48 was called, over an hour had gone by. Larken walked to the counter and presented her number and her birth certificate to a mousy-looking woman with a bad perm. She explained her family’s special needs and then handed over a letter of permission from her physician father; the letter detailed her mother’s condition and attested to the need for someone to take on the responsibility of driving Hope to her medical appointments.

  Looking at the employee made Larken nervous. She was a blinker; as she perused Larken’s paperwork, her heavily mascaraed eyelashes kept colliding with her corkscrewed bangs, causing them to bounce up and down like a row of manic, uncoordinated Slinkys.

  “Your situation is unusual,” the employee said finally. “I’ll have to consult with my supervisor.”

  So, here she is: Waiting. Again. At least she’s missing her Health Ed final.

  Today as always, Larken is torn between pretending her mother is a total stranger and proclaiming their connection to the world at large. Having a mother in a wheelchair may be a pain in the ass and embarrassing, but it makes her very, very special. In fact, it’s Larken’s specialness on this score that accounts for her being here today. It accounts for just about everything, actually.

  The last time Larken checked, her mother was still awake, moving her lips slowly as if in prayer, reading one of her poetry books. But when Larken turns around she sees that Hope’s eyes are closed, her head is listing to one side. Hope can fall asleep anywhere lately. It’s mortifying. She’ll be drooling soon and wetting her diapers too, if she hasn’t already.

  Larken sniffs.

  Yep. There’s piss in the air.

  The mousy employee returns with her supervisor; hard as it is to believe, her perm is even worse than her subordinate’s.

  “She’s not going to use it to drive farm equipment,” the mouse whispers to Poodle.

  “Why not?”

  “Her father isn’t a farmer. He’s a doctor.”

  “Physician,” Larken interjects without thinking. Mouse and Poodle look at her. “The word doctor is imprecise.”

  They resume their conversation.

  “She says she needs it to drive her mother around.”

  “Her mother doesn’t drive?”

  “My mother can’t drive,” Larken explains again, wearily. “She has multiple sclerosis. She’s in a wheelchair.” She indicates Hope.

  “Well, I’ll need to speak with your mother then,” Poodle snips.

  Larken grits her teeth, but tries to speak politely. “She has MS. Speaking is difficult for her. And as you can see, she’s asleep.”

  Suddenly, Mouse and Poodle are looking past Larken, their mouths agape, their eyes wide. Larken turns, expecting to see a madman with a gun, but what she sees instead is her mother, trying to stand with the use of her cane. She takes two shaky steps and then crumples dramatically to the floor.

  “Ooohhhhhhhh!” Hope cries. “Aaaaaaaah!”

  “Oh my God!” Mouse and Poodle start running toward her, but Larken gets to her mother first.

  Hope leans close to her. Her eyes are still closed and her brow is furrowed as if she’s in pain, but there’s the trace of a smile on her lips. “Just let them try to say no now,” she whispers.

  After Mrs. Jones has been resituated in her wheelchair (she shows no outward injuries but wears a pained expression and continues to moan softly), the supervisor makes a big show of giving Larken’s paperwork another look.

  “Oh, wait!” she says. “Jones? Larken Jones? Why you’re Doc’s daughter, aren’t you? My family, all my kids, we all had your dad as our doctor since before you were born.” She quickly pens a large, loopy signature at the bottom of Larken’s application and hands everything back to the mouse. “Congratulations, hon,” she says. “You’ve got your learner’s permit.”

  By the time Viney returns—the backseat of her car loaded with enough provisions to outfit a military regiment in Siberia—the blizzard is in full force.

  When they pass the Beatrice City Limits sign, Hope makes a suggestion: “Let her drive, Viney.”<
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  Larken is astonished. Her mother has to be joking.

  But Viney shows no sign of being amused. Nor does she register disagreement, shock, or any other reaction that Larken would deem appropriate; in fact, and to Larken’s horror, Viney actually seems to be considering this insane idea. During the ensuing silence—which is punctuated by grunts, hums, shrugs, suspenseful in-breaths, and purgative sighs—Viney and Hope appear to be having a telepathic conversation.

  Finally, Viney speaks. “You’re right. If she can drive in this, she can drive in anything.”

  After pulling over at the first available turnout, Viney puts on the emergency lights, pushes the car door open—briefly admitting a roaring wind and a scattershot of ice crystals—and gets out. A full two minutes later, she reappears on the passenger side and knocks on the window.

  “YOU’LL BE FINE, HONEY!” she shouts. Quarter-inch drifts are already covering the eaves of her brows; there are small stalactites extruding from her nostrils. “YOUR MOM AND I WILL HELP YOU!”

  Hope pats Larken’s hand and nods.

  “SHOVE OVER, SWEETHEART!”

  With exaggerated difficulty and an angst-ridden huff, Larken climbs over her mother and into the driver’s seat.

  And so, within an hour of receiving her learner’s permit and on the occasion of her magic birthday, Larken gets her first driving lesson during a blizzard so severe that it ends up dumping twelve inches of icy snow on southeastern Nebraska and knocking out power for a week.

  It takes them six hours to get home, but Hope and Viney were right: ever since Larken turned fourteen, she’s been able to drive herself in anything.

  There are worms that live in snow. And mosquitoes from the genus Aedes whose larvae develop in the snow broth of early spring. It is strange to think of these kinds of creatures thriving in cold temperatures.

  Gaelan has never had magical powers, nor has he desired them. He does not believe himself capable of commanding events, especially those involving the weather.

  “Let’s make it snow,” Rhiannon says. She has materialized, standing in a distant door frame, and advances toward him with an eerily smooth and steady motion; as she comes toward him, he sees that she’s riding in a self-propelled American Red Flyer.

  She stops. She is much too close.

  Gaelan expected at least a little preamble. “I have hickory-smoked tofu,” he says, wanting to slow things down. “Chipotle cheddar. Roasted pistachios. Hummus.”

  “Hummmmmmm …” she says, and starts taking off her clothes. They flutter to her feet, forming a snowdrift of white cotton and lace: T-shirt, gym shorts, lingerie.

  There is a weightless quality to falling snow, even in its multiple forms, the various ways it can come down. Many people find it entrancing; to them snowfall is magical. Such people do not associate meteorological events with the disappearance of a parent, and so perhaps understandably given his family history, Gaelan does not prefer snow in this down-falling, vulnerable state; he feels much better once the flakes arrive on the ground and begin accumulating in that clubby way that gives them weight.

  “Let’s make it snow,” Bethan repeats.

  Bethan?

  She’s naked, and now she is pulling the wool sweater over his eyes, obscuring his vision. There is nothing heated about the way she is doing it; he could be five years old. She could be a babysitter helping him get ready for bed.

  “It’s not in the forecast,” Gaelan says inside his sweater.

  “Some things are impossible to predict,” she answers, and her mouth is on his soon after that.

  He sees them having sex in a series of quick snapshots. He’s on top, she’s on top, they’re rolling over, they’re on their sides … It’s very cinematic; there’s even a sound track. It reminds him of some movie he’s seen a hundred times but can’t quite remember the name of.

  She has an orgasm.

  He asks, “What did it feel like?”

  She stares past him—toward the light coming through the window. It casts her face in gray and pale blue shades that give her skin the look of moonstone.

  “Gaelan,” she whispers, “look out the window.”

  But he doesn’t want to look. He pulls his Intro to Meteorology textbook off the nightstand and reads: “‘Snow consists of ice crystals that have coalesced to form flakes. Snowflakes have no set form. They can be needles, columns, stars, or flat plates, depending on the temperature and the concentration of water vapor.’”

  “Let’s make a blizzard,” she insists. Her hands start moving again and Gaelan is suddenly nervous.

  He continues to read: “‘Snow is caused by precipitation forming when the temperature of water vapor drops below the vanishing point.’”

  The wind picks up. Some coincidental angle of snow, light, object, and shadow causes Nefertiti’s silhouette to materialize on one of the bedroom walls.

  “No!” he cries, frightened now. “I didn’t predict this!”

  Trying to call out, he wakes up and finds himself on the sofa.

  He only intended to rest his eyes—he’s been studying all morning. The room is cold and bathed in a distinct, steely light and peculiar quiet. He becomes aware of Kate and Spencer, basking in the radiant heat generated by the small, domed, tropical island formed by the top of his head. Extricating himself gently so as not to disturb them, he gets up and turns up the thermostat. He checks the time—it’s much later than he realized, almost noon—and then moves to the window and gazes outside, where, as he surmised, and without any assistance from the National Weather Service, it has started to snow.

  * * *

  Gaelan has had difficulty focusing on his online studies. He’s not a long-distance type as learning styles go. He prefers real people and real classrooms. And it’s so easy to get distracted, working from home. There are the cats and the computer, his free weights and treadmill. The quiet is unsettling. It’s also hard to resist turning on the TV to check in with his former KLAN-KHAM colleagues.

  He turns it on now and finds his substitute mid-segment, gesturing toward the Doppler image of the storm system that he already knows is coming.

  The newest member of the KLAN-KHAM news team is a very young, very bright woman with big hair, a small waist, and prominent eyeteeth. Her name, Riley Calder, strikes Gaelan as suspiciously euphonious and perky—designed for its upbeat appeal. Ms. Calder used to be, Gaelan senses, someone else, and is in the process of reinventing herself for the American mass market, in this case, commercial television. She’s the kind of person who has simple motives: She wants celebrity however she can get it, and a chance to climb the corporate ladder of her choosing with a name that will assist that ascent. For example, if she aspired to stardom as a writer of Harlequin romances, Gaelan is sure she would have chosen another nom de plume, something like Ashleigh du Printemps or Clarissa de Winter. She probably grew up being called something she considered ordinary, déclassé, unassertive: Sue, Nancy, Doris, Lynn.

  Based on the time they spent together—with Riley shadowing him during his final week on camera and Gaelan sitting in on her broadcasts—his impression is that this job is nothing more than a milk stop. She’ll be more than competent as KLAN-KHAM’s substitute forecaster, she’ll do all the right things, but Gaelan imagines that her future plans extend well beyond the limits of Lincoln, Nebraska, and include the appearance of Riley Calder™ in the national, perhaps even international market: a syndicated talk show and women’s magazine; book endorsements; a line of gourmet frozen foods and/or designer furniture: the Riley Calder Collection.

  Riley already has her meteorology degree; she received it this past spring and this is her first job. Even so, she’s quite accomplished and savvy; when Gaelan was training her she seemed to already know everything and was more interested in standing too close to him than in learning the ropes.

  He turns off the TV and checks the time again. He should get on the road, start heading down to Emlyn Springs now—he’s expected at Viney’s for supper
at five, and this storm shows no sign of slowing—but he really wants to get in one more gym workout. So—after loading the car and dropping Kate and Spencer at the vet’s (where they’ll board in kitty condo luxury for the next week), he heads to the Y.

  Maybe Rhiannon won’t be there. It’s Christmas Eve, after all. She may already be on a plane, heading back to Oregon to visit her family and pay condolences to the squadron of lovelorn bodybuilders still languishing in her wake.

  He’s being dramatic. She didn’t break his heart. Not at all. They’ve continued to see each other at the gym and maintain friendly relations. She’s a nice girl, a smart girl, a class act. So it didn’t work out between them—she hasn’t been back to the condo since that one time or offered even once to spot him again on the bench press. It’s fine.

  It’s not like there were any stated expectations on either side. Technically, they didn’t even sleep together. They flirted, they fooled around, she was engaging company for a couple of weeks, and that’s it. She can’t say she didn’t enjoy herself that afternoon; it’s just that neither of them took up the reins of a sexual relationship beyond that day. There doesn’t have to be a reason for everything.

  And anyway, soon after their two-week-whatever-it-was, it became clear that she was seeing someone else: one of the Y’s personal trainers (indeed, Gaelan’s personal trainer): a guy known simply as Jeff, or “Buff Jeff” in some segments of the Y-going population; personal trainers don’t possess surnames.

  Jeff competes as an amateur. He’s been to the Arnold Classic twice.

  It’s been mildly distracting, having to face them every day in this setting, catching glimpses of the discreet nuzzlings and brushings and whisperings. Not that Gaelan can’t handle it. Still, he sometimes catches Rhiannon looking at him like he’s a three-legged puppy. And then there’s the obvious, more vexing concern: Has she confided in Jeff about his Problem?