Serious. Practical. Safety-minded. Will insist on childproofing.
“Who owns this building, anyway?”
“I’m not sure,” Bonnie replies. “Tom pays rent to somebody in Arizona, but the last two checks have come back stamped ‘RETURN TO SENDER.’”
“Tom?” Harold says.
Suspicious. Bonnie writes. Jealous type?
“Blind Tom,” she answers. “You know, he runs the piano hospital next door?”
“Oh,” Harold says. “Right.”
Definitely jealous. “I’m kind of like subletting this half of the building from him. He stores some of his pianos back there.”
“Pianos, huh?” Harold says, marching toward the back room.
“Unfinished pianos, piano parts …” Bonnie says. She feels suddenly protective on Blind Tom’s behalf. “That’s all his stuff back there,” she says. “I don’t go in that room.”
Harold ignores her and peeks in anyway. “Yep,” he muses darkly. “There’s not a single thing in this whole building that’s up to code.”
Lack of imagination, Bonnie scrawls. Not a music lover.
They walk around some more. Harold kneels to scrutinize every outlet in the shop. Half an hour later, his explorations still haven’t led him him to look up.
“What do you think about that light?” Bonnie finally asks, indicating the overhead fluorescent.
“Whoa,” Harold says with distaste. “Look at all those dead bugs.” He stands directly under the wheel and squints toward the ceiling. “Well, I’m guessing that wire is carrying too much current, for one thing. And we should definitely get you fixed up with some different chains.”
“Great,” Bonnie says. Feeling that she’s given Harold every opportunity to succeed, she strides to the front door of the shop and pulls it open.
Harold’s expression—a default scowl—grows even darker. “I can climb up there and take a closer look if you’d like,” he offers.
“That’s okay, Harold,” Bonnie says. “I appreciate your coming over.”
Harold remains in place, looking dazed and bullish. He regards the door with skepticism, as if walking through it would have dire and embarrassing consequences. “I’m … concerned, Bonnie,” he says. “I don’t like seeing anybody do business in such hazardous conditions.”
“Don’t worry, Harold,” Bonnie says. “I’ll get on those changes right away.”
“All right, then. Bye,” Harold grunts, and stomps out.
Bonnie shuts the door and crosses him off her list. It’s not until hours later, when she’s back home and tucked into bed, that she realizes she forgot to reward Howard’s participation with a free smoothie.
On each successive night, Bonnie trudges through the snow to meet with the candidates. In each case, she ends up having to nudge their visual explorations: Feel free to take a look around. Would you mind turning on the overhead light? Do you like the unfinished look or should I put in an acoustic ceiling? None of them want to do anything but talk. They all fail the test; they all leave with complimentary smoothies.
She has high hopes for her fifth and final candidate, Brody Canaerfan. His questionnaire is very promising; in response to What would make bike-riding more attractive to you and your family? he wrote, “One-on-one cycling tours with the owner of the shop.”
A few seconds after Bonnie remarks, “I guess it’s time to take down those Christmas decorations”—casually, of course, and with only the slightest upward tilt of her chin. Brody looks up, his expression riveted.
With warriorlike determination, he drags Bonnie’s heavy worktable across the floor so that it is centered directly under the wheel. After climbing onto the table, he pulls himself up into the rafters, balancing impishly on the same two beams that support the wheel and grinning down at her.
This is it! Bonnie thinks. He sees it! He’s the one!
It’s at this point that Brody starts telling Bonnie about his years as a competitive gymnast and his desire to start up a gymnastics team at the school. When he decides to use the rafters to demonstrate some of the saw horse maneuvers that made him three-time state champion, things turn decisively disastrous.
Brody Canaerfan, Bonnie’s fifth and final candidate, ends up drinking his complimentary smoothie in the county ambulance while getting a complimentary ride to the emergency room.
“Tom?” Bonnie calls across the partition—a sudden noise having drawn her attention to the fact that he’s here.
“Yes?”
“Do you think the bike shop is a good idea?”
“I think it’s brilliant.”
Bonnie sighs. Once she turns out the lights, the building is cast in complete darkness. “I’m heading home,” she says. “Are you leaving soon?”
“No. It’s Claude Debussy’s birthday.”
“Oh. Well …” Bonnie has no idea what to make of this information. “Good night, then.” Blind Tom, she’s concluded, is by far the oddest man she’s ever known.
Hope’s Diary, 1970:
Fairy Mischief
“Midsummer Night’s Dream” opens this weekend, the sixth annual production of the Emlyn Springs Shakespeare Troupe! Viney and I nudged and cajoled and nagged and flattered Llewellyn until he had no choice but to audition, and of course he’s a perfect King Oberon. Hazel inserted some Welsh folk music into the production—our fairy forest is in Wales, naturally!—so L. gets to show off his singing voice as well.
True, there are painful moments in the production. Plenty of people thrill to Estella Axthelm’s mannered performance and self-aware command of the language, but I regard Titania’s appearances onstage as opportunities to nap. Hazel was politic enough to give her and Llewellyn the final bow at curtain call. Overall, though, I’m extremely proud of our efforts.
I found a pair of dice on my socks this morning. I’ve never seen them before, nor has Llewellyn or the children. They’re old, wooden. A poltergeist? Elfin sprites? The cat? Tornadoes do this kind of thing, deposit mysterious items in unlikely places, but the only funnel cloud that has visited this house is the one the children kick up every day.
I’m dumbfounded.
Finding the dice was a nice distraction. It happened when I’d crawled to the foot of the bed and was fumbling around trying to locate my bathrobe. Light was finally creeping in from the direction of the window, warming my face, blurred shapes at the periphery. At that point, Llewellyn was downstairs talking on the phone with a neurologist colleague up in Omaha. Personally, I think he was overreacting, even now.
I’ve been using my eyes a lot, after all. Hands too—they’ve been almost constantly numb for the past week from hours of hand-sewing hundreds of sequins onto dozens of pairs of fairy wings. But oh, how magical our fairies appear! It’s all been worth it.
“Llewellyn,” I said when I woke up this morning, “are my eyes open?” At first I thought I was dreaming.
“What?”
“I can’t see. Am I awake?”
“What do you mean you can’t see?”
It sounds so funny written down like this, like a burlesque lacking a punch line.
“Hope,” Llewellyn said. “Look over here. Can you turn your eyes to where I am?”
“Of course,” I said. I heard L. moving about in the vicinity.
“Stay here,” he said finally. “I’m going downstairs to make a phone call.”
“Llewellyn, I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“Stay in bed. I’ll be back.”
“What’s wrong, Daddy?” It was Larken in the hallway outside our room.
“Nothing, pumpkin. Mommy’s just not feeling well.”
“Is she throwing up?” Gaelan asked.
“No no no, nothing like that,” L. said, “she’s just got a little headache.” I heard him descending the stairs, urgent and graceful—so unlike his clumsy spouse. “Leave Mommy alone now,” he called out on the way. “Let her rest.”
I sensed the children before I heard them—Larken standing in the doo
r, Gaelan taking a few steps in—and pressed my palms to my lids to make sure my eyes were closed.
“Mom?” Gaelan said.
“Good morning, sweetheart.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I just have a little headache.”
“Are you going to make breakfast?” Larken asked.
“Daddy will, in a minute. He’ll fix you something, or I will when my headache goes away. You can watch cartoons until then.”
Gaelan came closer. I knew it was him; his footsteps are more cautious than Larken’s, more tentative. I could picture her frowning at me from the bedroom door. I felt Gaelan’s body before he actually touched me.
He petted my hand. “Feel better soon, okay?”
“Okay. I will. Give me a kiss.”
He complied. Larken kept her distance.
“I love you,” I said to anyone within range, and then listened to the two of them go down the stairs together, their footsteps getting softer and softer and all of a sudden I had a terrible intimation of death, theirs or mine, the whole horror that comes over me now and then, the veil of what is bearable being torn off so that one knows one has given birth and given death, all in one.
That was when I started to cry and thought, this is ridiculous, Hope, get ahold of yourself, and crawled to the foot of the bed in search of my bathrobe.
Soon after, my vision returned—I’m sure it was the cleansing effect of tears that did it—and the first thing I saw, staring at me from the pile of dirty laundry I’d cast onto the cedar chest at the foot of the bed last night, were those mysterious wooden dice.
Snake eyes. Double ones. Lucky or unlucky?
Don’t know. I’ve never been much of a gambler.
* * *
Lucky, apparently, because (surprise) I’m pregnant again!!
(Note exclamation points. I don’t care.)
L. and I were carried away by all that Shakespearean romance, and I like to think that his performance as Oberon invoked some sort of fairy magic in support of our procreative efforts.
So there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Haven’t told L. yet. Will do tomorrow.
Chapter 21
Weatherman Encounters the Coriolis Force
Three-dimensional Gaelan is at the gym on a stationary bike; he’s watching two-dimensional Gaelan on a black-and-white flat-screen plasma television at the Y. It’s great that he can be in two places at once.
Two-D TV Gaelan is standing in front of a Doppler radar picture that shows a low pressure system making its way into southeastern Nebraska. He’s naked, except for a skimpy black Speedo, and he runs through a posing routine while he talks about the weather. “We’ll be seeing good symmetry in this front,” he says, flexing his pectorals, “with accumulating traps.” He turns his back to the camera. “We’ll have especially nice definition right here in the lateral obliques.”
I look great, 3-D Gaelan thinks as he regards his 2-D self.
Then he switches places: he’s inside his body, no longer watching it, and no longer on TV. He’s standing on an empty stage, looking out to where an audience should be. It’s a vast, starless universe out there. Is he still on the air? Where’s the cameraman?
Suddenly, a kind of strobe effect begins: Intense, highly focused explosions of light start going on and off everywhere. Trying to track them causes his eyes to dart around, pinball fashion. It’s painful. What’s he seeing? Dying stars? Lightning bugs? Flashbulbs?
He’s not alone. When the lights stabilize and steady, they illuminate the entire stage: It’s a huge, white, circular platform ringed by hundreds of bodybuilders. Each one stands in front of his own blue screen, pointing to radar pictures of various pressure systems, running through individual routines while Springsteen’s “She’s the One” blasts through the PA system. The mood is upbeat and celebratory, like a rock concert.
Now he understands: It’s the Mr. Weatherman Universe competition! Contestants will be judged not only on their physiques but on their camera skills and their forecasting powers.
Arnold is standing next to him, only a couple of feet away, on his left. He’s wearing his Conan the Barbarian outfit. Lou Ferrigno is on his right, dressed as the Hulk. Was he supposed to have worn a superhero costume?
He looks down. His Speedo has a red “S” on the front and he’s wearing Superman boots that obscure his lower legs. That’s okay. He’s never been proud of his calves.
Arnold and Lou stand in front of Gaelan and start performing their weather forecasting/posing routines. Gaelan must be a judge; he’s holding a small spiral notebook and pencil. It’s a struggle to understand what Arnold is saying; his accent is stronger than ever and he’s very stiff. He should take a yoga class. And Lou Ferrigno’s complexion has a sickly green cast; he looks terrible on camera. Neither of them has any experience predicting the unpredictable. Gaelan writes a zero on his notebook and holds it up.
There’s a man standing on the opposite side of the circle. He’s very far away and he’s wearing a gray flannel suit. He doesn’t seem to be part of the competition; Gaelan has the feeling that he’s another judge. He’s moving his mouth, but Gaelan can’t hear what he’s saying. He’d like to get closer, but he’d have to go all the way around the circle and disrupt the other contestants’ presentations. They really should have built a bridge.
Or maybe not. Something about the man is vaguely disquieting and Gaelan isn’t sure he really wants to hear what he has to say.
Gaelan starts doing yoga. He’s extremely flexible. He’s the first bodybuilding weatherman in the history of bodybuilding weathermen to do yoga as part of his routine.
He comes out of bridge pose to find that he’s on the back porch of their old house, looking out at a cornfield. The corn is tall; it must be late summer. There’s a big basket of eggplants and asparagus sitting on the porch steps. That’s his prize. He won the competition.
He spots Rhiannon way out in the middle of the field. She’s a scarecrow. There are a lot of scarecrows out there. He can almost see their faces, but not quite. They’re too far away.
She comes down from her scarecrow crucifix. She steps up out of the field and onto the porch. “Wear these,” she tells him, handing him a pair of dumbbells. They’re very heavy. “Sinkholes can be self-induced,” she says, and then she starts leading him farther into the cornfield.
They arrive at a place that seems familiar. He knows it, doesn’t he? Hasn’t he been here before?
“Not everything in Nebraska is flat,” she tells him. “There are a lot of underground springs around here.”
A door opens. It’s like a root cellar door, but it opens to an underground cave. It’s dark down there.
“We’ve got to get to the basement,” she says.
“Are you sure it’s empty?” Gaelan asks.
She extends her arm skyward, fingers spread wide, and starts circling her arm in a clockwise direction.
“I thought the Coriolis force moves counterclockwise,” Gaelan says. “At least in the Northern Hemisphere.”
“Not always,” she says. “It depends on your point of view.”
And then he is up there, looking down. She’s tiny and winged, like Thumbelina, and she’s in his bathroom sink. She’s sitting on the rim of the drain and sure enough, from this perspective her arm is moving counterclockwise. She’s commanding a continuously moving, shallow pool of water. It spirals around the sides of the sink until it disappears down the dark hole of the drain.
And then they’re at the Y, in a spinning class. She’s the teacher. His sisters are there, too—and Viney and Dad and even his mother, who is taking the class in a stationary wheelchair.
He is so happy to see them, but they’re all so intent; they don’t seem to notice him at all. Everyone is pedaling backward. Perhaps there’s a different set of muscles involved in backward biking.
“Okay, everyone,” Rhiannon shouts. “Let’s really push it now. Let’s make some cumulus clouds!”
His bike is special. There’s a weight bench between the handlebars, and there’s a woman there, bench-pressing an odd-shaped weight that keeps wiggling. Clearly it’s too heavy for her. She’s floundering. He needs to spot her.
He tries to get off his bike and into the spotter’s position but he can’t move fast enough and then she drops the baby—No!
—and that’s when he wakes up, facedown in his Intro to Meteorology textbook, his body compressed awkwardly against the desk, his left shoulder enveloped in a firestorm of pain.
With his right arm, Gaelan reaches for his OTC meds—his left arm is closer, but when his shoulder flares up like this, even lifting a bottle of Advil causes him to wince. He swallows two pills, assesses his discomfort, and then downs a third.
Restless sleep, vivid, disturbing dreams, and waking up with some degree of shoulder discomfort has become a regular routine. But as long as he keeps a stash of NSAIDs on hand, he’s able to work out. He’s taking it easier with certain elements of his routine, too: bench press, lat pulls, flys, push-ups. Fewer reps.
His computer has gone into sleep mode; he jiggles his mouse to wake it up. The results of his most recent Google search appear on the screen: a Web site called “Bad Coriolis.”
One of the challenges Gaelan has faced as a distance-learning student is the way a simple question can lead to an Internet search that can lead to hundreds of Web sites, that can lead to spending hours reading information that is not part of the class curriculum but is infinitely more interesting than what he’s supposed to be studying. He doesn’t even remember how he ended up at the “Bad Coriolis” Web site, but he makes frequent visits there; it’s one of the most interesting and informative sites he’s found in his cyberspace wanderings.
The site is maintained by a Mr. Alistair B. Fraser—a man dedicated to the debunking of certain widely propagated science myths, and to the proposition that “it is better to communicate good information than to offer misinformation in the name of good communication.”
For example, Mr. Fraser’s “Bad Rain” page reminded Gaelan that the universally accepted raindrop-as-teardrop symbol enforces a fallacy. Raindrops look absolutely nothing like this: small ones are spherical; large ones are shaped something like hamburger buns.
Sing Them Home Page 41
