Greek, Aequian, and Etruscan. Dacian. Elymian, Faliscan, and Ligurian. There were so many more. Messapic, Minoan, Oscan, Umbrian. And more still. The names belonged to other planets and other worlds. They belonged to craters on the moon. The professors came to listen, and Gary let them in. It’s for science, Gary said. It’s for their research, and she tried not to be angry. He was looking for his son, that’s how she thought of it. His son who sat all day and rocked in his chair. Who didn’t play with the trucks they bought him, who didn’t listen to music or clap his hands or sing. This was his way of keeping something when everything else was lost.
•
Healers came, too, and believers in reincarnation. Serious men in suits who tracked snow into the house. Women who wore beads and let their hair go long and gray. Gary listened to them when they talked about children who spoke languages from other lives. Who’d lived a thousand years before and remembered what they saw. It happened on the Pentecost, he said. That’s just how it went. The Galileans spoke a dozen different languages so the visitors could understand. They spoke languages they’d never heard because that’s how God wanted it. He talked about taking Nicholas to church, to have him feel the Spirit. He wasn’t working long hours anymore. Most days he didn’t go into the office. His cell phone was never charged.
He started studying ancient Greek. He bought some used workbooks and struggled with the letters. I’ve never seen a language like this before, he said. It’s even worse than law school. He wrote in his notebooks and learned the words for father and mother and son, and Holly made him coffee. She kept quiet because what was there to say. If those professors couldn’t reach him with all their expertise, then what hope was there for Gary, who’d almost failed college French.
He crouched before Nicholas when he was ready. He held his sheet of paper and cleared his throat. “I’m not so sure about the grammar,” he said. “Guess we’ll just have to see.”
“Ego eimi sos pateras.” He spoke loud as a preacher. “Pa-te-ras.” He thumped his chest to emphasize each syllable, and Nicholas opened his eyes.
“Pou ei?” He reached for his boy’s wrist. Where are you? “Pou ei?” Gary asked again, but Nicholas wasn’t listening. No, Nicholas was starting to rock again. His head tilted to the side.
Gary read the rest of his notes. He’d written all sorts of questions for his boy. Questions and explanations and things to calm him down. Your name is Nicholas. And here is your mother. She loves you. When are you coming home? He said these things in Greek and sometimes he stuttered and had to begin again, and Nicholas closed his eyes. He slept in his little chair.
“It’s a start,” Gary said. He pushed himself up from the floor. “He heard me that first time. Did you see? Did you see how he paid attention?”
“Yes,” she said, “yes. I saw it all,” and Gary looked contented. He whistled a little under his breath. He opened his Greek grammar books and started where he’d stopped, and it looked like random scribbles from where she was. It looked strange and familiar both. He’d learn all the languages right up the tree, she could tell from the set of his jaw. He’d go backward in time to the beginning. Climbing up to catch his boy, who would always fall away.
She gave Nicholas an orange to hold, and he reached for it and smiled. Gary was waiting in the car outside, but she didn’t try to hurry. Nicholas loved going to the grocery store. It calmed him even on bad days. He loved the fruits and the fine water mist from the sprayers. He swung his legs back and forth in the cart, and twice she had to straighten him out again and make sure his belt was latched. She picked some ears of corn. The beets looked good, and she filled up two bags with them so she could make a salad. Gary needed more vegetables. He spent too much time inside. His skin had gone from walnut to ivory, and the capillaries showed below his eyes. She needed to cook more often and clean up the house. She needed to put away the toys.
She was pulling a plastic bag off the dispenser when Nicholas dropped the orange. It rolled underneath the cart, and before she could pick it up he reached for her wrist and squeezed. He tilted his head. He looked at her and tightened his hold, and the expression in his eyes was something like surprise. He looked around the store. At the dented carts and the Easter lilies that were arranged beside the door. All the people in their muddy shoes, all their tired eyes. A little girl with red hair ran between the aisles. He looked at her and the ribbons in her braids and the way her dress swung around her knees. He squeezed harder and dug his nails into Holly’s skin.
An older woman pushed her cart alongside them. “Excuse me,” she said. “I need to get by.” She was holding a folder full of coupons.
Holly didn’t move, and she didn’t answer. She stayed where she was, but Nicholas let her hand go anyway. He rolled back in his metal seat, and what she had seen in his eyes, whatever it was, had gone away.
“Nicholas,” she said. “Come back to me.” She set his hand around her wrist and held it there. Who knew the things he saw. His eyes were dark when he was born. Dark and without end. He’d looked right past her in the birthing room. Like a tiny astronaut or an ocean explorer. When the nurses set him in her arms, his fingers had curled around her thumb but only for a moment. He pulled away and raised his fist toward the ceiling as if to show her something. Look, he seemed to say, look at what you’re missing, and she was certain then that she’d known him always and that he’d always be a stranger.
“Nicholas,” she said again, “listen to your mama.” She unbuckled the straps in the shopping cart and pulled him to her shoulder. “There’s nothing for you there,” but even as she said it she wondered if it was true. She rocked with him against the shopping cart. She stroked his curly hair.
Rise
He visited the city every night. He walked along its streets. His father lived there and the girl did, too, and the air smelled of cinnamon and salt from the water. He saw no cars and no bicycles anywhere, no other pedestrians strolling between the buildings. The rooflines grew lower as he came to the water. The asphalt was jagged and split. Sometimes he stepped into puddles or slipped where the road was muddy. Sometimes he took off his shoes. There were ladies behind the windows. They reached for him between the bars and tried to catch his arm. All around him there were flowers. Jasmine and plumeria and gardenias with their perfume. Guava and stephanotis, he knew them when he saw them. He knew all the birds and trees.
It was always summer in the city. The air was always warm. He couldn’t find Leo or Gemini or Venus shining like the moon. He saw none of the southern constellations either, the ones he knew from books. He saw anchors and crosses and trailing vines. A moth opening its wings. Remember these things, he told himself. Take them with you when you leave.
The woman was waiting on the sand. She sat on a woven straw mat and strung blossoms from a basket, working them one into the next. Sit for a while, she said. Her skin was pale as the flowers she held. We’ve been waiting here for hours. Heat rose from the sand as if the earth itself were something living. He worked the blossoms onto the string, and his fingers were sticky from the petals. They worked together until the sun rose and the crickets stopped their singing.
Ruby opened the blinds so the sun could shine across the bed. She stood there in her leggings and her purple flannel robe. “Pretty good,” she said. “I didn’t even have to sing.”
She hadn’t combed her hair yet, and her curls looked electrified. The oatmeal was ready, but he needed to hurry because it was already half past seven.
The kitchen smelled like coffee when he came out. She needed two cups to clear the clouds from her eyes, that’s what she always said. She stirred the brown sugar into the oatmeal and the dried blueberries and brought the bowls to the round table. “Maybe we’ll go riding this weekend,” she said. “Before it gets too cold.”
“The Chicago deal is heating up.”
“The air would do you good. It’s better than the gym.”
“I’ll know by Friday how the weekend looks.”
“Three thousand dollars for a tandem and now we never use it.” She tapped her finger against her front tooth, the one she’d had capped when she broke it on a cherry stone. She watched him scrape the edges of his bowl. She thought he was depressed. She’d say so any time there was an opening. That’s why he slept through his alarm clocks. Maybe he should see somebody because it wasn’t good to keep things bottled up. His father had been like that and look how things had gone for him. A heart attack at sixty-three and the bypasses couldn’t fix things once the damage was done. Nobody could help him, not even that specialist from Denver. It had been over a year, and she had a referral for somebody good. A therapist with experience in bereavement. Go see him, Ethan, she always said. You can go at lunch if you want. Or when you’re done for the day.
She had so many ideas. They could bicycle for Alzheimer’s or walk for ovarian cancer. It would do him good to give something back, and he’d say, yes, that’d be great and maybe next year, and how could she understand? She’d never been careless or unlucky. Everything she touched blossomed. Everything except for him. The African violets on the kitchen windowsill were blooming again, and last spring she’d built a greenhouse from a kit. She called it her church, and that’s what it looked like. It glowed in the evening when she worked. She had cherry tomatoes growing in there and orchids in hanging pots. Strange prehistoric-looking things with open-mouthed blossoms. Their roots curled in the air. It smelled like mushrooms inside and rotting wood and something else he couldn’t name. Come with me, she’d say. Why don’t you keep me company, and he’d go no farther than the door.
“Those folks in Chicago can wait,” she said. “A couple of hours on a Saturday won’t make any difference.”
“Two years away from the firm and you’ve forgotten what it’s like.” Ruby worked for a judge now. A Carter appointee with silver hair, and things were always quiet in his chambers. She wrote bench memos three days a week, and he didn’t mind if she worked from home.
“I’m just trying to give you some perspective.” She came up behind him to get his empty bowl and kissed him on top of his head.
Here’s what he didn’t tell her: Thank God for the clients in Chicago who yelled at him all day. It was October already, and the deal wasn’t anywhere near closing. They still hadn’t signed the letter of intent because one of the partners always had a problem. The indemnification provisions were too broad or too narrow and the definitions were unclear. He fixed each issue as it came up, but there was always another. Bless them because they filled his days. Bless the clients and the IRS and the treadmill at the gym. He ran until his T-shirt was soaked and stuck against his skin. He answered calls and wrote his memos and did pull-ups on the bar. He was exhausted by eight and asleep by nine, and that’s where he found his peace.
She waited by the river and the reservoir and down along the sand. She waited only for him. She sat on a woven blanket, and the air was so heavy and still. Don’t you want to see your father, she wanted to know. Don’t you want to meet my baby girl? Farther down the men were coiling ropes. Their boats rocked in the black water. They were ferrymen and fishermen, and their work was done for the day. Night has fallen around us. Set your work aside. She closed her eyes when she sang. Her voice never wavered. Sleep without any worries. I’ll always be your bride. She sang songs he’d never heard before, but he knew how they went.
He had four alarm clocks on his nightstand. He lined them up like soldiers. Analog and digital and an old-fashioned one with a bell and another that vibrated the whole mattress. The manufacturer called it the Sonic Boom. It was designed for narcoleptics and the hearing-impaired, but even on its highest setting it wasn’t strong enough. Only Ruby could wake him up. She pulled up the blinds and shook him by the shoulder, and if that didn’t work she sang all the songs he hated. “Feelings” and “My Sharona” and “Sometimes When We Touch,” and her voice cracked on the high notes. She sang into his ear, and she looked so relieved when he opened his eyes.
The little girl had been wearing a yellow dress. He hadn’t seen her as she crossed. Traffic was stopped in the right-hand lane, and he was talking with Ruby on the phone. She had the vegetables ready, but he needed to pick up a roasted chicken from King Soopers. One of the good ones this time and not one that was all dried out. He needed to pay attention. The law hadn’t taken effect yet, and it was perfectly legal to use his cell. He changed lanes because those idiots would make him miss the light. He changed lanes because he was tired and because he was hungry and impatient and because there was no God.
The girl wore a yellow dress, and there were flowers on the skirt. He saw these things. The flowers and her lace socks and the book bag she swung in the air. Her older sister was a few steps behind. She was close enough to see but powerless to change things. The girl flew over his hood. She cracked the glass as she went upward. Light as a bird flushed from the bush. Light as a skipping stone. He knew what had happened before she came back down. He stopped the car and dropped his cell phone and ran back to where she was. She lay against a storm grate. Her long brown hair had come undone.
The older girl began to howl. A sound unlike any he’d heard before. She went to her knees and covered her baby sister. A bus driver came and tried to help, but she pushed him away. She set her palms over her sister’s nose and her bare feet and all the places she was bleeding. She moved her hands in circles. As if she could plug those holes and mend the bones where they had broken. She leaned over her sister and pressed herself against that still body, and it took three paramedics to pry her away.
They took their tandem out on Saturday and rode up to the reservoir. It was warm for late October, but the mountains already had some snow. Up on the hills the cottonwoods were turning. Delicate things those yellow leaves. They fluttered like paper wings. He was in front and Ruby in back, and they rode together like a single person. He’d bought the bike ten years before as their first anniversary present. He told her when there were bumps and when to ring the bell, and there were other couples, too, in matching bike shorts and tunics. Seven thousand feet above sea level with a sky so bright it hurt his eyes. “Look at that,” Ruby was saying. “Look at the baby deer,” and it came near the road and tilted its head and its mother was there beside it. Past barns that had lost their rooftops and cabins set back from the road and he could see the water in the distance. So blue it was almost black. Ruby once said they lived in the perfect place. Winters need to be cold and the summers hot, and the seasons give life its rhythm.
They found a shady spot and ate their turkey sandwiches. She’d put in chips and horseradish, and his eyes watered from the sting. She climbed on a rock when she was done with her meal. She pulled her knees close to her chest. “Maybe this will be your medicine,” she said. “Just coming up here the two of us and sitting in the sun.” Her nose was sunburnt, and she worked her jaw the way she did to keep from crying. He wanted to climb up beside her on the rock, but there was only room for one.
Good evening good night turn off the light. Sleep with the roses and rabbits tonight. She strung the blossoms, and her hands were white. A ladybug crawled across her cheek. There were more on the blanket, mounds of them moving in circles between the flowers. You’ll wake up tomorrow if God wants you to. Open your eyes and the sky will be blue. She reached for his wrist with those long fingers. It was time to show him the water. Her baby girl was waiting beside the rocks. Her skin was cool despite the heat, but he pulled his hand away. He didn’t want her to stop her singing. There’s no hurry, she said. I’ve got nothing here but time. She closed her dark eyes and sang to him like a mother. She rocked him in her arms.
He saw a lady at the gym with an ankh tattoo at the nape of her neck. She was always there no matter when he went. Her black hair was shaved close to her head, and she never smiled or talked. She worked in with him on the machines sometimes. A slender woman with narrow fingers, but she lifted more than most guys, and once he saw her do handstand push-ups against the mirror. The lady w
ith the tattoo and the two gay guys who were serious about their sets, the grandma who wore orange lipstick when she worked with her personal trainer. He knew them all and nobody ever said hello, and that was how he liked it. He varied his routine to keep his muscles guessing. Push-ups on the BOSU ball. Three sets of twenty with claps in between and he felt the stabbing in his shoulder blades before he was halfway through. Crabwalking across the gym’s basketball court, one-legged squats, nine minutes jumping rope. One thousand three hundred and fifty jumps, and his knees popped sometimes from the strain. Push-ups with his arms extended. Fingertip push-ups when he felt strong, or push-ups on one hand. Straitjacket sit-ups with his arms hugged tight across his chest. Sometimes he could see his heart beating through his wet T-shirt. Who knew what kept it going.
Her hair had been long just like her daughter’s. Her eyes were almost black. She carried a backpack, and it had red ladybugs stitched across it and a button that said Marisa. She cradled that bag in her arms, and she didn’t look around the room, not at him or the nurses or the police officers who were still taking down notes. His lawyer was coming. Sid Taborsky from the firm who knew all about backdated stock options and Medicare fraud, and Sid was useless because the girl was dead and nothing mattered now. The woman stood alone in the corner. Her older girl wasn’t there, and neither was her husband if she had one. She didn’t look up when the doctors came and when they told her the news. She didn’t cry, and she didn’t move. My baby’s not dead, she said. My baby’s right here, and she held that bag when she went to her knees. She held it against her chest, and he looked at the oval of her face and those long white fingers and he almost believed her.
Rise Page 9
