Rise

by L. Annette Binder

  The corporate folks needed him in Chicago for three days. He had to hold some hands in person and not just over the phone. One of the equity holders in a subsidiary was having doubts about the deal. He wanted more changes to the disclosure schedule or he’d pull out and everyone would be left hanging. “Be careful with those guys,” they told him the day before he left. “Spellman’s a screamer. I saw him break a keyboard once when things didn’t go his way.” The next day he’d give away bottles of Oban scotch if he’d really crossed the line. That was his way of saying sorry.

  Ruby helped pack his bags. She had the shaving kit ready, and she folded all his shirts, and she took him to the airport, too, so he wouldn’t have to park. “Don’t look so worried,” she said when she stopped in front of the terminal. “I’ll call you every morning. I’ll wake you up just like I do at home.” She grabbed his arm before he walked inside. “Make a muscle,” she said. She leaned out the window to give him a kiss, and she looked so sweet with her eyes closed.

  A bench with the girl’s name at the Franklin School and a willow tree planted in her honor. Ruby arranged these things. Sid Taborsky worked out the settlement and the no contest plea. Funeral and medical costs and the loss of future earnings. A year without a driver’s license and fifty thousand dollars restitution, and none of it was enough. He wrote a letter to the mother and to the sister. It said how sorry he was and how he thought of them every day, and Ruby said he should meet them in person and ask for forgiveness. She said it would make it easier to forgive himself, and maybe she was right. He dialed the number a dozen times but hung up before it rang.

  He’d dreamt those first months of falling. He jumped from a plane and his chute wouldn’t open. He was climbing rocks, and they were slick from the rain. He fell from windows and bridges and balconies, and he opened his arms the way divers do. He arced backward in the air. These thoughts calmed him. He walked at night, going as far as Prospect Lake where people kept pit bulls behind their fences. He stopped carrying his pocket knife or his can of pepper spray and he waited for something to happen, but nothing ever did.

  Ruby said we have choices, each of us. You have a choice just like your father did. He chose to smoke those cigarettes and to skip those doctor’s appointments. Don’t you make the same mistake. He needed to do something good with the time he had. He owed it to himself and to that little girl, and it was easy for her to say that, his sweet Ruby whose plants were always blooming. Who took yoga every Thursday at the courthouse gym. She’d gone to visit his father those last few months. She tried to get Ethan to come along, but he always found a reason not to. Tip her over and she’d right herself. How could she understand? Sometimes he was so tired. Every day he was treading water, and he wanted only to stop.

  He took a cab from the airport straight to the Chicago office. Twenty-six miles east on the I-90 to Jackson and to Wacker and the cabbie listened to accordion music the whole way and never said a word. The meeting was in a conference room with views toward the water. It had already started when he got there. It had been going on all morning. There were white orchids on the table and stacks of tabbed papers. Danishes from breakfast with dried-out jelly centers. They argued about disclosure first and then Spellman wanted to know who’d pay the taxes. Ethan tried to explain how there wouldn’t be any taxes, not the way this deal was structured, but Spellman was getting worked up. He scratched his bald head and pounded the table. “Of course it matters,” Spellman said. “You can’t tell me for certain how things will go. Eight hundred dollars an hour and you’re just guessing here,” and Spellman’s eyes popped the way those stress dolls do when you squeeze them. They needed some language to look at. They needed a draft tonight for their nine o’clock call. Hypothetical taxes and disregarded entities and Revenue Ruling 99-6. These things made him tired. Ethan moved his feet in circles beneath the table and kneaded the meat of his palms. All this sitting would give him a clot.

  They took a break at two, and Ethan rolled his suitcase over to the hotel. The street was filled with construction crews. Men and a few women in yellow gear and muddy boots stood in line at the food trucks, and they ate hot dogs and gyro sandwiches standing up. A crew was laying rebar in the empty lot across the street. They tied it in places and walked along its length. Easy as gymnasts working the beam. It wasn’t even thirty degrees out and the wind blew hard from the lake, but they didn’t seem to mind. The buildings rose around them like cathedrals, and they were building another. It would last for two hundred years. He walked past them with his laptop and his suitcase, and all those winters in Colorado didn’t prepare him for the wind. It was sharp as a blade how it worked its way through his coat. He pushed his collar up and kept on walking. Everywhere he looked there were cranes. Did they know how lucky they were? Those men who worked in concrete and steel and big slabs of marble. The welders and the bricklayers and the pipe insulation guys. They made things with their hands.

  A group of kids walked past him with their teachers. On their way back from one of the museums probably. They wore name tags around their necks, and some of them carried pinwheels and held them high so the wind could turn them. They ran and pushed each other when the teachers weren’t looking. The buses were waiting at the corner. The doors were already open, and the kids ran up the steps.

  He set up his laptop when he got to the room. He unpacked his dress shirts and hung them in the bathroom. He turned the hot water on in the shower so the steam could work out some of the wrinkles. The room looked out onto a courtyard, and across the courtyard there was another tower with silver-colored windows. Seabirds flew over the buildings. They were probably five feet across with their wings open. Heading south to where the ocean was warm. The water wouldn’t freeze where they were going. The air was always mild. He closed the curtains, and the room went dark. They kept out every trace of the afternoon sun. The room looked like every other room in the hotel, and the hotels all looked the same, too, from one city to the next.

  He needed to look at the latest redline. They wanted the language before their call tonight. He should set up his alarm clocks before he forgot, but he was tired from the flight and from sitting in that room. He was tired from not exerting himself, and he lay back against the pillows. Ruby had packed his toiletries, and she’d set some butterscotch candies inside his bag because they were his favorite. He unwrapped a candy and then another. He fell asleep to that sweet taste.

  It was warm in the city. The air was still and the water, too, and the moon touched everything with silver. She took him by the wrist. Her hair was wet and coiled down her bare shoulders. He heard crickets and frogs and the slapping sound of water. He knew the route. The black lava rocks and the trees and the sand where it curved. The stars in their strange patterns. It’s time, the woman said. Her skin smelled like vinegar and roses. The girl was already there, just a little farther along the shore. Her face had no marks and her dress wasn’t torn, and she moved with her mother’s grace.

  It was time to take the ferry. Time to go into that water and nothing would hurt him there. The wind would never blow. He took off his shoes and let the waves wash his feet. The woman squeezed his hand. He looked into those dark eyes, but he found no mercy there. She pulled, and he stayed where he was. Her grip was strong as any man’s. No more winters where he was going. He could set his burdens down. A fisherman dragged his basket along the sand. It was full with octopus and strange curling things, and he beat them against the rocks. His arm stabbed downward through the air. All around them things were blooming and bursting and falling to rot. It smelled like Ruby’s greenhouse. The woman pulled again, and her face was angry.

  I’m sorry, Ethan said.

  He needed to remember what he’d done. Ruby said he should remember it and make amends but set aside the pain. It was the seed and the pearl would grow around it, and he didn’t deserve her. She talked to him sometimes just as he fell asleep. She whispered in his ear. It won’t happen from one day to the next. It was a journey, and she
said the same tired things that counselors everywhere said to drug addicts and gamblers and compulsive overeaters. One step and then another. Her fingers were gentle against his cheek.

  The woman pulled harder, and Ethan pulled back. Her lips curled back from her teeth. He felt himself rising, and he didn’t know why. Ficus trees grew in the city, and morning glories covered them. Everything was heavy with growing vines. He rose above these things. Above the water rolling against the sand. Rolling and falling back and he was over the treetops and he saw the woman and the girl farther down. Sweet girl walking into the water. God forgive him what he’d done. Above them and the fishermen tending their boats and the air was cool again and Ruby was calling his name. Only you can save yourself, Ruby always said, but she was wrong. She saved him every day. She saved him by singing in that lousy voice and by opening the blinds. Her voice pulled him upward, and he wasn’t afraid. Above the city and its cathedrals. Above the sand and the dark water and he needed to thank her.

  Halo

  Mrs. Schrom wore a black halo the day before she died. Raymond saw it when she spiked her tomatoes out back and when she walked her dog. The next day her husband drove their horse trailer off the road. On Route 50 just past Gunnison. He lived because he was thrown from the truck, but Mrs. Schrom was wearing her seatbelt and she was strapped in tight. His mom told him not to draw any lessons from the accident. You should always buckle up, she said. Mrs. Schrom was the exception that proved the rule. Sister Mary Bee up the street wore a halo, too, but she was old and Raymond didn’t notice at first. You had to watch carefully if you wanted to see them. They looked a lot like shadows.

  The first time he saw one he reached for it, but his fingers went right through. His mom apologized. He must like your hair, she told old Mrs. Dreisser, who died the next day. She went to sleep and didn’t wake up, and her daughter said it was a blessing. His mom had scolded him afterward. She shook her finger and said it wasn’t nice to point, and Raymond knew then she couldn’t see the things he saw.

  He called the people angels though some of them were mean. They had halos, and they drove their cars and rolled past him in their wheelchairs. He saw them in shopping malls and in the hospital when his mom had her attack. It was her gallbladder. The doctors said it was filled with stones. She screamed until she was hoarse and the nurses all came running. Raymond waited in the hallway and covered up his ears, and the old man in the room next door had a halo over his bed. It hung in the air like a cloud. Like a swarm of honey bees. The next day the nurses changed the sheets in the old man’s room. They stripped down his bed and rolled a new lady in, and that’s when he started counting. He counted the floor tiles and the pictures in the hallway. He counted ambulances when they ran their sirens and the steps between her bathroom and the door, and all his counting made his mom well again. The numbers brought her home.

  How many peas were on his plate and how many birds sitting on the wire and he counted them while they flew. There was magic in them. He knew this without anyone saying so. The magic would keep his dad’s plane from crashing. He was a pilot for Continental and gone three days a week. The food was cold by the time Raymond finished his counting. Sometimes he lost track and had to begin again. His mom didn’t understand why he took so long to eat. “Something’s not right with you,” she said. “Don’t be like your Aunt Leslie. Twenty years of counseling and she still can’t eat a cookie.” He pushed his food around when she started to worry. He took a forkful of peas and counted them against his tongue and she looked happy then. She relaxed a little and smiled, and she didn’t know he was keeping score. He was holding up heaven with his numbers. He was keeping the halos away.

  His Grandma Hooper knew her angels. Michael and Raphael the healer and Uriel who stands by people just before they die. She had angel heads on her wall and pictures of Saint George killing the serpent. Raymond sat with her because his mom was at the gym. They watched TV together even though her eyes were bad. She couldn’t read her magazines anymore or her mystery books, but she didn’t want cataract surgery either because those doctors could mess you up. She knew a lady whose eyelids started drooping the day after the surgeons cut her. Her friend’s eyes were clear now, but what good did it do if she couldn’t keep them open.

  His grandma made him grilled cheese sandwiches with extra butter. She made caramel corn in the microwave, and they ate together from the bowl. They watched Touched by an Angel and Highway to Heaven. Thank God for those reruns and for Lawrence Welk, she said. She didn’t like violence in her house. She didn’t allow cuss words either because bad thoughts leave traces. If they linger they become a sin. “Fix your mind on righteous things,” she told him, and her eyes were gray and bright.

  There were clouds on the TV, and the angel was walking along the road. He was in the desert where there weren’t any people. It was his job to help people so he could earn his wings. Look how nice TV used to be, she was saying. It used to lift us up. It wasn’t like it is now with all those naked ladies. You can’t go half an hour without seeing something bad. Raymond nodded though he didn’t know exactly what she meant. He reached for the popcorn bowl she held on her knee.

  “I see angels sometimes,” he said. “I see them with their halos.”

  His grandma scratched her chin. Her fingers were bent from her years in the shoe store. She talked about it sometimes. All the orthopedic shoes she sold to women with hammer toes and bunions.

  “Their halos are black,” Raymond said.

  His grandma looked at him now. “We don’t talk about those,” she said, but her voice wasn’t angry. She reached for the remote and turned the volume up. “They’re traveling, and we leave them alone.”

  He washed the bowl for her once her shows were done, and he pulled the weeds from her gravel beds. She used gasoline sometimes, too, but the neighbors didn’t like it. She sat on the porch with a sweating can of Sprite. “You’re a good boy,” she called out when he tossed the weeds into the bin and rolled it to the curb. “Come sit with me before you burn.” She was careful with the sun because that’s what killed Grandpa Hooper. It started with a spot at the top of his head. Just a single brown spot that set down roots and spread.

  Raymond sat beside her on the bench, and she patted his sweaty head. “I used to have hair just as red as yours,” she said. “It was what your grandpa noticed first.” It skipped a generation with his momma, she was saying. She got the German and not the Irish with that straight blond hair she had. They watched the sun set behind the mountains, and she looked right at it with her cloudy eyes and she didn’t blink or shade herself. He wanted to ask her more about the angels. He wanted to ask her where they were going, but he already knew.

  •

  On Friday afternoons he and his mom went to Leon Gessi’s to share a pepperoni pizza. She said carbs were okay once a week. That’s why she took those spinning classes and lifted all those weights. They were early today. They went at three o’clock and not at five, and most of the high school students were still waiting for their slices. They clustered around the foosball table and some ancient video games. The boys and girls dressed alike. They wore tight jeans and black nail polish, and their skin was so white he could see the veins around their eyes. They looked like spirits, those high school kids. They looked like the anime his parents wouldn’t let him watch. A group of them pushed by, three boys and two girls with pale pale eyes. They carried greasy plates and cans of soda pop. They laughed as they went out, and they wore halos, all of them. He watched them climb into a dented old car. It was rusted through in places. They pulled into the street so fast the tires left long marks and another car honked at them and had to hit the brakes.

  Two weeks since his dad had been gone. Two weeks and three days, and Raymond sorted his Legos by color and grouped them in batches of ten. He counted the paper clips his dad kept in a jar. The pennies in the kitchen and the bolts and screws on his dad’s workbench. He wrote the numbers down, one after the next, and the lists kept gettin
g longer. He piled them on his floor and taped them to his headboard. He went outside, too, behind the compost heap where the crickets had built a nest. Some were as long as his pinkie, and their backs were spotted with green and gold. All their moving made it hard to count them, and so he took his mom’s garden shoes and crushed them one by one. He made them beautiful while he counted them. He set them out like sun rays over the patio stones.

  His mom shouted when she saw them. She dropped her laundry basket. “What’s wrong with you?” She pulled him up and into the house. She looked scared like when she had to brake the car too fast and she’d throw her arm across his chest. They went together to his room, and she opened up the blinds. “Why don’t you play like the other kids? Why don’t you ride your bike anymore or play video games at Ryan’s?”

  He sat on his bed and watched her walk back and forth across the room, from his desk to his sliding closet doors. She stopped beside his bed. She pulled the lists off the headboard. “What are these?” She waved the papers in the air. She’d probably seen them a hundred times before, when she made his bed each morning and when she ran the vacuum, but she noticed them only now. “What’s all this stuff you keep writing?” She brought the papers to the window and looked at them in the sunlight. She squinted a little because she didn’t have her glasses, and for the first time he noticed how she looked like his Grandma Hooper. Not her hair but the lines in her forehead and how she worked her jaw.

  “What are these numbers?” She waved the papers again as if they’d talk to her if she shook them hard enough. “What do they mean?”