Raymond shifted on his bed. There were some birds in the plum tree just outside his window. They sat in a perfect line. It looked like five of them, but there might be more if he could only see them. “I’m just counting,” he said. “I’m counting them before they go away.”
She sat beside him on the bed and put her arm around his shoulders. “Nobody’s going away,” she said. “I’m right here, and your dad’s coming home in another week. He just needs a little time.” She gathered up all the papers from his desk and from under his bed. She even found the ones he’d taped inside his closet doors. She started talking about how eleven was a difficult age and sometimes even the good kids needed a little help. She took his lists away. She clipped them together and didn’t tell him where she’d put them, but it didn’t matter. As soon as she’d left he opened his notebook and started a new one.
His therapist Dr. Winer had thirty-seven snow globes. Her husband brought them back from all his business trips, and she bought her own, too, when they went together on vacation. She had dancing hula girls from when they went to Hawaii and snow angels from Vienna. The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco—the prettiest city in the country, Dr. Winer said, if you can stand the fog—and a stern-looking Lincoln sitting in his chair. She had a mermaid, too, with white blond hair streaming upward in the water. Her eyes were closed, and there were golden flowers behind her ears. Dr. Winer kept them on a ledge just below her window, and on sunny days Raymond liked to shake them and watch the glitter settle.
Dr. Winer’s face had no wrinkles, not a single line, but her hair was mostly silver. She wore it loose, and it made her look young and old at once. She listened closely when he talked. She wanted to know about school and how often his dad was gone. He talked about his counting sometimes but not in ways she’d understand. He couldn’t tell her how it was a relief and how it kept away the halos. She wanted to know why he’d killed all those crickets. “Why did you spread them on the sidewalk?” She looked at him the way his mom did when she was worried. She wrinkled up her forehead, and the sun came through the window and lit up her gray hair.
“I was praying,” he told her. And he didn’t know why he said it or exactly what it meant, but it was true. True the way dreams are or tears when you’re hurt. He was praying for the people with halos and those who were still waiting.
His mom was proud of how he was acting. “You’re calmer than you were before,” she said. “You’re not tapping the way you used to or playing with your food.” She was wearing a sweatshirt from the gym and her Adidas running shoes. She exercised every day now and not just at the gym. She watched the fitness shows in the morning and bought a purple yoga mat. She did sit-ups on a rubber ball and old-fashioned push-ups and jumping jacks. “This is the way your Grandpa Hooper did it when he was in the army,” she said. “I never saw a man who could do so many push-ups.” Raymond helped her count when she got tired. He kept track of all the numbers.
She wiped her forehead when she was done and drank from her bottle of vitamin water. “All you needed was somebody who could listen,” she said. “A professional and not just me or your Grandma Hooper.” She screwed the cap back on and set the bottle down. “She’s gotten strange since your grandpa died. It’s all that time alone.”
His mom was looking at him, and her eyes were serious. She was waiting for him to agree, but she was wrong about the doctor and about his grandma, too. “Grandma’s not alone,” he said. “Every week I go to see her.” Her eyes were full with angels and spirits, he wanted to say. How could she be lonely when she wasn’t ever alone.
Dr. Winer said people need space to breathe. That was true for grown-ups like his parents and it was true for kids, too. She asked him if he thought the numbers were keeping him from making friends. Maybe he spent too much time alone when he should be playing instead. She was wrong, of course, but he didn’t mind. He liked the sound of her voice and the way the light came through her office window. There was a courtyard two floors down and a maple tree that had started to flower. Another month and the choppers would fall from the branches. Those seeds would flutter down like wings. All that time he spent in Dr. Winer’s office, all that time talking and watching the branches through the window, and this is what he learned: It’s good to have somebody who will listen even if they don’t understand.
Count the tiles in the bathroom floor, but not the cracked one by the tub. That one brought bad luck. The cans in the pantry and the empty water bottles. His mother never stacked them right. She piled them by the washer. Count them and carry the numbers with you because you’ll need them where you’re going. Mr. Driscoll the school bus driver coughed six times before they got to Chelton. He had asthma this time of year. He said it was the pollen. Count them and keep them and work them round and round until they give him back his air.
He cleaned out his Grandma Hooper’s gutters. It was May already, and she was worried about rain. She let him climb the ladder and walk along the roof. There were needles up there and bent rusty nails, and he felt like his dad when he stood on those shingles. He was flying in the clouds. Grandma Hooper looked so small down there. She was wearing her jogging pants and her VFW visor. “Be careful at the edges,” she was saying. “Take it slow and steady.” He gathered up the leaves and all the needles and stuffed them in a garbage bag. By the time he was halfway around the house the bag was full to bursting. He found a dead raccoon and a bird’s nest with cracked pieces of pale green shell. He wondered where the birds had gone and whether the babies had lived. He’d seen a blue jay once eat a baby starling. It lifted the baby right from the nest and carried it away. “Tie it up,” his grandma said. Her hands were on her hips. “Drop it down when it’s full.”
He’d filled up two bags and started a third before he was done. He went back down the ladder, and that was worse than climbing up. He couldn’t see where he was going. His grandma dusted him off and made him wipe his shoes, and she had the ice cream ready. She’d let it get a little soft so she could work the scooper. “Don’t tell your momma what you did for me,” she said. “I don’t want her to worry. And don’t tell her about the ice cream either. She’s fussy when it comes to sugar.”
“I won’t tell,” he said. His mom had too many worries already, and they were mostly about him.
He ate his ice cream, stirring it around until it was smooth as pudding, and his grandma started to pray. She prayed when the mood hit her because she didn’t believe in churches. She set her hands together and talked directly to the king of kings. The one who knows things that are uncertain and obscure. “Grant me strength,” she said, “and bless my babies all of them and the travelers far from home.” Her voice went deep, and her eyes were closed so she could feel the spirit.
She kissed him on the cheek when his mom came to pick him up. Her lips were dry as paper. She leaned in close and held him by the shoulders, and her hands were stronger than they looked. “Don’t be scared,” she said. “Show them kindness while they’re here.”
Four weeks and six days and eleven hours. The numbers didn’t bring his father home. Forty-nine thousand six hundred and twenty minutes. It was longer than he’d ever been gone before, and his mom was on the LifeCycle again. She’d stopped putting on her lipstick and blow-drying her hair. She worked out until her face was shiny. “One thing in this life is true as the stars,” she said. “Your daddy and I both love you.”
•
Dr. Winer wasn’t sitting in her chair when he came in to see her. She was underneath her desk. “I’ve lost my earring,” she was saying. “I heard it when it fell.” She was moving around down there, and Raymond went on his knees, too, so he could help her look. He crawled on the outside of the desk and felt the wood floor with his fingers.
“I’ve got the backing right here,” she said. “But I can’t find the pearl.”
Raymond worked his way in circles away from the desk. The sun was coming through the window, and it shone across the wooden floors and made them look like hone
y. He was halfway to the wall before he found the earring. It was gold and not white like the pearls his mom put on when she wore her party dress.
“I’ve got it,” he said. He pushed himself up and held it high so she could see it was okay. “Look how far it rolled.”
Doctor Winer came up from behind her desk. She smiled and pulled her sweater straight, and everything about her was touched with silver. Raymond had to cover his eyes. “You saved me today,” she said, and she came to him and took it from his hand. “My husband bought me these on our honeymoon.”
She stepped out from the light. She put the earring back in her ear and checked to make sure it was in tight, and when she turned around there was a shadow over her head. Raymond saw it floating in the air. It was real as the pearl he’d found or the scabs on his hands from cleaning his grandma’s gutters.
“We’re going to the Bahamas next week,” Dr. Winer said. She rolled her chair back to its spot, and the halo went with her. “I want to take this pair along.”
She sat down the way she always did, and she reached for her pen and notebook. “Three months taking lessons in a pool, and I’ll finally see some fish.”
Raymond looked out the window. The gardeners were wheeling the mowers off their truck. The lawn was green already, and they’d started planting the flower beds. “Look how nice it is out there,” he said. “It’s warm enough for shorts.” He could hear the halo this time. It was thrumming like a hive. The sound filled the room, and the doctor didn’t notice. “Are you sure you have to go?”
“It won’t be long. Not even two weeks.”
Raymond didn’t sit down in his chair. He went to the window where she kept her snow globes and picked up the sleeping mermaid. He cradled her in his hand. She sat beside a treasure chest, and there were stones inside and strands of silver pearls.
He shook the globe and set it back down. He leaned over the window ledge. Three of the gardeners were gathered around the fountain. They were wet from working the nozzle. One of them had a metal brush, and he was scrubbing down the cement and the tiles around the basin. The water made a rainbow in the sun. They were working beneath it and didn’t look up, but Raymond saw it from where he was. He saw the droplets and the birds in the branches. He saw every tile and tree.
“Maybe you shouldn’t go.” He wanted to tell her that he saw bad things sometimes. That he knew what was going to happen. She should stay where she was because it was almost summer. The air was sweet, but the mountains still had their snow. “My mom says people fall off those cruise ships.”
“That’s true,” Dr. Winer said. “But people can fall at home, too. And we’re just going on a little sailboat. Even if I fall they’ll turn around and find me.” It was beautiful where she was going, she told him. The water was bathtub-warm.
She turned serious again and started to ask him questions. She wanted to know about things that weren’t important. His dad was flying planes from Denver to Phoenix and staying in a hotel. His mom was working out more every day, and the veins were starting to show in her arms. All those sets he counted and her face was clenched from the strain and she didn’t look stronger when she was done. The exercise was wearing her down.
He walked back and forth behind Dr. Winer’s desk. He could hear her pen pushing against the paper, and he didn’t look at her or the cloud over her head. Her computer was humming and the halo, too, and he wanted to cover his ears. It’d be a blessing if his eyes went cloudy. He could go outside then. He wouldn’t have to look at the ground. He’d pray for people he couldn’t see, and he wouldn’t feel their passing.
His mother rang the office bell before the hour was over. Her watch was always a little fast. Dr. Winer stood up at the sound. She went to the window and picked up the mermaid. “Keep her,” she said. “This one’s always been your favorite. I could tell from the first day you came.”
She set it in his hands. Before he could say no or give it back, she pulled him in for a hug. She hadn’t done that before, and he held on to her and didn’t let go, not until his mother came through the door.
Sea of Tranquility
It began with a shimmering in both his eyes. He was sitting at the store monitor and the letters started to blur. They went from black to silver, and he rubbed his eyes and closed the shades to cut down on the glare. It was almost six o’clock in the evening and he needed to check the database tables. They were liquidating the inventory, but nobody was buying. A lady had come in at lunchtime and napped on the Tempurpedic without any explanation. She thanked him when she left and straightened out her skirt. Couples came in all day long and bickered because the mattresses were too hard or too soft or weren’t suitable for backsleepers. He was thankful for Marci then because she didn’t fuss about the little things. She’d stopped coloring her hair, but she still drank wine at dinner. Fetuses need antioxidants, too, she’d say. It’s my duty to eat chocolate.
He scrolled through the summary table which showed him every mattress left in the store and down at the warehouse on Cascade. He’d switched the store to IntelliTrack because that program really worked, but he couldn’t stay focused now because the numbers were silver and the monitor, too, and it was like looking at snow with the sun shining on it.
The bell on the door rang and it was a blond lady with an Alaskan husky on a leash. Even from across the showroom he could see the dog’s pale eyes. The lady’s eyes were blue, too, and rimmed with dark liner. She was dressed like a teenager with her skinny jeans, but she must have been over sixty. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “Unless that’s a service dog you can’t bring him inside.”
The lady sat down on the Serta Perfect Day right beside the door. The dog jumped up beside her, and they lay down together like a man and wife. “He’s not hurting anybody,” she said. Her voice was young, too, almost high-pitched as a girl’s. She looked up at the ceiling and set her hands behind her head.
“That’s true,” he said. As he came closer to the Serta their faces began to blur. He saw only their outlines and the blue of her jeans and jacket. “But I can’t have dogs sleeping on our samples.”
She sat up and he couldn’t see the expression on her face or whether her eyes were open, but he saw her hand come to her hip like a schoolteacher lecturing a wayward student. “How are we supposed to know if it’s comfortable if we both can’t try it out?”
“Why don’t you tie him up out front? That way you can take your time.”
“That won’t work,” she said. “We make all our decisions together.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and he held out both his hands. “I don’t think I can help you.” They always came in just before closing. The cranky people with herniated discs and the peculiar folks with their Burger King bags who wanted to eat their french fries on his samples.
“Don’t tell me you’re sorry,” she said. “I hear that every day. Where’s your manager? I need to talk to him.”
“I’m the manager. I manage all our stores in town.” He looked back at the clock over the desk and it was quarter past six. Another fifteen minutes and he could lock the door.
“No wonder you’re going out of business. With policies like that.” She stood up and her dog did, too, and he held the door for them and watched them walk past the liquor store and the Summit eco-cleaners. He could see them clearly once they were farther away. She turned one more time to look back at his store, and he could tell from her profile she’d once been pretty.
He went to Walgreens and bought reading glasses like the ones his father used to wear. Little Ben Franklin lenses that sat low on his nose. He started with the 1.5 power glasses because the stronger ones made him dizzy. He had a pair in the bathroom so he could read his science magazines and another on his nightstand. He had three more pairs at the store. For a little while when he wore them the clouds were gone from his eyes, and he could read the sheets again and update the database entries. Marci teased him because he left them everywhere. Hey, grandpa, she’d say. All you n
eed is a sweater vest and a pipe, and she’d give him a light punch in the ribs because she knew he couldn’t hit her back. She stood there in her nurse’s scrubs and he could see her face again and the pooch of her belly. She was three months along and just beginning to show. Every morning she looked a little different.
On Saturdays he left early to go running. He got up without turning on the lights because Marci needed her sleep. She tossed at night even with her earplugs. She said it was her hormones, she could feel them bubbling in her blood, and then she’d laugh because nurses weren’t supposed to talk that way.
He went to Garden of the Gods because he didn’t mind the tourists. The loop took him past the Twin Sisters rock formation and the gift shop parking lot and up a narrow trail. The rocks were beside him and he saw them as blurs of red, but he couldn’t make out the sandy spots or the ruts left by the horses. Past the first and second parts and up the railroad ties that terraced the hill for riding. He knew these steps and how to climb them, and he wasn’t sure if he was seeing them now or running them from memory. Past those steps the trail turned south and went across the ridge. He stopped at the top and leaned against a boulder. He drank from his water bottle.
There were no trees where he was and no other hills to block his view. The wind had started blowing, and it was hot as a hairdryer how it came through the junipers. It turned his sweat to salt. Marci should be here with him because she liked those summer breezes. She was a cactus and not a fern, that’s what she always said. She could never live in one of those mossy states the way her sisters did. The road just below him was getting crowded. Silhouettes of people pushing their strollers and riding recumbent bikes. Flashes of color against the rocks. He could see every ripple in the distance, every shadow and groove and all the pitons and eyebolts left by climbers before the regulations got too strict. He’d been coming here since he was a kid, but he’d never noticed these things before. How the cumulus clouds weren’t just white. They had purple in them and silver. A prairie falcon circled the road half a mile away, riding the thermals above the asphalt. He saw the yellow of its talons and its russet marble eye. It had hairs around the holes in its beak, which caught him by surprise. They were fine as a cat’s whiskers. Everything was so clear it almost hurt to look. The garter snakes far down in the grasses and the frogs with their camouflage skin, the tiny mushroom of red dust left by a jackrabbit as it hopped. This is what it felt like to be an eagle or an angel. To see things as if he’d designed them himself and knew all their inner workings.
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