Above The Thunder

by Renee Manfredi

  She slipped the T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Mood Team” over her head and slammed the front door. It was still early, but Mike and Greta were out already working in the garden.

  “Mood Team, doing a random house-to-house check,” Anna called over, flashing an imaginary badge.

  “Halfway between good and great,” Greta called back, and smiled. “Are you going to be home later?”

  “Oh yeah, oh hell yeah. My daughter is coming in tonight. Just got a call.”

  Greta’s eyes widened. “Finally.”

  Anna nodded like it was no big deal, though already her heart was pounding with anticipation. “But come over. I haven’t seen you in days. Poppy has never in her life, including the first day of her life, been on time. My guess is they’ll be in around midnight.”

  Greta’s eyes swept over Anna’s shirt, took in the thermal undershirt she had beneath the T-shirt.

  “We’re playing hockey. I mean, they are, so I’ll be in an ice rink,” Anna said.

  Mike chuckled. When was the last time Anna saw this? In fact, both he and Greta seemed unusually upbeat. Under the best of circumstances, Mike had a sullen, melancholy air about him. “C’mon Anna, I want pictures of you with a goalie mask on. I would pay money to have that.” He laughed, clipped a row of daises and delphiniums and added it to a voluminous pile of flowers between him and Greta.

  “Jeez,” Anna said. “You have enough for a fleet of July Fourth floats.”

  He flushed and laughed again—was Anna hallucinating? Was this tall, secretive, lugubrious man actually laughing? She looked over at Greta, incredulous, but Greta’s expression wasn’t giving anything away.

  “Anyway, keep up the good moods. I’ll be at the ice rink with the sick and dying if anyone needs me.”

  Anna got into her car and checked the directions to the ice rink. After the fiasco with Amy, Anna was convinced that none of her current students was really qualified, regardless of Nick’s claim otherwise. At the same time, Boston General’s administrators determined that even a Saturday overflow group was still under the auspices of the hospital and they sent down a strict policy about staffing. Facilitators had to be psychiatrists, psychiatric residents, or psychologists. A licensed clinical social worker was acceptable, but only in “conjunction with a co-leader trained in the medical field.”

  “I’m off the hook!” Anna said, when Nick called three weeks ago to tell her the new rules. “Though I guess now I won’t get my new microscopes.”

  Nick began, “Actually, Anna…” and ended with not only a guarantee of new lab equipment, but also a promise to endow a scholarship—pending her college’s approval. Nick wanted Anna to agree to sit in on the meetings as the co-leader just until he could get someone else. He found a young social worker who was eager—“thrilled, in fact”—for the opportunity to get field experience. Anna’s status had been cleared through the appropriate channels. According to the language of the policy, Anna’s instruction of technicians, along with her phlebotomy work, meant that she worked in the medical field.

  “The hospital said you would be fine until I can find a medical resident or intern,” Nick had said. “Oh, and I have to change the name, since my group is technically the official support group. You and Christine, the social worker, will be running the Mood Team.”

  “Charming,” Anna said. “Though, personally, I’d like to call us the Mood Rings. I like the secret underground echo of that.”

  Nick wasn’t amused. “So, please, Anna? New equipment, and rare specimen slides are on their way to you.”

  “How rare?”

  “It’s a surprise. But don’t be surprised if you find yourself in possession of the Hantavirus and Nipah Virus Encephalitis.”

  “Nice!” Anna said. “Can you find me histology samples from The Elephant Man? I’d also like rabies, slides from both the dumb and furious stages.”

  “Now, Anna….”

  “Oh, Christ. All right,” she said, which was how she found herself now, weeks later, on yet another outing with the exuberant Christine.

  Anna admired Christine’s energy and high spirits, though she was a bit overzealous in planning special events. In the six weeks Anna had been co-leading, the group met at the hospital just twice. With Nick’s approval (delight, in fact), Christine had organized two picnics, a Sadie Hawkins dance (half the men dressed as women), and participation in the Fourth of July PFLAG float where she rode with about a hundred Marilyn Monroes. She and Christine were the only two not in costume other than big dark glasses and headscarves, twin Jackie O’s.

  Today’s outing was to be a hockey game between the men in Anna and Christine’s group, and the residents of an assisted-living senior citizen home, many of whom suffered from Alzheimer’s. “The Gay Moods vs. The Forgetful Dudes” was the name somebody had come up with.

  The game was already underway—and unraveling—when Anna got there. She counted six elderly men and four men from The Mood Team actually on the ice; there were ten or eleven cheering in the bleachers. Anna watched as Christine, on skates, was trying to talk to the group of senior men at one end of the rink. They were teetering, rolling this way and that like a handful of stray pennies. Some of them were eating hot dogs. The goalie was reading the newspaper. Each time the puck hit the net he looked up and said, “It’s in.” The two senior men who were actively playing seemed so aggressive that Anna was sure there were going to be some broken bones by the end of the day.

  Anna walked out on the ice in her street shoes. “How’s it going?” she asked Christine.

  “Isn’t it reasonable to assume that in a group of men, at least a few know the basic rules? I can’t teach them. I’ve never been to a hockey game in my life.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think it matters. We just need to make sure nobody gets hurt,” Anna said, as one of the “Forgetful Dudes” went full bore toward a “Gay Mood” who was hobbling away on the tips of his skates, using his hockey stick for balance.

  “Whoa, there. Whoa big fella, chill,” he said, then toppled to the ice. He picked up the puck and tucked it into his jacket. “You don’t have to be so nasty, Brutus.” He tiptoed toward the goal box, slid the puck in, then did a little victory dance. “Money Shot!” he yelled, and the men in the bleachers cheered.

  The goalie looked up from his newspaper. “It’s in. The cows have all come home to Montana.”

  “Uh, well,” Anna said. “Maybe we should stick to picnics in the future.”

  Someone beside her spoke. “The thing is, gay men don’t play hockey, and senile straight men can get the puck, but they don’t always remember why they want it.”

  Anna turned, took in the short blond man with the Truman Capote voice. He was wearing a tuxedo and, Anna thought, eyeliner and lipstick.

  “I’m Gary,” he said. “Ex-partner to Craig, who’s in the support group. I’m coordinating the half-time show.”

  “Half-time show?” Anna asked.

  Christine said, “I told them they could stage an ice capades.”

  “Sweetheart, it’s gaycapades,” Gary said.

  An hour later, Gary, as emcee, announced the ten men in the half-time show. Though all had elaborate costumes, not one of them wore skates. Five Peggy Flemings, a Katerina Witt, two Dorothy Hamills, one Nancy Kerrigan, and a lone Tonya Harding slid around in street shoes to the music of Carmina Burana.

  Anna sat beside Christine, felt herself relax for the first time all day. There was something enviable in the playful affection among many of the men; even those who were at war during the meetings seemed to be genuinely delighted with one another—the resentments and accusations put aside for now. In the bleachers, Anna spotted the man who had instigated the blue sock fight that first session. He was beaming down at the Tonya Harding, who looked up every time he heard his partner’s laughter and grinned.

  When the half-time show was over she watched Tonya Harding thread his way over to the bleachers. The couple had such a look of peace and contentment
that Anna couldn’t take her eyes away. Love was a river full of submerged rocks. Over time, it was how you diverted the flow around the boulders that mattered. She ached for her husband, his tender solidity and companionship.

  The men from both teams were out of energy by the end of the half-time show. A few of the healthier members were going out for pizza and beer, and invited Anna and Christine to come along.

  “I can’t,” Christine said. “I have to drive a van to help get the other team home. Mrs. Brinkman might want to join you. Otherwise, I’d love to.”

  “No, I’m afraid I can’t either,” Anna said. “I’ll tell you what, though.” She turned to Christine. “If you want to go out with them, I’ll take the seniors home. You can take my car. We’ll switch later.”

  “That is so nice of you, Anna!”

  “Well, you deserve to have a little fun.”

  Anna loaded the men and their gear into the van and drove them the ten or so miles back to the Golden Years Assisted Living Community. Most of them slept the whole way back.

  “Might you turn the heat on?” one of the men said. “I have a chill.”

  “Sure,” Anna said, and despite the summer heat cranked it up as far as it would go. But it seemed to be broken, blasting heat one minute and cold, accompanied by a loud staccato rapping, the next.

  “Come in,” one of the men said.

  Anna looked back in her mirror and saw it was the man who played goalie earlier. “It’s just the heater making that sound,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Come in.”

  The man dozed and woke with each knocking. “Come in, I say. I say, come in ye wildebeests, come in. Come in and lie beside me. There are no lions here.”

  At home, Anna sat on her bed and massaged her right temple where a hot, egg-sized lump was forming. She’d cracked her head against the edge of the Plexiglas at the ice rink and now she had a killer headache that wasn’t responding to ice or aspirin. She looked at her watch. Six o’clock, and no sign or message from her daughter, which could mean anything. Anna didn’t expect Poppy much before nine or ten o’clock, but had left a note on the door with instructions about where to find the spare key, just in case. Anna was suddenly ravenous. She hadn’t eaten yet today. She’d been off her feed for a few weeks. Most days, she relied on the clock, rather than her nonexistent appetite, to tell her when it was time for a meal.

  She stepped on the scale and was shocked to see she weighed a hundred and nine, sixteen pounds lighter than her usual weight. Still, she was in the normal range for someone of her height and frame. In fact, she liked the way her body felt light and lean. She was perfectly healthy, routinely offered her blood sample for every class she taught on venipuncture, and so knew what her hematocrit or monocytes were up to in any given week. The class lesson on CBCs had been just two weeks ago, at which time her white count was perfect, her red cells round and ripe as July tomatoes.

  She turned this way and that in front of the mirror, squinted. She’d been this slight as a young woman, and it was almost as if she could see the outline of her girlish body once again. The straight angularity of her shape before womanhood stuffed her full, threatened to burst through her overburdened skin. The melon-breasted months of pregnancy. The striations on her belly and thighs—every cramped inch of her staked out as someone’s territory, the claims that her husband and baby put on her flesh. It was wonderful to feel the fluid, loose boundaries of her skin again.

  She lay down for what she thought would be a short nap, but slept for over two hours.

  When she awoke, her temple was hot and throbbing. She’d had a dream in which the lump had become an egg case for baby spiders.

  Anna then heard someone moving around the apartment. Her heart pounded as she worked her swollen feet into her shoes. Surely Poppy would have awakened her the minute she and her family arrived.

  But it was Greta, Anna saw, as she walked into the living room.

  “Hey,” Greta said. “I was just coming in to wake you. I peeked in a couple of hours ago and you were dead to the world.”

  “I can’t believe I slept so long.”

  “You probably needed it.”

  “Any phone calls? Any word from my wayward daughter?” She picked up the newspaper. The season’s program for the community orchestra was already printed in the Events section. She hadn’t practiced in days and the first concert was in less than a month. Rachmaninoff would never come to her now. She tossed the paper aside, looked up at Greta. “What’s new, my friend?”

  “Nothing much. Just back from a rehearsal with the kids.”

  “How’s it coming?”

  “Good,” Greta said, and looked away.

  Anna raised her eyebrows. “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Since when do you give a one-word answer to a question like that? Normally I get pages.”

  “Oh, well.” She looked down, flushed. She put her feet on the edge of Anna’s chair, cracked open a bottle of water. Anna pulled out a cigarette, poured a glass of wine. “Vice, anyone?”

  “No, thanks,” Greta said.

  “Pardon me?” Anna said.

  Greta laughed, shrugged.

  Anna didn’t take her eyes off her friend. “What’s wrong? What’s different?” And then she knew. “You’re pregnant,” Anna said.

  Greta’s eyes widened. “How do you know that?”

  “Are you?”

  “I don’t know. I might be. I’m a little late.”

  “Well, you are,” Anna said, because it was immediately obvious. Anna had seen so many pregnant women over the years she could tell after a while just by their posture: even very early a woman’s body seemed to pull in toward the middle, the hands never very far from the belly, the head and chin tipped down slightly, the shoulders rolled inward. In a room full of women to be tested, Anna could usually pick out the pregnant ones just by the way the women were spaced; the gestational woman always sat a little apart from the group. It was pure biology, pure instinct, the expectant mother giving herself a wide space to thwart any unexpected assaults.

  “Have you done a pregnancy test?”

  “Not yet,” Greta said. “I’m afraid to. I’m afraid to find out. I can’t stand the idea of so much happiness so early. Things can go wrong, you know, and I’ve miscarried once before. Mike’s little swimmers, anyway, are not altogether all right.”

  “Oh?” Anna said.

  Greta nodded. “We found out last week. Motility? Is that the right word?”

  “Yes. But apparently one made it to the finish line.” Anna smiled. “I’m really happy for you, dear.”

  “Not yet. Don’t say that yet. It might jinx me. But thank you.”

  After Greta left, Anna sat in the chair by the window with a book. She was just about to give up and go to bed—it was twelve-thirty—when she heard that unmistakable sound of the past, the rattle and hum and sputter of the VW bus. Surely it couldn’t be the same VW Marvin bought from them all those years before.

  Anna stood, lightheaded, not sure what to do: rush out and greet them? Wait until they rang the bell? She heard car doors slam, a man’s voice: “Take that off right now, Flynn.”

  “No,” the child said.

  “Get the cat,” he said. “And I told you to take those goggles off.”

  The doorbell rang. Anna walked down the hall stairs, turned on the lights. Marvin’s big frame filled the doorway. “You made it,” she said, and stepped aside. “I was getting a little worried.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “We got a bit behind schedule. We had, uh, a slight problem along the way.”

  “Oh?” She peeked around him for Poppy.

  Marvin cupped Anna’s elbow lightly, led her away from the door. “Flynn?” he called over his shoulder.

  “I’m getting the cat,” she called back. “I’ll be right in.”

  “Where’s Poppy?”

  Marvin sank down on the couch, sighed, and ran his hands through his hair—still shoulder
-length, the way it was when Anna first laid eyes on him. He smoothed it back and secured it in a ponytail. She’d forgotten how beautiful he was.

  “We had a little problem in Pennsylvania.” He took of his jacket, loosened his shoelaces. “Poppy disappeared.”

  “What? What do you mean, disappeared?” Anna stood, turned toward the door as if some part of her believed he was lying.

  “Anna, please,” he said, and led her back to the couch. “Let me say this before my girl comes in, okay?”

  Anna couldn’t catch her breath and her head was pounding. “How could you do this to me? Call me and disrupt my life, get my hopes up again of seeing Poppy and not bring her back?”

  “I tried. I did. We’ve been having problems. This visit was her idea. She was actually looking forward to it. But she has this mood thing. The closer we got to you the more she got cold feet. In Pennsylvania, we stopped for breakfast. The next thing I knew, there was a note on the windshield saying she’d changed her mind. That Flynnie and I should go on without her. She said she’d check in from the road. She’ll be here later. That’s what her note said, anyway.”

  “How could you do this? Why didn’t you go and find her? Disappeared where?”

  “Poppy has problems. She’s always been moody. I can live with that. But things have intensified in the past few years.”

  Anna started to speak, then heard Flynn’s footsteps on the stairs.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Marvin said softly. “Flynn?”

  “I am here,” Flynn called from the stairwell.

  “Come in and meet your grandmother.”

  “I’ll be in shortly.”

  “I’ll go get the rest of our luggage,” Marvin said.