Above The Thunder

by Renee Manfredi

In the car, Flynn turned to her and said, “You worry too much. You worry when you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t ever be afraid. There is nothing whatsoever to fear.”

  “Maybe. But all the same, I don’t mind if you watch the train, just stay off the tracks. If I catch you doing that again, I’ll lock you in your room and handcuff you to your bed.”

  Flynn snorted exactly the way Poppy did when she was a young teenager. This time around, though, Anna found it less infuriating; the turmoil of adolescence was a mental illness all its own.

  Anna walked to the back of the house, down the steps that led to the shoreline. She saw Flynn from a distance, sitting at the edge of the water and digging in the sand with a piece of driftwood. The horizon was pink and gray, the November light draining out of the sky. As she got closer, she saw Flynn’s lips moving.

  Flynn looked up as Anna edged toward her.

  “Hey,” Anna said.

  “Hi there.”

  Anna wrapped herself tighter in her sweater, sat. “I’m cooking dinner. Got the oven way too hot, and thought I’d come out for air.” She had to be careful these days not to give the impression that she was checking up; Flynn got angry when she thought Anna was tracking her.

  “How has your day been?” Anna asked.

  “Good. I hiked up to the blueberry patch.” Flynn stretched out against the dog who was napping, filthy and covered with burrs. Were there nettles up in the blueberry patch? Anna couldn’t remember.

  “How are the blues?” Anna said.

  Flynn looked at her suspiciously, until she realized Anna was talking about the berries. “Blues are way finished. Low-bush cranberries are still hanging on. I might go get us some tomorrow.”

  “Good,” Anna said, and stood. “Dinner’s almost ready. Are you coming in?”

  “Pretty soon. Start without me.”

  “It’ll be dark soon.”

  “That, I know.” She looked at Anna, then away, as if there was something she wanted to say.

  Anna bent down to the dog. “And what about you, Baby Jesus?” The dog thumped his tail at the sound of his name. “Are you ready for a nibble of kibble?” Anna patted him, looked out at the water, waiting.

  “Your husband sends his regards.”

  “What?” Anna said, trying to keep the alarm out of her voice.

  “He tells me I should plant pink rosebushes for you. That it’s been too long since you’ve had the pleasure of your favorite flower.”

  Anna froze in place, caught between exhilaration and fear. Poppy must have talked to Flynn about Hugh at some point. Flynn’s memory and power of observation were phenomenal, so it wasn’t totally unexpected that Flynn would know this. The girl never forgot a thing.

  “Yes, that’s true,” Anna said. “Don’t stay out too long. I’ll keep your dinner warm.”

  Anna carried two bowls of soup into the sunroom, where Jack still sat, though without the morbid music, thank God. “Navy bean and ham,” she said, and cleared a space for him on the ottoman.

  “He’s not coming is he?” Jack said.

  “What? Who?” He did this a lot lately, resumed conversations that had taken place hours or days before.

  “Corduroy man.” He slurped his soup, some of which traveled in thick rivulets down the front of his sweater.

  “Oh, no,” Anna said. This was Jack’s new name for Marvin. Marvin commented to Anna during one phone call that Flynn needed a hobby. Perhaps sewing, he said, and the next day UPS delivered fifteen bolts of blue corduroy, enough to sew uniforms for an entire grade of British schoolchildren.

  “It might be time for a medieval Icelandic saga, what do you think?” Anna said, and held up volume two of Kristin Lavransdatter. Television gave Jack migraines so Anna had started bringing home books on tape. For such a small town, the library had a surprisingly good collection. Both she and Jack were captivated by this trilogy. “Do you remember where we left off?” she said, rewinding a little back into volume two.

  He nodded. “With Suzanne.”

  “In Kristin Lavransdatter. Kristin and Erland have decided to marry, and her father is heartsick and ashamed at the poor match.”

  “Yes, okay,” Jack said, though Anna saw that not much would get through to him tonight. She’d have to replay this part for him when he was feeling better. She listened for a little while, but her own focus was getting fuzzy. She went outside to check on Flynn.

  Jack watched her go out. His head was a fevered waterfall: hot and rushing and loud. And how long he’d waited for Hector, the shining bird, love surrounding him in plumes, the kiwi smell of his hair and his cool brown fingers scented with sandalwood. Hector and his warm umbrella of aroma. Sometimes he could draw Hector to him in this way, sing about the lady of the harbor and Hector would appear, the gold cross gleaming against his yellow shirt and he would smile his white-toothed smile, though his appearances were just wishes made into visions, because the instant he would look directly at Hector, try to speak to him, he vanished. Walking up the stairs, he would see Hector rounding the corner, and if Anna, supporting him, heard him say “hurry” it was to the bathroom she took him when all he wanted was to touch Hector, tangle his fingers in the silky curls once more, press his face into the hollow of the collarbone. Hector was always just far enough away that Jack knew with part of himself it was a kind of delusion, but real enough, too, like a waking dream. The second he felt Hector’s presence and turned to look—a movement out of the corner of his eye, a shadow falling over his right shoulder—he wouldn’t be there.

  Jack closed his eyes, felt the viscous cold soup begin to soak through his sweater, but he didn’t have the energy to take it off and find another one. He listened to the drone of the tape, to the crash of the tide against the rocks outside. It sounded a little like it might be sleeting, the icy hiss of weather that made him cold just thinking about it, his bones frozen wax, every rib a cold taper. Dying didn’t scare him. What scared him was the possibility of something beyond, something continuing. Spirit without body was repugnant, desire no longer limited by the boundary of skin, expanding to fill the universe, love like sound waves going on forever, not stopped by the density of flesh. How could he ever keep track of himself when his margins were infinite? He concentrated, tried to conjure a god to pray to: if there was just someone who would listen, he could make a good case. All he wanted was for an exception to be made, that if there was an after-ife or continuance of some kind, he be permitted to opt out. What he wanted after death was death, not life. He was tired, but it wasn’t that, not really. It was the idea of an eternity of not getting things quite right.

  But now wasn’t the time to think like this. Right now what he wanted was exactly what he had, the mohair blanket on his lap, the thick navy-blue fisherman sweater, the raw New England autumn out there and, inside, the thick fiesta of Anna’s soup. If he had only known this before, humbled himself to the dignity of small pleasures, how happy he would have been. Now that he was leaving, what he loved most were the feelings things evoked, not the things themselves. The cozy house with its rough-hewn wood and wide-planked floors, the way his thick-socked feet glided over the lemony varnish. The slabs of quarter-sawn oak that made up the cabinets and counters. How could he have known these things would matter? He felt a little cheated. If he knew happiness—or what could it be? Peace?—was so near he wouldn’t be sick now, wouldn’t have left the solid shelter of Stuart for the transitory pleasure of other men. Flynn’s company brought him such comfort every evening. The two of them sat before bed listening to The Tokens or Johnny Nash or The Fifth Dimension. Sometimes he revisited his boyhood, a happy one from this distance. Flynn would play “A Horse with No Name” and he was back in 1973, a ten-year-old on Christmas morning, inhaling the scent of frozen car seats, mad with excitement about the Risk game balanced on his lap as they drove to the house with the dozens of cousins. If he had known the pleasure of nostalgia, of remembering, his life wouldn’t have been all about racing forward with a desperate need t
o erase everything that predated the version of himself he considered most true.

  He saw little-girl Flynn out of the corner of his eye, just outside the French doors. When he turned, he saw that she was talking with someone out there, though through the dripping windows and shadowy dark he couldn’t see who it was. Maybe their mail carrier who often stopped to chat. It wasn’t Anna—he heard her clanging around in the kitchen. He squinted. Flynn looked somber, unhappy maybe, the way she looked when Anna asked her to do something she didn’t want to do. Jack waved his arms, but neither Flynn nor the man she was with paid any attention. He stood, his head dizzy and swimming. He placed one hot hand on the cold glass, pressed his face against it, but there was no one out there now. From somewhere, geese were calling out their coordinates, and layered over that sound, the whistle of a train from a quarter mile away. He sank carefully to the floor, dizzy with sharp pains coming from odd places—it felt to him as if his entire nervous system had been rewired. The skin under his fingernails was raw and tender, his knees were so cold they were numb. He took a deep breath, concentrated on the five things he found most exquisite:

  One. Flynn coming in with the fresh sea air clinging to her hair and clothes. Every evening, this was their ritual, Flynn pressing her face to his face, touching his neck with her cold hands that smelled of seaweed and brine. Flynn could entertain herself for hours with driftwood and seaweed. The mermaid girl, the little changeling.

  Two. The warm bath Anna drew for him every night. Usually she had fresh pajamas on his bed when he came out, like Stuart used to. Sometimes a pot of mint tea and Pilot bread biscuits with blueberry jam.

  Three. What was three again? He bent his head to his knees, tried to get lower than the curtain of dark sweeping over his vision. The bed itself was three, a huge walnut sleigh bed with sideboards wider than most bookshelves. It had a feather bed under the bottom sheet and a thick down comforter encased in a duvet of Egyptian cotton, sweetly laundered with French lavender.

  All was right with the world when he climbed into this bed, and everything—number four—was as perfect as the world could get when Flynn climbed in beside him. Anna let her play outdoors for the hour while Jack was bathing, and he’d taken to flickering the bathroom light when he stepped out of the tub to let her know that he was ready for her.

  In she would come then—five—and lie beside him until he fell asleep, chattering away about her previous lifetimes or conversations with the spirit world. She left a trail of sand in his sheets, a whole little beach at the bottom of the bed.

  How was it he had lived all these years without having known the pleasure of children? He should have taken the idea of fatherhood more seriously, should have considered having a baby with Jane and Leila. He and Stuart could have shared custody. Jack hoped Stuart would come to the birthday party Anna was throwing for his fortieth. He’d seen Stuart a few times since moving to Maine. Last Memorial Day Stuart and his partner, David—whom Jack despised for his wheedling insincerity—came for Anna’s annual barbecue. There was another time, too, though the circumstances of his visit were fuzzy now—sometime during a summer month, but he didn’t know for sure what he remembered and what he had conjured. Like the yellow bird, the riotous plume that was Hector.

  Jack had tried to tell Hector, tried to make Hector see the danger of physical love. A few weeks after he discovered Hector’s secret married life, Jack started up with him again. As simple as that. He’d been at Stuart’s recovering from pneumonia, his long idle days besieged with exhaustion, too weak to work but with an overwhelming restlessness that drove him out of the house. Hector was where Hector always was, the whole delicious feast of the boy filling the circle of his skull, Hector’s skin shedding its own honey-colored light in the shadowy later afternoon.

  Jack had talked his way into Hector’s apartment and for four months he went there every morning after Hector’s wife, Rosaria, was at work. He stayed sometimes until Stuart was due home. Hector was falling in love with him—he never said as much, but Jack could see it in the way Hector became more himself in Jack’s presence. He stopped asking for money, stopped the swaggering pretenses, and became more boyish and lovable than ever in his New York Yankees sweatshirts and old jeans. There were days when Jack didn’t even have to ring the doorbell; Hector sometimes waited and watched for him from the window that overlooked the streets. Sometimes they just lay in bed, side by side, silent.

  Jack insisted on being safe, persisted in precautions. One day, though, Hector rolled off the condom Jack had just rolled on himself. “Hey, man, I’m clean, all right? I know you are, too. I hate these things.”

  “We have to. We need to,” Jack said, but then Hector’s mouth was traveling everywhere, his skin and hair and hands like cool cream on Jack’s fevered body and it was just that once, or just a few times, and he told himself nothing bad could come out of something that was tilted so exactly to perfection; the afternoon, the exquisite body of a boy who loved him, blue pieces of sky opening like wings.

  By Thanksgiving, though, Hector was nowhere. The apartment was vacated, as if overnight. He wasn’t on the street corner or in the nearby bar where they sometimes stole away in the after-dinner hours for a quick beer. Jack never saw him again and, if he hadn’t called Stuart one last time, December twenty-first, the day he left his little shithole efficiency after meeting up with Anna, he would have never known.

  “I’m calling to wish you a Happy Holiday, and to tell you goodbye. I’m moving in with Anna until after Christmas,” Jack said.

  “You are?” Stuart sounded baffled.

  “I am. I’ll be in Maine.”

  Stuart was silent. “Listen, I needed to talk to you anyway.”

  “What’s up?”

  He paused. “Hector is looking for you. He came by here the other day.”

  Jack’s heart started to pound. “What did he want?”

  “He wanted you. He was angry. Really angry.”

  “Well, Hector’s an unpredictable boy.” Jack heard the table being set on Stuart’s end, the unmistakable heavy clank of the good silver on the bone china. They were having a dinner party, Jack heard with a pang. How could he stand this?

  “Jack, this is no longer my lookout, but I still need to ask. Is Hector sick?”

  “How the hell should I know that?”

  “Does he know you’re sick?”

  “Again, how should I know? Hector is, shall we say, socially gifted. I am not the only name on his dance card.”

  A year after moving in with Anna, Hector came to him in a dream. He was wearing his signature yellow shirt and wingtip shoes as shiny as a beetle. He wanted money for cab fare. Jack peeled off bill after bill but still Hector didn’t take his hand away. More, he kept saying, I need more, It’s going to take a lot to get me there, I’m going far.

  Flynn was hovering above him suddenly as he sat on the floor. She was wearing a beret and Irish dancing shoes. “My grandma wanted me to ask you if she should run your bath now.” She bent down until her face was inches from his. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m just resting.” She put out her hand to help him up. He stood, his balance unsteady. His bath. Flynn-girl with her sea scent. His freshly made-up bed. “Sweetheart, who were you talking to out there?”

  She snapped her head around. “What do you mean?”

  “I saw you through the window here. I saw you talking with a man.”

  “You could see him?”

  “Certainly.”

  “What did he look like?” Flynn said.

  Jack saw Hector as he was in the early months. The yellow silk shirt, the smooth perfect ovals of his fingernails. “What did he look like?” Jack asked. “He was beautiful. Spanish eyes and skin. He liked yellow.” Jack chuckled. “Every now and then he used to talk about getting a dog. Hector loved dogs. I don’t think he ever got one, though.” He turned his head and saw Flynn’s dog beside him. “Oh, he would have loved Baby Jesus.” The dog wagg
ed his approval, cleared the coffee table with his tail.

  Flynn looked down at Jack, who didn’t seem to be looking back at her. The newspaper boy had been out there, a boy from her class who liked her because she was the only one who didn’t make fun of him. But the boy had red hair and thick glasses, so that wasn’t who Jack saw. Flynn hadn’t seen anyone but Erroll, her classmate. But when Jack started talking about the man in the yellow shirt, there he was, standing right beside Jack as vivid to her as Jack himself was. Outside, she’d felt something behind Erroll. This must be whom Jack saw. Someone had been talking to her about birds. A Spanish man in a yellow shirt. Hector. The man’s name was Hector; he was the spirit she sensed, yes. He needed her to understand something about the Canada geese, the real story, and not the one she was taught in school last week. Listen: This is the truth about heaven and earth.

  “Who was the man?” Jack said now, looking straight at her.

  “He was Spanish. He wanted to tell me things. He wanted me to go with him to play soccer. He says you’ll play, too.”

  “No,” Jack said, inexplicably relieved. “I have never played soccer. I don’t know how. Did you bring in the newspaper?”

  “But you will,” Flynn said. “You will play soccer one day. He said you would.”

  “Now stop this nonsense, Flynn. Stop inventing stories that upset everybody.”

  She frowned, anger flashing across her face. “You asked. I was telling you only because you asked.”

  Later, Flynn moved close to Jack as they lay in bed. Things were about to change. Down by the train today, she saw three geese. She understood what it meant. Her teacher explained how far the geese had to travel and how tired they got. Three together meant that one was sick or dying, and was being led to the ground by the other two who would stay with the sick goose until it died or got better. The goose in the middle of the formation would die. Flynn knew she probably didn’t have magical powers, but sometimes, she slipped out of herself. Sometimes she became whatever she looked at long and intently. The bird in the middle was falling more than flying, the wind rushing around the pinfeathers was as loud as thunder when the sick bird tried to beat its wings against the air. The world through its eyes was milky and shadowed, and Flynn smelled the rain in the cold wind, felt the bird’s breathing in her own chest and how it couldn’t get deep enough into her lungs. The other two geese honked, the hinges that worked their jaws clicking as they opened and closed their beaks. There was a smell of rotten meat coming from the the sick bird; something spoiled in the flattened oily feathers. The birds were looking for a landing place, a place where two would fly away after one died. Until now, she didn’t understand why she was being shown this.