Above The Thunder

by Renee Manfredi

  Anna took a bit. “It’s very good,” Anna said. “Are we having company?”

  “Company has been dropping in and out continuously. You have to have something to serve. You should see what people call desserts. Lime green Jell-O with tiny marshmallows. I had to intervene.” He measured out two cups of heavy cream and poured it into a bowl of batter.

  “Isn’t this a bit excessive?” Anna said. “And, you know in this town….” She read from the recipe he was working from: “Pear and chocolate polenta-crusted tarts with crème Anglais. Well. Pearls before swine and all that.”

  “This is therapeutic. It helps.”

  Anna supposed that it would. You measured the ingredients, followed the recipe exactly, and the outcome was guaranteed. “I have my eye on that chocolate raspberry number there,” Anna said.

  Jack sliced her a generous piece. “My masterpiece so far, my Sistine Chapel.” He waited as she took a bite. “Yes?”

  “Magnificent,” Anna said.

  He beamed at her, switched the radio back on. Anna watched Jack work. Years ago, a daughter of a friend of hers and Hugh’s came back from Rwanda with film footage of the war. One part showed a young American volunteer sweeping up a hut, shaking out and hanging up clothes while the bodies of the home’s six inhabitants were piled in the middle of the floor. Jack’s abstracted expression, as he measured and sifted and stirred, as though there was nothing in the world that mattered as much as this, reminded Anna of the woman’s face in the video.

  “Where is Marvin?” Anna asked, then repeated over the loud music. She reached for the volume knob on the radio. “Jack, where is Marvin?”

  “He went to find the dog for you. He left this morning after you did. Somebody gave him a lead on a sighting.”

  “Oh, well. He can try. I appreciate that he’s trying.”

  Jack turned on the mixer—the old KitchenAid that had been her mother-in-law’s. She watched the paddle blades working, remembered the last time she herself used it: the trip she and Hugh made up here on his weekend off, the weekend they conceived their daughter. Anna made a piecrust for the raspberries they’d picked earlier. Everything about that day was still vivid. The hot July sun, the rocky path leading to the raspberry patch, the fronds of fiddlehead ferns brushing her legs as she walked past. Later, she and Hugh went for a swim, then made love on the sand. The whole weekend was sun-ripened and charged, full of promise and clear light. The girl had started in her then, was already splitting the husks of cells and dividing as she mixed the dough for the crust, the size of a raspberry seed by the time, days later, the last slice of pie had been eaten. That afternoon connected to this one, all part of a chain. Her daughter, her granddaughter, Jack, Marvin, Stuart and Greta—all of them linked to her and to each other.

  “I’m going upstairs,” Anna said.

  Jack turned to her, raised an eyebrow. “What, dear?”

  “I said, I’ll be upstairs.” She took her glass and the bottle of Grand Marnier.

  It was too early to start reading magazines, too early to get tipsy. She stripped the beds in the guestroom, held Lily’s sheets up to her face and inhaled.

  Anna gathered the bedding and tidied up the room. Greta was thorough; there wasn’t so much as a stray sock lying about. She felt a flash of anger. Why wouldn’t Greta leave some of Lily’s things here? What harm would it do anybody to leave a few clothes? Anna threw the sheets into the washer, then opened the door to Flynn’s room. The blinds were closed. The scent of her granddaughter was everywhere, as if she had just stepped out. Anna turned the light on, looked around. Flynn was messy, just like Poppy had been. Her bed was unmade as usual, clothes spilled out of opened rawers, CDs scattered over the floor. Flynn’s overalls were on the bed. Anna fastened the buckles and snaps. Such a slight and delicately made girl, more fine-boned than both Anna and Poppy. Anna sat, held Flynn’s pillow to her face. On the night table was the Tinkerbell lamp that had been Poppy’s. Flynn’s junky treasures cluttered the surface. Two miniature starfish, sea glass, pebbles, the figures from the old nativity set that Flynn remade into Gladys Knight and the Pips. Anna checked the drawers. The Diary of Beatrix Potter and a book about Celtic dancing. But she didn’t want to do this now, didn’t want to rummage around the girl’s things for what she both hoped and dreaded she’d find.

  It was when she stood to go that she noticed Lily’s little shoe, the one Greta had been searching for, on the other pillow. Jack must have been in here. Jack must have come across it downstairs and thought it was one of Flynn’s. She put it back on the pillow. Greta could afford to buy Lily new shoes.

  Anna went in to run a bath. Only six-thirty, which was a problem, since she was nearly at the bottom of the stack of magazines, down to the trashy weekly tabloids. Marvin or Jack would have to run out later for a fresh stash.

  She was just about to step in the tub when she heard a commotion coming from the living room beneath her, the crash and shatter of glass. Was that Violet’s voice? Anna walked to the head of the stairs. Violet smiled up at her. “Good evening,” she said.

  “Hi, Violet.”

  “Anna?” Marvin called from the living room.

  “Over here,” she said.

  “I have someone who’s anxious to see you.” Marvin turned the corner, and there was the dog, who bounded up the steps, clumsy and stumbling in his haste. He threw his weight against her, ears back and tongue lolling, smiling in the way only a dog can. Anna wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in his filthy fur. “Hi, Baby. Hi, Baby,” she repeated over and over, until she could believe he was really back. “Where did you find him?”

  Marvin sat on the step beside her. “Violet and I found him.”

  Anna looked over at Marvin, saw how pale he was. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded. “I got a call just after you left this morning from the groundskeeper at the cemetery. That’s where he’s been. Sleeping right there beside her. The groundskeeper brought him food and water. He lives in a little cottage half a mile from the cemetery, and he said he heard Baby J. howling for hours every night.” She led the dog into the bath she’d prepared for herself, scrubbed him down and checked him over. He was eerily calm for a dog in a tub, even a water-loving Newfie. Anna poured water over his head and he never moved, stared at her in a way she found unsettling. Baby J. had always been an enthusiastic wagger, clearing the coffee table with one sweep, but his tail was lifeless now, even when she cooed at him. He looked at Anna as though she was something worthy of close study and memorization. As if, in the grief-eroded geography of her face, he was trying to figure out where he would go next.

  PART THREE

  THE MIGRATION OF GEESE: THE HEAVENS

  FIFTEEN

  THE KNIGHTS WHO SLAY THE DRAGONS

  Stuart knocked on Anna’s door. She was playing her cello, the same piece she’d been playing every day for nearly eight months. It was nearly noon, and she hadn’t been out of her room yet. “Anna, it’s almost twelve,” he said.

  Her cello stopped. “Thank you, Big Ben.” There was a pause, then the music started again.

  “You know the rules,” Stuart said. He and Jack and Marvin insisted that Anna leave her room by noon at the latest, for a minimum of five hours every day. After that, she was free to do as she wished. One of them, usually Jack or Marvin, but occasionally Stuart, would sit on her bed with her and the dog—who had attached himself to Anna so completely that Jack renamed him Velcro Jesus—and watch DVDs, often The Godfather. In the nine months since Flynn died, Anna’s taste in films ran to war movies and thug flicks.

  “Anna,” Stuart said again. “It’s 11:59. You have one minute, Cinderella.”

  In the beginning, Anna had been infuriated of course, railed against them, told the three of them to get the hell out of her house, who did they think they were, and how dare they tell her what to do in her own home. Marvin simply picked her up, carried her downstairs, and threatened to put a padlock on her bedroom door to keep her out during th
e day.

  “We love you, Anna,” Marvin had said. “This is what we’ve come up with to help you. And you need to stop being selfish. You’re not the only one who’s grieving.”

  “Noon on the nose,” Stuart said.

  “I’m on my way. As soon as I wash my face.”

  Downstairs, Stuart found Jack in the kitchen. He was finally easing off his baking frenzy, had cut back to just one dessert a day.

  Stuart watched as Jack unmolded the cheesecake from the springform pan, then drizzled the mocha raspberry sauce in the loopy figure eight of the infinity sign. Or maybe it was supposed to be a Mobius strip; Stuart would have to puzzle it out before he commented. Jack got irritated when they didn’t recognize his designs.

  “Are we speaking?” Jack said.

  “We are now.” Stuart cleared a stack of newspapers off a chair and sat.

  “Are we speaking civilly?”

  “You tell me,” Stuart said. They’d been up half the night arguing. Stuart wanted the two of them to move back to Boston. His commute from the city to Maine every few days was tiring, though it wasn’t just that. The time had come, Stuart thought, for him and Jack to set up a household together, preferably in Boston. It was true that he could continue his adjunct teaching while living at Anna’s, but going to conventions, networking, interviewing for full-time jobs, was difficult from way up here. “Way up here,” Jack had said. “You make it sound like we’re living on the moon.”

  “You’re right. It’s not like living on the moon. The moon has more nightlife.”

  Jack said something now that Stuart didn’t hear. “Pardon?”

  “I said, do I have to let you win? Is that what it will take?” He filled the sink, gathered up the bowls and utensils.

  “What it will take for what?” Stuart picked up the newspaper.

  “For us to finally make our commitment official. Acknowledged in front of our loved ones.”

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Stuart said.

  “I just don’t think it’s a good idea to leave Anna. She’s done so much for me. She was with me when no one else wanted to be.”

  “Excuse me? Are we forgetting how that exile happened?”

  Jack turned off the water. “Okay, okay.” He dried his hands. “New subject.”

  Stuart paused. “A guy in the psychology department, Harold James, is renting out his brownstone. Lease with the option to buy. And the best part, the rent is eight hundred. He’s leaving the country, and needs someone to live there until it sells. I’m sure, if we wanted it, we could buy it for a song. He’s more or less desperate. But there’s a catch.”

  “Oh?” Jack said.

  “We would need to move in no later than Tuesday.”

  “It’s the first I’ve heard of this. Why are you telling me now?”

  “Because it’s happening now. Harold called this morning asking if I knew of anyone.”

  “And you thought we might be anyone. Anyway, I didn’t hear the phone ring. When did he call?”

  “Early. You were still sleeping. Will you at least agree to go into Boston to look at it?”

  Jack nodded. “Let’s go into town and look at wedding bands. We can take Anna with us so she can shop for a dress. Her clothes just hang on her. A-line needs buffet line.”

  Stuart sighed. He and Jack had been discussing a commitment ceremony for some time, but Jack had begun making plans at a frantic pace. Stuart wanted a ceremony, but he preferred logical steps: a house, then the wedding, with the rest of it to follow later—the rest being the crazy idea Jack and Greta had cooked up one night not long ago: a baby. How this became a decision, how Jack had gone from someday-wouldn’t-it-be-nice to discussing the fertile days in Greta’s menstrual cycle, Stuart found utterly baffling. He and Jack had been in bed one night when the phone rang. It was Greta, calling for Anna, but Jack had developed the habit, perhaps as a result of taking Anna’s calls for so many months, of picking up the phone regardless of whether or not somebody else had already answered. “I’m on,” he’d say, making every call his province. “It’s Jack.”

  The night Greta called, Jack picked up the phone five minutes after it rang. “Jack speaking,” he’d said. “Who’s this?” Jack waited, presumably for Anna to finish her conversation.

  Stuart had gone downstairs to the sunroom to read; Jack’s conversations might go on for an hour or more. When he’d finished two chapters of The Red and the Black—a novel Jack had recently enthused about—he picked up the phone to see if they were still talking. Stuart heard Jack say: “the transfer of DNA” as casually as if he were talking about moving money to a different bank account. Stuart felt only a transitory guilt about eavesdropping; nobody would have expected him to hang up in the face of this intrigue. He made himself comfortable in the rocking chair, heard Greta say, “Lily is so wonderful, I can’t imagine not having another child. I had a miscarriage with my ex-husband. The only thing I regret about ending my marriage is not trying again for a baby. He had great genes. We would have had a beautiful baby.”

  “Sweetheart, if it’s genes you want,” Jack had said, “I’m a virtual Calvin Klein. I’m six-two, Ivy-league-educated, a good athlete, cute as homemade shoes, funny as hell, verbally bright, good at math, and have above-average reasoning skills.”

  “Which you are not exercising at the moment,” Stuart broke in.

  “Hi, Stuart,” Greta said, as though she’d known he was on the line. Jack was unfazed.

  “Stuart and I have been together for over twelve years. It’s the greatest sorrow of our life that we don’t have a child together.”

  “Jack, what are you doing?” Stuart said, but both Jack and Greta ignored him.

  Forty-five minutes later, Jack and Greta were talking about the possible baby as though it existed, discussing the merits of private school versus public, the rising price of college tuition, and at what age to explain to the child why he or she had two daddies and one mommy. Stuart unabashedly listened, breaking in every now and then to call one of them a horse’s ass or a raving lunatic.

  “But getting back to nuts and bolts. So to speak.” Greta laughed. “How do we get your DNA without your virus?”

  “Good question,” Jack said. “Maybe Anna can filter it out. Maybe there’s a way to get the virus out of the cells.”

  “Maybe there’s a way to get the jackass out of Jack,” Stuart said.

  “I haven’t really thought about that,” Jack said. “I have been extraordinarily healthy lately, and it seems the disease is completely remissed, but nonetheless, it will have to be Stuart’s seed.”

  For the first time in over an hour, there was silence on the phone. Stuart hung up. In the following weeks, Jack’s enthusiasm grew, instead of fading, as Stuart thought—or hoped?—it might. But the more Jack’s intent seemed in earnest, the more Stuart began to think about fatherhood. Objectively, he considered bringing a baby into their lives misguided, but there was a tug, an emotional pull; fatherhood was something he’d wanted his whole life. Stuart’s answer to Jack, finally, was a cautious yes.

  Jack sidled up to Stuart now. “What do you think? Wanna head into town?”

  “Not really,” Stuart said. “Were you listening to anything I said to you last night? About taking things in stages? What’s your hurry?”

  “What’s my hurry?” Jack’s voice started to shake. “What’s my hurry? Do you really need to ask that?”

  For a horrible moment he was afraid Jack was about to cry. Stuart sometimes forgot how much Jack loved Flynn, and how he, like Anna, was still grieving for her. “I’m sorry,” Stuart said quietly. “I want all the things you want. But I guess I just want to focus on each thing as it comes, even if it all happens quickly. Okay?”

  Jack nodded, but didn’t look up.

  They both fell silent. Stuart counted the ticks from the grandfather clock in the living room, the pendulum tracking the seconds. One hundred and twenty-two. Jack spoke finally. “It’s like I
’ve spent my whole life riding backwards on a train. Not seeing things until they passed. I don’t want to lose you.”

  Anna made sure no one was lurking in the hallway before she made her call. She hadn’t told any of them yet, but she’d had preliminary talks with a realtor about selling the house here in Maine, about what would be a reasonable price, and told the realtor, Lori, that she’d call back with a decision, which she now had. Two days ago, shopping for a butter dish to replace the one Jack broke, she studied this one and that, debated about Irish crystal or English bone, but then thought: what did it matter? Until now, Anna hadn’t realized how much of what she did was pointed toward the future; buying a new watch, a Stueben vase, was in part choosing for her granddaughter, the things that would last beyond Anna and become Flynn’s. By the time Anna had left the department store and picked up a cheap Rubbermaid version at the grocery, she had her answer about the house.

  She dialed the real estate office, left a voice mail for Lori: “It’s Anna Brinkman. I’m ready to sell.” There. A decision that would become the right one, even if she didn’t completely feel that it was so now. Uncertainty was normal, she told herself, picking up her cello and starting back in on Bach’s Suite no. 1 in G major. After Flynn, Bach was all she wanted to play. When grief surged acutely, Suite no. 2 in D minor matched what was inside her exactly. After thirty years with these pieces, mastery had come at last.

  There was a knock at the door, then Marvin walked in. “Good afternoon, Anna,” he said, elongating the vowels into something menacing.

  “Yep. Just a bit slow today. On my way downstairs.”

  Marvin nodded. “I’ll fix your coffee.”

  Anna sat in the back seat of her Volvo with Baby Jesus, while Jack drove, and Stuart fussed at the dog who was pawing Stuart’s jacket. Every few minutes Baby J. stuck his snout in the front seat.

  “VJ, no!” Jack said, and reached back to push the dog’s head away. “See? He responds to a voice of authority. Good boy, good Velcro Jesus!”