Nearer Than The Sky

by T. Greenwood

  “You may have cracked his ribs,” Karen said, horrified.

  “He’s breathing, isn’t he?” Ma said, brushing from her eyes a long blond piece of hair that had come loose from her ponytail.

  The waitress was staring at the piece of liver like it was a piece of Benny’s lungs. Ma bent over and picked it up. She stood there with it dangling between her fingers, like she couldn’t figure out what to do with it.

  “You okay, Benny?” I whispered.

  He nodded, wiping at his tears with the back of his hand. A small, thin string of snot caught on his finger.

  “Here, Benny,” I said, pulling a handful of napkins from the dispenser and helping him wipe at his nose. I stole a quarter from the tip left in the next booth and handed it to him. “I’ll be right out. Go ride.”

  Benny wiped his runny nose on his sleeve and walked out the door. I looked back to where the teenagers were sitting. One of the boys had his hands curled at his chest, making his face droop and his voice slur.

  “You are so immature,” the girl giggled and put her cigarette out in her soda.

  “I’m retahded,” he mumbled, drooling.

  My eyes stung.

  Ma was still standing in the middle of the floor holding the piece of liver. Karen was sitting down with Larry again. She shook her head and said loud enough for Ma to hear, “She’s only a nurse’s aid, I don’t know what she was thinking.”

  Ma walked toward the teenagers. I waited for her to say something, to defend Benny. To make the acrid taste of retarded go away. But she didn’t say anything. She just went straight to Karen’s table and gently put the piece of liver down on her place mat. “I may not be an RN, but I can find a pulse. Difference between me and you is I’m not fucking everything with one.”

  Ma turned her back to them and returned to our table. All of the color had left her face; even her lips were pale.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Outside, she yanked Benny off the motorcycle ride and pushed him into the backseat of the car. Lily had fallen asleep in my arms. She was heavier in sleep, but I didn’t dare to try to hand her to Ma. So I struggled to get her into the car seat all by myself while Ma lit a cigarette in the front seat. I got into the front next to her, and she turned the key. A fire truck turned on its sirens as she peeled out of the parking space. I opened the glove compartment, pulled my braid out, and held it tightly between my fingers.

  Silence. Peter left while I was sleeping, and in the stillness of early morning it was quiet in the cabin. I could hear Jessica purring at the foot of the bed, the refrigerator humming in the kitchen, a log shifting in the woodstove. The sky outside might have been filling with light, but here in the woods the light of dawn is not strong enough to penetrate the thick foliage. It would be at least eight o’clock before the sun would find me.

  The pillow next to me still smelled like Peter, the unidentifiable scent that I might call home if I were to smell it outside of our cabin. I rolled over and held the pillow. I buried my face in the smell, and it immediately began to fade. He had left a note on his side of the bed. A yellow piece of legal paper torn carefully in half. I knew the other half was probably on the little desk in the living room. Peter is precise with his placement of things. Nothing is ever lost here.

  I turned on the light and tried to decipher his handwriting. The scratches and elongated loops were as familiar to me as my own after all these years. Sometimes I even notice the slant of my own hand beginning to mimic his, becoming his when I am tired. The note asked me to make sure to tell the pilot I was on the plane—an old joke between Peter and me. A ritual to keep me safe. Peter doesn’t fly anymore. He hasn’t for years. We used to travel back to Arizona to visit Lily and my mother. That was when I was still able to make myself believe that there was normalcy in their lives, that I was just like any other college girl bringing her boyfriend home to meet the family. The last time we flew together was back to Maine after a trip to see my father in California.

  It was spring, and below us, the Midwest was being ravaged by tornadoes. Entire neighborhoods were being lifted and spun and thrown down again. But we were high above the storm, resting on clouds. Despite the bumps and dips, I liked the idea of this, as if we might be able to look out the window and stare down into the eye of a cyclone. But Peter was terrified. I could see his lips silently counting the seconds between the bumps, as if counting might somehow help him predict the next jolt. It wasn’t until the plane actually dropped, plummeting sharply, and even the flight attendants screamed, that my own heart buckled. In those terrible moments of falling, I recollect only the unfamiliar smell of hotel shampoo in Peter’s hair and a small burn on his wrist when I clutched his hand, thinking, This is the way it ends. But after, when the plane had stabilized and the pilot came on to explain and apologize in that lighthearted way they always do, I let go of that feeling. It’s something you have to do, I suppose. Something to keep yourself from paralysis. But Peter refused to get on an airplane again after that. He says that life is easier when you’re afraid of flying. That the world becomes a much smaller and harmless place. Besides, his parents still live together on the coast up in Bar Harbor. We can get there in a couple of hours by car whenever we need to.

  I got up and went downstairs to the kitchen. I opened up the cupboard and found the kitty treats. Jessica looked at me suspiciously, and I shrugged, tossing her two orange fishshaped snacks. As the coffee brewed, I searched through the pile of junk on the back porch for my suitcase. I hadn’t gone anywhere for so long, I couldn’t even remember the last time I had used it. It was the same one I’d had since I left Arizona for college. Finally, I found it under our big red cooler, cobwebs binding it to a mess of cardboard boxes and unused junk.

  I carried it into the kitchen and set it on the kitchen table. Only one of the clasps still worked, the lock was broken, and I vaguely remembered having had to duct-tape it together the last time I used it. Inside, the plaid lining was faded and soft. There was an elastic pocket along the back for toiletries, thin leather straps to hold everything in tight. I picked my favorite things from the laundry pile in the mud room. The suitcase was too small to fit even a week’s worth of clothes inside, but there was something comforting in this lack of space. A pair of pants, a skirt, less than a week’s worth of underwear and shirts. I wasn’t planning on staying long. This suitcase wouldn’t allow it.

  As I closed the one functioning clasp, I thought about Peter’s family. Visiting his parents is something we look forward to. Something we plan for. He never gets calls in the middle of the night, threatening calls that force him onto airplanes. The trips to Bar Harbor are something we happily anticipate. The recollection of his father’s hands, fisherman’s hands, reaching for mine at the dinner table to say grace fills me with longing. The way the doorbell rings and the patter of his mother’s slippered feet behind the door, even the way she peeks through the gossamer curtains to see who’s there affects a certain gravity on my heart. My favorite visits, though, are when his sister, Esmé, is home from Brown. When we arrive she is almost always sitting on the love seat by the fireplace, her knees curled under her, peering over the top of a book. But when she sees Peter, she tosses the book aside like a banana peel or crumpledup piece of paper. She loves Peter more than anything in the world. You can see it in the length of her hugs, in the desperate way she clings to him each time we leave. In late August the fields behind their house are filled with blueberries that we bring back with us in his mother’s Tupperware. Sometimes I can smell the salty air in my hair for days after a visit.

  At night in Peter’s childhood room, as we lie curled tightly into each other in the narrow bed, I pretend that this is my home too. After Peter has fallen into the deep abyss of untroubled sleep, I listen to the waves crashing against the rocks, and pretend that this family belongs to me. But every time we visit their little red farmhouse where you can see the ocean from the hayloft in the old barn, I feel unbearably sad. Longing that is deeper
than want. It’s not as simple as desire. It’s more like missing something you’ve never had.

  Now I pretended that I was only going to visit Peter’s family. This was the only way to get myself through my cup of coffee and out the door.

  Chuck Moony pulled up the driveway when I was checking to make sure I had my ticket and my toothbrush. Jessica begged for another treat, and I gave in. She purred and wound herself around my legs and I thought, ridiculously, that she was trying to keep me from leaving. That maybe she intended to tether me here with her fluffy tail.

  “Ready?” Chuck asked through the screen door.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said and joined him on the porch.

  Chuck is Peter’s best friend. They grew up together in Bar Harbor and moved here together to go to school. Chuck dropped out after freshman year, though, when his mother died. He went back to Bar Harbor to help his dad on the docks. He knows everything in the world about lobster and crabs. About the color of the horizon at the edge of the sea at any time of day or night. He says he could never have learned as much in college anyway. He only came back to Echo Hollow a few years ago after he and his wife, Leigh, got married. I think Peter likes having him close again. There’s something nice about having a shared childhood with someone.You don’t have to explain a lot of things to each other.

  Inside the cab of the truck Chuck handed me a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the Dunkin’ Donuts and gestured to a bright pink box on the floor. Inside were a dozen chocolate glazed donuts, my favorite kind. I leaned over and kissed his scratchy cheek. As we backed out of the winding driveway, I watched my red and gold world roll by, curl away from us like feathery smoke from a chimney.

  “You need to stop at the Swan?” he asked, turning carefully onto the main road.

  “No. We can go straight to the airport.”

  “Okeedokee,” he said and rolled down his window to let some cold morning air into the truck.

  “How’s Leigh?” I asked. Leigh had just found out she was pregnant a couple of months ago.

  “Good.” He smiled. “She started making maternity dresses a week ago. There’s not much of a point to it. She’s still only a hundred pounds.”

  I laughed.

  Chuck usually came by the house at least three nights a week. At the beginning of the summer he started working for a contractor building spec houses, and he would stop by on his way home, still covered with a layer of sawdust. Leigh worked nights, so he’d come alone, carrying grocery bags filled with beer and meat. It was the one thing I looked forward to on those miserable summer days. He and I would sit outside on the porch while Peter marinated the meat and then tended the barbecue. The cold beer cans were relief from the heat, and Peter’s meals were small feasts. They would tell stories about growing up in Bar Harbor and I would laugh until my stomach hurt and my cheeks were tired from smiling. But sometimes when Leigh had a night off, he would bring her along too, presenting her to me as if she were a gift, as if female friendships were as easy as proximity. And inevitably she and I would stumble for things to talk about inside while Peter and Chuck sat happily on the porch. She was too quiet, and she never seemed to trust me. When she got pregnant, I was grateful for finally having something to talk about. She would bring along catalogs filled with baby things and we would sit across from each other at the table discussing cribs and bibs. Cloth versus disposable diapers. She even seemed a little less leery of me when I told her that Peter could probably help her make homemade baby food.

  When we got on the interstate, my stomach turned from too much coffee and chocolate. It was a long way to the airport, and I hoped that the sharp pains in my abdomen would subside. I shifted around in my seat trying to make it feel better.

  “Bellyache?”

  “Yeh,” I grimaced.

  “You want me to stop at the rest stop?”

  “Nah,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “There’s a Tums in the glove box,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said and found a family-size container behind a bunch of tools.

  “Ulcer,” he said, clutching his own stomach.

  The Tums was chalky on my tongue. I leaned my head against the window and closed my eyes. The breeze from Chuck’s open window blew across my forehead. When I opened my eyes, Chuck said, “How’s your ma?”

  “She’ll be fine,” I said.

  “It must be hard for you.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The way things get switched around. I mean, my ma was the one who always made sure everybody else was okay.You take it for granted, you know? That she’ll make cupcakes when it’s your birthday. That when you’ve got a cold she’ll put Vicks on your chest. I remember when she got sick it felt weird to have to take care of her for a change.”

  I nodded. Ma had never put Vicks on my chest.

  “What do they say, that’s the way the world crumbles?”

  “Something like that,” I laughed.

  Chuck’s mother died when he was only twenty. His father killed himself less than a year later. Chuck found him hanging from a noose made of fishing nets.

  He insisted on parking at the airport and walking me to my gate. He even spent ten minutes trying to get through the metal detector. Watch removed, wedding ring, big silver belt buckle. Finally the woman with the magic wand figured out it was his steel-toed boots. He brought me two Egg McMuffins, but my stomach still hurt so he ate both of them. He also came back from the newsstand with a thick Vogue that smelled like the perfume counter at the JC Penney and a double-size pack of cinnamon gum. “For your ears,” he said.

  I opened up the pack and offered him a piece. He smiled and pulled one out. He rolled the silver foil between his thick fingers and chewed.

  “How long are you going for?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Not long.”

  “Promise?” he asked. “You know we’ll all miss you.”

  Until this moment, I hadn’t felt like crying. But I could feel tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. He rubbed his knuckles gently across the top of my head. “You better be back before Leigh needs those maternity dresses.”

  We sat quietly then, watching my plane taxi slowly to the gate. Both of us chewing methodically.

  “Look,” he said, spitting his gum into his hand suddenly. “I made Jessica.”

  In the palm of his hand, his little pink wad of chewing gum had been transformed magically into a miniature sculpture of my cat.

  “Party trick.” He grinned. “I call it Oralgummi.”

  “I love it,” I said, smiling, and he popped the miniature sculpture back in his mouth.

  He waited for me to get on the plane, and even then through the porthole window, I could see him standing in the big glass window waiting to make sure the plane took off okay. I knew, too, that he would stand there until he couldn’t see me anymore through the clouds.

  There was no one waiting for me at the airport in Phoenix. Lily’s husband, Rich, had to work, and Lily couldn’t go anywhere since Violet got sick. She had suggested I take a taxi, recited directions to her house. I had only been there once, and all of Phoenix looks the same to me. There are no landmarks to help orient yourself. No distinguishing characteristics to differentiate this corner from that corner.

  It was early. Because of the time change, it was only 11:00 A.M. I thought about going to the airport bar but then thought better of it. Better to get this over with, I figured. Instead I called Peter at work from a pay phone.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m in Phoenix.”

  “Hi. I’ve been thinking about you all day. How was your flight?” I could hear kitchen noises in the background. The familiar whirr of the dishwasher. The clean steel sound of knives on butcher-block cutting boards.

  “It was okay. I had a couple of Bloody Marys.”

  “I miss you,” he said. “Can I call you later . . . from home? It’s a madhouse here.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Miss you.”

  �
��Okay, talk to you tonight,” he said. His voice was muffled. I could see him with the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he pulled a full pot of soup off the burner using two hands.

  When I walked through the sliding glass doors, the heat hit me like a wave. I gasped when the hot air reached my lungs. I had forgotten this intensity, the unbearable weight of the air here. Usually it isn’t this hot in Phoenix in November. I felt nauseated and wished I hadn’t had so much vodka earlier. The tomato juice was acidic in the back of my throat. Like vomit. The waves of heat and nausea were intensified by the smell of vinyl in the taxi. The sight of Lily’s house at the end of a street of identical houses made me almost shudder with relief. I paid the driver and opened the car door, letting in the hot air again, and then walked up the concrete walkway to her door.

  “Come in out of the oven.” Lily laughed and held the door open for me.

  Walking into Lily’s house was like walking into a hospital. Everything inside was white. Clean and antiseptic. But beyond the clean bright of blond wood floors, white leather couches, and white curtains was the smell of something sickly. It was cold inside. Refrigerated as if to preserve.

  I set my suitcase next to the couch, and Lily gave me a small hug. She was thinner than I remembered. I felt the sharp angles of her ribs against my chest, and the bones in her fingers when she squeezed my hand. Her hair smelled like the perfume she started wearing after she married Rich.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

  “Is she sleeping?” I asked, motioning to the bassinet in the corner of the room. The sound of the air conditioner wasn’t as loud as the sound of artificial breath being pumped into Violet’s oxygen tent.

  “I just put her down a couple of minutes ago.”

  I walked over to the bassinet and looked down at Lily’s baby. I had only seen her once, when Lily and Rich brought her to visit his mother in Boston and then to see us in Maine. She was eight months old now, but she looked as though she had just been born. Her hands were clutching the satiny edges of her blanket. The hair on her small head was only a few white feathers, her skin transparent. The only evidence of blood and breath were the thin blue rivers at her temples.