First I begin to listen and recognize the internal hum of ten distinct human beings. The counterpoint sounds inharmonious at the start—an overwhelming drone—but within moments, I discern the beauty of all the hearts and lungs and fluids moving together. The discovery holds my attention until I realize that one of the rhythms has rests that last far too long.
A little girl lies in the farthest corner, near a window as tall and wide as a cathedral door, quarantined as best as the nuns could manage. As I approach, she is absolutely silent. A hot breeze sweeps the length of the room and lifts the scent of urine from her bed. She gasps lightly. I turn to look for the nun, but she has vanished. I want her here for this child, to soothe her, but I know it will only complicate matters. I take back the covers and see that the little girl wears a light muslin gown. Her hands and feet are splayed and the color of twilight. I assume this cannot go on much longer because I feel the way I once did when I knew a child was building up to a scream.
“Donna, come see,” I say, swallowing my dread. Donna skips toward me with the doll swinging by its arm. I settle on the narrow space near the little girl’s hip and invite Donna to sit close to her chest, facing her. “We’re going to play the Whisper Game. We’ll have to be very patient, very still, and very quiet. Can you do that?”
“Yes.” Donna stares up at me and moves closer to my side. The doll separates us. “Is she sick?”
“Yes. She might be better soon.” A wafer of air slips into the little girl’s pale mouth. “Now, she has a secret she wants to tell, but she speaks so softly that no one has been able to learn what it is. You could be the first to know.”
When Donna smiles, a surge of grief delays my response. I will myself not to pull away as her shoulder touches my arm. She doesn’t react, but that doesn’t mean she can’t sense the agitation of energy.
“Now, baby, put your ear close to her mouth. Stay very still.” Donna bends at the waist, away from me. “Listen. Just listen.” Donna puts her left hand under the girl’s armpit. “You are doing so well.”
“Shh, I’m listening,” she says.
Moments pass, and not one of us moves. Donna places her right hand on the girl’s chest—I say nothing but Lean in, lean in now—the little girl exhales a filament—and Donna disappears in a wisp of ozone. A fleeting thin silver horizon between the body and the air curls up and vanishes.
When the aphonic wail escapes me, desire awakens with no flesh to take hold. I need a body to defy what I’ve seen.
I WILL SAVOR my tenth birthday cake only once. As I eat my third piece of the day, I don’t use my teeth. The lemon morsel presses into my palate. I swing my jaw from side to side and enjoy the creamy tartness against my tongue.
My daddy sits at his place at the table. He chews slowly, lingering on each bite. The small cut near his bottom lip threatens to open again. “Do you want more milk, my little bovine?” he asks. The bottle is almost empty.
“Yes, please.”
He leans near me to pour the last drops into my glass. A Bay Rum fog settles between us. The smell is nice, but I’m not used to his face without whiskers. “Where on earth did you get the idea to give yourself presents with nothing in them?”
“It is April Fool’s day, you know.”
Daddy laughs. “Clever trick, Razi. Your mother and I were horrified. I was ready to drag someone out by the collar.”
“Oh, Daddy, can’t you take a joke?”
“Did you like your real presents?”
“I love my new dresses. But I don’t think Grams likes that I got an Erector set.”
“Didn’t you want one?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t worry about Grams. She just doesn’t want you to become too much smarter than she is.”
“I can’t help it if I do.”
“Mother said you got A-pluses on your tests last week. I’m very proud.”
“Thank you.” I watch him scrape light yellow icing from his plate and lick the fork. “Why’d you shave off your mustache?”
“Don’t you read the papers? A furry face is no longer fashionable.”
“So? It made you look like a daddy. Now you look like a boy.”
“I am a boy.”
“Daddy . . .”
“Your mother likes it.” He juts his chin and winks. “Don’t you, Claire?”
When I turn, Mother is standing near the buffet. “Except for the shaving cream puddles, I don’t mind. Now he looks as young as he behaves. Time for bed, birthday girl.” Mother takes our dishes to the kitchen.
I hug Daddy. He pulls me bear-tight to his lap. The starch has worn from his shirt. His breath whispers in his chest. “Good night, my double-digit darling.” He wraps around me like armor. “By next year, you’ll be too big for this.”
“I won’t grow that much.”
“Oh, yes, you will.”
He releases his arms. I put my hands on his sandpaper cheeks, spotted with tiny red nicks, and look into his eyes. In this light, I see my silhouette in his pupils. The grandfather clock chimes ten o’clock. I kiss him on the forehead and notice that his mahogany pate glints with silver shards, mirror bright.
WEEKS AFTER I sent the first letters to search for Andrew, the first reply came from Boston, in June. I had mailed a query to every O’Connell in Massachusetts, hoping that one recipient was a cousin with a lead, even after all these years. When I opened the envelope, I flattened a thick, shiny piece of paper first. I recognized the dark eyes looking at me from the page. The young man was Patrick, Andrew’s father. Before his comfortable years made him slightly round at the edges, Patrick had a muscular angularity that showed as he stood tall next to an even taller bicycle. His kinetic young body waited to be released from the attention of the lens. In the pose, I saw the promise of Patrick O’Connell’s only son.
Mr. Burrat,
I am distantly related to Andrew O’Connell, I think. What I have probably won’t help much because I don’t have anything but basic genealogy to tell you. My great-great-grandfather was Daniel O’Connell, Patrick’s brother. Their parents and the first two children, Timothy and Mary, were born in Ireland and moved to Boston. Patrick and Daniel were born in the United States. Daniel was the only one who stayed in Massachusetts.
Patrick moved to New Orleans in the early 1890s, a few years after he graduated from college, and he was a banker. My grandfather told me once that the family was horrified that he eventually married a Southern woman, but at least she was Catholic. No one has a record of the dates of Patrick’s children’s births. You said that there was one son, Andrew, but my grandfather thinks there was another child. He might be confusing Patrick with Timothy, so don’t let that tangent take up your time.
For whatever reason, a lot of my O’Connell clan moved to Pennsylvania around the turn of the 20th century when steel was the business to be in. Maybe that will help?
I thought you might like copies of photos that ended up in my personal collection. They are both of Patrick. He’s about twelve in one and a young man at Yale in the other. Aren’t that big-wheeled bike and his mustache classic? If you want to include them in the book about Andrew, I can get you better copies.
I’m sorry I don’t have more to give you. I hope someone else can help you find what you’re looking for.
Sincerely, Jenna O’Connell
I WANTED TO DISCOVER more about the young man with the ponytail Amy refused to see.
In the attic, I found large boxes taped up that were marked “High School Stuff,” “College Stuff,” and “Other Stuff.” The words were written in Amy’s block lettering. I had learned long before never to trust a label to tell me what was inside.
I ran a line of hot, moist air against the tape across the top of each box to deteriorate the glue. In the “College Stuff” box were old notepads and textbooks, along with newspaper clippings about reproductive rights. The “Other Stuff” box held a tattered knapsack, grassroots organizing binders, more old newspaper clippings, and severa
l buttons: Against Abortion, Don’t Have One; Earth Is Your Mother; No Nukes.
I spent a long time with her teenage souvenirs. She had every yearbook since the sixth grade. The signatures inside her yearbooks filled several pages. She had had a boyfriend—or two—every year since her freshman year of high school. She served as a student government representative in her freshman and sophomore years. Her senior class selected her as Most Artistic. During those years, her hair and her clothes changed, but never her smile.
Until 1992. In every photograph after that year, Amy’s smile pulled at the edge of her mouth, turning it down so slightly that no one would notice. If someone did, she could excuse it as wistfulness or preoccupation. There was a melancholy dimness in her eyes. She had been happy in the moments when the snapshots were taken. The way she looked at Scott as she dabbed a piece of white wedding cake against the tip of his nose. The gaze she held on her father on his fiftieth birthday. The look she gave to the camera as she and her elderly Grandma Sunny waved from the hump of a camel at a zoo.
I thought the box was empty until I whipped a piece of cardboard free from the bottom. A large Whitman’s Sampler box fit perfectly in the space.
His name was Jeremy Wheeler. Included among Amy’s mementos was the identification card he received when he started college. His hair was short, and he looked older than eighteen at the time. There were love letters, three Valentine’s Day cards, increasingly intimate and serious in tone. Ticket stubs. A receipt from a restaurant. Two anniversary cards. The second one promised his love eternally. Photos dated from 1988 to 1992. His hair grew longer in each. Three picturesque postcards from Tennessee, during the span of seven days in June 1992.
It’s beautiful here. Remember our trek to Tunica Hills? That, only better. No one has guessed I’m a Yankee yet. Can’t understand half of what’s said even though everyone speaks so slowly. Miss you.
Love, Jem
FOUND A PLACE NEAR CAMPUS. Top story of an old house, view of trees. Imagine when the leaves change. You’re still coming with me, right? God, I miss you.
Love you, Jem
I’ll be home by the time you get this. So horny I could die. (Is it legal to write that on a postcard?) I have a surprise.
I love you, Jem
Under a stack of maps of Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee, there was a photo of them in front of a sign marking the border to Tennessee. From the angle of the shot, the camera must have been balanced on the hood of the car. Their arms are wrapped tight around each other. Then, the obituary and a ring. Jem died on August 19, 1992. He was survived by a mother, a father, two brothers, a niece, and four grandparents.
Amy was not mentioned.
I suspended the ring in the darkness. A narrow slice of light cracked through a space in the clapboards. It was an engagement ring, without a doubt, a tiny diamond in its center. Simple, heartfelt.
At the bottom of the box, she had hidden a short letter dated August 11.
Amy,
I can live with a secret engagement. I can live with knowing you’re six hundred miles away. Promise me forever, because you know I cannot live without you.
Love, Jem
As I stacked everything as I found it, a harsh urgent pulse of tears rushed forward with no release, sensation without substance. I remembered the last letter I wrote to Andrew, propped on my vanity, his name written on the sealed envelope. Nearby was the package I meant to send to Twolly. And tucked against the parcel, still in its box, the ring I left behind.
I ached with empathy for Amy. She tried to keep Jem within the umbra of her memory, guarded, deep under the surface of her life. From the DVD, he had emerged briefly to remind her that she had buried him, but he was not gone. Her reaction signaled that his memory had the power to destroy. I had watched her begin the incremental drift from Scott and, like him, had assumed the deaths of her grandparents had made her introspective and withdrawn.
Although I knew it was not my role or my right to interfere, I could not help it. They still had a chance, one I had missed.
Wednesday, July 10, 1929
Andrew, my darling,
My love for you is a force of nature.
I know, such words from a woman who holds faith in nothing but what her senses reveal. But I have proof, you see. I cannot doubt the rush under my skin when you turn those unfathomable blue eyes my way, the velocity of my blood when I am naked against your body, and the ebb and flow of my breath when you whisper my name.
You asked me a question, and I have your answer now. Just for a moment, close those eyes I adore, Andrew, then hold out your hand for me.
Always, always, your Razi
DINNER IS OVER with Andrew’s small group of friends and their dates. I stay behind in the dining room with Anna Whitcomb and the other girls while the boys smoke in the parlor. I have little to say. They are all Newcomb girls, attend the same classes, run in the same circles. I hear Andrew laugh, a surprising burst of high spirits from him, and my body jumps to meet the vibration. When Anna begins to discuss her nuptial plans—more than a year and a half away, a June wedding, scheduled for the first Thursday after graduation—I excuse myself with a coffee cup in hand. The young women are polite with their good-byes, but they don’t begin to speak again until I’m well out of earshot. Twolly will certainly hear about my departure when she sees Anna in class on Monday. I can’t help it. The boys are two doors away, and the sound of their voices draws me into the smoky room.
Warren Tripp stands next to the fireplace, deftly flicking cigarette ashes backhanded into an ashtray on the mantel. The gesture is so cavalier and practiced that I almost laugh. Next to him, Alan sits on the arm of an ancient, reupholstered settee with a coffee cup between his enormous hands and his legs jutting into the middle of their circle. Tom has one foot propped on his mother’s little stool. Andrew moves closer to Warren to let me step in.
“Ask Razi what she thinks,” Andrew says.
“What do you think of the current race suicide?” Warren asks.
I glance at Andrew. He knows I spent years eavesdropping while my mother and her suffragette friends discussed popular politics. “Whose race is killing itself?”
“Certainly, you are aware of the incredible number of immigrants in this country”—Warren exhales a puff of smoke—“as well as the deep concern over miscegenation. States across the South have banned such mixing. And for several years, the birth rate has dropped severely among the educated.”
“So this race suicide, it’s among the whites.”
“Exactly.” Warren draws smoke from the last of the cigarette. “A matter of genetics. The intelligent and strong are having fewer children while the dim and weak are having more. What kind of world will we have if we’re overrun by such masses?”
“I thought you were a Darwinist, Warren,” Alan says.
“Shouldn’t we assume that these ‘masses’ will die out on their own, if natural selection prevails?” Andrew says.
Warren smashes his dincher in the ashtray. His brown eyes scorch. “I suppose their death rate from disease is rather high, but the sheer number of them weighs in their favor. Something must be done to curb this threat to our country’s stability.”
I glance down at my cup to roll my eyes.
“This country is more prosperous that it’s ever been,” Andrew says. “What makes you think we’re threatened?”
“Our city alone is overrun by Italians, not to mention the Negroes,” Warren says.
“Perhaps we should be reminded that they do a good deal of the work to make our lives easier,” I say. “Typically, they dig and build what we don’t. They clean and scrub what we won’t.” An electrical storm of glances shoots among the men in front of me.
“Doesn’t your family have help?” Warren asks.
“We do, on occasion. Paula does our laundry, and Mae helps with special dinners and spring cleaning. My mother doesn’t believe in asking others to do what she isn’t willing to do herself. She believes all w
ork has an inherent dignity.”
As if on cue, Tom’s family housekeeper walks into the room with a tray of cookies and more coffee. She serves us politely. I know that she has been listening to our conversation because she looks me in the eye before she leaves. Her hands have the color and strength of carved walnut.
“Thank you, Millie.” Tom is sunburn pink.
“Now then, back to the issue. From an economic standpoint, it would be unwise to curtail the birth rate of these so-called undesirables,” Andrew says. A familiar glint appears in his eye. He wants to argue a position simply to see if he can, no matter how much he disagrees with it.
“Depending on who you are, that’s a self-serving and insidious idea,” I reply. “I prefer to imagine how different things would be if all people were healthy and well nourished.”
“What’s your point?” Warren asks.
“There’s no race suicide. You’re talking about eugenics and the assumption that there is a purer race that should breed. That’s bunk. It’s not an issue of race. It’s about one’s place in the world. You can be a Darwinist as well as a eugenicist, Warren. They all believe in natural selection. But our country is much bigger than the Galapagos Islands, and we’ll be long gone before we find out if such theories are true for humans.”
“So what do you propose, Darrow?” Alan asks. The boys laugh.
“Birth control,” I say. “The problem is not that there are too many babies. The problem is that the women—who bear the burden—don’t have the knowledge to stop.”
Andrew smothers a sly grin. The other young men stare at me, frozen.
“That’s against nature,” Warren finally replies.
“Nature isn’t fixed. It changes,” Andrew says.
“No, it doesn’t.” Warren lights another cigarette. “Things are as they have always been, from the movement of the stars to the way babies come into this world.”
“Tell that to the dodo bird.” Andrew raises his palms together and wraps his last three fingers down, the index fingers straight toward Warren. “Consider that evolution changed humans into creatures that no longer have multiple births. A woman bears one child at a time, usually. This allows her—and her mate—to concentrate energy on that child, ensuring that it will have a better chance of survival.
The Mercy of Thin Air Page 8
