The Mercy of Thin Air

by Ronlyn Domingue

  “I didn’t. I haven’t been coming in the room when you’re not here.”

  “Denial will only worsen the penalty.”

  “I swear I didn’t take them.” She took a breath. “I think we have a poltergeist.”

  “A poltergeist?”

  “Explain all the things that get rearranged around here. The misplaced objects.”

  “We don’t have a poltergeist.” He crouched back on his heels.

  “But in the movies—”

  He laughed. “People are their own poltergeists. It’s their energy that builds and builds until weird things start to happen. There are no ghosts.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How else? I read it.” Scott crawled within arm’s reach of her. “You’re just a bundle of kinetic energy, aren’t you? Now tell me the truth. You took the pieces.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then you shall suffer the wrath of the whalebite.” He suddenly clamped his hand around her leg an inch above the knee.

  Amy yelped with surprise and jumped back. Scott attacked the other leg in the same way. She darted through the bathroom and into their bedroom. She was about to whip around the doorjamb when he caught her at the waist. Amy bent into him, an unpredictable maneuver, and spun free. He stood at the crosswind of both doors.

  “What shall it be now?”

  She sat on the bed, catching her breath. Amy clenched her teeth to stop a playful grin. Scott tucked his fists at his last ribs, angled his elbows back, and drew air into the top of his bare chest. “I know how to torture you,” he said. He approached slowly in a Herculean pose. “Nondairy creamer. Beverage-dispensing hats. Irregardless.”

  “Plain yellow mustard. Daytime talk shows. Misuse of aggravate.”

  “Gilligan’s Island.” He dropped his arms. “Leaky faucets. Wool clothing.”

  “Open cabinets. Drivers who don’t signal. Missing puzzle pieces.”

  “No prelude kiss.”

  “No scratch at the nape later.” She took his hand and guided him to sit. For several moments, she traced figure eights on his loose fist. “Come back to sleep in here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you willing?”

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “That’s your question to answer now.”

  Scott leaned close, and when she didn’t move away but toward him, he kissed her softly, as if he’d suddenly remembered how. “I’ll get my pillow.”

  The light was off when he came into the room. The electric alarm read nine seventeen, earlier than their usual bedtime. Scott tousled the sheets and moved underneath. Amy was on her back. He nudged her to roll on her side and pulled her into the arc of his body.

  He left his alarm clock in the guest room.

  AFTER NEL learned the languages used in his favorite operas, he spent hours in music libraries listening to everything from medieval polyphony to twentieth-century minimalism. His passion was intense. No longer was his love unrequited. He was happy when he researched. Now and then, when he looked up from a book, Nel told me he could study forever.

  Eighteen months into his time between, he decided he wanted to play the cello.

  “How in the world are you going to learn the cello? You’d have to study somewhere. I don’t know, perhaps you can teach yourself to sight-read music. Regardless, cellos make noise.”

  “I can practice at night,” he said. “We don’t sleep.”

  We left our stake at a university’s music school when Nel found a private cello teacher. We became the quiet tenants of an unsuspecting landlord who tried to show children the beauty of instruments that weren’t attached to amplifiers. Nel would watch the sessions carefully. In the evenings, he would make me join him in a music store near the French Quarter to listen to him.

  In the beginning, Nel didn’t touch the cello. He had mastered using the air to animate objects long before. It was a simple trick to maneuver two things at once. He blamed his screeching bow on rusty skills. I assured him that he sounded awful because he was supposed to. He had never played an instrument in his life.

  I agreed that Nel needed to be alone to practice. To fill the hours, I returned to my strolls near hospitals and nursing homes to collect both the determined and bewildered who lingered nearby. As Nel had said, they needed me. However, for the first time in a long while, I drifted through the halls and watched people die. I wondered how they could release themselves so thoroughly into the atmosphere. What pulled them had pulled me, but I had remained. I had stayed. Wanted to stay. Why didn’t they as well? How could they be at peace, knowing what they left behind?

  For a moment, no more, I wondered whether my Andrew was dead and whether he had paused before the air absorbed him completely.

  Early one evening, after I had been away for more than two weeks, I returned to the music store to see Nel. I was knocked for a row. As I entered the room, I thought I heard a recording, but there was no hum of a machine. “Wow, Nel, that’s really—”

  He was touching the instrument. His shins framed the cello’s feminine curves. His fingers gracefully pressed the strings on the neck. Level with his belly, the bow rocked. Nel watched his hands. He did not close his eyes or gaze at the ceiling. He wasn’t only feeling the music.

  “Nel, what are you doing?” My outburst shook the storefront windows.

  The bow dropped. He looked at me, startled. “I thought I’d gotten better.”

  “I didn’t think it was you until I saw you. That’s against the rules.”

  “Holding an instrument?”

  “Touching. Touching anything. Touching anything is against the rules.”

  “Rules were made to be broken.” Nel squeezed his knees together against the cello’s sides. “I couldn’t play well when I held it at a distance.”

  What stunned me as much as the cello in his hands was the way he looked. Nel was hidden in a strange glow, a luminescence I had never witnessed between.

  “Nel, what’s happening to you?”

  The strings whined from contact with some part of him. “Look, you don’t understand. I always wanted to learn how to play—”

  “That’s not what I’m talking—”

  “Let me explain. When I was a little kid, we didn’t have the money for me to take lessons. My dad would let me go into a music store now and then to look around. The man who owned the shop was always nice to me. I didn’t touch anything or bother him. Then one afternoon—”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “Listen. Please listen.”

  “All right.” I had to avert my gaze. The sight of him was unnerving.

  “When I was twelve, for no reason at all, the shop owner let me play some of the instruments. Everything was either too complicated or loud. But the cello, it was so lovely. I was tall when I was young, so I didn’t feel like it was too big for me. The old man pushed my fingertips until the strings made channels in my skin. He told me to pass the bow smoothly. There was almost a human sound. I felt the deepest parts of me answer with that same hum. As if I had strings of my own inside.

  “My dad walked in as I was drawing one note into perfection. He stared at me and said, ‘Lionel, get that sissy piece of crap out from between your legs. There’s only one thing shaped like that I’d care to see near your crotch.’ I passed the cello to the old man and thanked him for his kindness. I never went back.”

  “Your father wouldn’t even let you go in the store?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t let myself go in. There was no use torturing myself.”

  “Lionel—”

  “It’s okay. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Listen, you play beautifully. You’re a natural. Honest. But—”

  “I wanted to do that my entire life,” he said. “Now’s my chance, and I’m dead. All I can do is repeat the memory of that one note because that’s the only one I ever felt whole. That’s when I knew good and goddamn well that I wasn’t all thumbs the way my father said I
was. I would have been good with my hands, but not the way he would have liked. So I forced myself to be content with merely listening. I was a dandy of a listener, too. Expressive, you know, my body always moved with music. I couldn’t help it. That’s what I was meant to do. You know, if I’d been born to a different family, or if my father had believed in giving us more than just the necessities, if he’d—”

  “Stop it, Lionel.” I throbbed as if I still had veins.

  “Why don’t you ever want to talk about anything important?”

  “It’s the past. We can’t change it.”

  “But you know what moments you could have changed. The ones that could have made a difference between then and now. I’ve seen all of mine, like exits on a map. I realize now that I was wrong to blame my father. I wasn’t powerless. I was just scared.”

  “You were a child.”

  “And what were you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What if you’d been accepted to Yale? Or Harvard? What if you hadn’t left the ring behind? What if you had gone back to get it? Tell me, Razi, if one thing had been different, would you be dead now? What would you be?”

  “You have a hateful little streak in you, Lionel Mulberry, I swear. I never should have told you any of that.”

  “Why not? Because I know your secrets? You know all of mine by now.”

  “An air of mystery becomes a man,” I replied.

  “If that’s your criterion, your Andrew is as attractive as they come.”

  I ignored him.

  Nel popped the air near my shoulder so I’d look at him. “I don’t know why I’m being allowed this time to—”

  “No one’s granting you permission.”

  “Okay, I’m taking the time to make up what I lost before. What I never did. Something’s changing,” Nel said. “Each time I achieve what I meant to do before, I feel a sense of resolution.”

  “What are you telling me?” I prepared myself for the real answer he wouldn’t give me that night. That would come soon enough.

  “I’m going to enjoy playing that cello. It’s going to feel cold and hard, but that will not change the way the notes sound. Music is food for the soul, and mine has been starving for a very . . . long . . . time.” He looked at his hands around the neck of the cello. “You were right, though.”

  “About what?”

  “I ache for my body so badly. What I wouldn’t give for a sneeze, a stretch, a yawn, a cry, an orgasm. The more I play, the more it hurts. The more I touch, the more I remember, the more my form changes. It’s like when I got migraines—the pain built up so much until I passed out. But when I awoke, I was on the other side of the pain in a peace so immediate I didn’t want to leave. I’m beginning to feel that peace all the time.”

  “But you shouldn’t look different. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Touch me. I’m solid. It’s strange.”

  “No, Lionel. I won’t.”

  “Just once can’t hurt you.”

  “I’m not worried about me.”

  “All right, honey.” He plucked each string in turn. “Are you leaving again?”

  “I will if you want me to.” I looked at him fully. He was unbearably beautiful.

  “Stay and listen, won’t you? Don’t leave me alone now. I’m afraid, to be honest. And I miss you.”

  “Didn’t Bach compose for cello? I like Bach.”

  Nel smiled. “You must have heard that somewhere. Challenging work.”

  “Tonight, for your pleasure, a solo performance by Mr. Lionel Mulberry.”

  “I always wanted to hear that,” he said.

  AMY ENTERED the sitting room with a flashlight and approached the bookcase. She was swaddled under layers of long shirts, thermal underwear, and corduroy pants. It was November. The electricity had gone out in their house again, and it was the only one on the block with the problem. Within the last few days, the power had fluctuated so much that they were afraid of fire. I had tried to calm myself, tried not to frighten them, but I no longer had control over the flares of thought that extended beyond my form and interfered with their routine and comfort.

  “Don’t forget, the electrician is coming tomorrow morning.” Scott walked into the room after her. He wore the thickest sweatshirt he owned, a bright yellow stocking cap, flannel-lined blue jeans, and two pairs of wool socks. “You know, with a house this old, the wiring was bound to go out at some point.”

  “It was built in the early forties. How bad could it be?”

  “Knob and tube. Antiquated,” Scott said.

  “Maybe your mice with the marble fetish have chewed the lines in the attic.”

  “You know, I didn’t think of that. I have traps up there, too.”

  “There’d be a rodent morgue if that were the case.”

  Scott moved to sit in the rocking chair, and I slipped into a corner. “I was looking forward to seeing the finished product tonight.”

  I hadn’t watched Amy’s last months of progress because every time I neared their electrical equipment, it ceased to function. During the past week, when the lights worked at all, Amy had put in the final hours on her photography project. Every snapshot she selected had been scanned, every pixel of each one touched up. Her patience was magnificent. Her attention to the minutiae was rewarded by a collection of images so clear, so bright, that the people almost seemed to move. Amy had arranged to spend a long weekend with Twolly to document all the names she could remember and collect any stories her great-aunt might share.

  “I’m really pleased with it.” She rested her fingertips on the edge of the second bookcase shelf. “I just wish Grandma Sunny could have seen it.”

  “I know, Aims. She would have been really proud of you.”

  “What have you read lately that you’d recommend? I want a break from fiction.” Her flashlight tracked the titles.

  “That book you got me on Hinduism a while back was interesting.”

  She turned the light on him and watched his features. “Really?”

  “Yes. And don’t look at me like that. I didn’t even think of the tangential reading material. Intriguing as it was.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Third shelf, left side.”

  Amy located the volume, closed the bookcase door, and stood reading the back cover with the flashlight. “I’ll give it a shot.”

  “Even if the book bores you, you’ll like the illustrations. The colors are so vibrant. I can see you figuring out how to use such color palettes. If you end up moving into interior design like you’ve considered, I think you’d do some pretty daring rooms.”

  She glanced up. “Daring?”

  He rocked back and forth on the tips of his toes. In the haze from the streetlight, Scott looked like a bootless little boy ready to build snowmen. “You’ll try something just to see how it works. The way you dress, combining all those vintage pieces in a way that’s unexpected.”

  “Is that why I’m asked if I’m European? I dress daringly?”

  “Probably. And why you won the award for that magazine spread last year. It was so bold. And years ago, the way you’d make Chloe go to antiabortion meetings to figure out where they were coming from.”

  “It wasn’t only to understand them. It was part of the strategy to figure out their tactics to come up with ours.”

  “But it took—what does Chloe say—clit?”

  Amy laughed.

  “Your grandfather liked that about you.”

  She dropped her arms to her sides, flashlight in one hand, book in the other. “What?”

  “Your daring.”

  “How would you know?”

  Scott rubbed his hands together, building heat. “I just remembered one afternoon we were visiting your grandparents, not long after we got married. You and your grandmother went upstairs for some reason, and I was alone with him. And out of nowhere, he said—yeah, I remember this because the words he used were so unusual—he said, ‘Your Amy, s
he’s venturesome. That’s a rare beautiful trait in a girl.’”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said I agreed, and then he changed the subject.”

  I watched Amy as she thought about her grandfather’s words. From the space around the bookcase, a clean salty smell began to spread into the room. I felt a tremor of memory begin to tear from me, out of control again, forcing Andrew to emerge with excruciating clarity. But the bookcase wasn’t the only source of the scent, and neither was I.

  “He said that?” Amy asked, her voice tight and high.

  “Yeah. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you before. I guess I thought you knew he felt that way.”

  Amy raised her right hand, the flashlight within her fist, and wiped the side of her cheek. “I had no idea Poppa Fin thought that.”

  Poppa Fin.

  Light and motion and sound exploded in the house. As Scott rushed to protect Amy from what had erupted—their expressions stunned and frightened—the room grew colder than it had ever been, suspending that pure brine in space until I could take it in, take her in, take in the fact that he had been so close—

  PHINEAS

  That word is on the top of the box. The name of a shop I don’t recognize. From my fingertips, Chinese red paper and silver satin ribbon drop to the ground. Valentine’s Day is two weeks away, so what is this? When I rattle the gift, there’s a dull thump, thump. A delicate pansy scent reaches my nose before I see the brilliant blossoms inside. A fine white feather blows free. My fingers stir the petals until I touch something hard. My heart rises, and my gut sinks. Then I realize—

  I SLAM THE DOOR and pull her on the bed. “I know his middle name now.”

  “Finally. That was one joke played out too long. What is it?”

  “Phineas, but—”

  “Andrew Phineas O’Connell. That’s not so bad. Why’d he—”

  “Etoile, listen. I know his middle name.” She stares at me. “He proposed. Had his grandmother’s ring and everything.”

  “Oh, my God.” I clamp her mouth until she extricates herself. “What did he say? What did you say? Where is it?” She grabs my hands and finds nothing shiny but the one little ring I always wear. “You didn’t.”