The Atmospherians

by Alex McElroy

  Dyson wanted a father. Rather: fathers. An army of surrogate fathers to replace his own father, a man who wouldn’t apologize for the domestic sadism of mocking his son, a man who now could never apologize for that most callous decision: driving his truck into the median. I couldn’t decide, however, whether Dyson intended to forgive these fathers—and, in the process, learn to forgive his own—or if he wanted merely to punish them.

  “Do you ever wish you could punish your father?” I asked him one night, during a movie.

  “He already punished himself,” he said. He asked why I asked.

  “I wish I could punish mine.” I didn’t realize I wanted this until I said it. But it seemed true to me, and I wondered how long I’d been hiding this from myself.

  “Maybe that’s why we have fathers,” he said with a laugh. “To ensure everyone a person to punish.”

  twenty-six

  ON THE WEEKENDS I spent with my father, I swam. He was a limber, work-bludgeoned man with a brushy mustache who wore the same stained gray crewneck every day. He was not the type of man, I’m saying, to possess a pool, or to live in a complex home to a pool, or even the type to swim, as far as I knew. But he rewired foyers and installed chandeliers for people who did, the McMansioners spored across identically affluent New Jersey suburbs like Short Hills and Millburn and Creek.

  I was nine the summer my parents split up. On my father’s weekends, he brought me along on his jobs to show me “the finest pools in the state.” He couldn’t offer me money or gifts, but he took pride in giving me access to rich people’s pools. All my favorite memories of him involve when we were driving to one of his jobs. Rarely did I see him happy, especially after the divorce—my mother’s decision—but in his truck he traded his grieving baritone for a goofy, carnival bark to describe the fantasy pools where I would swim: jungle pools with waterfalls frothing the rims, wintery pools lined with thick bricks of ice, lavender-scented water, high dives requiring parachutes, platinum lions jetting shimmering water into the shallow ends, pools built into natural caves, pools suspended midair, pools with no conceivable bottom, pools where dolphins arced out of the center like signatures.

  Even the most luxurious pools could never live up to what he described. Perhaps I should have been angry at him for the expectations he put in my head, but I carried his fantasy versions with me as I swam, imagining dry ice water slides or beluga whales drifting beside me as I paddled through the bland rectangular pools of the conventionally minded elite. Over that summer, I swam in square pools, circular pools, octagonal pools, pools shaped in the profile of their owners, kidney-shaped pools, Olympic pools, wave pools, indoor pools with chalky lining that turned my toes blueberry blue, saltwater pools, exercise pools, endless pools, edgeless pools, and pools home to the chunkiest beetles I’ve ever seen in my life.

  Never aboveground pools, however, which were too tacky for the neighborhoods where my father worked.

  The homeowners encouraged my swimming. They cherished the tickle of generosity that came with allowing a blue-collar daughter to taste the fruits of their wealth. The mothers—and there were always mothers, hair-sprayed and made up, in floral summer dresses and sandals—treated me with condescending benevolence. They would rest flutes of Cherry 7UP on the ledge and beckoned me over to talk. They praised me for taking advantage of the pools their children neglected. They referred to their children as spoiled or bloated or unmotivated or dumb as the children looked down at us from their windows with teeth-gritted, envious scowls.

  “Must be nice to join Daddy for work,” the mothers would say, and I’d mutter, “Uh-huh.” I never used the word daddy. Hearing it attached to my father made me shudder. Many asked what Mommy was doing. I never knew. Her weekends alone were fortresses; she rarely granted me access. These conversations exposed the canyons between the homeowners’ lives and my father’s, between his and mine. I hated pretending their assumptions about us were accurate—that my parents were married, that my mother’s life was mine to know. I fielded their questions as quickly as possible before paddling back to the deep end to hold my breath underwater.

  Late that summer, my father took a job at a secluded stone mansion at the top of a hill. The husband, Mr. Hensey, opened the front door dressed in white slacks and a red Lacoste polo. Sunburn made flaky meat of his cheeks. He said something indecipherable, then dragged a spit-roped retainer out of his mouth. “I expected you earlier,” he said. We followed him in. The rest of the Hensey family was “out on the island,” but he stayed behind, he said with a laugh, to ensure my father didn’t “dickle around on the clock.”

  My father laughed because Mr. Hensey laughed. I’d never wanted out of a conversation so badly. “My dad said I could go swimming,” I said.

  Mr. Hensey blinked at me like I asked to take his car for a spin.

  “She’s a water rat,” added my father.

  “Of course,” Mr. Hensey finally said. “Let me roll off the tarp.”

  The pool was bathwater warm and free of beetles and leaves. Sunlight cast prisms against the vinyl lining. A smooth cement walkway surrounded the pool. Hensey was painted in script on the side close to the house, and between the name and the house was a row of umbrella-shaded lounge chairs. What caught my attention, though, was the diving board hanging over the deep end, like a plank. Diving boards were rare in such lawsuit-averse communities. I flung off my towel and sprinted to the board, dived splashlessly through the surface, swam to the shallows and back. My mother didn’t like me swimming laps. “It makes your shoulders so broad,” she would tell me. “Just flounce around, play with a noodle.” Flouncing bored me. And the Henseys didn’t allow noodles—those were public pool toys. So I performed my normal routine: ten laps as quickly as possible. Then I repeated the circuit until I beat my original time.

  That day, I ended my laps in the deep end, lungs pulsing, and pulled myself onto the diving board. The air made me chatter and shiver and I rushed to the edge of the board but paused. It felt like something was clenching my waist. Back in the house, Mr. Hensey smiled flinchingly from an upstairs window. He swiped an encouraging wave across the glass. The boys who peered at me from their bedrooms normally scrammed when I noticed them staring. Mr. Hensey, however, didn’t scram. He wanted something from me he felt he deserved. I didn’t know what he wanted, or why he shouldn’t have wanted it, so I waved back, a whipping windmill of a wave, and he gave me a thumbs-up. It seemed only right to put on a show. I tried a flip for Mr. Hensey and mistimed the jump. The back of my head smacked the board.

  I woke up on a lounge chair with my head swaddled in gluey red towels. Mr. Hensey was shouting at my father about lawyers—“the best in the country,” he kept saying. I called for my father. “Thank god you’re up,” he said. He scooped his arms beneath my knees and my neck and carried me to his truck, muttering figures. He was tallying the cost—not of the emergency room but of losing this job. “You shouldn’t dive like that,” he said as he buckled me in. At the truck, he hollered, “I’m sorry!” to Mr. Hensey. He promised to finish the job early that week.

  There were no signs of brain damage, but I suffered a minor skull fracture. A lengthy gash on the back of my head required seventeen stitches. News of the injury spread to my father’s clients. Talk of him suing Mr. Hensey caught on. Mr. Hensey had likely started the rumors to cast my father as an opportunistic money-grubber using his daughter’s injury to steal money from someone who’d earned it. I doubt my father knew the first thing about hiring lawyers. Still, his clients grew wary. In the coming months he lost nearly all of his scheduled jobs, and that winter he moved to Florida. He’d always wanted to move there; now work wasn’t holding him back. In Boca Raton, he met his second wife, a stylist named Patricia, and started a family with her. We’ve spoken on the phone four times since he moved, haven’t seen each other once.

  For decades, I blamed myself for his departure. You shouldn’t dive like that sliced through my mind whenever I thought of him. I missed his h
arried jokes and loopy scenarios. I missed driving with him to jobs. Even after it became clear what Mr. Hensey had wanted from me, I still wished I had known better, that I’d flipped him off and slipped fishlike under the water. Had I been more mature, my father might have remained in New Jersey, in my life.

  Watching the men at The Atmosphere apologize, though, uncoiled a rope of rage inside me. I’d wasted years furious at myself when I should have been angry at Mr. Hensey. My father shouldn’t have apologized; he shouldn’t have scolded me for diving. I began to daydream about my father kneeling before me, hands clasped, begging me to forgive him for running away.

  twenty-seven

  A DIAMOND MOON reflected against the glass of the pond. Peter and I had just guilelessly fucked behind the barn—the first time in a week—and a faint flame of lust heated my heart. The illicit thrill of spying on the men made me pulse with desire. I was anxious to return to our daily routine. I wanted Peter constantly throughout the day—not Peter, but his body, the power I felt over him, and my wanting made me reckless. I grazed two fingers across his elbow at lunch, nudged close to him on the morning jog. He tried to ignore my advances; his standoffishness only made me desire him more. Who was he to not reciprocate? We didn’t so much as fuck that night as he conceded himself to me, more out of obligation than want. Alone, I meandered to the cabin, wishing I felt more wickedly wanted. I paused at the pond to check my phone. A voicemail from Roger awaited. I slipped out of my shoes and stepped ankle-deep into the water, drifting into the future he offered.

  Sasha: It’s Roger. We’re two weeks out from the launch. I see you’ve gotten some undesirable attention recently. Don’t for a second think that reduces our interest. We’re still committed to making this work. But I need to know if you’re interested. Whatever you think we can pay you we’ll double it. Please give me a call.

  twenty-eight

  PETER SAT CROSS-LEGGED on the chair on the table. The sight of him inside the barn ready to confess to his greatest misdeeds twisted my stomach. I fixated on him, wishing I could drag him away. I didn’t want him to go through this, I tried to convince myself, but I knew immediately this wasn’t true. I had no real interest in saving Peter. I had no interest in authentically knowing him—which is why it hurt me to see him on the table. If I heard his story, faced his grief and regret, I would have to see him as a person, to see the parts of him I tried to avoid during sex.

  He rapped his knuckles against his knee, exhaled with fluttering lips, a nervous tic that frustrated me. He never knew he was doing it. Plenty of times, I’d told him to quit and he’d genuinely asked, “Quit what?”

  “Everyone, take their places,” said Dyson. He and three men stepped onto the stage. “Showtime,” he said.

  My face was stuffed against the hole in the barn. Peter fluttered his fingers. Randy slipped out of the barn without me noticing. Peter was all I could see. He shook his head like a dog drying off. “I should probably start with my mother,” he said.

  Randy latched onto my shoulder. “Well, well, well,” he said. “What a pretty little fish I caught in my net.”

  My heartbeat shot into my ears. I swung around. “Get inside,” I said in a paranoid hush.

  “I’m pretty positive you’re not allowed here.”

  “I’m allowed everywhere, Randy. There’s no place I can’t go.”

  “Come on inside, then.” He dunked his eye against the peephole. “Much better view inside. I’m sure Dyson would love you to join us.”

  I stuck my thumb over the hole. “Just tell me what you want, Randy.”

  He assured me he didn’t want much. “Only what we deserve,” he said. “A reward for the work we’ve put in.”

  “Your spot at The Atmosphere is its own reward.”

  “I want to get out of this place.”

  “We told you from the beginning: no one’s keeping you here.”

  “Just for a day. A field trip. For us all to go out for a meal, or a concert, or maybe go sailing—I don’t really care. I want to have fun together in public.”

  “There’s work to do, Randy,” I said. Though I already knew I would give in, and this filled me with a piercing shame. “We can’t quit working because you want to have fun.”

  “Dyson always talks about movies.”

  “You’re being unreasonable.”

  He returned his eye to the hole. “Looks like your boyfriend’s finishing up.”

  “Spreading rumors won’t help your cause.”

  “Does Dyson know? We know. All of us do. I bet Dyson would wanna know, too.”

  “I don’t know what Peter told you—”

  “Peter didn’t say anything. Not about you, at least. Not like he used to. One day he just quit talking about you to us. Out of nowhere. It couldn’t have been any more obvious.”

  I ran my hand through my hair, settled myself. “Go back inside and I’ll do what I can.”

  “You know I came out here to pee,” he said. “Been an awful long time for a piss. Dyson will be suspicious. Not saying I can’t make an excuse—but should I?”

  “I’ll talk to Dyson.”

  “You’ll talk to him or you’ll convince him?”

  “I’ll convince him. Okay?”

  “You say I don’t care, but I care. I’m sacrificing a lot for you. I’m protecting you.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “With big news, I hope.” He ambled inside and joined the men as they stood in applause.

  I sprinted to the cabin.

  * * *

  I proposed a movie to Dyson that evening. He couldn’t believe the idea hadn’t occurred to him earlier. “This is why we need two people,” he said. “This is why other groups fail. You put one person at the top and their mind atrophies. But you put two creative people together and—” He draped his hands over my temples and kissed my forehead, then quickly thumbed the skin he had kissed, as if he left a mark. “Lennon and McCartney, Jobs and Wozniak, Diego and Frida.”

  “Sasha and Dyson,” I said, genuinely pleased.

  Dyson smiled moonily.

  It had been weeks since I’d felt this kind of kinship between us. I gulped this feeling, as if it were fresh air after being held underwater. Perhaps we hadn’t drifted as far apart as I believed.

  We drew up pros and cons for every movie currently playing. Around three in the morning, we compromised on a revenge thriller starring Mark Wahlberg and Jeremy Renner as cops hunting the gangsters who bombed their precinct. Just Us.

  * * *

  We told the men about the movie over breakfast. Randy cheered quietly, proud but unwilling to gloat. They changed the tires on the bus and gave it a fresh coat of paint—royal-blue base, The Atmospherians in red on the sides. Dyson wanted the world to know who we were.

  twenty-nine

  THE MEN JAMMED together in three- and two-seaters at the front. They dangled their arms over the seats in front of them, teasing one another, shouting and laughing like a football team riding home after a win. We had given them AirHeads candies as a treat. On the highway, the men closest to the windows pressed their faces to the glass, nostrils stretched until their noses looked like snouts. They flattened their palms against the glass and stared into the blurred greens of the passing scenery.

  I took a two-seater at the front thinking Dyson and I might play the role of a driver and teacher. This dynamic of adulthood had always intrigued me as a child. But Dyson was too distracted to talk. Two months had passed since he’d driven the bus. He struggled with the bare bone of the gearshift, dragged the shifter using two hands, swearing and sweating as the engine let out scraggly shrieks. I feared the bus might catch fire.

  Peter sat with Gerry a few rows behind me. Whenever I swiveled my head to look at him he wasn’t looking at me. I tried summoning him with my mind. Peter, I thought, Peter, come here. I craved his company most in the moments when we needed to hide ourselves.

  Randy plopped into my seat. He was chewing candy that smel
led like a mountain of cherries. “You could at least give me a hint,” he said.

  “Be satisfied with what you already have,” I said.

  “You’re gonna jam something sappy down our throats, try making us weep in public.”

  “You shouldn’t feel ashamed of crying.”

  “I like to cry where I’m comfortable,” he said. “In bed. On the toilet.”

  I turned to the window.

  “Just name an actor. A supporting actor.”

  “Maybe there are no actors.”

  “Where’s it set? Just give me something.”

  “Randy,” I said, in a tone of cut it out.

  He gripped the seat cushion and said, “Don’t pretend I’m the only one getting something.” He spoke loud enough for Dyson to hear. “I might get a movie—but you and Petey get to keep doing your thing in the night.”

  Dyson angled his ear in our direction.

  I held one finger over my mouth. Two weeks earlier, I might’ve cursed out Randy for threatening me, but I was taking a different approach. I was above Randy, now, and not only in the arbitrary rankings of The Atmosphere. Seeing him at his most vulnerable, pitted within his deepest regrets as he begged Dyson for forgiveness, made Randy pitiable and explicable. It is difficult to despise someone once you’ve seen them at their weakest. Randy’s threats were less expressions of malice than of confusion and pain. His pain was no greater than mine—I would never put his above mine—but it existed, it shaped him, and knowing this let me see him and treat him the way I might treat a child: Patiently. Patronizingly.

  Mark Wahlberg, I mouthed to Randy.

  His eyes bulged into balloons. “He’s one of the greats,” he whispered. “Maybe the greatest.” He danced back to his seat. There was no danger of him telling the others. He relished being the only one to know.