by CJ Hauser
Nolan cried. He had not thought he would, because he tended to freeze up when he knew a certain human reaction was expected of him. He was not, for example, good at peeing in public restrooms. But it turned out the double-think of his brain extended only so far, and he did cry, just like anyone else would, and this, at least, was a relief.
He walked and cried until it was late and he was exhausted, and when he took stock of his location, meaning to find a route home, he saw the Giants stadium in the distance and realized he’d been on autopilot, heading for work, yes, but also heading for the stadium because it was the closest thing his family had to a cathedral. Nolan rounded the stadium to pass McCovey Cove, where he and his father had come the night after Keiko’s memorial, the day Elsa would not touch him.
Because the Giants stadium was on the bay, when home runs flew high enough above the bleachers, they splashed into the cove. The night of Keiko’s memorial, Ian and Nolan, unsure what else to do, had chartered a small boat and bobbed among the other hopefuls in their kayaks and small craft. Nolan remembered that everything had smelled of diesel that night and that rainbows of fuel had played in circles on the surface of the water. When the field lights flooded on in the evening dimness, Ian had toggled the radio, and then there were the familiar voices of Miller and Kuiper, gently shooting the shit, starting the game.
Nolan conjured the image of his father as he had been in their boat that night. What if he was already forgetting? He would remember his father’s long face. His straight nose. His wire-rimmed glasses, which were unfashionable, Keiko always said, because they made him look like a scientist. I am a scientist, Ian would say, and Keiko would sigh. That night, Ian sat with his back tall and his hands braced against his knees. He wore Keiko’s Yomiuri Giants hat, and he was waiting.
Their odds of a splash ball were bad, still, the night Keiko died, Nolan and Ian sat in their boat with their heads tilted toward the lip of the stadium. Anticipating something that might or might not appear each time a Giant came up to bat. A light in the sky. A freak chance plummeting down.
Elsa was wrong. Ian was inherently hopeful. He couldn’t have killed himself.
Nolan turned his keys in the stadium’s staff entrance and made his way into the office. Inside, he flicked on the lights. It was late.
He and Ian hadn’t known how to lose Keiko, but at least there had been two of them. Alone, Nolan wasn’t sure what to do. He pushed on the stadium door and found it unlocked.
The concrete labyrinth behind the stadium smelled of fried-dough oil, peppers and onions, the blue juice of bathroom cleaner. He entered the stadium through section E. The lights were not on and it was dark in the valley of the field, but the media monitor was enough to see by. The screen faced away, but when the LEDs flickered, Nolan knew the slideshow was flipping along, a phenomenon that always reminded him of his childhood Viewfinder, plastic goggles Ian had given him for his seventh birthday, into which he’d slotted slides of the wonders of the world: Easter Island, the Hanging Gardens, the Pyramids. The monitor scrolled the Instagram posts of people using the GIANTSLOVE hashtag.
The media monitor had been Nolan’s idea, and he’d been roundly treated as a genius for coming up with it. Nolan wasn’t quite sure what this meant, because his job was, essentially, being young. Being a person who worked for a baseball team who understood social media and how it worked. Most days, as Nolan sat at his desk, trying to think of anything less than lame he could post to the Giants baseball page, the feed of other people’s faces scrolling past him, he felt as if he was doing nothing.
Nolan hopped the fence. He walked onto the field, past the third base line. He took off his sneakers and rolled up his pants. The grass was perfectly mowed in stripes, and it felt like dense carpet. He balanced on one foot. The other. He had played left field, briefly, as a child, and he gravitated to that space. It felt like a home.
Nolan’s parents had fallen for each other because they both loved baseball. They had named Nolan, in fact, after Nolan Ryan. This was because Keiko and Ian could not agree on a single major league baseball player they both liked except for Ryan, who’d played for neither of their teams but was the name behind the Nolan Ryan Baseball Super Stadium game that both Ian and Keiko loved playing on Super Nintendo. Ian supported the San Francisco Giants, Keiko, Tokyo’s Yomiuri Giants—but there was a fundamental understanding between the two scientists that when variables interacted with other variables for long enough, they sometimes yielded surprise. That after hours of uneventful nothing, sometimes something unlikely or wonderful might happen on a mud-red diamond. That baseball was the place for giants.
In the field now, there were deep blue patches of shadow drawn long across the field, and from them, Nolan imagined Titans rising. The monsters had long limbs, rounded bellies, and hands too large for their arms. They were the Giants of Nolan’s youth. Because when Ian and Keiko talked about Giants baseball when he was small, this is what he had assumed them to mean. That there were monsters tame enough that they could be trusted around people.
Even now, Nolan was not surprised he’d believed in this. His parents had seemed just as fierce and magnificent as any Titan he’d dreamed up for the San Francisco team. The first time Nolan went to a game and saw the men on the field, he was bitterly disappointed for three innings. Sulking in disbelief that these men were who Keiko and Ian had talked about with such reverence.
Then, in the fourth, he saw Marvin Benard steal third base and forgot he’d ever imagined anything better.
In the womb of the stadium that night, Nolan felt very small. He knew that the blinking lights in the sky, planes or satellites, could not see him. He could run the bases and lie in the grass and shout himself hoarse all night and no Giants would come. The very best Nolan could hope for would be for the security shift to begin and Bill Parsons, the chief, to come swipe his flashlight beam across Nolan’s face and pityingly explain why he could not be out here at night. And even if he was caught, barefoot and shouting in left field, he knew he would not get in trouble, because even to Bill, Nolan was not worth the bother.
Leap’s Island
Elsa and Nolan sat on the deck that night. It was getting dark out and the shack listed like a fat man transferring his weight. Nolan sank into the netting of a red camp chair that was stretched, he imagined, to the curve of his father’s back. It was hot and he stripped away his sweaty shirt. They’d bought a bottle of vodka and a can of pineapple juice at the landing and drank warm cocktails from waxy paper cups.
The buffleheads honked softly, clustering near the deck. Elsa was feeding them scraps of bread.
The ducks bumped each other, competing for waterlogged scraps. The bread hunks flowered open, soft in the water.
You’re interfering with science by feeding them, Nolan said.
I’m not too concerned with their science. Elsa tossed a piece of bread long, distracting an aggressive male mallard who’d been mooching off the buffleheads. Once he’d bolted, she tossed a larger piece right in front of it, and a smaller bufflehead glided in to claim it.
You’re welcome, she said. The bird tossed its head back and choked the bread down.
And then, as if it knew they were waiting for a show, one of the undowny buffleheads came and performed its oddity for them. The duck perched on the deck railing, its wings held out, crucified, bedraggled chest feathers pointed toward the last of the sun. There it was: a demonstration of the Reversalists’ entire reason for being on Leap’s Island.
He’s drying his feathers, Nolan said.
So?
Because their down isn’t waterproof. His down—Nolan pointed at the fat mallard circling Elsa after being tricked—is waterproof, but the buffleheads’ isn’t. Or it used to be, and now it isn’t. That’s the whole thing, Nolan said. Reversalism.
I read the website too, Elsa said. But she hadn’t studied it closely because she’d grown too
furious thinking about her father believing such bullshit. This duck made him think the next generation was empirically worse than the last? This duck signaled evolution running backward? Water dripped from the lowest fringe of its matted chest feathers, regular as a leaky tap, and the little bird shook itself. It was a ridiculous creature, but it didn’t seem bad enough to make a person run away and live on an island for the rest of his life.
She frowned at Nolan. What exactly did Dad think this proved?
If it wasn’t on the website, I don’t know it.
I thought maybe he talked about it, before he left.
Nolan shook his head. He would have loved to lord this over Elsa. Tell her anecdotes about Ian confiding in him about his work, his fears. But Ian would never have done that. Before Keiko died, Ian had talked with her. The two of them stayed up late fighting and laughing about their work, and they would just wave at Nolan when he entered the kitchen to get a glass of water or a dish of ice cream. Sometimes, Nolan would stand, leaning against the kitchen counter, until his spoon clicked against the bottom of the bowl. He could listen to them, but when it came to science, they were a closed circuit and never thought to let him in.
He’s got a lot of notes in there, Nolan said.
Elsa shrugged.
Don’t pretend you don’t want to know.
What?
If Dad thought the world was going to shit.
The world is going to shit.
If Dad thought we were shit.
Let’s just go to bed, Elsa said. She made to stand, but Nolan put a hand on her thigh, pressing his thumb into the soft spot beneath her knee. The bufflehead was still in position on the railing, stuck in its posture as the water ran from its chest. The duck closed his eyes and rosy feathers pressed in around the seams of his black lids.
Nolan said, You really don’t think him coming out here has anything to do with us?
And of course this was what Elsa was afraid of. She shouldn’t have been surprised that the thought had occurred to Nolan too.
How could Ian’s belief that mankind’s progress was in retrograde seem like anything but a referendum on their own disappointing existences?
Of course Elsa wanted to know what was in Ian’s notes.
But that Nolan could so easily admit his need to know was repellent to her. There was nothing more humiliating to Elsa than her own desires.
So she shrugged. I don’t think he thought about us very much, Elsa said.
Nolan released her leg and slumped forward like a kid, his belly creasing, and Elsa felt bad.
He pointed at the sad little duck on the railing and said, If we look through his notes, I bet we’ll find something.
Elsa knew he meant: Find the precise tone and tenor of Ian’s disappointment. Find out why he left us. Find out what we could have done better.
Fine, Elsa said. She was getting near the bottom of her drink, and she tipped back the cup and drank the dregs. The liquor had settled, and the syrupy end of the cup was strong.
* * *
——————·
Their father’s bed was made neatly. The green cotton blanket was rolled over at the top. The sheets were unwrinkled. Their father’s bed was low to the ground, and it was too small.
Nolan unfurled his sleeping bag on the floor and slunk into it. He clicked off the lantern and the dark was absolute.
Elsa stripped down to her tank top and underwear and lowered herself onto the bed. She brushed debris off her feet, bits of leaves and sand, before tucking her feet under the blanket and pulling it all the way up over her head. It smelled person-y, a bit like unwashed hair, but not unpleasant. She was too hot and pushed the blanket down again.
Birds were calling in the woods beyond the shore. The Gulf slapped at the stilt-house, and Elsa heard the slow drip of water running from the moss beneath the walkway back into the sea. She heard the teeth on Nolan’s sleeping bag unzipping, and then there was pressure on the bed, the weight of Nolan next to her.
She turned and felt around in the darkness.
Elsa patted and grabbed until she felt his thin wrists. He lay on his side, facing her. She cupped his face, tugged the sheaf of his hair.
Why did you say that earlier? Nolan asked softly, though there was no one to hear them.
What? Elsa stayed very still and stared into the darkness where Nolan’s breath was coming from.
About Dad killing himself. You said it when I called you too. Right away.
It didn’t occur to you?
He wouldn’t have.
He joined a doomsday cult, Elsa said, flipping over and away from him. People who think the world is ending don’t have great life expectancies.
Nolan was quiet a moment and then pulled the blanket back up from the bottom of the bed where Elsa had kicked it, spreading it over both of them. He smoothed the cotton over Elsa, beneath her arm, the slope of her ass, the backs of her legs.
Nolan, Elsa said.
Good night, Nolan said, and he turned away.
Elsa was not sure which one of them fell asleep first. The last thing she remembered thinking was that she would not last a whole week on this island. It was so warm beneath the blanket Elsa thought she might pass out if she didn’t kick it off. But she didn’t, because if she did, she knew Nolan would pull it back up again, would touch her again, and so she sweated in the heat until she fell asleep.
* * *
——————·
In the morning, Nolan walked out onto the porch. Elsa was in the Gulf, drifting in small orbits on the pink tiger float. She was wearing an athletic-looking bikini and sunglasses. She was reading a Scientific American with Mars on the cover. She smelled of sunscreen but already looked blotchy, the whitest kind of white girl.
You’re burning, Nolan said. Jinx leaned against his bare legs and sent a cold nose investigating up his shorts.
It was ten o’clock and light filtered through water the color of strong tea, the soft and murky bottom sending motes of dirt toward the surface in return. A weak breeze tunneled across the water and small waves merrily crashed themselves onto the shore. The tiger spun Elsa in a wide arc.
It’s morning sun. Not even strong yet, Elsa said. She took her sunglasses off. Elsa had lost herself a bit last night. In the presence of Ian’s ghost, Ian’s things, Ian’s dog, she’d felt herself being pulled back in time to when all the Greys had been together—she’d felt Nolan trying to pull her there.
We should pack up his things, Elsa said.
They had six days before the post boat returned, and this seemed to Elsa an eternity of time to be stuck on the island with Nolan. She knew what happened to people who stayed in close quarters for more than a couple days. Performances dropped away. Honesty took hold. Bullshit could no longer be kept under wraps. And so Elsa would pack Ian’s things quickly. Maybe Nolan could be rushed along. Maybe they could phone the mainland and try to find a way to leave sooner.
They began sorting through the shack that morning, but as they put Ian’s things into the two large duffels Nolan had brought for this purpose, the Greys found themselves distracted by small mysteries.
When had Ian gotten a San Francisco Symphony t-shirt with Beethoven’s face on it? The rubber sandals found outside the door couldn’t possibly be their father’s; he claimed sandals were a conspiracy to inhibit motion. Even the handwriting in Ian’s journals seemed wrong—too legible, almost elegant. The man who lived in this shack was not quite Nolan and Elsa’s father. He was a kind of almost-Ian.
At the table, Nolan read through stacks of papers as Elsa crammed the duffels. Jinx—the most confounding part of their father’s kit—dozed in her bed.
Nolan read the long, neatly lettered rows.
This is a roster, he said. Of ducks. He banded some of them.
Just pack it up, Nolan.
&nbs
p; Thirty in total, but he seems extremely excited about Duck Number Twelve.
Define excited.
Nolan flipped the page over and showed her three exclamation points next to the reports concerning Duck Number Twelve. There were lists of places the duck had been seen. Behaviors the duck had displayed. Most of it seemed obvious and boring, but a few bits were so technical as to be indecipherable. There was a list of tests Ian had requested for the duck, though there was no facility to perform such tests on the island.
Nolan, it’s nonsense, Elsa said.
Nolan shook his head. He wouldn’t have come out here if there weren’t something to figure out.
He didn’t come here, he left everything else, Elsa said. And I can tell you from experience, the sooner you stop hoping for good reasons Ian leaves, the better.
Nolan looked wounded, but Elsa couldn’t help it. Nolan had been defending Ian their whole lives and it drove her crazy. Ian had changed, Nolan always said. But people didn’t change. They just ran away from everyone who knew them too well so they could start over and do a better job of obscuring the worst parts of themselves.
And now here she was in this ragged shack, clinging to the coast of nowhere, surrounded by jars of feathers, revealing that what Ian had given up everything in his life for was just a squalid heap of nothing. The island confirmed that, with each choice, each fall, since Ian had left Elsa, he’d chosen things that were worse and worse. And every time it felt like he was saying: Even this I choose instead of you.
I think we should just pack up and go, Elsa said.
I need to eat, Nolan said.
* * *
——————·
On their walk to the Lobby, Nolan pointed out a lone stilt-house above the rocky outcropping on the west side of the island. The shack was listing toward the sea, as if even this island were not far enough away.