States of Motion

by Laura Hulthen Thomas

  “OK, son, OK.” Rilke showed the kid the hand not clenching the napkin to his lip and quickly assessed the scene. The teenage girl behind the counter was keeping it together pretty good. Black uniform, oversized name tag he could almost read from where he stood. A pretty sweep of blond hair tied with a black ribbon. Her hand was thrust deep in the register drawer. The other hand clutched the rim of the countertop, knuckles shining. Rilke gave her a slight nod as she locked eyes with him and then stared at the soaked napkin. Her relief at the sight of the law melted into fright as if a split lip diminished his competence, or maybe she was afraid the punk had beat him up before entering the store.

  Rilke looked past the girl to the kitchen’s gleaming metal surfaces. All clear. The fry cooks had slipped away, then. Better for incident management, but Rilke felt a surge at the craven fact of the girl left alone.

  The dining room, too, was empty, and now that he had the scene straight he could assess the boy. The kid was far more frightened than the girl. Dark eyes bulged from puffy purple bags. Skinny and insubstantial under a loose navy sweatshirt and baggy jeans. Judging from the physical aspects, the boy was in no way prepared to deal with unexpected trouble in his ill-conceived plan. A boy out of his league. A vulnerable boy. An unreliable boy.

  Which made the fact of the weapon much more dangerous.

  A more seasoned hood would have gauged Rilke’s uniform before making so much as a twitch with the gun in his direction. A hood would have kept it trained on the girl until Rilke moved his ass out the door, but this hapless kid was aiming right at the bloody napkin as if Julia’s bite constituted the whole threat.

  The damn napkin muffled his voice at a critical management juncture. “Let’s calm things down here, son, and lower that weapon.” The napkin’s tail flapped with his breath.

  “What, man?” The boy’s arm was shaking. The barrel jerked like a bumper car.

  “Lower your weapon,” Rilke repeated. He raged at Julia’s distant bewitchment that was keeping his blood flowing. And he was livid at this kid’s skinny scared face and the jerky fingers curled around the trigger. If it came, the shot would not be a deliberate extermination of a man or the law, but an accident of nerves during a half-assed robbery.

  The kid’s next statement was downright infuriating. “How do I do that?”

  Rilke felt a laugh bubble. Shit, was he going to honk it out right here? The girl’s expression pleaded with him to keep it together, subdue this individual, be her fucking hero, and then a movement at her waist startled him. A head of hair. Two heads, then three. A panicked eye peeked over the counter’s rim. Jesus Christ. The customers and cooks hadn’t abandoned this girl. The punk had corralled them, and now the eye narrowed and bobbed like it was going to vault over the counter in a desperate show of bravado and get everyone shot. The honking bubbled out of Rilke, great gales of spillage that wrenched a pain in his gut, and the eye widened and ducked back out of sight and the counter girl stared at him as if she might just laugh, too.

  The napkin blew from his lip. The girl screamed. The boy followed the napkin’s flutter with the barrel, stupid kid, and, as Rilke went for his weapon and the kid shouted, “No don’t I’ll shoot,” but didn’t mash the trigger as a half-assed amateur would, Rilke saw that the gun was missing the magazine.

  Even with the kid’s hand low on the grip, Rilke should have seized on this crucial fact at once, and he would have, too, if it weren’t for the bite’s everlasting seep. Now it was a straightforward matter to say a calming word, seize the unloaded weapon, quiet the girl, call it in. I know how good you are at subduing people, Dan. Procedure was what Rilke intended as he moved on the boy, but even before his hand clamped down on the gun and wrenched the skinny wrist he knew he was moving too fast and blood was filling his mouth again. Jesus Christ, Julia had fucking cursed him to bleed forever and the sharp crack of the boy’s bone set the girl off screaming like she’d been shot and she crouched down on the floor with the customers and cooks and they all rocked and screamed and the eyes rimmed the counter and the boy hollered, “Stopmanstop it’s not loaded,” but there was cause for reasonable fear and imminent danger of harm because the boy wouldn’t couldn’t let go of the gun.

  Sometime after the incident, Rilke would think he overheard Handelman joke to Julia that her hickey had sure saved Rilke’s butt because the bleeding lip proved Rilke’s claim the kid had resisted, but then again maybe Rilke really heard that half-assed crack in one of his terrible dreams when he was tucking a bat between Julia’s legs and the creature was glowing white with lacy wings, and in the ecstasy of their bodies’ join Julia took the dove-bat in her hand and set it free; and this time when Rilke released the kid and drew his weapon he sure as hell wasn’t going for the kneecap, and maybe in time he would dream that the beautiful girl behind the counter rose up, took wing, rested her tender hand on him in time to mess up his aim.

  State of Motion

  The first launch was perfect, their plane a wood-bellied sparrow fluttering at the apex of the school gymnasium’s domed ceiling before surfing the curve, winging steadily down. Terrence’s landing was an expertly piloted drop to the waxed oak floor. Two and half minutes in the air. That time aloft put Moor’s fourth grade team easily in medal territory for the Wright Stuff event. But on his turn at the controls, Conner piloted the plane straight into one of the chrome light fixtures dotting the dome. He wiggled the joystick frantically. The tail shuddered, but the nose remained buried in the fixture’s bowl. Terrence yanked the remote control from Conner. Moor cursed under her breath.

  “Don’t swear, Mom.” Conner’s admonishment was reflex.

  “Sorry, hon. Terrence, don’t grab the controls. All right?”

  Terrence scowled. He unnerved Moor with his spooky inborn talent for all things competitive. She avoided his pout and stared at the ceiling. They’d need a ladder. She’d have to find Will, the school custodian, if he was working this late.

  He was, she remembered.

  They’d made love that afternoon in the custodial closet ten minutes before the bell rang. He’d told her he’d taken a double shift, knowing she’d be bringing her Wright Stuff team to the gym that evening for their test flight. But she’d hardly shaken off his shine to pay attention to Conner’s animated after-school chatter. She couldn’t see him now, with her son and his plane needing rescue.

  No, she’d get Kay to help, Terrence’s mom, who was meeting in the cafeteria with the Ann Arbor District Science Olympiad committee. Kay was their school’s head coach. Although she was already an event coach for Wright Stuff, Moor had volunteered to pull double duty to assist her. Almost at once Moor had come to hate dealing with the woman. Kay was aggressively competitive in that American-working-mom way that made Moor instinctually petrified.

  “Terry, quit it!” Conner said as Terrence revved the motor. The plane whined as a wing dipped sharply over the fixture’s rim. “You’ll break it!”

  “It’s broken anyway.”

  “Terrence,” Moor said. “Don’t be rough with the remote.”

  “It’s not broken.” Conner jogged to stand directly underneath the plane’s squirming tail. “I think it’s in one piece.”

  “You busted it. You can’t steer. I kill you on piloting.”

  Moor took the controls before Terrence could jam the joystick into reverse again. “Terrence, don’t say kill, OK? Great, sweetie,” she called to Conner. “Maybe there’s a way to save it.”

  Just then a pop echoed in the dome like wet-snapped bubble gum. A shower of azure sparks bubbled up from the fixture. The plane shuddered and burst into flames. Two fiery balls rained down fast toward Conner, who, true to his nature, wasn’t looking up anymore but was answering Moor’s encouraging words with an elaborate plan for scaling the dome and plucking out the plane; was, true to his naïve nature, completely oblivious to the harm hurtling his way.

  And Moor couldn’t move.

  Even if he had interrupted his narrative to look up, Con
ner wouldn’t have darted out of the way. He’d watch with curiosity as the flaming comet hit him square between the eyes. He had no instinct for self-preservation. Moor’s own threat instinct was on a hair trigger, but when real catastrophe struck, her constant coil of tension had the bizarre result of immobilizing her. Whenever Conner really did get hurt, or Ivan had another bout of lung congestion, a stubborn holdover from a childhood infection that hadn’t been treated properly in a Soviet hospital, Moor felt an elemental aversion to their distress. She found injury and illness revolting. She never could bring herself to scoop Conner up and kissed his boo-boos, or hold Ivan’s hand as he gasped, could barely keep her own breathing sound.

  She never could form the words it’ll be OK.

  Her craven aversion to suffering peaked that past summer when their dog unexpectedly died. Boxer devoured a nest of rabbits he unearthed from under the deck and soon after began to bloat. Moor, pissed that he’d scattered miniature paws and shell-pink guts all over the backyard for Conner to see, at first didn’t recognize the urgency of his swelling gut. But when she heard gurgling and keening from the backyard, and he wouldn’t come when called, she’d realized it was bad, and the familiar fear filled her. She’d actually hid in her closet, pretending to clean it. Finally, Conner asked if Boxer was going to be all right and shouldn’t she take him to the doctor? And Moor had called the vet’s office for help before fetching a baseball bat and venturing outside. She was convinced the dog would maul her in his final excruciating moments. She didn’t know why. Boxer had been a gentle soul all his life. She had no reason to fear him. Except for tearing the bunnies limb for limb, he’d never so much as chewed a table leg.

  When she found Boxer under the fir tree, stiff, stomach distended, eyes rolled back in his skull, she’d gripped the bat tighter, rooted to the grass. The dog had dragged his stone-heavy body to the farthest point of the yard to die. He was wedged between the tree trunk and the fence post, as if his last thought had been to escape, not death, but Moor and her bat. It was Conner who crouched at the dog’s side and patted his head. Then an emergency tech from the vet’s office had driven up, lunged past Moor, dropped to her knees beside Boxer, and covered the dog’s slack black lips with her own.

  This stranger is kissing life into my dog, and here I stand with this bat, Moor had thought gauzily. After it was clear Boxer was dead, it was the tech who sobbed, and Conner who cradled Boxer’s floppy ears in his lap.

  Her shame ran too deep to tell Ivan exactly what had happened, so she stuck to the facts Ivan would easily digest. She told him the cause of death was suffocation, that the bloated gut crushed the dog’s diaphragm. She described Conner’s bravery and compassion in holding on to Boxer’s paw while they’d hauled the boulder-heavy body into the tech’s van. That she’d helped the tech carry Boxer was a minor victory of the will, at least. Although if she’d admitted wielding a baseball bat while a stranger locked lips with their pet, Ivan would be the one person to understand her. He’d been ruined by violence. He understood confounding reactions to fear. But such acceptance of the worst in each other had, by degrees, eroded their marriage. And it wasn’t good for Conner to have parents who never tried to stoke a bravery in each other that must, somewhere, still reside in their souls.

  “Neat,” she heard Terrence breathe in awe as one of the fireballs sputtered and died and the one heading for Conner’s hair flared hungrily.

  “Hey, buddy—watch out.” Suddenly Will was at Conner’s side, gently nudging him out of the way. Moor hadn’t noticed Will enter the gym until he rested his hands on her boy. Conner looked up just in time to see the fireball extinguish as if snuffed out by an invisible breath. A fairy dusting of ash settled in Will’s fair hair.

  “Wow,” Conner cried. “Mom! Look what happened to our plane!”

  “We are fucked,” Terrence said.

  “Terrence, don’t say fuck,” Moor said, although it was the same curse Conner had chastised her for a few moments before. The flakes of ash in Will’s hair drifted to the waxed gym floor. She stared at his easy grin as if through glass, sharp and glaring, far from her. Will ruffled Conner’s hair and came to her. On his feet were the tangerine Crocs she’d given him. Her first gift to a man in years; Ivan and she had ceased exchanging presents long ago. Will was a die-hard Detroit Tigers fan. The Crocs’ orange color matched the lurid tiger-striped shirt she’d uncovered a few weeks back while stripping off his slate-blue custodial shirt. A joke, but he’d worn them every day since, although the Crocs’ clown toes made him stumble on the stepladder. He had to slip them off whenever he was fiddling with something in the ceiling.

  “Jesus, Moor, you’re white as a sheet.” Will slid an arm around her waist.

  Was he going to kiss her in front of her son? She pushed him away. “Don’t do that,” she whispered. His skin was hot. He reeked of bleach.

  “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  “My son almost burned to a crisp.”

  “Not even close.” Will was standing too close to her, smiling wide. He always did, even after school in the crowded hallway. His happiness at seeing her was sexy, even as she imagined the other mothers taking note of the way he allowed his arm to brush hers as he passed, carrying that big sweeper or a bucket of tools. He teased her openly her with frank black eyes. As blond as he was, he ought to have blue eyes, she often thought. The contrast startled her, as if his features belonged to two different people with clashing complexions.

  “Goddamn it,” she said. “How are we going to rebuild that plane before Saturday?”

  “Don’t swear, Mom,” Conner said. And Terrence said, “I have No Bones About It and Circuit Wizardry and Water Rockets practice, plus soccer and my piano recital this week. There’s no way I can build another plane.”

  Will laughed. “Plus eating and sleeping really crowd the schedule.”

  Terrence scowled at him. “We eat pizza at practices.”

  “Why don’t we ever order pizza at Wright Stuff, Mom?” Conner whined.

  “We eat healthy at home, don’t we, sweetie?” Moor struggled to relax. It didn’t help that Will was lingering instead of figuring out how to make that fixture safe for the Science Olympiad. But he was in no hurry to leave her. He was thinking of her, as she was always thinking of him.

  Thinking of their trysts in the custodial closet, which wasn’t a closet at all, despite the plastic identifier on the door, but a large concrete-block room lined with shelves of disinfectant and mop heads and the detritus of broken school equipment. Several times a week they hurried to make love before the final bell. They would stand against the open section of wall next to the spare mop handles. Sometimes the handles cascaded down as they came, and the clatter would make them collapse against one another, breathing hard, legs weak, almost falling down themselves; and then that long metal rod he used to change out-of-reach light bulbs would roll around and hobble them both, and they’d laugh themselves to tears. She would stroke his fair hair, stiff like heaps of fine wire, before burying his lips in hers. Laughter was as sensual as sex, she had rediscovered, if she had ever discovered it. She and Ivan had never laughed much together.

  “I always get pizza after Wright Stuff practice,” Terrence boasted. Conner looked as crushed by this taunt as he was about the plane’s incineration.

  Kay burst noisily through the double doors from the cafeteria. “What’s that smell?” Her high voice echoed in the cup of the dome. No detail of sight or odor ever escaped Kay.

  “Our plane burned up,” Terrence announced.

  “That’s weird. What’d you do, pilot it into a socket?”

  “I didn’t do it. Conner did.” Terrence jabbed his finger at Conner’s flushed face.

  Moor bit her lip. “Obviously an accident. Not Conner’s fault at all. Kay, we have a safety issue here. We’ll need to move the event outdoors, I think.”

  “Against the rules. This event has to be held indoors.” Kay planted herself under the fixture and peere
d up. She was tall, with shoulders wider than her hips and long, athletic legs. Her auburn hair streamed down her back like a windswept swirl of maple leaves. She was a knockout. Moor couldn’t understand why Will didn’t attach his gaze to Kay the way all the dads did whenever she entered the room, but Will was one of those rare men who didn’t allow fantastic looks and a great body to trump an aversion to char acter. “How the heck did it catch fire anyway?” She leveled a bullet-glare at Will. Moor knew that look. She’d received it many times over the last few weeks. “The bulbs seem protected to me. Possibly a short in the wiring?”

  It was more than just the happy assignment of blame Kay was fixing on Will. Kay knew all about their affair.

  “Maybe it was Conner’s precision aim,” Will said.

  “Conner’s an idiot. I kill him on piloting,” Terrence muttered.

  “Sounds like a freak thing to me,” Kay said.

  “Kay, it’s a hazard.” Moor began to tremble. She sensed in Kay the same potential for violence under duress she’d feared in her sick dog, but in Kay’s case a bat wouldn’t be any comfort.

  “Will, do we have a legitimate hazard here?”

  Will shrugged. “I agree it was a freak thing. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. But I’ll check for a short.”

  Moor stared at him. The danger was obvious. Why was he downplaying it?

  Conner moved to Will. “Are we going to get disqualified because I ruined the plane?”

  Will ruffled Conner’s hair. The gesture was so affectionate Moor almost cried. “No, buddy. You just have to build another plane. Anyway, not one pilot in a million could have made that beauty soar so high.”

  Moor swallowed as Conner beamed up at Will. “I would like to address the safety issue further.” Her voice shook embarrassingly.

  “I don’t want to take this to the committee if it’s a fluke,” Kay said.

  “It’s their job to provide a safe environment for the events.”