For a Little While

by Rick Bass

  There were mornings when Lory was afraid to get up. She thought it was just common depression and that it would pass with time, but some days it seemed too much. She slept as much as she could, which seemed to make it worse and worse. She tried to keep it a secret from her family, but suspected that her brothers knew, and her mother, too. It was like drowning, like going down in chains. And she felt guilty about the anguish it would cause others.

  But her brothers! They anchored her and nourished her, they were like water passing through her gills. If they came down the hall and found her just sitting in the hallway, her head down between her knees, they—John or Jerry, or sometimes both of them—would gently pick her up and carry her outside to the yard, into the sun, and would rub her back and neck. Jerry would pretend to be a masseur with a foreign accent, would crack Lory’s knuckles one by one, counting to ten some days in German, others in Spanish or French, mixing the languages to keep her guessing, to make her pay attention. Then he would start on her toes as John continued to knead her neck muscles and her small, strong shoulders.

  “Uno, dos, trey,” Jerry would hiss, wiggling her toes. He’d make up numbers. “Petrocci, zimbosi, bambolini, crunk!” he’d mutter, and then, “The little pig, he went to the market. He wanted beef—he wanted roast beef…”

  He’d keep singing nonsense, keep teasing her until she smiled or laughed, until he had her attention, until he’d pulled her out of that well of sadness and numbness, and he’d shake his finger at her and say, “Pay attention!” She’d smile, back in her family’s arms again, and be amazed that Jerry was only eighteen, but knew so much.

  They would lie in the grass afterward and look up at the trees, at the way the light came down, and Lory would have the thought, whenever she was happy, that this was the way she really was, the way things could always be, and that that flat, vacant stretch of nothing-feeling was the aberration, not the norm; and she wanted it always to be like that, and still, even at thirty-four, believed that it could be.

  When they were sure she was better, one of the brothers would walk to the nearest tree and wrap his arms around it, would grunt and lean hard against it, and then would begin to shake it until leaves began to fall. Lory would laugh and look up as they landed on her face and in her hair, and she would not pull them out of her hair, for they were a gift, and still John or Jerry would keep shaking the tree, as if trying to cover her with the green summer leaves.

  A.C. and the brothers trained every day. When A.C. stayed at the farmhouse, each morning shortly before daylight he would get in his canoe and float all the way to Glens Falls, not ever having to paddle—just ruddering. As if following veins or arteries, he took all the correct turns with only a flex of his wrist, a slight change of the paddle’s orientation in the water, and in the morning light he passed beneath dappled maples, flaking sycamores, listening to the cries of river birds and the sounds of summer as he slipped into the town.

  Besides hurling the discus outside near the school, the brothers lifted weights in the school’s basement, and went for long runs on the track. Each had his own goal, and each wanted A.C. to throw the unspeakable 300 feet. It would be a throw so far that the discus would vanish from sight.

  No one believed it could be done. Only the brothers believed it. A.C. was not even sure he himself believed it. Sometimes he fell down when entering his spin, trying to emulate their grace, their precision-polished whip-and-spin and the clean release, like a birth, the discus flying wild and free into the world.

  In the evenings the whole family would sit around in the den watching M*A*S*H or the movie of the week—Conan the Barbarian once—their father, Heck, sipping his gin and tonic, fresh-squeezed lime in with the ice, sitting in the big easy chair watching his huge sons sprawled on the rug, with their huge friend lying next to them. Lindsay would sit in the corner, watching only parts of the movie, spending more time watching Lory—and Lory, next to her mother on the couch, would sway a bit to her own internal rhythm, smiling, looking at the TV screen but occasionally at the brothers, and at A.C.

  The nights that A.C. stayed over, Lory made sure that he had a pillow and fresh sheets. Making love to him was somehow unimaginable, and also the greatest thought of all; and he had this silly throw to make first, this long throw with the brothers.

  Lovemaking was unthinkable—the waist-to-waist kind, anyway. If she gambled on it and lost, she would chase him away from the brothers as well as herself.

  The idea was unthinkable. But each night she and A.C. would meet upstairs in the dark, or sit on the couch in the living room, dozing that way, with Lory in his arms, curled up in his lap, her head resting against his wide chest. That was not unimaginable.

  A.C. trained all through the summer. Sometimes early in the evenings the brothers went out looking for statues with him. Their backyard was becoming filled with statues, all of them upright outside Lory’s and Lindsay’s windows. A.C. laid them down in the grass at daylight and covered them with tarps, but raised them again near sundown: long-ago generals, riverboat captains, composers, poets.

  Louella kept her eye on him, suspecting, and believing in her heart, that he was the soul of her lost son come back in this huge body, come home finally. She did not want him to love Lory—it seemed that already he was too close—but she did not want him to go away either. Louella watched A.C. carefully, when he could not see she was watching him. What would it have been like to have three sons? What would that third son have been like? She felt both the sweetness and the anguish of it. She could not look away.

  He had not been so happy in a long time. He was still throwing clumsily, but the discus was going farther and farther: 250, 255 feet; and then 260.

  Each was a world-record throw, but the brothers did not tell A.C. this. They told no one else either. It was the brothers’ plot to not show him off until he was consistently throwing the astonishing 300 feet. Perhaps A.C.’s first public throw of the discus would not only set a world’s record; perhaps he’d hurl it so great a distance that no one would believe he was from this earth. Sportswriters and fans would clamor after him, chase him, want to take him away and lock him up and do tests on him, examine him. He would need an escape route, the brothers imagined, a way back to the Sacandaga River, never to be seen or heard from again…

  The plan got fuzzy at that point. The brothers were not sure how it would go after that, and they had not yet consulted with A.C., but they were thinking that somehow Lory would figure in it.

  Certainly they had told no one, not even their mother—especially not her.

  A.C. was euphoric as the summer moved on. When he was back at his farmhouse, he often went out to the pasture and lifted a cow and danced around with it as if it were stuffed or inflated. Or in Glens Falls he’d roll the brothers’ little Volkswagen over on its back, and then he would grab the bumper and begin running in circles with it, spinning it like a top in the deep grass. The muscles in his cheeks tensed and flexed as he spun, showing intricate striations. His veins would be visible just beneath his temples. A.C. would grin, and John and Jerry thought it great fun, too, and they’d get on either end and ride the upside-down car like a playground toy as A.C. continued to spin it.

  The summer had not softened him; he was still all hard, still all marvelous. Children from the neighborhood would run up and touch him. They felt stronger, afterward.

  Lately, on the nights he stayed over at the Irons’ house, once everyone else was asleep, A.C. would carry Lory all through the house after she had fallen asleep in his lap. He imagined he was protecting her. He carried her down all the hallways—past her parents’ room, her brothers’, past Lindsay’s, into the kitchen and out to the garage: it was all safe and quiet. Next he took her into the backyard, among the statues, and then into the street, walking through the neighborhood with her as she slept.

  There was a street called Sweet Road that had no houses, only vacant lots, and trees, and night smells. He would lay her down in the dew-wet grass along Sweet
Road and touch her robe, an old fuzzy white thing, and the side of her face. The wind would stir her hair, wind coming up out of the valley, wind coming from across the river. He owed the brothers his happiness.

  Some nights, heat lightning flickered over the mountains, behind the steep ridges. She slept through it all in the cool grass. He wondered what she was dreaming.

  Late in the afternoons, after practice, the brothers walked the mile and a half to the grocery store in town, and along the way they showed A.C. the proper discus steps. Lory and Lindsay followed sometimes, to watch. The brothers demonstrated to A.C., in half crouches and hops, the proper setup for a throw, the proper release, and he tried to learn: the snap forward with the throw, and then the little trail-away spin at the end, unwinding, everything finished.

  Jerry brought chalk and drew dance steps on the sidewalk for the placement of A.C.’s feet so he could move down the sidewalk, practicing his throws. Like children playing hopscotch, ducking and twisting, shuffling forward and then pretending to finish the spin with great shouts at the imaginary release of each throw, they moved through the quiet neighborhood, jumping and shouting, throwing their arms at the sky. Dogs barked at them as they went past, and children ran away at first, though soon they learned to follow, once the brothers and the big man had passed, and they would imitate, in the awkward fashion of children, the brothers’ and A.C.’s throws.

  Lory could see the depression, the not quite old part of herself, behind her—back in June, back in the spring, and behind in winter; back into the cold fall and the previous dry-leaved summer—but she was slipping forward now, away from all that. A.C. took her to his farmhouse and showed her how to hang from the ceiling. He’d rigged the harness so that she could hang suspended and spin.

  He had to get over the fear of injuring someone again. Had to hit the fear head-on and shatter it. He had run a long way to get here. He was ready to hit it head-on. It was worth it, once again. And he wanted her to be brave, too.

  “It feels better naked,” he said the first time he showed it to her, and so she took her clothes off. Lory closed her eyes and put her arms and legs out and spun in slow circles around and around, and A.C. turned the light off, sat down against the wall, and watched her silhouette against the window, watched her until she fell asleep, and then he took her out of the harness and got in bed with her, where she awoke.

  “We won’t tell anyone,” he said. She was in his arms, warm, alive. It made him dizzy to consider what being alive meant.

  “No,” she said. “No one will ever find out.”

  She fell asleep with her lips on his chest. A.C. lay there looking at the harness hanging above them, and wondered why he wanted to keep it a secret, why it had to be a secret.

  He knew that this was the best way to protect her, and that he loved her.

  He stayed awake all through the night, conscious of how he dwarfed her, afraid that if he fell asleep he might turn over and crush her. He rose before daylight, woke her, and they got in the canoe and drifted back to New York State, and were home before dawn. A.C. crept into the basement that first night, and every night thereafter.

  Lory had not liked hanging from the ceiling. She didn’t know why, only that it had frightened her. She kept the harness with her, kept it hidden in her drawer. She just wanted to love him, was all.

  Many evenings the family had grilled corn for dinner, dripping with butter. They sat outside at the picnic table and ate with their hands. Night scents would drift toward them. As darkness fell, they would move into the house and watch the lazy movies, the baseball games of summer, and then they would go to sleep. But Lory and A.C. stayed up later and later as the summer went on, and made love after everyone had gone to bed, and then they would go out on their walk, A.C. still carrying Lory, though now she remained awake.

  When she was not too tired—when she did not need to go to bed—they would paddle the canoe upriver to his farmhouse, with Lory sitting behind A.C. and tracing her fingers on his wide back as he paddled. The waves would splash against the bow, wetting them both. They moved up the current slowly, past hilly, night-green pastures with the moon high above or just beyond their reach. Summer haying smells rose from the fields, and they passed wild tiger lilies growing along the shore as they crossed into Vermont. Lory felt weightless and free until it was time to go back.

  They lay on the old mattress in the farmhouse with holes in the roof above them, and, through the roof, the stars. No brothers, thought Lory fiercely, clutching A.C. and rolling beneath him, over him, beneath him again; she knew it was like swimming through rapids, or maybe drowning in them. Her brothers protected her and understood her, but A.C. seemed to know what was in the center of her, a place she had believed for a long while to be soft and weak.

  It was exciting to believe that perhaps it was strong in there. To begin to believe she did not need protecting. It made his protection of her all the more exciting, all the more delicious—unnecessary, and therefore extravagant, luxurious.

  They sat on the stone wall in front of the farmhouse afterward, some nights, before it was time to leave, and watched the cattle graze under the moon, listening to the slow strong grinding sound of their teeth being worn away as their bodies took nourishment. Lory and A.C. held hands and sat shoulder to shoulder, cold and still naked, and when it was time to go, they carried their clothes in a bundle down to the stream, the dew wetting their ankles, their knees, so that they were like the cattle as they moved through the grass—and they’d paddle home naked, Lory sitting right behind A.C. for warmth against the night.

  The brothers continued to train in the daytime, and as the summer ended, there was a haze over the valley below them. They were throwing far over the fence, better than they’d ever thrown in their lives. They were tanned from the long hours of practicing shirtless. The sisters came by with a picnic lunch while the men threw. They laid out an old yellow Amish quilt that had belonged to their mother’s mother, with the hexagon patterns on it looking not unlike the throwing ring in which A.C. and the brothers whirled before each heave of the discus. The sisters lay on the quilt on their stomachs, the sun warm on the backs of their legs. They ate Swiss cheese, strawberries, and apples, drank wine and watched the men throw forever, it seemed, until the sisters grew sleepy in the sun and rolled over and looked up at the big white cumulus clouds that did not seem to be going anywhere. They closed their eyes, felt the sun on their eyelids, and fell hard asleep, their mouths open, their bodies still listening to the faint tremors in the earth each time the discus landed.

  A.C. had stopped sleeping altogether. There was simply too much to do.

  He and Lory went for canoe rides out on Lake George, only they did not take paddles with them. Instead, A.C. had gotten the harness back from Lory, and he slipped that over himself and towed her out into the lake as if going to sea, bare to the waist, and Lory in her one-piece suit. They were both brown from the picnics, and with nothing but the great blue water before them, they appeared to glow red, as if smudged with earth. The sunlight seemed to focus on them alone, the only two moving, living figures before the expanse of all that water, out on top of all that water. Their bodies gathered that solitary light so that they were upright, ruddy planes of flesh, of muscle, dull red in the late summer light, with nothing but blue water beyond.

  A.C. waded out, pulling the canoe with Lory riding inside, sitting upright like a shy stranger, a girl met on the first day of school. And then thigh-deep, and then deeper, up to his chest, his neck—he would take her out into the night.

  Once they were on the lake, he would unbuckle the harness and swim circles around her and then submerge, staying under for a very long time, Lory thought. She lost track of the time. There was no way for her to bring him up; she could only wait for him. She watched the concentric ripples he’d left in the lake’s surface until the water faded to smoothness again. She could feel him down there, somewhere below her, but the water was flat again, motionless. She would try to will
him back to the surface, as if raising him with a rope from the bottom of a well, but he’d stay hidden below her.

  For A.C., it was dark and yet so safe at the bottom of the lake. But then he would kick for the surface, up to the wavering glimmer of where she was, the glimmer becoming an explosion as he surfaced. He found her trying to pretend she wasn’t worried, not even turning her head to look at him.

  A.C. would get back into the harness and, like a fish or a whale, he would begin her on her journey again, taking her around and around the lake, leaving a small V behind the canoe. Lory trailed her hand in the water and looked back at the blotted tree line against the night and the restaurant-speckled shore; or she would look out ahead of her at the other shore, equally distant, where there were no lights at all.

  With A.C. so close, tied to the end of a rope, pulling her and the boat through the water as if she were a toy, she wanted to stand up and call out, cupping her hands, “I love you.” But she stayed seated and let her hand trail in the coolness of the lake. She was not a good swimmer, but she wanted to get in the water with him. She wanted to strip and dive in and swim out to him. He seemed so at ease that Lory would find herself—watching his wet, water-sliding back in the moonlight, the dark water—believing that he had become a sleek sea animal and was no longer a true human, mortal, and capable of mortal things.

  Occasionally Lory and A.C. went out to the lake in the late afternoon, and she took a book. Between pages, as he continued to swim, she looked at the tree line, the shore, all so far away. Sometimes a boat drew near to see if she needed help, but always she waved it away, gave the people in the other boat a cheery thumbs-up signal. When dusk came, if A.C. had been swimming all afternoon, he would head back to the harbor, side-stroking and looking at her with a slow, lazy smile. But she did not want laziness or slow smiles; she wanted to reach out and hold him.