In the Mean Time

by Tremblay, Paul

  Its cobblestone streets and quaint shops are so unspoiled by comparison to the rest of City. Annotte, decades ago declared the historical section of City, has been seemingly inoculated against the technological onslaught and organized crime encroachment. As a boy who grew up in Annotte (and now as an adult who longs to again make that quaint place his home), I remember the pride, the reverence with which we spoke of our Annotte, even during the anxious weeks leading up to the only Balloon occurrence I experienced.

  —I can’t resist adding this (though I doubt my editor will have the same problem trimming my personal background information): My father was a mason, and he owned a three-story cylindrical-shaped (as is the case with most of the older dwellings in Annotte) apartment building, and we lived on its third floor. Mother rode a fire-red bicycle to the University. She kept odd hours, which enabled her to stay home with me while father worked early morning jobs. On Mondays we had an odd little ritual. My mother would move furniture to clear a path spanning the circumference of our apartment, and she’d let me ride her bike. She didn’t want me riding on the cobblestones and having to dodge the many vendors and their carts. Around and around I rode the entire morning away. Eventually, I wore out a rut in the hardwood floor that my father had to sand out. While I rode, Mother read her books, or if she had no projects due, she clapped and sang silly folksongs, even one about the Balloons. But of course, I don’t remember that song, and I’ve yet to stumble across the ditty in my research.

  —From page four, eighth paragraph:

  I wish I could speak to common folklore regarding the Balloons, because there’s very little common among the many tales and legends surrounding the Balloons other than their appearing every nineteen years on the nineteenth day of December. Whether the Balloons are to be laughed at, ignored, feared, or welcomed depends upon whom you ask. While not a particularly religious community as a whole, Annottites seem to find their religion every nineteen years.

  Obviously, I do not fear the Balloons. But neither am I a zealot or enthusiast. However, I do fear the mobs. One such ruinous group takes to the streets and tears apart any person who dares announce they see a Balloon, or any person claiming to be chosen as a Balloon recipient. Like the torch-and-pitchfork-wielding peasants in Shelley’s Frankenstein this mob’s goal is to keep the occurrence from happening. In addition, as has been the case historically, a second mob patrols the streets displaying any number of bizarre prayers and homegrown incantations supposedly to aid the coming of the Balloons while violently clashing with anyone who voices a dissenting view. Throughout Annotte’s recorded history, mob and riot casualties have increased with each occurrence. This is why I shall be an impartial observer, overlooking Annotte from the relative safety of my library roof. The Longesian abuts Annotte, and from the roof, there’s a wondrous view of the ancient City-section.

  12/19 10:54 AM

  —I had planned a final walk through before the evening’s events and possibly to conduct some interviews, but the police have closed Annotte to all non-residents. Wooden barriers manned by small patrols block each of the nineteen streets leading into and out of Annotte. I was surprised to hear City was organizing an evacuation as well, but from what I’ve heard, no one was leaving. I will need to confirm or deny the rumor officially. Yet another phone call to make.

  —We’ve been forced to close the library as the turned-away crowds were making themselves a nuisance among our stacks.

  —Just off the phone with City University Press: A representative (don’t know how much faith I have in the woman, as I had to spell “Longesian” for her) told me they have no such publication as my mother’s essay in their catalogue, nor any record of its impending release. Surely this lends credence to my joke-theory, and a cruel joke at that.

  —Rereading the copyright page, it seems I have made a mistake, although I’d swear that I read City University Press, originally. The publisher’s credit reads: CUPress, which could conceivably be a publisher different than City University Press. But there’s the new problem of who CUPress is.

  12/19 3:16 PM

  —I’ve read more of my mother’s essay. The question of by whom and why this was published is a mystery that will have to wait until after this evening. Despite the alarming and often contradictory information contained within, I’ve decided that she was indeed the author. I’ve read enough of my mother’s scholarly works to know the essay’s voice and style is as unmistakable as the photo on the back cover.

  —What follows are some excerpts taken from her set of interviews conducted the day after the most recent Balloon occurrence.

  —From page twelve, seventh paragraph:

  This from a market owner who wished to remain anonymous:

  “My family was upstairs and I was standing on my shop stoop, holding my shotgun. I’ll be damned if I was going to let some group of Balloon-crazies bust up my shop. Anyway, it was snowing hard. And damn my eyes they [the Balloons] were actually falling out of the sky, but slow, and with a weird kind of aim. Am I making any sense? I’m saying they were falling like they knew where they were falling. Too many to count. And one was coming toward me, no bigger than a small dog. Even in the snow, I saw this one was red, so red almost purple, like a wine, and hanging under it was a string as thin as a hair strand. It didn’t really look all that different than a plain old kiddie balloon, but, at the same time, it looked different. I don’t know, sounds silly, right? Me being scared of a goddamn balloon. But just seeing it and how it floated with purpose. I’ve never been so afraid in my life. Hands, arms, legs, everything was shaking and it felt like . . . I don’t know, like I was dying. Then I heard one of those mobs yelling and coming up my road and the damned Balloon was still getting closer. And then I saw some sort of picture on the Balloon’s face but I shot at it before I saw what the picture was. I didn’t want to see it. You know, I used to laugh at all those stories . . . So I just fired and didn’t even bother with getting the thing in my sights. I fired two wild shots. I’m sorry, and I hope I didn’t end up hitting another house or store or God forbid, anyone else. I did what I had to do. Then I looked up and didn’t see the Balloon anywhere. I ran inside and upstairs into my apartment. The mob came and started busting up my shop and I just sat with my wife and kid in my arms, and we were crying.”

  While estimates run higher, City Hospital reported two fatalities and thirty-eight injuries solely due to firearm wounds on the 19th. Both fatalities and approximately half of the injuries occurred within the safety of their own homes, with the injured individuals (along with eyewitnesses) claiming stray bullets fired from the street were the culprits.

  Thinking about the stray bullets: perhaps my roof observatory won’t be as safe as I imagined it to be. Regardless, I find it interesting my mother did not directly comment upon the interviewee’s story, or his obvious (and frightening, if his viewpoint is to in any way represent the attitudes of some Annottites) paranoia.

  —From page thirteen, sixth paragraph:

  This from Aubrey Haas, self-proclaimed Balloon enthusiast:

  “Yes, I’ve seen plenty of Balloons and I’ve received their messages. No, I won’t describe what I saw, because they are beyond words, and to try to describe them to a non-believer, such as you, is tantamount to blasphemy. What is also blasphemy are the lies you and people like you spread about the supposed disappearances and gory deaths associated with the Balloons. It’s obvious these people are vagrants or victims of the anti-Balloon mobs. I’ve seen Balloons and many of my friends have seen them, even touched them. None of us have disappeared. Yet our secular press run by our secular Government continues the lies in attempt to squash any and all religious fervor. Don’t you see? We’ve been witness to a true miracle. Proof of God’s existence and His greatness. That is all I have to say to you.”

  As I tried to explain to Ms. Haas before she dismissed me, many estimates run higher—as these are on
ly the cases being officially reported—but in the five days since the 19th twenty-two Annotte residents have been reported as missing to the City Police Department, along with sixteen cause-unknown fatalities.

  Again, the interviewee’s zealot attitude disturbs me as much as the cold statistics my mother quotes.

  —While my mother was not a religious person, she celebrated spiritual diversity, as most true academes do (though she never gave credence to the cult-like worshippers of the Balloons). When I was a child, she encouraged me to find my own beliefs, my own spirituality. She used to bring home tomes of the many different religions practised in our City so we could discuss, dissect, and compare. Probably not a typical mother-son activity, but one I cherished. This essay reminds me how much I miss my parents, my mother, my kindred academic-spirit, in particular. The timing of this sentimentality couldn’t be worse in terms of my planned research; however, I know the trips and turns of everyday life cannot be planned and/or catalogued.

  —From page fourteen, fifth paragraph:

  This brief interview was the most difficult I’ve ever experienced. To be honest, I’m not very proud of myself for conducting it, and less so for publishing it. Regardless, it does belong here, in this essay. While gathering data at Police Headquarters, I saw a man, an Annottite, whom I knew very well (I’m keeping his name anonymous). He left the building in tears and screaming obscenities. I followed and despite having no pen or paper, or recorder, our conversation is burned into my memory. This is an exact transcription:

  Anon: She’s gone.

  Me: Who?

  Anon: My daughter.

  Me: My goodness, S ? Oh, I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?

  Anon: No. There’s nothing. Nothing.

  Me: Forgive me for pressing, but what happened?

  Anon: Come on, Gwyn. You know what happened.

  Me: I do?

  Anon: Yes, you’re writing your damned book about it, aren’t you?

  Me: About what?

  Anon: I locked her bedroom window. I know I did. I stayed up late, patting her head, watching her window, watching the snow, watching her sleep, and then thinking it’d all passed before I went to my wife and bed. And in the morning, I went into her room and it was so cold because the window was open. She was sleeping, so I didn’t wake her, even though I wanted to know why the window was open. At breakfast she was so quiet, keeping her eyes on the table. I thought she was just tired, probably didn’t get much sleep. And like a fool, the goddamn fool that I am, I pushed it all aside, you know? Like we all do. Like we all try to ignore the everyday evils. We’ll read about City’s drugs, murder, and homeless, but we don’t really see it. None of us do. We close our eyes and whistle past the graveyard, hoping and praying the not-my-family prayer, wishing all the bad away to never come back. And we Annottites simply wish the evil away for another nineteen years. My wish didn’t come true this time, Gwyn. That morning, I left for work, and J sent S to school . . . and . . . and she hasn’t come home. She hasn’t come home, Gwyn.

  Sometimes I feel like I’ve been punished for my part in this interview. An irrational feeling, but one I can’t shake. It’s been nineteen years and I haven’t forgotten this conversation, this interview, or the parallels to my life. Forgive this author’s melodramatic indulgence, but this essay—started all those years ago—has become one of loss and tears.

  I’ve stared at the ominous phrase “or the parallels to my life” for a better part of the afternoon. I don’t know what that means, or to what she was referring. And her writing about the nineteen years certainly gives the impression that this essay was written recently (all dates quoted in the essay refer to the most recent Balloon occurrence), which is an impossibility. The numbers aren’t adding up. Despite its apparent authenticity, this can’t have been written by my mother. Or at least, the dates and text were fudged and doctored. Yet, I’m still reading it.

  —December 19th, nineteen years ago: I remember locking and barricading our doors and shutters against the mobs. We were tightly shut in. We did our best to ignore what was happening outside. Mother played jazz records on her antique phonograph. The horns, bass, and piano almost drowned out the shouts and cries of the streets. Father and I played cards in his bedroom, playing well past midnight and playing until Mother joined us. Or did she? I don’t remember. I remember their bedroom with its yellow walls turned amber in the lantern’s glow. I remember hearing shouts and screams and cheering and gunshots. I remember my father telling me over and over, “It will be all right, son.” I remember being afraid, but exhilarated. I remember being bored with the hours of card play (though I don’t remember what games we played). I remember asking to ride the bike around the apartment. I remember the bike was stowed in my parents’ room for the evening (though I don’t remember the reason). Riding was forbidden on that evening, but I was allowed to sit on the red bike, and I remember pretending I was, of all things, a Balloon: I was a Balloon circling my home, floating like a fat snowflake in a squall, descending upon the streets and manic crowds, laughing at the juxtaposed looks of joy and fear on those City faces.

  —Rereading my notes: there’s still much I don’t remember about that evening and the days that followed. I’ll admit I started this project with more than academic ambitions. There are holes, personal holes, to be filled. But they only seem to be growing deeper.

  12/19 6:49 PM

  —From page nineteen (the last page), final three paragraphs:

  Time heals all wounds: a cliché we’ve all heard and very likely spoken in an effort to comfort the grief-stricken. However, denizens of Annotte know better. Here, every nineteen years, old wounds are reopened and bleed anew. My own wounds: one week after the 19th, my husband and my son—my wonderful, magical, curious son—disappeared, never returning from their Sunday trip to the Longesian Library. This is something I’m only able to write about now that nineteen years have passed, and now that the Balloons are due to make their fateful return. There isn’t a day that goes by without my thoughts and broken heart going out to them, and to myself.

  Academes often write with the lofty goal of serving the populace, of performing the often thankless task of imparting information crucial to one’s daily life. I have a greater hope for this, my last essay. My hope is that this modest essay will heal better than the overrated salve of time. Simply put: this is my reaching out to all Annottites who have suffered as I have. This is a commiseration from which I hope others gain strength.

  In the end, all we have are the big questions: Why Balloons? What connection do they have to Annotte? Why the violence? Why the disappearances? What does it all mean? I don’t know and I don’t offer any solutions or explanations, meanings or reasons. To look for such in the Balloon occurrence is folly. Ultimately, there is no meaning to the Balloon’s existence, as there’s no meaning to be taken from the presumed death and disappearance of my or anyone else’s family. The Balloons of Annotte in all their implausibility, absurdity, allure, inevitability, mystery, promise (to some), and menace serve only as symbols, and as constant reminders, of the irrational and capricious nature of our City-lives, of our very existence.

  This essay has so turned my head around. I’ve been pacing my office, like that long-ago little boy who once circled his parents’ home while riding his mother’s red bicycle. The contradictory information, the cruel joke upon my mother’s memory, the undeniable effect it is having on me while mere hours from the most important night of my academic life. I vow to strike this essay from my notes, first thing in the morning. Removing the damnable essay from my memory won’t be so easy.

  12/19 8:11 PM

  —I’ve manned my mini-observatory. Oak desk and chair, telescope, all resting upon a flattened section of library roof and pushed as close to a ledge as is permitted by the Longesian. Visibility is clear, though snow squalls are in the forecast. Spread out before me, Annot
te: the column-like buildings pointing to the sky, like skinny fingers. City below and all around is quiet.

  12/19 9:19 PM

  —They came with the snow, I don’t know if that’s something that has always occurred (as documented, it was snowing during the last occurrence), or just simple chance, there’s a cluster of three or four, or maybe five, hanging over the northern section, they’re only dark blobs at this distance, the telescope is too unwieldy and the lens keeps gathering snow . . . there’s more, two hover over Tanner’s Market . . . having a hard time keeping up with my pencil and keeping the snow off the paper . . . there’s another cluster over the Cribbage Street tenements, they’re circling the buildings, I’ve lost sight of some of them, can’t see their color yet, a strange scene to try to describe, they look like they belong there, floating above Annotte, their movement is slow, almost too slow to perceive such movement from this distance, but they are moving, they are falling, my God, I just lost one, it just disappeared, it just . . . looking higher and there must be hundreds, hundreds of the things, and there is yelling and screaming, breaking glass, lights blink on and off in houses and buildings, adding a strobe effect to the snowy night sky, I can’t see the cobblestone streets, but there’s a glow, they must be lighting fires, the mobs, it’s going to be real bad this year, I just it . . . snow is making the writing difficult, hope these notes survive, just across the Longesian, I see two Balloons bouncing off the side of the Buertin Bed and Breakfast as if they’re feeling the building for weak spots, looking for entry, there’s an explosion! and a huge fire in Annotte’s center, in Travis Square, maybe one of the breweries, the Balloons are patient shadows in the fire’s light, still floating, dropping, falling . . . what’s ? this can’t be , there’s a Balloon floating directly above me it’s by itself twenty feet above maybe it’s an illusion like an Escher painting it really isn’t directly above me it only appears that way I’m not in Annotte it only appears no it’s dropping gliding descending bathed in the fire’s back glow I feel the fire’s heat I hear it’s crackle I see the Balloon is blue a sky blue no a dark blue and there’s a picture on its face a little red bicycle maddening in its detail in miniature in minutia I want to I have to I have to run grabbing what I . . . back in the office my hands shaking more explosions rip through the night oh this will be the worst night in City’s history what I felt when it was almost on me what I felt it’s hard I can only think about the door to the roof and did the creaky rusty old flimsy roof door behind me the lights are out I’m huddled under my desk and I hear oh God I hear something gliding passing floating and I can hear floating I Mommy I’m so sorry it was me I know I wasn’t supposed to but I opened the window daddy fell asleep and instead of coming to get you I opened the window I just wanted to see one come in and it was so pretty Mom almost as big as my kite and so red like your bike our bike it flew right into my arms it was warm it had a sound when I caught it it was soft not like a rubber balloon at all felt like the canvas you have at school Mom it felt like a secret inside of me then I pressed my face against it looking through it inside it I saw all of us and we were in the living room playing laughing clapping we took turns riding the bike around the house around and around and around and I watched all of us riding it made me so happy so I woke daddy and gave him the Balloon he held it and looked inside he had the saddest happy face I’d ever seen like the face you had that morning we left for the library I didn’t tell you that and I’m sorry Mom I didn’t tell you we were keeping this secret inside of us I just wanted to ride around Mom really we let it fly back out the window I think I can’t remember Mom I can’t remember Mom Mommy I’m so sorry it was me I know I wasn’t supposed to but I opened the window I just wanted to see one come in and it was so pretty Mom almost as big as my kite and so red like your bike our bike it flew right into my arms it was warm it had a sound when I caught it it was soft not like a rubber balloon at all felt like the canvas you have at school Mom. . . .