Downside Up

by Richard Scrimger

  “What remains do you mean?” I asked Izzy.

  “The urn we kept on the piano for months, stupid. By the family picture. Remember?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Remember, we went to the cemetery for a service and to put the urn in a display thing.”

  “No.”

  “And you insisted on bringing Casey with us, only he wouldn’t sit still and kept barking at the minister?”

  “No!”

  “Okay, Buddy,” said Dad. “There, there. I’m here now.”

  Which was true, I guess.

  —

  The black dragon had climbed above us. She’d been cruising over our left flank for a while. Now, as if to say, Enough of this! she tucked her wings tight to her body and dived. When she was a few yards off she opened her mouth. Fire shot out, catching Stumbler’s tail and causing the little dragon to give a jump of fear and pain, and swoop away to the right.

  The smoke was thick and yucky. Burning dragon. No, wait, that was Dad’s shirt. I dropped my handhold and helped him bat out the flames.

  “Ouch!” Dad stared down at his hand.

  “What do you think the volcano would have felt like?”

  He didn’t answer.

  —

  Stumbler’s swoop to the right brought us into the town. The black dragon passed us and then pulled right in front of us, acting like a police car, trying to get us to pull over. We flew down the main street at roof level. Nobody out—it was late. The black dragon breathed long, fiery breaths. I saw a line of flame on a power line as we passed.

  Stumbler made a last attempt to get away, banking sharply then pumping her wings like crazy. Two, three, four, six blocks passed in a flash. I checked over my shoulder. The black dragon had turned to follow us. Her fiery breath tore along the roof of an old town-hall kind of building. Stumbler pumped some more, but her will was failing her. We were over a subdivision at the edge of town, well-lit streets lined with new houses that backed onto a farmer’s field. I heard an explosion behind us, checked quickly. A ball of flame, street level.

  We were over the field. Stumbler stopped pumping her wings and spread them wide, angling downward. She was done. I could hear her saying to herself, Ahh to heck with it. I understood her totally. I remember coasting to a stop outside my house and just falling off my bike, even though I knew Dad was right behind me and my punishment for riding without a helmet would last forever—which it did.

  Well, it lasted a month. Seemed like forever.

  Stumbler landed with a bump, skid and tumble near an old barn. We spilled off her like french fries. You know, the field was not as soft as it looked from up in the air.

  The little dragon stretched her full length. She gave a weird falling sigh then she breathed out. Flames played along her snout.

  “Come on,” said Izzy, grabbing hold of Dad’s arm, pulling him to his feet. “Let’s get out of here. That other dragon is coming!”

  “Ouch,” said Dad, freeing his burned hand.

  We hustled over to the barn. It was empty and smelled like wood and sun. We ducked through the open doorway.

  “The big dragon will know we’re here. What if it comes after us?” said Izzy. “Should we run?”

  The field outside was wide and flat, with no cover, not even a tree. The moon was high, bright, full. If we ran, we’d be as exposed as eggs in a frying pan.

  “We’ll be okay,” I said. “The black dragon is after Stumbler, not us.”

  “It is?”

  “That’s what Stumbler thinks, anyway. I know what she’s feeling.”

  “But how do you—what? What?”

  Izzy stared at me. I shrugged.

  “I just do,” I said.

  “That’s a heckuva bump on your forehead, Buddy,” said Dad. “Are you feeling okay?”

  —

  Seconds later the black dragon dropped from the sky. Sure enough, she ignored the barn completely, grabbing Stumbler’s haunch in her two front claws. Roof-sized wings flapped slowly, powerfully, as she lifted off. I stepped out of the barn to watch. Stumbler hung upside down. Her head dangled near my eye level. I was close enough to see her blink and focus on me, then move her damaged forefoot. Was she waving good-bye? I want to think so. I waved back. The big dragon lifted her high, and took off across the moon.

  We stood in the empty field in the moonlight, the three of us, safe for the first time. Izzy yawned wide enough to swallow a cantaloupe. Dad twisted himself around to crack his neck, like he does. The blur of dark stubble went all the way around his jaw. That reminded me.

  “You used to have a beard,” I said. “Didn’t you have a beard?”

  “Oh yeah—but that was years and years ago. Do you really remember, Buddy?”

  —

  I remembered getting lost in the insect gallery of the museum, looking at giant cockroaches with Izzy and Dad, and then looking away to find myself surrounded by strangers. The guy beside me had Dad’s kind of pants, but his skin was darker and he didn’t have a beard. Dad had left without me. I ran to the next room, and the one after that, scared I was getting farther away from him. When I heard his voice echoing up the marble stairwell, relief hit me like a hammer. And he wasn’t even talking to me. “Hey there, Mrs. Solarski!” he said. “How are you doing? How’s your lovely daughter?”

  I ran toward him, crying. He picked me up, called me Buddy. I put my arms around his neck. His beard against my face was a familiar scratch. I’d been in danger and now I was safe. He turned me round and made me wave to Mrs. Solarski and her daughter Joanne. Not that we knew the Solarskis very well—they lived in the neighborhood and the family owned a drug store. But Dad did that kind of thing. A salesman remembers names, he liked to say.

  We stopped at the candy store on the way home. Why weren’t you there? I asked him. Why did you go away? Why?

  These scenes were so clear now. Like a film. How come I couldn’t remember any of them when I was talking to Dr. Nussbaum?

  —

  We walked through the field and subdivision toward the downtown, making plans. A phone so Dad could call home and arrange for money. That was the first thing. Then—then—

  “We should go home too.”

  I think Izzy and I both said it at the same time.

  “Well, yeah, of course,” said Dad. “You’ll be coming home with me when I—”

  He stopped talking and walking too. Stood there a minute with his hands on his hips. We were out of the subdivision now, on a street with older houses, under a streetlight that flickered.

  He took a deep inhale. “I can’t help thinking you’re my kids,” he said.

  He held out his arms and we both came over. He put his arms around us, squeezing carefully because of his bad hand.

  “We are your kids,” Izzy said. Her voice a bit muffled.

  “Yeah,” said Dad. “Yeah, you are. I wouldn’t be here without you.”

  My heart felt too big for my chest, a pillow you pack into a suitcase and then can’t close the lid on.

  Remember the black dragon scorching the roof of that old building on main street? Now the building was on fire. It looked pretty serious too. Pumper truck, two police cars, ambulances, the whole thing. Lean yellow flames ran downward from the roof and had already reached the second floor when we got there. There was a crowd hanging around, mostly in pajamas. I realized the place wasn’t a town hall. It was a hotel, advertising cheap rooms by the day, week or month, and it burned like a match.

  A cop came over as soon as he saw us. He looked concerned as anything. “Come this way, please,” he said. “I didn’t see you before. You folks must have been on the top floor, eh?”

  He led us to an ambulance, where a woman in uniform took charge of us. The badge on her sleeve said she was an EMT. Emergency something. She handed us breathing things without even asking our names. I guess she thought we were hotel guests. A natural assumption, given the way we smelled and looked.

  “You okay?” she said to me
. “You want to lie down?”

  When Dad held out his burned hand, the emergency-something woman got busy with sterile water and cream and a roll of bandages.

  Izzy and I sat next to him. We didn’t want to be out of touch. I mean we wanted to be able to touch him.

  A woman wearing a breathing thing was on her phone, saying that she was on her way to the hospital in Lindsay. She lifted up her mask to talk, then dropped it to listen. That reminded me. I asked the emergency woman if I could borrow a phone to call home. She gave me her personal one, and I punched in the number.

  “Hel-lo?”

  I don’t know why, but I assumed that Freddie would answer. The landline phones were in the kitchen and in Mom’s room. Mom and Dad’s I mean. Anyway, hearing Mom’s tired voice was a real surprise.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  I couldn’t ask to speak to Freddie and I couldn’t say, Hi, Mom. “Stand by,” I said. Dumb, but I don’t know what I was thinking. My voice cracked on the last word—it hadn’t done that in a while.

  I handed the phone to Dad. “It’s Mom,” I whispered.

  His face lightened, hearing me say it was her. He took the phone eagerly.

  “Baby? That you?”

  Izzy and I exchanged looks. Hers was sad. I guess mine was too.

  “Listen, a lot has happened. Mostly good. Here’s what’s going on.”

  Dad explained where he was and what he wanted Mom to do. He sounded totally normal—like my dad, you know? I tried to work out why that made me so sad. He was the same guy. And he loved me. I believed that. Maybe it was hearing him tell his story as if I wasn’t sitting beside him. “Yeah,” he said, “there was an accident, and I’m going to the hospital in Lindsay. I’m okay, though. Yeah, up near Peterborough. You can come and get me there.”

  Dad was only here because of me and Izzy. This was our story and he was telling it like we weren’t there. It was a kind of good-bye.

  Was that it? Did I sense that this was good-bye, that I wouldn’t see Dad again?

  I didn’t want that to be true. I didn’t. I really didn’t. I—

  I didn’t know.

  Dad had Izzy on the phone now, saying he’d see her soon. The other Izzy—the one sitting beside him—muttered angrily. Was she mad at Dad or at her upside-down self, the Izzy who still had a father and who was still going out with Harry.

  Dad’s hand was bandaged now. The emergency woman left her phone with us and went to help somebody else.

  “Bye bye, Puddin’,” said Dad. “Put Freddie on.”

  “Let me talk to him,” I said.

  I waited until I heard his hello before saying anything.

  “Hey, it’s me, Freddie.”

  “Hey, wow!” He paused. “Great to hear from you, there, Dad. How you doing?”

  There were a couple of crackles and murmurs, and then his voice came again, softer.

  “Fred! It’s you. And you found Dad. That is so cool!”

  “Yeah.”

  “He was supposed to be home yesterday and he never even called. So you found him. That’s great! You sure he’s okay? He says they want to take him to the hospital. That sounds bad. What was it, an accident? Did you guys get in a crash or something? And how’s Isabel—your Isabel, I mean. She’s okay too?”

  Freddie was a chatty guy, all right.

  “She’s fine,” I said.

  “You wanna talk to Casey? I’m in the back hall and he’s here with me. You wanna say hi? Or you can see him tomorrow, I guess. Will you be coming?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know when I’ll be around.”

  Pause.

  “Well, whenever you do it’ll be cool.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And give Casey a pat and a treat for me, okay? Hey, Dad knows about us. About my world I mean. We told him.”

  Freddie isn’t stupid. “I guess so,” he said. “If he was just talking to Izzy, and he asked for me, then he must know. Cool. Okay then.”

  “Okay then.” I said it too.

  I could feel Freddie grinning into the phone.

  “Is it weird, being with him?”

  I had to think for a second.

  “No,” I said. “Weird stuff has happened, but it’s amazing to be with him.”

  “I got to ask, is he different from your own dad? I mean, I look like you, but we’re different. Is it that way with him too?”

  Of course, I never told Freddie about Dad. I’d blocked him out of my memory. I was there for Casey. Freddie thought I went home to the same family he had.

  “He’s my dad too,” I said.

  I gave back the phone. Izzy had hold of Dad’s other hand, so for a second the three of us were connected, hand to hand to hand. It felt—I don’t know—right. It was what we’d come for. I didn’t want to let go.

  When Dad lifted the phone to his ear his face lit up.

  “Freddie! Hey Buddy!”

  Izzy and I looked at each other. Nodded. Knew what we had to do.

  Dad was saying something to his son. His other son. Izzy let go of his hand and we slipped away. They were sorting people into ambulances. We slid quietly to the edge of the crowd, took a couple of steps into shadow and kept walking.

  “I’m tired,” said Izzy. “It’s like I’m carrying—”

  “Everything,” I said. “Yeah, I know.”

  We cut through two backyards to the next street, took a left and kept going. No talking—we both knew what was going on, what we were looking for. A couple of blocks later we got to the new subdivision. They were putting in sewers. Drainage ditches were open on one side of the street but filled in on the other. Stacks of plastic pipe shone under the streetlights.

  Each house had a little tree in the front yard. A sapling. We stopped at a maple with dark leaves. You know how leaves are softer in the spring, like a baby’s skin? Nice, isn’t it?

  “Should we have said good-bye to Daddy?”

  “We don’t have to.”

  —

  I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been looking down. It. The light that came from our world. We’d got to the end of the block. The drainage ditch was deeper here. More of a hole than a ditch. I guess they needed extra room to put in pipes with a joint. Whatever, I was looking into the hole and there it was, faint but steady. A light.

  “This is the place,” I said.

  “What if it doesn’t work?” said Izzy. “What if we can’t get home?”

  “It’ll work,” I said.

  We stood side by side, looking down. An automatic sprinkler overshot the lawn beside us, and our shoes were getting splashed.

  “Don’t cry,” said Izzy.

  “I’m not.”

  “Don’t cry.”

  But she was crying herself.

  A rabbit hopped out from behind a bush and stared at us for a moment before heading across the lawn in an easy rocking-horse motion.

  “Look—a bunny,” she sniffed.

  The bell around its neck jingled softly. Not a wild rabbit. Someone’s pet had escaped. I wished it luck.

  I took the stick of deodorant out of my pants pocket. It had been there all along, a bit of Dad to bridge two worlds. Izzy still wore the shoes he’d bought her.

  We held hands and leaped together.

  I was sure we’d get home. I couldn’t make sense of it or explain it—but so what? Belief is not about making sense. So when Izzy and I jumped into the drainage ditch with the light at the bottom, and kept going, I wasn’t surprised. We fell through time, space, darkness, reality, whatever it is that connects worlds. Hands clasped tightly, in breathing silence, we fell.

  There was still an inch of water in the Sorauren Park drain. The light I’d seen, looking down, hung from a metal pole in the middle of the park. It was brand-new, super bright. The park was boarded up. Hoardings all around it. We had to climb out of the place. The sign on the outside of the hoardings side said: COMING SOON—A GROUP 82 DEVELOPMENT. We stood on the sidewalk, clothes and hair and h
ands dripping.

  “I feel like I weigh two hundred pounds,” Izzy panted.

  “But you don’t feel upside down.”

  We walked the two blocks home. No lights in the houses, no cars, no pedestrians. No one around but us. The place seemed more unreal than the upside-down world.

  Izzy thought the same thing. “So weird,” she panted. “Is it us? Are we doing this?”

  —

  Elvira met us in the front hall. Her hair was a mess. She squeezed it with her hand and yawned wide.

  “Good thing you decided to come back tonight,” she said. “They put fences around Sorauren Park just after you left. I was scared they’d close off the drain too. I climbed over and lifted the top a bit for you. You won’t be able to use that much longer, eh? Some kind of condo going in.”

  I showered first, changed clothes, came downstairs. Elvira had water on to boil.

  The picture on the piano was almost as big as a sofa cushion. There was Dad, with his arm around Mom. Me and Izzy in front. All of us trying to look happy, dammit.

  How had I been able to block it out, to not see it?

  The metal frame rattled when I played a C major chord. No wonder I’d hated practicing.

  The mind is amazing.

  Izzy came down after her shower, in the bathrobe she never wore except when she was sick. We sat in the living room with all the lights on, sipping hot chocolate. Elvira was in the small round chair with her legs tucked under her, peering at us intently.

  “So you went down and met your dad, eh?”

  We nodded.

  “Bet you’re tired. That time I saw Pushkin, I felt like I was carrying the world on my shoulders all the time I was down there. Drink your chocolate and go to bed. Don’t worry about getting up. It’s not a school day, and your mom isn’t due until after dinner. What are you staring at, Fred?”

  “Nothing.”

  The top of the piano, beside the picture. Nothing there now, but there used to be, didn’t there? A vase kind of thing made out of blue glass, with a lid.

  “Was it really an urn?” I whispered to Izzy. She nodded.

  “What was in the urn?” asked Elvira.

  Neither of us said anything.