As the light of the day fades, so does Marie. I saw something bleed out of her when she heard about Chad’s visit, and she’s been unusually quiet ever since then. She’s probably still thinking about him and feeling rejected. But, of course, Chad feels rejected by her as well. She rises from her chair and picks up a handful of plates and used napkins which she carries into the kitchen. A few minutes later she comes back and gathers our glasses and empty bottles of sparkling water. Nobody’s looking at me to help so I stay where I am. I’m enjoying the velvety night air and the drifting conversation. After her third trip, she doesn’t return and since I don’t hear any noise in the kitchen, I assume she’s gone to bed.
My father is asking my grandfather about the political climate in Venezuela and they’re deeply engrossed in the subject but I’m not listening to the words, I’m listening to the mood instead. My grandfather sounds a little sad to me—or maybe he’s just tired, which he seems to be a lot. My father sounds wistful—like he’s remembering something he misses deeply.
After a while my father excuses himself for the night. He must be aware of Marie’s absence by now and he’ll either be worried about her or wondering if, somehow, he was the cause of her darkening mood.
But I want Grandpa to myself so I’m secretly relieved when my father leaves. In my hand, I’m holding the ancient picture of him that I found with my mother’s notes. I don’t know how many opportunities I’ll have to bring it up, and since he’s in a talkative mood, I decide to go for it.
“Grandpa, I thought you might want to have this.” I hold the picture out for him to see.
He takes it in his hand and squints hard while he examines it. Then he sets it face down on the table. I fear that I’ve made a huge mistake and I hold my breath, unsure of what to say next. The rasping chorus of crickets is loud and grows exponentially in the intensity of our silence. My grandfather reaches over and picks up the picture. He looks at it again and chuckles softly.
“Your mother gives this to you?”
“I found it in her things. There was a journal with some notes she took . . . and a postcard . . . and another note in there too. I thought you might want them.”
“No,” he sighs. “Better for you to keep.” He holds the picture tenderly between his thumb and forefinger. His eyes close, and for a minute, I think he’s fallen asleep. “I remember this day.”
I know in this moment that Grandpa has given me an opening. And I know that whatever he volunteers, I’ll commit to writing tonight in the solitude of my rooftop tent. I’ll finish the journal Mom started. The project that was so close to her heart.
“Would you tell me about it?”
__________
It would turn out to be a blessing that one of the last truly happy days in the young brothers’ lives was captured on camera. Back in those days, in a small village in the Hungarian countryside, photography was rare and expensive, according to Grandpa. But this was a special day—a young couple was to be married and the parents of the bride-to-be had hired a photographer to celebrate the event.
The photographer, a young fellow from the bustling capital city of Budapest, arrived in the village a few days early. In the days leading up to the wedding, he staged various portrait sessions of the townspeople, getting a sense for the light and the local atmosphere. My great-grandparents, hearing this man was in town, scrubbed their four young sons until their skin was practically raw, and then stuffed them into their best formal clothes. They weren’t wealthy people so the boys’ outfits, by necessity, were passed down from brother to brother. By the time they got to little Vili they were threadbare and full of telltale patches.
When Grandpa’s mother, Helen, found the photographer that day, he was in the middle of staging a session with three older girls and a young mother holding her baby. Who were the girls and the young mother? Grandpa can’t remember, but he remembers that no one objected to the last-minute addition of four boys—no one, that is, except the brothers themselves who were allergic to standing still, and anxious to get out of their stiff clothes and back to the serious business of playing.
Using only calm words of encouragement and reassurance, the young photographer stilled his nine subjects and freed the essence of their characters—each and every one of them, on this cool, but sunny, perfectly ordinary autumn day. And as light beams bounced from their hair, faces, arms, jackets, pants, dresses . . . the camera lens methodically collected the rays, directing them back toward the film to create an image that would endure to be seen in a different century on a different continent by a girl who was still less than a dream.
When this moment was over, the boys rushed home to shed their “fine clothes” and change to the far more futbol-friendly outfits they wore nearly every day once their chores and schoolwork were done. On the outskirts of town, they had marked off their soccer field, complete with makeshift goals. They grew up with stories of Gyula Biro, a Jewish Hungarian soccer star who competed in the 1912 Olympics. Biro was only fifteen when he made a national name for himself, and the older boys—Bela and my grandfather—dreamed of following in his footsteps. In a remote Hungarian village, a dream would probably always remain just a dream, but that didn’t dampen their enthusiasm.
That day, they were the only boys out on the field, so little Vili and Miklos were relegated to playing goalkeepers to the older brothers, my grandpa and Bela. In practical terms, this meant that the younger brothers chased after a lot of balls. But when the small, dirty faces of a group of Roma boys peered out from behind a cluster of beech trees, a real game suddenly became a possibility. The Romas were gypsies, shunned by most and distrusted by all, but the universal love of sports spoke more powerfully to my grandfather and his three brothers than the warnings of their parents and fellow townspeople.
If the Roma were a clan, well, then my grandpa and his brothers were a clan as well, and when one clan comes up against another, the results are often ugly. History has proved that over and over again and that day would be no different even though, on this perfectly ordinary day, only little boys were involved.
Goals were made, goals were disputed, boys were shoved, unfortunate words were thrown at each other and then, before anyone realized what was happening, the love of the sport had given way to the hatred of intolerance and misunderstanding on both sides.
“What happened next?” I ask my grandpa.
“The oldest Roma boy, he . . . how you say it . . . he put a hex, a curse, on my brothers and on my family. Then they leave and we go home.”
The perfectly ordinary day that began in innocence ,memorialized on a strip of celluloid, had ended under an ominous shadow.
__________
A few years ago, before the accident, Lyla and I were sitting outside one day talking about what we were going to do that night. It was a warm, breezy, dreamy day—the kind that makes you feel like a little kid. A fly was buzzing somewhere close enough to where I could hear it, and it added to the peace and softness of the moment. I thought about the fly and came to the conclusion that the same fly, buzzing inside my house, would drive me crazy. It would only be a matter of time before I’d look around for a fly swatter or rolled-up newspaper. And yet outside, on that particular kind of a day, it was relaxing.
I thought about it again when, a few days later, I saw a cottontail rabbit before it disappeared into a thicket of brush. On the adorable scale, it ranked high. Aware of my presence it paused momentarily, ears and nose twitching as if to get a fix on how close I was in relation to how quickly it could get to cover. While I watched it, a memory came to me of a rat scurrying through my mother’s vegetable garden. The rat had a nose and ears that twitched just like the bunny’s nose and ears. In fact, the bunny didn’t look all that different from the rat. Its ears were longer, its tail was round instead of long, and it hopped instead of scurried. But otherwise, there wasn’t much difference. One animal made me want to reach out to cu
ddle it; the other filled me with fear and disgust.
I decided then that the human brain might be extremely complex, but in some ways it was unbelievably simple. If I could just succeed in breaking thoughts down to their simplest form, strip them of all sentiment and cultural bias, I could become the master of my emotions and always make myself happy. Turn every negative into a positive.
The grief that came over me after the accident was like a tidal wave that pinned me to the ocean floor. Helpless against its massive power, I could only wait until it receded and allowed me to surface for a breath. I had to accept that nothing could speed up the process of healing either emotional or physical wounds of this magnitude—a person has to wait for what only time can cure. I would never be clever enough or strong enough to bypass that process.
But tonight, sitting on the roof in my reclining chair, I think about it again. I have hatred in my heart for the man who lives at 758—a man . . . a boy only two years older than me. It came from the same place in my mind where grief and doubt and anger also grew out of absolute numbness. Is there a stem cell for feelings? Can we intercept them before they grow out of control . . . or perhaps feed only the ones destined to turn into happiness? Is there a way I can purge myself of hatred once it’s taken root? Today was a good day for me. I barely thought about him and it felt good to be free of that heavy burden. Of course, it took the violent movement of the ground underneath my feet and Jake’s magic dimples to deliver that temporary peace of mind, but still . . .
An owl’s golden eyes glow between the leaves of the twisted oak tree. Somewhere on the ground it has spotted the rat that will be its dinner tonight . . . or is it a bunny?
I pick up my phone and type out a text to Jake.
Do you want to run with me tomorrow?
Almost instantly he responds:
How about 7 before I go to work?
Chapter | 21
Thursday morning and I’m up at six. I haven’t seen six in the morning for . . . maybe never. But as dumb as it sounds, I want to shower and get ready before my run. I don’t want to look like I just fell out of bed when Jake arrives.
Dad’s already up, but Marie and Grandpa are still sleeping. Dad is sitting at the kitchen table writing on a sheet of paper which I recognize as my to-do list for the day.
“Krista!” He’s surprised to see me at this hour, or even at all. He’s usually gone by the time I get up. “Something wrong?”
“No, I just wanted to get in an early run before Grandpa wakes up.” I leave out the part about showering and Jake.
“Good for you. I was just making a list for you. Did you mail those things yesterday?”
“No, I’ll do it this morning.” My father writes “Post Office” on the bottom of the list. “Did Grandpa’s test results come back yet?”
“Some of them did. I’m going to have you take him to San Francisco today. A med school friend of mine who teaches there is squeezing him in at three o’clock, so make sure you’re early. He’s doing me a favor.”
“What kind of doctor is he?”
“Hematologist . . . blood.”
“What’s wrong with Grandpa’s blood?”
“Mmmm . . . maybe nothing. They’ll be doing a bone marrow test. It’s not a big deal but if your grandfather seems nervous you can give him these.” He places a tiny envelope in my hand. It contains two round flat yellow pills. “Better have a glass of orange juice and a banana if you’re going to run.”
__________
I’m waiting on the street when Jake pulls up. He gets out of his Jeep and walks over to me. He has sleepy eyes, tousled hair, and looks like he hasn’t shaved. I guess he didn’t worry like me about making a favorable early morning impression, but he still looks incredible . . . maybe even more than usual.
“Ready?” He smiles brightly.
“I usually do a loop around my neighborhood, and then go down the hill to the place where you saw me that time. There’s a tree where I turn around.”
“Let’s see if we can do better than that today. Maybe we’ll motivate each other.”
We do some stretches and then start off on a slow jog to warm up.
“Mind if I run behind you?” he smiles slyly. “For the view, that is.”
I punch his arm playfully. “Hey!”
“Well I’d rather be in front of you, but it’s kind of tough running backward.”
As it turns out, I drop behind him in the narrow places where we have to go single file—and I’m the one who gets the great view. What a way to wake up in the morning. Better than that glass of orange juice I had before I left my house. Running with Jake—laughing, talking, sweating together. Like they say in the commercial . . . priceless.
When we get to the turnaround tree, he looks over at me with shoulders shrugged and palms up in a wordless question. I wave my hand forward, I’m not ready to head back yet. We get all the way to town before I realize I may not have the necessary reserves to get home so I swing back toward my house and Jake follows my lead.
I almost make it to the top of the hill, but not quite. My lungs are burning and my legs feel wobbly. Jake turns around and grabs both of my hands. Jogging backward, he half drags me up the rest of the hill. With what little breath I have left, I’m laughing and alternating jogging with a sort of lurching Frankenstein walk. I can feel my thin t-shirt clinging to me, soggy with sweat. Jake’s face is flushed and shining but he’s energetic and could probably do this hill again.
When we get to the top of the hill, there’s a narrow walking path sheltered from the sun by a young oak. I pull Jake under its shadow and plunge my fingers into his thick, damp waves of hair, guiding his lips down toward mine in a kiss I never want to end. The sweat trickling into my eyes and the corners of my lips—I’m not sure if its mine or his. He puts his arms behind my back and pulls me even tighter, closer to him. He smells salty and sunny. His kiss tastes like springtime and I melt into his arms, a thousand miles above the earth.
He holds me by my shoulders and pushes me back far enough to look at my face.
“Are we still friends?” he asks. His light-green eyes are unfocused and smoky.
“Wasn’t that friendly enough?”
He pulls me back to him and kisses me again, more urgently now, more confident of where we stand.
__________
Grandpa is quiet this morning. I’ve taken my second shower of the day and it’s only eight o’clock—I wasn’t in a rush to wash off the memory of my morning run, but I didn’t think Grandpa would appreciate sitting down to breakfast with the odor of that memory.
I decide to surprise him with one of the few things I actually do know how to cook—scrambled eggs. They’re dry but he eats them politely along with the whole-wheat toast and orange juice, complimenting me all along. There’s not a lot of conversation but I can tell he appreciates my effort. After breakfast, he goes up to his room, taking with him a little plate of eggs for Charlie. It seems cannibalistic but I know birds love to eat eggs.
Once I’ve cleaned up in the kitchen I knock on Grandpa’s door and he lets me in, and then quickly closes the door behind me so Charlie doesn’t escape. But Charlie looks like he has no intention of ever leaving this man’s side. He’s perched on the edge of the plate and has almost completely finished the eggs.
“He’s a good bird, this Mr. Charlie,” my grandfather says thoughtfully. “He steps on my finger last night.”
“What? That’s great news, Grandpa!” He has said it in such a matter-of-fact way that I realize he doesn’t grasp the significance of it.
“You try. He will go to you.”
I’m scared to try because I don’t want to be rejected by Charlie again, but my grandfather sounds so confident in such a nonchalant way that I feed off his confidence and extend my finger in front of Charlie.
“Push a little,” Grandpa encourag
es me. “He needs to get used to these things.”
Following his instructions, I push my finger into Charlie’s pink, fleshy chest and he looks up from his scrambled egg breakfast and steps onto my finger, first one foot and then the other. I feel his full weight on my outstretched finger.
We gave Charlie everything we thought he wanted—a quiet room, toys, special seed. Grandpa didn’t see the pink, featherless flesh, he just saw a bird, and I guess I’m not much different from the little gray bird that doesn’t want to be special. Visible pinfeathers are sprouting from Charlie’s bare chest.
Chapter | 22
I never spent much time in doctors’ offices, because I had a doctor at home, and no matter what was wrong, my dad would usually tell me that I would get better, and I always did. I guess he instilled in me a sense that complaining was self-indulgent and weak—that I should suck it up and be strong when faced with sickness or adversity. Mom was nurturing—completely the opposite of Dad. If any of us was ever sick, Mom was there with hot tea, soup, comforting words. But I must have more of Dad’s genes because I tend to hold things in just like he does—or at least I try.
The hematologist’s office in this university medical center is a depressing place. People seem defeated and scared. Shoulders are hunched over months-old magazines that have been paged through so many times they’re creased like an old man’s face. People look fearfully toward the door every time the nurse opens it to call for the next patient—as though she’s the escort to an underworld from which there’s no escape.
The House at 758 Page 13