A Paper Son

by Jason Buchholz

  I passed the time by drifting through various medicated states, taking brief limping forays through the hospital corridors, watching stories about myself on the news, trying to keep track of all the questions I had about everything. There were reports from the hospital’s parking lot: Rain-lashed correspondents held their microphones and pointed toward the hospital’s upper floors. Some stood outside the lobby of my apartment building, others in front of the barriers that cordoned off the now-closed campus of Russian Hill Elementary. It was comforting, in a way—though so much was changing I could lie there in my hospital bed and travel through the familiarity of all my usual locations.

  I learned things about myself, too. I learned there were about fifty reporters camped out in the hospital’s lobby and in vans outside. I learned that I was conscious now, and in good condition, but hadn’t been released from the hospital yet. I learned that school would be out for the rest of the week, until another facility could be readied. I wondered if Eva was watching all this somewhere. I saw an interview with Franklin. He answered the reporter’s questions with precision and warmth, and then asked if he could address me directly.

  “Of course!” the reporter said.

  He turned to the camera and cleared his throat. “Your progress reports are due, young man,” he said, without a hint of a smile.

  I also had time to contemplate my newfound fame and the attention that awaited me upon my discharge. Lucy returned and told me there were a hundred messages from TV producers on my machine at home. A newscaster on one broadcast speculated about what had happened “down there,” and told viewers they’d have to wait until I hit the talk show circuit to find out. I imagined myself describing to perky morning news anchors the underwater classroom I’d found in 1920s China, and the discovery of a clue that might or might not help me find a boy I might or might not have made up. It would be a short-lived circuit.

  Sometime that evening a nurse came into my room with a slip of paper. “We’ve been hanging up on all your callers,” she said. “All eight thousand of them, except your family members. But this guy was insistent. Said he was your college roommate. I told him the best I could do was to pass the message to you.” Leonard’s name was on the slip, along with a number. She shifted the phone onto the bed next to me before turning and heading for the door.

  “Those nurses are guarding you like you’re the goddamn Dalai Lama,” Leonard said, when he heard my voice. “What in God’s name are you doing with yourself up there, anyway?”

  “Yeah, it’s been an eventful couple of days,” I said.

  “I saw them interview this Annabel Nightingale,” he said. “Attractive, poised, about your age, and when the reporter mentioned your name her eyes looked like a couple bags of glitter. Not even you could fuck this one up.”

  I laughed, which made the gash in my head throb. “Actually, she was already my girlfriend,” I said. “I think.”

  “Well, you’re not getting rid of her anytime soon,” he said.

  “That works for me.”

  “Listen, Perry. I’m sure you’re getting all the attention you need. So I actually called to talk about me. Remember my lamentations about the death of spontaneity? Well, I’m calling from Big Bear. It was an unplanned trip. After watching you take that plunge I decided to load the family up and head for the mountains. So anyway, I wanted to thank you. You’re an inspiration.” He laughed. “Of course, I first made reservations, checked road conditions, inflated all four tires and the spare to the proper pressure, and filled a cooler full of the kids’ usual foods. I did let them get Frosted Flakes, though, instead of the usual Wheaties.”

  “That’s a stepping-stone cereal,” I said. “They’ll be freebasing Twinkies next.”

  “I’ll teach them how,” he said, laughing. “Another thing. I wrote a poem, the first one in years. Are you ready to hear it?”

  “I can’t wait,” I said.

  “Roses are red, peregrines are brownish, I’m glad you’re still breathing, your day could have been drownish.”

  “And they say poetry is a dying art,” I said.

  ***

  Well after dark my doctor came in, at a time when my medication was wearing off and everything was getting hard and sharp and uncomfortable again. He flipped through my chart and then tossed it onto the foot of my bed. “You about ready to get out of here?” he asked.

  “Yes please,” I said.

  “You’ve got a choice to make.” The entire lobby of the hospital, he said, and all the streets around it, were still crawling with media. I could walk out into the spotlight, or I could head down through the emergency department, where a couple of off-duty paramedics had offered to spirit me away in an ambulance. It was an easy choice.

  “Good decision,” he said. “It’s a mob scene down there. Too many germs.” He asked a nurse to feed me a final, extra-strength round of painkillers. “In case you can’t get to a pharmacy until tomorrow,” he said, and gave my left hand a firm shake. A young nurse took me down a service elevator and into an employee break room, where a pair of paramedics sat drinking sodas and playing paper football. One of them was about my age; the other looked a few years younger. They jumped to their feet as we approached.

  “Hey Gabriela,” the younger of them said to the nurse, “when are you going to let me cook you that breakfast?”

  “January thirty-second,” she said. She planted a kiss on my cheek and shot him a look. “It was a pleasure meeting you,” she said to me. “You’ve got a very lucky girlfriend.” She gave a little wave over her shoulder and disappeared through the door.

  The paramedic turned to me with a wide smile. “So that’s what I gotta do, huh?” he said. “Jump into a flooded building!” He extended his left hand and gave my own a gleeful, enthusiastic handshake. “Cracks me up when she acts like she don’t want me. I’m Hector, though. That was some badass shit you pulled out there!”

  “Yeah, maybe it was,” I said. The medication was starting to kick in. I felt tingling in my knees and around the gash in my head. I could put my weight on my bruised leg. Warmth was spreading up my back.

  The other paramedic shook my hand with equal vigor. Like Hector, he seemed accustomed to shaking left-handed. His name was Naseem. “Ready to go home?” he asked.

  “Definitely,” I said.

  I followed them out the door, but not before they had me pose with them for a photo. We climbed inside their ambulance, with Hector at the wheel, Naseem in the passenger seat, and me in a rear-facing jump seat in the back. We pulled out onto Hyde. All along the first block news vans crouched along the curbs, waiting in the rain, weak lights glowing in their interiors. The next block was dark and quiet, as if the streetlights had all gone out, as if the rain had stopped, as if the ambulance was gliding through air, and the next thing I realized someone was shaking me by the knee and asking me something. It was Naseem.

  “Hey man, you okay? You sure this is the best place for you right now?”

  The ambulance had stopped and was idling alongside the curb. Through the windshield spilled the glow of the neon sign of the bar at Pier 23. Hector was watching me over his shoulder. He muttered something to Naseem about my medications.

  “This isn’t where I live,” I said.

  “You told us this is where you wanted to come,” Naseem said. “You got a ride meeting you here or something?”

  “I figured maybe you wanted to pour a couple of shots in there to kick-start that Percocet,” Hector said, his eyes smiling. “It looks like you’re already kick-started pretty good, though.”

  Through the windows I could see that the warehouse doors were open, and there was light coming from the office inside.

  “I asked you to bring me here?” I said.

  “You don’t remember that?”

  “This is real?” I said, continuing to watch the office windows. “I said to come here, and this is all real? This is happening?” Maybe I’d dozed off, and spoken to them in my sleep. It had happened befor
e, on occasion—my sister used to tease me about it. She said I’d tried to order a pizza once. And with all the medications flowing through me it certainly seemed possible.

  “We’re really here, I promise,” Naseem said. “You sure you’re feeling okay?”

  “You definitely aren’t in need of any cocktails, my man,” Hector said. “Where do you live? You got a driver’s license on you? You got some parents or friends around or something?”

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “Wait here for just a minute, would you?”

  I jumped out and ran without waiting for an answer. I saw and heard the rain but my numb body felt no cold, no moisture. Erhu music enveloped me as I stepped through the warehouse’s doorway. It reverberated through the cavernous room, dense as the song of an orchestra a thousand strong. A trail of wet footprints, gleaming in the dim light, led from out of the black recesses of the warehouse. I followed them into the office and up the stairs.

  The cluttered storeroom had disappeared. In its place now stood a darkened theater, its walls lined with heavy deep red curtains. A disorganized collection of empty tables and empty chairs, some of them on their sides, covered the floor. On a low black wooden stage an old man sat on a stool, his fingers dancing on the strings of his instrument. He was drenched; his clothes were full of holes. There was a slight greenish tint to the deep wrinkles in the skin of his face, and a piece of seaweed hung around his neck like a scarf. A smell that was at once fresh and ancient, the way a low tide might smell during a thunderstorm, filled the air.

  I sat down in one of the chairs near the stage and waited for him to finish. When he had played the song’s last note he laid his bow across his lap, tipped his head forward, closed his eyes, and smiled a small smile, as though acknowledging a roomful of applause. When his eyes opened again I asked him, “Who are you? Where did you come from?”

  He smiled. Most of his teeth had fallen out, and those that remained were black. He gestured for me to come closer. I rose and approached. He reached into his instrument case, pulled out a thick bamboo tube, and handed it to me with a smile. Rose’s onionskin manuscript was still rolled tightly inside it, the edges of its sheets uneven and ridged like the surface of a seashell. When I touched them the paper turned to water, flooded out through the bottom of the tube, and splashed apart on the edge of the stage. I dropped down to my knees and saw, suspended in the puddles, thousands of small penciled letters sliding and drifting around one another, coming unraveled. The water poured down to the wooden floor, where it found cracks between the boards and began draining through, carrying the letters with them. Far below, I thought I could hear them all dripping into the bay. The musician nodded as if to say yes, this is what happens. He began another song. I set the tube back in his case, gave him a small bow, and returned to the ambulance.

  ***

  Annabel gasped when I appeared at her door. “Peregrine! When did they let you out?”

  “Just now,” I said. “Some paramedics snuck me out. My street is a news van parking lot. I would have called, but my phone . . . .”

  In the street Hector and Naseem honked and rolled away. Annabel pulled me through the door, kicking a lunchbox that threatened to follow me in. She made me a mug of tea, settled me into a recliner in the living room with a blanket over me, and went out to get my prescriptions filled. The painkillers had reached their apex and I could feel my wrist and ankle tingling, almost vibrating. Heat pulsated softly from the back of my head, where the staples were holding me together. Warmth emanated from a dozen other spots where I had smaller bruises or cuts. I fell asleep and dreamed I was walking on the sea floor. All around me swayed giant trees of kelp with trunks thick as redwoods. Sparrows soared around me, their flight paths marked by trails of bubbles. When they opened their beaks to sing it wasn’t music that emerged but tiny handwritten letters, which drifted through the water, twisting and fading.

  When Annabel shook me awake it felt as though hours had transpired. Heavy rain continued to pound at the windows. It was dark but faint light from the kitchen limned Annabel’s face, revealing her wide eyes. When she spoke there was a quaver in her voice.

  “Peregrine,” she said, “it’s here.”

  I sat up. “What?” I said. “What time is it?”

  “Midnight. Can you get up?”

  I swung my feet to the floor. My body felt stiff and my head felt like it was full of helium.

  “How’s your thigh?” she asked. “Can you walk?”

  I took a few test steps and was happy to learn I could put my weight on it without much discomfort. “It’s better,” I said.

  She led me up to the darkened third floor and to the chair in the center of the room. “Can you see it?” she asked.

  I tried to look through the wall of rain, but grayish spots danced in front of me, blocking out the sea. It took several seconds for my eyes to adjust, and when they did, I saw a faint glow, shining through the rain, not far off the coast. Annabel came over to me and circled her arm around my shoulders. She leaned her head against mine. “I think it wants you,” she said.

  We bundled ourselves up and went out her front door. We crossed the empty highway and made our way down to the shoreline. The sea slammed into the sand before us, and though the waves tossed and twisted and foamed as far out as we could see, their movements did not disturb the serene bearing of the Crystal Gypsy, which was steaming straight at the coast now, toward a point just south of where we stood. Her decks and smokestacks came into focus, followed by the black portholes lining her sides and the outlines of her doors. She was massive, all of her glowing, shining with a faint white-green luminescence. She turned toward us, and continued to turn until she was running almost parallel to the shoreline, looming above us. I could make out the life preservers lashed to her railings and the creases in the tarpaulins that covered her lifeboats. The paint that spelled out her name had faded and chipped, but it was still legible. She ran aground just inches in front of us, rocking and shuddering as she came to rest in the sand, her joints and surfaces creaking and protesting as she brought her weight to rest on her keel. And then it was as though something in the ship suddenly let go, as if the bonds of her constituents gave up their hold, all at once. She became a cloud of tiny white points, her shape intact but vague. The cloud hovered there for an instant before bursting apart. It fell with the rain over the two of us, into the water, into the sand. The white scintillas ran down our coats and sleeves; they fell onto the waves’ surfaces, where the motion of the sea took them. They washed up onto the sand beneath our feet, millions of them, and for a time the beach looked as though it were full of stars. It took several minutes for them all to fade away.

  SEVENTEEN

  The next morning we awoke to an eerie silence. Annabel noticed it, too. She sat up, turning her head back and forth. “Something seems wrong,” she said. We climbed out from under her thick layer of blankets and into the cold air of her room, bracing ourselves for the next surprise. My wrist ached and itched inside my cast, but my head felt better, and my eggplant-sized bruise had become a pale plum. I started dressing myself while Annabel walked over to the windows and pulled the curtains. She started to laugh.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “It’s the sun,” she said.

  I joined her at the window. A clear pale blue filled the sky; not a cloud remained. Light harmless mists drifted over the ocean. Small waves rolled in at regular intervals and fell onto the beach. The chrome on a passing car gleamed in the morning sunlight. We padded downstairs. She tuned a radio to news as she made coffee. The storm had dissipated that morning, a reporter explained. A cold, dry front had come in and splintered the system, sending small weak cells out through the Central Valley and into the foothills of the Sierras, where they were shedding the last of their moisture. Radar imagery revealed nothing but clear sky to the west, as far as Japan. The entire Pacific Ocean now gleamed beneath a sun we hadn’t seen in weeks, he said.

  Annabel handed me a hot
mug of coffee. “Let’s go get some sun,” she said.

  The air was bracing but clean and clear. Lost items still littered the ground outside, but now instead of leaning against her gate and clamoring for ingress they lay scattered across the sidewalk, reclining in the gutter. They seemed patient now, somehow. She kicked a tennis ball up the street; we watched it decelerate, stop, and slowly reverse itself, inching its way back to her gate. We headed across the street, aiming for the thick sunlight pouring down onto the opposite sidewalk. “How did this all come to be?” I said, looking back over my shoulder at the wallets and keys, the socks and hats and papers and sweatshirts. “What do you remember?”

  We stepped out of the building’s shade and the sunlight went through my clothes and skin and into my bones. It glittered in each tiny water-filled irregularity in the asphalt roads. The concrete sidewalks were a flat, even gray, as though they’d just been poured. The parked cars had all been washed and polished. We proceeded at coffee-sipping speed, our steps synchronous despite my limp.

  “Memory isn’t a factor,” she said. “This precedes me.” She slipped an arm through mine and in her touch I could feel the sudden weight of what she was about to say. “It’s hereditary.” She sipped her coffee, her eyes ahead. The steam embraced and then released her face. “Matrilineal primogeniture,” she said. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Firstborn daughters?” I said. “Isn’t that unusually specific for genes?”

  “It’s not genetic,” she said. “It’s something else.” Her voice trailed off a bit. She sipped again. “But maybe one mystery at a time is enough.”

  “I think we exceeded that limit a long time ago,” I said.

  She gave me a small laugh. “You’re right,” she said. “Besides, it won’t even seem that strange in light of everything else.”

  “So let’s hear it then,” I said.