When she was floating, Sia never felt any pain. She didn’t feel the fish that seemed intent on flashing its catfishlike fins every time Toad so much as shifted a pinky finger; she didn’t feel Jackson’s absence every time Gumper sighed or the phone rang; she didn’t feel the pain of having overheard that fight between her parents on the day the pork chop got violently dredged. She didn’t even feel the Dogcatcher’s sadness.
“It’s glorious,” she told her therapist.
“Then why don’t you stay up there?” her therapist said.
• • •
“I see you,” the Dogcatcher whispered, watching Floating Sia soar overhead.
CHAPTER 79
“What’s the matter, sweetie?”
“I lost my pen.”
“Which one?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Jackson, my PEN. You know, THE pen. The one I write with.” Sia wrestled the cushions off the couch and dug her fingers deep into the crevices where pennies usually hide.
“You think it’s in there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you writing on the couch?”
“No, I never write on the couch. You know that. Why are you asking me that?”
Jackson bit his lip. “Then why would it be there?”
“I DON’T KNOW, JACKSON!”
“Okay, okay. Let’s think. Where were you writing last?”
Sia stopped and sat on a cushion on the floor. She sucked her lips in so she wouldn’t cry, but it didn’t work. Little sobs leaked out from between her lips. “At . . . my . . . desk . . .” she said.
Jackson chuckled, grateful they were moving from frantic anger to teary resignation. “It’s all right, sweets. We’ll find your pen. Let me look.” He disappeared into her office. A few minutes later:
“Look! Your pen!” He held it up triumphantly.
Sia leapt up into Jack’s arms. “Oh, thank God. You’re the best. You’re amazing. The love of my life.” And she grabbed the pen, disappeared into her office, and closed the door.
CHAPTER 80
The thump of Toad hitting the floor shook the house, and by the time Sia reached him, he was curled on his side next to the bed, tears silently streaming down his cheeks, nocturnally traveling whatever terrible wave had landed him on the beach. Without waking him, she moved him from the floor to the bed, and once he was tucked in, she rubbed circles on the small of his back like she used to do whenever Jackson had the flu or couldn’t fall asleep. She rubbed until their energy blended into one and she could no longer tell the difference between her hand and his back.
• • •
While she rubbed, she imagined Jackson, wandering in some faraway land, curled in a mute hollow similar to Toad’s, taken in by a woman who feeds and clothes him, offers him a bit of peace, a respite from his journey. The woman’s house, Sia imagined, was in the woods, in a clearing much like the ones you might find in “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Three Little Pigs,” or “Hansel and Gretel.” It was the kind of house—cottage really—that Jackson would have one day built for himself and Sia up in the forests of New Hampshire or Maine, and it was a place where conifers towered overhead and soft, fragrant pine needles coated the ground. Jackson’s favorite kind of place.
Sia saw Jackson in this place—silent, lost, confused, not knowing which way was home. In her dreaming, the woman sat behind him on a bed, rubbing circles on his back, beautiful but not willful, and their eventual coming together was not out of her deviousness, but out of Jackson’s desire to be found. By someone. Anyone. As Sia rubbed the place between Toad’s shoulder blades, she remembered the details of Jackson’s body, the extra-long left testicle that hung a good two inches below the right, the squarish mole on his left thigh just below the crease of his hip, the odd outward curl of his baby toe.
Yet there she was, watching this strange man shift slowly from nightmare to sleep, resting her hand on his lower back as his breath evened and his tears dried. She studied the creased scar on his shoulder, a cluster of freckles on his jawline, and the rough scabs on his hands. When she was sure he was asleep, she reached over and touched his hair. Without the clumps of sea salt and sand, it was thick and ropy. Coarse and full. Nothing like Jackson’s baby-fine hair. When Toad turned onto his side and the moon hit him just right, she saw the tender pink wound behind his left ear. Like a keyhole, she thought. She pressed her finger to it. Hot, hot, hot.
CHAPTER 81
PLOVER REPORT
JUNE 2012
NESTING PAIRS: 12 (refuge); 4 (Sandy Point Reservation)
PAIRS STILL SITTING ON NEST: 12 (refuge); 4 (Sandy Point Reservation)
CHICKS HATCHED: 2 (refuge); 1 (Sandy Point Reservation)
CHICKS FLEDGED: 0 (refuge); 0 (Sandy Point Reservation)
BEACHES: All beaches closed to humans.
• • •
“Plover lover!” Joe Laslow shouted at Mrs. Wysong. He grabbed his coffee and stormed out of Starbucks.
“Elitist selfish male humanoid!” she shouted back, adjusting the clasps on her plover warden uniform. Only the piping plovers could move Mrs. Wysong to shouting. And every year at this time, they did.
By July, she’d be swearing.
CHAPTER 82
When Toad finally settled into a peaceful sleep, Sia climbed back into her own bed and dreamed that a spaceship shaped like a great blue heron shot through the universe, then slowed to a hover above the beach just outside her bedroom window. In the moonlight, it stabbed its long, narrow beak into the ocean floor as if stabbing for a fish or a shrimp, and with a deep moan, the beak began to glow. In that weird dreamlike way of being able to see inside and outside at the same time, Sia watched Toad slide down the center of the beak. Then the moan ceased and she heard Toad hit the water with a splash.
With three flaps of its wings, the heron ship took off, and Toad was left standing on the edge of the shore.
• • •
“He is not an alien,” Sia said.
“You’re the one who had the dream. Not me.”
“Right, Jil. A dream. That’s it.”
“Maybe Toad’s people implanted the dream in your brain. Maybe they’re accessing you from their planet.”
“What planet?”
“I don’t know. Whatever planet he’s from.”
“Maybe,” Sia said. “And maybe I’m really an alien, too.”
“Or,” Jilly continued, ignoring Sia, “maybe they’ve found my beacon and are hovering overhead right now in a ship trying to figure out a way to get Toad out of your clutches.” She jumped up and peered out the window.
“My clutches, Jil? Isn’t that a little extreme?”
“Well, out of your house.”
“He’s not an alien, Jil. I have no one in my clutches. There’s no spaceship. End of story.”
• • •
“Tell me about the fish.”
Sia rubbed her belly. “Do we have to talk about it?”
Her therapist noticed the rub and jotted a note. “Yes, we do.”
“What can I tell you that I haven’t told you already? Toad’s pain is mine.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” her therapist said. “You can say no to it.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Can you read without your glasses?” Sia asked.
Her therapist looked at Sia over her bifocals. “No, I’m farsighted.”
“You can’t control that? Force your eyes to see twenty-twenty?”
“Of course not. It’s a biological problem.”
“Exactly. So is my issue with empathy. I absorb the pain of any person near me.”
“That’s . . .”
“That’s what?”
“Undocumented. Unscientific. Impossible.”
“Didn’t you tell me a few weeks ago t
hat anything is possible?”
“Different context.”
“How convenient.”
CHAPTER 83
“M, what are you looking for?” Mrs. Dixon was wearing her shockingest purple muumuu and matching fuzzy sandals.
M jerked her head down and whirled to face her friend. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Mrs. Dixon said. “Nothing?”
“Just looking at the sky, trying to decide if it’s going to rain later.”
“M, there’s not a cloud for miles.”
“I see that now.”
Mrs. Dixon tottered across the lawn. “You’re lying. You’re out here day and night staring at the sky. You even sleep out here sometimes.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
“Well, it’s lovely out here.”
“Bull puckies. It’s mosquito heaven. You’re up to something. Is it Odyssia? Is something wrong?”
“No, it’s not Odyssia.” M glanced at the sky.
“M,” Mrs. Dixon said, “I know you. Tell me. Is it the man Odyssia found? Is he really an alien like Jillian says? Are you looking for his ship?”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that.”
“Then what?”
“I’m preoccupied, that’s all. Taking comfort in the firmament.”
“Mmmmm.”
• • •
The Dogcatcher smiled. “The firmament, the firmament,” she singsonged to herself, inching along the outer edge of M’s fence. “The firmament, the firmament.”
CHAPTER 84
“Odyssia Dane,” Richard said, “I believe we have a lead.”
Sia looked up. “We do?”
He smiled and beckoned to the kitchen with his head. “Come inside. I’ll tell you about it.”
Toad was sitting with Gumper just a few feet away. Earlier Dr. Dillard had nattered at him for an hour, but though the whole ordeal flustered and agitated Sia, Toad seemed unaffected. Before Dr. Dillard’s visit, he sat and stared. During Dr. Dillard’s visit, he sat and stared. And now, two hours after Dr. Dillard’s visit, he sat and stared. She wondered how long a person could survive in this state.
“Sia?” Richard said.
She stood and followed Richard into the kitchen. “So,” she said, “what do we have?”
“An e-mail sent to our Toad hotline.”
“From?”
“France.”
Sia nodded. “France, huh?”
“It came through last night. I was going to call you, but I’m worried.”
“About what?”
“You.”
“Me? Why?”
“That you’re in too deep.”
“It’s my worry, not yours.”
“That’s not entirely true. I asked you to keep Toad.”
“Fate asked me to keep Toad. You were just the conduit.”
“Fate?”
“Richard, this has been my whole life. I find things. I lose things. I find other things. In the beginning, they were just little things. Insignificant things. A comb. A book. An injured seal. A ring. You know, normal things.”
“But then?”
“You know as well as I do things changed, got bigger, when Jack disappeared.”
“And you think there is a lesson for you in all this losing and finding? Something you’ve been missing.”
“Maybe.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What is it? What is it you’re supposed to learn?”
“I don’t know yet. I only know that I’m supposed to keep and help Toad. So stop worrying. I’m fine.”
“I’m not convinced, Sia, but I can’t force you to change what you’re doing. Let’s just try to figure out if this new lead has any validity. You know in the past few weeks, we’ve received more than five hundred tips about him.”
“That many?”
“A lot of them are kooks, folks who send notes to every hotline for every cause. Lonely people who need someone to talk to.”
“But?”
“Like I said, last night we got an e-mail from a man in Paris who insists Toad is a street performer who disappeared a few months ago.”
“A street performer in Paris? Toad?”
“That’s what the man says in his e-mail.”
“No way.”
“Why not?”
“To risk sounding like Jillian, Toad is too good-looking to be a street performer. They’re always scrawny and poorly dressed. Do you remember the suit I found Toad in?”
“Odyssia, you aren’t stereotyping street performers, are you?” Richard laughed.
“Yes, I guess I am,” she said. “What kind of street performer?” She was thinking mime.
“Juggling, singing, dancing.”
“And what makes you think this tip might be worth investigating?”
Richard pulled a piece of paper from the file in his hand and held it out. “The man faxed us a photo.”
Sia took it. “Oh, my God.” The quality of the fax was poor, but the likeness was there. The man in the photo had a sharply cut jaw and deep-set eyes.
“See?”
Sia closed her eyes. “Okay, what’s next?”
“The French authorities have gotten involved. They are trying to track down the street performer.”
“Do you have a name for the guy?” Sia said.
“Pierre Babin.”
“Pierre.” Sia looked out the window at Toad. “My grandmother’s neighbor had a dog named Pierre.”
“We should hear something in the next few days, Odyssia. I’ll let you know.”
• • •
Words swarmed Sia. She tried to sort them in her head . . .
blue
candid
wilt
snare
bank
But she couldn’t. They sloshed in her brain like ice in a cup of tea.
No order.
No meaning.
“Pierre,” she said.
CHAPTER 85
The first animal Jackson brought into their home was a wounded otter.
“He was hit by a car,” Jackson said as he gathered splints and bandages and filled the bathtub with water. The otter was thick and long like a loaf of bread, and he looked at Jackson with such love Sia thought he might live in their bathtub forever. She and Jackson nursed him and nourished him, and as soon as he was strong enough to splash his way out of the tub and chase Gumper through the house, Jackson released him back into the wild . . . a little farther away from busy roadways.
The second was a bear cub that must have wandered down from New Hampshire or Vermont with its mother and somehow got separated, perhaps by crossing one of the highways. The bears only came when spring was slow to arrive up north. If the new buds and berries weren’t ready when the bears bumbled out of hibernation, they came in search of bird feeders and garbage cans, crossing the state border into Massachusetts only long enough to fill their bellies and wait out the vernal equinox. The cub was beautiful, darling, and petrified. She shook and bawled all night like a baby until Sia and Jackson distracted her with a bottle of warm milk. They tended her like awkward new parents for nine days until Jackson found a program that accepted the cub with the promise of eventually trying to release her back into her home territory. He knew it was a long shot, but he wanted them to try.
• • •
“Do you like zoos?” Jackson asked on their third date, but he didn’t wait for an answer. “I despise them,” he said.
• • •
For a long time, Sia thought the last question Jackson ever asked her before he disappeared was, “Cappuccino or Americano?” But she’d forgotten that after he’d tossed on his shorts, T-shirt, and sneakers and bounded out the bedroom
door and down the stairs, he’d bounded right back up, popped his head in the door, and asked, “Should I take Gump?”
“No,” she’d said, “I’m going to cuddle him until you get back.”
When she remembered that question, she realized she should have said yes. Gumper might have saved him, pulled him back from wherever he’d gone, like Bernadette and the toddler.
CHAPTER 86
“Good morning. Mrs. Dane, please.”
New York.
“Good morning. Is this Odyssia Dane?”
Los Angeles.
“May I speak with Odyssey Dannon?”
London. Clip clip clip.
“Hello. I would like to speak to Odi . . . Odee . . . Oddy. I am sorry. I do not know how to pronounce this name. Maybe you can help me? The surname is Dane. D-A-N-E.”
Mumbai.
“Hi there, ma’am. I’m looking for the gal who found the silent guy. How ya doin’ today?”
Teeexxxaaaasss.
• • •
When Wingnut called, Sia paused. She knew she had to give the story to someone.
“Melissa,” she said, “if I give you exclusive access, you have to promise to respect Toad, me, and the story. No sensational slants. No alien stories. No love stories. No fairy tales. No questions about my husband. None of that crap. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Melissa said. Her voice was full of sugar. “And I’m sorry about the alien thing. My boss asked for it.”
“What if he asks again?”
“I’ll say no. I’ll quote him your stipulation up front. He’ll do it for an exclusive.”
“No exceptions, Melissa.”
“No exceptions.”
“Then you can have the story.”
“Really?”
“That’s what I said.”
• • •
The phone rang and rang.
“You know,” Sia told Toad, “this is all about you.”
The Art of Floating Page 19