Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  The nurses and orderlies and aides come and go with their smiles and clipboards, seeing to Arthur’s needs, checking tubes and monitors.

  At Eloise’s request, a cafeteria worker brings a small pot of hot coffee for Larken.

  A candy striper delivers more flowers, a gorgeous spray of autumn mums, willow branches, exotic dried seed heads. Larken is reminded of the bouquets her sister and mother used to gather in the fall.

  “Oh!” Eloise remarks, reading the card. “How lovely! Aren’t these lovely, Arthur?”

  Eloise shifts to another subject, inquiring about how Larken’s classes are going so far, whether any of this semester’s students seem especially promising, has it been a terrible burden, taking over Arthur’s classes as well teaching her own?

  Larken feels a heavy, fluttering dread begin to gather in her chest. She should excuse herself and get home.

  “It’s no problem at all,” Larken says, glancing at the clock and shifting in her chair. It’s nearly nine o’clock. She still has papers to grade, a lesson plan to review. She’s going to be up well past midnight and there’s a faculty meeting at eight A.M.

  When Eloise finally asks the question—and it’s a testament to her patience and sense of propriety that she has waited nearly two hours to do so—she does not look up from her needlepoint and there is no change in her voice. “You know,” she begins, “I’ve been thinking about the trip Arthur takes to Europe every winter break, ever since … well, since you were an undergrad, isn’t that right?”

  Here it comes. “I believe so.”

  “Did you ever take that trip?”

  “Just once.” She doesn’t remember, Larken thinks, incredulous, or else she’s just being polite.

  Not knowing whether to feel relieved or ashamed, Larken diverts her eyes toward a bowlful of flabby Jell-O cubes on the hospital tray next to Arthur’s bed; they’ve been sitting here all night, gradually dissolving. Something about their insidious decline, their slimy texture, and their color—bright red—makes Larken wonder if Jell-O isn’t used for special effects in horror movies. She’ll have to ask her brother. He’s seen every scary movie ever made.

  “Then you know!” Eloise continues, her voice blithely devoid of subtext; she really seems to have forgotten what happened on the plane all those years ago. “Arthur has done it so many times that it’s planned to the millisecond. You know how he is. The curriculum, the day excursions, the accommodations, it’s all been arranged, every detail worked out.”

  Larken attempts a smile. “I don’t doubt it.”

  “There are twelve students signed up. Arthur was planning a unit on Constable—there’s an exhibit on at the Tate, you know—and Mirabella is teaching the Raphaelites.”

  The flock of birds invades Larken’s chest. She imagines reaching out and grabbing the Jell-O cubes, stuffing them into her mouth and gulping them down as if this action would sate them, make them still.

  Eloise continues. “My point is, even though I’m sure Arthur will be up and around by Christmas, I doubt that he’ll be able to travel, so I was wondering …” She has risen from her chair and is standing next to Arthur, holding his hand. “There’s no one on the faculty like you, no one else who knows Arthur’s work as well and is capable of teaching his syllabus in the way he’d want it to be taught.”

  For a moment Larken has the impression that Arthur is speaking through her, they are ventriloquist and dummy. What a relief! All this time, Arthur has just been pretending!

  Don’t ask don’t ask don’t ask don’t ask, Larken implores.

  But she will, of course.

  Gaelan has been summoned to the conference room. It’s very crowded. The segment producer is here, the news director, a couple of KLAN-KHAM’s long-term sponsors, and the new station owners: two suits whose names Gaelan has never been able to retain, possibly because they have a shape-shifting quality Gaelan has noticed among rich and powerful males; their identities seem to be constantly in flux.

  Noticeably absent are Gaelan’s on-air colleagues; why would an announcement related to the workings of KLAN-KHAM not involve them as well?

  There is a lavish floral arrangement and a cornucopipa-like spread of deli items laid out on the sideboard: fruit, pastries, salads, condiments, cold cuts. It’s so unsettlingly reminiscent of his father’s Gymanfa that for a brief moment Gaelan wonders where the body is.

  The station owners facilitate the proceedings. They’re cordial: they offer Gaelan a bottle of sparkling spring water—which he accepts—and his choice of a deli sandwich (ham, corned beef, roast beef, or pastrami) and chips—which he declines. They offer him a seat. They express their condolences over his recent loss. And then, without much else in the way of preface, they suggest that he enroll in an accelerated online degree program in broadcast meteorology at Mississippi State University.

  In the ensuing silence, Gaelan wonders if he hasn’t missed something; the suits are smiling at him in a suspiciously anticipatory manner. Perhaps he’s the entrée.

  “You want me to go back to school,” he states, just to clarify. “Get a degree in meteorology.”

  Led by the suits, there are happy nods of assent throughout the room, less threatening now: an assembly of bobble-head dolls.

  Gaelan tries to keep his voice level. “How exactly do you imagine I’ll be able to do this?”

  There’s a simultaneous, collective reshuffling of the room’s energetic field: cleared throats, altered expressions, sliding feet.

  Gaelan continues. “I mean, I’m trying to understand how it would be possible to carry a full class load at the same time I’m working full-time. Not to mention study …”

  The suits exchange a grim look—negotiators drafting a peace accord at Camp David—and then go on to say that of course they didn’t expect that kind of sacrifice, what they’re offering is several months of partially paid leave, because he’s an asset, really, with his years of experience and dedicated following, and extremely, tremendously valuable asset to the news team.

  “Look,” Gaelan says, “I know I’ve been a little off the past few weeks, but …”

  The suits break in to assure him that his performance—and Gaelan can’t help but feel knifed by the emphatic use of that particular word, given its sexual associations and the fact that his penis seems to have lapsed into a semivegetative, possibly even comatose state—has nothing whatsoever to do with their proposal; they’d planned to bring this to him before his father’s passing. Furthermore, they’re fully prepared to sweeten the deal in any way they can just to ensure Gaelan’s continued association with the KLAM-KHAN. He’ll be a key player as the station transitions to its new identity. He’s a big man in their vision of the future. They need him.

  And yet, the sensation in Gaelan’s body is that of shrinking, shriveling, of fluids being siphoned away in a slow but inexorable process that, by the time this meeting is over (will it ever be over?) will leave nothing in his place but a dessicated hull. Even his bones will crumble. It’s an end that comes to evil inhuman creatures in certain horror movies: vampires, demons, aliens. He’ll try not to shriek. Woe to the janitor with his broom and dustpan; what a job he’ll have. Or maybe a good stiff Beaufort 5 will blow through the conference room and carry his powdery form aloft—like cremains.

  “Give it some thought,” the suits conclude, smiling, glad-handing, “and get back to us.” The suits have switched identities once again: Now they’re candidates who’ve already bought the election and are guaranteed to win by a landslide.

  It’s clear to Gaelan that his future depends upon agreeing with a decision that’s being foisted upon him as a suggestion. He understands that he’s been dismissed. He exits without shaking anyone’s hand, afraid that the lightest physical contact will initiate his horrific demise. It wouldn’t do to turn to dust before he leaves the building.

  He rushes to his car, so upset that he’s lost his habitual physical awareness and control; he’s completely unconscious of walking i
n a way he was shamed out of decades ago, with a pronounced farmer’s swing.

  In a way, it occurs to him, what’s just happened is a relief.

  For years, he’s felt guilty about his unwarranted early success, agonized over the precariousness of his professional standing. He’s held fast to the possibility that the offerings of sincerity and effort have compensated for his unearned luck. He’s prayed for absolution.

  Now at least his prayers have been answered: He finally knows that it all counted for nothing.

  Bonnie, disheartened by a continuing lack of clarity about how to proceed, decides to work on a special subset within the archive. She’s pulled out a shoe box in which she stores various sized bits of paper that she’s collected over the years: recovered fragments from her mother’s diaries. Some of the pages are handwritten, some typewritten, some barely legible. All are torn and their content is fragmented, incomplete.

  Out of this refuse—using an acid-free glue stick and the artful application of her intuitive powers—she composes an epistle:

  Dear Diary,

  I am such a cheap perfect eggplant

  Not pregnant thank you very much

  who keeps track of such hormonal wars

  Any mother would.

  (oh say what you mean you coward)

  I may never be able to produce

  But I found a pair of baby shoes,

  Can’t we wait? I heard her say

  Wait until what?

  My dear babies.

  mommy Bonnie ?

  why should I have to wait so long?

  poor me

  I’m growing bit by bit crazy

  Losing my mind.

  my vision imperfect

  nothing to be done

  and yet and yet and yet

  mother-daughter outfits coiffed my obdurate girl

  these babes who bless me hearts and hands and hands and feet

  they are the ones the twin that she’s been expecting

  oh, how we labor

  help me help me help me help me help

  Bonnie presses the heels of her hands against her eyelids until her tears are reabsorbed. She can’t do any more today, and so begins to gather up the unused scraps of paper (there are so many) and replace them in the shoe box.

  Here’s one:

  … calling this baby the little pedaler, so busy in the …

  Bonnie is startled by an eerie sound: a quiet hum, a high-pitched sigh. It’s coming from the Artifact: the wheelchair wheel. Bonnie remembers her mother speaking to her of sonic magic in relation to the piano: of sympathetic vibrations and overtones and harmonics, the way strings can be set to singing not just via the direct action of the hammer, but through the invisible influence of a migratory sound wave. And then the sound is gone.

  What set up the vibration? What awakened the Artifact’s voice?

  Bonnie’s eyes take in another object, one that usually resides elsewhere. It’s on a table next to her bed, and so linked to the Artifact not only via its size, shape, and purpose but by proximity: a wheel from her bike. She brought it inside after her morning ride and put it in the wheel jig. It’s in need of truing.

  The obviousness is comical; the realization hits her like the infusion of a spring breeze. That’s it, she thinks, and whispers words of gratitude.

  Hope’s Diary, 1966:

  Little Sandwiches and Blind Hands and Feet

  Losing my mind. I make sandwiches and cut them into appealing little shapes—hearts and hands and ponies and stars—and then children drop them. I feel myself scowling as I clean up, my voice sounding tight and overcontrolled even to me, so surely they recognize the tension.

  I feel chronically unprepared for all my body is called upon to do. My hands have lost their grace. They used to be graceful. There was a time when Larken and Gaelan were babies, even—not so long ago!—that my hands felt blessed and competent, when supporting the backs of the babies’ heads, say, when things were simpler. (When they had no personalities, is that what I really mean? When they had no will? HA!)

  They have wills now, and the ability to assert themselves and ask for things and express preferences and spill the milk and topple the lovely plate of sandwiches, butter and cucumber and cream cheese and olive, a real tea party, I told them, the way children in England would do at this time of the day, four o’clock, and no wonder, since it is the worst, the absolute worst time for motherhood, the time when all pretense of good humor has dissipated and all one wants to do is have a large stiff drink or slit one’s wrists or both.

  About my hands: They’ve acquired a blurriness, that’s the only way I can think to describe it, as if they were sighted. They seem to not know where they’re going, are frequently running into things, miscalculating the distance between one place and another. I’ve had the same experience with my feet.

  My hands need glasses! My feet are going blind!

  All this has given rise to a whole set of invented blindfold games: In our variation on “Six Men and the Elephant,” I fill paper bags with odd household objects, blindfold the children, and have them guess what’s inside. Our version of hide-and-seek requires us to not only be sightless, but crawl. I place Hershey’s chocolates on various places on the keyboard; if they can correctly identify the note, they get a kiss.

  Funny image really. I like the idea of bespectacled hands and feet.

  Chapter 17

  Wrens in Winter

  Larken wakes up with the first rays of December light; upstairs, the three bears are hibernating. She wishes she could join them. The passage of the solstice may mean that Earth is technically tilting toward the sun, but it will be months before Larken’s body will believe it. She never feels heavier or more shadowed than in winter.

  Wearily, she opens the bedroom closet and starts pulling out shopping bags full of presents, most of which are still unwrapped and wearing price tags. Usually Larken derives great joy from questing for the perfect gifts. This year she’s unsure of many of her choices—so unsure that she’s saved the receipts.

  Three boxes are wrapped and festooned and ready.

  For Mia, there’s a first edition of The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. Larken braved snowy weather last week to drive up to a used bookstore in Omaha to get it; she doesn’t know the poet’s work, but Lorde is one of Mia’s literary idols and Larken is familiar enough with Jon and Mia’s library to know that they don’t have it.

  Jon is getting a handknit, cabled lamb’s-wool sweater in a rich emerald green; Larken ordered it online months ago from a specialty shop in Wales.

  Esmé’s gift is gigantic, more unwieldy than heavy. It took three rolls of paper to wrap it. It will not escape Mia’s notice that there are actually several presents inside the box: from Italy, a gorgeous handpainted puppet theater—complete with curtains and scrims and scenic elements—and a set of hand puppets: King, Queen, Prince, Princess, Wizard, Knight, Sorcerer, Dragon, Peasant, Pony, Barn Swallow, Dog.

  Larken understands that this extravagance represents a violation of the established rules. Every year at this time, Mia reminds them that if we’re really celebrating Jesus’s birthday, we should remember that the Wise Men brought three presents, period, and that invoking the spirit of Christmas as an excuse to ransack Toys “R” Us and max out the credit cards is bullshit. Mia is a stringent advocate of experiential, versus material, gift-giving. She’s happiest when Larken presents them with tickets to the Children’s Museum or day passes to the zoo.

  Larken doesn’t mean to usurp Mia’s maternal authority, disregard her wishes, really she doesn’t; but this year she just couldn’t contain her love for Esmé in an envelope.

  She pulls out her overnight case and puts on the coffee. She scribbles a note to Jon (J—Happy holiday. I’ll call tomorrow. Hope M isn’t too pissed and lets E keep everything. Give her a big hug and kiss from me. Love, L), and while the coffee brews, she sets the gifts just inside the front door to her apartment. In his role as Santa, Jon will use his
key to get in later tonight, after Esmé is asleep. He’ll bring the presents upstairs and place them under the tree.

  At least she’s only going to be in Emlyn Springs for a couple of days.She has a shitload of things to do before she leaves for Europe. She probably shouldn’t be going at all, but this Christmas more than any other she feels obliged to go, for Viney’s sake if for no other reason.

  This is the first time ever that she and Gaelan are not driving down together on Christmas Eve. She regrets this—knowing how much her brother hates to drive alone—but it’s unavoidable, since her flight leaves very early on the twenty-sixth. Shit. She’s so unorganized. She’ll have to wrap the rest of the gifts tonight after everyone else is in bed.

  By the time she starts loading up her car, a fleet of ragged-edged, dingy clouds has started creeping in from the southwest. A storm is coming. Stopping at the South Pointe Super Saver on the way out of town, Larken loads a grocery cart with six ten-pound bags of kitty litter in case she gets stuck; the streets are already wet and treacherously slick. In the parking lot, the snow is starting to fall.

  She loads the ballast into the trunk, turns on the defroster, puts the Chevy in low gear, and drives onto the highway and into her past.

  On December 14, 1977, the future Little Miss Emlyn Springs—accompanied by her mother—is spending the morning of her birthday at the Nebraska State Department of Licensing in Beatrice. She’s standing at the counter, weight-shifting from hip to hip in what she hopes is a slouchy, righteously pissed-off way, one that will register her disdain to the other people in the room, because when it’s your birthday and your father is a small-town physician and your mother has MS you just know that everyone is watching every move you make.

  There’s a cold front coming in, a real bad one according to Joe Dinsdale; he says they might get up to a foot. It wasn’t supposed to start until much later but it’s been coming down for about fifteen minutes now. Big surprise. The whole day has been a complete disaster.

  They left early—Viney drove—the idea being that they’d get everything taken care of and be back home by early afternoon. The plan was that Viney would drop them off and then run errands while Larken got her learner’s permit. It shouldn’t take long. Viney wanted to stock up on groceries in case they got socked in; she also wanted to get to a hardware store and buy extra propane for the cookstoves, extra batteries for the flashlights, and a few bundles of firewood.