Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  Spring bouquets no longer cheer me; a vase of dead grass would be welcome.

  “Do the little things that you have seen me do,” the saint enjoined us during his last sermon, as he lay dying. I imagine his voice as reedy, but not unpleasantly so. Nothing bombastic, just a pious, politely spoken suggestion: “Gwnewch y pathau bychain.”

  What will be my dying words, I wonder? Or will I be past language by then? Likely. The swallowing mechanism goes, so must all other controls involving the tongue, the lips, the teeth, and the jaw … I will be silent at my death, then.

  Will thought be possible, that’s the real question. Does the brain survive an incapacitated body? Can it keep from going mad, denied all outward forms of expression? And isn’t madness unexpressed a kind of triple hell?

  Maybe L. was right to keep it from me. What good is knowing? I have been so bitter toward him since learning of this thing he has hidden. After all, he didn’t give me the disease, he only knew about it and—out of good intentions, out of love, I suppose (and I’m realizing now that it had to have cost him something)—kept it from me.

  “Do the little things” will be my slogan then. And they shall grow littler and littler until … what? What in the end will I be able to do? What little thing?

  * * *

  Today at least I managed a big thing, the last big thing this body is likely to manage in this lifetime.

  It’s hard to consider the possibility that, at thirty-one, I may have just performed my corporeal grand finale, but at this moment, no one could be prouder of this diseased body and what we’ve accomplished than me.

  My last-born child is a girl: Bonnie Ebrilla.

  No C-section this time: My little pedaler, so spritely and busy in the womb, announced her intention to arrive with a theatrical downpour—my water breaking as I hung out the laundry this morning on one of the first warm days of spring. Looking down at my soaked clothing and the wet earth, I thought about the never-to-be children I’ve buried in our field over the years. Always beneath my feet, whenever I walk this land I feel them: the wispy remains of the lost ones, and yet they are of one flesh with this earth that I so love, and with me, and I have never stopped speaking with them; they are no less real to me for having never been born.

  By announcing her arrival this way, Bonnie seemed to be saying, “I know who lives here. I know what this place means to you.” Standing there, I felt the force of her will, the strength of her spirit, her faith. I felt her choose that moment: She watered those remains believing she could bring them to life, as if her older brothers and sisters were seeds that could still germinate if only they were given the right nourishment.

  An hour later, she was in my arms. Llewellyn didn’t even make it home in time—he was forty miles away on an emergency house call. Viney was my midwife. A blessing for us both. And so we’re home instead of at the hospital. Just the two of us; Llewellyn left to go into town to pick up Gaelan and Larken from school and bring them home to meet their baby sister.

  She’s so calm and alert. And so completely of my body in the way she is shaped: long (twenty-three inches!), fine-boned, completely different from the two stocky boxers the OB extracted from my womb six and seven years ago!

  Whatever else the future brings, this child will always remind me of my body’s triumphs instead of its failures.

  PART THREE

  Fancy Egg Days

  I had spent years attempting to find him and had not. He never wanted me crawling around in the grave of his self. He wanted me to find him elsewhere—in the face of the Bearded Priest, in people rising and falling through space … In the face of the woman who now set a coffee before me.

  —from The Face of a Naked Lady by Michael Rips

  Hope’s Diary, 1972:

  Amaze and Amuse Your Friends

  Bit tired today. Handwriting an effort, so before L. left on a house call, I asked him to bring my IBM Selectric—old friend!—down from the attic. We’ll see how it goes. It’s been a long time since college essays, even longer since ninth-grade typing class, but I used to be quite the speed demon.

  The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

  The quick brown fox isn’t as quick as she used to be.

  I’ve been trying to regularly schedule time alone with each of the children. Today it’s Gaelan’s turn. Viney has the baby at her house and Larken is at Bluebirds.

  Right now we’re having “quiet time,” me doing this, Gaelan on the sofa looking through one of the science books I got him for his birthday. It’s the Amaze and Amuse Your Friends! series; there’s one on air experiments, one on jets and rockets, one on magnets, and another on seeds.

  We’ve been very interested in air lately. Earlier today we did an experiment called “What Is in the Empty Glass?” which involved stuffing a piece of paper inside a glass, turning the glass upside down, pushing it straight down into a pan of water, and then lifting it out. When the paper comes out dry, it really does seem like a magic trick. I don’t think I ever quite contemplated the relationship between magic and science—or at least, what we perceive as magic—before my curious son started taking an interest in such things.

  Gaelan has been reading to me on the days when my vision fails and/or when my eyesight is blurry. He took this on without anyone asking. So like him. He reads the newspaper sometimes, or from one of his chapter books, or poetry if I ask for that. He reads to Bonnie, too, which is so sweet I can hardly bear it.

  This morning he read an article about the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, some Russian named Ilya whose last name sounds like a form of pasta. He’s come up with a new form of chaos theory, something to do with dissipating forms re-creating themselves into something new. Gaelan understood more of it than I did, but I can certainly appreciate both chaos and dissipation.

  My presence as lab and/or magician’s assistant is required. G. informs me that, for our next trick, we’re going to make water flow uphill. (!)

  Chapter 23

  Coddling the Slacker

  “Have a seat, Gaelan.”

  The conference room is crowded with the men he’s come to expect in this setting—his news director, the sponsors, the suits (although they’ve clearly relaxed the dress code since their previous gathering)—plus an individual who’s introduced as KLAN-KHAM’s legal counsel and whose name sounds so much like the station’s call letters (Ken Clam? Clem Lamb? Cam Clapp?) that Gaelan immediately forgets it.

  “We’re sorry to have to bring you in like this,” the suits-in-shirts begin, “but something has come up …”

  Gaelan realizes that he may finally get his wish: At long last he’ll be allowed to predict the weather wearing clothes that accentuate his biceps.

  “… something rather serious that we needed to discuss ASAP.”

  True, he’s lost a lot of tone and symmetry since his injury—prohibited as he is from doing any left-sided lifting—but he’ll get it back. He’ll be better than ever. Imagining his new televised look, Gaelan feels a mild surge of exuberance.

  And yet the prevailing mood is hardly jovial. The news director is staring at the floor; the sponsors are biting their lips.

  “Now understand,” the suits are saying, emphatically, “there’s been nothing formal, but …”

  Gaelan suddenly notes that the sideboard is conspicuously empty: no lavish floral arrangements, no catered displays of condiments and deli meat. If there’s a dead person in the room, his passing is not being celebrated.

  “… an allegation of misconduct has been brought by one of our employees …”

  A criminal, then, or one of those John Doe types whose remains have gone unclaimed and who’ll be laid to rest in a cheap pine coffin in some potter’s field without being sung even a single hymn.

  “… and as we’re sure you can understand, it is incumbent upon us to regard any allegations of this nature as extremely serious.”

  There is a pause. This must be a prompt for him to speak.

  “Allegat
ions,” Gaelan says, aware that his attention has been wandering and that the safest thing to do is repeat the last few words of the previous speaker. “Extremely serious,” he adds, nodding.

  The suits regard him with a squinting wariness. “We have to act on this, Gaelan. Right away. Before it leaks. Before there’s any damage to the station’s image.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gaelan says, “what?”

  When the reply is made—and even though it comes (surprisingly) from Ken-Clem-Cam, Esquire—Gaelan has the sensation that the roomful of men is speaking in chorus:

  “Ms. Calder believes that she was the victim of sexual harassment.”

  He doesn’t say Who?—although he’s tempted; his contact with Ms. Calder was so short-lived that it really does take a moment for him to realize who they’re talking about.

  The lawyer goes on. “She alleges that the harassment—in the form of inappropriate touching and sexually demeaning jokes—occurred during the time you were training her as your replacement.”

  Gaelan doesn’t say What?—even though that, too, comes to mind as an appropriate response, since she was the one who made a habit of hemming him in—on the lounge sofa, by the coffee machine, at his computer desk—making sure that her liposuctioned ass was angled in his direction and her implants were never more than a few inches from his eye line. He has never shown her anything but professional and completely asexual courtesy.

  “It’s going to be a difficult charge to discredit, Mr. Jones, given what I understand to be your lifestyle.”

  “My lifestyle?”

  “I thought it prudent to investigate your personal life when Ms. Calder came to us, in order to assess whether her charges had any validity.”

  They’re having him on. They’ve got to be.

  So Gaelan laughs and says, “You’re kidding.”

  This does not please them.

  The dreary scene that follows makes Gaelan suspect that these fellows have been watching way too many TV courtroom dramas. They’ve lost their sense of humor. They’ve abandoned their sense of reality and thus have no interest in anything as complex as the truth.

  Above all, Gaelan realizes, they are frightened, and frightened men can feel neither love nor loyalty. There’s not a Joe Dinsdale among the lot.

  You’ll never get any respect being a weatherman, Joe said, but if you can laugh about it—because think about it, son, how many people in the world get paid to predict the unpredictable?—you’ll have a lot of fun.

  In his last official act as a KLAN-KHAM employee, Gaelan Jones, weatherman, asks, “What are you prepared to offer in terms of a severance package?” and when he’s negotiated those particulars to his satisfaction, he leaves, marveling at how easy it was.

  And yet, as he starts emptying his locker, he finds himself regretting that he didn’t leave behind some final symbol, a display of rebellion, a loyal weatherman’s equivalent of the gun and badge the wronged police officer always leaves on the lieutenant’s desk when he’s been leveraged into an unjust resignation.

  What could it be?

  Passing the glass-walled conference room on his way out, he notes that the suits et al. are still in session—having been joined by the cosmetically altered Ms. Calder and another person, presumably her litigator. There’s a lot of smiling and nodding going on.

  Gaelan asks the receptionist for a piece of paper. On it he scrawls the “Bad Coriolis” Web site logo—a teardrop shape enclosed in a circle with a slash through it—and then he slaps it against the glass. When everyone looks up, clearly alarmed, he blows Riley Calder a kiss, and then strides out to his car, completely unaware that he’s walking like a farmer.

  What he tells himself is this: In eighteen years, he’s never taken a vacation, and Viney needs him.

  In Gaelan’s mind, it is for these reasons—not because his condo holds one too many memories of failure and humiliation, and not because the city of Lincoln is too large to practice small-town pretending—that he packs up his cats and his free weights and his CD and DVD collections and moves to Emlyn Springs.

  He doesn’t need to tell anyone about losing his job right away, certainly not Viney. It would only worry her. He can just go on as if nothing has happened—at least until he figures out what’s next.

  Who knows? Maybe this will turn out to be the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to him.

  He’s been here for almost two months.

  It was a very kind and self-sacrificing thing for him to do, and Viney was grateful for his presence at first. He took care of her, cooked for her, saw that she ate and rested properly. He got her out of the house on days when the weather was fine enough for walks. He took her up to Beatrice a couple of times to the movies. She’s loved having this time with him.

  But now that she’s feeling better she’s started to worry about him, and frankly (there’s just no other way to put it) he’s underfoot in that annoying, unwelcome way that surly teenagers and unemployed men have. Not that he’s surly, just quiet. Nor is he lazy, not exactly—he works out with those weights for hours every day; Viney hears him up in his room, huffing and puffing to that rock-and-roll music he likes so much. It’s more like a lack of direction. She wonders when he’s going back to work, because there’s a special quality men have when they’re working, when they have the feeling of self-importance that comes when they consider themselves to be working—whatever that means to them. It’s almost like an odor they put out.

  “Are you going to study after the show is over?” she asks.

  They’re sitting on the living room sofa, watching The Guiding Light. Viney wishes now that she hadn’t introduced Gaelan to soap operas. He’s grown very invested in the lives of the characters.

  “Gaelan, honey,” she repeats. “Are you going to study before dinner?”

  “No,” he replies. “Al Gore’s on Oprah, and after that I’m going for a run.”

  Again? Viney thinks, because this will make the third time today. But she keeps her mouth shut.

  “I’ll study tonight,” Gaelan adds.

  “Oh, well, you’ll have the house to yourself. I’m meeting Hazel Williams at The Little Cheerful in a few minutes, then I’m having dinner at the club with Bud and Vonda, and after that I’ve got a Fancy Egg Days committee meeting.”

  “Great, Viney,” he replies, his eyes never leaving the television. “That’s great.”

  “Maybe you could call Bonnie,” she suggests. “You kids could watch a movie together or something.”

  “Yeah, Viney, that’s a great idea. Maybe I’ll do that.”

  When it comes to men, unemployment, retirement, and partially paid leaves of absence are the worst ideas ever invented. They really lose their dignity if they aren’t required to labor for a paycheck.

  Viney wonders if she shouldn’t start demanding that Gaelan do chores and give him an allowance. Maybe she should see about getting Internet access at the house so he could do his online studying here.

  Something has to be done, because his presence is turning her into the worst, most stereotypical kind of hag. Every day she catches herself saying things like Why don’t you call up Bethan Ellis? or Have you thought about volunteering at the school? or We could sure use your help with Fancy Egg Days. Imperatives veiled as polite suggestions.

  Who knew that having a grown unemployed son at home would feel so much like being married?

  After Viney leaves, Gaelan decides to skip Al Gore’s good-natured fear-mongering and plug in one of Arnold’s early movies instead. He lights up a joint.

  His shoulder feels great, fully recovered. It’s time to start lifting again.

  He’ll just watch a little more TV, have a quick run, and then head up to his room to work out.

  He’s wondering how much weight to start with when the doorbell rings.

  The appearance of this unlikely visitor should surprise him, but it doesn’t. In the narrow history of their relationship, Eli Ellis Weissman has established himself as someone with
an uncanny gift for materializing at highly inconvenient and/or embarrassing moments.

  “Hello,” Eli says. Is it possible that he’s even smaller than he was the last time Gaelan saw him?

  “Hello.”

  Perhaps some undiscovered scientific law is at work here, one that causes underdeveloped, hormonally fluctuating twelve-year-old boys to shrink.

  “How did you get here?” Gaelan asks.

  “I rode,” Eli replies. Looking past him, Gaelan notices the new-looking bicycle propped against Viney’s porch. It’s one of the models Bonnie sells in her shop.

  “Where’s your helmet?” he asks.

  “Nobody in Emlyn Springs wears a helmet,” he says disdainfully.

  “But you have one, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You need to wear it,” Gaelan admonishes. “Just because kids around here don’t wear them doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t. You could set an example.”

  Eli stares with an abashed expression, and Gaelan realizes how inappropriate it is for him to speak in such paternalistic tones to this boy he barely knows. “Besides,” he amends, “your mom would want you to.”

  Eli swallows hard and looks at his feet. “I was wondering if you could help me with a project.”

  “What?”

  “I’m doing a unit on meteorology as part of my homeschool curriculum, and I was thinking you might be willing to help me since that’s your area of expertise.”

  Not anymore, Gaelan thinks. “I’m sure you’ll do just fine without my help. What’s the project?”

  “Building a wind vane.”

  Gaelan nods.

  Eli sniffs. He tries to peer past Gaelan into the living room. Gaelan blocks his view.

  “Have you been diligent about your physical therapy?” Eli asks.

  There must be another scientific principle informing this exchange, one related to magnetic mental fields and extrasensory perception because it’s clear that Eli not only knows what Gaelan has been doing but what he’s been thinking.