Above The Thunder

by Renee Manfredi

  “No, Flynn, you don’t. You invent. Do you understand the difference between imagination and fact?” Poppy had asked.

  “Yes, I do. And the fact is I’ve been Japanese and I’ve been Hindu. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. I was a famous horse veterinarian in England and a witch in America. Right now, I’m not even a person. I’m not even human. I am distance.”

  “What?” her father had said. “What, sweetheart?”

  “I am not a person. I am the distance between New York and California. I am every one of those miles.”

  “That’s interesting,” Marvin had said, taking a little notebook from his shirt pocket and writing something down.

  “Christ,” Poppy said. “Don’t encourage her, Marvin. It’s not interesting. It’s not normal. Why can’t we be normal?”

  “Because you’re a drug addict,” Flynn had said. “The next time around I’m not coming back to help you. You have done wrong.”

  “Okay, Flynn, that’s enough,” Marvin had said.

  Her mother was crying and wouldn’t stop and that was the last thing Flynn remembered before Poppy had disappeared for good.

  “May I be excused?” Flynn asked Greta. She put the goggles back on.

  “Sure,” Greta said. “What would you like to do now? There might be some cartoons on.”

  “No, thank you. I don’t like cartoons. Can I go to my grandmother’s backyard? I told her I would dig her yard.” Flynn was lying, which she didn’t like to do, but she had a project she needed to start.

  “Well, I guess that would be all right, if you promise to stay just in the yard. It’ll be dark soon.”

  “I promise. Can I borrow your radio?”

  “You sure can.” Greta unplugged it—at least that’s what Flynn thought she was doing; she’d moved down to 20/600, the setting that made the world easy: everything was just a shape that was either moving or not moving.

  In her grandmother’s yard, Flynn put the radio on the picnic table and got a shovel from the shed. She began to dig. Hopefully her grandmother wouldn’t be too upset. According to the DJ this morning, there were underground musical stars who had been there for over thirty years. It would make her grandmother’s yard ugly, but if she could find the Bay City Rollers it would be worth it.

  After an hour of steady digging she pressed her ear against the hole. She thought she heard something very, very faintly way down in there. The kind of muffled noise Hoover McPaws made when he purred from beneath layers of clothes in a laundry basket. She couldn’t be sure, though. It might be something or it might not. She would be happy to find anything. Really, she didn’t care all that much about finding the Bay City Rollers or Gladys Knight; what Flynn wanted was a pip. One pip would be worth a thousand knights.

  “Where’s your car?” Anna asked, as they walked out of Davidé’s.

  “I took the bus in. So I’ll have to ride with you if you let me.”

  Anna drove through Boston then headed north on the highway. She had no destination in mind, but it felt comforting to be pointed toward Maine. How many times did she and Hugh make this drive in the course of their marriage? Fifty? A hundred? An image of the house was forever lodged in her mind. The living room blazing with firelight, the sharp scent of birch and the dormant scents reawakened from the heat: dusty old carpets, the lemon and pine polish on the furniture and brass, and, Anna’s favorite, a faint beachy smell that seemed to rise up from every nook and tucked-away blanket.

  “Where are we going?” Marvin asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t have the foggiest idea.” Anna took the next exit, drove down a side road and pulled into a closed Texaco station. She rolled down the window, reached for her cigarettes and stared into the fading twilight. The tree frogs and crickets called.

  “Just like high school. Hello, 1983.” He laughed.

  “What?” Anna said.

  “Every empty parking lot is a potential lover’s lane.”

  Anna snorted. “You’re drunk.”

  “I am, it’s true.” He rolled down the passenger window, reached for one of her cigarettes when he couldn’t get the hand-rolled tobacco to hold its shape.

  “I guess I need to say that I don’t want you here. I’d like to get to know Flynn, but I want only limited contact with her if you do decide to move to Boston. I mean, I’ll be the kind of grandma who goes to the school plays, but not the kind who makes the costumes. Do you know what I’m saying? I can’t relive all this again, Marvin. I’m sorry.”

  “Relive it?”

  “Motherhood, grief, all of it. I don’t want to be attached to anything anymore. I mean, it’s like you’re all back from the dead. All those years. All those years without a word. Who can live with that kind of worry forever? You have no idea. You have no idea how after a while absence turns into grief. And this sounds terrible, but it was just easier to imagine my daughter, that all of you, were dead. Mourning is easier than worry. Or any of those emotions you feel for the living.” She remembered now how sweet Poppy was as a young girl, so loving and obedient, a near-perfect child. But it was as if Poppy had been the daughter of a close friend instead of her own. Like any mother she was haunted by the idea of losing her child—to death, to strangers, to terrible, irreversible accidents—but that was simply maternal instinct. Motherhood was a different state entirely, one that she never really inhabited. Poppy seemed part of her, certainly, but Anna suspected her attachment differed from other mothers. The child who had been joined to her body once continued to seem like one of the most expendable parts of herself. A growth, a tumor. Well, not that exactly. Nothing so malignant. An extra finger or toe that got in the way and was not useful or needed.

  “I’m sorry, Anna,” Marvin said. “I’m sorry for everything.” He covered her hand with his own.

  “Well,” she said, and drew away. “That’s that. I wish you well. I’d like updates and calls now and then.” She lit another cigarette, stared at the old soda vending machine against the side of the gas station. It was one of the styles from the ’50s or ’60s that dispensed Coke in bottles. Anna remembered how satisfying it was to drink sodas from a bottle, the icy slush cooling her palm, the cold glass against her lips. What an odd thing to still have around.

  She put the car in gear, but stopped. “Actually, before we go, I need to see.” She nodded to the old Coke machine, dug around for some change. “I have to see if it works.”

  “No way,” Marvin said. “That thing looks like it’s been there since the Johnson administration.” He took the change from Anna. “I’ll go.” Anna watched him walk away. Marvin did have admirable qualities. He seemed extraordinarily patient—with his unusual daughter, with his flighty wife, and even, Anna had to admit, with her. In all of her tirades against him, he never once lost his temper or yelled back. And most men would have written off the likes of Poppy years ago. There was a real nobility in the way he loved his wife and daughter. Ironclad and without conditions. Even now when he talked about Poppy, there wasn’t any trace of bitterness or resentment in his voice. Still, there was something about him that made her stop short every time. A darkness, an incomplete telling of the truth, she didn’t know.

  Marvin turned back, held up a cold bottle.

  Anna got out of the car and walked over. “Amazing,” she said, oddly elated. She found the opener along the side of the machine. The icy sweetness was how she remembered it. The smell of the bottle was the same, too. She passed it to Marvin, who passed it back after a sip, and they finished it this way, taking turns until it was gone.

  Flynn was waiting inside her grandmother’s house, watching from the living room window. She could hardly wait to start their new life together. Ever since Greta had let it slip earlier about the adoption, Flynn’s excitement had grown over the afternoon until now, nearing eight o’clock and her bedtime, she was shaking with anticipation. Maybe she and Anna would buy new clothes so she wouldn’t have to always wear things from the second-hand store. She figured that they wo
uld move into a big house—Flynn saw it in her head. A huge place with many rooms, but also many spirit people. Flynn didn’t mind living with the dead. She’d always seen them, and they her. There was a murdered woman here in her grandma’s house. She once lived here, but somebody killed her in another country. Flynn had seen her in the bathroom a few times, and occasionally sitting beside her grandmother, especially when Anna did her doctor things. The woman liked Anna’s microscope. Once, the woman touched Flynn awake with cold air. She was sitting right on Flynn’s bed! Flynn held her breath. She didn’t blink.

  The woman said, Can you tell me what time the football game starts? Will you direct me to the train that will take me downtown? Flynn told the woman she could see her, but not help her, and after that the woman left her alone.

  People got a free house from the government when they adopted a child, Flynn knew. Her father and Greta might get married, though Greta said she already had a husband. Flynn thought she was probably lying, since her house was too neat and kitchen table didn’t have any mail or newspapers on it. This new life was going to be perfect. Every morning when she thought about Poppy she cried a little. Every night of her life she was sad. Each time her mother disappeared, Flynn felt so terrible she was sure she would die. This time, though, when Poppy got back everything would be different. It would be better. Poppy would live in the adopted house, and have her own room to do her drugs. She wouldn’t have to feel guilty about not taking care of Flynn because other people could do that. Her mother’s room would have two lights on the door: yellow and red. When the yellow was lit up, Flynn would go in and visit. Yellow meant high and happy. The red light would tell her to stay away. That was the color of angry cravings that made Poppy say things to Flynn she didn’t mean.

  Anna walked in just as “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” was playing on the radio.

  “Hi, Flynn,” Anna said, then turned the volume down a notch.

  “I’ve been waiting for you all day. I’m so glad you’re home. I was getting worried.”

  “Oh?” Anna said. The girl looked drawn and ashy. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Where do you want this?” Marvin said, from beneath the twin-size mattress that Anna bought earlier. The lumpy mattress that Flynn was sleeping on was old and worn. There was no reason for the girl not to be comfortable during her stay.

  “In Flynn’s room,” Anna said.

  Flynn felt her heart beat wild with joy: already her grandmother had bought her a new bed. She had never had anything new in her life, except maybe for Christmas, and now here was something of her very own in her room. She hugged Anna around the waist, buried her face in her grandmother’s sweater that smelled of lavender and smoke and garlic. “Is this going to be the adopted house?” Flynn imagined something bigger, but maybe people had to sign papers before the government gave you the big house.

  “What, dear? Is it going to be what?” Anna looked down at her granddaughter. Her face was like a flower, open and radiating light. Every young girl was lovely, but this one even more so: she had her mother’s deeply pigmented lips and cheeks, Marvin’s dark curly hair. Her eyes were the deepest brown, almost black, and sparkling. Anna wondered how long it had been since she had touched a child. In ways like this, out of affection rather than clinical necessities. She remembered Poppy hugging her once or twice the way Flynn was now, her sharp head just under Anna’s breastbone. So long ago.

  “Greta told me,” Flynn said softly.

  “Told you what,” Anna said, and touched the girl’s warm cheeks.

  “That I’m going to live here. With you. And her.”

  “What? No, I’m—”

  “I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.”

  Something about the way she said it, or the events of the evening, or the touch of the child herself, made Anna melt a little. This, after all, was her blood. But more than that: she was the grandchild of her husband. Part of him. His genetic material coded in her DNA. Anna was surprised by how long it had taken her to remember such a self-evident fact. Any little bit of Hugh that shone through in the girl—a tilt of her head, an arch of an eyebrow, a preference for fruit at room temperature—any minuscule resemblance would be a little like having him back.

  She sat down next to Flynn. In the car, Anna had told Marvin in no uncertain terms that he was to be out of her house in two weeks. A short visit was fine. No harm in that. It would give Anna and Flynn a chance to get to know each other, but it wasn’t so long that she or the girl would form deep bonds.

  Anna turned the radio back up. What was with the songs from the ’70s she’d been hearing all day?

  From the other room she heard Marvin singing along, and she joined him, the two of them sharing the song the way they had the bottle of Coke earlier.

  By the end of the evening, something felt as if it had shifted—as though something had been decided that she had no say in. It was hard to put her finger on what had changed. Except that when she looked up at the clock, three hours had flown by as she and Flynn rifled through Anna’s closet and jewelry box, sifted through boxes that Anna had left unopened since moving.

  “I love cooking,” Flynn said, paging through an old Betty Crocker. She had put on an old dress that Anna had saved for sentimental reasons, one from the year when she and Hugh started dating. Flynn liked girlish things, to Anna’s delight; Poppy never bothered with jewelry or perfume, both of which Flynn now had on abundantly.

  “See this diamond ring?” Anna picked up the two-carat solitaire that had been Hugh’s mother’s. “This was your great-grandmother’s. Someday it will be yours. Some day you’ll have all this jewelry.”

  “Which day?” Flynn said, adding another bracelet to the stack already around her wrist.

  “Tell me something, Flynn,” Anna said, remembering how Hugh liked his fruit and beverages at room temperature. “If I told you I had a bowl of grapes for you in the kitchen, where would you look for them, on the counter or in the refrigerator?”

  Flynn looked at her with an expression of amused disbelief. “The counter. Why would you keep grapes in the refrigerator?”

  SEVEN

  THE NINTH ORDER OF ANGELS

  Nobody at work, with the possible exception of Jane, knew Jack was sick. His health status was his business, and he planned to keep it that way. Jane, of late, had begun putting odd stresses in the middle of her sentences—“How are you?”—which led him to suspect that she’d talked to Stuart. Jack wasn’t worried about indiscretion from Jane; in this conservative office, right-wingers and old New England stock, she had as much to hide as he did.

  It had only been one month and eight days since he had left Stuart. Or more accurately, was shown to the door. Kicked to the curb, tossed away like a used Kleenex. One month, eight days, and twelve hours since Jack was forced to rely on self-pity rather than Stuart’s ministrations to get him through the night.

  From his open office door, Jack watched the partners file in. He surreptitiously observed any unusual reactions or expressions from those who passed by as he pretended to study stock quotes. Nothing had changed. The same people who always ignored him, ignored him still, the friendly ones waved, same as ever.

  At ten o’clock he picked up the phone to call Stuart, then changed his mind. Jack had called him a few times—well, fifteen to be precise—in the first week, but Stuart hung up the instant he heard Jack’s voice. Two days ago, Jack left a message on the machine asking Stuart to call him at work if he wanted to talk for any reason. That was probably a mistake, he thought now, as he sorted through the stack of files on his desk, bleary-eyed from too much vodka the night before. Stuart might assume that the absence of a home number meant that he was with someone else and didn’t want to give out his home number. “I’m such an idiot!” he said, and banged his hand down hard on his desk. Why didn’t he just indicate in his message that he didn’t yet have a home phone number? Jack knew how Stuart’s suspicious mind worked. “I am such an incompetent moron.”


  Molly, his secretary, appeared in the doorway to his office. She sat on the other side of the thin wall. “Did you need something? I had headphones on. Sorry.”

  “No. Just talking to myself.” He waved her away. “Carry on.”

  After leaving Stuart, Jack spent two days in a hotel, which he thought might do as a makeshift apartment; it was cheaper than rent, and he had maid service, access to workout rooms, and a fully stocked wet bar. The lounge had a bartender called Ace, and Jack wanted to stay there if for no other reason than that; it was a name right out of Hollywood. Robert Mitchum himself couldn’t do better than be served old-fashioneds by a guy who was almost typecast—he had everything except the Guinea tee and the wife named Maria. But in the end, the hotel made him lonelier. The common areas were full of budget-minded honeymooners too broke to afford Cancun, overweight, balding businessmen, newly divorced middle-aged women already hopelessly thick around the middle. Society’s downtrodden. One night while walking off his insomnia, he came upon a boarding house with a sign advertising rooms rented by the week. The next day, he leased the entire third floor—six rooms in all. It was squalid, but by renting all the rooms he’d have privacy and space; it was one thing to live in squalor, another to be cramped in a tiny room while doing so. Jack asked the landlord to paint the rooms. “Preferably off-white, in a Sherwin-Williams semigloss.”

  “Huh? Paint?” The landlord said. “What?”

  “Paint. The liquid substance one applies to walls.”

  “Paint?” he repeated again.

  “Can you come and get the junk out of all these rooms?” Jack said finally.

  “Yeah, yeah, all that stuff’ll be gone by when you come.”

  Of course the pile of cast-off possessions remained. Jack was both depressed and intrigued by the remnants of these other lives. There were the requisite broken hot plates and chipped mugs, torn shirts and stained, sprung mattresses, but there was also a room full of toys, all with something broken or flawed. He found six See ‘n Says and not one had all the animals making the correct sounds. On one, the pigs mooed, on another, they brayed. The one Jack especially liked had the elephants chattering like Cheetahs and the monkeys roaring like lions. Few of the Lego blocks snapped flush, and all the Monopoly games were deficient in money or property. Jack called Stuart that first evening, wanting to tell him about the hard-luck toy salesman who had apparently inhabited this room, but he chickened out. Jack had ached for his partner at that moment. It was ridiculous, but he never could have imagined it would come to this, the enormity of his loss driven home by the pull-cord of a cheap, flawed toy.