Nearer Than The Sky

by T. Greenwood

  I nodded.

  “Can I put on some music?” Sheila asked, touching Daddy’s sleeve.

  I felt drunk with food and sun and stolen sips of beer by the time the food was ready, but Daddy and Eddie and Sheila were drunker. Benny had been following behind them all afternoon, picking up their beer cans. He saw something on TV about a guy who built an entire house out of pop cans, and his wheels were spinning. When Daddy wasn’t looking I snuck a few sips of beer out of the empties. Sheila had a habit of leaving her cans half full.

  Now Sheila was lying on the old couch in the backyard, twirling one of her curls that had gone astray. Weeds were still growing up around the couch. I sat down in a lawn chair next to her, adjusting it so that it leaned back at the perfect angle. She was smoking a cigarette lazily, leaning her head back and blowing the smoke out of her mouth and nose. She was wearing earrings made of small brown feathers and beads.

  Daddy and Eddie were shooting darts at a dartboard they had hung on a tree.

  “You want a puff?” Sheila asked.

  I nodded and looked around to make sure no one was watching.

  She handed me the cigarette and I held it between my fingers like I’d seen her do. Nervously, I put the end, ringed with her lipstick, in my mouth. It was kind of soggy and tasted like ashtrays smelled, only mintier.

  “Now breathe in,” she said seriously.

  I breathed in and my whole chest filled with smoke. Smoke went up my nose and into my eyes. I didn’t want to make any noise, so I tried to swallow my cough. Sheila was laughing so hard, it made Daddy and Eddie look. Benny, who had been piling up the empties in the field, stood up. I was coughing and dizzy, but I’d never felt happier. It was the same feeling I got when I was playing pool with Little Ike. The eight-ball shot that wins the game.

  “Jesus, Sheila,” Daddy said, coming over and taking the cigarette out of my hand. “She’s only twelve.”

  “I started smoking when I was twelve,” she said.

  “That’s not the only thing she started early,” Eddie said.

  Sheila giggled and Daddy smiled. I wasn’t sure if I was off the hook or not until Daddy reached for Sheila’s hand and said, “You like this music so much, let’s dance.”

  Sheila stood up and walked with Daddy over to where there was an empty space and they started to dance to the Saturday Night Fever record. Daddy was spinning her around just like the commercials I’d seen for the movie. All the spinning made me dizzy. I had to close my eyes to keep from getting sick.

  “Watch this!” Daddy said, pulling away from her. He crossed his arms in front of him and jumped down onto his knees. He jumped back up and did it again. Benny clapped his hands wildly. I could still smell the smoke on my hands. The next time Daddy went down on his knees he cried out.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Are you okay?” Sheila gasped and knelt down next to him.

  “I think I broke my goddamn kneecap,” Daddy said.

  “You want an ambulance, Travolta?” Eddie said, crushing a beer can.

  “No, just get me over to the couch,” Daddy said and draped his arm over Sheila’s shoulder. She stooped a little with the weight of him, but they made it over to the couch and Daddy plopped down.

  “Now I need another drink,” Daddy said. “Indie, honey, could you grab Daddy a beer and a bag of frozen vegetables for my knee?”

  “Are you okay?” I asked, suddenly feeling really dizzy. I didn’t know if it was the beer or the cigarette.

  “I’ll be fine. Just grab me something cold to put on this. And something cold to drink.”

  When I came out of the kitchen with a bag of frozen peas and a beer, Daddy was lying on the couch and Sheila was perched on the armrest behind his head. Her long, shiny legs were stretched out in front of her, and when she leaned over to flick the ash of her cigarette in the ashtray I could see straight down her top.

  “Oopsey,” she said, setting her cigarette down and reaching behind her head to retie her halter top. She flipped her hair back and made a big show of tying the strings.

  I handed Daddy the beer and Sheila grabbed the peas from me. When she laid them on Daddy’s knee, her hand stayed there, pressing them against his black-and-blue kneecap. I watched her big turquoise ring resting on Daddy’s knee. I watched Daddy close his eyes when he sipped his beer. I watched them when the sun sank behind the peaks, when Eddie fell asleep in the lawn chair, and when Benny’s tin can house fell over. I watched and waited for something else or something more until Sheila finally stood up and said she had to get home. The house was strange after Lily and Ma left. This I knew: The rules were different with Ma gone.

  After Eddie and Sheila left and Benny fell asleep, Daddy was still lying on the couch. His knee was so swollen and purple it didn’t look like a knee anymore. I was picking up all of the cigarette butts and greasy paper plates and corn cobs, putting them in one of the trash bags we usually used for pine needles.

  “C’mere, sweetie,” Daddy smiled and motioned for me to sit next to him.

  I set the bag down and went to him.

  “Did you have fun, honey?” His words all melted together. “Did you have a good time?”

  I nodded and smiled. He closed his eyes and winced a little when he made room for me to sit down.

  “Sheila really likes you.” He smiled. “She told me.”

  When he kissed my forehead I could smell beer on his breath.

  “You okay, Daddy?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Indie, you know. It could be like this all the time. We could go away. We could . . .”

  My heart started to beat so hard I thought he might be able to hear it. I waited for him to finish. But he only leaned his head back and closed his eyes again, then finally his breath grew deeper and he fell asleep. And I thought for a minute about running away with Daddy. About packing up the car in the middle of the night and driving away and never looking back. But when I thought about the way that Benny had stood on the porch waving good-bye to Ma and Lily, I felt sick to my stomach and tears pooled up in my eyes, and I knew that when Daddy went, he’d have to go alone.

  At Rusty’s, Daddy sat at the bar like any other customer. Outside it was snowing again. Lightly, like dust instead of snow. It was twilight, the strange spot of time when the people who had been sitting at the bar since breakfast had left but before the nightly crowd had arrived. Daddy and I were alone. Though everything had changed, it looked more familiar now than it had the other day when I came looking for Rosey. The hazy neon of twilight and beer signs. The halogen glow of street lamps outside. The way the red light from the Budweiser sign twisted and turned inside Daddy’s glass. This was something I could hold onto.

  “This is weird, huh?” I asked.

  Daddy shrugged his shoulders.

  “I can’t believe they got rid of the pool tables,” I said. “I mean, it just feels like something’s missing.”

  Daddy turned to me. He hadn’t changed that much since I’d seen him last, but there was something older about him. Deeper lines by his eyes, maybe. Something more relaxed and knowing in them.

  “You play much anymore?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Every now and then.” I thought about how different it was at Finnegan’s Wake. Lots of college kids. Playing pool at Finnegan’s was more of a mating ritual than anything else. Boys with puffed up chests trying to impress the girls. Girls with too much perfume leaning seductively over the tables, using the sticks as flirtatious props.

  Daddy set his empty pint glass on the bar and wiped at his mustache with the back of his hand.

  “I got a postcard from Ike’s wife a few years back,” Daddy said. “He died in his sleep one night. She and their kids moved down to Phoenix after that.”

  “He did?” I said, feeling my chest tighten.

  Daddy nodded.

  The last time I’d been back to Mountainview, Ike had been at Rusty’s. But then again, so had Rosey.

  “I went to see Rosey the other
day,” I said. “We ate menudo.”

  Daddy smiled. “That’s what’s really missing here. I would give everything in my wallet right now for some of her enchiladas.”

  “She’s coming to the service,” I said. “I think it’s just an excuse to bring us food. She already dropped off a whole pan of tamales.”

  Outside I could hear the piercing whistle of the 5:05 train. A passenger train. When I looked out the window I could see two stories of faces peering out through small windows glowing yellow inside. The floor beneath my feet trembled as it passed. Daddy stared into his empty beer.

  The bartender came over. “Another one?” he asked, throwing a damp dishrag across his shoulder. Daddy looked at me and my empty beer. I shook my head.

  “Nah. I think we’re done,” he said, pulling his wallet out of his pocket. It was the same one he’d had when I was young. Brown leather with the embossed face of an Indian. Benny had given it to him for Christmas one year. He picked it out at the store near Rusty’s where they fixed saddles. Benny liked the store because of the rows and rows of cowboy boots. A whole spectrum of leather. Behind glass were silver spurs and belt buckles. Belts hung like leather ribbons along one whole wall. Now the Indian’s face had faded.

  “Thanks, Daddy.”

  “Let’s go for a walk,” he said. “I’m not ready to go back yet.”

  We went across the street to the smoke shop so Daddy could buy some cigarettes. He grabbed a handful of Bit-O-Honeys from a plastic bin and handed me three of them. I untwisted the wrapper as we walked out into the snow again and popped the candy into my mouth.

  Daddy put his hands in his pocket and stared at his feet as we walked down the brightly lit street. Every little shop had its Christmas displays even though it wasn’t even Thanksgiving for another two weeks. White lights were strung like electric teardrops from all the bare branches of the trees.

  “Do you ever miss it here?” I asked.

  “Sometimes,” he said. “Mostly this time of year. In California it’s easy to forget what season it is. Christmas isn’t much different than the Fourth of July.”

  We walked away from Depot Street, away from the trafffic and noise and lights, toward the library. The snow was falling more heavily now, landing in large white puffs on Daddy’s shoulders and hair. I could feel my own hair becoming heavier with the weight of snow.

  The old stone library used to be a mental institution, back when Mountainview was first settled. Then it became the courthouse and jail. About fifty years ago, they took all the bars off the windows and lined the walls with shelves. It’s a beautiful building. There are stone fireplaces and soft couches to sit on inside. It’s hard to imagine people being locked up in there. Tonight, it was dark, only the faint glow of a few lights shining inside. We stopped when we got to the little wooden bridge that arced over the dry gully. In the spring it would become a stream.

  Daddy sat down on the bridge, dangling his legs over the edge. I sat down next to him and shivered. He lit a cigarette and I breathed in the familiar scent of his smoke. In the silence I knew he was trying to figure out the best way to talk about Ma. He flicked the cigarette down below us before he’d finished it and put his hand over mine. The thick silver Hopi ring he always wore was cold against my skin.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I’m really okay. And I think Lily will be okay too.”

  “Indie,” he said, seeming relieved that I’d pierced the balloon of quiet around us. “You never knew your grandma.”

  I shook my head.

  “She was a horrible woman.”

  I laughed, but his expression was serious.

  “She was bad to your ma. She never really cared much about her, it seemed. It didn’t matter what she did. Good or bad. It’s like she was more of a nuisance than a kid.”

  Ma never talked about her parents. I always assumed she’d emerged full-grown. The notion of before never entered my mind.

  “When I met her, she could barely lift her head up, she was so shy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Scared of the world. But those were good times, Indie. She and I would ride—I had some piece-of-crap Duster—down to the beach. Did I ever tell you about the place where you could get shrimp tacos for a dime? A lot less expensive then. Filthy little taco stand on the boardwalk. And she had this way of making me feel like I was the only person in the whole world. Like I was some sort of king or something. Hmm. She never wanted to go back home. Sometimes we’d just drive for hours so she wouldn’t have to go back to her house. ’Course, her ma probably never even noticed she was gone. I remember, she’d always get sand in the car. She’d never remember to shake out her sandals before we left. Funny. I didn’t mind so much then. The little things, you know?”

  Daddy sighed. “ ’Course, things change. People change. Damn, places change. Rusty’s, even . . . after all those years of slinging drinks and stopping fights. After all the conversations, it’s gone. Like I imagined it.”

  I nodded and felt something inside my throat swelling.

  “Daddy,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”

  He looked at me and squeezed my hand.

  “You didn’t leave because of Sheila,” I said. My voice felt like a small bird, trapped inside my chest. Its wings beating in my throat. Scared. “You left because of what Ma was doing, didn’t you? To Lily?”

  Daddy took my hand and put it inside his coat pocket with his hand. I looked at him, but he would not look at me. I concentrated on the lines around his eyes. Like wings.

  “I made mistakes,” he said, still squeezing my hand. “All different kinds of them.”

  Snow fell across our laps, into our hair, making everything damp. But inside the warmth of his pocket, my hand, at least, was safe.

  Daddy stayed on the outskirts of town at the new Super 8. Rich had reserved a room for himself and Lily and Violet too, but Lily said she wanted to stay at Ma’s. I put sheets on the bare mattress in Ma’s room, and while Peter took a walk and Lily took a bath, I helped Rich set up the portable crib they’d brought for Violet.

  As I smoothed the sheets across Ma and Daddy’s old bed, Rich struggled with the crib. Violet lay sleeping in her car seat next to him on the floor.

  “I hate this thing,” Rich said. “I can’t wait until she’s old enough for a bed.”

  “You didn’t have a problem arranging for the service?” I asked.

  “No, the priest was doing two funerals already. He’s squeezing us in between the two. It will be short, I imagine.”

  “Thank you for taking care of everything,” I said, and fluffed one of Ma’s old feather pillows.

  “There,” Rich said, the crib popping open.

  “Did you bring her oxygen?” I asked.

  Rich looked up at me blankly. Down the hall I could hear Lily’s bath water running.

  “I mean, does she need it still?”

  Rich lifted her out of the car seat and held her against his chest.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling my face grow warm. “It’s just that everything is so strange. Everything’s turned upside down. Things I thought were true aren’t. Things I thought weren’t are. I’m sorry.”

  Rich laid Violet down in the crib and stroked her hair. Violet snorted a little and then her face grew soft and quiet again.

  Rich looked up at me and said, “The night before everything with your mom happened, I was getting ready to leave. I had all of Violet’s things packed. I had the car loaded up with my stuff. I had maps in the glove box, highlighted maps, like this was just some sort of family vacation. I’d made reservations at three different hotels. I’d talked to my brother in Boston. About working for him. And the whole time, Lily was sitting at the kitchen table. Your mother was upstairs, sound asleep. And Lily was just sitting there looking at me like I was the one who was crazy.”

  Down the hallway, I heard the water shut off and the splashing sounds of Lily stepping into the shallow tub. I imagined her, frail and small, lowering her b
ody into the steaming water.

  Rich’s voice grew softer. “And for a few minutes, I thought, Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m nuts. And I imagined what would happen if Violet stopped breathing while we were in some hotel somewhere. What would I do?”

  Rich lowered his head. “And then I looked at her, sitting at the kitchen table, wringing her hands. And I knew that she was thinking the same thing. What would happen if she stopped breathing?”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head.

  “She believes it, Indie. She really believes that Violet’s sick.”

  Down the hall, Lily lay still in the water. I imagined her closing her eyes and lying down, allowing her ears to fill with the warm, soapy water. Holding her breath and letting the water enclose her. I imagined she might be thinking, This is what it feels like. To stop breathing.

  “And then I unpacked everything. I carried in my suitcase and put everything away. I put Violet’s clothes back in her bureau. I put the box of diapers back in the closet. I put Violet back in her crib,” Rich said, touching Violet’s closed eyelids. “I couldn’t do it.”

  I heard Lily rising from the water, the sound of her bare wet feet slapping against the cold linoleum floor.

  “When the police called about your mom, it was like a sign. And when I told Lily, she just looked at me as if to say, I told you. I told you so. ”

  “But that was an accident,” I said. “Violet, this stuff with Violet, is Lily’s fault.”

  He lowered his head.

  “What will you do?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rich said. He turned his head when he heard the bathroom door open. “I have no idea.”

  I heard Lily’s feet padding into the kitchen. Rich leaned into the crib and kissed the top of Violet’s head. After a while I heard the teakettle whistle but Lily didn’t remove it from the burner. It just kept whistling, the pitch escalating to a scream.

  I knew that Daddy wasn’t coming home.

  The night smelled like firecrackers. Like burnt grass and singed fingers. Ma and Lily were in Vegas shopping for a tap costume for the Miss Pre-teen America pageant. Daddy was at the bar, and I was home by myself, watching fireworks on TV. But through the open window I could smell the aftermath of someone’s barbecue and Roman candles.