Nearer Than The Sky

by T. Greenwood

  I knew that he wasn’t coming home, the same way I could feel the train in my bones a good half an hour before the tracks rumbled and the whistle screamed. I was learning how to predict departures.

  Daddy called like he always did now that I didn’t have Benny to keep me company anymore when Ma and Lily were gone. When he called, I stretched the phone cord all the way out the front door and sat down on the porch. The air smelled burnt. Extinguished.

  In the background, I could hear the bar sounds. The clanking of glasses and rumbling of men’s voices. I could hear Rosey in the kitchen. The sound of hot oil, fat crackling, and the hiss. I could hear the jukebox and Sheila’s breath over Daddy’s shoulder.

  “Is it Indie?” she asked. “Are you calling home?”

  “Hey baby,” he said, like he always said.

  “Hi Daddy.”

  “Did you go to Starry’s to see the fireworks?”

  “Uh-huh,” I lied. “We hiked up the hill behind her house and watched from there.”

  I closed my eyes and felt the cold air, sleeping bag over my shoulder, saw the shiny black of Starry’s hair at night. I felt the grass under my feet, damp and tickling my ankles. I felt my head resting against my balled up sweater, saw the stars and thumbnail moon overhead. When I squeezed my eyes shut tight enough, I could see an explosion of colored lights.

  “Good. I’m glad you didn’t stay at home,” he said.

  Behind him, I could hear plates of enchiladas chiming against the polished wood of the bar. I could hear the creaking sound of vinyl seats and the weight of someone new.

  “Listen, honey,” Daddy said, his voice softer than a July moon, more gentle on my tongue than a spoonful of night. “You know I love you.” And the light filled my entire mouth, glowed and warmed my throat.

  “I know,” I said.

  In the background I heard the bar noises. I could hear the balls cracking against each other, rolling, and sinking into pockets. The jukebox and Sheila’s breath.

  “Hold on a second,” he said as a train passed.

  On the back of my eyes, fireworks became the bright light of the train illuminating the tracks ahead of it in the darkness. When the sound faded, I opened my eyes and stared out at our empty driveway. I felt the summer air like a warm breath on my shoulders. Smelled the burnt sky.

  Then, he said softly, “I’ll see you when you get up in the morning.”

  “Daddy?” I asked. “Will you wake me up when you get home?”

  But as he was about to answer, the train had already traveled from downtown to the tracks just past the woods by our house, and I couldn’t hear him above the piercing whistle.

  I knew that Daddy wasn’t coming home.

  Outside, the smell of fireworks faded. I sat on the porch until there was no evidence that the sky had ever been filled with color. I got up and kicked rocks from the driveway into the side of the house, watching how the sharp stones chipped away at the paint. I leaned down and looked into the darkness underneath the front porch, half expecting to see Benny hiding behind the lattice. But there was only the smell of earth and darkness.

  Inside, I turned off the TV, went to Lily’s room, and opened up her closet. I found one of the costumes she had outgrown and brought it out to the living room. From a drawer in the kitchen, I got a pair of scissors and sat down on the couch.

  The rhinestones came off easier than the sequins; they were glued instead of sewn. I pulled and cut and twisted until the costume was just a shell, a skin-colored husk with little pieces of thread sticking out. In front of me on the coffee table was a pile of colored lights. The Fourth of July sky in my fingers when I scooped them into my palms and carried them to the backyard and threw them into the night.

  Later, I lay in my bed, not sleeping, only counting the hours until he didn’t come home. And with my eyes closed, the sounds of the night trains that passed marking time stopped sounding like trains at all. The rumble of the tracks turned into thunder, and whistles became cries. Became Sheila’s laughter and the sound of Daddy’s tires squealing out of the driveway one last time.

  After the ceremony, we went back to the house and Rosey was waiting there for us with enchiladas. I had given her a key and told her to make herself at home. The kitchen was warm and smelled wonderfully familiar. This could have been a holiday, a celebration, instead of what it really was.

  Peter looked funny dressed up. I had only seen him wear a suit once or twice in almost fifteen years: once at The Birches’ employee ball and once when Chuck and Leigh got married. Most of the time he wore jeans and T-shirts. Most of his clothes were worn soft at the elbows and knees. Crusty with bread dough or tree sap. There weren’t many places in Echo Hollow that required formal attire. He’d borrowed this suit from Chuck Moony, who has been to a lot of funerals, but Chuck is about three inches shorter than Peter, so it was a little small on him. He kept tugging at the sleeves throughout the service. As soon as we got back to Ma’s house he went into the bedroom to change. Rich, on the other hand, looked comfortable in his suit. In the morning before we left for the church I had found him standing in the living room at the ironing board, spraying his white shirt with starch, steam coming in small bursts from Ma’s iron. He might have stayed inside the safety of that stiff suit all day if Violet hadn’t spit up formula on his shoulder.

  “I think I’m getting a migraine,” Lily said. She looked at Rich, her eyes asking for something. “I need to go lie down.”

  But Rich only shifted Violet to his other shoulder and wiped at her mouth with a clean cloth diaper.

  Defeated, she went into Ma’s room and slammed the door. I went to the kitchen to help Rosey.

  “Hola,” Rosey said. She was bent over, leaning into the oven to remove the now-steaming pan of enchiladas. “Ay, que bonita,” she said, gesturing to the dress I’d taken straight from the rack to the register at the store at the mall without even trying it on. It was nothing I would ever wear again. Black polyester with a shiny black belt around the waist. I would probably throw it away rather than packing it with my things when Peter and I finally went home.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You need some help?”

  “No, no, no,” she said. “You sit down.”

  I knew better than to argue with Rosey, so I sat down at the kitchen table and opened up Rich’s pack of cigarettes. There were only a couple left, so I closed it and shoved it aside.

  “Go ahead,” Rich said. He was standing in the doorway, rocking Violet gently in his arms. “I’ve got another pack in the car.”

  “Thanks,” I said and pulled one out of the pack. I only smoke on special occasions. I wondered briefly if this constituted a “special” occasion. I opened the door to the backyard a crack and stood by the open door, blowing my smoke outside.

  “I picked up a platter of deli meats at Smith’s, some pop and some liquor,” Rosey said. She pulled off a pair of Ma’s oven mitts and set them on the table. “I didn’t know what everybody around here drinks, so I bought vodka and whiskey. I like, personally, the whiskey, but I don’t know about everybody else.”

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “In that grocery bag.” Rosey pointed to a bag on the counter.

  “You want a drink?” I asked. “Rich?” But he had gone into the living room with Peter.

  “Si, si,” she said. “Put a little Coke in there too.”

  I tossed the cigarette onto the cold ground outside; it sizzled when the burning end hit the damp grass. I grabbed a handful of ice from the freezer and filled two tumblers, pouring the thick whiskey over the ice, adding Coke as an afterthought. I handed Rosey the cocktail and motioned for her to sit down next to me.

  “Your Daddy looked handsome in his suit.” She smiled. “Nice to see him again.”

  I nodded. Daddy, like Peter, felt silly in a suit and was stopping at his motel room to change before he came back to the house.

  “California seems to like your Daddy,” she said.

  I nodded again. W
hen Daddy first left with Sheila all those years ago, he bought a bar somewhere just south of LA. He sold it a couple of years later when he and Sheila broke up. Since then he’d been living in San Diego; he owned a bar in Pacific Beach. Peter and I had gone there once. It catered mostly to bikers. Outside the bar on any given day the parking spaces were filled with Harleys, twenty or thirty of them in a row, each more elaborate and ornate than the next. Sitting at the open window that faced the beach, when a group of bikers left it looked and sounded like a flock of strange birds taking off. California did like Daddy. I suppose it always had. I wondered if he ever thought about what would have happened if he’d never met Ma and come to Arizona.

  “The service was nice, no?” Rosey asked, finishing her drink quickly and setting the cup full of ice on the table. “That new priest is a niño, a baby, huh? Mama’s milk still on his breath.”

  “He wore sandals,” I said.

  The priest at the Catholic church was young. He wore Birkenstocks with thick wool socks. Because there was a funeral scheduled right after Ma’s he kept checking his watch throughout the service. The flowers from the last funeral hadn’t been removed yet, so the church was filled with the strange heady scent of yellow roses. It felt somehow wrong to see yellow roses in November; contrary. I had to keep looking out the stained-glass windows at the dusting of snow on the ground to remind myself that it was almost winter. Maybe this is what Daddy meant about it being hard in California to know what time of year it was. And because the roses were leftover, I felt vaguely guilty that Ma’s funeral was decorated with borrowed flowers. The priest had a tickle in his throat, too, and had to stop several times to cough. Each pause made me more and more uncomfortable. Daddy sat between Lily and me. Rich and Peter were on either side. Rosey sat alone in the back. Ma’s doctor showed up, as did her hairdresser, and the boy she hired every winter to shovel her driveway. This, like the borrowed roses, is what made me sad. It wasn’t that Ma was gone, but the glaring evidence of how alone she was in this world. Everybody leaves her, Lily had said. Daddy left her, you left her. I’m the only one who stayed. I’m the only one. . . . She’s lost everything. She lost Benny and then she lost everybody else. Lily was the only one who cried, and somehow watching the tears rolling down in pink streaks through the makeup she’d put under her eyes to hide the dark circles made everything all the more pathetic. Ma would have been embarrassed by the service. She would have pursed her lips and hissed, Great turnout.

  Daddy came in then and I got up to pour him a drink. Vodka and ginger ale. That’s all he ever drank besides beer. He hugged Rosey from behind as she used a spatula to scoop the cheesy enchiladas onto the paper plates we found in one of Ma’s cupboards.

  “This is the real reason I came,” Daddy winked at me. And I knew that he was telling the truth.

  We sat in the living room with plates on our laps and cocktails resting on the armrests of our chairs, trying not to spill anything on Ma’s carpet. After we had folded the dirty paper plates in half and stuffed them into the wastebasket under the sink, we returned to the living room and everyone made their excuses for leaving. Lily, who had come bleary-eyed out of the bedroom when Rich called for her, said she still had a headache and wanted to lie down again. Rich fell asleep on the couch with Violet sprawled across his chest, and Daddy and Rosey left together. Rosey’s grandchildren were coming for dinner and Daddy was going to drive down to Phoenix and stay the night with Eddie Grand and his wife. His flight wasn’t until tomorrow morning.

  “Thank you for coming, Daddy,” I said and leaned into him.

  “You’re welcome, honey. Please call me if you need anything at all. Okay? And maybe you can talk Peter into getting on a plane and coming to visit me soon?”

  I nodded and smiled, but after his car had disappeared through the trees, I felt my throat grow thick with tears. I have never gotten used to saying good-bye to Daddy.

  In Benny’s room, I took off my stockings and shoes and curled up in a spoon with Peter on the small bed. And only then, with the familiar warmth of Peter behind me and his beard tickling the back of my neck, did I start to feel sad. Only in the sweet pine circle of his arms with his fingers reaching to brush the hair out of my eyes, did the tears come. And even then, my body didn’t tremble. I held my breath to keep my shoulders still and turned my face so that the tears fell into my hair.

  I dreamed about Ma. I dreamed her gestures and slivers of her expressions. A wave, the way her hand flew to her throat when she was nervous. A half-smile, the blankness of her disappointment. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not dream a whole picture of her. She came to me in fragments that slipped through my fingers like sand. I dreamed the way she shrugged her shoulders, and the corners of her smiles.

  I woke up cold and disoriented. Peter was still asleep next to me, but he had come uncurled from my body and was facing the wall. His shirt was twisted, and the cuffs of his jeans had ridden up around his calves. I thought for a minute about straightening him out, but then realized it would probably only wake him.

  I got out of Benny’s bed and opened the door to the hallway. The lights were off, and the hallway was dark. It could have been the middle of the night; it could have been just before dawn, but when I looked at my watch, I saw that it was only seven o’clock. The door to Ma’s room was open, and Rich was sprawled across Ma’s bed, still wearing his dress pants and starched white shirt. Violet wasn’t in the crib next to the bed, and Lily wasn’t in the room either.

  My heart started to pound as I walked quickly down the hallway into the dark kitchen and into the living room. My eyes were adjusting to the darkness. I could see the shadows and outlines of furniture and walls, appliances and sharp corners. I walked on tiptoes to the living room, afraid of what I would find. It was too quiet. Not even a breathing sound.

  Lily was sitting on the couch, holding a blanketed bundle in her arms. She and the bundle were motionless. She could not hear me, could not see me, here in the doorway. It was too dark. I felt a scream rising in my throat, instinctual and fierce. My knuckles tightened on the door frame when Lily’s head lowered and she leaned over, kissing Violet’s pale head.

  “Lily,” I said, a warning.

  Lily looked up and fear flashed in white streaks across her face, through her eyes, made her hands tremble. The muscles in her neck tightened as she spoke, “Indie, please . . .”

  “What are you doing?” I said, moving slowly toward the couch. “What did you do to her?”

  Lily shrank and clutched Violet tightly. “Indie, please don’t tell him, please don’t . . .”

  I sank to my knees in front of her and reached for Violet. It might be too late, I thought. Oh God, she may already be gone.

  But as my hands closed around the edges of her blanket and Lily’s hands tightened around her, Violet let out a small cry. Irritated and annoyed. We’d woken her. We’d only woken her from sleep. She blinked twice, hard, and then her eyes closed sleepily again.

  “Indie, please don’t tell Rich. I only wanted to hold her.”

  Still kneeling, I sat back on my knees and looked at Lily’s terrified face. I didn’t understand.

  “He won’t let me near her. But I just wanted to hold her. I just wanted to watch her sleeping.” Lily was crying, harder than she had cried at Ma’s funeral. “I promise,” she sobbed. “I won’t hurt her.”

  My knees were numb. I couldn’t move.

  Lily reached for me with her free hand, her fingers imploring. They clutched at my arm, begging for me to understand. To forgive. And this gesture, these fingers asking forgiveness, were unfamiliar. They didn’t belong to Ma. They belonged to Lily, and they thrummed I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry against my skin.

  The sounds trapped in my throat, the animal sounds of protection and warning, dissolved. All of the anger and fear were like sugar in warm water. Metal becoming liquid, the solid pang of tin turning into smooth mercury. I put my fingers across Lily’s and looked for Ma in her face. But th
ere was only the soft blue of Lily’s eyes. And in the dark living room with Violet sleeping quietly between us, I thought, This is all I wanted. All of this time. I only wanted an apology. I only wanted someone to acknowledge that something had gone terribly wrong.

  “Did you do it?” I asked quietly, quietly. “Did you?”

  Lily’s fingers dug into my wrist and then she let go of my arm, her eyes open wide. She pulled Violet to her chest and shook her head.

  “You bitch.You goddamned bitch,” she whispered.

  And in that one moment, all of the fragments of my dream, the recollected slivers, Ma’s gestures fractured into glass, suddenly realigned themselves. The corners of her mouth, her clenched jaw, and the defiant flat circles of her eyes became Lily’s face. She looked at me in disbelief and hissed, “How can you believe that shit he’s telling you? What kind of person do you think I am? What kind of mother would do that?”

  I stared into the empty blue of her eyes, but she was already gone.

  “A mother like ours,” I said. “Someone like Ma.”

  There is always a small gentle gesture that confuses everything. There is always a sliver of kindness more painful than glass or fragments of bone. Like the way a hand becomes suddenly tender after fingers unravel from a fist. The simple swell of a tear in an eye that used to be unforgiving. We cling to these acknowledgments, these small apologies, trying to make sense, but it’s no easier or more realistic than holding water in your hands. Colored sand or wind.

  I used to love the hems of my mother’s dresses. On the floor where Benny and I played with pots and pans and wooden spoons, I could touch them sometimes when she walked by. They felt like wind, I thought, the way they brushed across my fingers and then were gone until she moved across the room again. When she stood in the bathroom, peering in the mirror at her face, I could sit on the cold linoleum forever looking, touching the bottom of her dress. Benny preferred the soft brown boots that zipped up. Her animal legs of coffee-colored suede. When she left them on the floor, unzipped and open, he put his hands inside to feel their warmth. But it was the crisp edge of cotton or the loose sway of rayon that thrilled me. If she had let me, I would have held the edges against my cheek, put them in my mouth and tasted them.