Gravity Box and Other Spaces

by Mark Tiedemann

  “Eric is easy to understand,” she went on. “He’s self-indulgent and egotistical.”

  “I suppose you’d be happier with someone like that?”

  “No. Otherwise I would have found someone like that. But when you say I’m a lot like him I’m torn about how to take it. You admire your father almost to the point of elevating him to godhood, but you use him as an example of everything you don’t like in other people.”

  “Oh. So you think I want to be like him.”

  “I didn’t say that. And no, I don’t. You don’t want to be like him. The trouble is you’re so goddamned busy not being like him that you’re not bothering to be like anything else, either.”

  Paul raised his hand, finger pointed, and opened his mouth. A dozen arguments crowded his mind, demanding expression. He could not decide which was most important, so none of them was said. He turned away.

  “I like your father,” Kay said. “I think he’s a wonderful grandfather to Jon.”

  “Jonathan,” Paul corrected automatically. He hated nicknames; his own had been Kite.

  “Jon.”

  He glared at her.

  “He’s a little boy,” she said. “Don’t load all this generational guilt crap on him. He’s not the standard you could never be.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Kay threw up a hand in disgust and rolled her eyes. “You want to live up to Eric’s expectations—what you think those are, at any rate—and you don’t think you can, so you’ll make sure our son does. Stop it. He’s his own self.”

  “I know that! He’s my son. I love him!”

  “So love him.”

  “I do! I take my responsibilities toward him very seriously!”

  Kay nodded. “Unlike your father?”

  “Unlike my father! Yes! Eric never takes anything seriously!”

  “Especially you?”

  “I don’t know about ‘especially,’ but he never took me seriously.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Oh? This is something you know by virtue of some special insight? Eric perhaps explained this to you? That’d be like him to explain to you what he’d never think to mention to me.”

  Kay raised an eyebrow. “You better watch that or you’ll have a neurosis before you know it.”

  Paul slammed both fists down on the counter. The vegetable platter jumped, but nothing spilled. Pain shot up his forearms. Frustration encysted him.

  He looked at Kay. Her image was broken and hazy from the frustration welling in his eyes. He turned around and looked at the walls, the windows, and out at the autumn darkness.

  “Why couldn’t he just die like a normal human being? Why couldn’t he just go away and never come back? I can’t even ask him that for thirty years.”

  Kay came around the island and hugged him from behind. At first he resented the gesture, wincing at the attempted comfort. His misery was his own in a way that nothing else had ever been. Still, he turned and held her.

  Jonathan stood in the doorway of the kitchen, watching them, his small face still and solemn. Paul frowned.

  “Jonathan—?”

  “Don’t you want Gra’pa to come back?”

  Paul stiffened. Jonathan waited for an answer, eyes liquid and hurt, confusion demanding resolution. Paul looked at Kay and she watched him, waiting.

  “He asked you,” she whispered.

  Paul shook his head.

  Kay said no more about it, but moved them into Eric’s bedroom. Paul watched, fascinated, while she reordered their lives with a quiet efficiency and confidence that in anyone else would have made him feel inadequate.

  Sleeping in that bed, in Eric’s bed, was difficult. Paul would lie awake for an hour before drifting off, his attention riveted to every sound that broke the night’s quiet. He lay with his hands folded over his chest, his legs straight, almost rigid, and in the morning it appeared he had hardly moved at all. He did not remember his dreams.

  After a few weeks he resumed work. Eric’s office was equipped with a better computer system than he had and it was easy to shift all his databases and projects into the expanded system. He immersed himself in designs again.

  The intricacy of architecture fascinated Paul. He lost himself in the complexities, the problem-solving, and the piece-by-piece creation of a solution. He worked best alone rather than as part of a team. He was always disturbed by what others did to his work, even when he approved the modifications.

  He entered into relationships with his designs; they were part of him. Here, before his computer-augmented drafting board, amid all the programs, reference materials, and sketches, he felt himself most complete. It was completion by negation, though, for he was not conscious of “Paul” while he worked; he was the work. Kay pointed this out once, but he did not understand. He only knew he had no self-doubt when he had a project on his desk.

  He looked at his progeny the same way, though he insisted the affection he held toward the one was qualitatively different from the other. He collected books and developed whole databases about fetal development, post-natal care, and early childhood progress. Kay had chided him on what appeared a heroic attempt to make himself into a pediatrician. Nevertheless, it fascinated him. Jonathan was a growing, changing, self-repairing, self-improving, adapting, living structure.

  Occasionally Jonathan came into the study to watch him or quietly play nearby. The child seemed to know not to interrupt Paul, and Paul enjoyed his son’s presence, finding it pleasant to glance over and see the boy playing in some other part of the room. But, he sometimes wished Jonathan would interrupt him with questions or requests, child’s concerns, or laughter. Paul caught himself once in a while wishing Jonathan would hurt himself so that Paul could minister to the wound and be more necessary to the boy, a benefactor, a father. He played scenarios out in his head, imagining an injury or crisis, constructing his own responses, knowing the outcome would be a father and son drawn closer together by the trauma.

  Such thoughts made him deeply uneasy, but he could not seem to stop them. He impatiently dismissed these daydreams with a stern reminder to himself that he wished only the best for Jonathan and he certainly never wanted the boy hurt. At other times, he watched his son and dimly realized that he did not really understand the child. Someday he would. Time would draw them together; proximity would forge its own intimacy.

  Will I be closer to Eric in thirty years—?

  One day Jonathan came into the studio. After watching Paul quietly for several minutes he said, “Daddy—?”

  “Hmm?”

  “How long’s gra’pa going to sleep?”

  “Thirty years.”

  “He’ll be alive afterward?”

  “Of course. He’s just frozen.”

  “I’ll be a grown-up when he wakes up.”

  “Uh-huh. Thirty-four. A man.”

  “Will he still be my gra’pa?”

  “Of course. Time can’t change that. Though you might call him ‘grandfather’ instead.”

  “You call him Eric. Can I?”

  “If he says you can.”

  “Will he still take me places?”

  “What? You mean like Disney World, like last year? Well, you probably won’t want to then. You’ll be an adult, with adult interests.”

  Jonathan digested this with a serious expression. Paul watched him absent mindedly, his thoughts on a problem of entrances and exits in the design on his board. When Kay had been pregnant with Jonathan, Paul had designed a school. Now he was working on a daycare center, a commission he had wanted to get ever since. Finally, Jonathan shrugged, hugged Paul briefly and went off to play somewhere else.

  I’m glad we can talk, Paul thought, returning to his design.

  Five weeks after Eric went to sleep, Kay went into labor. They hurried to the local clinic and six hours later Michael came into the world.

  The next day Paul was allowed to bring Jonathan into Kay’s room. She looked tired and a little pale. The labor had gone we
ll, not as hard on her as Paul had feared, but he was still struck by how fragile she seemed. No more, he thought; Michael is the last.

  “We could have done this at home,” Kay said. “It wasn’t so bad.”

  “I feel safer about it here,” Paul said. “Anything goes wrong—”

  “Next one I want to have at home.”

  Paul frowned. Kay’s eyes drifted closed sleepily.

  “Is Mommy going to sleep for thirty years?” Jonathan asked, his voice small and a little tremulous.

  Paul looked at him, shocked, but Kay laughed.

  “No, honey,” she said, “I’ll be home in a day or two.”

  Jonathan seemed to consider this, frowning, then nodded and looked up at Paul. Paul’s heart hammered. He could not read the question he thought he saw in Jonathan’s eyes, nor could he seem to speak.

  “My brother,” Jonathan said, “won’t know anything about Gra’pa, will he?”

  “Not unless we tell him,” Kay said. She sounded so tired.

  “Maybe we better not.”

  Paul licked his lips and said, “Why not?”

  Jonathan shrugged. “It wouldn’t be fair. He’d miss Gra’pa and not even know who he is.”

  “My, my,” Kay said, “we have a natural-born philosopher in our family.”

  “It’s not funny,” Paul said. “Jonathan, your grandfather hasn’t got anything to do with this. Understand?”

  Jonathan kept his gaze down.

  “Paul,” Kay said, “I don’t think this is the time—”

  “Then when is? That selfish son-of-a-bitch. Even on ice, he’s controlling my life, interfering with my family.” He touched Jonathan’s shoulder. The boy looked up. “Try to forget about him, Jonathan. You can ask him in thirty years why he decided to duck out of our lives, but for now he’s just not part of anything.”

  “Paul!”

  Jonathan nodded slowly. “I just won’t say anything to my brother.”

  Paul completed the initial floor plans for the daycare center and sent them off to the client.

  Kay was in the living room, cradling Michael against her shoulder and looking out the window. Paul smiled at them. For the first time in a long while, he felt satisfied. He paused for a few seconds to enjoy the moment, the gestalt of family.

  Kay looked at him. “Have you seen Jon today?”

  Paul stopped. “No. I’ve been working.”

  She nodded. “I haven’t seen him in a few hours.”

  “Did he go outside? It’s warm enough.”

  “I don’t see him. I told him not to go into the woods out of sight of the house.”

  “I’ll go find him.”

  He went outside and called. After half an hour he began to feel uneasy. He checked Jonathan’s room. The small bed was made, as if it had not been slept in. Jonathan was a conscientious boy, Paul told himself. He had been making his own bed for several months now, though not this well. Paul asked Kay if she had made the bed.

  “No. It wasn’t messed up this morning when I checked.”

  Paul went through the house, room by room, calling his son. With each non-response, his uneasiness grew less and less dismissible. By the afternoon it was clear that Jonathan was not anywhere in the house.

  Kay called the police.

  Paul tried to find some trail outside to indicate that Jonathan might have wandered away, or some sign that someone had come up to the house undetected. While that was unlikely, Paul found himself snatching at any possibility. His well-ordered sense of the world was losing its capacity to cope, and he did not know how to handle panic.

  The police arrived, took statements, a couple of photographs; a pair of dogs were ordered. Paul watched with intense impatience as the police checked Jonathan’s room and the rest of the house, clearly, to Paul’s mind, unconcerned. They moved much too slowly, did things with far too little sense of urgency. All their reassurances sounded hollow.

  On top of everything else, Michael began to cry incessantly.

  By the time the search dogs arrived Paul realized that he was useless in his current state of mind.

  “I’ll be in my office,” he said to Kay. “I have to—”

  She nodded, giving him a gentle shove.

  “I’ll help them,” she said.

  Gratefully, Paul retreated to his work place.

  There was a message waiting for him on the computer. A response already? That would be quick. He opened it.

  Dear Mr. Dover: We have gone over your floor plans with great enthusiasm. At a glance, they appear perfect for our needs. Wonderful. Exactly what we wanted. However, there is one detail that must surely be a mistake. The outdoor play area is fine. However, there does not seem to be any direct access to it from the interior. We’re quite sure this is an oversight. Please advise. We wait your response.

  Paul reread it six times. Then he pulled up the floor plans and traced all the doors. To Paul’s surprise, there was no door to the playground. The nearest access from inside the building was the fire escape. A deep, percussive laugh worked its way up through his larynx. It was a silly, obvious mistake. He sat down.

  The door opened. Kay stared at him with wide eyes. Paul shrugged, realizing how silly and insensitive he must seem, but when he told her why he was laughing in the midst of all this tension she would understand. He held up his hand and opened his mouth.

  A policeman appeared behind Kay.

  “Mr. Dover,” he said in a voice quiet and somber. “We’ve located your son.”

  Kay chewed her lower lip.

  “Great!” Paul said, standing.

  “Would you come with us, sir?”

  Paul frowned. Kay was not smiling. She held Michael, who complained with small, uncertain sounds. Paul walked by her and followed the officer.

  They did not go outside. Baffled, Paul followed the man into his basement. Paul wanted to tell him that he had already looked down there and that he knew this house very well. Jonathan could not have hidden from him within it. After all, he had grown up here, played in these halls and rooms, and explored everything even as it was being built.

  The dogs snuffled at the ends of their leashes. Faces in harsh light turned to look at him as he followed the policeman. It was chilly in the basement. The floor was tiled, the walls were off-white. For an instant it reminded him of the cryotorium. Paul had always been happiest playing in the basement. He had trouble reconciling the conflicting feelings. The policeman parted for him.

  “The paramedics are on their way,” someone said.

  He stopped at the side of one of the big chest freezers.

  Jonathan lay within, eyes closed, hands folded across his small chest, the ice crystals glinting on his eyelashes, frosting his hair. His skin was a perfect expression of calm and patience in pale blue; his eyes were rimmed with dark circles. A small suitcase lay beside him and at his feet was a plastic bag containing some of his favorite toys.

  “He’s all ready,” Paul whispered, “for when Gra’pa comes home. He’s—”

  Along the Grain

  Peter Malon heard them when he switched off his chainsaw. There were people running through underbrush. He set the chainsaw down beside the trunk section he had just finished cutting and cocked his head to get a sense of direction.

  Out of the thicker woodland to the east, a girl sprang into the clearing, naked, arms and legs pistoning, face set around clenched teeth. She was halfway across the glen before she saw him. Her eyes narrowed briefly, then all sign that she recognized his existence vanished, her attention returned to her flight.

  As Peter stepped toward her, two men emerged in pursuit. Both wore jeans. The taller man wore a black t-shirt with the faded emblem of some band, the other a soiled tank top. They ran with the gangly abandon of kids in summertime, arms flailing, faces stretched in manic grins. The shorter one carried a coil of rope in his left hand.

  As they neared, Peter snatched a heavy branch from the ground, took four long strides forward, and threw it a
t the nearest. The branch tangled the short one’s legs, and he pitched forward. Peter continued on at a sprint and intercepted the tall one. Peter caught his upper left arm, spinning the man around. Staggering, he swung a wild right haymaker that Peter ducked reflexively. From then on, everything became automatic for Peter, a dance of block and jab, which ended quickly with the man on the ground, winded, holding his side. Peter spun around as the shorter one charged, a branch raised like a club. Peter slammed a shoulder into his chest, jammed a thumb up into his armpit, and then, as his opponent staggered backward, brought both hands down onto the his collarbone.

  The tall one had managed to get to his feet and now stood uncertainly, a heavy hunting knife in his hand. Peter stepped forward. The knife flashed up toward him, but Peter caught the wrist and twisted. He barked in pain and dropped the knife. Peter kicked him in the ribs, putting him on the ground again.

  Neither tried to stand.

  “You’re trespassing,” Peter said.

  “Who in hell’re you?” the tall one wheezed.

  “The owner.”

  “Since when? This is open ground.”

  “Since a month ago. Didn’t you see the posted signs?”

  Neither answered. Peter picked up the hunting knife.

  “What were you going to do with this when you caught her?”

  “Caught who?”

  Peter squatted by the tall one and aimed the knife-tip at his face. The man went pale.

  “Naturally you weren’t chasing anyone,” Peter said. “Were you?”

  “Nothin’ human.”

  Peter felt a sickly-hot worm of long-suppressed rage stir in the back of his brain. It must have shown a little in his face, because the man on the ground looked suddenly afraid.

  “You leave my property,” Peter said quietly. He stood, stepped back, and tapped the flat of the knife against his thigh. For a moment he imagined beating them, maybe cutting on them. The suddenness and violence of the thoughts frightened him a little, so he considered hauling them into town to Sheriff Edmunds and making a formal complaint. The logistics troubled him; he might, he decided, end up hurting them even worse if they resisted. Peter tamped down the anger, made himself think it through. He was vaguely pleased with his self-control. “Leave and don’t come back.”