Carry the Sky

by Kate Gray

  “I’m glad you came,” Crisco said. “Want a beer?” She stood up. Her turtleneck was tight around her shoulders, tight around her biceps, tucked in at the waist.

  “Long Island Iced Tea,” I said.

  She stopped moving toward the bar. She turned toward me.

  “Coming right up.”

  All around me were tables with cities of bottles and glasses. The few women not on the dance floor were quiet by the wall, and I was the only one in a seat in the middle of the tables. The dance floor was packed. Women screamed the lyrics, swinging their hair with sweat dripping, and bumped their hips into the butts of women in front of them.

  To party this hard was rowing at race pace, no air, instinct kicking in. And to dykes at Sneakers, the dance was a time they moved with their own kind, hit a rhythm they could keep. Loneliness was the bass line, and they danced to it. Except for rowing, nothing in my background prepared me for this movement out of body. This loneliness was its own kind.

  What I knew about parties was invitations my mother wrote by hand. Each season she threw one party, mostly for teachers from my siblings’ schools, and for her own brothers and sisters, and sometimes our priest, Father M; nearly everyone in the New England town came to our house. They came with matching pantsuits and jackets, with purses matching blouses, kerchiefs matching ties. They drank dark drinks that my older sister and I brought on silver trays. Mother also hired help who wore white uniforms and said, “Yes, ma’am,” and “Yes, sir,” to people half their age.

  By the end of those parties, the tables in our living room were little cities, full of empty glasses, glasses with a cube or two, glasses with red lipstick on rims. By the end, my mother and father were fighting.

  One time ended up like a city demolished.

  “You shouldn’t have invited him,” my mother said. She was sitting in the lime green armchair. Her legs were crossed, and her arms were crossed, a cigarette in one hand. My mother loved her burgundy jacket with the wide lapels and shoulder pads. The fashion was out of old movies, like Lauren Bacall, and her waist tapered in a straight skirt. My father was standing up, facing her. His gray suit was pressed so creases ran up his legs, and his leather shoes were polished. My sister and I were across the room on the couch.

  “You invited the Catholic one,” he said. His forehead was getting red. His forehead was getting red in the places where he didn’t have hair.

  “That’s right,” she said. “I invited the real priest.” She put the cigarette between her red, red lips. She took a puff, and the end of the cigarette was a dare.

  “Forget it,” he said. He looked down at the oak floor.

  “Forget what? Forget that you’re not Catholic?” She uncrossed her legs, leaned forward.

  “Quaker,” he said. “You knew that from the start.” The top of his forehead was red.

  “Well, it’s not good enough.” She twisted toward the end table by her side and crushed her cigarette in the ashtray.

  “Never have been,” he said. My father didn’t look angry any more. My father was a boy alone.

  “Oh, great,” she said, “poor, pitiful you.”

  My mother looked at my father’s pants, not at him. Then she smacked her lips like she was thirsty. She tried to get up. Stretching one arm to the armrest and trying to push off, she slipped. Her hand was a crushing ball on a glass city. Water and glass and ice flew off the table. The floor was shiny with wet and pieces, and some kept going on the floor, bounced off the wall, under furniture.

  Two tall glasses were all that was left on the table. Mother stood up and looked at them. The top of her body swayed side to side a little. Then she drew back her hand like a golf club, twisted, and smacked them off. The tall glasses popped against the sideboard. Everything was loud, but my father. My mother turned her big shoulders with the shoulder pads toward my father, and smiled.

  “Here you go,” Crisco said. She put her face in front of me, her face not angry or drunk. Her smile was invitation and breath.

  “Thanks.” The cocktail glass filled my hand. The drink was so strong my eyes watered. The music was so loud that we had to face each other, pull our seats close, and put our lips to each other’s ears.

  “How’s teaching?” Crisco said. She smelled of soap.

  “Harder than I thought.”

  “Like how?” She pulled back to look at me. Her wide face was freckles across the bridge of her nose.

  “Like how to reach them.”

  “How can you?” She pressed my cheek with her cheek but then took it away.

  “What?” My cheek where hers touched was moist.

  Crisco grabbed my chair and dragged it, with me in it, as close as it could go. My knees pressed between her legs. She took my shoulders in her hands, and pulled me toward her. My skin got hot like she was going to kiss me. But she turned her head to the side to shout into my ear.

  “How can you reach them when you’re so far away?” She pressed my shoulders with her hands, slid her hands toward my neck, and squeezed my delts. She shook me back and forth a little.

  I nodded, put my hands on her thighs. My palms were spread across her muscles.

  A slow song came on. Cris Williamson. The dance floor cleared. Some women hissed. No one got up to dance. Crisco and I sat and listened. One of my hands stayed on her thigh, and she held the armrest of my chair.

  The waitress came around with a small tray raised above her shoulder. Her jeans were ripped, and her pink tank top showed tight muscles.

  “Another round for the rowers?” She looked at Crisco.

  “Sure, M.J.,” Crisco said.

  I sat back in my chair, raised my eyebrows, and smiled at Crisco.

  “What?” she said. “What?”

  “Does Traski know about this place?” The U.S. rowing coach, Carl Traski, would try anything to break a rower’s will. If he found out about Crisco, in every practice he’d tear her down.

  “He’s too busy sleeping with the girls.” Crisco played tough. Years on the streets of Chicago required smarts and secrets: keeping herself hidden was as easy as breathing.

  Soon M.J. brought the second drink. Between rounds we danced. We jumped when Van Halen told us. Crisco danced like a teenage boy, stiff shoulders and lead hips. She raised her arms above her head, and her shirt wrapped around her triceps. There was nothing like her smile, bigger than the disco ball, bigger than the dance floor.

  The next time a slow song came on we stepped into each other. There was nothing soft about Crisco: Her breasts were all pec muscle, her arms were all biceps, and her stomach was a flat plane. In her arms I felt safer than open water in a sprint race. In her arms the race was over. And for the first time since you disappeared in the Schuylkill, I didn’t wonder where you were.

  Margie Adam sang her sweet, slow song, and Crisco’s shoulder fit under my neck. She leaned back enough to talk into my ear.

  “Taylor, you know Sarah loved you.” Her cheek gave heat to the side of my neck.

  “Sure.”

  “No, she really loved you.” Crisco’s lips moved air on my ear.

  “She really loved Mark, remember?”

  “Yeah, but she was in love with you,” Crisco tightened her arms around me, like someone might do before the doctor gave a shot.

  “No, she wasn’t, Crisco. She was like my mom, said I was going to hell.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but she couldn’t help loving you.” Crisco pressed her cheek against my cheek. Our skin was wet. Our skin was neither mine nor hers. What Crisco said reached into that forever place, the one that had prayers and mountains in Massachusetts. Sarah in love with me was nothing I could touch, but the words made that place in my chest crack a little more open. Forever was no longer a place any more. In Crisco’s arms I knew forever could never be again. With Sarah gone, forever was the crack that kept opening.

  After Margie Adam finished, Crisco kept her arm around my shoulders and walked me off the dance floor. I almost missed the step down t
o the sticky linoleum, and her hand guided me around the tables with all the glasses and beer bottles.

  “Grab your coat,” she said, her face so close to my face. My face did the getting-hot thing in case her lips came closer. Crisco lived in another part of town, and I lived an hour away. We’d have to swing by the hotel and get my stuff on the way. But with women’s faces spinning and glasses blurring and a rower’s arm around me, I’d do anything.

  Janie’s hand was hard on Crisco’s back. “Be safe,” she said to the two of us. I waved to the women bunched in the shadows and waved to the streetlight down the street.

  Inside Crisco’s blue Datsun hatchback, there were sandwich wrappers, pop cans, and U.S. Rowing magazines. There was condensation on the inside of the windows and mold around the edges. This was the car that got us to practice before dawn every day. Never once did I think we’d sit in the dark outside of a lesbian bar. Never had I thought I’d want the dark in Crisco’s eyes.

  “Nice to see Joni again,” I said. Joni Mitchell Blue was Crisco’s car.

  “She’s glad to see you too, Taylor Alta, but she thinks you’re skinny.” She turned her sunflower face to me. Her hands came around my ears, wrapped around my head, palms holding my cheeks. She pulled me within inches of her face. I closed my eyes, waiting for soft lips.

  “Gotta go.” She let go of my head. My eyes opened. “Got to get you a cheesesteak, real one, fatten you up. That’s what we’re going to do.” She turned toward the steering wheel and started the car.

  My body was still leaning forward, leaning on the stick shift. My lips got cold. Maybe she didn’t notice my face right there, waiting.

  I said to the windshield, “Complete with Cheez Whiz?”

  “The works. Your body’s got to be big enough to hold that big spirit of yours.” Her hand left the steering wheel, and she locked it on my thigh. A shock pitched my body forward.

  “You call this muscle a quad? Good God, girl. What’s happened?” Her smile was hanging off her face, so big. I tried to watch where we were going since she was looking more at me. I figured out we had gotten to west Philly. In front of Marty’s Steaks, we found a parking spot.

  As soon as I opened the door, I could smell the onions, the grease. The booze from the bar and not much food made the lights too bright, the counter far away. My stomach tightened. It had been awhile. When my crews raced, I forgot to eat. When I had too much to do, I forgot to eat. Over the past six weeks, I lost twenty pounds, and my clothes that I had bought to teach at St. Tim’s fit like rice sacks.

  “We have arrived,” Crisco said, “at the place of your redemption. See and believe, the best cheesesteak in all Philly.” Crisco was a loud preacher when we walked in the door, the type of loud that doesn’t seem loud when you’re drinking. The single man at the counter and the couple in the booth turned around.

  We ordered two, and my stomach knotted with hunger. We shuffled down the chrome counter. Within minutes, the server in a black T-shirt slid a steaming plate onto each of our trays. The steak was piled high with onions and cheese over an Amaroso’s roll. The steam rose into my nose, and Crisco kept one hand on me, one hand on her tray.

  “Mangia, mangia,” Crisco said in impossible Italian when we sat in our booth. Everybody in Philly spoke like Sylvester Stallone and charged up the museum steps.

  As the steak slid out of the roll and juice ran down my hands, as the roll gave out and the cheese pooled on my plate, Crisco talked to me about spirit, about the way that the body acts as a vessel, about the importance of honoring the spirit by honoring the body. She said it didn’t matter what religion I was, or my mother was, or Sarah was. She said I had to eat and keep my body big enough. She gave me the rest of her cheesesteak after I finished mine.

  “Just a second,” she said, and she went back to the counter. In a few minutes, she came back to the booth and grabbed her jacket, and with a milkshake in hand, she led me back to her car. “This will keep you while we drive to Delaware.”

  “You’re kidding. You’re not driving to Delaware tonight.” The cheesesteaks were landing in my stomach.

  “You’re going to need this coating. And I need to know where you live.” She opened the passenger door for me.

  “What about practice?” Traski expected the team at 6 a.m. Crisco’s coaching was later in the day.

  “What about it? I’ll get back in time.”

  “Ah yes, respecting the vessel,” I said.

  “Shut up. Drink your shake.”

  Song / Particles in

  Turbulence

  “This seat taken?”

  The stack of lab books takes up the space next to me at the counter. Marsh Road Diner is hopping. Once a month Sam Omura and I meet in Wilmington, vectors from where we live, his short, mine long, no isosceles. Sam knows vectors, electrical engineering, now working on secret something for CIA space labs, satellite surveillance for the Cold War.

  “Sam! Sorry about that.”

  “You’re a dull boy, Song.” Still lean and short, his dark hair with no signs of gray, he bellies up to the counter, King of Smart Guys, PhD from Stanford, grad student who taught me when I did undergrad. Nobody taught vectors the way he did. With fifteen sharks for students in the class, he turned out the lab lights, turned on lasers, cut the competitive crap out of the class. Sharks forgot our GPAs, GREs, and pedigrees. Nothing like this teacher.

  We shake hands once I move the lab books from the Misfits of Science.

  “How’s Sheila?” Start with the family, start soft, get harder.

  “Still inventing stuff,” he says. He turns his head to me, and his dark eyes, with their bushy eyebrows, are bright. He and Sheila have been together ten years, and she’s turned ones and zeroes into codes that make machines calculate almost faster than humans can.

  “My two favorite scientists,” our waitress says with a coffee thermos in her hand.

  Sam can never resist. “Where have you been all my life, Nancy?”

  “Waiting for you, doll.” She turns over the mugs and pours coffee. “What’ll you have?” She never writes our orders down. After we call out the same things we order every time, we shake our heads at the news we hadn’t talked about since last month.

  “Two hundred sixty-nine people, gone.”

  “Anything you can tell me about that? I know you’re not supposed to.”

  “CIA’s not involved.” He never likes to talk about where he works. His lab does contracts. “But I can tell you it looks like a colossal mistake. The jetliner went 300 miles off course.” He shakes his head, whistles under his breath at the stupidity.

  “Any reason?”

  “Nobody knows as of yet. We had surveillance in the air, but not nearby.”

  Behind the counter the waitresses dodge each other, post the orders for the cooks, grab dishes after the cooks ring the bells, slosh coffee into cups.

  “Speaking of unknowable, is Dorothy White still kicking around that place?” Sam hasn’t been back to Tim-Tim’s since he graduated. His family worked the fields near the school, came back after the prison camps during the war. Even though Sam missed years of formal education, he scored the highest of all kids in Delaware on the aptitude tests, and the Du Ponts wanted him in, felt guilty for the imprisonment. Sam was the first Japanese American at Tim-Tim’s and he blew the doors off the place, won every prize in science and music, lettered in cross-country, basketball, and tennis. Slight in build, mighty in spirit.

  “Queen Busybody? Sure.”

  “Need anything?” Sam drinks about half his mug of coffee in one gulp.

  “You mean, in the labs?”

  “No, in the dining hall.”

  From beakers to Bunsen burners to microscopes to the huge shiny fume hood, Sam kept Tim-Tim’s kids in science. The Du Ponts built the lab but didn’t make it work. Sam made sure Misfits of Science could at least try the tools. On the giving scale of alumni, Sam is at the top, always setting records.

  Nancy places the oval plates in
front of us, pancakes and omelets so big they hang over the sides. Before I can unwrap my silverware, Sam stabs one of my sausages and pops it in his mouth.

  “Thanks. Sheila doesn’t like me eating pork.”

  “Help yourself,” I say. “We could use a thing or two.”

  “Send me a list.” His fork is busy cutting his omelet into pieces, each piece a square. The once-floppy omelet is now an electrical panel perfectly charted.

  “Say, Sam, I got a live one this year.” By the time I clear the butter off the paper divider, pour syrup, he’s eaten his way through half the omelet. The guy never gains weight. No entropy, always motion. “Hungry?”

  “Always. What kind of live one?”

  “The kind of kid that makes you want to bow every time you walk in the classroom.”

  Sam sets down his fork. “You don’t do that, right?”

  “Of course not. For instance, I’m doing particles in turbulence, and I set it up with two kids up front of the lab. Tell them to raise one arm and touch the other kid. They don’t want to. Too bad. I make them.

  “I ask them how big is the force of gravity? I make them repeat after me, ‘A product of the masses of both, inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.’ Basically, not much. After I explain, the Second Formers at the front of the room about gag.

  “Let me back up. Last week, Kyle is his name, all he says is ‘Oh no, Mr. Bill.’ You know that Saturday Night Live show? Down in study hall, I see him with his head plastered to the desk. I say, ‘Hey, Kyle, getting your work done?’ and he says, ‘Oh no, Mr. Bill’ really loud. At dinner, I hear he takes those boiled-to-death beans we eat. Remember those?”

  “I still can’t eat beans,” Sam says.

  “Well, he cuts one at a time, picks up the halves, and you know what he says.

  “But even when he’s jumping off chairs and making noises, he’s watching. I see him. Into any room, he bumps, bounces, makes a grand entrance, but then sits in the back. With so much show, he’s invisible.