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She placed these things on the tired old Broyhill, and we carried it out next to the blue-green pool, and the sky above the Valley was filled with a cobalt-gray fog.

Amy turned on one of the portable lasers Abe gave us for Christmas, the ones we use to point at walls during meetings, and cut the sky with a thin red beam. Dusty carried Mom out and placed her on the couch, head skyward, and Dad lay down beside her on this couch, and wrapped her in blankets.

Amy said, "Mrs. U., you've probably always wondered what kids do on weekends. Well, the truth of the matter is, they smoke pot and go to Pink Floyd laser shows at the planetarium. Michael: hit the tunes . . ."

An art rock anthem from another era filled the air, and we turned on all of our lights and cast them into the sky, a chaotic symphony of lines and color.

The dozen of us stood out there on the patio, out in the January evening's foggy dark: Michael and Amy, still in their clothes, diving in the brilliant blue pool, rescuing the R2D2 pool cleaner from its endless serflike toil; Dad next to Mom on her bed, cradling her head in his arms, watching our lasers, positioning her head so that she could see the beams; Ethan, pale and feisty, testing batteries with a small device, arguing with Dusty over some small matter; Lindsay nearly asleep, lying next to Mom; Abe on his trampoline bouncing into the fog with Susan, Todd, Emmett, and poor, lumbering, overweight, Misty, their four lasers cutting the heaven and joining my laser and Karla's laser and Dad's and Ethan's and Dusty's.

Karla and I lay down on the cement next to the pool atop a threadbare promotional towel for Road & Track magazine, its thin cotton insulating us from Earth's current lack of heat. I told her I loved her. Dad heard me say this, and so I guess Mom heard these words, too.

I remembered a friend of Mom's once told me that when you pray, and you pray honestly, you send a beam of light out into the skies as clear and as powerful as a sunbeam that breaks through the clouds at the end of a rainy day; like the lights on the sidewalk outside the Academy Awards.

And as Karla and I lay there, the two of us - the all of us - with our flashlights and lasers, cutting the weather, extending ourselves into the sky, into the end of the universe with precision technology running so fine, I looked at Karla and said out loud, "You know, it's true."

And then, I thought about us . . . these children who fell down life's cartoon holes . . . dreamless children, alive but not living - we emerged on the other side of the cartoon holes fully awake and discovered we were whole.

I'm worried about Mom . . . and I'm thinking about Jed, and suddenly I look around at Bug and Susan and Michael and everybody and I realize, that what's been missing for so long isn't missing anymore.

hellojed

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