Rise (12 page)

Anastas was setting up his recorder. He was opening up his laptop and untangling the cords. “He's a miracle. And it's not just Greek I hear. There are other languages, too.”

“You need to leave,” Holly told him. She pulled Nicholas closer to her chest. “You won't be recording him today.”

She wasn't polite when she held the door. She didn't take his card. And though she needed to make dinner and the dirty laundry was mounded in front of the machine, she held Nicholas for hours that afternoon. She turned on the lights on the Christmas tree and rocked him until he slept. She sang to him.
Sleep, little boy, sleep. Your father's tending sheep. Your momma's shaking the tree and all the dreams fall deep
. She sang, and his little face went slack. She thought of burning paper, of smoke wisping round, and all the traces those people had left. They'd lingered for two thousand years, and with the strike of a match they were gone. She nuzzled her boy in the crux of his neck. She breathed in his sweet smell.

Greek, Aequian, and Etruscan. Dacian. Elymian, Faliscan, and Ligurian. There were so many more. Messapic, Minoan, Oscan, Umbrian. And more still. The names belonged to other planets and other worlds. They belonged to craters on the moon. The professors came to listen, and Gary let them in.
It's for science
, Gary said.
It's for their research
, and she tried not to be angry. He was looking for his son, that's how she thought of it. His son who sat all day and rocked in his chair. Who didn't play with the trucks they bought him, who didn't listen to music or clap his hands or sing. This was his way of keeping something when everything else was lost.

•

Healers came, too, and believers in reincarnation. Serious men in suits who tracked snow into the house. Women who wore beads and let their hair go long and gray. Gary listened to them when they talked about children who spoke languages from other lives. Who'd lived a thousand years before and remembered what they saw.
It happened on the Pentecost
, he said.
That's just how it went
. The Galileans spoke a dozen different languages so the visitors could understand. They spoke languages they'd never heard because that's how God wanted it. He talked about taking Nicholas to church, to have him feel the Spirit. He wasn't working long hours anymore. Most days he didn't go into the office. His cell phone was never charged.

He started studying ancient Greek. He bought some used workbooks and struggled with the letters.
I've never seen a language like this before
, he said.
It's even worse than law school
. He wrote in his notebooks and learned the words for
father
and
mother
and
son
, and Holly made him coffee. She kept quiet because what was there to say. If those professors couldn't reach him with all their expertise, then what hope was there for Gary, who'd almost failed college French.

He crouched before Nicholas when he was ready. He held his sheet of paper and cleared his throat. “I'm not so sure about the grammar,” he said. “Guess we'll just have to see.”

“Ego eimi sos pateras.” He spoke loud as a preacher. “Pa-te-ras.” He thumped his chest to emphasize each syllable, and Nicholas opened his eyes.

“Pou ei?” He reached for his boy's wrist. Where are you? “Pou ei?” Gary asked again, but Nicholas wasn't listening. No, Nicholas was starting to rock again. His head tilted to the side.

Gary read the rest of his notes. He'd written all sorts of questions for his boy. Questions and explanations and things to calm him down.
Your name is Nicholas. And here is your mother. She loves you. When are you coming home?
He said these things in Greek and sometimes he stuttered and had to begin again, and Nicholas closed his eyes. He slept in his little chair.

“It's a start,” Gary said. He pushed himself up from the floor. “He heard me that first time. Did you see? Did you see how he paid attention?”

“Yes,” she said, “yes. I saw it all,” and Gary looked contented. He whistled a little under his breath. He opened his Greek grammar books and started where he'd stopped, and it looked like random scribbles from where she was. It looked strange and familiar both. He'd learn
all
the languages right up the tree, she could tell from the set of his jaw. He'd go backward in time to the beginning. Climbing up to catch his boy, who would always fall away.

She gave Nicholas an orange to hold, and he reached for it and smiled. Gary was waiting in the car outside, but she didn't try to hurry. Nicholas loved going to the grocery store. It calmed him even on bad days. He loved the fruits and the fine water mist from the sprayers. He swung his legs back and forth in the cart, and twice she had to straighten him out again and make sure his belt was latched. She picked some ears of corn. The beets looked good, and she filled up two bags with them so she could make a salad. Gary needed more vegetables. He spent too much time inside. His skin had gone from walnut to ivory, and the capillaries showed below his eyes. She needed to cook more often and clean up the house. She needed to put away the toys.

She was pulling a plastic bag off the dispenser when Nicholas dropped the orange. It rolled underneath the cart, and before she could pick it up he reached for her wrist and squeezed. He tilted his head. He looked at her and tightened his hold, and the expression in his eyes was something like surprise. He looked around the store. At the dented carts and the Easter lilies that were arranged beside the door. All the people in their muddy shoes, all their tired eyes. A little girl with red hair ran between the aisles. He looked at her and the ribbons in her braids and the way her dress swung around her knees. He squeezed harder and dug his nails into Holly's skin.

An older woman pushed her cart alongside them. “Excuse me,” she said. “I need to get by.” She was holding a folder full of coupons.

Holly didn't move, and she didn't answer. She stayed where she was, but Nicholas let her hand go anyway. He rolled back in his metal seat, and what she had seen in his eyes, whatever it was, had gone away.

“Nicholas,” she said. “Come back to me.” She set his hand around her wrist and held it there. Who knew the things he saw. His eyes were
dark when he was born. Dark and without end. He'd looked right past her in the birthing room. Like a tiny astronaut or an ocean explorer. When the nurses set him in her arms, his fingers had curled around her thumb but only for a moment. He pulled away and raised his fist toward the ceiling as if to show her something.
Look
, he seemed to say,
look at what you're missing
, and she was certain then that she'd known him always and that he'd always be a stranger.

“Nicholas,” she said again, “listen to your mama.” She unbuckled the straps in the shopping cart and pulled him to her shoulder. “There's nothing for you there,” but even as she said it she wondered if it was true. She rocked with him against the shopping cart. She stroked his curly hair.

H
e visited the city every night. He walked along its streets. His father lived there and the girl did, too, and the air smelled of cinnamon and salt from the water. He saw no cars and no bicycles anywhere, no other pedestrians strolling between the buildings. The rooflines grew lower as he came to the water. The asphalt was jagged and split. Sometimes he stepped into puddles or slipped where the road was muddy. Sometimes he took off his shoes. There were ladies behind the windows. They reached for him between the bars and tried to catch his arm. All around him there were flowers. Jasmine and plumeria and gardenias with their perfume. Guava and stephanotis, he knew them when he saw them. He knew all the birds and trees.

It was always summer in the city. The air was always warm. He couldn't find Leo or Gemini or Venus shining like the moon. He saw none of the southern constellations either, the ones he knew from books. He saw anchors and crosses and trailing vines. A moth opening its wings.
Remember these things
, he told himself.
Take them with you when you leave
.

The woman was waiting on the sand. She sat on a woven straw mat and strung blossoms from a basket, working them one into the next.
Sit for a while
, she said. Her skin was pale as the flowers she held.
We've been waiting here for hours
. Heat rose from the sand as if the earth itself were something living. He worked the blossoms onto
the string, and his fingers were sticky from the petals. They worked together until the sun rose and the crickets stopped their singing.

Ruby opened the blinds so the sun could shine across the bed. She stood there in her leggings and her purple flannel robe. “Pretty good,” she said. “I didn't even have to sing.”

She hadn't combed her hair yet, and her curls looked electrified. The oatmeal was ready, but he needed to hurry because it was already half past seven.

The kitchen smelled like coffee when he came out. She needed two cups to clear the clouds from her eyes, that's what she always said. She stirred the brown sugar into the oatmeal and the dried blueberries and brought the bowls to the round table. “Maybe we'll go riding this weekend,” she said. “Before it gets too cold.”

“The Chicago deal is heating up.”

“The air would do you good. It's better than the gym.”

“I'll know by Friday how the weekend looks.”

“Three thousand dollars for a tandem and now we never use it.” She tapped her finger against her front tooth, the one she'd had capped when she broke it on a cherry stone. She watched him scrape the edges of his bowl. She thought he was depressed. She'd say so any time there was an opening. That's why he slept through his alarm clocks. Maybe he should see somebody because it wasn't good to keep things bottled up. His father had been like that and look how things had gone for him. A heart attack at sixty-three and the bypasses couldn't fix things once the damage was done. Nobody could help him, not even that specialist from Denver. It had been over a year, and she had a referral for somebody good. A therapist with experience in bereavement.
Go see him, Ethan
, she always said.
You can go at lunch if you want. Or when you're done for the day
.

She had so many ideas. They could bicycle for Alzheimer's or walk for ovarian cancer. It would do him good to give something back, and he'd say,
yes, that'd be great
and
maybe next year
, and how could she understand? She'd never been careless or unlucky. Everything she touched blossomed. Everything except for him. The African violets on the kitchen windowsill were blooming again, and last spring she'd
built a greenhouse from a kit. She called it her church, and that's what it looked like. It glowed in the evening when she worked. She had cherry tomatoes growing in there and orchids in hanging pots. Strange prehistoric-looking things with open-mouthed blossoms. Their roots curled in the air. It smelled like mushrooms inside and rotting wood and something else he couldn't name.
Come with me
, she'd say.
Why don't you keep me company
, and he'd go no farther than the door.

“Those folks in Chicago can wait,” she said. “A couple of hours on a Saturday won't make any difference.”

“Two years away from the firm and you've forgotten what it's like.” Ruby worked for a judge now. A Carter appointee with silver hair, and things were always quiet in his chambers. She wrote bench memos three days a week, and he didn't mind if she worked from home.

“I'm just trying to give you some perspective.” She came up behind him to get his empty bowl and kissed him on top of his head.

Here's what he didn't tell her: Thank God for the clients in Chicago who yelled at him all day. It was October already, and the deal wasn't anywhere near closing. They still hadn't signed the letter of intent because one of the partners always had a problem. The indemnification provisions were too broad or too narrow and the definitions were unclear. He fixed each issue as it came up, but there was always another. Bless them because they filled his days. Bless the clients and the IRS and the treadmill at the gym. He ran until his T-shirt was soaked and stuck against his skin. He answered calls and wrote his memos and did pull-ups on the bar. He was exhausted by eight and asleep by nine, and that's where he found his peace.

She waited by the river and the reservoir and down along the sand. She waited only for him. She sat on a woven blanket, and the air was so heavy and still.
Don't you want to see your father
, she wanted to know.
Don't you want to meet my baby girl?
Farther down the men were coiling ropes. Their boats rocked in the black water. They were ferrymen and fishermen, and their work was done for the day.
Night
has fallen around us. Set your work aside
. She closed her eyes when she sang. Her voice never wavered.
Sleep without any worries. I'll always be your bride
. She sang songs he'd never heard before, but he knew how they went.

He had four alarm clocks on his nightstand. He lined them up like soldiers. Analog and digital and an old-fashioned one with a bell and another that vibrated the whole mattress. The manufacturer called it the Sonic Boom. It was designed for narcoleptics and the hearing-impaired, but even on its highest setting it wasn't strong enough. Only Ruby could wake him up. She pulled up the blinds and shook him by the shoulder, and if that didn't work she sang all the songs he hated. “Feelings” and “My Sharona” and “Sometimes When We Touch,” and her voice cracked on the high notes. She sang into his ear, and she looked so relieved when he opened his eyes.