Sign Languages (19 page)

But it was never God, hidden somewhere in the huge sky of the dome, he asked for. It was Filippo Brunelleschi. For only he could gather up the materials from the quilt and piece them together and leave them together for Evan to see until the unsticking came again.

The ill boy closed his eyes. He might stand up in a moment, the sweat gone. He might softly call out to Claudia or his wife and listen to his voice.

The medicine would be improved again. And such advances would keep him alive for twenty years more.

SIGN LANGUAGE

Friday

The 727 turned to the southwest and vanished into the thunderheads of midsummer. Most of his life, he thought, was captive in that thin shell. And as he turned from the window to face the crowded lobby two thoughts occurred. Or rather, one sharp picture and a hideous thought superimposed. There was a bare field, just off a runway—punctuated by curious lights in cages, white-topped fence posts—and a looming huge fragment of a tail section. This, he knew, was one of those lasting TV images, from the Dallas crash of a few years ago. But the second thing was the unpleasant thought; I'm alone.

Halfway across the carpeted area, Charles turned around and walked back to the glass and waited and watched an identical American Airlines plane rise and bank to the south and vanish. He worried after all those strangers and their families.

Back in the traffic, the car radio on, he wondered what he would do for the next three days. And finally, out of the city, the sun setting beyond the green hills north of Nashville, he still hadn't come up with any answers. Though, unwillingly, he acknowledged a second unpleasant thought: He didn't miss them at all. Not Annie or the girls. But of course not, you jackass. He looked at his watch quickly, always a too careful driver. They've only been gone an hour now. Soon they'll be there and he'd still have two hours to drive before he reached the quiet town and empty house.

Some of the guys at work had suggested driving up to St. Louis for a ball game, but Charles had turned down that and all other invitations until someone had nudged him and winked. The secretaries had pursed their lips.

“Batching this weekend, huh? Take-out pizza and beer.”

“Sink full of dirty dishes I bet.”

Now he wished he'd gone. He hadn't been to a major-league game in years.

A half hour from home he stopped for gas. And, at the register, he turned to the attraction of flashing lights and gaudy, homemade signs over the deli counter. He bought the big basket of fried chicken livers and potato wedges, a Hostess fried apple pie, and root beer.

But out on the road again, the villages and river bridges becoming familiar, he was ashamed of himself. He glanced down at his soft belly and measured its distance from the wheel by turning his hand sideways. Still four fingers away, though he sucked in more deeply than ever. This isn't good, he thought, and swerved off the road, scattering rocks against a roadside dumpster. He ate exactly four more of the greasy livers and hurled the sack and the fizzing A&W can into the overflowing container.

He hadn't driven on the highway after dark in years, and his eyes ached. He cursed other drivers who didn't dim their lights until the last minute and who seemed too close to his side of the road. He thought about all sorts of things, his mind the usual collage of odds and ends. He remembered a movie about a man who went above the Arctic Circle to study wolves; set down alone in the beauty of places where there are no people at all. Different from those Sierra Club calendars of such places. In the movie there was only the man surrounded by wild hearts and shallow, interpreting breaths.

It was almost eleven when Charles came into town. He'd promised Paul he'd come by no matter the hour for one of his famous Manhattans. But instead he drove slowly past their house on Oakridge and smiled guiltily because he saw all of them in front of the opened bay window, their backs to the street, playing some video game. The blue light of TV showed in most of the houses behind drapes and blinds.

He parked behind the pickup. Two vehicles in the driveway and one driver. But he didn't get out immediately, pick up the evening paper, unlock the doors, turn off the porch light Annie'd left on for him. Instead he watched the moths circle the yellow bulb, his mind busy with all the usual tangle, his breath a little shallow. He felt the tightness in his chest which often awakened him, worried him, worried him even more because he hadn't told anyone. Though he was sure it was anxiety, stress from work. His stiff penis pushed at his khaki pants. His breathing reminding him of the moment Molly, the oldest, was born.

After a while he picked up the paper and unlocked the door. But inside, he decided to leave the porch light on. Afraid of the dark? he thought. “Nothing'll get you, you know.” He spoke and smiled at what he told the kids when they all came home after a Disney movie or Wendy's.

He walked through all the rooms pulling down windows and closing blinds and curtains. In the girls' room he got on his hands and knees and dislodged a startlingly real doll baby from between the bunk-bed rails and the wall. This was Susan's, the four-year-old's, favorite place to stash things. In the dimness under the bed he confronted a row of carefully arranged animals and dolls. Tigers and bears and the incongruously small Ken and Barbie.

At midnight he shut off the local radio station's classical hour and sat at the kitchen table, his eyes rummaging over familiar things, many of them almost-decrepit wedding gifts. Last week he'd tried rewiring the sixteen-year-old toaster that gladly accepted bread and instantly, in some electrical supernova, produced squares of charcoal. But now there was the new one with the latest options, extra-wide slots for bagels, in the ritzy patina of brushed stainless steel.

Charles listened for a moment to the buzz of his thoughts and heard his concern for aging faucets, failed cabinet locks, proposals due at work, the muddled melody of something by Brahms.

He thought about how he hadn't been this alone in years. He simply couldn't remember when. He recalled from nowhere the picture of a girl named Brandy sitting astride him, her small breasts jiggling in the firelight. From a camping trip in college. He'd considered camping and canoeing a passion then. But now he thought about how elaborate and purposeful it all was. Choosing this item over that. Being superior and particular. The now-embarrassing extolling of nature's virtues. And he'd never gone anywhere alone. There was no solitude, communion, whatever those hip phrases had been. He'd sawed off his toothbrush handle to save space. He'd exaggerated his Cherokee ancestry. There was seduction in tents and canoe bottoms. He saw his own bare ass pumping away, the silver canoe drifting between banks solid with pines and French mulberry.

He wanted something to happen now. He pushed the everyday thoughts away. His life right now was not taken up with his wife, the girls, the office, his blood pressure, taxes, his mother's failing health. For a moment he remembered he'd promised he'd phone her after Annie and the girls left for his brother-in-law's wedding in Miami. Then he snagged himself on Annie's promise to call in the morning before the rehearsal.

“I'm hoping a woman won't answer,” she'd laughed. He saw her long, bony face. They rarely kissed, though they made love often and ferociously. She turned her ass up now and he came at her from behind, their only contact the wetness of groin and buttocks.

Charles took a long, hot bath until his toes and fingers wrinkled. He kept adding the precious steaming water until it was completely gone. He washed his legs and feet; he never got below his knees when he showered. He dozed off in the water and came back in a chill, his watch on the top of the toilet tank fogged on the inside. The cold water raised gooseflesh.

In the bedroom he turned back the covers then went and locked the bedroom door. He turned off the lights and lay still. But what did he want to happen now? Something unusual, he answered himself. Something wonderful and strange. Something from a pleasant dream or exotic movie. Or maybe not even pleasant. But mysterious. He was sure such things must happen to other people. Isn't that what shows in some eyes? Or were those rich people, celebrities on TV, and was that just money and drugs?

He put his fingers to his forehead. He wondered if Annie had ever had such a thing happen. She seemed light on her feet. “Happy,” he said aloud in the dark room, the edges of the blinds rosy from the streetlight at the corner. But I'm fine there, too. It wasn't happiness. That took place in tents, in canoes, at Molly's birth, the placenta like some heavy wet scroll rolled up tightly.

Hush, he told himself. Listen. What is there to happen? And it wouldn't just happen by itself.

Charles got up in the dark and straightened the covers. He took some blankets out of the closet and walked to the brick patio. Outside the sky was clear; he had never really learned the constellations, though once, long ago, he'd gone out at his parents' every night with a star chart and a flashlight. But hadn't that ended up in a tangle of opened clothes and elbows? Or maybe it'd been too hard or he'd lost interest with no one to impress.

He made a pallet behind the row of potted, blooming vincas and leaned against the rail, watching the motionless shadows. A dog barked twice. The hedge at the back of the yard needed trimming. Charles lay down and covered up. A gust of warm wind rattled the bamboo chimes; the sound the clatter of bones.

His head was full of movies and work and images of girls and women and the girls as women, their narrow hard butts now wide and embarrassing. Elvis, the family cat, came up the steps, curious at the strange sight. He put his gray face up to Charles's, and Charles took him into the bed. He'd never slept with a cat before, or with a dog. For a long time they both fidgeted.

Saturday

The third time Charles awoke he swung his legs off the couch and sat up stiffly aching in a dozen places. He rubbed his eyes and noticed he'd left the muted TV on, which now showed some children's cartoon with animal-people, in ugly colors, locked in dreadful combat.

Tasting his own sour breath, he saw it was almost one o'clock. He wondered when he'd pulled the den drapes closed. Rising, he turned off the TV, opened the heavy drapes, the bright summer light rebounding off the bricks of the patio, needling his tired eyes.

He poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot he'd made at daylight after the neighbors' whispering had first wakened him. Sitting rigidly over the cup in the dainty, cheerful breakfast nook where he'd always felt too large and clumsy, he winced in embarrassment.

“Shhh… come look. See him? Over there on the patio. See?”

“Good lord. You think he's okay?”

Charles had barely opened his eyes, his face wet with dew, cat hairs on his tongue and lips.

“Maybe it's a heart attack.”

“Maybe Annie kicked him out or something.”

They had both laughed like naughty children.

Charles had realized he was the topic of the Hallistons' conversation, the whispered voices as faint as the early morning light. But already the temperature was in the eighties, and though he wanted to lie still until Sam and Karen left the low hedge twenty feet beyond his head, he was terribly hot and miserable. Finally, their whispers lower now, more conspiratorial, he hurried them by groaning theatrically and tossing this way and that. Then he listened carefully over the sound of early mowers and the clink-clink of sprinklers until he heard their patio door open and close. Charles tried to sit but couldn't, his spine a complicated network of aches. He had to turn gingerly onto his stomach and work himself to his knees by using the outdoor furniture until he sat, breathing shallowly under the shade of the pastel-striped table umbrella.

“Jesus Christ.” He pulled a damp sheet over his twisted boxer shorts. He'd popped two buttons off his pajama tops. He'd kicked out in the night and overturned two pots crowded with the white stars of vincas. The black dirt had been taken up into the bedding and his legs were streaked with the grime. Charles shook his head and began cleaning up. He scooped the dirt into the pots and gathered the bedclothes. It was full daylight before he finished and realized he was soaking with sweat and still outside in his underwear. Elvis sat on the steps down to the yard and stared at Charles, who, passing by, gently pushed him off the terrace.

The second time he'd awakened, he'd been asleep on the couch. It was nine by the VCR when Annie phoned. His mind had been full of retreating dreams, the voices of the Hallistons in the hedge, mortal embarrassment.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

And she'd talked on in her level voice full of straightforward information. Good descriptive details of their flight, her parents' health, the progress of the wedding. He'd talked to the girls, their own voices full of cheer, the sound of birds, of innocent animals celebrating without any heaviness at all.

Now it was afternoon and Charles went to the kitchen and poured out the bitter, hours-old coffee. What foolishness, he thought. “Silly bastard.” His concerns now including the patio business, Sam's and Karen's voices, the tone of his wife on the phone. Her voice like a stalactite, fifteen years of accumulation. Steady in the face of operations, death, weddings, pain, and disappointment.

Make me like her, he thought, and was surprised because he had thought he was almost exactly like her already. Aren't I? Isn't that why we married, live together?

The rest of the day he worked hard at all the tasks he should already have done. He hosed down the brick walk and the front porch. He touched up the faded picnic table. He waved brazenly at the Hallistons as they left for the tennis courts.

So I'm alone for a day and I come unglued, huh? He laughed at himself and shook his head at the whole vague idea of something wonderful and exotic. That's the movies talking, not me. And, for the longest time, he considered the devilish power of movies and rock music and commercials over our lives as he trimmed a hedge, even combed out the cat's gray, shedding hair, its desperate claws scratching at the bricks.