The Antarcticans (14 page)

Lucifer extended a hand to help him up from the floor. “Do you believe me now?”

“About what?”

“That I’m working toward your best interests.” Lucifer swept his hands together as if he had just finished a particularly difficult job.

“Trust? I’ve been trained since the beginning of my life
not
to trust you.” Gavin felt a surge of courage bubble up in his frustration with the whole situation. “You think throwing a bone at me is going to reverse all that? Sending my wife on some mission to save the world? Appealing to her deepest need to help?” Gavin’s left hand began to tremble—a nervous tic that began when his father used to swat at him after a night of drinking.

Lucifer looked up at the ceiling then back down to his nails, inspecting them for perfection.

“Is it my name that confuses you?” Lucifer asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“My name, Lucifer. In your mythology, I’m the deceiver, God’s adversary, Prince of Darkness, all those charming titles. Is this why you’re so difficult to deal with? You actually believe I’m those things? You believe them because of a name?”

“I believe people when they tell me who they are.”

“And then you attach a whole history to them based on what you think you know. I’m curious, when did you decide what your name was?”

“I didn’t.”

“Ah. And has it informed your life at all? Made things easier or harder, because your parents chose a certain name, based on their lives, their knowledge or ignorance about the world?”

Suddenly looking panicked, Lucifer went to the nearest control panel and typed frantically at the images that were illuminating. “You need to go, Gavin. I have a situation I need to deal with. I appreciate your concern for me. It’s endearing really. I bet you never thought you’d be ministering to Satan.” He pointed to the door then disappeared into another room beyond where they were standing.

Unsatisfied with his visit, Gavin found his way out. He found it intensely frustrating when dealing with Lucifer. He drove up I-95 to Fort Lauderdale and made his way to Las Olas Boulevard. When he pulled up along the neon flashing light and pink peeling paint of the Elbow Room, he knew this was where he needed to go. Its run-down old-Florida feel made him nostalgic for a childhood he was always promised but never received. He settled in at a corner table, reveling in the noise and commotion of the tourist-fueled watering hole mixed with ocean breezes. Through the open front of the bar, looking out onto the ocean, he caught a glimpse of a large ship approaching the coast. The closer it sailed, the more he could make out the massive ship adorned with red-and-gold banding at the edges of the top deck. He knew it was the
Dragon
.

Gavin stood up from the bar, crossed the street, and headed to the beach. The
Dragon
was still a mile or so out, but he knew Joshua was on that ship. There were other cargo ships on the horizon, but they were dwarfed by the size of the
Dragon
. It was headed south and moving; some of the beachgoers were pointing to it. He heard them say it was a US aircraft carrier. Two US Coast Guard helicopters were racing down the coastline then banked hard and headed for the ship. Fighter jets screamed overhead and fired warning flares at it. Beachgoers scrambled, yelling for their children to get out of the water. They shoved their sandy towels into their colorful bags, folded up their chairs, and ran to cross Ocean Boulevard without their sandals, leaving debris of forgotten sunscreen and water bottles behind. The lifeguards were listening closely to their radios, receiving some sort of official instructions, while at the same time whistling for any stragglers to come in from the water. The balconies of the hotels lining the ocean were filled with onlookers, pointing, and their hands were over mouths, wearing general looks of concern and uncertainty. Gavin could imagine what they were thinking:
Are we being invaded?

Remarks about other attacks on American soil peppered the conversations around him. Gavin tried to reassure a few people who were jostling past him, but they brushed him off and kept moving. Feeling the waves push their way into his shoes, he walked farther into the water. He was afraid of what might happen to Joshua. Even though he was seventeen years old, Gavin still thought of him as a little boy, screaming with delight as he slid down the playground slide, singing “Happy Birthday” at his own celebration, and asking Gavin why there were stars in the sky. His boy was lying in the depths of a massive ship that was being approached by armed fighter jets with unknown intentions. Gavin was pale, cold, and helpless on a deserted beach, with his family unreachable. The skies continued to shriek and light up with warning flares. He stood and watched as if it were the Fourth of July.

The
Dragon
turned out to sea and increased its departure speed from the Florida shores on its way to international waters.

A lifeguard was tugging on Gavin’s shirt. “Sir, it’s time to leave.” She was frantic. “We’ve been instructed to remove everyone from the beach. You have to go to the other side of the road.” Her voice was raised—he could feel her fear. Her eyes were watery; her sun-bleached hair was falling out of its bun; and her whistle hung listlessly from her neck as her right hand held a red flag.

Gavin turned to her and placed his hand on the back of her arm. He held it there for a moment and looked warmly into her watery hazel eyes. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he said.

He made his way back to the Elbow Room, found his bartender, closed out his tab, and got in his car. He hadn’t finished the Scotch he had ordered—maybe he was fine to drive and maybe he wasn’t; he didn’t care right now. He sped along I-95 toward Florida City. Until he was about halfway there, he didn’t realize he was heading to see his mother. He pulled into the driveway, which was made of two slabs of concrete that extended from the curb to the single-car garage at the back of the lot. The door to the garage was only halfway down, and the back end of her late-model metallic-green Ford was sticking out.

He used his key and opened the back door to the kitchen, which was just off the patio. He smelled his mother’s rose-scented perfume, mixed with her particular brand of aerosol hairspray. It was a comforting scent from his childhood, and he often joked to her that when she went to meet her maker, her perfume and hairspray would precede her. He quickly looked around the first floor; everywhere he looked, he saw memories, Polaroid images in his head of times long ago. His sister, Emily, was so clear to him here. She was still young enough that she was perfectly healthy, playing with her dolls, offering teatime with her pink-and-gold plastic tea set from Kmart. The door to the staircase that led upstairs was open, and he heard some shuffling and mumbling. He looked up at the faded, threadbare carpet.

“Ma, you up there?” he yelled.

“What the…? Goddamn it, Gavin. I’m upstairs,” she called out.

He reached the top of the stairs before she was done talking. He looked over the half wall. This was the part of the house where she spent the most time. His father had converted it from an unfinished attic into a room where only children could stand straight up. His bedroom was up here when he was a kid. His
Star Wars
and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus posters were still on the walls, and his dartboard was peeking out from behind a stack of books his mother had piled against the wall. The window at the top of the staircase poured dusty streams of light through the dirty glass, enough not to knock over the books, not enough to read them. His desk from his high-school years sat against the wall where his bed used to be, and the desk lamp Father Jake had given him for his seminary school dorm was turned on.

On the desk, his mother had piles of coupons, separated neatly and organized by store. There were baskets full of discarded newspapers she had hacked up with her massive shears for the savings within them. On one of the walls, her name was spelled out in big cutout letters she had found in the ads:
Cathy Pennings
, each individual letter held up by a different-colored plastic tack. His mother was never interested in the actual content of the newspapers; she’d spend the first hour of every morning with her coffee and brandy, scanning through the wispy black-and-white local paper, looking for “the” deal. When she found one she was particularly excited about, she’d exclaim, “Now there you go!” and grab her shears and snip away. After she had cut it out, she’d hold it in her hand like a long-lost picture of her beloved, read it over carefully, then tell whoever was in earshot, justifying her extra time spent reading, “You have to read the fine print. They’re always trying to get you.” Gavin, always hearing his mother’s voice, found himself reading the fine print on just about any document he encountered in his life.

She was sitting in his old desk chair, facing the window, with two boxes between her legs. She was hunched over the contents, pulling items out and making organized piles of them on the desk next to her. She sat up straight, dropped what she was reading back into the boxes and looked up at Gavin. She ran her hands lightly over her thin wispy gray hair as if suddenly realizing she might look disheveled. “What are you doing here? It’s not Sunday.”

“There’s some trouble with Joshua. I thought you might want to know,” he said.

“I already know he’s a troubled boy. What’s he done now?” She moved her glasses to the top of her head and stood up, holding on to the chair until she could will her back into the proper posture she prided herself on. She was small now—Gavin thought she looked smaller with every year that passed—but her hair was straight, poised, and when she worked at it, coiffed.

“He had another episode—you know how he sees things and then hurts himself. I won’t go into the whole story, but I heard that…well, someone could help me, and I searched him out. His colleagues have Joshua now and won’t let me see him. Noila is away in Antarctica and…” His eyes were welling.

“Antarctica? What the fuck is she doing there?”

“Mom, please, language.”

She flung her hand through the air, dismissing his protest.

Gavin went through the rest of the details, eventually regaining his composure.

“Oh, I see.” His mother nudged his shoulder and pointed down the stairs. “Let’s get some tea. This isn’t going to be a short conversation.”

They were sitting at the square kitchen table, one side against the wall with a cuckoo clock hung above it. The other three sides had faded tiffany-blue vinyl-and-chrome chairs. They were incredibly trendy now but in the way that styles come back decades after one first encounters them. His mother set his Earl Grey tea in front of him.

“Frankly, I’m shocked you went after this man,” she said, “knowing who he is and all. Remember the story I used to tell you when we’d cook together? I’d come home from the grocery store, after collecting all the best deals. Then I’d launch into a story about Mr. Chun and all his children. You’d pull up a chair to stand on and begin unpacking all the food I bought. Then I’d point up to my watercolor of Mr. Chun and tell you to tell him thank you for the food.”

“Yeah, I remember now that you say it.”

“That was Tsao Chun. He’s one of the gods from ancient Chinese folk religion, or so I’m told. I discovered him on a trip to Chinatown in New York City. You know, when something just speaks to you?”

“You had me praying to a pagan god? Ma!” Gavin was exasperated.

“You’re damn right I did, and look over there. He’s right where you left him after all these years, giving me great meals and a son who comes and visits.”

“You’re drinking too much again.” He looked at her tea. “I saw that, when you were pouring.” He nodded over to the teakettle and the bottle of brandy on the counter next to it.

“Get over it. I’m going to be eighty-one next week. I don’t care if I drink too much, and what are you going to do? Talk me through every day and give me the courage to get through it? You don’t have time for that. You know the thing about brandy? It’s always there for me. Where else you going to find that? Not in Mr. Chun—that’s for sure. I stood by him for years, secretly saying my prayers. He was someone to talk to when I was standing here alone, your sister gone, your father dead from being mixed up in all his nonsense, and you, on fire with all that religion.”

“Wait, Mr. Chun was there? I thought you said he was some pagan god.”

“Goddamn it, Gavin! Put your religious hoity-toity bullshit away for a second and listen to me.” She slammed her teacup down, making a small crack on the side of the saucer.

“Sometimes, when your world is falling apart around you,” she continued, “you reach out, and you don’t have a fucking clue what you’re going to touch, but when you feel something—something real—rub against your fingertips, you grab it. Not because it’s the best thing to grab or the thing that makes the most sense, but for no other single reason than because it’s there, because it’s real.” She looked Gavin straight in the eyes. “Sometimes it’s a whiskey sour, sometimes it’s a god printed on a flimsy piece of paper, or it’s a lover who will hold you just long enough, even if they beat the piss out of you after. It’s your raw need driving you to make those decisions.” Her eyes were wildly angry and focused, and her hair had shaken loose from its sticky prison.

“Sorry, Ma. I didn’t mean to bring up the past,” Gavin said apologetically.

“This isn’t about me. Your world is falling apart, and you’re grasping. Under normal circumstances, you never would’ve become involved with this man. And reading that book he gave you? Well, that doesn’t even sound like you. But I get it. I’m just letting you know…I get it.” She shook her head back and forth.