Wide Blue Yonder (21 page)

It was a sin. Unless you were married. And even then, you couldn’t get all carried away.

Everything was quiet. The shower curtain crinkled when he took a careful breath. Little by little, he unwrapped himself and stepped out of the shower curtain. The bathroom was empty except for the bleach smell. Local Forecast went galloping out the door, his heart in a rush. When ever things got too clean, she went away.

But she was still here. She was in the bedroom, rooting around in the closet. Local Forecast was always embarrassed to have her fooling with his clothes. Without him inside them, they were just saggy baggy things of no distinction. Rosa hurled them into the laundry basket as if she didn’t think much of them either. Local Forecast hung back at the door. Fat Cat stalked past him and gave him a look as if Rosa was all his fault. Local Forecast wished he could get Rosa to stop and pay attention to him again. Maybe she didn’t like him anymore. It was such a desolating thought that a sound came out of him, a bleating sound.

Rosa looked up from the laundry basket. She muttered to herself, ya ya ya, led him back to the kitchen and fixed him a tuna
fish sandwich and iced tea. That made him feel better, although it wasn’t as good as the slapping and giggling.

Once he tried to follow her when she left the house but she only went as far as two corners and stood there until a bus roared up. She got on and waved him away, shoo. The bus scared him. It smelled bad. He watched it cough its way down the street and that night he tried to follow where it had gone but it didn’t leave any tracks. There had to be a street you took to get to Rosa and a street you took to get back but he hadn’t found them yet.

When they were married she could stay here all the time.

He was still eating his sandwich when the phone rang. He got up all in a hurry and answered it with his mouth still full: “Oca fucust.”

“Harvey? Do you have a cold? This is Elaine, how are you?”

He managed to swallow, though there was still some fish taste stuck behind one tooth. “Fair, light south winds, highs mid-eighties—”

“Yes, well, never mind about all that. I’m going to come see you and I’m bringing a friend who wants to meet you. So I hope you won’t get upset about it, OK?”

He put the phone up next to the television, where Man In A Suit was talking about isobars. He let it stay there for a while. When he brought it back to his ear, he could hear the listening sounds on the other end of the line. Then she said everything all over again, twice as slow and loud.

He hung up and went back into the kitchen, leaving Man In A Suit talking to himself. Rosa was in the basement, making the laundry machines run. He wasn’t hungry anymore. He didn’t see why people couldn’t just leave him alone.

Rosa went away. Then Yoo Hoo came. He sat on the couch with his hat pulled over his eyes, sulking. This day was not turning out so good. He heard Yoo Hoo come in and exclaim in her
loud voice about how clean the house was. “And this is my friend Robert. Would you like to say hello to him? I’ve been telling him all about you.”

Robert said, “Hello, Harvey. Very nice to meet you.”

No it wasn’t. Local Forecast spied on them through his hat, where they couldn’t see him looking. Robert had red hair and a red mustache. He had something in his hands, a light that went on and off. He held it up to his face, one eye at a time. Robert seemed to see him watching. “Here, do you want to see it?”

Local Forecast took it in his hand. It was some kind of metal stick. He couldn’t get the light to go on. Robert said, “You have to look into it. Take your hat off and I’ll show you. Now hold very still.”

The light shone straight into his brain and held him there. He said “A-aah.” Robert was on the other side of the light, looking in.

“That’s very good,” he said encouragingly. Local Forecast felt Robert’s cool fingertips on his forehead and at the back of his neck, steadying him. “Now the other eye.”

Obediently, he let his other eye open and flood with light. The light of the world.

“What’s that, Harvey?”

“Daddy said He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

The light shut off and he blinked. Robert said, “I didn’t quite catch it.”

“He can be a little hard to understand. He doesn’t get much practice talking.”

He still saw the white, even when he closed his eyes. Then when he opened them, everything had a ring of rainbow around it. “There now,” said Yoo Hoo, from somewhere inside the rainbow. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

He wasn’t sure yet. Robert said, “Harvey, is this where you sit to watch television? Can you see it from here?”

“No hazardous weather is expected today or tonight in central Illinois.”

“All right. How about the newspaper? Can you see to read the newspaper?”

Local Forecast waved it away. He didn’t like newspapers. He was never in them.

“And you don’t wear glasses. That’s really unusual. I’ve had to wear glasses ever since I was a kid.”

He hadn’t noticed Robert’s glasses before. They were the small kind and didn’t reflect much.

Yoo Hoo said, “I think he compensates. You know, gets used to seeing things a certain way.”

“As we all do, to some extent,” said Robert, with a smile in his voice. He liked Robert. “Harvey, I have to wonder if you used to have to sit this close to the television. You couldn’t get much closer, could you? Now I don’t want to scare you, but what if you got so you couldn’t see it at all?”

Local Forecast tried to put his hat on but they’d taken it away.

“Sometimes that happens when people get older. It’s like your eyes are windows and the glass gets clouded.”

Yoo Hoo said, “You should listen to Robert. He’s an expert.”

At windows? But he knew there was something serious that he was trying not to understand.

Robert said, “I want you to think about letting me help you. It’s not an easy thing. It’s an operation. And we’d have to go to my office and talk some more. But after everything’s over, I feel certain that you’ll see at least some improvement.”

Green Woman came on. She was talking about hurricanes. They hadn’t had any yet, but it was still early. Hurricanes were Big Weather. He was going to learn everything about them, the
statistics. They came all the way across the ocean, ninety, a hundred miles an hour.

“Serious. Important.”

“I can assure you.”

“operation?”

“doctor.”

Hurricane Harvey roared and roared. Nothing could withstand him. He blew trees into toothpicks, blew the shoes right off of people’s feet, the eggs out of chickens before they’d been laid. He was merciless. Noisy too. Hrhaaahaa. The window curtains fell in a heap. A lamp went smash. Yoo Hoo and Robert ran for the door. Yoo Hoo kept trying to talk. She said, “Now, Harvey.” He roared at them and they skedaddled.

After they left him alone, he had to sit down for a while. The glass thingamajig on the lamp was broken. And he’d have to put the curtains back up before it got too bright. His eyes were his own business. They couldn’t make you do anything unless you were in the no no no hospital no no no no humidity dewpoint precipitation.

They could put you in there without you even knowing. One day you just woke up and there you were. On the inside with the outside a million miles away. He made himself sit very still and remember. His tongue fluttered around his mouth, looking for a place to hide. Your mouth was always dry in the hospital. That was how you knew they came around with the medicine. They were sneaky about it, they did it when you weren’t paying attention.

There was a chair he used to like because it held you down when you might otherwise go floating off. The chair was in front of a wall and the wall stayed put right where you wanted it. The nurse said, Now Harvey. If you don’t eat your soup, you can’t have more milk. He didn’t know why you couldn’t have one and not the other. It was how they let you know who was boss.
Mamma and Daddy sent him new slippers and a Christmas card. The card said Christ and his love shall redeem us all. Christ had holy light shooting out of his fingertips. The slippers were too small.

The doctor said, That’s a mighty fine card, Harvey. Now don’t you feel bad about tearing it up? Because he had. He’d called Mamma and Daddy names out loud and he’d torn up the Lord God and now the doctor was going to tell on him. The doctor would put him in the cold bath and God would make him burn in hell and Daddy there was no telling.

The doctor said Calm down. We can’t have you acting up like that, you understand? It upsets the other patients. And it’s not good for you to get yourself so worked up. You don’t want another Treatment do you? I didn’t think so.

Mamma said, Your father has something to ask you. Stand up straight and look ye forthright. Daddy sat at the table in his big chair. In front of him on the table was the white bowl Mamma used for mixing. There was a crack like a dark hair down the front, turned so that there was no way not to see it.

Come here, boy.

He was already right there, so he didn’t know where he was supposed to go. He moved his feet up and down, trying to stay forthright.

Tell me what you see on this bowl.

Crack.

I can’t hear you.

A crack, sir.

That’s right. It’s cracked. Now tell me how the crack got there.

I don’t know, sir.

Well, I’ll tell you what I do know. I didn’t break it. Your mother didn’t break it. Frank says he didn’t break it. So that leaves you. What do you have to say about that?

His knees went cold. There was something he was supposed to
say. Only one something in the whole universe, and everthing else was fatal. He imagined that one right thing like the Holy Ghost, a bird circling away overhead out of reach. Daddy was waiting. He tried to think pure thoughts. He prayed that the bird would descend and light on his head and show him the way but his tongue couldn’t come up with even the taste of a right word. He didn’t break the bowl. At least he didn’t think he did. But he knew that wasn’t the right thing to say. If he said Yes, he did it, he could just take his punishment and get it over with.

But wouldn’t that be a lie? And what if that was the trap that was waiting for him, telling a lie because it came out of your mouth so soft? Mamma looked at Daddy and Daddy hitched his pants up, getting impatient. Then the Holy Ghost flapped right down on him and he knew the answer was to convince himself he really and truly broke the bowl.

It wasn’t that hard. He thought of all the ways it could have happened. He was trying to reach the raisin box and the bowl was in the way. Mamma told him to stay out of the raisins. Once he sneaked some when nobody was watching. And there were times he opened the cupboard doors and
looked
at the raisins, and plenty more times when he
thought
about looking at them. So it was easy to imagine how it might have happened, and from there to how it had happened. He saw the bowl from underneath, its smoothness and the lip or shelf that marked its rim. It looked a little like a flying saucer, if you were to see one from upside down. Then it wobbled and grew larger and slowly vibrated itself into the waiting air.

I did it.

What’s that, boy?

I broke the bowl. I went to eat the raisins and I broke it. I’m very sorry, sir.

He felt himself shining with white truth. He was dazzling. For just that one moment, he shone. There had to be a punishment
now. But he was unafraid, clothed as he was in his new righteousness.

Daddy spoke. So you disobeyed your mother.

He didn’t like to think of it that way but he had to nod, yes.

This bowl will never be whole again. It’s broken, just like your immortal soul.

He sniveled a little imagining his poor soul, all sad and cracked.

Now the difference between this bowl and you is that Jesus Christ has the power to restore you. If you let him. If you cast out pride and humbly repent. Do you want Jesus Christ to heal and cleanse you?

Oh, he did. The bowl of his soul. He saw it rise up on white wings.

Are you willing to sacrifice for Christ’s sake?

Frank came in the front door from school, whistling. He looked around, the air went out of his whistling, and he went back out.

It was a new question. Another something out there in the universe. But this time he knew what to say: Yes!

So Daddy led him down to the basement. Mamma sang Bring Forth the Royal Diadem. They stretched him out on a long table and Daddy prayed as he drove the spikes through his hands. They raised him up on the cross and he looked into the whitest light. It made his head split with pain. He screamed and tried to get away from it. A hot thread burned from ear to ear and the water poured from him so his skin wept and his teeth melted. Daddy said Oh hallelujah hallelujah and heaven was descending

But no. That was just the Treatment. It turned the inside of his head into blank whiteness and he knew he was leaving something out. There wasn’t one thing he could know for certain. Except the Weather, which was always there. So he sat in his usual place on the couch, hunched forward to watch the words scroll by like perfect clouds.

M
ost of my work is with people who want to quit smoking or lose weight. That’s the bread and butter. Then there’s your compulsive habits: counting floor tiles, cracking knuckles, hair pulling. Plus a few more you don’t want to hear about. I do stutterers. And agoraphobics, folks who get nervous about leaving the house.”

Elaine said, “How do you get the agoraphobics to come to your office?”

“Well, the really serious cases, I’ll go see them. And we use tapes a lot.”

She was somewhat distracted by the agoraphobics, the thought of them peering out from behind their shy curtains, but she soldiered on. “How about, ah, less specific problems?”

The hypnotist—hypnotherapist, she reminded herself, he preferred that—was ready for the question. “Low self-esteem and assertiveness issues. Lack of focus. Goal-setting. Grieving.”

Elaine stopped herself from nodding, and got down to business. “I want to be happy.”