Above The Thunder Part 20

Jack closed his eyes, felt the viscous cold soup begin to soak through his sweater, but he didn't have the energy to take it off and find another one. He listened to the drone of the tape, to the crash of the tide against the rocks outside. It sounded a little like it might be sleeting, the icy hiss of weather that made him cold just thinking about it, his bones frozen wax, every rib a cold taper. Dying didn't scare him. What scared him was the possibility of something beyond, something continuing. Spirit without body was repugnant, desire no longer limited by the boundary of skin, expanding to fill the universe, love like sound waves going on forever, not stopped by the density of flesh. How could he ever keep track of himself when his margins were infinite? He concentrated, tried to conjure a G.o.d to pray to: if there was just someone who would listen, he could make a good case. All he wanted was for an exception to be made, that if there was an after-ife or continuance of some kind, he be permitted to opt out. What he wanted after death was death, not life. He was tired, but it wasn't that, not really. It was the idea of an eternity of not getting things quite right.

But now wasn't the time to think like this. Right now what he wanted was exactly what he had, the mohair blanket on his lap, the thick navy-blue fisherman sweater, the raw New England autumn out there and, inside, the thick fiesta of Anna's soup. If he had only known this before, humbled himself to the dignity of small pleasures, how happy he would have been. Now that he was leaving, what he loved most were the feelings things evoked, not the things themselves. The cozy house with its rough-hewn wood and wide-planked floors, the way his thick-socked feet glided over the lemony varnish. The slabs of quarter-sawn oak that made up the cabinets and counters. How could he have known these things would matter? He felt a little cheated. If he knew happiness-or what could it be? Peace?-was so near he wouldn't be sick now, wouldn't have left the solid shelter of Stuart for the transitory pleasure of other men. Flynn's company brought him such comfort every evening. The two of them sat before bed listening to The Tokens or Johnny Nash or The Fifth Dimension. Sometimes he revisited his boyhood, a happy one from this distance. Flynn would play "A Horse with No Name" and he was back in 1973, a ten-year-old on Christmas morning, inhaling the scent of frozen car seats, mad with excitement about the Risk game balanced on his lap as they drove to the house with the dozens of cousins. If he had known the pleasure of nostalgia, of remembering, his life wouldn't have been all about racing forward with a desperate need to erase everything that predated the version of himself he considered most true.

He saw little-girl Flynn out of the corner of his eye, just outside the French doors. When he turned, he saw that she was talking with someone out there, though through the dripping windows and shadowy dark he couldn't see who it was. Maybe their mail carrier who often stopped to chat. It wasn't Anna-he heard her clanging around in the kitchen. He squinted. Flynn looked somber, unhappy maybe, the way she looked when Anna asked her to do something she didn't want to do. Jack waved his arms, but neither Flynn nor the man she was with paid any attention. He stood, his head dizzy and swimming. He placed one hot hand on the cold gla.s.s, pressed his face against it, but there was no one out there now. From somewhere, geese were calling out their coordinates, and layered over that sound, the whistle of a train from a quarter mile away. He sank carefully to the floor, dizzy with sharp pains coming from odd places-it felt to him as if his entire nervous system had been rewired. The skin under his fingernails was raw and tender, his knees were so cold they were numb. He took a deep breath, concentrated on the five things he found most exquisite: One. Flynn coming in with the fresh sea air clinging to her hair and clothes. Every evening, this was their ritual, Flynn pressing her face to his face, touching his neck with her cold hands that smelled of seaweed and brine. Flynn could entertain herself for hours with driftwood and seaweed. The mermaid girl, the little changeling.

Two. The warm bath Anna drew for him every night. Usually she had fresh pajamas on his bed when he came out, like Stuart used to. Sometimes a pot of mint tea and Pilot bread biscuits with blueberry jam.

Three. What was three again? He bent his head to his knees, tried to get lower than the curtain of dark sweeping over his vision. The bed itself was three, a huge walnut sleigh bed with sideboards wider than most bookshelves. It had a feather bed under the bottom sheet and a thick down comforter encased in a duvet of Egyptian cotton, sweetly laundered with French lavender.

All was right with the world when he climbed into this bed, and everything-number four-was as perfect as the world could get when Flynn climbed in beside him. Anna let her play outdoors for the hour while Jack was bathing, and he'd taken to flickering the bathroom light when he stepped out of the tub to let her know that he was ready for her.

In she would come then-five-and lie beside him until he fell asleep, chattering away about her previous lifetimes or conversations with the spirit world. She left a trail of sand in his sheets, a whole little beach at the bottom of the bed.

How was it he had lived all these years without having known the pleasure of children? He should have taken the idea of fatherhood more seriously, should have considered having a baby with Jane and Leila. He and Stuart could have shared custody. Jack hoped Stuart would come to the birthday party Anna was throwing for his fortieth. He'd seen Stuart a few times since moving to Maine. Last Memorial Day Stuart and his partner, David-whom Jack despised for his wheedling insincerity-came for Anna's annual barbecue. There was another time, too, though the circ.u.mstances of his visit were fuzzy now-sometime during a summer month, but he didn't know for sure what he remembered and what he had conjured. Like the yellow bird, the riotous plume that was Hector.

Jack had tried to tell Hector, tried to make Hector see the danger of physical love. A few weeks after he discovered Hector's secret married life, Jack started up with him again. As simple as that. He'd been at Stuart's recovering from pneumonia, his long idle days besieged with exhaustion, too weak to work but with an overwhelming restlessness that drove him out of the house. Hector was where Hector always was, the whole delicious feast of the boy filling the circle of his skull, Hector's skin shedding its own honey-colored light in the shadowy later afternoon.

Jack had talked his way into Hector's apartment and for four months he went there every morning after Hector's wife, Rosaria, was at work. He stayed sometimes until Stuart was due home. Hector was falling in love with him-he never said as much, but Jack could see it in the way Hector became more himself in Jack's presence. He stopped asking for money, stopped the swaggering pretenses, and became more boyish and lovable than ever in his New York Yankees sweatshirts and old jeans. There were days when Jack didn't even have to ring the doorbell; Hector sometimes waited and watched for him from the window that overlooked the streets. Sometimes they just lay in bed, side by side, silent.

Jack insisted on being safe, persisted in precautions. One day, though, Hector rolled off the condom Jack had just rolled on himself. "Hey, man, I'm clean, all right? I know you are, too. I hate these things."

"We have to. We need to," Jack said, but then Hector's mouth was traveling everywhere, his skin and hair and hands like cool cream on Jack's fevered body and it was just that once, or just a few times, and he told himself nothing bad could come out of something that was tilted so exactly to perfection; the afternoon, the exquisite body of a boy who loved him, blue pieces of sky opening like wings.

By Thanksgiving, though, Hector was nowhere. The apartment was vacated, as if overnight. He wasn't on the street corner or in the nearby bar where they sometimes stole away in the after-dinner hours for a quick beer. Jack never saw him again and, if he hadn't called Stuart one last time, December twenty-first, the day he left his little s.h.i.thole efficiency after meeting up with Anna, he would have never known.

"I'm calling to wish you a Happy Holiday, and to tell you goodbye. I'm moving in with Anna until after Christmas," Jack said.

"You are?" Stuart sounded baffled.

"I am. I'll be in Maine."

Stuart was silent. "Listen, I needed to talk to you anyway."

"What's up?"

He paused. "Hector is looking for you. He came by here the other day."

Jack's heart started to pound. "What did he want?"

"He wanted you. He was angry. Really angry."

"Well, Hector's an unpredictable boy." Jack heard the table being set on Stuart's end, the unmistakable heavy clank of the good silver on the bone china. They were having a dinner party, Jack heard with a pang. How could he stand this?

"Jack, this is no longer my lookout, but I still need to ask. Is Hector sick?"

"How the h.e.l.l should I know that?"

"Does he know you're sick?"

"Again, how should I know? Hector is, shall we say, socially gifted. I am not the only name on his dance card."

A year after moving in with Anna, Hector came to him in a dream. He was wearing his signature yellow shirt and wingtip shoes as shiny as a beetle. He wanted money for cab fare. Jack peeled off bill after bill but still Hector didn't take his hand away. More, he kept saying, I need more, It's going to take a lot to get me there, I'm going far.

Flynn was hovering above him suddenly as he sat on the floor. She was wearing a beret and Irish dancing shoes. "My grandma wanted me to ask you if she should run your bath now." She bent down until her face was inches from his. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Yes," he said. "I'm just resting." She put out her hand to help him up. He stood, his balance unsteady. His bath. Flynn-girl with her sea scent. His freshly made-up bed. "Sweetheart, who were you talking to out there?"

She snapped her head around. "What do you mean?"

"I saw you through the window here. I saw you talking with a man."

"You could see him?"

"Certainly."

"What did he look like?" Flynn said.

Jack saw Hector as he was in the early months. The yellow silk shirt, the smooth perfect ovals of his fingernails. "What did he look like?" Jack asked. "He was beautiful. Spanish eyes and skin. He liked yellow." Jack chuckled. "Every now and then he used to talk about getting a dog. Hector loved dogs. I don't think he ever got one, though." He turned his head and saw Flynn's dog beside him. "Oh, he would have loved Baby Jesus." The dog wagged his approval, cleared the coffee table with his tail.

Flynn looked down at Jack, who didn't seem to be looking back at her. The newspaper boy had been out there, a boy from her cla.s.s who liked her because she was the only one who didn't make fun of him. But the boy had red hair and thick gla.s.ses, so that wasn't who Jack saw. Flynn hadn't seen anyone but Erroll, her cla.s.smate. But when Jack started talking about the man in the yellow shirt, there he was, standing right beside Jack as vivid to her as Jack himself was. Outside, she'd felt something behind Erroll. This must be whom Jack saw. Someone had been talking to her about birds. A Spanish man in a yellow shirt. Hector. The man's name was Hector; he was the spirit she sensed, yes. He needed her to understand something about the Canada geese, the real story, and not the one she was taught in school last week. Listen: This is the truth about heaven and earth.

"Who was the man?" Jack said now, looking straight at her.

"He was Spanish. He wanted to tell me things. He wanted me to go with him to play soccer. He says you'll play, too."

"No," Jack said, inexplicably relieved. "I have never played soccer. I don't know how. Did you bring in the newspaper?"

"But you will," Flynn said. "You will play soccer one day. He said you would."

"Now stop this nonsense, Flynn. Stop inventing stories that upset everybody."

She frowned, anger flashing across her face. "You asked. I was telling you only because you asked."

Later, Flynn moved close to Jack as they lay in bed. Things were about to change. Down by the train today, she saw three geese. She understood what it meant. Her teacher explained how far the geese had to travel and how tired they got. Three together meant that one was sick or dying, and was being led to the ground by the other two who would stay with the sick goose until it died or got better. The goose in the middle of the formation would die. Flynn knew she probably didn't have magical powers, but sometimes, she slipped out of herself. Sometimes she became whatever she looked at long and intently. The bird in the middle was falling more than flying, the wind rushing around the pinfeathers was as loud as thunder when the sick bird tried to beat its wings against the air. The world through its eyes was milky and shadowed, and Flynn smelled the rain in the cold wind, felt the bird's breathing in her own chest and how it couldn't get deep enough into her lungs. The other two geese honked, the hinges that worked their jaws clicking as they opened and closed their beaks. There was a smell of rotten meat coming from the the sick bird; something spoiled in the flattened oily feathers. The birds were looking for a landing place, a place where two would fly away after one died. Until now, she didn't understand why she was being shown this.

Listen: This is the truth about heaven and earth. Sometimes things turn upside-down. The birds see you. To them, you are a faraway star. You are in their heaven, walking in their heaven, just as they fly in yours. And, listen, listen: sometimes we are like the birds, too. We come from there to here, to help fly you home.

"Jack," Flynn said, though she saw he was almost asleep.

"Yes, love," he said.

"Listen, this is the truth about heaven and earth: When the geese die, they fly down. When we die, we fly up. We live in their heaven, and they live in ours."

"Hmm," he said.

There was more she was supposed to tell him, but he was snoring now. She needed to let him know that his time was near, and that the man in the yellow shirt, Hector, was here to help him. He would wait with Jack, just the way the birds waited. Hector was sitting on the bed, touching Jack's hair. Flynn kissed Jack goodnight, and stood to go. She turned around at the door. Hector was right behind her. She looked at Hector, then back at Jack, confused. Maybe this was just his way of thanking her, or of telling her to leave him alone with Jack. But when she walked out into the hallway, Hector followed. When she put her hand on the banister to go downstairs, Hector put his hand on her shoulder, wrapped her in a soft and suffocating embrace, and she began to weep with fear, with what she thought she now understood. Hector hadn't come for Jack. He had come for her.

ELEVEN.

VENUS IN PIECES.

Stuart was halfway to Anna's before he realized he hadn't gotten Jack anything for his birthday. Even after all this time, after all that had happened, he couldn't just let it slip by-he'd never let a birthday go by unacknowledged. This year was the big one, his fortieth, and Anna was planning a party.

Of course, more generous ex-lovers would say that Stuart's presence was enough, that risking a stable relationship with a partner of nearly a year was more gift than Jack deserved. Jack, of course, wouldn't see it that way. The one birthday Jack would never forget was his own. Stuart had resigned himself to it long ago-shopping for his own birthday and Christmas gifts, dragging Jack along as punishment while he went into every kitchen store, every clothing boutique, intentionally not buying what he'd picked out weeks before until he saw the suburban-husband glaze in Jack's eyes.

David had thrown a fit when Stuart mentioned his plans. Anna had called one Sat.u.r.day afternoon, asked if he would come to Jack's party which might be a full-blown celebration or just an intimate gathering, she hadn't decided. But either way. Sure, we'll be there, Stuart said. David was so easy-going, so good-natured and trustworthy that Stuart took for granted that he would come along or not care that Stuart wanted to go. But one night, not long ago, Stuart had gone too far. David listened, thin-lipped and pale, as Stuart detailed the anguish of loving Jack, the way it felt as if every cell in his body had been infused with the man. It felt, he said, as though his very DNA had spiraled with Jack's; to fully disentangle himself would take years of careful unraveling. David shook his head and looked away.

Stuart and David had a great place in Worcester, a rambling-once genteel, and now shabby-genteel-three-bedroom Victorian with rococo accents and innumerable gothic archways. David was director of libraries for B.U. and there were dinner parties nearly every weekend for one group of David's colleagues or another. Stuart, having finally finished his Ph.D., was teaching as an adjunct while he searched for a tenure-track position.

He and David had been painting the living room when Anna called, were trying to find just the right tone of yellow. They had fourteen samples from the paint store, and had narrowed it down to nine. "I think b.u.t.tercream," Stuart said, "b.u.t.tercream with the trim in Winter Sunlight."

"You're kidding? Winter sunlight is not a submissive shade. I think b.u.t.tercream with plain old eggsh.e.l.l would be friendlier." They stepped back and stared, then laughed. "We're such f.a.gs," Stuart said, and rolled the lightly coated sponge down the front of David's sweatshirt. He answered the phone, talked to Anna for five minutes, and then went back into the living room.

"Who was it?" David said.

"Anna. We're invited up to Maine next weekend. Jack's fortieth." He rearranged the plastic drop cloth so it covered the skirt of the sofa.

"I don't think so," David said.

Stuart shrugged. "Whatever. I'll be back Sunday night." He walked over to the fireplace, not sure that the mantel should be anything but white. Maybe off-white.

"I mean, Stuart, I don't think it's a good idea for you, either."

He turned. "Why?"

"I think it's perpetuating your relationship with Jack. In the long run, your way is more painful." Stuart just looked at him. "The relationship is over. You've already grieved for the man once, do you need to do it all over again?"

"What's it to you? It has nothing to do with you. With us." He gave David a quick, light kiss before turning back to the problem of the yellows. One of the things he loved most about David was that he could speak so freely; insults and sarcasm had always been the price of being candid with Jack.

"I really don't want you to go. I'm asking you not to go."

"You're being silly. Insecure and silly."

But David hadn't backed down. "If you leave, I might or might not be here when you come home."

Stuart had looked at him evenly. "Is that some sort of threat?"

"No. It's just that I have to think about what it means to have a partner who doesn't respect me when I feel strongly about something."

"Okay," Stuart said. "I understand." David didn't mean it. Or, if he did, they would deal with it when he got back. All those years with Jack had squashed his panic response. Stuart no longer felt unhinged and desperate every time his lover slammed out in anger or wasn't precisely where he said he would be. Still, David hadn't ever come down so strongly before. Was he was serious?

Stuart would talk to him later from Anna's, he decided, speeding through the tunnel in the forest green Jeep Cherokee he and David had bought just last week. The seats were leather and the car even smelled rich. He loaded Thelonius Monk and Coltrane on the CD player, hit shuffle, and picked up his phone. No. Not now. Why stir it all up now?

He stopped in Portland to browse the shops. What the h.e.l.l could Jack need or want? Clothes? Books? DVDs were always a safe bet. At a Blockbuster, he found a digitally remastered boxed set of Robert Mitchum's lesser-known movies, as well as every one of Ben Affleck's movies-Jack's other schoolboy crush. For Flynn, whom Anna had said was into Irish dancing, he found Riverdance in addition to the G.o.d-awful sequel.

It had been snowing lightly when he left Worcester, but it was seriously winter up here. The pines and spruce were bent under the weight of ice and snow.

He stopped at an inn just an hour away from Anna's for a cup of tea, and to get out of the weather for a bit. In the back dining room, the one with windows on all sides, a huge stone fireplace was fat with birch logs. He'd been here twice before-once with David, on their way to a New Year's Eve party at Anna's, the second time alone, when he left on a whim to visit Jack but got control of himself in the end.

Stuart asked for a corner table, far from the madding crowd of tourists. It was always a good idea to sit quietly, to gather himself in, before seeing Jack. Occasionally, he felt nostalgic for the life they'd had, but not often; mostly he felt lucky to have what he had now, a man who was stable and loyal and who loved him unreservedly.

The dining room was full of families and noisy children. He ordered a brandy. Outside, the mountains were already fully sheathed in white. Stuart wondered about the rooms here, if they were as nice as the B&Bs where he and Jack used to stay. David had not a trace of sentimentality. The times when Stuart suggested driving up north to look at the leaves, he at first thought Stuart meant rare archived ma.n.u.scripts-as in the leaves of the frontispieces of old books. "And what's wrong with looking at the leaves in Ma.s.sachusetts?" David said, when Stuart clarified what he meant. Stuart just rolled his eyes. In his darker moments he wondered if they were too different to make it for the long haul. But there was something to be said for pragmatic love as st.u.r.dy as a handrail.

Maybe there would be significant snow acc.u.mulation tonight. Anna would have a pot of her amazing soup going, probably a fire, too. It was a little like going home, the clean warmth and gentle lighting, the mouth-watering food smells. He was grateful for Anna, felt blessed to be invited to her parties and for all her invitations-even if he didn't accept most of them. If not for the problem of Jack living there, he and David might visit more often. Both of his parents were gone, dead within fourteen months of each other to the day. His father had died painfully, of pancreatic cancer. One by one the adult children had filed in to their father's hospital room to say goodbye. Stuart's brothers and sister had eight kids between them. Stuart studied his father in the bed, propped up by the inadequate pillows, and it seemed improbable that this was the man who knew his boyhood, the arms that held him as a child. It seemed an odd thing to be thinking, that this man would be taking the knowledge of his childhood away forever. That was the worst thing, Stuart supposed, the way in which his family history just disappeared when his parents died. He supposed it was the same for his siblings, though not exactly. They had their children, their own families, for holidays. Both of his brothers lived in Ma.s.sachusetts, his sister in New Hampshire. Stuart had never been invited to their homes. He hadn't realized how estranged he was from them-he didn't feel estranged-until his parents were gone and he and David ended up either celebrating holidays alone or tried to forget Christmas altogether. It wasn't that his siblings shunned him, it was just that he didn't occur to them. He wasn't resentful for not being included, but he was hurt by their forgetfulness-intentional exclusion, he sometimes suspected-in leaving him out of family gatherings.

He sipped his brandy, turned his body away from the two families who had come into the dining room. Two terrible women in their thirties, fat suburban mothers wearing Land's End khakis and some poly-cotton turtlenecks they probably picked up at Kmart. He wanted to lean over and tell them if they wanted to sneak a cheap turtleneck into their wardrobes, the secret was to buy black, and black only. Nothing advertised price better than the dye lot of those rainbow colors. Fat women with soft a.s.ses and softer brains, sprayed hair and inferior children. Repulsive, these stupid cow families from the boroughs and provinces, with their conservative politics, mini-vans and self-righteous certainties.

What was wrong with him today? He rarely felt so hateful. Maybe it was the run-in with David, who seemed increasingly manipulative. David was subtle in how he applied pressure, Stuart had to give him that; often, not until a foul mood overcame him did he realize David was its source. Though it didn't quite feel like that now.

He turned back to the window. Outside there were two men with Russian-looking hats carving a block of ice with chisels and what looked to Stuart liked sanders. They had lights set up all around their work area as though they planned to be there a while. Stuart watched absently as the men worked. He started to relax a bit with the heat coming from the fire and the warm flush of brandy moving through him.

Someone at one of the big tables saw what was happening outside and before he knew it Stuart had four children crammed between his table and the window, craning their necks to see. Two of them actually stood in his sightline. A couple of bulldozers, knocking into his table and nearly upsetting his teapot. He looked over at the mountainous mother who smiled at him, self-confidence creasing her doughy face, as though it was only natural that they use the entire room.

"Excuse you," Stuart said, and with his foot pushed the chair opposite him when one of the boys knocked it with his thick body. How could a mother let her son get this way? Thighs as thick as spruce trunks, face pale from bad food and too much television. Stuart pushed the chair back, eased it into the s.p.a.ce the boy was occupying, but the kid was oblivious. He shoved hard a second time so the chair caught the boy in the middle and knocked him off balance. The kid stumbled and toppled. There.

Instead of getting the hint, though, to Stuart's horror, the boy started to cry. Conversation stopped at the tables, and one of the women, presumably his mother, called over, "What's the matter, Gerald?" The kid looked at Stuart, who returned his look with a hostile arch of his eyebrow. There. The world isn't moving out of the way for you, sonny. The boy's mother came over. "What happened?"

"He shoved that chair into me!" the kid said between sobs.

The mother looked at Stuart, her little mouth with its shimmery pink lipstick-pink lipstick against a red turtleneck!-shaped exactly like those old-fashioned bottle-openers. Apparently, the woman was waiting for him to deny it. Stuart downed the last of his Hennessey. "You need to teach your son some manners," he said quietly.

"Pardon? What did he do to you?" She looked at Stuart with a mixture of surprise and defensiveness, mostly surprise, which infuriated him.

"Ask him," Stuart said. "But kindly ask him at your own table and leave me to mine."

The woman's face darkened, and Stuart could see her retreating, ready to let it go. "He's eight years old. It wouldn't kill you to have a little tolerance." She wrapped a protective arm around the boy.

"Oh? Actually, you may want to take your own advice," he said. "About the tolerance part, I mean."

The whole noisy table of them departed, and Stuart was left in peace, though ashamed. He truly hadn't meant to get so angry. All-consuming fury wasn't his style.

He left money on the table and went out. The air smelled of bayberry and pine from the wreaths hanging on the porch, the perimeter of which was lit up with white Christmas lights. He sat in the car and just stared awhile at the white Georgian columns and felt the ache Christmas always brought up in him. He found his phone, dialed home, but didn't let the call go through. Too near Anna's now, too close to the whirlwind of Jack.

Stuart had brought his coat, the one with the mementos of Jack, and put it on when he got to Anna's. He didn't especially want to bring it, but he suspected that David had been going through his things and he didn't want this under his eyes. It hadn't fit in his suitcase and he didn't want to leave it in the car-some of the pressed flowers might be sensitive to cold. He juggled his armful of luggage and bags, knuckled the doorbell. Maybe he wanted to show it to Jack, maybe that's why he'd brought it along.

Through the gla.s.s blocks alongside the door, he saw Anna backlit by the yellow light of the hallway, blurring toward him. "Hi, dear," she said, opening the door. "I was just about to call the state troopers." She took his packages and hugged him. "We just finished dinner. We waited as long as we could."