Nearer Than The Sky Read online

  Because of the sky, the men in their plaid pants and bright yellow shirts are all inside the clubhouse, drinking thick liquor in fishbowl glasses, arguing with their candy-colored wives. The golf course is empty except for the carts, which could be carriages for ghosts today in the thick mist. I step around one of the empty carts and raise my face to the sky. I try to conjure a storm just by wishing.

  I can’t remember why I came here except that it meant I would not have to go home the first summer after my freshman year. I didn’t expect that it would be like this. The brochures only showed the castle and the lake nestled in the mountains like a fairytale place. They didn’t mention that we would be stuffed into small, hot rooms, or that we would be fed the leftover food we served in the chandeliered dining room.

  But as I walk across the dewy grass and the air is thick with electricity, this feels like freedom. Ma tried to convince me to come home. She was lonely now without Daddy. I knew the familiar acid taste of her pleas in the back of my throat, so I held the phone to my bad ear, and her voice was only a muffled hum arriving weak and pathetic after traveling through the tunnel of too many years.

  I walk across the impossibly green rolling hills of dreams. I can barely see in front of me for all the haze. The rain comes slowly this time, beading up on my hair and skin. It tastes green. When the thunder rolls under my feet and through the thick white air, I am not afraid. I have an agreement with the sky. An understanding. This is freedom, I think, spinning barefoot on someone else’s playground. And I trust the sky, because I can’t trust anything else.

  The next morning, I awoke feeling purposeful. I walked outside to the shed, wearing my nightgown and a pair of boots I found in the garage. They were probably Daddy’s, they were so big. The mother cat was lying defeated on her back, the four remaining kittens purring and burrowing into her. When she realized I was there, she opened her eyes and lifted her head.

  “I brought you some food,” I said. I’d gone to the grocery store and bought several cans of the same kind of cat food I bought for Jessica and a plastic food and water bowl.

  I set the bowl down near her, and she struggled to free herself from the hungry kittens. She managed to get away from them and they squeaked and crawled on top of one another, looking for her nipples. She ate until the bowl was empty, drank the water almost as quickly.

  “I’ll bring you some more later,” I said when she looked up at me. “Now feed your babies.”

  When I called the animal shelter they said I could bring her and the kittens by in the afternoon. They assured me that they’d be able to find homes for all of them, that they wouldn’t be separated until after the babies were weaned. I figured I’d stop by to say good-bye to Rosey on my way and then come back and get a taxi to the bus station. The buses ran twice a day to Phoenix. If I took the five o’clock, I’d make it to the airport in plenty oftime to catch a red-eye flight.

  I couldn’t wait for the lab tests to come back on the house. I already knew what they would say anyway. I couldn’t stand another night of sleeping on my mother’s couch, being awakened by the train every hour when it shook the house. I couldn’t bear another morning in that kitchen, eating macaroni and cheese out of the pot, or another moment staring at our old things. I missed the café. I missed the cabin. I missed Peter.

  When I called to tell him I was coming home, he knew not to ask about Ma. He must have heard the explanations in my voice as I sat staring out the kitchen window at the field of dead sunflowers. He only said, “Good. Joe will be fine here alone. I’ll be at the airport at six.” And then, when the lump in my throat grew so large I was afraid I might choke, he whispered, “I love you, you know.”

  I felt almost happy as I gathered my things from around the house. I picked up my socks and T-shirts, put all of my dirty clothes in the washing machine in the garage. There is nothing worse than bringing home a suitcase of dirty clothes. I finished the orange juice and milk. Took everything else that might go bad out of the fridge. I decided to leave the furniture in the rooms, though; let Ma deal with it when she got home. I didn’t want to expend another ounce of my energy moving things around this house. I left the box of syringes on the table for Ma to find. The open lid was like an open closet door, spilling her secrets, and I didn’t care anymore.

  When the laundry was done, I went outside to gather up the mama cat and her kittens. Most of them were sleeping, and the mother was cleaning herself. I set down the cardboard box lined with an old blanket and put my hands on my hips. “I know you’re not going to like this. But I haven’t got much of a choice.” And then I reached down and started to lift the sleeping kittens by the scruffs of their necks and set them gently in the box. The mother stopped licking her paws herself and looked at me. “Relax,” I said. “You’re coming too.” And she barely resisted when I lifted her up, feeling the sharp angles of her ribs, and set her inside. She only walked around in circles until she settled down, her belly exposed and ready for when they woke up.

  I carried the box carefully out of the shed, afraid to disturb them any more than I already had. I heard the phone ringing as I closed the shed door. “Shit,” I said. I set the box down and ran into the house. Ma didn’t have an answering machine, and I thought it might be Peter calling to get my flight information.

  “Hello?” I said, out of breath.

  “Indie, it’s Rich.”

  My heart thudded loudly.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Indie, I don’t know how to tell you this.” Silence. “Christ.”

  “Oh God,” I said. “Is it Violet?” I was conscious of my breaths. My heart was pounding so loudly, I could feel it in my temples and throat and chest. “Rich, what happened?”

  “It’s your ma. Something terrible. God, I don’t know how to say this.”

  “Ma?” I asked. “What’s wrong with Ma?”

  “It happened this morning when she went to the Safeway to get some formula for Violet. She took my car. She must not have been paying attention. She went right through a red light.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, bending over, my stomach feeling tight and sick.

  “She couldn’t have felt anything. The other car, it was one of those new SUVs. The impact of it . . .” Rich’s voice was soft, fading. “Are you okay? Please say something.”

  “She just got out of the hospital. She’s fine.”

  “Indie, there was an accident.” Rich’s voice was far away. It felt like snow, falling softly. Like a bird’s wings, it was so gentle. “She ran a red light.”

  NOVEMBER 10, 1999. Phoenix, Arizona. My mother pulls out of the Safeway parking lot into traffic. It is Wednesday, and everyone is headed somewhere. It is hot outside, and she has the air conditioning on so high, it is tickling the small hairs on her arms. Maybe she is listening to the radio. Tapping her fingers on the steering wheel with the rhythm of the music, or simply with impatience. There is a case of formula for Violet on the seat next to her. She is stuck in traffic only a few blocks from Rich and Lily’s house. She peers into the rearview mirror to check her hair. There is one curly silver hair that will not lay flat. She runs her hand gently across the top of her head, smoothing. She touches her pale pink lips. Opens her mouth just a little. She is only looking for lipstick on her teeth when the light turns green. And then she is moving again, with all of the other cars, a weekday, early morning parade. The station wagon in front of her is full of children, two of them are looking at her, making faces. The boy sticks up his middle finger, flipping her off. Brats. The light ahead turns red, and the station wagon comes to an abrupt stop. She steps on the brake and Rich’s car lurches forward, the case of formula almost falling to the floor. Irritated, she makes a face at the child who is still looking at her through the station wagon’s rear window. The light turns green, and she is moving again, and she is impatient now to get back to the house. She leans over to adjust the case of formula, which has slipped forward. It is heavy, and it takes a couple of pushes to ge
t it back on the seat. When she looks up again, the station wagon is farther ahead of her now, already through the light, but the child is still pressed to the glass, sticking his fat pink finger up at her in an easy gesture. She feels her skin grow hot, and she steps on the gas. But before she can decipher the meaning of yellow turning red, it is too late. Before she can remember the word for stop, the color for wait, the sound of accident the station wagon has turned right. Before any of this registers, the only color she sees is the blue of her knuckles and of the metal as it comes through her door. And then it is over. Just like that.

  THREE

  It began snowing that night. The temperature dropped down to twenty degrees and clouds moved across the mountains like a dark woolen coat. I stood outside after Rich called and watched them moving, covering the peaks’ shoulders. Enclosing them. The sky turned an impossible shade of violet before it grew black, and my fingers were almost numb with the cold. I had turned off all the lights in the house, and the blackness was absolute. The snow clouds swallowed the stars, and moon meant nothing other than a faint memory of something bright and white. It was so dark I could have had my eyes closed. I could have been asleep instead of standing in my mother’s backyard.

  Peter was on his way, flying for the first time in years, so that he could be with me by morning. Here he is in the midnight airport: buying a plane ticket and a magazine he knows he won’t be able to read. Sitting in the bar near the gate, digging in his pockets for stray dollars to pay for the beer. Smiling at the waitress who is distracted, tired. Airports are the loneliest places to be at midnight.

  Ma’s body had already been sent to the crematorium. I couldn’t imagine what kind of place that might be. When I tried to picture the building, all I could conjure was a shopping plaza in Phoenix. Target, Bank of America, Safeway, Crematorium. I pictured neon-lit aisles and cashiers in aprons. Gumball machines that dispensed ashes when you put in a quarter and turned the knob. Fake tattoos or Superballs.

  It started snowing that night. In a year it is easy to forget how cold winter is. Seasonal amnesia is the only way to survive in climates like this. It is almost impossible to remember the realities of winter when the sun is shining and the sky is bright. I turned on the back porch light and made my way to the shed, where I had left the kittens when the phone rang. They were crying and trying to stay warm. I carried the box into the house and set it next to the couch. I found another blanket and offered it to the mother cat, who would not look at me. I lay down on my stomach on the couch, my head resting on one of Ma’s stiffpillows, watching them wriggle and squirm.

  Peter said Chuck Moony would watch Jessica and the house. That he and Leigh would stay there to keep an eye on things while he was gone. He said that Joe could take care of the restaurant, that everything would be fine. But I knew that he was only thinking about getting on the airplane. That he wasn’t talking about the things that wouldn’t be fine. Remembering the time we almost fell from the sky is easier than remembering cold. It’s the kind of recollection that lives in your knees instead of inside your bones. When you think plane crash, there is something tangible. It is easier to imagine than freezing or numb.

  Ma would be cremated wearing one of Lily’s dresses. She hadn’t brought any dresses with her to Phoenix. Nothing appropriate. It struck me as almost funny that Ma would be cremated in someone else’s clothing. She bought all of her clothes from catalogs because she didn’t like the idea that other people had been inside the clothes that hung on the racks at stores.

  The mama cat was cleaning the kittens one by one, moving her tongue across their small warm bodies until their fur shined. Indiscriminately, as if each of them were the same. Outside it was snowing. The snowflakes were so big they could have been white petals from a cold flower instead of snow. I reached down and touched the mama cat’s head. She looked up at me, annoyed, and I moved my hand out of the box.

  Peter would close his eyes when the plane started to taxi down the runway. He would lean his head back against the headrest, put his hands on the tops of his thighs. When the plane roared and accelerated, he would pull the seatbelt so tight it would cut into his stomach so he could concentrate on this pain instead of the possibility of falling.

  When I’d asked how Lily was, Rich said, Not well. She’s not doing so well at all.

  Outside it was snowing cold white petals. And they didn’t melt when they touched the ground, because the ground wasn’t warm. The earth was frozen and unyielding. The hole I’d dug to bury the kitten in was shallow. I couldn’t dig deep enough into the reluctant earth for a proper grave. I tried to give the mama cat some more food and water, but she didn’t seem strong enough to crawl out of the box. Please, I pleaded. You need to eat. But she just lay there, and the kittens sucked, sucked, sucked on her red nipples.

  When the wheels lifted and the plane rose off the ground, Peter’s heart might dive a little. It might plunge in preparation for the falling of the body. He would not smile at the flight attendant in her nylon stockings and navy blue when her eyes scanned across the other midnight passengers. And she wouldn’t notice anyway. Fear to her was simply an expression on every third or fourth face.

  I wondered about the bones. About what happens to the bones after the fire. Did they burn too? Did they crumble? Did they resist when the body fell away, an insistent skeletal shadow until the last moment?

  The vents blew hot air across the room, but there were cold pockets that you could fall into if you weren’t careful. I walked barefoot and stupid into one when I went to make some tea. I stood for a moment in this cold space and it felt like I had no fingers or toes. In the other room, I could hear the kittens suckling, sucking.

  Peter would feign sleep. He might pull the plastic shade, lean his head against the window, and pretend that he was only dreaming. But each bump in the sky would startle his eyes open. Each cough, each laugh, each bell of ice ringing inside someone’s plastic cup would make him remember where he was tonight. And even when the plane landed, he would not trust the ground beneath his feet.

  I thought about the bones. When I thought about Ma’s death, I only saw the purple swirl of a borrowed dress, and bones crumbling like snow.

  In the living room, I pulled the kittens off the mother. It was like unsnapping a dress. I lifted the cat onto my lap and forced her eyes open wide with my fingers. What is the matter with you? Do you want to die? And then I cradled her in my arms, my hair wet with tears and stuck in my mouth. I’m sorry. Come on, please let me feed you. And outside, the falling snow made everything white.

  When I heard the taxi door close and saw Peter walking up the driveway, my head started to buzz. It was like seeing a ghost in work boots and jeans. Even far away his posture was as familiar as my own hands. I went outside without bothering to put on a jacket. I ran down the driveway, my feet pounding against the cold ground until I was inside the warm circle of his arms. We stood there for a few minutes, staring at my mother’s house.

  “You’ll catch pneumonia. Let’s get you inside, okay?”

  I nodded and we started to walk back up the driveway. His jacket smelled like the woods at home, like he’d carried a bit of the forest with him. I leaned into him, allowed his arm to curl around my shoulder, and breathed the woodfire smell of him. He opened the door and we went into the kitchen.

  “Brrr,” he said. “What is it Chuck says? Colder than a witch’s tit?”

  “No, that’s the right way to say it. He says, ‘Colder than a widget’s tit.’ ”

  “Well, it’s nice and warm in here,” he said, and took off his jacket. He draped it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs and sat down.

  The first winter we spent in our cabin, we didn’t know a thing about keeping warm. The apartments we had lived in when we were first together were always equipped with clanking, hissing radiators. The first morning I woke up in the middle of the night and there were crystals of ice forming on Peter’s beard. We learned quickly how to keep a fire stoked. How to
treat the woodstove like a hungry infant in need of middle-of-the-night feedings. We learned the pricelessness of a down comforter and thermal underwear.

  “You want some coffee?” I asked.“Ma doesn’t have a coffeepot, but I bought some instant.”

  He looked at me blankly for a second at the mention of Ma. “Please,” he said.

  I turned on the stove and watched the coils glow red underneath the teakettle. I concentrated on the jar of instant coffee, on the label peeling away from the glass, on the sparkling crystals inside.

  “The house looks different from what I remember,” Peter said.

  “I had to bring half of the furniture back inside the house from the front porch and the backyard,” I said.

  “Why was the furniture out there?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  I pulled the water off the burner before it whistled. I poured the water over the coffee and stirred each cup until the crystals turned the water a muddy brown, and then remembered there wasn’t any milk; I’d finished it when I was getting ready to go home. Before Rich called.

  “There’s no milk,” I said, my hands shaking. I turned around and looked at Peter, feeling helpless. Apologetic.

  His cheeks were speckled with coarse black hairs, an unshaven shadow. His black hair was messy, his cheeks still blushed pink from the chill.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Really.” He reached for the coffee cup and my shoulders started to shake.

  “I’m not used to this,” I said.

  “I know.” He nodded and took the coffee cup from me. He set it on the table and reached for my hand, pulled me into his lap, and touched the top of my head.