Above Us Only Sky Read online

  “What did he look like?”

  “Same old, same old, like an old man with a white beard, which is why I never believed her.”

  Wheaton said, “I don’t see God. I don’t even know if I believe in him.”

  “What do you see?”

  “You used to have wings like a fairy or a bird or a butterfly, or like a mythical creature.”

  Immediately, I was terrified, more scared and more uncertain than I’d been since leaving Nashville. How could this boy, this nobody with ripped-up shoes and milky eyes, know about my wings? Dropping my head between my knees, I threw up the Fruity Pebbles I’d had for breakfast.

  Wheaton said, “Are you all right?”

  I was staring at the bright oranges and pinks of upchucked cereal. “I’m all right.” I reached back to feel the two seams that were my scars. I didn’t want Veronica to know what Wheaton had said. I didn’t want her to know that I’d thrown up.

  “I can see stuff,” he said. “That’s all.” We were quiet for a minute. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “You didn’t upset me.” I lied. His right knee touched my left. I was pretending that I hadn’t thrown up. I was pretending that everything was going to be okay. I was pretending that Wheaton couldn’t see things no one else could see. I guess I was a lot like Veronica—good at pretending things were okay when they weren’t. Wheaton and I, in our different ways, were painfully old for seven.

  If I knew where Wheaton was, I’d call him and tell him that the Old Man is in the hospital, but I don’t know where he is. I haven’t known for years.

  “What do my wings look like?” I whispered, tugging at my shirt to show Wheaton my scars. “They thought I had a birth defect.”

  He said, “It seems like the scars should be bigger.”

  “They cut them off when I was a baby.”

  He ran his fingertip along one seam. His hand was moist from a habit of pulling on his fingers, thumb to pinky, counting noises, birdcalls, and syllables. It was a habit I eventually tried to break, the pulling on his fingers. Now it seems stupid that I cared so much about a boy trying to decipher the universe. All he was doing was counting, trying to line things up. It was one of the few things that kept him sane.

  He said, “I don’t usually tell people what I see or hear. It’s dangerous.” His fingers were still pressed to my scars. When he was five, the year he started kindergarten, his parents placed him in Magnolia Gardens, an institution designed to fix problem children before they became adolescents. The Gardens, as they were called by Wheaton, had killed the voices and visions, but only temporarily, and only by using a low dose of lithium. The drug had not only quieted the visions but had dulled Wheaton. He couldn’t think, and when he tried to talk, his words were garbled. He also got confused about time: days of the week and the order in which things happened. His dreams and his waking life were one and the same.

  Before the Gardens, Wheaton had been close with his mother. This closeness was one of the reasons he was placed in the Gardens. He always used that verb placed. He never said “locked away” or “institutionalized.” His mother’s name was Lily.

  When Wheaton heard the voices, Lily had quieted them. She taught him to sing and count sheep. When he saw people no one else could see, Lily called them “imaginary friends.” She did everything she could to normalize Wheaton’s experiences, but then he started school, and Lily wasn’t there to reassure him. Rather, the guidance counselors thought he needed professional help. At home, his father tended to agree with them. It wasn’t normal for a boy to be so attached to his mother. Like a skipping record, Wheaton heard his father say, “There is something wrong with him.” Seven syllables, thumb to pinky, ending on the pointer finger. Thumb to pinky is the only way to count.

  Lily chain-smoked as she drove Wheaton to Magnolia Gardens. Wheaton’s father, who aspired to be a great American novelist, sat in the passenger’s seat reading lines of dialogue aloud. He was oblivious to Wheaton’s nervous finger pulling. I don’t want to go away. Seven syllables, thumb to pinky, ending on the pointer finger. Pointer finger. Four syllables ending on the ring finger.

  Wheaton had curly blond hair and big eyes, usually green, but when he had visions, they rolled up white in the back of his head. Years later, when I was in my twenties, I’d see junkies on the bus, their eyes doing the same thing, spittle in the corners of their mouths. Wheaton was never a junkie, and the only time he’d drooled was when he was prescribed lithium. If you ask a psychologist or psychiatrist or even a general practitioner about administering lithium to a five-year-old, they’ll tell you it’s a bad idea, a last resort. Aside from his eyes and the peculiar things he said, Wheaton was attractive, a looker like my dad, and from the finger pulling to the visions, he was special. Unique. He liked to draw and carried a small brown notebook, an old recipe book, in which he doodled, sketching whatever I requested, from dragons to birds. Wheaton was my best friend, my confidant, my comrade, my compadre.

  We were as close as two people could be, or so I thought, but Wheaton had secrets—his own treasures. Perhaps if I’d paid closer attention, I wouldn’t have lost him.

  Veronica is on her way here. We’re flying together. Arrangements have been made. I am trying to get my Oma on the phone, to let her know our plans, but her friend Rhonda answers. “Your Oma is at the hospital.”

  “What’s the room number, Rhonda? I don’t have it.”

  “Ten-three-seven. Ingeburg thought you’d already be on your way.” She hesitates. “She thought you’d have left by now.”

  I do not particularly like Rhonda. “I’ll be there tomorrow. Do you know if my grandfather is conscious?”

  “Ingeburg says that his oxygen levels are low. He doesn’t have much time.”

  There it is again—time. It’s two in the afternoon. June 3, 2005. Friday.

  I picture the Old Man smoking his cigar and pointing with it, telling Rhonda to shut her mouth. It’s an extension of his hand. Sometimes I thought he was going to poke Freddie in the face with it, but he never did. Rhonda is frustrated with me. I think I might’ve accidentally told her to shut her mouth. She’s hung up.

  If the Old Man is unconscious, I hope he’s dreaming, and if he’s dreaming, I hope there are big birds, black bears, and long-limbed pines. I hope that the birds are frenzied, muting the drone of hospital noises, like the spongy squish of rubber soles on vinyl flooring and the hum and blip of man-made machines. I hope the bears are fierce, protecting him from needle pricks, and the boughs are bendy, embracing him. Perhaps his mother is there, and she’s singing opera. Tomorrow, I will be there, and I will try not to be afraid. Tonight, I will try and dream of the Old Man. In my dreams, he is never old.

  4

  Prudence

  The plane is crowded. Veronica and I couldn’t get two seats together, so I’m back near the bathroom beside a man who, from the smell of it, is drinking scotch. He has blond curls like Wheaton’s. Candy hair, I used to call it, the kind of hair that loops around your fingers.

  The plane is rumbling down the tarmac. My stomach drops. Please let the Old Man know me. Please let him hold my hand and sit up. “Where’s my cigar?” he’ll ask, tossing whatever blanket they’ve draped over him to the side. He’ll tell my Oma that they’ve made a big fuss over nothing. Already, I’ve lost Wheaton. I can’t lose the Old Man.

  I am thirty-two years old. Wheaton would explain this as sixteen times two, as four squared times two. As one year younger than Jesus when he was crucified. As four times eight or eight times four or two digits or fingers away from making sense. When I was half the age that I am now or take away four squared plus one, my life changed for the better. It began with one of Wheaton’s visions and culminated in honest-to-God revelations. Big stuff.

  Like so many good stories, it begins with an apparition, a ghostly girl—but not just any ghost. This ghost had wings. Wheaton saw her on t
he pier and for a few seconds mistook her for me. Our pier in Los Vientos was concrete, not how a pier should be—slatted wood creaking with the ocean dizzily underfoot—but hard, the kind to crack, not splinter. If we lay down, we didn’t even feel the sway of the Atlantic beneath us, but we could watch the clouds pass overhead. Because of the winds, they passed quickly, but like all piers, our pier had an end where ocean met sky. This was where the ghost of the girl appeared, and because she had wings, it seemed only right that I should be able to see her too. Wheaton and I went out together to look for her, a spring squall blowing, our local brown baggers fishing for their night’s supper. Like most of Los Vientos’s population, these men and women had gone as far as they could, and without wings or fins, had to stop.

  “I don’t see her,” I said, frustrated. Of course I couldn’t see her. I didn’t have the sight like Wheaton, but we both suspected her appearance had to have something to do with me. Wheaton saw her “plain as day,” and told me she was staring at the sea. I reached out to try and touch her but felt nothing. Just the same, I was hopeful.

  Lightning flashed in the distance.

  Wheaton told me that her wings were enormous. Big and white, rounded above her shoulders and pointed at her feet. “She looks like you,” he said. There was another flash of lightning. Waves splashed against the concrete beams, the clouds swelling magenta. We were on the verge of something. We both knew it—anticipation was buzzing like electricity. And then Wheaton said the ghostly girl was gone. Vanished.

  There were storm clouds in his eyes, and the sky spit rain. Later, he drew her picture. Like the ghost herself, the picture was murky, Wheaton’s charcoal smudged, making it difficult to discern the shape of the face or the bend in the wing.

  My scotch drinker is a pilot who flies private jets. I don’t know exactly what that means, so he explains: “I fly airplanes for people who are rich and own planes but don’t fly them. It’s a living, and I get to travel.” His name is Sam Kirk. We shake hands. His fingers are swollen. There’s a tan line where a wedding band is missing. I order a vodka and cranberry and we clink glasses. This is better than sitting beside Veronica. I can be alone with my thoughts, holding fast to the Old Man. I met him the same year that our ghost appeared.

  Wheaton and I knew that 1989 was an important year. The sky was bluer. The moon brighter. The tides higher. The sun warmer. Food tasted better. So did cigarettes. We eagerly but somewhat anxiously anticipated whatever was coming our way, the waves smacking the pier’s concrete pilings, spitting foam like beer; fish jumping out of the water, pelicans diving swoosh into the blue, our world like boiling stew.

  In March of that year, I went alone to the Saint Mark’s Nature Reserve. I was a regular there. The volunteers and researchers knew me by name. It was a Sunday, and I expected to see more tourists, but the place was empty. In search of darkness and air conditioning, I went into the audiovisual room. There was a film about birds looping continuously. The narrator said, “Bird nests are works of art, each singular. Even today, as birds struggle to adjust to a loss of natural habitat, they succeed by incorporating Styrofoam and plastic into the construction of a suitable nest. In cities where noise pollution from traffic and construction has increased, many species of birds have developed a louder call to attract a mate. For most of the nine thousand species of birds, the male constructs the nest, building and rebuilding until the female is content. The nest has to be sturdy and safe from predators. It also has to be exactly what the female wants. If it’s not good enough, she’ll leave.”

  In the video, a baby osprey was born, cracking its shell, squirming and kicking, the head poking through, the wings pulsing, eventually unfurling. Later, the video showed the baby’s downy feathers. The mama bird circled the nest.

  An announcement came over the loudspeaker: “Five minutes until we close.” My shoulders and back itched. The low volume on the videotape started buzzing. I was born in the wrong nest to the wrong parents. I stood up but sat back down. Something hurt. I got to my knees on the institutional carpeting. The movie screen was close enough to touch, a blur of red and pink, orange and white. A baby bird’s mouth opening. My back burned. It is the male bird’s job to attract the female with flashy colors and calls. On my knees, I said, “Wheaton.” I felt them, the tips of them, slicing through my back. It hurt. I rocked forward. A mama bird was squawking. I reached for the screen. The light was magnified. The room glowed, and it seemed to shine for me. Many birds mate for life, while some females tire of one mate, abandoning the nest for another male’s colors and call. There was a buzzing in my ears, a weightlessness, the floor disappearing. I was compressed and filled. The male protects the baby bird, calling to the female if a predator approaches. The wings unfurled. My wings. I was crying. Brilliant. They were as wide as I was tall and grazed the carpeted walls of the small room. The intercom crackled, “Two minutes until closing.” I was born with wings. Rocking back and forth, seeing the reflection of my wings bathed in the red film light of two cardinals zipping tree to tree. This is how I was born. The light switched on. It was Dr. Neal Carl, one of the researchers. “Why are you on the floor, Prudence?”

  “Look at me,” I said.

  “We’re closed,” he said.

  “Look at me!” The wings were as real as my legs.

  “I’m looking.”

  “Can’t you see them?”

  “See what?” He looked at his watch. “It’s time to go. I’m making dinner tonight. We’re having tacos. Time to vamoose, Prudence.”

  I rose slowly for fear of hurting them. I could see their magnificence reflected over the rolling credits. I thought that Dr. Carl was blind. He said, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m incredible.”

  I reached for my messenger bag but was afraid to bend down.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Dr. Carl handed me the bag, which I held at arm’s length. I didn’t want to damage my wings.

  I couldn’t take the bus, not when my wings had emerged. I had to show Wheaton.

  I will never, as long as I live, forget the wonder of that day. I had never experienced anything miraculous. I walked past my own house. Veronica was on the front stoop, smoking a cigarette. She said, “Where are you going? Where have you been?” I rolled my eyes.

  I traversed Wheaton’s yard and pushed the front door open. He bumped his chest against mine like we were on the same sports team and I’d just made the winning score. He knew. His eyes were the color of malachite. He grasped my hands the same way I sometimes held his, to quiet them.

  “Can you see them?” I asked. “Can you see them right now?”

  “I’ve always seen them.” He smiled. “Please don’t fly away.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t leave me.”

  I wasn’t going anywhere. I remember thinking that he was being silly, but in actuality, he was being ironic because he’s the one who flew away. Not me.

  I hook my thumbs together and make wings with my hands, a bird inside a plane. I can’t see my mother from my seat, only the slushy pilot to my right and on my left, the polyester skirt and nylon ankles of the flight attendant wheeling a cart of pretzels and soda cans. In 1992, the year Wheaton went away, the Old Man took me to Coney Island. I was nineteen, perplexed and sad, but we laughed about the deadbeats operating the rides. “Shiftless,” the Old Man called them. “Who can afford to be drifting in this world? Time is short.” We rode the Ferris wheel, and I remember him telling me, “Sometimes life is like this Ferris wheel. Even when everything seems wrong, the sky is black, it’s starting to rain, and some lady throws up on you, the wheel will keep right on turning to spite you.” Wheaton was gone, but the wheel was going to keep turning.

  Last year, the purple martins turned the sky black. This year, I’m missing it, missing them. The sky outside my window is as white and clean as Wheaton’s eyes after they
capsized. I want to save the Old Man. I know that I’m selfish, but I need him to stick around. I am counting on yet another miracle. There have been so many in my life. Why not one more?

  PART TWO

  Yes I would say Here I am I am tired I am tired of running of having to carry my life like it was a basket of eggs.

  —Joe Christmas from Light in August by William Faulkner

  5

  1989

  In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the Old Man swallowed his high-blood-­pressure tablet, and like he did every morning, complained about this spoiled generation: “Nobody saves a penny.” When his pie-faced, German-­born wife, Inge, asked if he’d heard from their son, the Old Man grimaced. “That boy’s got no sense. What’s he doing with his life?” The Old Man lit a cigar and rocked back in his easy chair. “You do for your children and they do nothing for you. Get me a beer, will you, Inge?”

  “I have nothing better to do with my time?”

  The Old Man opened the newspaper, and before Inge had delivered his Black Label beer, he fell asleep. Inge stubbed his cigar.

  Later that evening when she tried to wake him, he brushed her aside. “Leave me alone.”

  “Come to bed.”

  He didn’t answer, and she left him in his easy chair.

  With his beard on one shoulder, the Old Man dreamed. For the first time in at least a decade, he dreamed about his sisters. In the dream, the three girls held hands.

  Before the war, the Old Man was called Frederick.

  In his dream, Frederick was young, and he was shouting, screaming, warning his sisters about what was coming. “Audra, Danut˙e, Daina! Listen to me. Run! Get out of there,” and even though they could see him in his dream, they could not hear him. Their names meant Storm, Gift from God, and Song. Daina was the baby. She was their little songbird. Everybody’s favorite, and no one made it a secret. He was shouting at the three of them, but there was no sound, even as his voice strained. In the dream, he touched his throat. His sisters waved like nothing was wrong. Groundless, nowhere to stand, the Old Man kept screaming. “Get out of there!”