Gymnastics, I said.
Howdjou know that? she said. I said I had a brother making an insurance run at mid six figures before he hits twenty-five, irony is it’s the worst risk he could take with his life.
That campfire sounded nice, she could see it, the stream, the canyon, no canyons like that in Wisconsin. She was a good camper.
I held her for a long time, like reflections flickering on the walls. Our campfire, I said. Here thirty miles north of al Kut vehicles weighing down the asphalt all night, a billet for us at a faithful old base someone said the Under Secretary of Defense was going to pay a flyby visit to.
She’s the one at home Dad said was never wrong. ’cause she looked up to him. Did I know Livy at all? Yes, going to sleep dissolved, thinking of sixteen thousand candles, talking softly as if anyone would hear us. Waking up, hungry—
But the Russian…
We weren’t done with him.
And the archaeologist.
Went back down to take another look.
At the blast area, yeah. Good idea. Livy looking down at me, propped on her elbow.
“He heard I was down there…”
“Oh the Russian!” “Ukrainian.” “Like a big wrestler?” “Not that big.” “We know him.”
There it was again, the GI music-listening project, my friend coming in (as my father guaranteed) “handy” to dive with such originality it had been ignored at a moment when they wanted me at poolside. Dad could have swatted Storm like a fat, stumbling fly though he was not fat or hit like a bug with his windshield on a hot and threatening day, couldn’t he? — upstairs with brownish blood on his pants brownish and blurred and a monitor screen above the virginsbreath and the little volume of large short stories, and I had told the Russian’s little story like him to tempt a listener but this one wouldn’t betray her assignment, which I knew was to use me to pick up the track of the Chaplain. “They’re supposed to be so warm,” I said, as her mobile rang. “Not him.” “No.” “No,” she pursed her lips, “he never fooled me.” “How come you’re never wrong?” “Never volunteer anything. Wait till they ask.”
25 out
“That’s all it was,” I at last replied. My sister tossed her cigarette, we’d come a couple of miles up the highway. She put three fingers to her temple. “It was on his mind,” she said. “Mostly his,” I said, thinking the night before the dive, when I almost fainted in my boxers seeing him at the other end in the bathroom doorway, and looked once and went in my room and never lost it, and we sort of shook our heads about it now in the car, spinning our wheels. “I remember,” she said.
“Because I told you in the morning.” “I remember everything,” Em’s voice was husky and droll. “I wish I remembered everything you read to me, but I kind of do,” I said. “I remember what I didn’t,” she said.
The Directory on the floor, catalogues strewn among books, brochures, Summer programs, I didn’t know what. And Dad coming in on the kiss that didn’t end. “Not easy for him.”
The Coaches Directory entry. I’d forgotten how she censored it. “He doesn’t like writing. But there it is. Résumé, nothing to it. Methods, goals—‘no secrets,’ ‘industrious,’ ‘punctual.’ Mom said how he agonized late-night. Then you — the son ‘who’”—her pause (she was “E” then) like everything equal, gripping, ready to move, and present in her speech and reading always for the brother infinitely worth attending to—“‘who, it was ruefully doubted could ever have it in him to double as diver slash swimmer on the East Hill ‘Imperial’ team West Zone USA Swimming affiliate.’” An omission — (Wait, she said under her breath) — hard to exactly recall as if it was not so much right then in the entry on page 153 but a few words on so that, as she would do when she sight-read a hymn, a Sousa march, the Haydn, or “I Thought About You” (where I now added a personal campfire to the standard’s stream, train, cars parked, and that A flat 13 chord Em showed me that comes after “you,” just before you hit the going-away G9 again), she was reading a little ahead at the same time. Like a dive, I had thought filled to the brim with the life and apparent slowness of a full twist finding myself at the top standing in front of the plenary session following not a hard act to follow erstwhile speechwriter Storm’s proxy welcome from the Chief Executive (“that we are one American family in healthy competition brother and sister”) and describing at Storm’s behest the full twist wondering what had happened to Em though relieved to learn her car was OK in the parking garage.
“That birthday envelope I wrapped.”
What was in it, Dad had held it up to the light, money? Held like a slide above the dinner table after I’d gone to the other party which turned out to be an enlistment party. It was not a poem, he was sure (though he never understood that I would learn to write, or how), and definitely not drugs (a hint of humor, warmth). Maybe some artwork? or words of wisdom (?) — or a will! Em had provided the blue ribbon, which Dad had been loath to disturb. “Happy Returns” was in her high, round hand. “It was like a fortune,” she said to me both hands on the wheel, “somebody just wrote it with no one specific in mind but it didn’t come out that way.”
I took our mess hall trays away when Livy answered her ringtone, tilting her head as if she were taking the call while out walking, and I felt her waving a hand behind me to keep me there at the long table (near two friendly men in fatigues with, as it happened, the telltale cross on the collar). I didn’t like whatever was being said at the other end of her cell, but not because the major would want her back at headquarters.
I stopped opposite the Chaplains, noticing a copy of the Scrolls propped open with a mug and a knife between two breakfast trays. What did they think of it? The elder said, Thought-provoking even if it’s not quite from that time. Either it is or it’s made-up, said his friend. From what? said the first. You think He knew anything about fish hatcheries? said the other. Wind energy, said the elder, oh shoot, the Apostle Thomas said some of that stuff a century or two later — India he got to. Further, said the other. It is what it is, said the elder to me like a whatchamacallit — benediction. Shoptalk they cut off abruptly, smiling and shaking hands after I had put down my two trays. The Chaplains had a look at Livy leaning into her cell but slanting a friendly look our way.
Her cell did not make her seem between. And in the car presently her absent boss seemed more the proxy than she relaying what she knew wouldn’t surprise me but the trip was scrubbed and we had to turn around but she’d told him the car was heating up and we might need another day. She had left something out, I knew, sealed in a fond female act just as she had made our time a gift. And as we drove I marked her being “thoughtful” (my mother’s word if you were being quiet and she had to know why). Like increments of delay, intelligent breath, this thoughtfulness — hope, control — touched by me she was — nothing too wrong between us if she could only privately plan. “Oh I’m no prize package,” Livy said coming along what she said was Highway 27 toward a bridge.