“Are you well enough to travel?” he finally asked.
“Wipe that smirk off your face.” Grandmother’s eyes narrowed and her mouth became an angry line. Michael felt his face flush — he hadn’t realized he had been smirking. “Of course I’m well enough,” she said. “I’ll get my coat.”
She stood easily, pushed the chair back underneath the kitchen table, and hurried off to the closet.
Some days, Michael felt the Earth knew of his plans to escape it, and reached up with an extra hand to hold him ever more firmly. It had been bad the day he left Suzanne — ironic, because that was the very act he suspected might liberate him utterly, not yank him closer to the ground he had begun to despise. Now that he was so close — to Grandfather, to his secret — it felt as though the Earth was actually pushing him down, driving him into itself like he was a stake.
God, he just needed some time alone with the old man! Simplification, isolation, was not enough — there was something else the old man knew, and Michael needed to know it too.
He remembered the day Uncle Evan shot his movie, the day he saw the miracle of his Grandfather’s flight. His father, genial sadist that he was, had built him up for it, on their way over to Evan’s: Grandfather’s a miracle worker, Mikey — just like Jesus. Maybe if you ask him nicely, he’ll work a miracle for you! He remembered his mother trying to shush his father. That’s not why we’re going; don’t get Mikey’s hopes up, she said, and to Michaeclass="underline" Grandfather’s not like Jesus.
As it turned out, Grandfather showed up almost four hours late, and Michael was the only child there — so of course the waiting had made him crazy. It had in fact made everyone crazy. Michael’s father drank too much, and wound up spending what seemed like an hour sick in the bathroom, and his mother paced, feigning interest in Uncle Evan’s movie camera, which he loaded film into, in a black cloth bag; or the notebook. It was filled with crabbed handwriting, mathematical equations, and an array of charts and diagrams Evan had assembled, to try and explain the phenomenon of Grandfather’s seemingly miraculous flights. She flipped through the book with Aunt Nancy, then called Michael over and made him go through it too, and finally shut it and put her fingers to her eye-sockets and shooed Michael away.
We’ll work it out, said Aunt Nancy, resting her hand on his mother’s shoulder. Once we’ve got it on film, we’ll work out what’s happening… Make it right. From the bathroom, Michael heard a retching sound and the toilet flushing, and his father’s drunken cursing that everyone in the living room strove to ignore. Michael had finally asked to be excused, and went outside to watch for Grandfather’s car, from the sweet quiet of his uncle’s garden.
The car finally arrived, and Michael watched as his parents and aunt and uncle hurried outside to meet him. Uncle Evan opened the driver’s door — which was opposite Michael — and at first Michael thought he was helping Grandfather out. But he wasn’t; an enormous, round arm reached out and grabbed his arm, and that was followed by thick, hunched shoulders topped by a head plastered with black, sweaty hair. There was some fumbling below the roof of the car that Michael couldn’t see, and finally the immense woman started toward the house, borne by two canes and dwarfing even Michael’s father, who Michael thought was the biggest man in the world. The woman, Michael realized, was his Grandmother — whom he had not seen since he was very small.
Grandfather emerged next. He was wearing a neatly pressed suit, and he straightened it as he stood next to the car. He glanced briefly to the house, where the family were all occupied herding Grandmother through the side door, glanced at the sky, and skipped — actually skipped — over to the garden, where Michael sat. He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, and looked again at the sky.
Michael waved at him. Hello, Grandfather, he said. He waved again. Grandfather, it’s me! Finally, when the old man still didn’t respond, Michael reached out and grabbed the fabric of his pant-leg, and pulled.
There was a crunch, and Michael jumped back as Grandfather’s feet came back into contact with the ground. It was true! Grandfather could fly — he was flying just then, even if it was only an inch above the ground! Michael looked up at the old man with awe. He was like Jesus!
At the tug, Grandfather did look down, and his eyes, furious points of black, met with Michael’s. His lips pulled back from his teeth, in a snarl. How dare you! he snapped, and raised his hand, as if to cuff his grandson.
The hand lowered again, however, as Uncle Evan shouted hello, and strode over, camera in hand, to begin.
We’re ready to go, said Uncle Evan, and Grandfather straightened, pulled his suit flat. I don’t know why I agreed to this, he grumbled. You’re not going to send this to the television, are you?
Don’t worry, Dad — this is just for the family, Uncle Evan said.
Grandfather nodded, grudgingly satisfied. Where shall I stand? he asked, and glared at Michael again.
Michael trembled, and felt as though he was going to cry.
Later, Michael did cry. Michael’s mother held him, glaring at Grandfather’s back as he skipped back to the car, his flight finished and his corpulent wife re-installed in the driver’s seat, to bear him home.
You’re ground-bound, boy, Grandfather had said when he landed, and Michael had asked him if he could fly too.
Oh yes, Michael had cried that day. Ground-bound, Grandfather had called him, and he had been right — about him, Grandmother, about the whole pathetic family. They were all bound to the Earth; gravity hooked their flesh and winched it, inch by inch, year by year into the ground.
All of them, that was, but Grandfather.
Grandfather knew how to remove the hooks, free himself from the tyranny of Earth. He wouldn’t tell Mikey the boy. But he would sure as hell tell Michael the man.
“We must take the Highway 400,” said Grandmother as Michael started the car. She wouldn’t give him the address — she insisted, rather, on giving directions from the passenger seat, so Michael might better concentrate on the road. Michael backed the car out of the driveway.
“Will you tell me where we are going?” he asked. “At least generally? It helps me to know.”
Grandmother put a fresh cigarette in her mouth and fumbled with her lighter.
“Generally?” She chortled. “Generally, we’re going to see your Grandfather.”
The car filled with Grandmother’s rancid lung-smoke. Michael tightened his hands on the steering wheel, and thought, not for the first time, about putting them around Grandmother’s throat.
It seemed as though the drive took a day, the traffic was so heavy and the conversation so sparse. In fact, it was just barely over an hour before they reached the appropriate exit and Grandmother told him to leave the highway here.
“You know your way,” said Michael as they waited at the stoplight. It was snowing now — vector lines of white crossed the beams of his headlights, and little eddies swirled close to the asphalt. Now that they were stopped, Michael cracked open his window and savoured the fresh, clean air. “You must have been out here before,” he said.