WHAT I DO: I keep driving home. I don’t turn around. I drive home up our driveway, and Mia comes running out to greet us. She runs to her mother and Jen picks her up and buries her nose in her neck and breathes deeply, and I know she will stop wanting to know now the name of Anna’s boyfriend. Mia has wiped the anger away so quickly it is amazing, and I take Mia from Jen, and I want to breathe Mia in, too.
WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Chicken burritos.
WHAT MIA SAID SHE WOULD EAT: A chicken burrito without the chicken.
WHAT SARAH NOTICES: That the burrito shells have shrunk in size, but we all agree it’s a good thing since there was too much burrito shell to our burritos before anyway, so even though we know we’re being cheated, we don’t feel so bad.
WHAT THE NIGHT SAID: The streams are fuller now, the snow having melted. You will not be able to hear the owl hooting from the tree now, with the rushing sounds being so loud. You will not hear the occasional coyote yip. The snoring of Sam in the next room will blend in with the rushing sound. The snoring sound of your wife right next to you, though, can’t be masked.
CALL: No call. I just drive to Dorothy’s house. Dorothy is the woman with the sheep whose name is Alice. Alice is the sheep who follows Dorothy around like a dog. Alice is the sheep Dorothy took to church one day. I stop on the way to Dorothy’s house. I need gas. With a fill-up I get a free peanut butter cup. Is this good or bad? There’s been a scare. Peanut butter from a plant somewhere has been linked to illness in a handful of children. I eat the peanut butter cup, my fingers tasting a little of the gas from the nozzle I just used at the pump.
ACTION: I asked Dorothy if she had seen anything unusual. I asked Dorothy if she had seen the spacecraft in the sky. Dorothy called Alice over to her. Alice put her head in Dorothy’s lap, in the hammock created by her floral cotton skirt and her knees. Yes, Dorothy said, Alice has seen the spacecraft, too, but I haven’t, Dorothy said.
RESULT: I thanked Dorothy and I left.
THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: I was still hungry. I wished I could fill up my gas again and partake in some more tainted peanut butter.
CALL: No call. I drove to the farm where the minis, Molly, Netty, Sunny, and Storm, lived. The owner was not home. I petted the minis. I asked them if they’d seen the spacecraft. The minis whinnied. I took that for a mini yes, a mini sharing of our common experience.
WHAT I PASS ON THE WAY HOME: The zebra. He is outside standing on the snow bathed in the yellow moonlight. I put the window down. Free the Zebra! I yell. I see the zebra turn and look at me. The brush at the bottom of his tail moves from side to side.
MORE THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: Maybe rockets could be propelled by small, portable CERN accelerators, and man could travel from planet to planet without having to use fuel, relying on the power of magnets instead.
WHAT I DO ON THE WAY HOME: I stop off in front of the school. The sign is out by the road, the sign that has the letters that the bad kids can move around and make any words they want to and that they did once turn into COME TO THE FALL BOOB FEST. I sit looking at the letters that are there. VENISON DINNER TONIGHT, the sign says. I think what I can do and then I do it. I get out and change the letters around and then remove a few. I make the sign say, VEIN DINNER TONIGHT. Then I think how I wish I had some B’s and O’s because I’d really rather spell something with boobs instead.
WHAT I READ ON THE WAY HOME: The sign the local taxidermist leaves outside his house. SPECIAL: SKULL CLEANING HALF PRICE. I think how the sign is the same kind of sign that the school has, where I could change the letters around, but how could I come up with something better than SPECIAL: SKULL CLEANING HALF PRICE? And then I think how maybe one day a sign somewhere like that along the road will read LOW LEVELS GUARANTEED and I’ll be sure to drop in.
WHAT I SAW WHEN I GOT HOME: The spacecraft again. Maybe my going back to the doctor worked. It was flying low over our house. I stopped and waved to it, and it seemed almost to wave back, I thought, because it seemed to flash back red and green lights, but then it zipped away. I went inside. I didn’t care any longer if it could tell me the name of the man who shot Sam. I was just glad to see it back in the sky. Later, in bed, I looked for it again. I couldn’t see it. It must be down in the town by now, floating over Phil’s store, floating over the school, floating over the local taxidermist’s house, the Zodiac Killer’s house.
WHAT THE WIFE SHOWS ME WEEKS LATER: The brochure for the swimming team that the children have been on. Now there’s a master’s swim team for adults.
WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: The doctor says Sam needs the exercise. He should be on the team again, and your levels want you to join, too. I look at the brochure. I like how the sunlight comes in through the glass walls and lights up the pool water, making it look like water somewhere else, like water in Ecuador maybe, like water in Maui or Palau.
UPDATE OF THINGS MY WIFE THINKS MY LEVELS CAN DO SO FAR: Beg, talk, appreciate food, join a swim team.
WHAT I TELL MY WIFE: All right, I’ll join if you’ll join. I do anything now. I am so happy that the only thing I have to worry about now is my levels that it makes me appreciate having my levels. I am so happy to just look at Sam in our home again. I am happy to see him on the couch, his huge feet on the arm, dirtying the cloth. I am happy to hear him stomping upstairs across the floorboards and whipping towels at his sisters after he has showered. I am happy to hear him screaming for no reason, bounding down the stairs, reaching the bottom and wildly petting Nelly, shaking her head back and forth, and calling her a good girl. I think how it doesn’t matter who shot my son. My son is back. If the hunter were to knock on my door now, I don’t think I’d want to meet him. If the spacecraft were to suddenly blare out his name into the night sky, I wouldn’t want to know what it was. I wouldn’t want to be reminded of when Sam wasn’t.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER A FEW WEEKS: Most nights we crawl into bed, after having swum on our teams, smelling faintly of chlorine with a good kind of tiredness spreading out from our bones. I have tried to think like a dolphin. After all, this is what I have learned is the best thing to do in order to improve my fly. Think like a dolphin. These are happy, fast thoughts. These are undulations celebrating flight underwater. My wife and I have lain in bed in the dark before sleep talking in whispers about stroke and turn. Our arms, glowing silver in moonlight, have moved through the room, bent as we are on perfecting entry and recovery. We demonstrate for one another our aquatic techniques. Backstroking we remind ourselves to roll, keep our heads back and straight, our kick from the hip. Freestyling, our fingertips skate across the surface of the water right before we plunge them in for the pull. Breaststroking, we are moving our hands out in front of us, held in the shape of us at our prayers, our heels nearly touching our rears for the kick. Butterflying, we are trying to move like a dolphin, but it is difficult to do in bed, the weight of us heavy on the sheet coarse with grit the dog brought in on her feathering when she slept on our bed while we were out for the day.
And it is not just the night when we are in bed thinking about swimming, but it is at the breakfast table when we make Sarah or Mia or Sam (yes, Sam!) stand up from their French toast and we take them by their wrists and show them how in the recovery of the fly, their arms don’t go straight back underwater, but out toward their sides, pushing away the water for maximum speed. We take their small thumbs, and we tell them to keep those thumbs down when entering the water. They don’t listen. They grumble. They don’t want to be corrected. They say they’ll be late for school, and even your wife doesn’t care if they’ll be late for school, the whole family’s standing now, arms straight up in the air, practicing the dolphin rhythm, pushing their hips in and then out, moving the smell of the sweet maple syrup through the air, over toward where the dogs are, making them bark, making them want what we have on our plates.